Khari smiled and Lhaurel was struck by the mischievous gleam which shone through that look.
“Stick around and see,” Khari said.
* * *
Three men, all potential magneteloriums, struggled under the weight of the massive stone they were trying to move. Lhaurel stood to one side of the greatroom, leaning against her cane. Khari had brought them here to clean up from the earthquake. Other groups worked on other stones in the room, where Khari had transferred them, leaving Lhaurel to watch over these particular three men.
Khari and Cobb each watched over the other groups, though Lhaurel wasn’t sure what Cobb had to do with anything here. Nevertheless, he had been the most effective so far. With his acerbic tongue, gruff demeanor, and low rumbling voice, Cobb was a nightmare taken flesh. He yelled, cursed, and even threatened.
So far only one of his group hadn’t tried to spit at him or gotten into a shouting match. The rest of the greatroom had emptied except for the potential mystics, so the arguments were heard only by those who could benefit from it.
The one who hadn’t tried anything was actually the only one who had broken so far.
Lhaurel had watched it happen. The man’s group had been lifting a particularly large stone and were walking it over to the carts that would take it to eyrie to be dumped to the sands below, when he’d been pushed up against the wall by his overzealous companions. Instead of shouting with anger or pain, the man had simply grown red faced and ground his teeth together. Cobb, noticing this, began yelling, not at the man’s companions, but at the man himself.
It had been painful to watch and Lhaurel had been about to step in, when she’d seen the man’s muscles bulge along his jaw and noticed a cloud of red-grey mist form around him. A chunk of metal exploded from one wall and shot toward the back of Cobb’s head. Without even thinking, Lhaurel had reached out then and dismissed the man’s hold on his powers. The lump of metal continued forward for a few feet before dropping to the ground and rolling across the sand before stopping against Cobb’s feet. Khari had shown that man to another room shortly thereafter.
Lhaurel turned back to the three men she’d been supervising. One of them slipped and the stone came crashing back to the ground amid the accompanying curses of the other two men. They quickly got into a heated argument. Lhaurel hated having to put them through this, but at the same time, she half thought they got off easy. This was a simple, almost harmless endeavor compared to what she’d been forced to endure. Still . . .
“Enough of that,” she snapped, voice seeming to crack like a whip with the remaining vestiges of hoarseness from her encounter at the Oasis. “Pick up that stone and get it into the cart!” She tried to keep her voice firm, but this was new to her. She didn’t like the scrutiny and her attention constantly wandered, thoughts trickling back over her dream and what Beryl had made them read.
The man who had dropped the stone glowered at her. “Why don’t you come over here and try this?” he shot back.
Lhaurel chuckled. “How about you try what I had to do and then tell me how hard you have it.”
“Sands take you,” the man snapped. “I don’t have to take this from you, girl.”
Though the man was at least a decade Lhaurel’s senior, she resented being called ‘girl.’ Cobb was one thing, he’d called her ‘girl’ her whole life, but this man, this stranger? “You’re right, you don’t. You volunteered for this, if I understand correctly. If you don’t want to pay the price for the magic, we don’t want you. But the next time you’re about to die, the next time you look death in the eye and realize you can’t escape its clutches, don’t expect anyone here to save you.”
By this time, everyone in the room was watching their exchange. All work had stopped and the silence became deafening. The man stared at Lhaurel, hands clenching and unclenching at his side. The two other men who had been working on the stone with him had stepped back, probably seizing the moment as an opportunity to rest.
“You’re right,” the man hissed. “I shouldn’t have stayed. You Roterralar women don’t know how to act properly. You’re not meant for leadership.”
Lhaurel noticed Khari move forward, her expression dark, but Lhaurel held up a hand to stop her. This was her fight. She felt sick prodding the man, but at the same time part of her thought he deserved it.
“And you think you are?” she said. “You can’t even lift a stone or channel your own rage to be of any use. You think that is strength? You don’t even understand the word. Try asking a woman who’s born a child what true pain is. That’s strength.”
The man spat at her.
Lhaurel lashed out at the man on instinct, not with her fist, as she half-expected herself to do, but with her powers. She reached out, using her own blood as fuel to reach out to the man. Acting purely on instinct, she felt through his blood and seized on that part of it which controlled his magnetelorium powers. The man gasped, in pain, in shock, in pure terror, eyes wide. Lhaurel yanked and suddenly the man was on his knees.
Lhaurel pushed her powers away, stunned at what she had just done. What had she just done? She honestly didn’t know.
The man got to his feet, cheeks wet from tears, whole body trembling. No one around them moved. The man stared at Lhaurel and there was confusion, pain, and fear there. He raised a hand and Lhaurel saw a nimbus of red-grey mist form around him. A little metal talisman suspended on a leather thong around the man’s neck lifted and seemed to float in the air before him. He stared down at it and his expression slid to include awe in the mix of emotions present there.
“What did you do?” Khari asked. Her voice was tinged with the same awe reflected on the man’s face.
Lhaurel turned to her, equally awed and feeling more than a little weak. She leaned heavily against her cane.
“I broke him,” she said.
“Can you do it again?” Khari whispered, looking around at the awed, startled, and shocked faces.
“I think so,” Lhaurel said. “But not all at once. That alone took more strength than I’d care to admit. I need to rest. I . . . Can you get someone to help me down to the room where we left Beryl’s scrolls?”
Khari nodded. “Yes. Rest for now, but hurry. See if you can’t find something in those scrolls that will help us with this lot. Or at least explain what in the seven hells you can do.”
Lhaurel wasn’t so tired that she didn’t hear the note of confusion and fear in Khari’s voice. The woman knew more about Lhaurel than anyone else alive, understood her abilities’ true source, but that didn’t mean she didn’t fear the unknown.
Lhaurel nodded. “I’ll see what I can find. This—” She glanced at the other people there, felt their eyes on her and saw them look away when she tried to meet them. “Well, I’ll see what I can do. I owe you, Khari, but I don’t understand this any better than you do.”
Khari sighed and gestured for one of the other women to assist Lhaurel. “I know, but figure it out soon, if you can. We need this to work out.”
* * *
Lhaurel leaned back against the wall, head once again throbbing as she dug through the scrolls scattered across the stone table in search of something she had read earlier. Her mind refused to cooperate with the work. She wasn’t sure if part of it was the consequence of what she’d done earlier or the fact that the reading itself was dull work, even if the content of the scrolls was vastly interesting.
The one thing she was sure about was her own disappointment in herself. Though she’d never consciously decided, she’d intended to never use her powers against another human being again. She would use it for them as much as she could, but not against them, not as a weapon.
Yet what had she just done? She’d instinctively lashed out at the belligerent man and changed him. What she’d done was an invasive, horrifying act.
She’d come to recognize something about her powers, something discussed in these scrolls. There was a deep, hidden need within her—a desire to use her magic, to reach out and
control everything around her—that she didn’t know how to contain. She hadn’t recognized it until just now, though now that she thought about it, it had been there since the moment she’d realized her true potential.
She found the scroll she was looking for and tugged it closer to herself. She scanned through it until she found what she was looking for. Unlike the other scrolls, which seemed more instructional and informative, this one appeared as if it were once a self-recorded history. Something about it tugged at her memory, but it floated there just beyond her grasp. She found the passage she was looking for.
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?
Dreams. Lhaurel shook her head, feeling the headache swell. Had Kaiden been plagued by dreams that had driven him to madness? It was possible. Lhaurel half felt she might be headed that direction herself, though her most recent dream was far more pleasant than the nightmares that had plagued her before.
The door opened with a creak of rusty hinges. It was an old door, the wood poorly fashioned and starting to fall apart in places, so it groaned almost as much as the hinges did as Beryl pushed it open and limped into the room. The lamplight reflected off the metal embedded in his skin and cast strangle little motes of light across the room which danced like dust in the wind.
“Have you finished yet, Lhaurel?” Beryl asked. His voice was pitched low, but it carried an intensity that sent shivers down Lhaurel’s spine.
“How could anyone have read all this in just a day?” Lhaurel asked, gesturing vaguely over the scrolls scattered across the table.
Beryl grumbled something unintelligible as if to himself, then spoke up. “You must hurry.”
“Why?” Lhaurel asked, feeling her irritation and confusion grow. “Why should I hurry? What did you mean when you said this stuff was why Kaiden did what he did? I’m tired of all this confusion and mystery.”
Beryl scratched at the stubble on his chin and regarded her impassively for a long moment. Lhaurel was just about to say something else, this time even more pointed than the last, when Beryl shook his head.
“You must hurry because the Orinai are coming,” Beryl said, his voice hard and without its typical rasp. “I don’t know when, but they will come.”
“The who?”
“The Orinai,” Beryl said. “They built this place, this Arena. They were driven out centuries ago, but only because they thought the Rahuli doomed to death.”
What was he going on about? What Arena?
Lhaurel raised an eyebrow at him.
“They’re coming!” Beryl suddenly thundered, and the room seemed to shake with the volume of his shout. “They will come and destroy you all. You’re not prepared, you’re not ready. Kaiden knows this. Somehow he knows. He wished to burn away the dross in the crucible of battle, cut everyone away who could not stand against the coming storm. The Seven Sisters will destroy you and everything you’ve come to know.”
“What are you talking about?”
The look Beryl leveled at her burned away any doubt she had about his sincerity. Whatever it was he was saying, whether it was really true or not, Beryl sincerely believed it.
“You thought the genesauri were a nightmare,” Beryl whispered. “They were a light breeze to the coming sandstorm. I’ve seen what they can do. You won’t be ready.”
He didn’t wait for Lhaurel’s protests or questions. Beryl got up and limped out of the room, muttering to himself. Lhaurel felt her headache swell and massaged her temples. She needed to talk to Khari about all this.
Chapter 17: Prisoner
“Storm Wards are also, among other things, generally the most arrogant of the Great Ones and most likely to remain at their Iteration and return to it for multiple incarnations of their lives.”
—From Commentary on the Schema, Volume I
“I told you they would come,” Kaiden said, not looking over at Gavin. “I told you the enemy would come.”
Gavin’s eyes darted to the red glass blade sitting in the sands a few feet away. If he made a dash for it . . .
Kaiden kept talking as Nabil hissed and puffed out his feathers in a threatening manner.
“I read the scrolls, I knew what was coming. Now we will all die.” There was a deep, tremulous quality to Kaiden’s voice, which matched his outward appearance but was dissonant to the true age shown in the man’s eyes.
Gavin took a careful step forward. Though Kaiden didn’t appear to have any weapons, he was wearing brown robes similar to the ones the mystics had worn before everyone knew who they really were. Anything could be hidden within those folds, not to mention Kaiden’s magnetelorium abilities. Kaiden’s face was a maze of craggy wrinkles, like canyons with a thousand spidery branches, and his grey-white hair clung to him despite the light breeze.
“What are you doing here, Kaiden?” Gavin asked, taking another careful step forward. He was directly in between the two prone giants and only a foot or two away from the glass knife. He could easily bend over and snatch it from the ground.
Kaiden glanced over at him and blinked owlishly. Gavin wasn’t sure if Kaiden was really seeing him or not, as his gaze seemed to wander and remain unfocused.
“Here? I’m here to protect you,” Kaiden said, his gaze seeming to fixate on some point over Gavin’s right shoulder.
“Protect me?” Gavin took another step forward and then bent down and scooped up the red glass knife. Kaiden didn’t seem to notice. Or care.
“Protect you all. The horrors I’ve read about, the terrible darkness, the Seven Sisters.” Kaiden shuddered and closed his eyes.
Gavin seized that moment to dart forward and tackle Kaiden to the ground. The man didn’t offer any resistance, and as a result they ended up slamming into the ground with twice as much force as Gavin had expected. The dagger flew out of Gavin’s hand and he felt a rush of panic before it registered that Kaiden wasn’t resisting at all.
Gavin scrambled to his feet and whistled for Nabil, who hopped over the prone figures to land next to Gavin. Kaiden turned his head to regard the aevian with one corner of his mouth twisted up into a half-smile. Gavin hastily pulled a length of cord from the satchel on Nabil’s back and used it to tie Kaiden’s arms behind his back.
“Nabil,” Kaiden said, speaking over Gavin’s shoulder to the aevian. “I haven’t seen Skree-lar in a long, long time. Do you know where he is?”
Nabil hissed and flexed long talons, which dug into the sand and scraped against rock hidden beneath. He clacked his beak and let out an ear-piercing screech that made Gavin wince and cover his ears.
“Hush, Nabil!” Gavin snapped.
Kaiden chuckled, though it was the sound of falling stone and grating earth.
“Enough games, Kaiden. What are you doing here and where are the others who helped you escape?”
“Didn’t you tell Farah that these would die if you didn’t administer to them?” Kaiden asked. It was the first time the man had looked directly at Gavin when he’d spoken, and his words dripped with menace.
“Don’t try and ignore the question,” Gavin said, retrieving the dagger and half-glancing at the two prone giants at his feet. “Why are you here and where are the people who helped you escape the Roterralar?”
“As I said, I am here to protect you. You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re doing or what you did when you pulled that sword from the dead Orinai atop the cliffs. The sandstorm is coming and I’m your only hope.”
Gavin almost rolled his eyes. Kaiden reminded him of the old Sidena Warlord, Jenthro. Full of talk and show, always trying to scare people into doing what he wanted. His grandmother had told him about these types. She’d said they were all secretly cowards. A confident man doesn’t need to act tough or be brutal to try and scare you. A confident man already knows his own strength. A coward though, they needed the constant reminder of their own stupidity.
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“You’re doing a fine job protecting me all tied up like that,” Gavin said. “Nabil, kill him if he so much as moves in the wrong direction.”
Gavin wasn’t sure if the aevian understood, but Nabil chirped softly as if in acknowledgment and fixed beady eyes on Kaiden’s form. Kaiden had the nerve to look amused, which was an odd look on his prematurely aged face. Gavin ignored him, but was careful to keep his glass dagger close. So far Kaiden hadn’t shown any hint of his former powers, but Gavin wasn’t going to leave anything to chance by assuming they really were “former” powers.
He turned to the two prone giants and did another quick check of their wounds. He then pulled the waterskins from Nabil’s back and removed the makeshift bandage around the wider, shorter giant’s chest.
Kaiden made a small noise at the smell, but Gavin had grown a little more accustomed to it at this point. Blood, pus, and fluid dripped from the man’s wounds. Gavin used a miniscule amount of water and a piece of cloth torn from Kaiden’s robes to clean parts of it up. Gavin wished he had some alcohol or even some tigerroot, but he made do with what he had, as his grandmother had taught him.
He let the wounds air out for a bit after he washed them, taking that time to go over the cuts on the taller man’s shoulders and hands. The ones on his shoulders were similar to the long gashes across his shorter companion’s chest, but the wounds on the taller man’s hands and arms were puzzling. Long gashes, scrapes, and cuts covered him from fingertip to elbow almost as if he’d fallen half a hundred times against rock.
Kaiden noticed Gavin’s inspection of the wounds.
“It is a difficult journey, coming here,” Kaiden whispered, half to himself.
Gavin shot Kaiden a withering look, but the man’s statement bounced around in his thoughts as he worked on the wounded man’s shoulders. It was obvious that these men, whoever and whatever they were, were not some of Kaiden’s men. There were no Rahuli this large nor mystics as powerful, and none of the original seven clans had that accent.
Sharani series Box Set Page 49
