Until All Bonds Are Broken

by Tim Frankovich

  “It’s like a flute?” Seri asked. She had seen a number of flute players back home in Arazu.

  Ixchel nodded. She tossed her head to get some loose hair out of her face, then brought the mouthpiece to her lips. She blew a few notes through one chamber, then adjusted an odd device up near the mouthpiece. It looked like two additional pieces of polished, carved wood couple inches long. They were strapped to the flute with lengths of leather running through a pair of drilled holes. Seri could just make out that they covered an additional set of air holes in the flute itself. A tiny turquoise decorated each of the pieces, along with a third gem mounted just below them.

  This time, when Ixchel began to play, she blew through both chambers. Seri had never heard anything like it. The effect was astounding. Ixchel moved her fingers steadily, playing a series of notes that blended together in amazing harmony.

  “It’s like you’re playing a duet with yourself!” Seri exclaimed.

  Ixchel’s face twitched in amusement, but she continued to play. The tones, much lower than the flutes Seri knew, swelled in a haunting melody that seemed vaguely familiar. Ixchel hit a couple of notes out of tune and winced at each.

  The curtains moved and two other young women peeked inside, attracted by the music. Seri smiled at them, but surreptitiously gestured for them to remain hidden. They nodded and pulled back.

  Ixchel completed her song and set the flute down. Seri realized she had been holding her breath for the last part of the song. She gasped and clapped. Ixchel blushed. “I did not do it justice,” she said.

  “That was beautiful!” Seri said. “You were fantastic!”

  “I missed five notes.”

  “That’s impressive! I mean, I’ve never heard you practice, so it must be some time since you tried it last!”

  Ixchel shrugged.

  “What was the song?”

  “It is the tale of a woman who loses her love. The sipak, the great beast of the sea, takes him in a storm. In response, she learns the way of the spear. She tries to hunt the beast down, but never finds it again.”

  “That’s what sounded familiar!” Seri exclaimed. “Some of it sounded like the waves of the sea!”

  Ixchel nodded.

  Seri sat back. “You just continue to amaze me, Ixchel. You are so full of talents and—and I can’t even compare. You’re a warrior, a musician, and I don’t even know what!”

  Ixchel’s mouth twisted. “I’m not very good at any of them,” she said. “But you! You can see into other worlds! And work great magic!”

  Seri frowned. “I can’t see into other worlds right now. He said it was temporary, but he can restore it all. If he has time.”

  “And so you want to stay.”

  “I have to! I need it back, Ixchel. I need it.”

  She nodded. “Then I will do what I can to protect you, even from yourself.”

  “You do a good job at that, you know.”

  “Today I learned that I cannot protect you from Forerunner. Did you see his magic? A sword of fire! How can I stand against that?”

  “You shouldn’t have to.” Seri got up and moved back to her bed. “I don’t think he means us genuine harm.”

  “I am not sure of that.”

  Seri sat in silence as Ixchel carefully put the flute away. She wanted to ask her to play again, but just getting the one song had been amazing. She didn’t dare push further.

  “Who do you think they were?” Ixchel asked. “The ones you saw in the other world?”

  “I don’t know.” Seri looked up at the ceiling. “Before I met Lady Lilitu on Zes Sivas, I thought I understood magic. It came from the Lords and the land. But she had something different. And now Forerunner has it too. And these strangers… they were unbelievably powerful.”

  “Didn’t your Master know the Lady?”

  Seri cocked her head. “Master Hain? Of course he did.”

  “Then he knew of her power, also? He did not speak of this to you?”

  “He didn’t.” Seri sucked in a breath, amazed at the pain that statement brought her. Not only had her mentor died, he kept a secret from her, a secret that seemed vitally important to the world itself. Or worlds, for that matter.

  Ixchel completed her preparations and blew out the lantern. “Tomorrow, we should wake Dravid,” she suggested.

  “Yes.”

  Seri rolled to face the back wall and wiped a pair of tears from her cheeks. In all her despair over losing her star-sight, she had not really mourned for Master Hain. What would he have thought of Forerunner? What advice would he have offered? Seri felt a hole inside. To whom could she go for advice now? Her friends were all her age; they knew some things she did not, but they possessed limited wisdom.

  Her loss pulled her thoughts down a spiral of sadness until sleep finally silenced them.

  “You should wake up.”

  Dravid’s eyelids felt like each one carried a heavy weight, but he forced them open. His mind took a few moments to process what he saw.

  Ixchel stood above him, looking down. Still unsure whether he dreamed or woke, Dravid said the first thing that came into his head.

  “You’re so beautiful when you’re not frowning.”

  The slap woke him up completely.

  “I’m sorry, Ixchel. Sorry.” Dravid called as she stalked away. “I was dreaming.”

  “Clearly.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” Dravid reached for his crutch and missed. He fell from the bed and rolled on the ground.

  Ixchel turned with a sigh. “Are you all right?”

  “No. I’m not all right. I’m missing a leg. Have you seen it?”

  Ixchel rolled her eyes.

  “That’s what I was dreaming.” Dravid grabbed the side of the bed and pulled himself into a sitting position. “That my leg wasn’t gone. I was walking.” He lowered his head. “I was walking.”

  Ixchel stood still. Dravid didn’t know what effect, if any, his words might have had on her. She wasn’t the one he wanted to confide in, but she was here at this moment.

  “Seri needs to see you,” she said at last. “We’ll be outside. Clean up and get dressed.”

  Dravid nodded. Ixchel spun on her heel and left the room.

  He closed his eyes and thought. What was the last thing he remembered? Oh, yes. Trying to absorb some of Forerunner’s magic, and failing. Just like everything else he tried to do.

  Seri. He needed to tell her about Forerunner’s power, about what he had felt. Maybe she would understand better.

  He found his crutch and pulled himself up.

  Dravid found Seri and Ixchel not far from the men’s lodgings. His heart leaped when he saw the look of delight on Seri’s face upon seeing him approaching. It pushed all his depressing thoughts away.

  “Dravid! So good to see you up again!” She hurried to meet him, then came to an awkward stop a couple of feet away. Dravid would have welcomed a hug, but her smile would have to be enough.

  “Thanks, Seri.” He looked around. “Is there somewhere we can sit? I still feel drained.”

  “The pavilion contains many seats,” Ixchel said.

  Dravid agreed. Seri wanted to launch right into something, he could tell, but she held it back while they walked. He smiled as he watched her trying not to say anything.

  Only two followers of Forerunner sat talking on one side of the otherwise empty pavilion. Dravid and the girls found seats with a table on the opposite side.

  “Forerunner restored my star-sight!” Seri exclaimed.

  Dravid jerked back. “Really?”

  “For a few moments,” Ixchel said.

  “It was temporary,” Seri said, “but he proved he can do it. He just needs time to gain enough power to do it permanently.”

  “All that power he has, and it’s not enough?”

  Seri frowned. “If… if you had seen… the creature that took it from me. I can’t imagine the power it held. To overcome it… until yesterday, I wouldn’t think it was even
possible.”

  “All right. So… I’m guessing you want to stay here.”

  “Tell him the rest of it,” Ixchel said.

  “The rest?”

  “The other powerful ones.”

  “Oh, right.” Seri explained about the Gidim, and how they looked in the Otherworld.

  Dravid felt questions bubble up inside of him.

  “Wait, wait, wait. You said the creature that took your star-sight was unimaginably powerful. And we both know Forerunner is full of power. And now you say these beings in the Otherworld are also insanely powerful. So… which one is the most?”

  “That’s… uh… hard to say. Let me think. Forerunner is at least as powerful as one of the Lords. Do you think so?”

  “Definitely.” After trying to absorb some of his power, Dravid had no doubt of that. “But his power is different.”

  “They all are! It’s like everything we learned on Zes Sivas only told half the story!”

  “I know. My head is spinning. And you said the, uh, people in the Otherworld were more powerful still?”

  “Yes. And their power was something else entirely. Like Forerunner’s but higher? And it made me feel…”

  “Made you feel what?”

  Seri blushed. “I, uh…”

  Dravid waited.

  “Desire.” Seri’s voice was so low, he barely heard it.

  “Oh.” Dravid had no idea how to respond to that. In the silence that followed, Dravid reached out for magic, more to occupy his mind than anything else. To his surprise, he found some right away and pulled it in. Seri remained quiet, so he looked around. Finding a small crack in the table’s surface, he channeled the magic into it slowly. With precision control, he widened and lengthened the crack, twisting it as he did.

  “It—It’s just a different kind of power. So strange!” Seri said all in a rush. “I don’t know what it means. And the creature that took my star-sight was another thing entirely. It was like it was made of magic or something. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “So more or less powerful?” Dravid ignored the disapproving look Ixchel gave him. He focused on the crack, twisting it again.

  “I just don’t know.”

  Dravid looked over the letter he had carved into the table, the first letter of his name. “Everything we thought we knew has been upended. What do we do now?” He looked up at Seri.

  “We have no one else to ask for guidance. No Masters out here.”

  “We have to blunder along on our own.”

  “Why?” Ixchel asked. “Why must we even stay? This is not our quest.”

  Seri lifted her hands in exasperation. “We’ve been over this!”

  At that moment, the ground began to shake.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  VICTOR THOUGHT HE heard a rumble just before the ground itself began to shake. Not again.

  “Marshal?” He felt a familiar twitch from their Bond. But that shouldn’t be working during war, should it?

  Rufus stumbled and fell next to him. “What’s happening?”

  All around him, the other curse squad members reacted, trying to stay on their feet.

  “Not again!” Callus wailed.

  Wolf slumped onto the ground. “Dying,” he said.

  “Marshal!”

  “He went that way!” Gnaeus said, pointing across the camp, even as the Bond pulled Victor in that direction.

  He started running. Or at least he tried. One step, everything seemed normal; the next step, he couldn’t find the ground. By the time his foot hit solid ground, his entire body had gone parallel to it. He hit the dirt hard and slid.

  As he lifted himself up, his hand began to vibrate. But it felt wrong. The vibrations did not radiate outward as they usually did. Instead, his hand vibrated only toward the ground itself, as if the ground pulled the vibrations into it.

  Victor considered this for only a moment, before scrambling back to his feet and continuing to run. The pull of the Bond compelled him. During their journey, the Bond yanked him toward Marshal many times. This felt the same way. It wasn’t the strongest he had ever felt it, but that didn’t change his urgency.

  Around him, shouts and cries of both fear and command echoed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Volraag’s command tent collapse. If not him, then the shaking might be coming from Lord Tyrr, which meant this could be the precursor to a full-scale assault. But what did Marshal have to do with all this?

  He fell five or six times, scraping his knees and palms bloody. But the Bond would not let up, forcing him to keep getting back up and running on and on. He might be imagining it, but it felt like he began to anticipate the ground’s movements and time his steps to match it. At the very least, he stopped falling.

  The Bond led him in a familiar direction. The ravine!

  The ground’s shaking subsided and he picked up speed. Then it erupted again and threw him to the ground once more.

  Victor spit dirt from his mouth and pulled himself up. Marshal knelt on the ground a few feet away, at the edge of the ravine, palms in the dirt.

  “Marshal?” He approached with careful steps. The Bond seemed not to be pulling at him any more, now that he had arrived.

  Marshal looked up. Even through the scars, Victor could see his fear.

  A quick glance at the ravine revealed much of it had collapsed. Lord Tyrr’s troops would not be using this unless he came back and dug it out again. Still, enough of it remained to make it a danger to ignorant travelers. The rocks stayed exposed just below.

  “Did you do all this?”

  “No, I…” Marshal seemed at a loss for words. He looked back at the ravine, then down at his own hands. He lifted them from the ground and stared at them. “It… it pulled me, Victor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the ground began to shake, it… it pulled at me. It wanted my magic.”

  The vibrations went toward the ground. Same thing, perhaps.

  “Did you, I don’t know, give it to the, uh, ground?”

  Marshal shook his head. “It was already shaking. How could I add to it? But it pulled. It pulled.”

  Victor bent down and helped Marshal stand. “We need to get back to the squad. Lord Tyrr might have done this to shake us up before attacking.”

  “No. It wasn’t him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Marshal nodded. “This was like before. I think the earth itself is… breaking?”

  “Well, that’s frightening.”

  Louder yells came from the camp. Yells of command, not fright. Lord Tyrr might take advantage of the chaos, even if he didn’t cause it.

  “We’ve got to get back to our squad. Come on!”

  Marshal took a last look at the ravine, then hurried after him. They both began to run.

  Only when they reached the borders of the camp did Victor realize Marshal hadn’t explained why he had been at the ravine in the first place.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SERI’S EYES WIDENED. They were many miles from Zes Sivas. If the ground were shaking this far away, then the situation had grown worse since they left. This quake must be far worse on the island. Would Jamana be all right? All of this passed through her mind before she even considered the danger to herself.

  The ground rumbled. Chairs toppled. The pillars holding up the ceiling rocked. Curtains fluttered. Wood paneling buckled. One of Forerunner’s followers screamed.

  “Get out of the building!” Ixchel yelled.

  “No!” Forerunner’s magic-enhanced voice boomed throughout the pavilion. Somehow, he appeared in the center of the room, arms spread wide. “To me! I will protect you!”

  Seri didn’t hesitate. “Come on!” she said. She started toward Forerunner.

  Ixchel grabbed her by her robe. “My Lady!”

  Seri glanced back at her. “Whether we trust him or not, his power can protect us!” she argued.

  Dravid put his hand on Ixchel’s arm. “This time,” he said, looking int
o her eyes. She hesitated, then nodded.

  They hurried to Forerunner’s side. A dozen or more of his followers, the women in white and others, came rushing in from all directions. “Hurry! My power can protect you!” he called.

  Even as he spoke, Seri saw a crack open up on the east side of the pavilion. It moved toward them with frightening speed, widening to a couple feet, swallowing a few chairs and half a table. The ground continued to shake. Dravid sat down hard, unable to maintain his balance.

  “Forerunner!” Lucia screamed, pointing at the crack.

  “Fear not!” Forerunner brought his arms down in separate arcs, then swept them back up. As he did, a translucent golden dome formed in the air around the crowd of people. Seri stared. The dome reminded her of the way she beheld magic with her star-sight: as beams of colored light. The dome appeared similar, though she had never seen magic in this exact color range.

  “Are you seeing this?” she asked Dravid.

  “The dome? Yeah.”

  Interesting. She wondered if the dome’s visual manifestation was a necessary part of the magic, or something Forerunner added to impress his people. It fit within his character.

  The crack reached the dome’s edge and stopped, inches away from where Dravid sat. How could that be, unless the dome extended into the ground itself? Dravid raised his hand to touch it.

  “The roof!” someone cried.

  Seri looked up and saw the pavilion’s ceiling collapse. Though not much of a solid construction, no one would want to be under it as it fell. But again, the dome protected them. Pieces of lumber of varying sizes and shapes plummeted all around them. Yet where they struck the dome, they were deflected and slid to the ground outside the protective region.

  The rumbling stopped. Forerunner did not move, holding his hands - and by implication, the dome - aloft.

  “Is it over?” a woman asked.