Lhaurel looked down over Fahkiri’s wing.
Long, lithe bodies burst from the sands by the score, wind making the flesh on their long yellow fins vibrate and produce the irritating keening. And flying among them, swords, lances, and talons flashing, were the young aevians. They darted in between the masses of sinuous sailfin bodies, almost as agile as the genesauri themselves. Talons flashed, ripping gaping holes in genesauri flesh. Lances drove in behind the heads, piercing through the other side and getting stopped by the crosspiece. The riders left the lances embedded in the corpses, letting them fall back into the sand and getting in the way of the sailfins that continued to burst upward. Those who had already dropped their lances drew swords and lashed out, cutting sailfins out of the air, some falling back to the earth in more than one piece.
High above, Lhaurel reached out with her senses. She felt the blood coursing through the Roterralar veins. Felt the thrill of adrenaline and fear that drove them onward. The aevians felt of pride and anger, lashing out against these perversions of nature with all of their might and strength. There was an abiding hatred there, a sense of generations of enduring, pervasive animosity that manifested itself in their unabated desire to kill these creatures that plagued the sands.
Makin Qays lead a group down. Lances pierced sailfin flesh, pinning corpses to the ground to be devoured by their companions. Makin Qays rolled out of his saddle, landing in the sand and throwing up dust. Above him, Lhaurel watched with a panic-stricken grip on her lance as Makin Qays pulled his axe free and dashed across the sand, dodging the sinkholes left by earlier sailfins. The man was crazy. He was going to die.
He dashed toward the nearest group of sailfins, a roiling mass of spines and flesh tearing into one of their fallen companions. His axe spun in a dizzying arc. Blood spurted and sailfin bodies joined those pierced by the lances. Makin Qays seemed to disappear among the contorting forms, and then he appeared on the other side, axe dripping blood. His aevian dropped to the sand a moment later and Makin Qays leapt into the saddle, a cry of victory springing from his lips. The Roterralar rallied around him.
Stunning pain ripped through Lhaurel’s body, pain so intense that it made her muscles seize and she almost lost her grip on the lance. Only the safety tethers on her harness kept her in the saddle. Below her, a young woman on her aevian screamed in the jaws of a sailfin. Then the scream cut off. Her aevian sent a ragged screech into the air and dove into the pack of sailfins that swarmed over the fallen Roterralar like ants on a drop of honey. Talons flashed, blood flowed, and shrieks rent the air from both genesauri and aevian alike. And then all was silent.
Lhaurel gasped and tore herself away from the scene, pulling her senses back, bruised and bloodied. Before she had pulled back, she had sensed the genesauri below the sands. Sensed all of them. They extended outward for hundreds of spans. Thousands of them. Only one small group fought them here. One small group of many. Fear and despair clutched at her heart and stilled her pounding blood. Below her, more shrieks and screams made a jarring symphony of death and pain. Lhaurel refused to look down, but some part of her couldn’t resist the pull. She looked just as the larger aevians and their riders dove in a glorious wave of steel.
They shot through the air with speed unmatched by any other creature upon the sands. Lances held out before them, Makin Qays and Khari at their head, a wave of aevians crashed into the sailfins below with devastating accuracy. Blades pierced sailfin bodies and drove them into the ground. The lances remained buried in the sand as the aevians pulled out of the dives in a swirl of wind, sand, and feathers, swords hissing out of sheaths. War cries filled the air as wave after wave of the larger aevians plunged toward the earth and killed genesauri by the dozen. Makin Qays raised his bloody axe in the air, signaling another attack. Until that moment, Lhaurel had never understood why he garnered the respect he received from the Roterralar. Now she saw. He was a warrior at heart, not a leader of a peaceful people. This was a man who fought battles with his own hands, who rallied people to him when hope seemed lost.
Kaiden and Skree-lar appeared in the chaos and press of bodies. From so high up, Lhaurel couldn’t make out many details, but she could see that he didn’t have a sword, and his lance was no longer in his hand. For a moment she felt a hint of panic as a sailfin burst out of the sand and surged through the air straight toward him. Without even pausing to think about it, Lhaurel whistled sharply and urged Fahkiri into a dive. He screeched a war cry and plunged toward the earth, aimed at Kaiden. The wind bit at her eyes, but Lhaurel refused to close them. They remained locked on Kaiden and the approaching jaws of the sailfin. She willed Fahkiri to go faster, urged him downward. She readied the lance.
The sudden impact nearly tore her arm from its socket. The lance pierced genesauri flesh as easily as if it had been passing through butter, but then it struck something solid and was wrenched free from her grasp. She let it fall and readied herself against the sudden lurching, gut-wrenching change of direction that she knew was coming.
A single clarion note cut through it all, a solitary thought that gave her both peace and stability against the chaos and noise and death that filled her eyes and ears and nose around her. Kaiden was safe. She had saved him.
And then she and Fahkiri slammed into the ground. Her head struck something hard and the leather leads in her harness snapped. Momentum carried her off Fahkiri’s back. Sand filled her mouth and ground into her flesh, tearing the skin. As quickly as she could, Lhaurel scrambled to her feet, spitting. Dazed confusion clouded her mind for a moment, but then her gaze fell upon her brave aevian. Dark blood pumped from the hole through his chest.
No. Lhaurel dropped to her knees, ignoring the blood that flowed from a dozen wounds. Not Fahkiri. Please, no.
The sailfin’s corpse lay a few feet away, lance through its middle, purple spines along its back lay broken and covered in blood, the same deep, red blood that stained Fahkiri’s feathers and painted the sands. Lhaurel ignored the sounds of fighting around her, ignored the geysers of sand that heralded the arrival of even more genesauri.
Fahkiri cried weakly. His legs twitched spasmodically as the sailfin venom worked its way through his veins. Black eyes met Lhaurel’s. There was sadness there.
No, she was not about to give up on him so easily. Hands went over the wound, a meager bandage against the flow. Blood pumped up between her fingers, hot and strong. She could feel it. She could feel it.
She gasped and reached out to the other part of herself, the mystical part of her that rushed through her blood. The powers answered. The sense of the blood was much stronger than when she had felt the water. She could feel each pump of Fahkiri’s heart with a sudden clarity that wrapped around her and gave her strength. A thin film of red mist enveloped her. With every bit of strength she could muster, she willed the blood to stop flowing, willed it back into the aevian’s body. A reservoir of untapped power had suddenly opened up to her. Khari’s training provided her the path to channel it downward between her fingers.
The pool of red around her knees shrank. Blood flowed back up into Fahkiri’s body, forced back through the wound. Flesh knit together beneath her fingers, the blood within it obeying her command. She was master of the substance. She ruled it, and it bent to her will. The bloody mist around her dissipated as the wound sealed itself back up and Fahkiri rolled awkwardly to his feet, his screeches sounding as awed and confused as Lhaurel felt.
Lhaurel fell back onto her buttocks, realizing that she was shaking. Her hands trembled and shook, but they were clean of blood. Every last drop of it had been forced back through Fahkiri’s wound.
The aevian stretched his wings experimentally, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to. When he didn’t feel any pain, he stretched his wings to their fullest, reared back his head, and screamed into the sky. Behind him, a sailfin dropped to the ground and sent a shower of sand into the air. Chunks of the sand hit the ground near Lhaurel and dusted her with a fine gritty spray.
Sh
e blinked and raised a shaky hand to brush the sand from her face. As she did so, the ground beneath her trembled. Something massive burst out of the sand next to her, sending her tumbling down the side of a dune. Fahkiri screeched in anger, rage, and pain as a genesauri as big around as a dozen sailfins together shot up out of the sand and then arched back downward, swallowing Fahkiri whole and plunging back into the depths of the sand.
Something inside Lhaurel broke. She felt it shatter as she watched the marsaisi’s long, stocky body and spotted tail slip back beneath the sand.
She had just saved him. Fahkiri had been dying and she had healed him. She had just saved him.
Her mind felt numb, and yet at the same time, a torrent of swelling power grew within her, and her senses blasted outward like a raging storm. The wind kicked up and shot outward from her as her power grew, the sands radiating outward in a circle and following the path of the whipping wind. The sand rolled outward in waves like ripples upon the surface of water.
Lhaurel felt the genesauri in the sands beneath her feet. She felt the marsaisi turning in the sand, pushing upward against the force beneath the sands that let it pass into the air. She felt it, felt the blood pulsing within it. Felt it and reached out to it.
A red mist formed around her. Power blossomed in her chest, a bittersweet burgeoning of pure strength that made the earlier reservoir seem like a candle beneath the sun. The red cloud grew as she continued to pull on the blood. The marsaisi burst up from the sand, twisting and writhing in a great and terrible pain.
Lhaurel stared at it without pity, ignoring its flailing body and the waves of sand that flew in the air and were blasted away from her by the screaming wind. She reached out to the blood within it. Reached out to and drained it from the creature’s body. And as she did, the power within her grew, grew to a strength that she simply could not contain. The wind screamed around her, whipping up dust. A scream of pure agony and terror and ecstasy ripped from her throat. The red cloud of blood and sand grew and thickened until she was hidden within it, a pool of red that bubbled and hissed as if it were steaming.
The marsaisi seemed to shrink, the skin wrinkling and desiccating until all that remained was skin plastered against bone and a thick, plated skull. It flopped onto the sand and remained there, lifeless. A dozen sailfins burst from the sand, screeching toward her.
Kaiden landed in front of her, shards of metal flying from both his hands in a steely cloud. The metal shards whipped through the air, forming a protective ring around him and Lhaurel. Anything that got close was torn apart by the swirling metal, spraying the air with blood and bits of ragged flesh.
Lhaurel remained in the pool of blood, laughing in the sheer power of it. It raged within her like a tempest contained within a bottle. Her blood boiled and then turned icy in turns, racing through her veins in time to the throbbing, roiling masses of the blood that surrounded her in the air. A horn sounded, calling for a retreat. She sensed them leaving, sensed the hundreds of dead and dying genesauri here. And then she knew no more.
Chapter 19: Choosing Death
“The clans have given me another to assist me. I do not know her name. I fear to ask it. Will the enemy use her against me, too? Perhaps I will send her away before it happens. She shouldn’t be here.”
—From the Journals of Elyana
Gavin sat with the greatsword across his lap, reading one of the scrolls in the torchlight. The scrolls were in the ancient script of his people, the Orinai, the language that his grandmother had spent so long teaching him. As a child, he had thought it wonderful to have a secret language that only he and his grandmother knew. As he’d grown older, he had wondered at its use. But now, reading the scroll, he thanked his grandmother for her constant, persistent teachings.
Hope is a solitary flame standing alone against a gale. Will alone cannot keep it alight—it requires fuel. Our hope rests close to me now, a feeble force against the coming storm. But it is all we have. There are some among the elders who would not have me try.
But the people have spoken. They accepted my plan. Me. The one that they call crone. Witch. Outcast. Now their lives rest in my hands.
What is the test of honor? To uphold the flame, or to snuff it out?
The decision has fallen to me.
The enemy has come.
The rest of the page was faded, but Gavin shuddered as he carefully rolled up the scroll and placed it back within the glass. As he did, he pondered the question in the message. What was the test of honor? His grandmother’s dying wish was that he uphold the flame.
The writings here spoke of things that didn’t exist in the Sharani Desert. Green plants and flowers and animals that would never survive the harshness of the desert adorned every page as if they were commonplace. They reminded him of the stories his grandmother had told him, tales of Eldriean and the time before the enemy came.
A noise sounded down the hall, echoing strangely against the surface of the lake. Gavin stilled, listening as it grew steadily louder and louder until the distinctive sound of it became plain. Footsteps. Someone was coming. He stowed the scroll into a pocket and rose into a crouch, greatsword held at the ready. Stepping back into the shadows, he waited in silence.
Voices drifted down to where he hid, different than the first and much less refined.
“You’ll get the work done, or you’ll be the first ones we feed to the genesauri.” A commanding voice, the contempt not even masked in the slightest.
“I don’t answer to you, m’lord. I’ll do as I’m told by me and mine.” The second voice was firm, yet there was a careful edge to it, as if he were not sure how the man he spoke to would respond.
A sickly hiss echoed through the room, the sound of bare steel sliding against leather.
Gavin almost smiled as the first speaker spoke again, his voice now flat. “You can answer to me, or you can answer to my dagger here. The choice is yours.”
The rest of the exchange was lost as the voices faded away and the speakers moved on. Gavin relaxed slightly but decided that it was time to move. He wished that he could have taken more of the scrolls with him, but the one he had would have to suffice. He needed to see more of this place, travel through the halls and see what was going on. He had a growing suspicion that this place had once housed an ancient and forgotten people, the Orinai, or some of their first descendants. His grandmother would have loved to have seen this place. He felt compelled, now, to walk it for her. And a part of him burned with curiosity to discover exactly who it was that now called this place home.
He moved forward cautiously, crossing the narrow walkway in the middle of the vast lake as quickly as he dared without creating too much noise. His wounds slowed him. He paused at the entrance to the lake room, but upon hearing nothing he moved on. He only made it a few steps before he came face-to-face with an unfamiliar, aged face.
The man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, and then they narrowed, and he reached for his sword.
Gavin hesitated for only a moment less. With a sudden burst of strength, he shoved the man aside before he could draw his sword and dashed down the passage behind him. He turned down the first turn he came to.
Behind him, the man shouted for aide, screaming of intruders. Gavin recognized the voice through his panicked flight. It was the dagger-wielder he had overheard before.
Gavin burst into another room, large and spacious in its expanse. It was a dead end. In desperation, he searched for another way out, but there was nothing.
Behind him he heard his pursuer enter the room and slow to a measured walk. A cautious man, one who knew the folly of leaping into a situation blind.
Gavin cursed. He turned and came face-to-face with the older man again.
The man smiled, revealing gaps in his otherwise straight teeth.
“What’s a little whelp like you doing down here?” the man asked.
The only response Gavin offered was to raise his sword.
The old man’s eyes narrowed aga
in. He recognized the surety of Gavin’s movements.
Gavin almost smiled back at him but forced his expression to remain blank and calm. His grandmother’s teachings sounded in his mind, reminding him to remain in the moment where the ripples on a pond faded and stillness began. That was the moment of balance.
The older man shifted into an aggressive stance and waded in without any further preamble. Gavin spun his blade up to block the blow, his arms tingling from the power behind it, and then shoved the blade way. They exchanged a series of quick blows, each one trying to get a gauge on the other. The other man’s smile slowly returned, and Gavin felt a cool chill prickle at the base of his skull.
The man’s blade slipped through his guard and scored a minor cut along his leg. Gavin cursed at the searing pain that raced down his leg and felt the warm, stickiness drip down its length. He slapped the blade aside before it could dart upward and do any more serious damage, but he realized in that moment that he was seriously outclassed. He knew the forms, knew them as well as anyone could without actual combat, but the man before him had weathered a thousand battles against man and beast alike. This man was the embodiment of practical application.
No! He would not die here at this strange man’s hand. He had survived without a warren or a clan to protect him since he had been a small child.
Gavin steeled himself and attacked, the greatsword in his hand spinning in rapid, arcing cuts that worked his opponent’s blade up and kept the man rocking back on his heels. Gavin stepped forward and forced the man back a step. Wind sounded in Gavin’s ears, and he felt something surging through him and up his arms.
Gavin’s blade spun in, seeming to glow with a crackling white light, and scored a small hit on the old man’s arm. It was small and barely drew blood, but the old man spat a curse and screamed in pain, stumbling back.
Sharani series Box Set Page 24
