Sharani series Box Set

by Kevin L. Nielsen

  “A lovely analogy, but what do you suggest I quench Lhaurel in?”

  “I suggest you let her cool down. Keep stresses out of her life. Let her find something relaxing and peaceful. Don’t overwork her. Like the metal, both she and her magic will cool, and then you should be able to see what sort of flaws come to the surface, if any.”

  Khari nodded. Beryl always had astute advice.

  “Oh, and when you see her, ask her to come see me. This is hers,” he said, holding up the sword.

  “I will.” She turned to leave but hesitated.

  Beryl arched a bushy white eyebrow at her as she turned.

  “Do think someone is controlling the genesauri?”

  The forge flared again, and Beryl frowned. The light from the forge illuminated half of Beryl’s face, leaving the other half bathed in shadows.

  “No one is that powerful,” he said. “Not even me.”

  Khari pursed her lips into almost a frown and turned to leave, but before she got through the door Beryl spoke again.

  “Oh, and Matron—she isn’t broken yet.”

  * * *

  Kaiden strode through the darkened passages with long, lithe strides, holding aloft the torch he had taken from a wall bracket. The sand lay thick in these tunnels. The cleaners either hadn’t gotten down this far after the sandstorm, or they simply didn’t clean down here. Kaiden strode purposefully onward. He obviously knew the path well and fully expected Lhaurel to follow him. Lhaurel didn’t know why, but she did.

  She walked along behind him, cursing the sand, but otherwise her thoughts and mind were pleasantly blank. She followed not because she had any interest in where Kaiden was taking her, but because the walking calmed her mind and granted her a measure of peace. Intermingled with the emotions that ran high concerning Honric’s death were other, less powerful, yet equally troubling thoughts and feelings about Kaiden.

  The man was somewhat of an enigma. There was something endearing about him, yes, but at times he simply seemed an arrogant little toerag bordering on cruelty. So cold at some points, and then so warm and inviting at others. The memory of the first time she had seen him, among the Sidena, made her smile through her tiredness. He’d been so cool, arrogant, and sarcastic among the Sidena. Yet he had treated her with respect even in the face of such barbarity as was going on around them. And then there was the way he had treated her during the sandstorm. Slaying the rashelta to demonstrate his powers and standing over her in the storm, facing the winds to protect her. He was a contradiction wrapped in the guise of a man.

  Yet she followed him anyway. Where was the sense in that?

  At the moment, she simply did not care. She just walked and allowed her mind to go blank, unable to do much more than focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Her mouth and throat were dry, but she didn’t have any water on her. And she was not about to ask Kaiden for his. Her numb sense of things left her with no way of knowing where they were within the warren.

  Eventually, though, her curiosity got the better of her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not far.”

  “That’s not a very helpful answer.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I told you about it, now would it? Just trust me.”

  “I’d really rather not.”

  Kaiden laughed. “It’s a momentary trust, fleeting at best. You can go back to not trusting me afterward.”

  “How much further?”

  “Not far,” he said again. If she’d had a rock somewhere, Lhaurel would have tossed it at him.

  The passageway grew dank and cold as they walked farther. Moisture dripped from the walls and ran in little streams down the crevasses of reddish-grey rock. Lhaurel felt oddly comforted. When she trailed her hand through the water on the walls, she felt strength surge through her, and her senses seemed to come alive. She felt Kaiden walking a few paces in front of her, sensed his presence. She felt the water running down the walls. The massive underground water source that she had felt earlier rested just on the other side of the wall. It was so large, so incredibly vast. It swirled with currents and eddies, budded with life. The place felt right. Safe.

  They rounded a corner.

  “Here we are,” Kaiden said, raising the torch high.

  Torchlight glittered off the surface of a vast underground lake. It stretched out several hundred spans, reflecting the light off its shimmering surface. The sound of dripping water echoed against the walls, a harmonious symphony that sang to Lhaurel’s heart. A narrow pathway of stone led through the lake toward the far wall like the stoneways through the sand toward the Oasis.

  Kaiden let her soak in the grandeur of that much water all in one place for a moment and then motioned with the torch that they were going to follow the path. The flickering light cast odd shadows across the water’s surface and on the cave walls around it.

  Kaiden led the way. Lhaurel followed, breathless.

  As they neared the far wall, the light revealed what Kaiden had obviously brought her there to see. An enormous mural covered the face of the entire back wall. The paint or dye was faded in some places, worn with the age and covered in layers of mildew and dust, but it depicted a world and a life different from any that Lhaurel had ever known. Strange drawings of plants that looked like bushes but with only one massive brown stalk and far too much green on them. Animals that were clearly the workings of some child’s imagination. Bodies of water that were bigger than anything that would have survived long in the desert climate above.

  And central to it all were depictions of a people. People who worked and farmed and hunted together, all standing or working with their eyes turned upward toward one figure wearing a thin crown and bearing a strange-looking sword. Along the edges, an odd reddish-brown cloud and streaks of white lightning were drawn in a ring, enveloping the mural as if it cut it off from everything else. There were other drawings etched into the stone that looked older still, but they were faded and worn, the message lost.

  Beneath the mural, along the bottom two spans of the wall, hundreds upon hundreds of little rectangular repositories had been cut into the stone, each one lined up in dozens of rows and columns. Little symbols were carved into the stone around each opening, but Lhaurel had no understanding of their meaning. As she stepped closer, her mouth hanging partly open in awe, Lhaurel noticed that within some of the repositories there was something placed, something that shone and reflected the light.

  “What is this?” she asked, reaching out a hesitant hand.

  Behind her, Kaiden moved the torch so that she could see what it was she was touching. A glass tube with a metal cap. There was a rolled-up length of parchment inside, but it was too dark to make out any markings. “Depends on who you ask,” Kaiden said, stepping up beside her. “Some say this is simply a pretty picture, drawn by people who had been driven mad by the genesauri. Some say it is a remnant of a time long past that will never be again.” His voice was quiet, respectful—almost reverent.

  “And what do you think?”

  Kaiden turned to look at her, and his gaze was serious. His brows furrowed above his eyes and then suddenly relaxed. Looking away, he gazed up at the mural on the wall.

  “It’s a depiction of what used to be. And what can be again,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it really happened or not. It’s an ideal. A unified people working together, guided by a wise and powerful leader. A time without the genesauri. It’s what freedom looks like, Lhaurel.”

  Lhaurel stared at the man, stunned. Who was he to talk so longingly and majestically of freedom? In order to long for freedom, one must first have tasted the bitter gall of imprisonment. But his words rang with the beauty and power that only came through truth.

  She looked up at the mural again and caught a small glimpse of what Kaiden was explaining. She chewed on her bottom lip, suddenly trying to reconcile her image of Kaiden with the surprisingly poetic soul he had just revealed.


  “And what are these?” she asked, holding up the glass container.

  Kaiden smiled and winked at her as if she had asked something clever. Lhaurel found herself blushing, which somehow made her angry with herself.

  “Well, my guess is that they are a record of our past and how this,” he said, gesturing to the mural, “somehow became the hell we live in now.”

  “Your guess?”

  Kaiden shrugged. “Well, everyone knows this lake is down here, but few come down this far. It’s somewhere I go when I need to find peace. It’s too sacred, too perfect, for me to feel comfortable showing it to just anyone. Actually, anyone but you. I haven’t even shown Sarial.”

  For some reason, that made Lhaurel smile. “So why did you show me?”

  “Because you understand what it is like to fight for freedom. Not just freedom for yourself but freedom for those you care about. I’ve seen it in you. Once they identified you as a possible mystic a few years ago, we watched you. We saw the way you rankled under the pressures of being a woman. I personally saw your little acts of rebellion and how you tried to show the other women that they didn’t just have to capitulate. Oh, nothing too dangerous. Like teaching yourself the sword, for example. Freedom is in your blood.”

  Lhaurel flushed at hearing how she had been watched for several years. The last month of constant scrutiny had been bad enough, but years?

  “And, for a moment today, you looked like something had taken away that thirst for freedom. When I feel like that, I come here. It reminds me why I fight each day. Why I struggle to provide freedom to all.”

  “I—” she began and then hesitated. Did she trust him? Maybe she was starting to, but it was still a small thing, a seed just barely taking root.

  It only took her a few minutes to relate what had happened in the Oasis, culminating in the death of one of the brigands at her hands.

  He listened, impassive, as the torch sputtered in the dank, musty air. His expression changed to one of outrage when her story reached the part about the three men.

  “You were too merciful.” His harsh voice echoed in the cavernous confines. “I wouldn’t have left any of them alive.”

  Lhaurel almost recoiled from the sheer force of his animosity. She had expected Kaiden to question her actions, interrogate her on how she had felt Honric die, or even lecture her on diplomacy.

  “But I killed a man. He wasn’t a genesauri or a sandtiger. He was a man.”

  Kaiden’s expression softened somewhat, if steel could be said to soften. “Sometimes killing is the only way to protect others. This won’t be the last time someone dies on your blade. Sometimes there is simply no other way to protect either your own or someone else’s freedom. You killed to protect. There isn’t any better reason for death than that.”

  Lhaurel bit her bottom lip. “But how do I know that I really was protecting? I just got so angry that my body forced me to act. It was as if I was watching myself do it from behind a stranger’s eyes. Did they really need to die?”

  Kaiden reached out his hand and gripped her shoulder. His grip was iron. “People don’t change that much, Lhaurel. If they were going to attack you because you were Roterralar women, then they had already made their choices that lead to those actions a long time ago. Once men get it in their heads that there is one way of doing things, then that’s the only way for them. There is no going back. What you did helped save future lives.” His voice was passionate, sharp, and strong. Yet there was a mixture of bitterness to it, as if the conversation had somehow opened up old wounds not yet healed.

  Lhaurel sniffed, and Kaiden released her shoulder, dropping his hand to his side.

  “Come on,” Kaiden said. “I’ll take you back up to the greatroom. You look like you could use some sleep.”

  Lhaurel nodded but then hesitantly reached out and grabbed his arm. He stopped and turned to face her.

  “Thank you for this, Kaiden,” she said with a grandiose gesture that took in the entire room. One side of her mouth twitched upward in a small smile.

  Kaiden winked at her and shrugged. “It was nothing.”

  * * *

  Lhaurel entered the smithy with measured hesitation. Before she and Kaiden had made it back to the greatroom, a young woman had met them with a message for Lhaurel. Beryl needed to see her. Again. Lhaurel had almost forgotten that the man had been working on her own sword and that the one at her belt was only a temporary companion. Lhaurel felt relieved that she would not have to keep the weapon that had shed another human being’s blood.

  Yet her trepidation now came for another reason. After bidding goodbye to Kaiden and the young messenger, Lhaurel had checked the blade that Beryl had loaned her only to find it stuck fast with blood. Despite her best efforts, which, admittedly, were somewhat hampered by her revulsion at the sight of the reddish-brown stains, the blade was still coated with it.

  The ever-present harnesses hung from the ceiling, though after her experience with the broken strap, she now understood why there were so many of them. The forge was dormant, but some heat still radiated from it, and a pair of lanterns on one of the counters provided a little illumination. Beryl was nowhere to be seen. Lhaurel peered over each of the counters and even looked into the dark shadows in the corners of the room.

  She sighed. It made sense that the smith would be in the other room, the armory, but she had hoped to not have to go in there. The sheer vastness of the room left her in awe, and she was not sure how she’d feel about being surrounded by such an array of weapons.

  She found the smith standing just on the other side of the forge as if he had been waiting for her. A beautiful sword rested in his grip. He offered it to her without a word. Lhaurel took it, wrapping her fingers around the slightly too-long handle, and then handed him the sword that he had loaned her. The new sword somehow felt right in her hands, much more so than the other one ever had.

  “Thank you,” she said, threading the weapon’s sheath onto her belt.

  Beryl ignored her, instead drawing the blade she had given him and inspecting the bloodstains on it. He grunted and slammed the sword back into its sheath.

  “Khari told me about what happened,” he said in his gruff voice. “Well done, young one. Those your age shouldn’t have to be put in those situations. You should be with people your own age instead of being forced into life’s hard lessons.”

  Lhaurel swallowed and half smiled. It seemed an appropriate response.

  Beryl tossed the loaned sword toward a pile of weapons that lay in a corner. A cloud of reddish-grey seemed to form around Beryl as the sword continued to sail over the pile of discarded weapons and float, suspended in midair, into a bin of scrap metal. The weapon landed with a clatter and the cloud around Beryl faded.

  “You’re a magnetelorium!” Lhaurel said, realizing that the misty clouds she sometimes saw around people marked when someone was using their magic.

  Beryl nodded. “That I am. There are a few of us here.”

  “Like Kaiden.”

  “Yes, like him.” Beryl said then hesitated, his brow furrowing in an expression of concentration. “He’s about your age, isn’t he? Maybe you should spend some time with him and enjoy your youth. Leave the hard life lessons for later.”

  Lhaurel smiled and turned to leave. Beryl didn’t stop her.

  Chapter 16: Eddies and Falls

  “What is the nature of dreams? Are they real or purely illusory? If they are real, what is the nature of this realm of dreams? If illusory, why do they have such a powerful effect upon the dreamer? I think the enemy has somehow found Briane, and they have pried from her the nature of our plight. They have found a way into my dreams. I see blood and steam and fire. The enemy taunts me with visions of things that simply could not be . . . no, they could never be true. Images of blood and fire and pain. And a girl child screaming.”

  —From the Journals of Elyana

  Lhaurel ducked Khari’s high vertical thrust and then rolled out of the way of her foll
ow-through. Lhaurel’s feet shuffled backward and to the left, following her opponent’s blade and bringing her own sword up under Khari’s guard. The older woman tried to dodge but not quickly enough. The leather-clad blade smacked hard against her side, most likely leaving an angry red welt even beneath the leather and the layers of cloth. But there was no time for Lhaurel to gloat.

  Khari grunted away the stinging pain and spun back in, forcing Lhaurel back into a defensive stance that backed her up to the edge of the training circle.

  Around the edges of the circle, more than a dozen spectators watched the duel with more than idle attention. Several younger women, mere children in all actuality, watched in open admiration as they danced around one another. Older women and men watched with less open emotion, though it was still apparent that most of them were impressed. Tieran stood to one side, grinning foolishly as Khari scored a hit on Lhaurel’s leg. On the other side of the circle, Kaiden winced and shouted words of encouragement to Lhaurel. Hearing him, she gritted her teeth and launched back onto the offensive with renewed vigor.

  In the week since she had come back from the Oasis, Lhaurel had spent almost every waking hour either training with Khari, flying with Fahkiri, or else, surprisingly, with Kaiden. The magnetelorium, despite his surliness and arrogance in many situations, was fast becoming her dearest and closest confidant. The night after he had shown her the mural and the underground lake, he had shown her the camp he’d formed atop the plateau. “Topside” he called it. She’d marveled at the stars and the sense of camaraderie and acceptance she’d felt among the people gathered there. Several of the people she had met there had come to watch her fight. She’d found her own tent and slept there that night and every night since. In all truth, she hadn’t ever spent a single night in her room within the warren itself.

  Khari darted in with a spinning reverse-gripped cut. Lhaurel’s training had progressed rapidly, far more rapidly than Khari had expected, but despite that Lhaurel barely managed to get her blade up in time to deflect the blow. Their blades locked, the hilt of Khari’s sword only inches away from Lhaurel’s blade.