The Exalting

by Dan Allen

  “So, we either kill her ourselves, or send her to Norr to face their justice,” said the mustached man. “Pity. Forty years we’ve waited for someone like that: strong, brave, willing to make personal sacrifices.” He shook his head as if in disbelief. “She seemed like the right type, you know?”

  “But she took the stone from the kazen,” said the younger man. “She really must be just a thief.”

  It was a moment that captured all of Dana’s hopes and fears in one. Was she truly a desperate thief? Dana looked to the city wall. It was within running distance. She could escape with the stone. She could find another exalting chamber. But she couldn’t seem to stomach the idea. It was pure theft of will.

  It was what Vetas-ka was trying to do.

  The older man shook his head. “I wish I knew the full story. Why is Norr sending so many rangers just to apprehend a common thief? Wouldn’t they rather be rid of her if she ran away? They aren’t fond of adepts, you know.”

  “Yeah,” mused the younger man. “They must be trying to make an example out of her. She’s flaunted everything they believe in—even blood-bound herself. It’s sacrilege to them. They won’t want others to try the same thing.”

  “What would a person like Dana have to gain from stealing the stone?” the senior officer wondered. “If you want to solve a crime, you have to know the motivation. That’s what we’re missing.”

  I wanted to help, Dana thought. Truly.

  Or did I just want power?

  “She could be stealing it for someone else,” suggested the fellow with the goatee.

  “Then why did she bring it back in the first place?”

  The soldier frowned.

  “Can’t you see? We’re missing something critical.”

  “She could be mentally unstable.”

  “That is a possibility,” agreed the captain of the guard. “Though unlikely. You felt her. Did you trust her?”

  The man hesitated. “Yes, sir. Completely.”

  “So,” said the captain, “what follows from that?”

  “If she really is trustworthy,” said the man, “she’ll turn in the stone.”

  “At peril of her own life?” said the captain.

  “She risked her life already,” the soldier said. “But was that for her own purposes or the good of others?”

  “Only she knows,” said the officer.

  Only I know.

  There came times, Dana knew, when a choice had to be made. And that choice would define not only her, but the future of Shoul Falls, and possibly Norr as well.

  Would others see her execution for what it was? Suppression.

  Or would she save her own life and deny Shoul Falls the very same right for which she had fled Norr: self-determination?

  I can’t keep it. It isn’t mine.

  But if turn it in, Dana thought, would they still kill me?

  A surge of fear rushed within her.

  The soldier had said he trusted her. Obviously so did the captain. Perhaps she could offer trust as well. But then what? They had to serve the extradition. She would end up in the hands of the Norrian rangers.

  Then what? Pain?

  Dana flexed her hands into fists. I’m not afraid of pain.

  And hadn’t Sindar felt peace in that place beyond?

  But there would be no Ryke. No Forz. No Kaia or Mirris.

  No chance to see what she was really capable of.

  No, she thought. I determine that, right now. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. I can’t do this. I can’t.

  “She seemed like the right type, you know.”

  I am!

  Whether she had done it only for the hope that she would become a ka mattered not. What she chose now would define everything.

  Forsaking all hope for herself, Dana embraced her chance. It’s my choice. She stood up from behind the barrel and spoke in a voice as bold as a challenger in a duel.

  “I am.”

  The men’s jaws dropped.

  “I am the right type.”

  The soldier flinched, but the captain seemed to regard her with pure amazement.

  “I have the bloodstone right here.” Dana drew the crystal out of the bag. She swallowed as her heart tried to leap out her throat.

  Courage.

  “Be careful, it’s grown recently. I ask only that you don’t let the kazen have it. Sindaren took it away because he feared one of them was in league with the Vetas-kazen. Keep it safe. I’ll . . . answer to the Norrians.”

  The head of the guard stared in disbelief. Here Dana was, surrendering not only the bloodstone but also herself, to certain destruction. His eyes widened. His response was a single word. “Why?”

  Dana raised all six sifa, a gesture of both complete surrender and intimate regard, showing that she had nothing to hide. She set the bloodstone on the barrel. “Please escort me to the Norrian guards. I won’t risk our city losing the favor of the Pantheon and suffering their wrath.”

  “Is this a trick?” the soldier whispered. “How can she . . .”

  “I don’t know what to say,” said the older officer.

  “And please return these to the infirmary,” Dana said, dropping the bag to the cobblestone street. “I just borrowed . . . stole them . . . to hide the stone.”

  A feeling of complete and total emptiness found Dana as she stepped back from the stone. She was free, once and forever. Free from other people’s limits and definitions. She had made her choice. She stood tall, unafraid.

  “I surrender.”

  What the other men saw in her eyes, she could only guess. But at that moment, they seemed to be looking up at her, a girl about to be taken for execution. How her grandfather would be surprised to hear how she had died, and the stories passed on by the people of Shoul Falls, of the one who could have been something powerful but chose instead to be something great and small. Something wise and wonderful and forsaken.

  “I accept your surrender,” said the officer, standing at attention, as if speaking not to a prisoner but an opposing general. “I can only assume you had the best intentions.”

  “She did it,” the soldier muttered. “She sacrificed herself.” He looked at the captain. “But what about Norr?”

  The captain’s jaw wormed. “For the good of the city,” he muttered. “I must hand her over.” Duty seemed to bear down on the man’s shoulders. Finally, he squared them. With eyes glistening with emotion, he gave her a small nod.

  “I don’t blame you,” Dana whispered. “It’s not your fault.”

  “That is . . . very kind of you say.” The captain, taking hold of his charge, nodded to the soldier, who stepped forward with iron manacles.

  “Dana . . . I’m going to have to bind you,” said the soldier. “And give you angel’s kiss. The Norrian chancellor demanded it.”

  Perhaps her enemy in the sanctum had even suggested it to them.

  “Of course,” Dana whispered. How else could it end, but like this? Cut off from everything, even pain.

  What she wouldn’t give to feel pain now. To go on living and fighting. But she was free. And she would stay free.

  By the time the all-clear sounded in ringing echoes of trumpets across the city and across the mountainside, Dana was in a steam-wagon, headed north for the last time. With the icy angel’s kiss drops still numbing her lips, Dana was headed to Norr for trial and execution by foreign water, like an ignominious criminal.

  But Dana was not a common Xahnan. She was better. She had proven it. Dana had saved the stone, not once, but four times. And though her friends had suffered—Forz, a shattered leg; and Ryke, his standing with the sanctum for helping her—Dana had saved the will of an entire city.

  Doubtless, when the citizen’s meeting convened, the stone would be taken to the square and a blazing fire brought upon it. Whether the ruling sayathi would perish in the blaze, sending a wave of agony through all those bound to them, Dana would never know. The angel’s kiss hid all such connections.

  V
etas-ka’s prize would be destroyed, and his vengeance on her served prematurely by the harsh law of Norr. But would the Pantheon of Aesica stand up to him? Or were they doomed to surrender when he came to conquer?

  Yet, it was not the only choice the council could make.

  They could choose a new ka.

  Turning herself over to Norr was a terrible risk. Dana had no idea if her gambit would pay off.

  It’s the only way to show who I am.

  She was now committed to a staring contest with death. She was not going to blink.

  One chance.

  Numb to even the fear of her own death, Dana looked out through the narrow windows to draw some distraction from the passing evergreens. Rangers traveling alongside the steam-wagon on greeders blocked most of the view.

  Suddenly, the steam-wagon hissed to a stop.

  A word passed from the conductor in the boiler control through a panel to the passenger coach.

  Dana supposed the stop was to refill the water tank from a bank of snow. But then one of the two rangers not shackled to Dana, dismounted from the barred cabin, as a man on a greeder, draped in a gray winter riding blanket, strode to a stop. Dana recognized the rider. It was another Norrian ranger.

  “Cyric, what is the word?”

  “The citizen council of Shoul Falls,” said the breathless ranger. “They voted.”

  The face of the ranger that had dismounted from the cabin of the steam-wagon took on a smug expression. “Then the bloodstone was destroyed? The city is free like Norr?”

  The ranger on the greeder, his face pale despite the bite of the frost that should have left it red, shook his head. “No. They chose a new ka.”

  “A new ka—after forty years?”

  Dana’s heart leapt.

  “Captain Mol, you must get the prisoner to Norr as quickly as possible,” said Cyric.

  The captain’s eye’s narrowed.

  “They’ve chosen Dana.”

  Me!

  Dana’s heart skipped a double beat. Warmth flooded into her, the tips of her sifa flaring in excitement.

  There was hope. Ka were immune to inter-city disputes. Only the Pantheon could judge a ka. They would have to release her.

  Mol’s eyes went wide. “They will send an embassy for her.”

  “Very likely, sir. I didn’t wait around to find out.”

  “Get off,” ordered Mol. “Bring the girl!” Dana was immediately pulled from the cabin and set in front of Mol in the saddle, with her legs bound to the sturdy greeder.

  “No!” Dana cried. “You can’t do this. I’ve been chosen!”

  “Hya!” Mol’s command sent the large greeder bounding forward. Had she any connection to the veil, Dana could have stopped it instantly.

  Of course, there was a way to save herself. She had to get her powers back. She had to drink the viper’s embrace she had taken from the infirmary. Dana shook at the very thought of it.

  It was now or never.

  Dana leaned forward and reached into the top of her shirt, pulling the small vial from where it was hidden in her tie-top.

  With only a moment to act, Dana’s entire body cried out in protest. Bitter tears ran from her eyes as she bit the stopper from the vial and poured the cursed liquid into her mouth.

  Dana’s scream rose over the sound of a soldier’s warning horn. The memory of the viper’s embrace Mirris had placed on her wound did no justice to what Dana felt. Her spirit was torn into shreds, her body was flayed by a thousand whips, ran through with a million burning stakes. In seconds, she had but one desire: to simply cease existing.

  No.

  Die! Her spirit cried in protest to the agony that rent her.

  As her eyes closed, the world was suddenly bright, bright beyond anything possible. Shadows moved closer, drawing ever nearer as the pain moved away to a place distant.

  A hand reached out, one she recognized. A familiar voice touched her mind.

  “It’s alright.”

  Sindaren?

  “Have you come to find peace already? Let me show you the great beyond.”

  NO!

  Dana stood in the gale of pain. I was chosen. I was chosen.

  The world disappeared in grays and blacks. Only the steady thumping of the greeder’s feet told her she was alive. Each pounding step sent shudders of pain through her, hammers driving spikes through her ears and eyes and temples. Her skin burned like she had fallen into the fireplace and lay there among the glowing embers.

  Dana forced a breath into her lungs, shuddering at the icy pain that shot through her ribs. Finally, she forced her eyes open and reached out to the forest.

  Her only answer was from rasp-wings nestled deep in a tree trunk.

  Dana summoned them all.

  As the greeder passed the hive, a swarm of stinging rasp-wings shot out from the tree and assaulted her captor, their burning stings causing partial paralysis.

  Mol screamed and flailed, trying to ward them off.

  Dana snatched his keys and threw an elbow hard into Mol’s side. He tried to grab her as he tipped from the greeder, but his paralyzed fingers offered no grip.

  The greeder she was bound to carried Dana away from Mol and the swam of rasp-wings.

  “Good day, Captain Mol. Let’s hope our paths don’t cross again.”

  Dana hastily unlocked the shackles on her wrists and tossed them aside. She was headed for Shoul Falls to become the ka—a goddess.

  As the greeder accelerated on the downhill slope, bounding and gliding, Dana’s own heart did the same.

  I can’t believe it.

  The journey was only eighteen miles.

  On the greeder, she could reach the sanctum in less than an hour, so long as she wasn’t caught by the rangers that Mol had left behind with the steam-wagon—and Vetas-ka didn’t find a way to stop her.

  Chapter 31

  Dana took a shortcut off the trail, avoiding the soldiers’ steam-wagon returning to Norr. From atop a nearby rise she watched it pass, then wound her way back to the trade road.

  She would soon find the kazen from Shoul Falls. And then, she would go to the exalting chamber.

  She nearly shook from excitement.

  I can’t believe it.

  As she rode the bounding greeder toward Shoul Falls, she thought of the warnings her grandfather had given her of the unending burden, the feelings of guilt, and the moral conundrums.

  He knew.

  She didn’t have to go to Shoul Falls. She could run for it and leave the city to itself. But with every step, she knew this was her path.

  I am going to be ka.

  I’m ready to fight.

  Dana’s eyes darted toward a gliding object that streaked low over the trees on the near side of the rise that separated her from Shoul Falls.

  She thought it was a greeder, but it was too high and too fast, and it was headed toward the mountain, not gliding from it.

  The shape was almost . . . Xahnan.

  It crashed into a tree and disappeared from view. A clan of marmars shrieked at the intrusion.

  What in the name of the Creator?

  Dana knew she should stay on the path. In only a few minutes, she would be found by the kazen and on her way to Shoul Falls to become the ka.

  But this was something completely unexplainable. There was nothing like it on Xahna, no airship or animal.

  Other worlds.

  Was it possible?

  And why would they choose now to arrive?

  The odds were silly. But that didn’t make the arrival of a strange flying thing any less remarkable. In any case, the danger to her was past. The rangers would return to Norr without her.

  Suddenly pain raked Dana’s side.

  The marmars!

  Something was attacking them.

  “That’s it.”

  * * *

  “Branch!”

  Jet crashed through the low brush of the purple-needled pine forest as a colony of chubby primates pursued him wit
h all the vigor of steroid-enraged Avalonian bat chickens.

  “Can I shoot?” He didn’t want to waste ammo, but the feisty little buggers were testing his patience.

  “You’re on limited ammo.”

  “Come on, Angel. Just one or two.” Jet jumped a fallen log and knocked aside a purple-needled pine bough.

  “You know it’s not going to be just one or two. Don’t even start with that nonsense.”

  “Ah, go stuff yourself in a zip file.”

  “Jet.”

  “Fine. I’ll use nonlethal rounds.” Jet whirled around, drew his suppressor, and fixed it to the barrel. He dropped to one knee, chambered a round, sighted, and squeezed off a shot at a monkey just as it leapt. Can’t change trajectory mid-leap. Then he swiveled twenty degrees to his right, waited a heartbeat, and sent another monkey into spastic fits with shock rounds.

  “That’s two shots,” Angel reminded. “Party’s over.”

  “Fine. Old-fashioned way.” Jet drew his survival knife. “Bring it on, you sons of glitches!” He usually reserved that curse for fighting AI bounder mechs, his least favorite foes. But these monkeys were really vying for the top spot.

  The drawn blade had the desired effect. The pack scattered in a chorus of shrieks.

  “Now it’s time for me to disappear.” Jet tagged his wrist-mounted control, and his camo unraveled into a curly mess that resembled a half-decent ghillie suit. He crept around a rise and hunkered down next to a boulder. Balancing his rifle on the fold-out rest, he sighted two miles down range.

  “There’s the falls.”

  “Perimeter clear. I can’t see through your boulder, though. Permission to deploy a dragonfly drone?” Angel asked.

  “No need. Save the juice.”

  “This boulder gets in the way of all my sensors. I hate being blind.”

  “It also hides me,” Jet said as he continued scanning the perimeter of the city. It was quiet.

  “Any luck patching into a surveillance bug?” he asked, hoping one of the AI satellites had conveniently dropped one.

  Angel replied with a tone that meant no.