The wind whipped up around her, tossing her robes and hair around her thin frame. Taren steadied himself against the gust, though Kaiden ignored it, turning back to the battle below.
Lhaurel felt her heartbeat, sensed the flow of her blood, in and out. Down below people screamed. They died. Spilled blood into the sands. Her heart beat.
Taren grinned and stepped up next to Kaiden at the edge of the plateau. Aevians died. A group of women ceased to exist as a marsaisi fell among them, jaws flashing. Lhaurel felt it. By the seven hells she felt them all! The genesauri, the clans, the people, the aevians, Kaiden, Taren—she could feel all of them. Felt the lifeblood pumping through their veins, felt it being stolen away as they died. She knew it, experienced it with them. She felt their pain. The wind howled.
Her muscles seized up, her back arched, and from her depth a primal, primitive scream ripped from her trembling lips.
* * *
Saralhn scrambled to her feet amidst the chaos, pains forgotten beneath layers of terror and pure horror at the death and slaughter around her. The spear she had tripped over skittered across the sand and then came to a rest. Maryn had disappeared, and she absently wondered what had become of her. A woman covered in blood and missing a hand ran in front of her, the dust making her appear wraithlike.
A sailfin burst out of the sand. Teeth gleamed.
Terror melted in the face of instinct. Saralhn dove aside and tucked into a roll, coming up with her hands wrapped around the haft of the spear. The sailfin twisted in midair and came at her with a sound that was halfway between a growl and a hiss. Saralhn clutched the spear in sweaty palms and licked her lips. Blood pounded in her ears. Time seemed to slow.
Glistening teeth bristled in front of her. The smell that issued from the creature’s gaping maw was that of death, decay, and rot. Saralhn felt sick. Then the beast was upon her. It slammed into her and took her to the ground. The spear was wrenched from her fingers, and she screamed as a billowing cloud of dust rose into the air around her. Heavy, coiled muscles writhed and twitched above her.
Is this what death feels like? She had thought there would be more pain involved. Not this surreal sense of detachment. People described death as a cold embrace, but this was far from that. This was hot and dusty and . . .
Still.
It took her a moment to realize the writhing coils above her had stopped moving. The pressure on her chest was simply that of massive weight threatening to flatten her, not the crushing embrace of sailfin jaws. Flailing, she kicked herself free and scrambled to her feet.
A foot of broken wood stuck out of back of the sailfin’s body, piercing the fin and slick with its blood. Its eyes were clouded over in death. Saralhn felt wetness on her cheeks and realized that she was crying, tears of helplessness and fear and a euphoric sense of relief. She didn’t remember killing the beast, but it was dead all the same. It must have rammed itself onto her spear. She had aided its suicide.
Saralhn laughed at the thought, a crazed broken laugh that held little humor in it. But it cut off as quickly as it had begun, and the reality returned to her in the form of another sailfin bursting up and spraying her with earth. A shriek rent the air. For a moment Saralhn thought it was the sound of another sailfin coming from behind her, but then a large bird appeared out of the sky, rider on its back and long spear held out in front of it. The spear pinned the sailfin to the ground as the bird’s rider released the spear, and the bird pulled out of the stunning, majestic dive. The rider saluted her with a raised fist as the bird winged back into the sky.
Saralhn blinked. She knew that face. It was the Roterralar woman, Khari. Lhaurel’s friend.
Saralhn rushed forward and wrenched Khari’s spear free from the dead genesauri, mind racing. Lhaurel was somewhere among them. She hefted the spear. It was light despite its cumbersome length. She had an idea.
* * *
Kaiden didn’t even look over his shoulder at the sound of Lhaurel’s scream. His gaze was focused downward on the battle below. Aevians fought and battled genesauri. People screamed and died. Yet the Roterralar fought hard to form a wall of death between the broiling mass of sailfins and the people of the clans. Few escaped the line, but those that did wreaked havoc amongst the unprepared people.
“You’re just going to let them die?” Lhaurel said, crawling up to the edge of the plateau and watching in revulsion as people died, as a part of her died with them.
Kaiden didn’t turn his head. “Those who deserve to live are not here. Those worth saving have been saved. If any survive this fight, then they will have earned their place among the sands. I will give them a world free of genesauri, but they must earn it. They must have the requisite strength to survive the descent of the enemy.”
“But you told me we need more numbers,” she said, mustering everything she could to try and make her voice sound persuasive. “How can you unite them if they are all dead? How can you hope to stave off the genesauri without enough warriors?”
At this, Kaiden did look over, a wry grin on his face. “You know so little. I called the genesauri here. I can drive them away. They are nothing but the crucible within which the dross is consumed. I unite those worthy of being united. After today, there will be no Roterralar and no clans. There will simply be the tribe.”
Kaiden turned away from her and glanced at Taren, who stood a few feet away, watching the battle below. “Take Lhaurel below,” Kaiden ordered, whistling shrilly to summon Skree-lar. “Lock her up for now. I have work that needs doing.”
Taren scowled but saluted.
Lhaurel cried.
Chapter 22: A Breath of Stale Air
“Am I the cause of those screams?”
—From the Journals of Elyana
Khari spun in a shimmering dance of death, sword a metallic blur that dripped scarlet. Somewhere she had lost her Gwyanth. It had been a quick death, thankfully, but now she was forced to continue fighting on foot. That was fine by her. She fought better with her sword than with her lance anyway. In the back of her mind she knew that without her aevian she would not have any chance of leaving this place alive. That, too, was fine by her.
A sailfin burst upward from the sand on the far side of the broken Oasis walls, a powerful leap to take it over the broken red sandstone and into the Oasis itself. Khari pulled her blade free from the creature she had just killed and, following the momentum of her feet, clove the genesauri perfectly in two. The two pieces dropped from the air and plummeted onto the rocks, renewing the stain.
It was no wonder that the sands were red. Red from countless centuries of death and destruction. Years of painting with the blood of its defenders. The blood of its people.
The berm on the horizon continued to draw nearer, though slowly. She knew what it was, though fear had long since died within her. Khari would be here on the rocks to greet it. She was a master of the blade. She was death.
The karundin was said to be the mother of the others. Perhaps that was it. Khari had never been blessed with children. Those she helped lead among the Roterralar had been the closest she’d ever come to experiencing what it was like to be a mother. She would be here to wreak vengeance for her surrogate children.
She paused for a brief moment to take a drink from a waterskin, one of many at her waist. The liquid rushed through her like a raging fire, urging her to act, renewing her strength and her power. Her lips formed a thin line. Her eyes narrowed. A marsaisi breached the top of the sand, bony headplate a dull, metallic grey.
Thick bone covered most of its head and a small section of its back. But right between the neck and the headplate was a tiny crack. Khari leapt from atop the rocks, blade extended downward in front of her, point aimed at the narrow crack. Blood dripped from a dozen wounds, but the sword found its mark. Her sword was wrenched from her grasp, but she found a discarded spear that she collected, letting it dance in her hands.
The heat of the contest washed over her, burning away pain and fatigue, but also smeltin
g time. It passed in large dollops, a double handful at a time, or else seemed to slow to the speed of a tortoise arising in the predawn haze.
A dozen sailfins surged upward over the rocks in an effort to cross over into the Oasis. But at the very crest of the broken mound Khari danced, spear spinning up, over, and around her. It was neither her favored weapon, nor the one with which she was most skilled, but at that moment it sung a perfect harmony to her dance of death. Only three of the dozen sailfins made it back down into the sand on the other side.
The red-grey stones ran slick with blood, but the gritty sandstone gave Khari the purchase she needed. On the other side of the hill, the berm of moving sand continued to push forward, driving packs of sailfins and marsaisi toward the Oasis. Khari didn’t mind it. She was one with the spear. She was one with the pulse of her own beating heart. She was death.
The berm exploded outward as a horrendous, toothy head burst out of the sands.
Death trembled.
* * *
The sound of sobs echoing in a small, dark chamber had an eerie cast about it. At times, Lhaurel thought the returning echo of her own cries sounded like the murmuring gurgle of a distant spring, sending water up to the surface from a hidden reservoir far below. Other times is sounded like a dam bursting, a cacophonous din of sound caused by too much water trying to escape from too small an opening. And sometimes it simply sounded like the pitiful sounds of a broken will.
It was the last that finally broke through her mental barriers. The pain of experiencing so many deaths all at once had left her without feeling, left her clinging to her own life with as much strength as she could muster. That left little room for much else but tears. A simple manifestation of a wide range of emotions or none. And yet, hearing her own sobs coming back to her, she realized the time for tears was gone. The clans were dying. Kaiden was wiping them out one by one. The genesauri were his weapons.
Someone had to do something. In here she could no longer feel them. The oppression of the Oasis walls kept out the sensation of death and destruction.
She felt weak and tired. The manacles on her hands clinked, and she scrubbed under her nose and wiped away the moisture that had pooled there. As she did so, her eyes fell upon her fellow prisoner. She could only make out his outline in the darkness, but she could sense the gaping wound in his stomach. Blood dripped into the sands beneath him.
She grit her teeth and struggled to her knees. It took effort, but she managed to drag herself over to him. She was helpless to save the people dying outside, but this one she would save. This one would not die if she could protect him.
Pulling him onto his back, Lhaurel felt his hot breath on her face. The smell of blood filled her nose. He was close to dying, hovering on the verge of the darkness. Placing her hands over the wound in his stomach, she reached out to her powers. It answered her call easily. Red mist formed around her, a cloak of blood. This man’s blood and hers mingled in the air as fuel for her power. Energy surged through her. Grasping at it, Lhaurel willed the flesh back together. She pushed the blood back through the open wound and back through his veins. She could feel his heart begin to beat faster and faster as the torn flesh knit itself together between her fingers.
The man gasped, and his eyes snapped open, the whites showing clearly even in the darkness. An icy chill swept through Lhaurel’s body, and without even thinking about it, she pulled at the red mist in the air around her. The mist dissipated, returning to her body. The chill vanished, replaced by a wondrous feeling of euphoria. A quick tug on the chain that held the manacles together sent the links scattering across the sand. Where had she gotten such strength?
The man sat up, feeling at his stomach with hesitant hands.
“Who are you? I should be dead.”
“I healed you.” Lhaurel stood and felt along the edges of the room until she found the door. Testing it, she found it locked.
“I am called Gavin,” he continued. “One of the outcasts. My water is yours. May you ever find water and shade.”
Lhaurel blinked. So formal.
“Lhaurel,” she said.
“Lhaurel. Okay, Lhaurel. Would you mind telling me what is going on? The last thing I remember was fighting an old man.”
“Taren?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Is that his name?” The man, Gavin, sounded oddly light-hearted for having almost died.
Lhaurel placed an ear up against the door but heard nothing coming from the other side. Her muscles still trembled with strength and she clung to the vestiges of power that still surged through her. She could sense Gavin, behind her, and felt strength and power radiate from him, as well. He was a relampago; she could feel the power within him. Did he know? The thought was a comforting one for some reason, like the warmth of the sun on a cool spring morning.
“I overheard his plans down below. He said he was going to be king. But how could he . . .” He trailed off, standing. “I take it he succeeded, then.”
Lhaurel paused and turned to look at him.
A noise sounded in the passageway behind the door, the sound of metal striking against rock.
“Get back,” Lhaurel hissed.
Gavin lay back down in the sand and curled up how he had been before.
Lhaurel secreted herself behind the door, strength still surging in her arms. If people came in, she would deal with them. She had to get out and find Kaiden. Put an end to this.
A key scraped in the lock. The door swung inward, and light flooded into the room. The smell of pitch and the way it flickered revealed it was a torch. As soon as the door opened, Lhaurel’s senses shot out into the passageway. The person in the door was Sarial.
With a muffled shout, Lhaurel slammed her shoulder into the door. The heavy wooden door slammed into the woman and knocked her to the ground. Lhaurel spun around the door, but before she could get to Sarial, Gavin was there, slamming a double-fisted blow to the side of Sarial’s head as she struggled to rise. She slumped to the ground, motionless.
“Come on, then,” Gavin said, grabbing the sputtering torch. “Let’s get out of here.”
Lhaurel hesitated, looking down at Sarial’s form, the only movement the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. It would be so easy to simply pull the dagger hanging from her waist and end it there. Spill her blood onto the sands. It would be easy. She’d done it to her own brother. She didn’t deserve to live.
Lhaurel reached for the dagger and pulled it free.
“Good idea,” Gavin said, reaching down and pulling free the sword belted at Sarial’s waist. “We’ll need these.” He switched the torch to his left hand so that he could hold the sword in his right.
Still Lhaurel hesitated.
Gavin gave her a curious look. She recognized him then. He was the outcast who had told the story of Eldriean so long ago.
She sucked in a breath and shook her head. Enough blood had been spilled.
“Help me move her in here,” she said, stowing the dagger in her belt. “We’ll take the key and lock the door. That should buy us more time if anyone comes looking for us.”
“Good idea.”
They were done quickly.
Lhaurel turned the key in the lock and then stowed it in a pocket. “Let’s go.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” a cold voice said.
Taren and a woman Lhaurel did not know blocked their way. Taren held Gavin’s greatsword in one hand.
Gavin stepped between them, putting himself in front of Lhaurel.
Taren laughed. “Isn’t that sweet. He’s going to protect you, Lhaurel. Poor fool. This time, I’ll make sure he’s dead when I leave him behind.”
A red mist formed around the woman, and crackling energy formed on her fingertips.
Lhaurel reacted without thinking, letting instinct reach out to her. Just as the woman raised her fingers to attack, Lhaurel pulled the bloody mist around the woman to her, dispersing it into the sand. The energy on the woman’s fingers
died.
“What—how?” the woman stammered, a look of stunned disbelief on her face.
Taren tried a much more pragmatic approach. With a lazy salute, he charged forward, sword raised before him. Gavin was ready for him. Their swords met once again, and Gavin pushed forward.
Lhaurel ignored them for a moment, drew her dagger, and advanced on the woman. Red mist formed around the woman again and energy crackled. Lhaurel dismissed it again. The power was in the blood—that was what formed into clouds of mist around the mystics, carrying the individual powers with it. She realized consciously now what she had known almost from the moment she’d first acknowledged her powers. Without the blood, there was no magic. And Lhaurel was master of blood. She wasn’t a wetta at all. She was a blood mage.
“Enough,” Lhaurel said, skirting around where Gavin and Taren fought. “Your magic is useless. I will continue to dispel it.”
The woman grit her teeth in frustration and drew her sword with a shriek. “Fine, I’ll just kill you the old-fashioned way. You’re nothing but a slattern, a mangy whore. I don’t know why Kaiden prefers you to Sarial. But with you dead, no one will stand in her way.” She dropped into a middle guard and waited.
“She can have him,” Lhaurel said.
The woman took a step forward and then suddenly stiffened. Her mouth opened wide, as if she were about to scream, but no words came out, only a thin, bloody bubble of spit. For a moment, Lhaurel was confused, but then she saw the bloody tip of a blade sticking out of the woman’s chest between her breasts and sensed the presence of someone else standing behind her. The woman slumped forward to her knees, fingers clenching and unclenching and scrabbling at the sand. Behind her, an old man stood clutching a bloody short sword in steady hands. His face was twisted in disgust.
“Cobb?” Lhaurel’s voice was thick with incredulity.
The older man looked up at her, eyes going wide for a moment. Then they slipped past her to the battle that was taking place behind her. His expression hardened. With a shout, Cobb hurled the short sword in his hand with all his strength. For a moment, Lhaurel thought that the man meant to kill her, but the sword tumbled passed her, wide by a considerable margin. He’d been aiming for Taren.
Sharani series Box Set Page 27
