Sharani series Box Set

by Kevin L. Nielsen

  “What do you need?” Lhaurel asked, distracted.

  Khari began talking, but Lhaurel only half listened. Her mind was elsewhere, following Kaiden’s retreat even without being able to feel his presence.

  Khari led Lhaurel back to her room to grab a red robe for each of them. Lhaurel felt odd wearing them, though they fit surprising well. Then Khari handed her a leatherwork belt inlaid with steel rings to replace the more ornate one Beryl had given her, and Lhaurel gladly belted her sword onto it.

  “So, what exactly do you need me to do?” Lhaurel asked for perhaps the dozenth time as she and Khari walked down the passageway toward the eyrie, red robes encircling them.

  Khari groaned and rounded on her. “As I said before, I need to gather some information tonight. My informants don’t know enough about us to even realize what questions to ask. I need someone who is familiar with the Sidena’s current politics to help me find out where to prod and who to approach.”

  “But won’t they recognize me?” Lhaurel asked.

  “They think you’re dead. They won’t be looking for your face beneath a Roterralar hood. We survive through mystery and intrigue. The more mysterious you seem, the more likely it is that they will pay more attention to you. And the closer attention they pay to you as a Roterralar, the less likely they are to actually see you.”

  “Alright.” That didn’t make sense at all.

  * * *

  Gavin blinked and sucked in a long, ragged breath. Time returned with the sound of his beating heart.

  Thump.

  He tried to sit up, but his muscles refused to respond. He groaned, a weak, wet sound.

  Thump.

  He lay there for what seemed like an eternity, though by the count of his heartbeats it was far less than that. The sun beat down, warming the rocks upon which he lay and burning his exposed, bloody flesh. He had no idea how long he’d lain there, but it was long enough that a few carrion eaters, including a few rashelta, poked around near him without the slightest hesitancy.

  He strained and struggled to rise, finally succeeding in rolling onto his stomach and then back onto his knees so that he could slip into a sitting position. His vision swam and a shock ran down his arm. The carrion-eaters scattered.

  Slowly, his vision came into focus, coalescing on the red-grey rocks that formed the cliffs that encircled the Oasis. Heat radiated upward from the cliffs, giving the whole area a look of a mirage. The rock extended in a massive circle around the entire perimeter, stretching for miles along the circumference of the almost perfect circle. Though mostly flat, there were sections that had become broken and jagged where pieces of the cliff had broken. These ragged towers dotted the otherwise unbroken circle in several places, but the only true gap in the wall rested above the narrow canyon-like entrance to the Oasis, a few hundred spans to the south of Gavin.

  Gavin groaned, low and pitiful, and brought his hands up to inspect the damage. They were a ragged, broken mess, some completely devoid of anything resembling flesh. He could still use them—they all bent and none of them were broken—but movement brought pain.

  Why?

  The question burned through the shock and the pain. What had driven him to such self-destructive actions?

  Remember what it is that you have sworn to do.

  It had been said that the end of the great and final battle against the enemy had been fought here, upon the cliffs. Literally on top of the plateau-like ring that protected them from the genesauri during the Migration. The stories claimed that what had happened atop the cliffs had brought them both salvation and destruction.

  His grandmother had told him that his parents had died trying to discover the truth behind these stories. His father had tried to scale the cliffs more than once but had never completed the climb. The burden of discovery and proof now fell to Gavin. Somewhere atop these cliffs was the proof that he and his family had searched for generations. Somewhere there were the answers that he sought.

  Muscles screamed in protest as he struggled to get to his feet. Strength failed him and he stumbled and fell. He screamed, and his screaming gave him strength. A gust of wind whipped up around him, scattering dust and driving sand into his wounds. Teeth clamped together against the searing pain, Gavin rose to his feet, defying his weakened muscles and remaining standing on sheer will alone.

  His grandmother’s oaths pushed him onward . . .

  . . . and something else. Something deep and primal within his very blood . . .

  He took a step forward and then another, broken boots falling from his bloodied feet. He concentrated on the steps, counting each one as he walked, though never getting past two.

  One, two. One, two. He walked.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he tripped and sprawled out onto the rocks. He groaned and pushed himself to his knees, spitting out blood. He glanced back the way he had come, his path clearly marked by his jagged, bloody footsteps. His path was wayward, but he noticed, with a sudden discordant surge of pride, it retained its forward progression.

  A small beetle scuttled across the rock near him. Without thinking, Gavin reached out and grabbed it between two stiff fingers. The pain was excruciating, but he didn’t let go. He popped the insect into his mouth, ignoring the scuttling, flailing legs that kicked at his tongue. Chewing was painful, but he bit down on the hard shell, feeling a satisfying crunch as the bitter juices washed over his tongue. He’d never tasted anything quite so satisfying. He tried to stand up, but strength failed him. He needed rest and time to heal.

  The sun rose and fell three times before Gavin had the strength to move with the speed and alacrity he was used to. There were plenty of beetles and small crab-like creatures to sustain him, though the diet was bland. Water came in shallow pools near the Oasis side of the walls. His hands had healed, so the pain was only a dull ache. The sun rose over the Forbiddence, barely visible from his current vantage, warming the rock.

  He popped a beetle into his mouth and chewed.

  He swallowed and pushed himself up to his feet, stifling a groan. His grandmother’s voice drifted across his memory, recounting the stories of his youth. It gave him strength. The wind whipped at his brown hair streaked with red, tossing it around his face where it wasn’t plastered to his scalp by dried blood and dirt. The wind smelled of dust and heat and blood.

  He took a step forward and then stopped. On the other side of the Oasis walls, something glinted in the early morning light. An outcropping of rock jutted out from the otherwise flat surface of the plateau. Something glinted at its apex. How had he not noticed it before?

  It took him the better part of the morning to circumnavigate the top of the Oasis wall, eyes constantly straining to try and make out what was reflecting the light. When he was close enough to see what it was, the sight made him halt. A sword was thrust into the rocks, part of the blade and the hilt remaining exposed to the elements. And there was something at its base. He resumed his walk, though more quickly than he’d gone before.

  The dull white thing took shape as he neared. A skeleton, ancient and broken. It lay against the red sandstone, limbs sprawled out as if it had fallen from a great height. The blade was thrust through the broken ribs exactly where the heart would have been.

  Gavin studied it, fascinated. The proportions were off. The person would have stood over seven feet tall and, judging from the thickness of the bones, been a massive behemoth of a man. And the skull was odd. The head was more narrow and pinched at the front than he had expected and the teeth—they had been filed to points, like the fangs of a genesauri.

  “This can’t be Eldriean,” Gavin said aloud, wonderingly. He stepped closer, his movements coming more fluidly than they had been before. He reached out and laid a bloodstained hand on the sword’s hilt. The sword toppled free with a crunch of rock. Gavin struggled to catch it before it fell, his fingers protesting the abuse. He grabbed the sword hilt as the ground beneath his feet gave way, and he fell into darkness with a terrified s
cream.

  He hit hard. He heard something break, though he couldn’t tell if it was one of his bones or his entire body. He coughed, spitting up blood and phlegm as dust poured down around him and chunks of broken rock hit the floor.

  Somehow he’d maintained his grip on the sword. It seemed lighter than he had expected.

  When the dust settled and the rocks stopped falling from the crumbling mess of sandstone above, Gavin used the sword like a cane to support himself. He struggled to his feet. Nothing felt broken, but beneath the pain from the wounds he had already sustained, it was altogether possible that he had broken any number of bones and simply couldn’t feel it. Regardless, nothing was damaged enough to keep him from walking, though his movements were slower again.

  “This is for you, Nana,” he said, to give himself strength. “There was something up here. You were right . . . you were right.” His voice echoed strangely in the chamber.

  He looked up, noting the distance he had fallen—only a few spans. The sword must have extended down into this hollow chamber beneath the skeleton, slowly weakening it until Gavin’s light touch on the hilt caused the whole section to collapse. Thankfully, the cliff itself hadn’t fallen.

  He stepped forward and something crunched under his foot. Bones, he realized, looking down. The behemoth’s bones. That was what he had heard breaking. Ancient, brittle, and bleached by ages in the sun, the bones were now little more than dust and jagged white flecks mixed in with the red and grey sandstone.

  He pressed his hands against the sides of the wall, searching for purchase, but found nothing. It was too smooth, too polished. Like glass.

  It was glass. It lined the inner walls in a thin sheet. It was a startling discovery, one that made him reassess the nature of this cave. This wasn’t a natural structure. It had been made by human hands.

  That meant that there had to be an exit somewhere. He felt his pulse quicken. There was more here to be discovered. As he shuffled forward, coughing as dust entered his lungs, he wished that his grandmother and parents could have been here to discover this with him. They were still with him in memory, but he longed for their physical presence by his side.

  Eventually, he found the expected exit, hidden in shadow at the far end of the chamber. He paused a moment to gain his strength, leaning against the greatsword, and then stepped into the darkness.

  * * *

  Beryl closed his eyes and reached out with his senses, selecting a large block of metal and pulling it toward him. The cold, grey lump of hardened steel rose out of the bin as if in defiance of gravity’s laws, floating through the air toward where Beryl waited. His eyes remained closed. He didn’t bother stoking the flames of the forge. He really didn’t need to, though at times the physical turmoil of forge work was a boon to his troubled, crowded mind. His work lay scattered across the desert, like the grains of the sand itself, but this weapon would be different. This weapon he made because he wanted to, not because he was bidden.

  This girl, this Lhaurel—she was different. Khari and Makin Qays had visited him earlier, both congratulating themselves on another successful breaking. One of the voices told him they were wrong. It was the voice of someone he had once been, someone from long ago.

  “They think the girl is broken,” he whispered in response to that voice. “The sandstorm, Kaiden, the trauma, it only widened the cracks. She’s not broken yet. No, it takes a more complex breaking to open up complex magic.”

  He remembered his own breaking like a distant echo. Even after all the other memories had faded, that one was as fresh and poignant as if it had occurred just yesterday.

  “How long must I be the weapons maker?” he asked.

  He raised his hands before him, flecks of metal in his skin reflecting the light, and gestured at the block hovering in the air before him. It shifted. The metal began to elongate and flatten, manipulated by the will of one who was as old as the metal he worked and twice as hard.

  “The curse.” He spat, willing the metal to thin more. “Why must they keep fighting? Isn’t there enough death? Why must I keep giving them more weaponry? Why don’t they ask where the weapons come from—where the fuel comes for the fires?”

  He knew the answers.

  “They were the dregs of society to begin with. And the slaves. They are the lesser children of a greater father.” He shuddered, memories playing through his mind like flashes of lightning in a storm.

  The metal he was working shimmered and warped for a moment, but a simple gesture smoothed out the transmuted edge and the work continued.

  How long would his torment continue? He’d been the first thrown into this desert, this eternal hell. He was the first of the lesser lords. The first magnetelorium. Did any of these remember their ancient heritage? No. Of course they didn’t. It was lost to them, lost in memory and legend. The outcasts, those crossbreed mutants now so interbred that the original purpose of the imprisonment was lost to them, still told some of the stories. Twisted and warped versions of them, but at least that was something. But these Roterralar, those here to protect the others, they didn’t understand a hundredth part of what they thought they knew. Not even when they sat upon the very spot where it all began. Not even then. Thanks to Elyana and the genesauri.

  “Oh Elyana,” he said, voice soft and eyes still closed.

  The hilt formed on the sword, and the cross guard flattened and formed to separate the hilt from the blade.

  “You will never know what you caused. When you created your salvation, did you understand what you were doing to this people? Did you know what effects it would have?”

  Her cause had been just, and it had performed its intended purpose, though Beryl wondered if it was perhaps just a delaying of the inevitable. The enemy had been driven back, but a new one took its place. How was this any better? And when the current enemy was removed, how long before the old one returned? The Sharani were a doomed people, imprisoned in their desert without any idea of what went on beyond the Forbiddence that enclosed the sands. In truth, Beryl no longer remembered, either. Those memories were foggy things, lost to the annals of time and history. Yet he had been here before the desert, been here before the crimson scourge had made a sport of this all.

  Things were changing. Beryl could feel it. It had started with the genesauri shifting their hibernation pattern. But that was only a beginning. This was only a part of a larger whole. Things had been set in motion that were simply better left undone. The world was about to change. The girl, Lhaurel, she reminded him of times past.

  Beryl closed his hands, blade finished, and the weapon dropped from the air to bury itself in the sand, point first. Another blade completed. Another sword made to kill Rahuli. He was about the task appointed him, the same task for which his life had been spared.

  He laughed suddenly, a strange, short bark. It was the laughter of a broken man, a man whose existence and sanity danced on the edge of a knife. The laughter of a man doomed to eternal creation and eternal damnation. He was a bringer of death, a supplier of the implements of destruction.

  A quick swipe crumpled the sword into a useless lump of metal once more, flinging it back into the bin.

  The laughter that followed did little to hide the wet streak of a tear slipping down his cheek.

  Then the metal lump rose and began forming itself into a sword again. He’d lost track of how many times he’d fashioned this sword. Maybe a dozen or so this morning. Twice as many yesterday.

  He laughed and then shrugged, pushing aside the despair and emotion welling within him. For now, he would allow himself to be simply Beryl, the smith. For now, he could forget the pain and the madness. Beryl opened his eyes and pulled on the bellows, stoking the fire. This time he would do it the mundane way. Maybe he could ignore the voices then. Maybe this time he could ignore the small part of him that was screaming.

  Chapter 13: Shifting Sands

  “My work is taking a toll on me. Sleep greets me with the echoes of children screaming. Wh
en awake, the dreams linger, the echoes giving me an anxiety that slows the progress we so desperately need. But Briane was right. The cause is worthy of the sacrifice. I must fight on.”

  —From the Journals of Elyana

  It had taken much more than a simple bribe to get Fahkiri to come down from his roost. By the time Lhaurel climbed up to him and not only apologized but also begged for him to come down, Khari was ready to simply leave her behind. But the aevian had eventually relented and allowed Lhaurel to saddle him and clip her own harness into place on his back. They had managed to launch from the eyrie’s cavernous opening an hour before sunset and wing their way southward.

  Lhaurel loved the thrill of flight, but her racing heart was filled with a small measure of trepidation. Her harness was completely secured, but she rode more stiffly in the saddle now, clutched more tightly onto the pommel. She didn’t want to repeat the terrifying plummet that had happened earlier.

  Khari’s aevian had been none other than Gwyanth, Fahkiri’s mother, though there didn’t seem to be any familiar love between the two anymore. Gwyanth was as cold and distant towards Fahkiri as her rider was to Lhaurel.

  Khari pushed them hard through the blazing sun, though as high up as they were in the air, the heat was bearable, even in their long robes.

  Lhaurel scanned the red sands below them. The evidence of sailfins passing was everywhere. Small piles and depressions dotted the sands, like pockmarks on an old man’s face. The wind was slowly filling them in, but even the relentless wind needed time to erase so many. Lhaurel shuddered at the memory of the Sidena Warren, destroyed by only a small sailfin pack.

  She shifted her gaze as Fahkiri climbed a little higher on a gust of wind. Kaiden was right about where the monsters were headed. The pits and piles of sand pointed in the same direction they flew, straight toward the heart of the Sharani desert, the Oasis. Eventually the evidence stopped, showing where the sailfins had stopped to rest or whatever it was they did when they weren’t on the move.