Sharani series Box Set

by Kevin L. Nielsen

  Gavin had survived the deaths of his parents and grandmother, had done the impossible, had conquered the Oasis walls. Energy crackled along his blade. He let it go.

  He blocked a series of rapid thrusts and then deflected the older man’s blade slightly to the right, letting go of the hilt with his left hand and bringing his elbow up to smash into the other man’s nose. It shattered.

  He had scaled the walls of the Oasis and discovered the place where legends claimed that the enemy had been driven back. He was not going to die here.

  With a shout, Gavin took two quick steps forward and brought his sword spinning down in a great overhead chop, the glow from the sword illuminating the crags in the old man’s face, now running with blood. The old man smiled suddenly and drew his dagger in a lightning-quick motion. He caught Gavin’s blade between his dagger and sword, which he’d crossed before his face. Before Gavin could reset, before he could even react, the old man pulled the dagger out from underneath the sword and slammed it into Gavin’s gut.

  * * *

  Makin Qays sat with his chin in his hands, elbows resting on top of the thick wooden table in the council room. Blood still stained his robes from the morning’s battle. Only Khari was in the room with him, cheeks stained with the tears of grief. There was no one else to fill the empty chairs. This was not a council meeting. This was a meeting where a man and his wife discussed their inevitable deaths.

  “Is there any sign of them?”

  Khari moved around behind him and placed her arms around his neck, leaning in close. She massaged his shoulders, though her own face was strained and the grey in her hair appeared more white than grey.

  “The last anyone saw of the two was when Kaiden picked her up and got her onto Skree-lar’s back. Everyone else was so busy with the regroup they didn’t see if they actually made it into the air.”

  “So they’re lost now, too, then?”

  “It may be that our time has ended, dear one,” she said, her voice quiet and resigned. “I do not know why the genesauri have come. But much blood has been spilt because of them. We must have killed over a hundred of the beasts, and yet they continued onward as if fleeing the flames of the seven hells. I—” She hesitated, and her hands stilled on his shoulders. “I don’t know what else to do but continue on with honor.”

  “You saw them on the way back here, my wife,” Makin said, taking her hand in his own. Both were spotted with blood. “There are thousands of them. They’ll fall on the Oasis like a sandtiger on a lamb. They’ll be slaughtered. I can’t order the Roterralar to die along with them.”

  Khari removed her arms from around his neck and rounded to sit on the table in front of him. She took his head in her hands and looked deeply into his eyes.

  “When you became Warlord of the Roterralar, you swore an oath to protect the seven clans. You vowed to uphold the flame. You swore that you would protect them until the last breath of life left your body and the last drop of blood dripped from your veins. We must uphold that oath, or all the deaths are meaningless. Sarial died in vain. Tieran died in vain. All of them.”

  “You’d have us die, then? Throw away our lives for people that don’t even know we exist?”

  “If we are to die,” she replied, her eyes hardening, “then we die together. We die with them, defending the Oasis from the genesauri that would wipe them out.”

  “We’d reveal ourselves.” It was not a question.

  “We have no choice. The Roterralar barely survived with the numbers that we had before the deaths. Now we number only a few score. We either rejoin our parent clans, or we will cease to exist altogether. Our choice has been made for us. The time for decisions is over. The time for action is upon us.”

  Makin Qays slowly lowered his hands onto the table, curling his long, worn fingers inward to form tight fists. He raised his head to look at Khari and his eyes blazed with a sudden fire.

  “So be it.”

  A few minutes later he stood in the greatroom, the remnants of the Roterralar arrayed below him. Makin Qays looked down at them, studying each face in turn. Wives and mothers clutched children or held their husband’s hands. Yet there was no fear in their faces, only resolve. He smiled.

  “The time has come for us to uphold our oaths,” he said, not even needing to raise his voice to be heard by everyone in the room. “I leave for the Oasis as soon as I am done here. The Rahuli will know we are here after today. The Roterralar will cease to exist, one way or another. Anyone who will come with me to uphold the flame is welcome, but know that we go to die.”

  He turned and headed for the eyrie. Everyone old enough to hold a lance came with him.

  * * *

  Beryl looked up from his work when Khari entered. Sweat beaded on his brow and dripped down with a sharp hiss onto the hot metal he was working. He could have finished the task using his other abilities a dozen times over in the amount of time it had taken him just to get to this initial heating, but his mind needed the work. He had to keep the voices at bay.

  “We’re emptying the warren, Beryl,” Khari said, approaching him despite the heat. “Everyone that can hold a lance or ride an aevian is needed.”

  Beryl grunted, turning back to his work. He knew what she wanted, but she was going to have to ask. It wouldn’t change his answer. He couldn’t go back out there. He didn’t want to see what had become of his home. He didn’t want to see what Elyana had done so many years ago.

  “Beryl, we need you.” Khari stepped closer, near enough for the sparks from the metal when his hammer struck it to come dangerously close to hitting her. “You’re our strongest magnetelorium. You’ve been around for as long as any of us can remember.”

  Beryl shook his head. The voices in his head clamored for a chance to speak. Yes, he could fight again. He had the strength, had the power. It swelled within him, strengthening the voices—heightening the madness.

  “No!”

  “But you must!”

  Beryl set down his hammer. The forge furnace flared near them, washing them in a wave of heat. Beryl clenched his teeth, dampening his temper and struggling to keep the voices as bay.

  “One crippled old man won’t make any difference,” he said softly.

  Khari stepped up to him and put a hand on his arm, gripping it firmly.

  “I’ve never understood you, Beryl. Neither did my father. Why will you not leave the warren? Your abilities are strong enough to kill even a marsaisi, I’m sure. You were the one who showed Kaiden how to manipulate metal. You’re the most powerful mystic alive.”

  Beryl growled, a low, deep sound of earth trembling beneath their feet. A marsaisi? He could tear one of those apart with his bare hands. He didn’t even need his powers for that. Only the karundin would give him pause. But that wasn’t because of what the Rahuli slaves thought, one of the voices whispered. What would stop Beryl, the smith, would be the memory of what the creature had once been. The memory of its creation. Khari took a step back as Beryl leveled his gaze on her.

  “I will not go. This is your fight. I fought mine long ago and lost. I’m still fighting it every day. Go, fight your fight. The lances will be ready.”

  In the back of Beryl’s mind, a small voice begged him to go. It yearned to fight. It screamed at him.

  “I will not go!”

  Khari backed away, clearly shaken. Beryl growled again and picked up his hammer. The metal had cooled enough that shaping it with the hammer would be useless. He struck it anyway, the sound masking the door shutting behind Khari’s retreating form.

  He laughed suddenly, a strange, short bark of a laugh that held neither humor nor any hint of levity. 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.

  Inside his mind, one of the voices screamed.

  Chapter 20: Allegiance

  “We have had
success again! These are already much larger than the first, much more robust and of far greater stature. I released a number of the first into the sands despite the clans’ objections—the enemy will soon encounter this new threat. Let them taste fear. Let my creations haunt them as they haunt me. Let them take revenge for Briane. The enemy is vast—but then, so are my creations.”

  —From the Journals of Elyana

  Lhaurel knew she was alive because she felt the pain. Not just the physical pain from the dozens of minor wounds that covered her body from head to foot, but also the pain of failure and loss.

  Darkness surrounded her on all sides, wrapped her in its loving embrace and swaddled her in the soothing arms of confused forgetfulness. The last thing she remembered was Fahkiri’s death. Everything else was shrouded in a red, misty haze, like a fog painted with blood.

  The blackness and the pain mingled into a swirling vortex of black and red, twisted in her vision, and did nothing to lessen the confusion or deaden the pain. If anything, both intensified.

  Lhaurel’s ears started working in slow bursts of sound and silence, each sounding more loudly than the last. The silence was loud. The following sound was quiet. Yet mingled in with the quiet whispers of ghost voices and calumnious shouts was a soft, rustling laughter. A laugh that grew from the silence of not-so-distant memories and resolved into the painful intensity of the present.

  Her eyes opened from blackness into nightmare. A gap-toothed smile filled her vision, and hot breath that smelled of rot filled her nose.

  “Taren.”

  “Hello, my dear,” he said, stepping back slightly so that she could see more of him in the dim light. “It’s been a while.”

  Lhaurel blinked and closed her eyes, willing this to be a dream, a nightmare. How had Taren gotten here? Where was she? There was blood on his face that looked like it had been hastily cleaned.

  “I would think by now you’re wondering where you are,” Taren said slowly, stepping back again so that most of him was lost in shadows. Whatever dim light it was that filled the chamber barely had the strength to illuminate the small section of it where Lhaurel lay and didn’t reach much further. “You’ll just have to keep on wondering, my dear wife.”

  The words brought a rise out of Lhaurel. From somewhere deep within her, a small burst of strength and spirit flared.

  “I am not your wife,” she spat.

  From the shadows came the sound of steel clearing leather, a sound that caused Lhaurel’s flesh to crawl and a small shiver to run down her spine. She swallowed a momentary flutter of panic and steeled her expression. If she was to die here, she would not do so clouded in fear, huddled and weak. She would not back down before Taren.

  Light flashed off steel as a thin blade spun through the distance separating them and buried itself in the sand a few inches from Lhaurel’s face.

  She spat sand. Her eyes focused on the quivering blade before her. Did he miss? Recognition answered the question for her. It was the sealing dagger.

  “Your blood in my veins says differently.”

  In response, Lhaurel spat at him, though the spittle fell far short. It was futile, a waste of pure water, but it made Lhaurel feel less helpless.

  Taren laughed, cold and hard, and sunk down to his knees. “Ah, Lhaurel. You are such a fool. You could have been part of something great. You really could have. Even before Jenthro approached me to petition for our union, I had my eyes on you. Stubborn. Strong. Willful. The perfect match for a future king. Once you had been properly broken, of course. Even then the plan was in place. Marvi helped me with that, though she didn’t know what she was doing. The correct pieces were moved to prepare for this final day. I wanted your power for my own. But your blood wasn’t good enough.”

  Lhaurel was trying her best to ignore him completely. There was blood on the dagger, fresh blood that shone red in the flickering light. Despite her best efforts, Taren’s voice rang through her closed ears.

  “My blood?”

  Taren grimaced, pointedly scratching his arm where the sealing dagger had left its mark five different times. “The magic you mystics have has something to do with your blood. We thought mixing blood during a sealing would work, but yours was too weak. He said that’s why they wait to take women until they’re older, for the mixing of blood.”

  He stepped forward and retrieved the dagger, his expression hard.

  “If the choice had been mine, this would be your end, too, along with the mystics and Roterralar, but alas, the choice is not mine.” His voice remained flat and emotionless.

  It took Lhaurel a moment to realize that something was off about what he had said. Her brain wasn’t working like it should. It was as if her thoughts were trying to run through loose sand.

  “The mystics?” she asked. What did Taren know of the mystics?

  Again Taren answered with a laugh, though this one seemed to carry a genuine, if minuscule, amount of humor to it. “Come, now, Lhaurel. Don’t play dumb. We both know that you’re anything but dumb. Yes, the mystics and the Roterralar, supposed protectors of the seven clans. Rulers of the sands and keepers of the magic that keeps us safe. Those that do not join us today will die here upon the sands.”

  Lhaurel’s head pounded with each beat of her heart, which only heightened her confusion. Taren was suggesting that he would kill the Roterralar? He may control the seven clans now—or five, now that two were missing—but even with all of the several thousand people, Khari could wipe out most of them herself. Kaiden could kill them all before they ever even came close enough to lob a spear at him.

  She tried to lick her lips, but her mouth was dry and all she managed was to crack the scabs and dried blood that lined them. She tried to rally the strength to sit up, but she couldn’t find the will. Her muscles refused to respond. Even her thoughts seemed sluggish.

  Taren leaned forward, his eyes suddenly gleaming and his voice filled with eagerness. “And when the Roterralar have fallen or been pulled back into the fold,” he said, “then I will be king, standing at the head of the clans when we face the enemy at the gate. And at my side will be one who can stop them.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Not mad,” a familiar voice said from the shadows. “Just fervent.”

  Kaiden stepped out of the darkness. Lhaurel looked up at him, eyes wide and mind clouded with confusion and a sudden, overwhelming sense of relief. He was here to save her. Blinking, she waited for him to draw a sword, or manipulate metal and attack Taren, but he simply stood there, watching her. Watching how she would react to seeing him there.

  Taren glanced over at him and nodded once. Curt and low enough that the deference was plain.

  Realization dawned with the cold fingers of dread clutching at her heart.

  “Leave us, Taren,” Kaiden said.

  Taren’s face contorted for a moment, eyes narrowing, but he stood without a word and walked into the shadows.

  A creak of iron hinges sounded in the shadows and then the soft thunk of a wooden door slipping into the embrace of its frame. Then silence.

  “I am sorry about Fahkiri,” Kaiden said at last.

  Lhaurel nearly laughed at the sheer, mad impossibility of it. “That’s what you have to say? You’re sorry about Fahkiri? You’re in this with Taren. You’re behind the genesauri too, aren’t you? It’s you. It’s always been you.”

  Kaiden nodded.

  “How? I heard them in the council meeting. They said no one was powerful enough to control the genesauri.”

  Kaiden smirked. “They think too narrowly. They always have, Lhaurel. I don’t have to control them when I can simply change the direction of their flight.”

  “What?” Lhaurel strained against her bonds, but they wouldn’t budge. Why couldn’t she feel her powers?

  “Sarial explained it to you. The genesauri fly using a form of magnetism. The Oasis walls are filled with magnetic metals that have pushed against the genesauri for as long as anyone can remember. Since the O
asis was created, actually. I simply changed it so the genesauri were drawn toward it instead.”

  “Why, Kaiden? Why? Do you know how many people you’ve killed?”

  In reply Kaiden raised his arms to show his tattoos, flicking the sleeves so that each of them was exposed. “I know how many I haven’t been able to save,” he said, “and I know how many the Roterralar let die in their own ignorance and fear.”

  “And you think if they hadn’t hidden, they could have saved more? You’re as mad as Taren.”

  Kaiden shook his head and crouched down beside her, pulling out a waterskin and holding it up for her to drink. She almost refused, but the sensation of water so close was simply too much to ignore. She swallowed gratefully and felt strength surge through her.

  “Is it mad to want to protect everyone? Is it mad for a shepherd to kill a diseased goat before it can infect the others? And if he can use that diseased carcass to also kill the predators that hunt the other goats, how much better is it? Would that shepherd be considered mad or visionary?”

  “We are not goats.”

  “Some are sheep and some are shepherds,” Kaiden said. “And some who are shepherds are really sheep. And some sheep are really shepherds who have simply forgotten who they are.”

  For a moment, Kaiden’s words resonated in the depths of her mind and stirred her soul, tugging at emotions and anger that had grown dormant in the time she had spent with the Roterralar. And then an image danced through her mind. A rashelta dying, purple blood dripping into the sand. Broken crockery across the floor. An image in red.

  “You can burn in the fires of the seven hells, Kaiden.” Lhaurel closed her eyes. She steeled herself for the blow she knew would come. She waited. The crunch of sand beneath booted feet reached her ears as Kaiden slowly walked away. She opened her eyes as he passed out of the light and was lost in shadows.

  He shot a parting retort over his shoulder toward her over the creak of hinges protesting their use.

  “Ask yourself which you want to be, Lhaurel. A sheep or a shepherd. Our understanding of this world is about to change. The enemy is coming.”