Resenting the Hero Read Free

nothing more than human hands were quickly torn down again. Our modest crops were destroyed by droughts and floods. Many, many died. People fell into despair and became certain that the planet would kill them all. Yet they strove to survive. They rebuilt. They sowed new crops. They had children.
    â€œOne of these children was a boy named Bora Zaire. A very odd young man, who spoke nonsense, and was prone to tears and fits of rage. An idiot, many thought. And one day, a cyclone approached his settlement. While others fled in fear, this young man stood in the strengthening winds, staring as though in challenge. And the cyclone faded in strength and size until it disappeared.
    â€œAnd Bora Zaire died.
    â€œHe was only the first to die in this way. The same happened in other settlements. An event would threaten, and some young man or woman—always one who was considered strange and odd—would stare the event down. The event would disappear, and the young person would die. No one could understand why.
    â€œWe know now that these young people were Sources. We now know that these were people with a special talent, an ability to feel the approach of an event, to reach into that event with their minds. They could draw the forces of the events into their very bodies, draining the events of all their power until they simply disappeared. The forces of these events could be directed away, harmlessly.
    â€œThis we call channeling, and we now know channeling the forces is fatally hard on the body. The heart beats too fast. The mind tears itself apart. The forces are displaced in a manner most unnatural, and they curve back on the Source to crush that fragile human shell.
    â€œWe know this now, because this is what Shields tell us.
    â€œNirah Kadaf is the first Shield we have in the history books. A quiet, serious young woman who couldn’t like another young woman in her settlement, a strange girl named Mandir Olsworth. When their settlement was threatened by a tidal wave, and Mandir felt compelled to stand out in it, Nirah stood beside her. The tidal wave sank harmlessly into the soil. And neither woman died.
    â€œFor while Sources can reach into the heart of an event, Shields can reach into the minds of Sources. They can slow the heartbeat of a channeling Source, calm the mind, and erect their own barriers around a Source to protect that Source from the curling forces.
    â€œStories of this pair of women spread wide and reached the ear of Sylva Westphal, a holder of the north. She sent men out to collect these two women, and others to search for more of their kind, to bring them to her hold. And once they were there, she hired healers and people of learning to study these young people and determine what they were.
    â€œYears of study revealed little. There was no one physical or mental characteristic shared by all. The talent did not appear to be inherited. Nor could it be learned by others. It was something inborn and completely unpredictable.
    â€œWhat was learned, however, was that Sources and Shields, when they were brought together, bonded. And bonded Sources and Shields worked better together than those who were not bonded. And the bonding was as unpredictable as the talent itself.
    â€œHolder Westphal continued to search for people of these talents. She housed them, fed them, and then charged for their services. Those with the money to pay the fee could have their homes and settlements protected from the natural events of this world. Those who could not were destroyed.
    â€œMany protested of this to the Empress, for all perceived the talents of the Sources and Shields to be vital to the survival and prosperity of the whole world. So the Empress demanded that all Sources and Shields be turned over to her.
    â€œHolder Westphal refused.
    â€œThe Empress called on her Imperial Guard.
    â€œHolder Westphal assembled an army of mercenaries.
    â€œThe Sources and Shields, foreseeing a lifetime of