The Exalting

by Dan Allen

  “Very,” Ryke said without looking up.

  “Great. There are guards.” Dana pointed to the edge of the pool. “Someone must have tipped them off that you might come to the mouth of the falls—what are they doing?”

  “Looking for fish in the pool,” Ryke said.

  Dana wasn’t surprised. “Well they aren’t watching, so hurry.”

  Ryke wedged the bow against his knee and groaned as he bent the bow to string it. The bowstring was twice as thick as any Dana had ever seen. “Are you sure you can slide down this?”

  Dana nodded. “No problem. The question is whether an arrow can reach the woods beyond the pond.”

  “Not without a warlock.” Ryke looped the end of the cord around a sharp rock. “Just make sure that doesn’t slip off.”

  “Got it.” Dana gripped the cord with her hands, her knuckles grinding against the sharp rock.

  Ryke knelt on the ground, the bow clutched in his hand. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Then he stood and nocked the heavy arrow.

  Ryke opened his eyes and drew the great bow back, pulling the arrow to his chin. He lifted the arrow almost straight up and released.

  The arrow shot out into the air over the lake, the cord trailing behind it.

  When it reached the peak of its arc, Ryke dropped the bow and grabbed the cord in his hands. On Ryke’s contact with the cord, the arrow straightened out and then seemed to accelerate.

  Ryke was pouring will into it.

  As it soared over the base of the falls, the arrow took up the slack, hauling the cord through Ryke’s fingers as it fell.

  Ryke groaned with the effort of keeping the arrow on target.

  The arrow sailed over the rocks and passed between the trunk of a tree and a large branch. The cord snapped taut, and the arrow careened about the branch like the toggle of a bolo, cinching the line.

  Dana folded her arms and rolled her eyes at the feat which bordered so near to impossible that no superlative would do it justice. “That was probably luck.”

  Ryke fell to his knees exhausted.

  “Come on,” Dana said. “We have to hurry. The guards will see it.”

  “I . . . I don’t have the will. And I hate heights. Bad combination.”

  With his will spent, Ryke would only bring attention to her. If she was going to steal the bloodstone, she needed a low profile. It was up to her now.

  “You’ve done all you can,” Dana said.

  Dana knelt and swept his black braids away from the side of his face. She planted kiss on his salty cheek.

  “Another thank-you?”

  “No. That was for luck. I still have six.”

  She walked to the edge of the falls, untied the belt of woven leather strips from her trousers, looped it over the taut cord, and held it in both hands. She squinted, trying not to look down.

  A gust of cold, misty wind challenged her balance.

  “Oh, mercy.” She leapt from the edge. The thin cord stretched under her weight, dropping precipitously down, momentarily making Dana think the rope had broken. Her breath caught in her throat as the cord stretched and finally came taut.

  The pool was over a hundred and fifty feet below.

  Then the braided leather strands of her belt began snapping from the friction.

  Dana nearly screamed as she dropped several inches, all of her weight transferring to the single remaining strand.

  She hauled herself up and grasped the sliding cord with her bare fingers. They burned as she slowed to a stop, right above the guards.

  Crystals of Xahna! That hurts.

  Dana pulled her legs up and began crawling hand over hand as she dangled from the cord like a marmar monkey on the underside of a thin branch. Her palms stung like they had been placed in a fire.

  She looked backward at one of the guards and met his startled eyes.

  “There one is!” He drew a crossbow. “Stop right there.” The second guard sighted up the cord to the mouth of the falls in the middle of the cliff, looking for any who might be following her.

  Dana was still thirty feet off the ground, far enough to break both legs, her back, and every other bone in her body if she fell.

  Then she was falling.

  Ryke must have cut the rope!

  Dana swung downward as the cord collapsed. Unfortunately, the distance to the tree was just a little more than its height. Dangling from the rope, she skidded along the ground as the two soldiers raced toward her.

  “Stay back!” Dana yelled.

  They were on dangerous ground. This was a forest.

  The charging men came within two yards of her, when a torrent of enthralled birds burst out of the trees and throttled the soldiers. Beaks, wings, and claws thrashed them backwards.

  The men raced for the cover of the pool, covering their faces and screaming for help.

  Dana turned and raced through the trees. As a flock, the birds looped back toward her.

  A hundred pairs of eyes informed her steps. Despite having never crossed the wood before, with the help of her friends, Dana picked an unimpeded route through trees, boulders, and underbrush.

  Teal-breasted swallows raced ahead, spotting soldiers coming at her. Pecking grouse raced around the other side of the men, stepping on leaves and breaking twigs underfoot, leading them the wrong direction.

  Anvil-bills snapped branches over the soldiers, raining piles of pine needles to block their vision as Dana slipped through their line unheard and unseen.

  The birds scattered away as she emerged from the forest and onto a rock in leaping distance from the city wall, where two city scampers waited to guide her through the back alleys.

  Without hesitating, Dana took the jump, her adrenaline carrying her just far enough. She caught the top of the wall, climbed up, and slipped through the space between what might have been two ancient battlements.

  As she headed into the city, the black-scaled scampers alternately scouted and stopped to point directions with their snouts.

  Then, with Dana’s prompting, a long-tailed marmar suddenly realized how to work the mechanism of its cage. It escaped and raced over the rooftops of buildings beside her. The monkey, a favored delicacy in Aesica, took its first chance at revenge by flinging a load of poop in the face of a sentry.

  Dana slipped by unnoticed as the raging guard looked in vain for the offending primate.

  Dana headed for the center of town, passing row after row of deserted streets. It seemed everybody had gone to the meeting where the fate of Shoul Falls and possibly all of Aesica would be decided.

  Would all the cities capitulate so easily? Would Vetas-ka find ways to subvert their kazen and turn them to him?

  Someone has to make a stand.

  The Aesicans could band together, the separate cities and their ka fighting as one. Wasn’t that what the Pantheon of Aesica was for? Why didn’t Shoul Falls call the Pantheon for help?

  One thing was certain: no one would follow weakness.

  Then I’ll show them strength.

  Chapter 22

  Jet sat across from Monique on two of the benches in the launch deck/storage bay, listening to her theory about cooperation between the ka of various cities on Aesica. Since an ASP dropship had detached from their sprint ship and landed in Torsica, Monique’s investigations had focused almost entirely on potential landing sites on the smaller, more mountainous continent.

  Jet actually found Monique’s theory sort of interesting. “So . . . it’s like a federation?”

  “More of a pantheon of gods,” Monique said. “There’s not much to support it. Only the lack of any reference to recent wars and some isolated audio references.” She smiled. “You’re actually paying attention, aren’t you? I mean, you still look at the shuttle fuel status display every few minutes, but between that you actually listened to me.” She crossed her legs. “We aren’t going to run out of fuel, you know. Big Bertha had more tritium than we needed, and Adkins wouldn’t let them delay departure to pump it
out.”

  “Huh. That explains why Decker hasn’t been dumping the shuttles on schedule. He’s just running them all at 80 percent instead of just letting the extra ones go.”

  “For redundancy,” Monique said. “What if there is an engine failure or a tether snaps? We’d miss the planet entirely.”

  She made a good point. “You know I used to just think—well, it’s embarrassing—but, I used to just think you were a pretty face.”

  “That’s incredibly shallow.”

  “Yeah. It is.” Jet wished he could turn back time and somehow swap out who he had been for the kind of person that made a better friend, someone who really cared. But even traveling close to the speed of light couldn’t turn back the clock. He could only go forward.

  “As for me,” Monique said. “I used to just think you were a trigger-happy jarhead.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m convinced.”

  Jet burst into laughter. “Come on—I’m more than that.”

  “And a pair of usefully large biceps.”

  Jet leaned forward, elbows on his knees. It was a nice rest from sitting up straight in double gravity. “Useful for . . . what?”

  Monique blushed. “I don’t know . . . anything.”

  “Anything?” Jet said. “What about holding you?”

  Monique’s jaw dropped. “Not that useful.” She stood up against the double gravity of deceleration and sauntered away. “Jarhead . . .”

  It was progress.

  A day worth remembering.

  He wasn’t sure how many he had left.

  There were a few days in his life that fell in the category of unforgettable.

  The day he learned that jackalopes were real—another of Avalon’s bizarre and surprisingly dangerous, small, fuzzy creatures. Imagine a jackrabbit jumping at your nether regions with its spiky antlers. He never slept well on Avalon after that.

  There was his first kill on Talaks, sipping oxygen from a mask at six thousand meters altitude. His explosive round tipped an approaching orc off the edge of a very steep cliff. His commander had simply radioed, “Nice miss.”

  Like today with Monique.

  Jet’s headset chirped, and Decker spoke. “The orbital AI running the satellite video flagged a gathering in one of the northeastern Aesican cities as anomalous. We’re getting full streaming video and near constant audio from several recently deployed bugs.”

  With an effort Jet stood up. Whatever was going on down there had gotten Decker excited. “Which city is it?”

  “It’s Shoul Falls—one of the cities without a ka. Outside elements are approaching from the canyon and the forest, too. We’ve got ourselves a showdown brewing.”

  “I’m there.”

  Jet pressed to his feet and stomped to the cramped bridge.

  Shoul Falls. No ka. Outside elements.

  It felt like trouble. The kind of trouble he was born for.

  As he passed the medical station, Jet tapped the wake icon on Dormit’s cryobag. “It’s time to rock and roll.”

  Dormit might not make first contact, but Jet needed him full strength when he landed. The fearless dwarf had saved his life on Avalon. He would probably do it again.

  * * *

  Dana slipped over a brick wall into a work yard, then ducked through a side gate. She emerged into a plaza filled with people. Nearly half had dark hair: brown or black, just like her.

  An immigrant town. No wonder Vetas-ka had come to its rescue a century before. There were likely business and family connections between Shoul Falls and Torsica.

  Dana stopped to look in a window and caught her reflection.

  Wow.

  Being blood-sworn had its advantages. Dana looked better than after a week’s vacation at the geyser fields of Farlan. Her eyes sparkled, her skin was smooth—even the wound in her forehead was barely visible—and she wasn’t even out of breath.

  She turned to the gathered crowd and stood up on a barrel to see what was going on.

  A raised platform stood in the center of the central plaza. Eight men and eight women sat on chairs surrounding a glass case on a pedestal.

  On the floor of the glass case was the leather pouch—empty. And seated on what looked like an ornate candlestand was a scintillating crystal with a size and shape so familiar Dana had no doubt what it was.

  The bloodstone.

  She borrowed the eyes of a hawk soaring overhead for a closer look, noticing how easier it seemed with the sayathi symbiotes inside her. As the hawk’s eyes focused on the crystal, Dana took in the many facets, the same shape she had felt through the pouch.

  A sense of urgency gripped her. Dana was glad she hadn’t looked before. Seeing it now, glinting in the sunlight, she wanted nothing else.

  A bell in the square tolled three times. Dana looked around. There were at least ten thousand people pressed into the large square, possibly more. The chaos of arguing voices dropped as all sixteen members of the council stood.

  “In accordance with our sacred laws,” spoke a woman from the middle of the group, “we are gathered to determine the fate of the bloodstone. Each of the elected citizens represents their district. In the event of a tie, the vote will go to the populace at large. Those of blood-bound age shall all be counted.”

  “Burn the bloodstone!” cried a voice from the crowd, which was immediately drowned out by a dozen other countercries as well as scattered echoes of agreement.

  The woman in the center of the platform raised her hand.

  “Those sworn to the loyalty of the ka—the acolytes and kazen of the sanctum—are being held at the barracks of the civic guard. Each has submitted to a disabling treatment of angel’s kiss and will be unable to interfere with these proceedings.”

  The chairwoman gestured to a man seated at the edge of the group. “Kazen Korr will represent the sanctum at these proceedings, his vote carrying the will of those denied attendance. He will ensure the safety of the stone, as well as execute whatever decision is made by the council.”

  “Not good,” Dana groaned. Now she had him to deal with as well. There was no guarantee that he would not make a grab for the stone if the council chose to destroy it. Being a telekinetic warlock lent him an unmatched advantage.

  Dana thought about trying to force her way closer to the center. But that was a risk. Korren might spot her.

  She stepped down and drifted back into the crowd, stopping just out of reach of a civic guard in earnest conversation with a young boy, probably his son by the looks of their similar hawkish noses.

  “What took you so long?”

  “Some sort of commotion at the falls,” the boy reported.

  “The missing two?”

  “Yeah. Ryke and the Norrian. They tried to slide down a cord, but only one of them made it down—the foreign girl, Dana.”

  “No worries about her,” the father said. “Korren said she’d been on angel’s kiss for two days. She probably can’t hear herself think.”

  Yes, I can.

  “But the soldiers at the pool were assaulted by every bird in the forest,” said the youth. “Explain that if she’s on angel’s kiss. Makes me wonder who isn’t telling the truth.”

  “So, she’s a druid?”

  The boy nodded. “Oh yeah. Apparently, like none anyone has seen since the last ka.”

  Dana lifted her eyebrows at that. Her grandfather had been an adept after all—a druid just like her. But he wasn’t anymore.

  She recalled the way her grandfather often rubbed the muscles at the back of his neck.

  The stone was on his neck.

  Mercy. He must have torn it out!

  As a ka, he would have shared any connections that his bound acolytes had. With dozens of kazen he would have had nearly every adept ability known to creation. Somehow that traumatic experience of removing the bloodstone had left him without any connection through the veil.

  Dana wondered how her grandfather had done it—the first ka in all of recorded h
istory to willingly give up the bloodstone.

  It was no wonder his warnings about the life of a ka and its unending pain had been so keen.

  Yet, here she was ready to defy the will of the council and the entire city just to save the stone he had willingly given up—one that didn’t belong to her and had only been entrusted to her by a desperate, dying man.

  Was it right?

  Sindar had to have a reason for fleeing with the stone. He wouldn’t have done it if merely destroying the crystal was the best choice.

  Or perhaps he thought he could get Togath to resume the role. He had been their chosen protector.

  The crowd surged forward, and Dana lost the voices of the man and his son. It seemed the citizen council was nearing a decision.

  “The bloodstone was taken to Norr without any consent from the council!” cried a voice from the platform. “The binding token of our will was lost to us for weeks due to the negligence of the kazen trusted to protect it.” A man on the platform pointed at Korren. “Anyone could have gotten a hold of it. If anyone in Norr would have seen it—”

  “They wouldn’t even have recognized it,” said a woman. “Norr was absolutely the safest place to take it. Sindar obviously had thought about what he was doing.”

  “The Vetas-kazen have made themselves known,” said a citizen councillor on the stand. “Not since the great Aesican war turned our hills red with blood has a Torsican ka intervened in the affairs of this continent. While we were grateful for help at that time, we must now send them a message that they cannot misunderstand. No city of Aesica will submit to their rule.”

  Another citizen on the platform spoke. “We cannot fight a ka of his strength. Any of the cities of his empire could wipe us off the continent. Destroying the bloodstone is our only choice. Rob him of his prize, before he robs us of our will forever.”

  “No!” cried scattered voices in the crowd.

  It felt like a public execution. People clutched their hands in fists. A grandmother near Dana was weeping. From the far side of the square a group of young men began a chant of, “No. No. No,” although it was clearly not catching on.

  The head citizen raised her hand for silence but wasn’t given it. “You have all spoken your arguments. To continue debating would be to simply rehearse what has already been said. We are not here to convince others to take our position. We are merely here to state our reasons, that our children and their children will know why we have dealt with them in this way.”