Guail gave a quick bow. “You are right, warrior, please forgive my asking. I simply wished to allay doubts to my master’s safety. However, he has proven to not need such concern in the past.”
“You should seek to gain experience from what has come before,” Crystalyn said.
Guail’s face flushed.
Crystalyn laid a hand on Lore Rayna’s shoulder. Her pulls on the tube had slowed. “Have you finished? We shouldn’t delay much longer.”
“The revered one has not returned to his tent since leaving this morning,” Long Sand said.
Guail glanced sharply at Long Sand. When the bright-haired sand reader failed to look his way after a few breaths, he kept his sunken gaze locked with Crystalyn.
Crystalyn was alarmed. Had she come too late? “Where has he gone?”
Another sharp tug from Lore Rayna pulled Long Sand a half step closer. Though he had the look of overbearing confidence mixed with great arrogance, his long face and nose complimented his rounded jawline. “Our… the clan leader entered the Shrine of the High King not long ago.”
A saying her father had told her a time or two came to mind. Maintain an expression of stone during interrogations. Give nothing away.
Though excited at the news of closing in on Darwin, Crystalyn made a conscious effort to keep it from showing. “Then we go to the tomb. I assume it’s that imposing mound of sand and rock overshadowing this camp?” she asked, nodding beyond Long Sand’s shoulder.
Guail folded his arms at his wide belly, puffing out his chest. “The great lord has forbidden all but the diggers to enter the shrine. You may wait for his return inside his tent.”
“What did you call him?” Crystalyn asked.
“You are a blasted fool, Merchant,” Long Sand said simply.
Guail flushed, the skin on his face deepening almost to the maroon color of one of his layers of silk as his beady eyes narrowed. “Hailing from a land of greenery and moisture, I expected a Valen wouldn’t know the nomadic clans’ courtship rituals involve the sharing of one’s water,” he said with a sneer.
Lore Rayna spit the tube from her mouth.
Several armed men in the crowd laughed. The women mixed among them scowled.
Red of face, Lore Rayna stood to her full height of eight hands. Moving too quickly, the shorts she wore tore at each hip several inches, and the shirt ripped slowly between her breasts with each breath.
Crystalyn groaned. She was running out of outfits she’d brought from her home world of Terra.
Again, the men in the crowd guffawed.
Hastel’s axes swished as he tugged them from the leather-wrapped steel rings on his hips. “The next laugh dies in the throat of the one emitting it. No one laughs at a companion of mine.”
Lore Rayna glanced down quickly at the warrior, her light brown-haired head swinging toward him at his words. Her eyes brightened.
The soft schlepp of many weapons leaving the safety of sewn leather scabbards lined with wood caught at Crystalyn’s hearing. Some of the sounds had come from behind.
Crystalyn reformed the knockback symbol in her mind, though she feared she’d expended her strength healing Lore Rayna. With that handicap, and the fact she couldn’t discreetly remove the black crystal candle artifact from her pack, now really wasn’t the time for a brawl. “Put your axes away, Hastel, blast you! Sometimes, I swear, you’re too fast at drawing them.”
A quick glance over his left shoulder informed anyone paying attention that Hastel had also heard the sound of weapons drawn. Gripping the half-moon heads of his axes, he stabbed both handles into their ringed holders without taking his vivid blue eye from the crowd.
“Seize them now!” Guail shouted.
Strong arms grabbed Crystalyn’s arms, forcing them roughly behind her back.
Broth’s growls came from behind a ring of warriors.
“Broth!”
“No worry, Do’brieni. They have surrounded me, but they do not attack.”
Three men and a woman grabbed Lore Rayna but not for long. Her arms and legs hardened, and her hair brightened to a vivid green. Tree-like branches without the leaves shot from her hands, slamming into those trying to pin her arms behind her. Her branch-like hands knocked her would be captors roughly to the side.
The nomads took no chance with Hastel. The pommel of a sword thumped into his head and dropped him to the ground where he stood.
Crystalyn froze when Guail pulled a dagger from a silky sleeve and held the edge at her throat. “Stop resisting or she dies!”
Lore Rayna batted the last warrior, a woman, away and turned to Guail. A mound of sand bulged upward in a line, moving toward him.
The burning sensation of pain followed by wetness flowing down her cleavage indicated the knife had taken a bite. Crystalyn hoped it was shallow.
“How deep do I have to go to prove my determination? Stand down, Valen, or your leader dies,” Guail said softly, pressing the dagger deeper.
The burning started anew.
Scowling, Lore Rayna grew still as several warriors closed upon her.
The arm around Crystalyn’s neck relaxed.
Crystalyn formed her gray-shaded knockback symbol, set to a star pattern, with its white outline in her mind. Bringing it out and already reforming it into three concentric circles at chest level, she sent it behind her. The first of the three slammed into Guail, flinging him and the biting dagger away. The second and third circles hit those racing to his aid from the crowd.
Adding a touch of complexity, she formed another and combined it with a second aggression symbol, changing the white outline to gold and the gray to silver. Sending the now golden stacked circles soaring behind her again, they generated a thunderous boom.
Freed, she gazed about gauging her next round as her anger mounted. Though weakness raged within her, a third symbol hovered in the air before her, the intricate pattern of her smoky garlands, one of her strongest for aggression. Crystalyn prepared to do damage this time; her drained mind and body would accept no less.
Long Sand’s deep voice trumpeted loud and concussive. “Hold position, you bloody sand adders!”
Thirty of the forty-two warriors she counted shuffling toward her in a tightening circle stopped in their tracks. Twelve kept coming, moving with fluidity unnatural for men.
Long Sand leapt in front of Crystalyn, a scimitar gripped in each hand. “Halt, you blasted vermin! This is your final command. Continue this path and I shall kill you all personally,” he said. Even though he did not shout, his voice carried.
The warriors split, circling in silence, coming to a stop only when they surrounded Crystalyn, Long Sand, and Lore Rayna.
Graceful, as if a beast gauging the moment of attack, Long Sand spun on a heel. Slow and deliberate, his fierce gaze fell upon the ring of warriors. “Think carefully, you blasted imbeciles; can you not see how strong a User she is? Is the merchant’s promised payment greater than your own lives?”
No grizzled, clean-shaven, or permanent hairless face looked her way. Strangely, all looked at Lore Rayna.
Crystalyn stepped out from behind the nomad warrior, expanding her symbol to twice its size, as she, too, made a slow deliberate circle. As she passed, one by one, the mercenaries fixed on her, their eyes bulging. Her anxiety rose as a thought occurred to her, nearly stunning her with the implications. “Lore Rayna! Use your wood! They’re all Dark Men!” she screamed.
Broth growled.
“Don’t touch them or let them near you, Do’brieni! They are too strong together!” Crystalyn boomed into the link.
“I cannot come to your aid without attacking them!” Broth protested.
“Stay back!” Crystalyn warned.
Six of the twelve heads split down the middle, dropping on shoulders like one would peel back a hood, the first of the Dark Men started to emerge. The rest raised long swords in unison, preparing an attack on Lore Rayna.
They we
re too late. Already the Valen woman’s arms had elongated with the flor’e’form, her legs hardening. Extending and branching out into three forks, each of Lore Rayna’s hands elongated to a sharp point, impaling all six in the throat.
Three of the remaining six had dark shadows detaching from a deflating body. The trio converged on Crystalyn. Long Sand’s scimitars slashed outward, passing through two of the shadows without an affect.
Sharp cracks rent the air as Lore Rayna’s branches snapped forth like a whip, a living deadly lash that popped the Dark Men into wisps of smoke as they came within her range. Leaping forward, her branches dissolved the last three before they had fully split from the host.
When Lore Rayna’s arms and legs retracted, Crystalyn flashed a grateful smile at her friend. Then, putting a hand to her neck, she stopped the flow of her blood.
Long Sand’s blue eyes were wild as he turned to Crystalyn. “There is more to you and your group than any would have imagined. What has that blasted merchant infested his men with? I beg an answer, but first, please put your… weapon away,” he said.
Crystalyn dissolved her symbol, not bothering to point out he still had weapons drawn. “They are known only as Dark Men, shadows that ride inside men, destroying them in the process. Their weakness against wood was discovered not long ago, that’s about all we know.”
In one fluid movement, Long Sand sheathed his scimitars. “What do they want with you? How did they get inside those mercenaries?”
Crystalyn gave a one-handed shrug. Though she had a strong sense some power wanted hers, she didn’t want to discuss it at length. “You’ll have to ask your ‘blasted merchant.’”
Long Sand bowed. “I shall at that, if he still lives. Please, allow me to send for a healer for you and your man.” He strode to the comatose form of Guail, lying on his side some way forward on the path of sand.
Crystalyn checked that Hastel’s breathing was normal, and then she joined the sand reader who spoke with two of his men. The men sprinted away as she came near.
“The healers should soon arrive,” Long Sand said. He prodded the gaudy silk back of the merchant with the toe of his boot, smearing it with sand. “Did you kill him?” he asked.
Failing to find a pulse in the thick folds of the merchant’s neck, Crystalyn checked for it at his wrist, finding a strong one there quickly. “He is unconscious, though he will wake soon, like the others struck by my symbol. This time, they live.”
Long Sand gave a slight bow. “That is well, I suppose. The shifting sands foretell the merchant still has some use. Had I not seen this, I would not have hesitated to kill him where he lay.”
Abruptly, Long Sand bowed low, intoning, “We, of the Searing Sun clan, have accrued a debt of deep service to…” He straightened. “What clan do you hail from?”
Crystalyn thought for a moment. Only one name fit. “Creek Family clan,” she finally said.
Again, Long Sand bowed. “The clan is honored to serve you. The Clan of the Creek Family has only to express a desire and the Searing Sun will see it done.”
“There are but three of us, no, four, I suppose. Wait! Did you say your whole clan?”
“As the highest ranking leader present, I speak for my people. For three seasons, it shall be an honor for the Searing Sun Sect to serve you.”
“Thank you for your offer, Long Sand, but consider it declined. Not one of us requires subservience. Take care of your people, I’ll handle mine.”
Long Sand’s clean-shaven face darkened, and his hands clenched and unclenched above the pommels of his scimitars.
The scowl Crystalyn masked was partly from symbol fatigue as she thought of her present weakness, only one step shy of the shakes, but mostly from impatience. Why couldn’t they just get on with the search to find blasted Darwin? “What is it?” she asked the nomad.
“I believe your refusal has given him and his entire clan offense, mistress,” Hastel cut in, the tone of his voice weak. One hand covered the blow to his head. “Refusing now will make an enemy of every last one of them, even the non-warriors and the children for three-fold the seasons offered that you declined.” Removing his right hand from his head, it joined the left one fingering the heads of his axes.
“This clan shall find I block the way,” Lore Rayna said, the tone of her voice ominous.
Long Sand gripped the pommels of his scimitars.
Throwing back the hoods of their robes, the ring of warriors advanced as if signaled. Perhaps they were.
Crystalyn gaped around. “You’re all blasted serious, aren’t you? Has this entire bloody world become battle hungry? Okay, serve me. I have a request. Take me to your revered one.”
Raising a hand, Long Sand motioned to the advancing clan warriors. They dashed beside him, lining up on either side. Again, he bowed low, as did the warriors, in unison. Straightening, he smiled. “As I said, it is an honor to serve, follow me.”
Long Sand turned to a tall woman, slightly shorter than Crystalyn herself, on his right. “Ensure the merchant has a guard of twenty sect mates, the strongest. When he wakes, bring him to me at the excavation site after we exit the tomb. As for his hirelings, those unconscious, give them the opportunity to don an oath veil. Bestow a swift death upon those who refuse. One final command; supply everyone here with something wooden to use as a weapon in case more of those dark creatures are walking about in the skin of mercenaries or clan.”
Smoothing away a look of revulsion, the woman bowed. Then she gathered nineteen other men and women warriors and jogged to where the rotund man lay.
Four nomad warriors led the way to the revered one, Long Sand behind them. The five that remained fell in behind Hastel bringing up the rear. Though still weak, Crystalyn’s strength built quickly as she moved, glad to have finally neared the end of this hot and dry desert search.
Yet she had some trepidation that grew worse as they came within the shadow of the hulking tomb blocking the sun with its palpable presence. How would she react upon first sight of Darwin? Would she hug him or destroy him?
It bothered her that she didn’t know.
HAND OF THE ENEMY
Moving from a patch of green banana fern, Sureen dashed through a small opening, making it to a lightly singed clump of red oak brush. Nearby, a falun tree smoldered, massive even with its charred top half-gouging a large furrow in the meadow beyond its roots. Marveling how a forest fire could burn with such intense heat and still leave patches of flora unscathed, she plotted the way forward. Most of the army had vacated the Vale, but a significant force occupied the southern.
Hidden under shrubs or inside green fabric half-tents erected in the spotty patches of tall grass, shadowy scouts watched the forest and the Vale’s trampled meadow. So far, she’d marked them before they’d seen her, and she’d managed to avoid trip wires both mundane and magical strung with clever hands or created by an adept using the Flow. Her training with the Green Writhe had allowed her to slip past them, though barely.
The devastation of the Vale sickened her; the great trees had grown for hundreds of seasons, perhaps a few into the thousands, nurtured, as they grew old, by the Valens. Or more likely, the trees taught the people of the Vale how best to care for them.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. A figure squatted at the base of the oldest tree in the falun forest, the southern outpost. Kara Laurel! Sureen couldn’t believe the fool woman was still in the Vale so many days later. How had they not caught her and killed her?
Smothering her impatience to charge in and confront the woman, Sureen scanned the area with a cautious eye. Tethered to a seared sapling behind the woman, the black warhorse grazed. No other mounts were even close to the area. Her quarry was alone. A grim smile crept upon her. Kara Laurel had much to answer for.
Stooping low and keeping to the brushes and ferns, she worked her way to the back of the tree. Leaning her back against it, she took a moment to gather the Flow, filling her body and th
e white crystal on her staff. Kara Laurel would not return to the Circle of Light for judgment willingly. Hopping over a mossy root, Sureen rounded the great dead tree.
Kara Laurel waited with her arms folded at her chest, her smooth face serene and unreadable. Dried blood splashes coated her arms and the midsection of her yellow dress. “There you are. I suspected the Writhe would send you. Know that I am not disappointed.”
“The Green had no part in this. I come by my daughter’s command alone.”
Kara Laurel raised a fine auburn eyebrow. “Your daughter trusted me, allowed me to roam free, to help the Vale. What did you have to do to convince her otherwise?”
Obtusely, Sureen scanned the small patch of greenery behind Kara. Nothing out of the ordinary caught her eye. “My daughter is intelligent. The supposition of your trustworthiness was hers alone and needed no persuasion.”
Kara Laurel’s arms dropped to her side. “There was a time when you would have defended me in all things, no matter if you knew but little of my motivations. Have you not missed me?”
“You changed, Kara. Your daughter’s death made you indifferent to those who love you. Let me help you, it is not too late.”
Kara Laurel’s shoulders slumped, her smooth face losing composure as the corners of her mouth drooped a little. “You cannot, there is only one who can, one that has fought valiantly, unaided and with great sacrifice.”
The brief glint of something shiny drew Sureen’s eye. Empty flasks shelved on a thick root lined the wide tree limb before it vanished underground. Rings of moist spots pocked with tiny holes darkened the soil from the base outward. Anxiety flowed into the pit of her stomach switching to fear with a dawning comprehension. “You have not returned to the Vale to stop the Alchemist. You came to aid him.”
Kara Laurel smiled. “You are as observant as always, my once companion. We were close before discovering our life hearts. Were we not? Try to understand me now. Allow me the faith you had in me, the love we shared. The Alchemist has found the way to harmony, the path to end all troubles of the land. Finally, we, all of us, our world, shall be free of turmoil! Think of it! There shall be no fighting, a quick death to atrocities, and a resolution of conflicts. At last, all shall be equal throughout the land.”
Beyond the Dark Gate Page 33
