Sharani series Box Set

by Kevin L. Nielsen

  Even as just a witness of the memory, Lhaurel recognized the small demons. They looked like sailfins, just on a much smaller scale. They couldn’t be, could they?

  Elyana dropped the piece of meat—about the size of her fist—into the water. The creatures in the water darted out of their hiding places and tore off great chunks of the meat before darting back into their caves. They darted in and out in a roiling mass until the meat was gone, only a faint reddish cast to the water showing any sign that the meat had ever been there.

  There were more than just sailfins in the water. Other creatures darted out of hiding and returned during the frenzied eating. Marsaisi, karundin, all in miniature form. Why was Elyana keeping them here? And in water? Lhaurel had too many questions, none of which seemed like they had answers.

  Elyana watched the tank for several long minutes, seeming to take some small pleasure in their antics, then turned away and leaned one hand against the wall. It was rough against her hand. Even in the dream, Lhaurel felt the sensation of touch as Elyana experienced it and followed her stream of consciousness as she considered it.

  The Sisters had commissioned this Arena. It had been sculpted out of sandstone and laced with the elements that drove the Schema and Progressions. A hundred years. A century of work. Tens of thousands of slaves’ lives lost in the constructions. Dozens of Great Ones diligently at work to construct this monolithic testament to the Orinai’s power. And then another century as the descendants of those slaves and the Orinai outcasts who were thrown in to join them fought and struggled together. How ironic that it had become the complete opposite now, a bastion of defense—a veritable fortress—against the very people who had commissioned it. The Sisters had called it a proving ground for the Progressions, a study of the complexity that was the human soul. Elyana wondered if the other Sisters had gotten the answers they were looking for. She certainly hadn’t. Not yet.

  Beryl had asked her to tell the Rahuli the paths of the Progressions, the secrets of the Schema. Elyana’s back straightened and she lifted her chin. She may now be counted a traitor to the Orinai, but she had not yet fallen to such a state as that. Not yet, at least. There were some secrets, some knowledge, that needed to be contained. Honor sometimes left what was true bathed in shadow to protect those whom that truth would injure. Sometimes doing what was right was a matter of upholding that which is sacred.

  Elyana sighed and walked over to one of the shelves. She pulled down one of the books and retrieved a bottle of ink and a pen, all three of which she placed onto the table. Elyana took a seat at the table and opened the book. The pages inside were blank, though the parchment was thick and almost white, untouched by age. No, she wasn’t so far removed from her calling as a Sister that she was ready to desecrate the sacred secrets of the Progressions, but she could discuss other things. The quill dipped into the ink and Elyana began to write, Lhaurel reading the words through Elyana’s eyes as the woman wrote them.

  The enemy has come. Our lush arboreal verdance lays desolate, crumbling from life to dust. Life is dissolution.

  The enemy has come.

  With tongues of fire and on the back of wind they come, rolling like thunder clouds across our land. Our warriors are outnumbered, our magic users proving to be inferior masters of the elements. The blood of the clans stains the sands red, paints the cliffs in scarlet ribbons, and makes crimson the sky. We are dying.

  Elyana looked up from her ledger. Lines of concentration wrinkled her brow and left premature age lines emanating like the web of a sand spider from the corners of her eyes. Her eyes themselves, once a vibrant blue, were now without luster, even in the lamplight. Dead. Sunken. Lifeless. Oddly, Lhaurel was able to observe Elyana as if detached from her for the first time, though it was a fleeting moment of disassociation, then Lhaurel was back inside Elyana’s mind, experiencing the Sister’s life as she lived it. Elyana turned back to her chronicles.

  * * *

  Five days after receiving the message from the pseudo-Sister, Lhaurel found herself as irritable as she’d ever been. Dreams plagued and haunted her whenever she slept, nightmares of what happened in the Oasis and what could have happened to the Rahuli after she’d given herself up. Compared to them, the dreams of Elyana, which were infrequent at best, were almost a pleasant relief, though they reminded her of her other worry, the need to regain her abilities before the lack of them killed her. Each day the longing for it grew, becoming something more than a desire, moving into a need. It gnawed at her constantly, though she could still ignore it the majority of the time. A small part of her worried, irrationally perhaps, that she’d never get them back. A part of her longed for that, knowing the raw strength of her abilities and fearing what it would do to her to have them back again. The rest of her hungered for their return.

  The wagon in which she sat bounced and jostled along the endless plain of grass. It was pulled by one massive gatheriu the color of the trees in the Oasis, a dull, lifeless brown. The creature lumbered in a strange rolling gait, front legs acting more like forearms than actual legs as it walked. It also smelled like rotten meat which made Lhaurel want to gag. At least this time she was able to ride above the wagon instead of always inside it.

  “Beg pardon, Honored Sister,” the man driving the wagon said, pulling a pipe from his mouth with one hand and gesturing at the lumbering beast ahead of them. “Grunt here is me best puller, see. Problem is, he likes to eat them smokeweed plants any chance he gets. That makes him smell right foul most days, see. I wouldn’t have troubled you with him, but, you see, the other Sister, she wanted fast. You understand, don’t you?”

  Lhaurel fought down her growing irritation. This had to have been the thousandth time the bald little man had asked the same question. While she didn’t mind the apology itself—the beast did smell absolutely horrible after all—the constant repetition was grating at best.

  “It’s fine. We must make it to Geithoorn as quickly as possible. The smell is not an issue.”

  In all honesty, the smell made her want to vomit, but she reassured him each time he asked. Talha wanted speed and nothing was going to stand in her way. Over the last five days Lhaurel had seen a new side to the woman. The woman she’d come to know as calm, logical, and stern, if a little eccentric, had become harsh and—to Lhaurel at least—distant. And she still hadn’t told Lhaurel what was in the message. In truth, Lhaurel thought Talha was starting to act more and more like Sellia, and that scared her. She still had nightmares of the few minutes she’d spent with the woman.

  After a minute, Lhaurel tossed back her hair and straightened, stretching aching muscles. Several of her priestesses behind her looked up and asked if she needed anything, but Lhaurel ignored them. After days of sitting except for when they stopped for the night, she felt the burning desire to move. She needed to move.

  “I’m going to walk a while,” Lhaurel said in as flat a voice as she could manage. She’d still not mastered Talha’s calm, commanding tone, though she’d managed to replicate Khari’s with a little practice. “Do not slow down or wait for me if I fall behind.”

  The driver, Lhaurel hadn’t learned his name, looked like he wanted to protest, even going so far as to take the pipe out of his mouth, but Lhaurel leveled her best ‘Khari’ stare at him and he grunted and looked away with a visible gulp after only fleetingly meeting her eye. Lhaurel took that as assent and so clambered down the side of the wagon and hopped down to the ground, half stumbling as she landed. She caught herself before falling, but it only served to further increase her current frustration to realize that the skill and balance she’d earned as a warrior in the Sharani Desert served her little without the augmented balance and grace her powers had given her. Was she truly so incompetent without them?

  “Sister,” one of the priestesses called down as the wagon continued to roll by on its massive wooden wheels though the endless grass. “Shall we accompany you?”

  “Stay with the wagon,” Lhaurel ordered, then had a thought. “Bu
t fetch me my staff.”

  Josi, the young priestess from the time they’d been attacked, pulled the staff free from where it rested beneath the driver’s bench and tossed it down to Lhaurel, then bowed. Lhaurel caught the staff with one hand and took several steps back from the wagon. It lumbered by and the next wagon, gatheriu leading, rumbled forward. Talha and her priestesses looked down at her from atop it.

  “Walk with me, Sister?” Lhaurel asked, beginning to walk alongside Talha’s wagon. It wasn’t moving that quickly, but it was fast enough that Lhaurel had to keep a brisk pace to stay alongside.

  “You should not be walking,” Talha said, glancing down at Lhaurel over the edge of the book she had open on her lap. “It is both undignified and unnecessary. One of our station does not walk when other means of transport are available.”

  “Does one of our station ever get bored and need to stretch their legs?” Lhaurel asked. “Or has age made that impossible for you?”

  Lhaurel regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of her mouth, but Talha didn’t get angry. Instead, she closed her book and gave Lhaurel her full attention, looking down at her from the back of the wagon with cold, appraising eyes.

  “Age has taught me many things, child,” she said with ice in her voice. “Most notably respect and integrity when it is due. For one who is the avatar of Honor, you do little to respect those who are your betters.”

  On the inside, Lhaurel snorted, though she kept her expression suitably flat. She’d received far worse chastisements before. In fact, compared to Marvi’s tirade both before and during her forced marriage, Talha’s statement was almost a compliment. Compared to Khari’s blazing vehemence when trying to break her, it wasn’t even warm.

  “We haven’t had a good discussion in days,” Lhaurel said with a pert smile, staff clunking against the hard ground. “I thought we could walk and talk a while.”

  “Read the books I gave you.”

  Lhaurel continued to walk, not bothering to respond, careful to avoid the dust kicked up by the wagon ahead of her. She’d only offered to walk with Talha to avoid the lecture she knew would come, but, in the end, Lhaurel had decided to take the confrontation head on instead of avoiding it. She knew she was being brash, but it felt good to interact, even in a confrontational sense.

  “Oh, very well then,” Talha snapped, handing her book to one of the priestesses and getting to her feet, staff in one hand. “I will walk with you for a time. I could use a little movement.”

  Talha’s driver didn’t even try and protest. Talha didn’t bother with the small ladder. Instead, she simply leapt the six feet down to the ground, staff spinning out behind her. She bent at the knee as she landed, white skirt billowing out behind her like a cloak. Lhaurel was so surprised that she stopped dead in her tracks. The wagon rumbled on.

  “Now that you have me here,” Talha said, straightening and beginning to walk without waiting for Lhaurel to recover from her shock. “What would you have of me? You are lucky I am the one accompanying you. Few of the other Sisters would tolerate what you just did.”

  Lhaurel sped up until she was walking alongside the tall woman. She had grown used to looking up to her, though it had been a hard habit to form. Among her own people Lhaurel had only been surpassed in height by the men. Here, among the Orinai, even the women made her feel small. Only the priestesses were close to her own height.

  “And what would they have done about it? I doubt it would be appropriate for Sisters to be seen fighting with one another on that scale.”

  “If no one who witnesses it remains to tell of it,” Talha said, walking in time with Lhaurel, both staffs hitting the ground within seconds of one another, “what harm is there in it?”

  “You’re saying . . .”

  Talha nodded and gestured to the right with her staff, indicating that she wanted to put more space between them and the wagons. When they were a good dozen spans away, enough distance to no longer be overhead, Talha continued.

  “Sellia would have everyone here killed just to avoid anyone ever discussing the fight. Just the little spat we had here is worse than what she would have allowed. Aiam and Alcine are almost as bad.”

  Lhaurel shuddered. “That’s horrible. Why would they do that?”

  “It is in their natures. It is also the way of their Progression.”

  The words resonated within Lhaurel on a subconscious level, only increasing her disgust and confusion. “Their Progressions condone the murder of innocents just to cover up their own dishonorable acts?”

  Talha stopped and turned to look at Lhaurel, an ink-stained hand rubbing her forehead. A strand of blood red hair slipped free of Talha’s bun and danced in the slight breeze in front of the woman’s eyes, in harmony with the movement of the long grasses through which they walked. Talha’s face held a rapt expression of utter incredulity for half a moment, then she burst into laughter. It was a pure, honest laugh, the kind that works its way up from the toes and permeates every fiber of one’s being. Talha laughed until tears streamed down her face, then she gasped a ragged breath and seemed to regain control of herself. Still, a smile remained on her face.

  “I forget your naïveté sometimes, though, even with it, you remain true to your Progression. It’s remarkable.”

  “What’s remarkable?” Lhaurel demanded. She wasn’t sure if she should feel insulted or not at Talha’s outburst.

  “It’s remarkable how well you typify the ideal you represent with your, um, history.” Talha resumed walking, though this time there was far more liveliness to her step. Part of the levity remained and, for reasons Lhaurel couldn’t even begin to name, let alone understand, she was glad of that.

  Grass crunched beneath their feet and Lhaurel waved a hand to clear away the dust billowing from the wagons ahead of them before she could reply.

  “What?”

  “You are the representation of Honor. Not just in the ideological sense, but in a physical one as well. The people we lead, the Orinai, they will look to your acts and your deeds as examples of what honor is. In a way, you will become the definition of honor. I have studied many writings of past Sisters and a number of discourses on the subject. You represent it well. Sellia and the other Sisters will be well pleased, I think. Remarkable.” Talha paused, pursing her lips in the way she did when thinking about something. The wind tossed Lhaurel’s hair in front of her face and she had to brush it away. She also wrinkled her nose as she caught a whiff of Grunt’s foul stench, which the wind had brought with it.

  “Actually,” Talha continued, “it’s not remarkable at all. You do not find it remarkable that a bird learns how to fly. It simply does what it was created to do.”

  Lhaurel found herself chewing on her bottom lip both in response to the smell and Talha’s words. If Talha noticed the lip biting, she didn’t say anything, though she did make a face and wave a hand in front of her nose.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Just now, that indignation about Sellia and the other Sisters and how they would treat others, that is something anyone honorable would have done. When you agreed to come with us in order to save your people, that was also the honorable thing to do. It was the only honorable thing to do. It is not always the easy thing, or—arguably—the right thing, but it is the honorable and moral thing to do. Ah good, the wind’s shifted. I’m not sure how much more of that smell I could take.”

  Lhaurel remembered an old man dying, his death hastened by her uncontrollable powers. She remembered the woman who had been drained of her life blood at the moment Lhaurel needed it to destroy the genesauri. Those had not been the acts of someone with honor. They’d been acts of desperations. Acts of a monster. Of a Sister.

  Lhaurel started to say something, to voice her thoughts aloud, when she stopped herself. She hadn’t told Talha everything that had gone on in the Sharani Desert for a reason. Those memories were private, the last bastion of the former self she had left. Talha knew a lot about the people
there and some of their customs, but much of her knowledge was simple guesswork. Lhaurel wasn’t sure she wanted to profane those memories, the dignity of her people, by sharing that knowledge with her just yet. No, Lhaurel still struggled too much with her own identity to let go of the memories.

  “You should try riding behind the thing. The smell is from the gatheriu pulling my wagon.”

  Talha chuckled, but then her expression sobered. “Despite all you have seen, child, still you doubt. I see the conflict within you. Elyana’s memories battle against the woman you were becoming among your old people. You are neither of those women, Lhaurel. You are something far greater. As a Sister, as one who has reached the pinnacle of the Iterations and now follows the Progression through endless incarnations, you are holy. You are one of the deities of this nation. You are eternal.”

  “I have memories of aspects of the religion that are foreign to me, Talha,” Lhaurel said, struggling to articulate how she felt. “The Rahuli have no real sense of religion, not by that standard. We know of the seven hells and that each of us will someday go to one of them, but that is the extent of our beliefs. Our actions in life determine what level of punishment we receive after death.”

  “And old interpretation of the Progressions,” Talha said, brightening even further. “I do wish we had more time for me to interview you on the ways of the Rahuli. It amazes me what things have remained intact and what has become perverted over the centuries. A population raised in isolation changes in so many interesting and unique ways. Do you suppose your people can still breed with the stock of their ancestors?”

  “What?”

  Talha paused again, one hand patting her robes as if searching for a book or something with which to write. She looked up and smiled, showing her painted teeth.

  “Never mind. Once we reach Estrelar there will be plenty of time for us to speak of this further, for now, perhaps we should catch up with the wagons?”