Inheritors of Chaos

by Barbara Ann Wright

  But another voice argued that he hadn’t done anything but speak the truth, and that he had a right to his anger, and that, well…well…

  If he had to walk, it felt good to fight.

  And he was using his power to assuage his guilt. The only emotion allowed free rein was anger, but he could stop that. He could calm himself down.

  He just didn’t.

  When the guilt came again, he tried letting it be, clenching his fists to keep from flicking the feeling away as easily as Patricia had dismissed his power away before, but when it came time to speak, what he said was, “I need to be alone for a little while.”

  That was not the apology he’d been planning. He couldn’t make himself look at Simon’s face; there was probably nothing but devastation there. Having been rejected for so long, slights like that broke Simon’s heart, and that made Horace even angrier.

  He marched away into the plains, far enough that he couldn’t see anyone else. He could still see the tree, but a small rise separated him from those walking, and he dipped into a shallow ravine to put more distance between them.

  When he spotted movement to his left, he thought it was one of the scouts, but it was Jon, following him again.

  “I want to be alone, Jon,” Horace threw over his shoulder.

  “We don’t have to talk.”

  “If I can see you, I’ll pick a fight with you.”

  “Fine by me.”

  Horace stuttered to a stop and laughed, the tension leaking out of him, leaving him feeling deflated. Jon stopped just outside of reach as if expecting a physical fight. But unless Horace used his power, he couldn’t hurt Jon, and not just because of the armor. The man was too good.

  “I meant that I’m likely to start an argument. I’m in a very prickly mood.”

  Jon shrugged. “I don’t know how to argue, so you’ll just be yelling at me.”

  Probably true, and the prospect didn’t excite Horace at all. He started walking again, and Jon fell in beside him as they picked their way down the ravine. The white, chalky walls bore swirls of brown and sandy gold. “My restlessness has gone beyond craving a fight. I’m becoming an asshole.”

  “Like you’re caught up in your own head.”

  That was certainly true. Horace was angrier with himself than anyone else; he just wasn’t letting himself feel it. And he didn’t want to start now. “I was a jerk to Simon.”

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  Horace barked a laugh. “That’s not going to cut it. He’s going to want an explanation.”

  “I can explain.”

  Horace glanced at him in surprise. “How?”

  Jon looked at nothing for a long moment. “I’ll tell him about wanting to fight even when you don’t want to feel that way. I’ll say that, because of your power, you don’t know how to be exhausted. I’ll say that a lot of soldiers use alcohol or sex to cope. He should feel good you’re not doing that.”

  Horace snorted. “I don’t know. He might approve of the sex approach.”

  “Not that kind of sex,” Jon said, unsmiling. “From what I heard, it’s when you use someone just so you can get out of your own head for a little while. The other person is just a…tool.”

  Horace blinked; he’d never heard Jon open up so much before. Of course, Jon might not see his speech as particularly revelatory. It probably meant more to him that he’d shared his love of models, his own method of coping with a dangerous job.

  “How you doing at not using your power after sparring?” Jon asked. “Did you do it last night?”

  “That’s not what’s bugging me.” In fits and starts, Horace told him of the confrontation with Patricia and Liam, how he’d been thinking with his power, the strongest part of himself, and he’d still been bested.

  Jon shrugged. “Even if you’d rushed her, she probably would have taken you out. If she’s controlling Liam, he could have stopped you. He used to be a paladin.”

  “I know.” Horace spoke a little louder than he meant to, but Jon didn’t seem to mind. “But I should have tried.”

  “It’s been a long time since anyone’s beaten you power to power, hasn’t it?”

  Horace went still. “Not since the Sun-Moon.” He swallowed. “And Naos.”

  Jon pointed back over the lip of the ravine. “Patricia used to be a god like them, right?”

  “So, you’re going to tell me I shouldn’t feel bad because they’re powerful?”

  “You can feel bad about whatever you want. I’m just trying to help you determine why that one fight is upsetting you more than those others.” Jon stared at nothing, face as placid as usual, and Horace was tempted to peek into that head, but he kept himself in check.

  Being kicked around by powerful assholes was a good reason to be upset. It was one of the reasons he’d been eager to learn how to fight, so he was less likely to be surprised. But Jon was right. That wouldn’t have helped with Patricia. He hadn’t been scared; he’d used what he was most familiar with. And part of him knew it wouldn’t work.

  Maybe that was it. He was angry because all the fights he kept getting into were with mega-powerful gods.

  Jon put a hand on his arm, gaze locked on the rocks in the distance where the ravine was covered in shadow.

  “What?” Horace whispered.

  “I saw someone.”

  “Probably a drushkan scout.”

  “No.”

  The definitiveness in his voice made Horace look again, this time with power. Jon was right. A group of humans was waiting in the ravine. He went through them one by one, people he didn’t know, until he came to one man.

  Disbelief and fear rushed through him. The Storm Lord. “No, it can’t be. He’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  Horace tried to fight down his fear, but if the Storm Lord knew he’d been detected, he’d hit them with lightning. “We need to run.” Horace pushed through his own emotions and sent out a desperate, telepathic call. “Simon!”

  * * *

  Patricia swore, stumbling as she walked. She’d been regretting her decision not to ride aboard the tree. She was curious about the drushka, but Dillon had been right: if something went wrong, and they were high off the ground, it would be harder to get away.

  Not that it would be easy now.

  She’d kept a lazy telepathic and micro-psychokinetic net over the whole company, alternating between the two so that no one became suspicious. And she thought her touch light enough that no one would notice, especially since she didn’t bring it near Simon or Horace.

  But when Horace stormed off over a hill out of sight, Patricia followed him with a light telepathic tendril, not invading his mind, just ready in case he used his power.

  When his power reached toward Jonah and his people, she tensed, but she didn’t act quickly enough to shut it off. He detected Jonah, and Patricia knew he’d realize whose body that used to be. She threw a telepathic shield over him as he put out a call for help.

  “We need to get over there,” Patricia said. “Horace found Jonah.”

  “Fuck.” Dillon followed her gaze, but so far, no one else seemed to notice. She’d instructed Jonah to stay far to the east, and he’d been hiding in ravines and ditches when he could. The drushkan scouts mainly ranged north.

  “Take him out,” Dillon said.

  Patricia gawked, her fear rising like the tide. “They’ll kill us!”

  “Not if they don’t find out. Take him the fuck out before he comes running over that hill, and you have to explain your little science project with my old bod. And don’t think they won’t want to know what happened to my mind.”

  He was right. It was too many questions, but he wasn’t thinking far enough ahead. Horace was Simon’s lover. He was worth more alive than dead.

  But Simon would feel it if she used her power with enough force to incapacitate Horace and the man with him. She sent her own telepathic signal, something Simon couldn’t spy upon. “Jonah, take that man and his friend prisoner. St
ealthily.”

  He obeyed. Patricia continued to block Horace’s signals, but she feared that stopping him from using his power would be too detectable.

  “Is it done?” Dillon asked.

  “Jonah is handling it. Distract Simon.”

  She continued to block Horace’s telepathy as it became frantic. Horace used his micro powers against one of Jonah’s men, knocking him unconscious. Patricia caught the thoughts of another man who leapt upon Horace, but the man’s thoughts turned panicked as he was attacked in turn. Everything was going wrong.

  Dillon glanced back to where Simon walked. “Wait a few seconds, then do something that makes it look like Naos is attacking.”

  “I can’t pull a goddamned meteor from the sky!” She didn’t think so, at least. Maybe she wouldn’t have to go that big. “Just go talk to him.”

  Dillon faded back, hailing Simon and engaging him in conversation, a distraction for her distraction. She threw another telepathic shield around the yafanai in the tree, then struck everyone with a telepathic blast, hoping Simon wasn’t alert enough to know it was her.

  Everyone staggered, Simon and Dillon included. She reeled, too, as if she’d felt the same assault. It disrupted all the yafanai, and Simon was tottering, so Patricia risked a micro-psychokinetic blast for Horace and his friend. One of them had been injured; now Patricia put them both down, telling Jonah to carry them into the nearest limestone cavern. This close to the mountains, many such caverns connected to the mine, and Patricia could collapse the entrance behind them.

  Until she needed them.

  Chapter Twelve

  A flashback played through Simon’s head like a vid at slow speed: when Dillon had kidnapped him by socking him in the jaw before a telepath had knocked him out, all because he’d let down his guard.

  Now he grabbed Liam’s arm, struggling to regain his thoughts. He’d been so discombobulated by the fight with Horace, then Liam had called his name, and he was trying to listen to Liam instead of brooding when a telepathic attack had stabbed him in the brain.

  “Something’s…it’s…” He couldn’t get the words in order. Panic rampaged through him like a wild animal, but he had to get hold of himself, had to tell them that someone had attacked.

  But Liam bent double beside him, and as Simon looked around the field, the world tilted crazily. Everyone seemed in various stages of distress, including Patricia.

  “Shawness!” Reach took his arm. More drushka were racing through the grass, supporting the humans. Reach began a healing song, the melody mixing with the other shawnessi, but Simon’s body was fine. His mind was on fire. Still, the song let him breathe through the lingering effects of the telepathic attack. His vision returned to normal, and his thoughts finally got in order.

  “All of us,” he muttered, clinging to Reach. “She hit all of us.”

  “Was it Naos?” Reach asked.

  “Had to have been,” Liam said. He’d gone a bit pale as he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth.

  Patricia staggered over. “Maybe we’re not going fast enough.”

  “And so she slows us down with an attack?” His head snapped to the right. Horace had marched off alone. Simon ran, relying on his legs to know what they were doing without guidance from him. They’d had a stupid fight, and Simon had let Horace out of his sight, and now he was probably suffering alone or incapacitated or…

  Simon topped the rise. The plains stood empty, but there was a ravine below. He ran and looked along its length. Nothing. “Horace?” He took a slow turn. He just had to look more carefully, that was all. “Horace!”

  “Shawness?” Reach asked.

  “He must have fallen. Maybe she hit him harder than the rest of us.” He sent his distress to Pool, reaching for the person who could see the farthest and act the quickest through her drushka.

  “We will find him, shawness,” Pool said in his mind.

  Reach caught Simon’s arm and helped him walk. Cordelia had followed and was calling orders to the paladins to fan out along with the drushka.

  Nettle leaped into the ravine and loped along it. Simon sent his power out and tried to ignore the people around him. Horace couldn’t have gotten far. He wouldn’t have walked away into the wilderness, no matter how upset he’d been. He knew how dangerous that was.

  Hadn’t someone followed him? Simon remembered one of the paladins breaking off. Jon Lea.

  Simon whipped around, searching for the glint of metal armor while his power still sought Horace. He tried to stretch his senses further, but a headache throbbed through his temples, and he pulled back. Why had Naos hit them with such a powerful blast? Had she been waiting for one of them to separate from the others so she could pick them off one by one like some maniac from a slasher film?

  “Here, shawness, a way down,” Reach said.

  Simon let her guide him down the side of the ravine. She sniffed the air. “I smell blood.”

  “What?” Simon focused harder, making pain rage through his skull. “I can’t…I should be able to detect him even if he’s injured, even if he’s…”

  Dead.

  Simon fought the urge to sob and clung to Reach. “Where?”

  Reach waved ahead. Simon ran, hearing Cordelia and several others skitter into the ravine behind them. What the hell had Horace been thinking? They never should have had that stupid fight. Simon should have just said how much he loved him and that he was there for him, and…

  A few red smears decorated the ground where Nettle waited. Horace had been injured, then he’d…walked away? Crawled? Simon cast his senses about again but found no one except those surrounding him.

  Nettle went farther and stopped next to a divot in the ravine wall. “Here.”

  The word seemed as loud as a shot, though she spoke in a normal tone. Cordelia stepped to Nettle’s side, and her expression tightened into worry.

  Simon tottered forward. A large rock hid their feet from view. “Did you…find him?”

  The back of the rock bore a crimson stain and a puddle of blood at its base. If the person who’d shed that much blood wasn’t dead already, they soon would be.

  “Horace!” Simon yelled, turning a circle, pushing through the pain.

  Dizziness overcame him. He tried to brace himself, to call a warning, but the same telepathic attack as before stabbed at him, bringing him to his knees. His thoughts tumbled beyond all control.

  Nearly lost in the haze, he heard a voice say, “Don’t keep me waiting.” Naos’s voice, but it sounded different. Angry or annoyed. Simon fought to get hold of his power, his thoughts, trying to use his anger.

  His mind suddenly cleared as if scrubbed clean, and he looked up into Patricia’s face, feeling her power.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said softly. “I was ready for her this time.”

  He blinked, realizing she’d used her telepathy to clear his thoughts. He used his power on himself, but it felt worn, pummeled in a way he couldn’t counter.

  “Why is she doing this?” Cordelia asked as she leaned on the bloodstained rock.

  “Didn’t you hear?” Patricia asked. “She’s trying to hurry us along.”

  “Not without Horace,” Simon said.

  “Can you sense him?” Reach asked.

  “I would have told you if I could!” He knew he should rein in his temper. It had cost him too much already. “I’m sorry. I can’t sense very far, not with these fucking telepathic attacks!”

  “How fast does she want us to go?” Cordelia yelled.

  “You can track Horace, right?” Simon asked Nettle.

  “Ahya, shawness, but his attackers are moving swiftly.”

  “Lead on.”

  “Hold it!” Cordelia said. “A handful of us can’t go racing into the plains. Besides, the drushka are already on it, right?”

  Simon looked to Nettle, who wrinkled her nose with a sympathetic smile, and Simon realized how stupid he was. Of course the drushka were on it. They’d fanned out, and on
ce Nettle had found them a starting place, a simple thought had alerted the rest of them. They ran up and down the ravine and even up the sides and over the plains, searching for clues.

  Before Simon could take a step, a trill of alarm came from Pool.

  “The trail has gone into a cave, shawness,” Pool said, “and then farther underground, to a tunnel that has collapsed.”

  Simon looked to Cordelia, his heart sinking.

  “It will be all right, shawness,” Reach said. “We will find him.”

  In a tunnel that had collapsed. “Can you tell who took him?”

  “Perhaps he fell and injured himself?” Reach said, but it didn’t sound as if she believed it.

  Cordelia stared at the ground. “And then he and Lea crawled into some random cavern instead of shouting for help?”

  “There are other scents here,” Nettle said. “Some seem almost…familiar, yet I cannot place them. Some were plains dwellers, by the leather they wore.”

  Cordelia grabbed Simon’s arm, and he didn’t need to be a telepath to read the guilt on her face.

  “Oh hell,” he muttered. “It might be the ones we let go.”

  “What’s this?” Liam asked as he finally reached them. “Who did you let go?”

  Cordelia rolled her head from side to side as if readying herself for a fight. “We caught some plains dwellers not long ago, and we didn’t know what to do with them, so—”

  “So, you handed Naos’s army right back to her?” Patricia asked.

  Cordelia frowned hard. “We weren’t just going to fucking kill them.”

  Liam wiped a hand down his face, and Simon sensed his aggravation, but he was trying to keep it under wraps. He hadn’t seemed this quick to anger before his brain damage. If Patricia had to rebuild him at that fundamental a level, maybe they’d never get the real Liam back.

  Horace could still try.

  If they ever found him.

  “You should have kept them locked up,” Liam said, shaking his head.

  Cordelia spread her arms. “Where, exactly?”