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A Respite From Storms

Page 17

by Robert J. Crane


  Huanatha stopped. Turning a beady eye onto Alixa, she said, “I only hurt those who I wish to hurt.” She strode back to the racks, depositing the weapons again. Then, to Kuura: “You have eyes for the axe, yes?”

  His gaze jumped to it guiltily, then back. “Aye.”

  “Then why do you not take it?”

  “I … I am fearful, Que—Huanatha.”

  “Of what? Seeing the look in the eyes of a cruel man as you cause the life to drain from his grotesque, inhuman body?”

  “I am … simply cautious. Alixa … her points are not invalid. We must tread carefully if we are to do battle with Baraghosa.”

  “Then tread carefully we will,” said Huanatha. She reached for the axe, with its many prongs, and wrenched it out of the rack—then thrust it into Kuura’s hands. “Now you are armed.”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yes, Huanatha.”

  “As for the two of you …” She came closer—and again she looked into their eyes, in the way that Jasen had felt was her parsing through his most base components. She searched him first … then, her lips pursing just a fraction, she turned her attention to Alixa.

  “You will take daggers,” she said almost immediately.

  “I will not,” Alixa scoffed.

  “When your life depends upon them, and you find yourself empty-handed, you will regret your decision.”

  “My life will not depend upon them.”

  “Will it not?” Huanatha bowed, so she stood only a head above Alixa. Looking very closely at her, she said, “What I see in you lies on the surface. You wish not to be swept up in this fight … yet swept up you are.”

  “That’s because I keep being forced to follow.”

  “Who forces you?” When Alixa did not answer, Huanatha continued: “Baraghosa brought an act of greatest evil upon your people. I see this in you. I see it reflected back at me: the way magma poured upon your village as you watched, severing the people you most love from this earth.”

  “Is that supposed to be a … a medium’s trick?” Alixa said. “Do not speak to me as if you can read what happened from my eyes. I said, by the tavern where you eavesdropped upon us, that Baraghosa could cleave the earth apart.”

  “You do well to question,” said Huanatha.

  “You do not have answers.”

  “No. Perhaps not. But I can tell you that it did not hurt them.”

  Here, Alixa drew a sharp intake of breath. Her eyelids flickered open wider, just for an instant. “Excuse me?” she whispered. Her voice trembled.

  “As the mountain poured down upon them,” said Huanatha, “they did know. It was so fast. The only knowledge they had of it was a distant rumbling, disrupting their sleep for an instant … then it disrupted them no more.”

  Jasen closed his eyes. Hot tears threatened to break past his lashes, trickle down his face.

  He imagined his father, lying in bed—not awake, as he had believed, feared, but wrapped in a peaceful slumber, away from the pains of his waking life. Perhaps he was dreaming. And then that dream had just … stopped, Adem with it.

  He did not feel. Did not hurt.

  “Is …” he began—but his voice trembled too, terribly, and he had to clear his throat to make his words feel solid when he tried again. “Is my father at peace?”

  Huanatha looked to him, into him.

  “Yes,” she said after a long time.

  “Is … is he …”

  “With your mother now. Yes. And the rest of your ancestors, looking over you now.”

  His breath came out shakily. So close to crying, he forced himself to hold it together.

  His father and mother—together again.

  He was without them … but they had each other. He pictured them now, embracing, their spirits coming together after so long apart. Oh, how they’d missed each other …

  He shut his eyes, tight. So wet.

  His chest ached, an impossible pain. The gouges carved through his heart, his soul … they burned, like they were new all over again.

  Huanatha touched his shoulder. “It is okay to cry,” she said. “You may grieve. They understand. They grieve for you too, both of you … you who rose from the ashes of Luukessia. And rise you must!” she said, in a cry that made Jasen’s eyes open. She was standing at her full height again, arms open wide, eyebrows high upon her forehead. “The both of you must continue on—for it is what they want—you, and the beast who has lashed herself to you.”

  “Scourgey?” asked Alixa. She’d been crying too, or come close to it; her eyes were tinged with pink. Frowning at the scourge who sat amicably at her ankle, she said, “What does she have to do with this?”

  “Your Scourgey is as much destined to follow the road you both are on as you are,” said Huanatha. “And she knows it, even if you yourselves do not presently see.”

  “She … knows …?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Huanatha. “She tells me so.”

  “She tells you.” Alixa’s voice had gone flat, disbelieving all over again.

  “Do not harbor so many suspicions, child. I speak truth. Have you never met a shaman, speaker with the dead?”

  “No …”

  Huanatha smiled. “You have now.”

  Alixa frowned down at Scourgey again, her confusion only growing. “But Scourgey isn’t dead.”

  Huanatha barked, a laugh that was distinctly unfeminine. Then she said, “Choose your weapons, child. You may pick any that feels right to you.”

  “You said I had to take daggers.”

  “These, I believe, will feel most right to you. But if you do not trust my judgment, test them all and see yourself.”

  Alixa pouted, for a moment. Then, glancing sidelong to Jasen, and down at Scourgey, she sighed. “I really have to do this, don’t I? I don’t have any other choice.”

  “You have plenty of choice,” said Huanatha.

  Alixa answered only with a, “Hmm.” Then, body sagging, she joined Kuura at the rack of axes to begin testing them.

  “What about me?” Jasen asked, meeting Huanatha’s eye again. He trusted her, fully, for reasons he could not discern. Whichever weapon she said would fit best into his hands, he would take; she need only look deep into him, and say.

  “You … you are more difficult,” she said, slow.

  “A sword? I think I could—”

  “Jasen.”

  He stopped.

  “Do you know what is behind you?” Huanatha asked.

  He twisted around, seeing the empty hall—

  Her hands on his cheeks brought him back around.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I see the souls of your ancestors,” Huanatha answered, “those who came before you. They follow in a line, from the beginning to now. And they worry about you, Jasen. See truths about you that you do not yet know.”

  “What truths?”

  She bypassed this. “They wish to see you succeed.”

  Jasen’s heart swelled. “I do too. But … how?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Pour your heart into this,” Huanatha said. “Go after it with your full effort, like never have you before. Only then will you find your way. Your ancestors are certain of it.”

  He imagined them again, their spirits carried on a wind he felt but could not see, imagined them looking down on him. It made him lightheaded—every one of them, right back to the beginning—and there, at the forefront, clearest of all, his mother and father.

  He would avenge them.

  He would do them proud.

  But now, for the first time, now he was waiting for a collision he knew was destined to happen this night, his assurance faded.

  The smiled drooped.

  Your ancestors are certain of it.

  Jasen was thankful beyond measure …

  He only wished he was certain too.

  19

  A storm was building.

  Dark clouds had rolled in throughout the afternoon. Jasen had watc
hed them, starting first as greyish puffs that marred the open blue of the skies, then growing darker and darker. A frigid wind blew in from the sea. It whistled and howled, carrying the spray of waves upon it, falling into the city like rain.

  By late afternoon evening, true rain had started, falling from the heavens in fat spattering drops, almost weighty enough that they came down straight despite the wind blowing at them. The skies were almost fully black by then, as if nightfall had come five, six hours early. The darkest part of all was centered directly above the Aiger Cliffs themselves, as if the impending storm was targeting the city specifically.

  Days without storms … and here this one had come, on the very night that Baraghosa had agreed with the council he would access their conduction fields.

  He’d known.

  It sent a shiver up Jasen’s spine.

  For perhaps only the second time since witnessing the destruction of Terreas, he had another glimpse of Baraghosa’s power, unobscured by his single-minded desperation for vengeance. Compared to the act of splitting open a mountain, it was a simple thing, that Baraghosa had foreseen this.

  Yet if he could foresee a storm days out, what else could he see?

  They watched well into evening, waiting.

  “When are we going?” Alixa asked. She was restless.

  No one was more restless than Jasen. His first plan—the frail beginnings of one, at any rate—had been to scale the towers of rock overlooking the city once again, and lie in wait for Baraghosa at the conduction fields. Huanatha agreed on this. But Kuura and Alixa talked him out of it, Kuura believing that it would be better to catch Baraghosa unawares, from behind.

  “You say that as if we can guarantee an approach when his back is turned,” Huanatha had scoffed. “Are your eyes on extendible stalks?”

  “We may approach when his back is metaphorically turned,” said Kuura. “He will be distracted with his business with the conduction rods. So we make our attack then, yes?”

  “We might miss him,” said Jasen.

  “The lights you speak of will be easy to follow.”

  But Jasen did not believe that would be so, when the winds howled and the rain came down at a steep angle, stinging their faces and eyes and forcing them to cast their gaze toward the ground lest the frantic downpour blind them.

  They agreed, eventually, that they would wait for when Baraghosa was atop the cliffs—or, if visibility was a problem, when he was likely to be on the cliffs. Then it would be Jasen to give the go-ahead.

  They waited at another tavern at the bottom of the cliffside path. Unlike Terreas, the world kept turning in the Aiger Cliffs when the rained poured. Fewer feet pounded the streets—but these people had crossed seas, braved storms and enormous waves, leaks to their own hulls, perhaps naval battles in unfamiliar territories … so the lashing of the rain upon their heads was nothing to them. At most they pulled over a hood made of loose fabric, or donned a cloak, then steeled their bodies and pressed their way through the city to the vendor or shop or tavern they were headed toward.

  The vendors on the docks did pack up eventually, but only when the waves threatened their stalls. Still, they did not move far, retiring to streets up the steps and past the archway leading into the city proper.

  The rain hammered. Sitting outside, on a table quickly soaked, Jasen stared up the cliffside. The twisting spires did not shine now with exposed metals.

  There was no sign of Baraghosa’s lights. At least, Jasen saw none. Shielded from the rain by a wooden awning erected around this tavern’s side, he could at least look up without the rain pelting into his eyes, though still it blew into their shelter, angled so it wet them from the waist up.

  Jasen kept one hand gripped upon the sword Huanatha had let him pick, one with a lightweight, blackened blade that she promised was sharpened to perfection. He held tight so no water would pass his knuckles and slicken his hold when it mattered most.

  The sheeting rain made it harder to see. And the darkness of the sky made it harder still. Picking out the spires of contorted cliffside had been near impossible. But he’d found it, and his eyes blazed on the nigh-indiscernible edge that separated it from the roiling bruise overhead.

  He watched for lights, waited.

  Still none. But he would see them … he hoped.

  They all watched, Jasen knew. Between their eight eyes—ten, if Scourgey watched too, and he believed she did—they would surely catch Baraghosa as he climbed to those dizzying heights.

  But Jasen watched most intently of all. His back was to the table they all clustered around. His legs were ready, at a moment’s notice, to stand and propel him forward. He half-listened to the idle chatter behind him, enough to follow a conversation but not enough to be able to recount it thirty seconds later.

  Kuura was storytelling—or maybe had been, trying to reduce the tension in the air. Yet Jasen was not listening very well, and Alixa’s interest had been crushed out of her as the evening drew on. So now he spoke with Huanatha about Nunahk, and she talked of the Muratam in turn.

  “… the aihn-blight affect your crops?” Kuura asked.

  Huanatha frowned. “You ask of matters two and a half decades ago.”

  A nod. “Yes. But it was a bad blight, yes? Do you recall it? Our seeds were bitten by it. Many of our stores had to be burned, for the fungus spread too far before we were aware of it. If not for our river, I do not think many of us would have survived.” He laughed, adding, “When we did have the grain again to bake bread, it was like a blessing from the gods themselves.”

  “The blight came to the edge of our lands only,” said Huanatha. “Deudenwe had great foresight, and prevented it from damaging our resources.”

  “Deudenwe,” Kuura mused. “He was a great leader, as we heard tell.” Hastily, he added, “Of course, not as great as you, Queen—”

  Huanatha cut him off with a throaty derisive noise. “I told you that I do not wish to hear—”

  The door into and out of the tavern opened. Wind blustered in a particularly violent blast at that same moment, whipping it from the hand of one of the bar staff as he came out.

  He shielded his face with an arm, made his way to their table.

  “Empties!” he half-shouted, his voice heavily accented.

  Kuura gathered up their glasses, Alixa’s still half-full of a caramel-colored liquid she’d long ago abandoned, and passed them to him. “Have yeh got the door—?”

  “Fine,” he said, already moving away again. The door fought him as he returned inside. He won: it closed with a resounding bang! that the wind sucked away.

  “Would anyone like another drink?” Kuura asked. “Huanatha?”

  “I will purchase my own beverages,” she said stiffly.

  “Right, yes. Jasen, Alixa?”

  “No,” Alixa murmured.

  “Jasen?

  … Jasen? Would you like—”

  “He’s here.”

  And he was up on his feet, already marching out from under the awning, to the cliffside pathway.

  Kuura and Alixa scrabbled up too. Huanatha, who had been sitting beside Jasen on the same bench, moved much more fluidly, her armor hardly whispering as she rose and pressed herself into a stride. Only when she stepped into the rain did it made a sound, as the raindrops pinged against it.

  “You’re sure?” Kuura asked.

  Jasen nodded. “I’m sure.” He had seen, against the blackened, stormy skies, two pulsing lights. Barely visible for the curtain of rain falling diagonally between them and separated by such a great distance, they were hardly pinpricks. Yet Jasen saw them, fixated on them now, blinking rapidly to shift the waters running down his face as he strode through the building storm. They’d just appeared on the clifftops that moment, so Baraghosa had either climbed from another direction—or he had somehow appeared there, at that instant. Neither seemed possible. There was no other pathway to the conduction fields, nor could a man vanish and reappear himself at will.

  B
araghosa, though, was no ordinary man.

  The five of them surged up the cliffside. It provided a small shelter from the storm: the winds had whipped in from the east, and so the cliffs themselves provided cover, at least from the rain. But the chill and howl were always present. Gooseflesh had been raised on Jasen’s skin for hours now, surely had on all his companions’ too. Had he not been so determined, the cold would have stopped him. He’d lift his hand to his mouth and breathe into his curled fingers, fighting to bring warmth to his digits. His entire body juddered with racking shivers. His teeth chattered, almost hard enough to chip their ends. The roar of the wind over the Aiger Cliffs felt like a heavy blanket, pressed over him, blocking his frozen ears and smothering him. None of it mattered. He had only one focus: scaling these cliffs so that he could confront Baraghosa once again, so that he could look into his face and watch as he ran him through with his sword, watch the life force drain out of him as his blood poured hot over Jasen’s wrist, pooling between their feet, and Baraghosa died, and Terreas was avenged.

  So he climbed—nay, ran—up the cliffside, his hand clasped upon the hilt of his sword.

  Scourgey was at his heel. He spared her only a glance.

  She was looking back at him, mouth open. The scent of death was hardly upon her now, whipped away by the winds that did manage to penetrate the alcove in which the city had been constructed.

  Huanatha was behind, just half a step. “This Scourgey, she is with you,” she said. “She will follow you till the very last.”

  Jasen nodded. “Good Scourgey.”

  “Are we sure about this?” Alixa called. She and Kuura were lagging behind, though how far exactly, Jasen could not be sure. Eight paces perhaps, or ten. From the way her breath caught, already they were hurrying to catch up.

  A fire had been lit beneath Jasen’s feet, though. They’d have to fight all the way to the conduction fields to keep pace with him.

  “Baraghosa is atop these very cliffs now,” Huanatha answered Alixa. “The time to defeat him is upon us—and defeat him we shall! For we have determination in our souls, a flame in our bellies, and justice in our hearts.”

 

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