by Sky Corbelli
Chapter 57
For a Job Well Done
Sarah fell to the ground, body jerking in little convulsions. Mat screamed something as he pulled her further over the ridge, grabbing the bolt-thrower and taking up a defensive crouch over her body. Another bolt of lightning flashed from somewhere inside the cave, crackling through the air above them.
“No.” Ezra felt numb, staring at his teammate's body. “Not like this... not like this.”
Mat glared back at the cave, then turned to Ezra, eyes haunted. “Listen, Ezra, we're not going to be able to move her safely. I'm still too out of it. I need you to run. Get as far away from here as you can. Try to make contact with the Guild, try...” Mat swallowed and shook his head, as if to clear it. “I don't know, just try something.”
Ezra stared at Mat, not believing what he was hearing. Run off on his own, leave them behind? He quickly scanned the land around them. Rock and dirt, everywhere. There was no way. He couldn't outrun the seer, even if he somehow managed to avoid getting fried by the thunder-struck. Another bolt of lightning buzzed out from the cave, flickering overhead.
And a quiet, child-like voice behind them said, “She doesn't look so good.”
Mat and Ezra spun toward the voice, their faces masks of shock and disbelief. There, sitting calmly on the lip of the crater just behind them, was a little boy. His skin was as black as a moonless night. His eyes were a light, hazel brown. A mess of tight, wiry curls adorned his head. He looked questioningly at Ezra. “I don't think you're going to get out of this,” he stated, almost sadly, completely ignoring the bolt of lightning that sizzled by not ten centimeters from his head.
“Ezra,” Mat said shakily, “I think I may have hit my head harder than I thought.” He paused, as if carefully considering his next words. “Why is there a little kid out here commenting on our escape?”
“I...” Ezra began, not knowing what to say. There was something so familiar about the boy, as if he'd seen him somewhere before. Ezra's mind worked furiously, trying to place the face. The little boy smiled broadly, white teeth gleaming in the afternoon light, and it clicked into place. Southedge. The boy who stood on the weather vane and then disappeared... it was him. Another memory jumped out: Helena, the little boy who had run into Mat, then turned and grinned... it was exactly the same smile. Ezra stared in open-mouthed amazement.
“But you know what would be really great?” the kid asked, eyes gleaming mischievously. “If you escaped.” The wind picked up and something hit the ground at Ezra's feet. He and Mat looked down. There was the wormhole controller, completely undamaged. Ezra reached for it, hands shaking. It was real. He flicked it on, and watched in amazement as the display came to life. “How?” he whispered eyes looking up to the little boy, but finding only air where he had sat.
Mat gaped at the lip of the crater, then whipped his head back and forth, eyes searching. “Must've hit it really hard,” he muttered. “Couldn't have been–”
He was interrupted as another fork of lightning exploded into the far side of ridge, kicking up a cloud of dirt and stone. The water-seer darted out of the cave, stopping to scan the area until her all blue eyes settled on them. Ezra could see the fierce satisfaction written on her face as she leaped into a sprint, smoother and faster than he would ever be able to manage. “Maybe now isn't the time to worry about it,” Mat said quickly. “Ezra, you might want to get that thing working fast, or I doubt we'll have a chance to regret it.”
Ezra was already working. He jumped back to the first coordinates in his log, drew power from the matrix that stretched out from the generator within the cavern, and connected the wormhole. The black rock and gravel underfoot was replaced with smooth, hard stone. The scene before them vanished, leaving a breathtaking view that had captivated Ezra so long ago in its place. Ezra grabbed Mat and Sarah, heaving them back into the cool, rocky side of the mountain behind them and disconnecting the wormhole as soon as they were clear. He let out the breath he had been holding in as a tiny laugh of relief, turning to look up at the overcast sky.
Mat swung his head around, trying and failing to figure out where they had ended up. “Where are... Ezra, where did you take us?”
Ezra gulped down his laughter, wiping at his eyes as all of the turbulent emotions of the day came crashing down on him, leaving him mentally and physically exhausted. “I didn't have any locations inside Sanctuary programmed in. I mean, I know them, mostly, but throwing a port to an existing terminal that's in range of my sensors is one thing. Picking out exactly the right coordinates is something else entirely. So I used one I knew would work.” He gestured toward the gently swaying grass in the field far below, the line of trees off in the distance. “This is the first place I ever went outside of Sanctuary. The place where it all began.”
“I don't see how this helps us...”
Ezra shook his head. “I can hack into any wormhole connection in the city from where we are. Jack a little power, and I can drop us anywhere in–”
“You should have seen her face!” a merry voice interrupted him, laughter bubbling through it. Just on the edge of the of the rocky shelf, the dark little boy stood looking out at the world. He turned to the team, enormous grin on his face, eyes dancing. “She screamed and screamed. Oh, it was priceless.” He let out a long, delighted laugh.
Ezra found himself on his feet, wormhole controller gripped tightly in his hands as if it were a sword. How had the kid followed them? They were thousands and thousands of kilometers away... it didn't make any sense.
“It was all just fantastic. You know, I really worried when you decided to strike out from Helena. I thought that maybe the adventure was over,” the kid continued, completely ignoring Ezra's reaction. “But then, there was more! You three, you're my favorites. Everywhere you go, it's always an adventure!” He vanished, and his voice suddenly coming from the far side of the ledge, where he threw a punch into the air. “Action!” Again he disappeared, reappearing behind Ezra. “Mystery!” Next he had his arm over Mat's shoulder. “And a little lusty romance,” he snickered as he poked Mat in the side. Suddenly he stood back on the cliff's edge, arms spread wide. “The best I've seen in decades!”
Ezra's mind was whirling, trying to put things together. “Who... what are you?” he whispered.
Something changed in the little boy's expression. The smile altered slightly, no longer that of a pleased child, but something more... sinister, more knowing. The gleam faded from his eyes, replaced with something unreadable, unknowable, calculating and, above all, ancient. Those eyes were older than the stones behind their feet, old as the sky and the moon and the wind. “Ah yes,” he said softly. “And you even spotted me, twice for that matter.” He chuckled, a sound so filled with knowing intrigue that it could never come from a child. “Go on,” he urged, “figure it out. I love it when your kind gets clever.”
It clicked in Ezra's head. The book, The Will of the Elements. “Clever Wind,” he breathed in disbelief, “swiftest of the Elements.”
Wind threw back his head and laughed, clapping his hands with child-like joy. As he did so, he drifted off the ground, away from the ledge, until he was floating over open space. “You can't believe everything you read in Lightning's little book, though. After all,” he sniffed, “I'm at least two hundred years older than him.”
Ezra's mind was racing, trying to catch up to the ramifications. The Elements, physical personifications of nature... they were real. So Fire had really come to Stephen in the night. Earth had literally crowned Gaav. And what Wind had said... he had just implied that he was old, older than any record they had in Sanctuary. What kinds of questions could he answer? What light could he shine on...
Something tickled at the back of Ezra's mind, some question he'd been carrying with him. Mat's words echoed in his head: When man controls nature, every disaster in man-made. “It was you.” He looked at the floating boy in horror. “Southedge. Helena. You killed the village elders. You made that firestorm, you trie
d to destroy the city. That's why there wasn't a wind-scarred, or a fire-kissed, because it was you, the whole time.”
Wind gave Ezra a crocodile smile, eyes glittering maliciously. “Oh very good. I was afraid that you might not notice my hand in things. Did you like those two? I personally thought that giving the little knife-scarred piece of mortal trash something to take credit for was inspired. And using fire to ravage that pathetic valley, what did you think of that? Forcing the tart to pick someone in a hurry. She's so good about following the Pact and never interfering directly. And it pinned the blame on him so nicely in the process. You should hear him scream; Val is a genius when it comes to breaking a man. I love watching her work.”
“Why?” Ezra croaked. “All those people. Why would you...”
“I was bored,” Wind shrugged, looking for all the world like a kid trying to amuse himself with whatever was at hand. “I can only watch you grubs running around for so long before I have to do something, or I'll simply go out of my mind with–”
Something flickered past Ezra's ear, and one of Sarah's wicked daggers sprouted from Wind's left eye. His head jerked back sharply, and he tumbled out of sight. Ezra shot a startled glance back at Sarah, who was gritting her teeth against her obvious agony as she tried to get her other knife out.
Then that sinister, delighted laugh rolled up from below. The boy floated back into view, plucking the knife from his eye and toying with it absently. He wasn't bleeding. He wasn't even hurt. “Insolence!” he cried out, a merry peal of laughter accompanying the word. “I adore insolence! Do you know how long it's been since anyone has dared to be insolent with me?” His eyes narrowed on Sarah's prone form, his voice becoming quiet, dangerous. “I think that deserves a reward.”
The wind on the little plateau picked up suddenly, throwing Mat and Ezra back against the wall and pinning them there. Sarah let out a gasp as she was lifted from the stone in a tiny whirlwind, hovering a few centimeters off the ground. Wind regarded her thoughtfully, knife tapping his chin. His free hand flicked at the wrist, and a long, smooth cut curled its way across Sarah's forehead, around her terrified eyes, splitting into elegant, fractal-like spirals as it traced its way over her body. Delicate whirls of crimson stood out against her pale flesh, only to be covered by a sheet of blood flowing from the impossibly fine cuts above.
She began to scream.
