The Exalting

by Dan Allen

  Ryke didn’t offer any arguments. He seemed to understand that while destroying the bloodstone would prevent its capture, it would seal their doom in the end.

  “So, you want to stop them from destroying the bloodstone . . . how exactly?”

  “Well,” Dana said. “I doubt they’ll listen to me.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’m going to have to steal it. The problem is, Korren may be thinking the exact same thing—to take the stone for himself.”

  “You might have a chance there,” Ryke said. “Most animals will snatch something that size if it tickles their curiosity. I suppose you have a better chance than someone like me going in and knocking skulls.”

  He was right. She would have to do it. “We don’t have much time. Isn’t there another way out of here? I mean besides the falls and the pit of doom?—I can’t believe I did that.”

  Ryke laughed. “You really are amazing, Dana.” He lifted her hand. “There is one way. But it is sacrilege—utterly forbidden. It’s the exalting chamber.”

  “The what?”

  “I’ll show you. . . . I’ve only been there once.” Ryke’s voice was heavy with some misgiving. But he stood and lifted her hand.

  Dana followed him to a cut-stone stair that rose near the river.

  “Carefully,” Ryke said. “One wrong step and—”

  “Bloody death. I know.”

  As she climbed slowly, following his guiding hand, Dana could only think of how incredible it was that he had found her at the falls. And now they were together, alone, depending on each other.

  We do make a good team.

  As he paused for her to catch up, Dana reached out and put her hand against his chest. Her eyes searched blindly for his. “Why did you risk your life for me in the canyon? You didn’t even know me.”

  “I watched you as you came up the canyon, as I often watch travelers who avoid the main road. Some are thieves. Others are wanderers. You . . . you were in danger.”

  Dana grinned. “Or did you just hope I was in trouble so you could come rescue me?” A guilty silence followed. “Ah! You did!” She grabbed the front of his shirt and squeezed. Dana imagined Ryke was blushing.

  “Can you blame me?” Ryke said, his voice sounding from so close Dana imagined she could lean forward and kiss his lips, if she dared. “The life of an acolyte is one of self-denial. We live to serve.”

  “As for this,” Ryke cleared his throat. “What we are about to do is punishable by death. You must never speak of it.”

  “Kissing?”

  “No—why would I—you do realize you’ve got a giant scorpion on your shoulder?”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Well, it does suit you. Not sure it likes me, though. I was talking about entering the exalting chamber.”

  Dang it.

  “Follow me.”

  “Hand,” Dana begged, reaching out.

  “Are you just faking blindness to hold hands?”

  “I think that would be against the rules,” Dana said. “. . . Not that I wouldn’t try it.”

  “Finally, some honesty.” He had to be grinning.

  Dana’s fingers slipped between Ryke’s, and she followed him forward into a low-ceilinged cavern, a fact she discovered with the side of her head.

  “Ow!”

  “Duck.”

  “Thanks.”

  “For your blind information, this is a beautiful limestone cavern,” Ryke said. “All sorts of colors—and look at that.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a shrine here, with a glow candle—the one I brought when I crossed the chasm.”

  “It’s still here?”

  “Like I said. No one comes here.”

  Dana heard the rummaging in his pocket followed by the sound of a striker. “Alright, follow me. Quickly.”

  The path led downward. It was an easy walk mostly, though the humidity in the cavern did become quickly stifling.

  Ryke’s hand tugged downward, and Dana stooped under a rock formation. A bit of chalky water dripped onto her hand.

  It was warm, almost hot.

  Dana realized she was sweating profusely.

  “Almost there,” Ryke said. “Can you feel it?” he asked.

  “Feel what?”

  “The heat.”

  “I thought it was just you.”

  “Funny.”

  “What is this place?” Dana asked. “Why is it so hot?”

  “This is where the bond between the bloodstone and the ka is made.”

  Dana rounded a corner and squeezed through a narrow gap between two limestone formations. A waft of hot air hit her face, nearly choking her.

  “I can’t even breathe this air.”

  “Heat melts sayathenite. I thought a Norrian would know that.”

  “Well, yes. Forz, my friend—not my boyfriend, just—anyway, he makes mechanodrons with sayathenite. He warms the crystals when he trains them. Too much heat, and they melt away.”

  Ryke led her forward, into the steamy air.

  “Are you sure this is safe?”

  “It isn’t safe,” Ryke said. “Not everyone survives the exalting ceremony.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dana said.

  “When I was being examined for the decision,” Ryke said. “I was brought here to see if I could withstand the heat.” His voiced faded. “I failed.”

  “I’m so sorry.” That explained why Ryke hadn’t been chosen. “What does heat have to do with the ka ceremony?” she asked as she followed Ryke further in to the geothermal chamber.

  “How do you think the ka gets the crystal inside them?”

  Dana blinked. “Inside them?”

  Ryke sighed. “You’ve never seen a ka?”

  Dana shook her head.

  “The bloodstone is part of them; usually it forms on the back of their neck or in the center of their chest. Sometimes on their forehead.”

  “How do they—”

  “They must swallow it,” Ryke said. “But the bloodstone does not melt at body temperature. The chosen must survive the heat, which melts the crystal. The ka must then cool slowly so that the crystal may reform. Too fast, and the crystals reform in the bloodstream—the candidate dies. Come on. Just a bit further.”

  It felt like walking through a furnace. Only there was no flame.

  “The sayathi in the bloodstone are the ruling type,” Ryke explained. “Inside an adept, they can reach beyond the veil. They can feel the sayathi in the bodies of those blood-bound to the colony, as if the stone were still in the pool. The connection is far stronger than any meditation circle.”

  “Which is how the ka draws will from the people in the city,” Dana guessed. Sweat dripped down her back. Her damp clothes clung to her.

  “And feels their pain and their hopes and prayers.” Ryke stopped. “Oh no.”

  “What’s the problem?” Dana asked.

  Ryke banged his staff against something metal. “The entrance—our exit—is locked from the other side.”

  “Can’t you break it down?” Dana said. “I can’t take much more of this heat. I don’t think we can make it all the way back through the cavern.”

  “I know,” Ryke said. His breathing was likewise ragged.

  His hand let go, and there was a sound next to her as if he had sat down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Meditating. I need to summon all my will. Then I will try to break through.”

  Dana bit down her questions and tried to keep the welling delirium from overwhelming her. She struggled not to interrupt Ryke. He was gathering will, and her distraction wouldn’t help.

  But perhaps her will could.

  Come. Dana threaded out will and drew on the spinning scorpion still waiting patiently on her shoulder. She immersed herself into its dizzying consciousness. Her vision split into a dozen views. The nimble creature wriggled through a gap between the iron door and the wall, then down a chain and thrust severa
l of its multi-segmented legs into a lock. Dana felt its limbs as extensions of her own. She worked the mechanism by pushing two metal leaf springs in opposite directions until the catch finally came loose. Dana let the chain fall through her fingers and listened as its weight pulled it through the latch link by link. The moment it was clear, she pushed the latch down and fell out as the door swung open.

  A blast of cool air greeted Dana.

  “It’s open?” Ryke gasped.

  Leaning on Ryke’s staff, the two stumbled away from the heat of the exalting chamber, landing in each other’s arms in the cool sand of the chamber beyond.

  Dana rolled onto her back, taking in huge gasps of cool air. “There was a lock,” she said. “I had to get the spinning scorpion to open it for me.”

  “Did you just save my life?” Ryke said.

  “I think so.”

  “Well that’s one less thank-you to bother about.”

  “No. You rescued me from the falls. That’s still six. But if you want one off the list, you’d better take one.” Dana reached for him and then froze. She looked at her hand in front of her face. “Holy ka! I can see again.”

  “I think you must have sweat out all the angel’s kiss,” Ryke said.

  “Brilliant. How how do we get to back to the city without being seen?” Dana said.

  “We can’t take the mountain route. We don’t have much time,” Ryke added. “The citizen council always meets at noon.”

  “Noon?” Dana scrambled to her feet. “When is that?”

  “It was a half hour away when I left Shoul Falls. So five, maybe ten minutes.”

  “How long will they deliberate?” Dana said.

  “I don’t know. We’d better run,” Ryke said.

  “Wait,” Dana said. “I’ve got a better idea. Do you have a bow and some rope?”

  Chapter 21

  After six weeks aboard the Nautilus, personal space was so far gone, it was in the realm of myth. Jet was strapped to the bulkhead next to Monique.

  He was pretending to be asleep.

  So was she.

  Her breathing was too regular. It was easy to tell when Monique finally did fall asleep because she did this twitch thing and then let out a long, slow breath.

  Teea was flipped, with her head by Jet’s feet and closer to the filter intake, to keep her errant dream pheromones from messing with his head. There was a reason faelings slept far apart in trees.

  Two feet away on the opposite wall of the corridor was Yaris, who tolerated the buzzing electronics. Decker had a spot in the small recess that composed the medical station where Dormit was still in hibernation.

  Jet felt every breath Monique took, the swell of her chest pressing gently against his arm.

  After a long day of studying transmissions from the orbital satellites around Xahna, and then practicing Xahnan with Jet and Teea, she ought to have been as tired as the rest of the crew.

  Something was eating at her. And for some reason, that ate at him, too.

  Jet had plenty to mull over. The ASP ship had finally started braking at ten full g’s. Whether it had started with anyone alive, it certainly had no one left alive now. The risky maneuver bought them them an additional week. ASP would be there a full month ahead of Jet. It would give them time to land on the big continent, make powerful friends, and attempt to consolidate power.

  Even worse, the ASP sprint ship was a larger frigate with multiple dropships anchored on the hull like lampreys, each adding braking thrust.

  Even Decker wouldn’t stand a chance in orbital combat.

  And they know we’re coming.

  Monique took a shorter breath, holding it, as if she were done pretending.

  “Hey,” Jet whispered.

  “Hey.”

  “You ready for decel?” Jet asked. “Only eighteen hours of free fall left.”

  “I guess,” she whispered back.

  Is she depressed? Am I that depressing to be around?

  “You want to talk sociology?”

  “No,” she said softly, her voice dulled by weariness.

  Jet was no shrink. But he was a friend. “What’s on your mind?”

  She hesitated. “Oh, just my last night on the Excalibur.”

  Her date with the elf. He had hoped it would a good memory for her, not something she would brood over a month and a half later. That made him even more curious. “What happened?”

  “I spent the evening with the high elf Ahreth.”

  Oh great. The guy looked like a Greek god—but taller and thinner and no beard. And talk about dating older guys. “Isn’t he like a hundred and fifteen?”

  “Looks like he’s twenty-seven,” Monique whispered. She paused, as if her tongue wouldn’t say the words.

  “Spit it out.”

  “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Okay, that punch wasn’t so bad,” Jet muttered. “Still kind of hurts in the ribs a little.”

  Monique’s lip twitched with the start of a smile. “We met in one of the elven council chambers.”

  “With no corners and curvy ramps and wicker chairs and poofy cushions?” Jet’s eyebrows crossed. “What do they do in there anyway? Or, do I not want to know?”

  “A date with an elf is a lot of meditating,” Monique said. “Kind of . . . boring.”

  That was better than the worst-case scenario Jet had been dreading.

  “Did he say anything interesting,” Jet asked, “about the mission?”

  “Of course, I asked him what he thought,” Monique said. “He’s got to be the smartest Believer in the fleet.”

  “Don’t tell Yaris that.”

  “Yaris agrees. But when I asked Ahreth about anything related to first contact, he would tell an unrelated story, or ask me a question in return. It felt like he was so far beyond me that I was just a child.”

  “Or he was stumped,” Jet mumbled.

  “Ahreth finally did make his point.”

  Jet turned his head and was eye-to-eye with Monique, who was close enough he couldn’t quite focus on her face. There was pain there, down deep where she was vulnerable, like a person who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

  The pale look of her face in the gently blinking console lights left Jet cold and empty. She seemed untouchably remote and trapped there.

  “It was late—possibly early in the morning. We had finished the bottle of solemnity. It’s such a strange elixir.” She sighed. “It’s almost like stepping out of your body and looking at the world as though you were someone else.”

  Jet could only imagine because he’d never had enough spare pay to even beg a sip of the stuff.

  “By this time, I no longer saw Ahreth as merely a thing of beauty—I could still see him, the draping folds of his tunic, the flowing muscles of his body, his slender arms, long white hair, but these were merely facts.”

  “You were ‘in the hollow,’” Jet said. “That’s what Yaris calls it.”

  “I sort of just saw things only for what they were, without any attachment or consequence. Then the stories he had told sort of arranged themselves in my mind. And I saw.”

  Jet blinked. “Saw what?”

  “The conclusion. All his stories were tales of impossible quagmires and catch-22’s. In each situation there was only one solution—to fail. I don’t know why he tried to get me to think about failure. By the time the solemnity wore off, I found myself in my chambers alone . . . weeping.” Her voice choked. “He thinks we’ll fail.” Monique shivered. “Jet, how many people are going to die?”

  Millions of lives—billions—were hanging on their mission. And the high elf in the hollow had spoken only of failure.

  The word “fail” bound all of Jet thoughts, channeling them along a path he had never considered.

  “I’m sorry,” Monique finally whispered. “I . . . I didn’t mean to tell you all that.”

  Stuffed in a sleeping sack, Jet couldn’t offer his hand or pat her shoulders. He leaned his head to the side and gav
e a gently consoling side headbutt.

  As he did, his thoughts shifted sideways, onto a new path.

  Failure.

  Jet couldn’t gather Xahna to his side in merely a few weeks. He couldn’t outsprint the ASP ship—or out-negotiate them—collect enough argon and tritium fuel, and find the next planet closer to the Prime Star before the ASP fleet arrived. He couldn’t fight the ASP fleet and win.

  Failure was the only option.

  Failure. Of course! “He may be right,” Jet said. “The only way to save Xahna is to let it fall to ASP.”

  And in that moment, he knew why they chose a marine.

  He could put the mission first.

  God help us.

  Xahna must fall.

  “I think I’m having an idea.”

  Resurrection.

  “Moni, did you ever read the Bible?”

  A tremble and a slow, heavy breath from Monique’s direction gave the answer. She was asleep.

  That was fast.

  But Jet couldn’t sleep. He finally knew what he had to do.

  How do you engineer a resurrection?

  * * *

  Ryke shattered the latch with his staff and pulled the lock bar free. The heavy wooden door swung open to reveal an array of weapons: swords, maces, spears—

  “Bow.” Ryke lifted a heavy oaken bow, an arrow, and hefted two coils of thin cord over his shoulder.

  Dana had never seen a bow so thick. It looked more like a warped beam.

  “I don’t think you can loft all that cord with one arrow.”

  “Watch me.”

  A grinned twitched on Dana’s mouth. Look who’s modest now.

  Ryke led the way to the mouth of the falls. This time Dana could see and made it quickly through the exalting chamber.

  On the small ledge beside the falls, Dana looked out over the vista she had missed previously. The morning sun was high in the sky, though it was not yet noon. But there wasn’t much time left.

  Ryke spent a minute arranging the cord.

  Dana looked over the edge. At the base of the falls several hundred feet below was a roiling pool of deep blue water shrouded in turbulent mists.

  Dana’s stomach twisted. “This is insane.”