elemental 07 - destroyer

by Mayer, Shannon

  His frown deepened and we just stared at one another. “Well, so much for that lesson.”

  From behind me was the sound of Raven catching up, coughing as he walked. “Yeah, she was very grateful.”

  I glared at him as he walked by me, rubbing his throat. I’d not hurt him badly, just cut off the air to his brain. “Drama queen.”

  His eyes popped wide and a rough laugh burst from his lips. “See? I knew we could still get along.”

  I didn’t want to feel that budding warmth of a laugh, so I squashed the emotion and took another step toward the water in the center of the room. “Talan, Raven says you two are going to explain to me just what in the goddess’s name is going on.”

  With a heavy sigh, he nodded. “Damn your Terraling stubbornness. Fine, I will tell you the whole story.”

  Peta snorted. “You aren’t that old. Raven says it goes back to before the Veil was created.”

  Talan smiled at her. “Peta, you kept me company for many years, and you are probably the best familiar I have ever had despite the fact you were given to me as a spy.”

  Peta gasped and he nodded.

  “I cleared your mind of what she would have you do, so you were free to be yourself.” He smiled at her. “But I digress; you are not the first familiar I have had in my life. You weren’t even the second.”

  Irritation flickered across her cat lips, like she’d smelled something rotten. “How old are you?”

  He grinned and stood up from his throne—because now that I could see it, that was exactly what it was. “Lark is good at guessing games, but I will help a little. I was there when the Veil was created. I was there when the false mother goddess rose to power. She tried to confine me like she confined my siblings.” His violet eyes glittered, not with malice, but with humor.

  I stared at him, his words sinking in slowly. The pieces of his past, of what he was saying coming together in an impossibility. He was right, I was good at figuring things out, but I had to be wrong about this. I had to be.

  “No.” I breathed the word and his grin widened.

  “I knew you of all elementals would guess this truth. If you could guess that Viv was the false mother goddess, that she was the one behind things, there was no way you wouldn’t figure out who I am if I gave you a few clues.” He took more steps and ran a hand through the rushing water. “Who am I, Lark? Even Raven hasn’t figured that out.”

  My head whipped sideways to look at Raven. He shook his head. “I have no idea. He’s played this game with me, too.”

  “The Veil was created by Spirit, by those humans we call Trackers now. But you helped them, didn’t you?” I arched an eyebrow at him.

  Talan nodded. “Keep going, you’re almost there.”

  I was shaking, because I struggled to believe even though the evidence was there. No, that wasn’t true. “Trackers are descendants of the first Spirit Walker.”

  “Good, you’re getting there.”

  No, no, no. This could not be. “You have no proof,” I said, my throat tightening on the words.

  Raven and Peta both stared at me. But it was Raven who spoke. “Proof of what?”

  “He’s…” I shook my head and started again. “Talan is one of the original five. The last born of the true mother goddess.”

  Talan swept low into a bow from his waist. “Youngest and most troublesome of the five forebears of the elementals, at your service.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Talan’s statement hung in the air of the rock cavern while the water continued to rush by as though nothing of import had just happened. Peta, Raven, and I didn’t move, we didn’t so much as twitch a muscle.

  Talan’s eyebrows climbed, and his gaze didn’t move from me. “Am I really that terrifying?”

  I stared back at him. “It’s not fear that holds me here. Shock, I believe, would be more appropriate. Shock and disbelief.”

  Raven grunted as though I’d punched him in the gut. “You should be afraid of him if that’s true. He could be manipulating us even now and we wouldn’t know it.” As he spoke, his voice rose, and anger flooded his words.

  I put a hand out to him, palm facing him. “Stop it. I can see if he’s using Spirit. And right now, he’s not.”

  “You sure about that?” Raven threw the question at me. I didn’t look at him, but kept my eyes on Talan.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Talan laughed. “It is a gift some Spirit Walkers have, to see the lines of power. It is not a gift I have. It was only in your mother’s family and it developed on its own. Strange how the powers did that after they left us. They often twisted on their own, forming to what the elemental needed to survive.” He ran his fingers through the water. Us. He meant his other siblings, of course, the other forebears of the elemental world. I shook my head to clear the lingering disbelief.

  “Still, there is no proof. You could just be a strong Spirit elemental who has learned to survive all these years, not unlike Viv. I would think that one who was truly the original child of the mother goddess would be able to take Viv out on his own. He wouldn’t need to manipulate anyone else.” I smiled. “So maybe you aren’t so much who you think you are?”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Raven nod. “What are those places the humans stick their mad ones?”

  “Asylums,” I said. “That’s a good point. Perhaps we should send him to one of those.”

  “Yes, they could let him think he’s in charge there.”

  I barked a laugh. “In charge. Please. He’ll be trying to convince all the humans they are really elementals who need to save the world.”

  Raven burst out laughing and I couldn’t help joining in. Peta’s concern came through loud and clear. “Are you all right?” she whispered in my ear.

  I couldn’t help myself. “It’s a sibling thing.” And it was. This was how Raven and I had always bantered back and forth. Ganging up on the other kids in our family and making them look like fools.

  Talan frowned at us both. Like an adult dealing with naughty children. Which only set me laughing more. A part of my brain realized it was a combination of shock and sheer overload. Because even though Talan hadn’t proven anything, what he said made a wicked sort of sense. Which brought me out of my laughter as fast as I’d started.

  “Wait,” I drew a sharp breath as I struggled to form the question that slammed me between the eyes, “why do you not just get your other siblings then and deal with Viv?”

  Raven’s laughter died as suddenly as mine had. “Now that is a good question.”

  “You two are going to be the death of me,” Talan muttered. “I told you I would show you the story. Will that suspend your disbelief of who I am?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Then we will start there. We start with a girl named Vivica.” He reached up to the waterfall and ran his fingers through it, his arm coated in pink lines so bright that I wondered just how I had not noticed before. And then I remembered. Shit, he could hide his power from me. He’d done it before. Had I forgotten or had he taken that knowledge from me? Fear slid down my spine like droplets of icy cold water.

  “Put your hands in the water,” Talan said, “and you’ll be taken to the past.”

  “You mean we’ll see the story,” Raven said.

  “No,” Talan shook his head, “your spirits will go into the past and you will see how things happened. What brought Vivica to become Viv, then to become an effigy of the mother goddess.”

  Peta butted her head against my cheek. “I will be with you.”

  I was not afraid, not really. But I was unsure I wanted to send my spirit anywhere without my body. “I thought we were on a time crunch.”

  Talan smiled. “The story happened in the past. Here in the present, the time that will lapse will be less than a few seconds. A heartbeat or two.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better. “Can we be trapped there?”

  He shook his head. “No. If you become afraid, you need only
take a step back. As long as you walk forward, you will see the story unfold.”

  His instructions seemed simple, and yet, I was not sure. “All of us are going?”

  Talan shook his head. “Just you and Raven.”

  I fought not to hunch my shoulders. “And you are staying behind why, exactly?”

  “Suspicious much?” He smiled at me, but it wasn’t mean. “I stay behind because if something were to go wrong, then I can pull you both out.”

  “So something has gone wrong before?” Raven asked. I was glad it was him and not me.

  Talan rolled his eyes as though we were being ridiculous, but I saw the motion for what it was. He was avoiding the question.

  I took a step, closing the distance between him and me. “You might be the last born of the true mother goddess. But don’t you dare lie to us now. You want us to work with you, then you’d better think about how you want us to see you. As a liar? Or someone we can trust?”

  He rubbed a hand over his face. “Damn it. You are too perceptive by half. Yes, this has gone wrong once before. But we both survived, so I am being cautious now.”

  “What happened?” Peta asked.

  Talan shook his head and then slowly answered. “The one who went with me tried to interfere. We both did, thinking if we could change the past, then things would be better. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “What happened?” The question came from Raven and me at the same time.

  Talan let out a groan. “Mother, help me not kill them all.”

  Peta hissed at him. “Don’t you take that tone with us!”

  Talan looked at her. “Fine. We were both hurt, the injuries were not life-threatening, but we struggled to connect with our ability for a time.”

  “But you got it back?” Raven asked.

  “We did,” Talan said.

  “Will the people in the past be able to see us?” I asked.

  Talan shook his head. “No, you won’t be visible to them, though as I mentioned, you can be hurt. You will need to watch yourselves.”

  I glanced at my brother. It was like a three-ring circus and it would keep going if we didn’t at some point just jump forward. Or in this case backward.

  “I will go. No more questions. If you swear to me you will pull us out if there is trouble.”

  Talan nodded. “If you are in there longer than ten seconds, I will pull you out.”

  I had a feeling it was going to be the best we would get. And suddenly I was eager to go, to see what had happened and understand what the hell was going on in my world.

  “How long will that give us on the other side?” I stared into the water as I spoke.

  “Long enough.”

  Without another word, I lifted Peta off my shoulder and set her on the ground. She looked up at me, her green eyes narrowing before she gave me a tiny nod. No words. We couldn’t say what flew between us without speaking. Because if Talan knew she was my safety net, he might put her out of commission. Assuming he was not playing by the rules.

  I smiled at her and she winked up at me.

  I drew a breath and put my left hand into the waterfall. Raven moved up beside me and put his right hand in.

  “Ready, sis?”

  I shrugged. “Nope.”

  He gave me a lopsided grin. The moment stretched, Raven disappeared, and there was nothing but the sound of water rushing around my ears, the feel of something tugging on my feet. I took a step, then another, and another, and the world as it had once been, long before I was born opened before me…

  CHAPTER 8

  THE PAST

  What I expected when I opened my eyes after plunging my hands into the waters of the past was not what I got. I’d thought maybe I’d see things in snapshots, like human photographs in bits and pieces. What was laid out in front of me, though, was a living breathing place that was so like the world I resided in, I wasn’t sure I could tell the difference. I wasn’t sure I could tell I wasn’t standing there in truth.

  I blinked several times and stared around me. To my right stood Raven. “Is this real?” I asked.

  “I think so. It feels real.” He was doing the same as I was, staring around us. Because we were in our home—the Rim. No, that wasn’t quite right. We were in the Rim of the past. What it had been before our time. Long before our time. The center of the Rim was smaller than it was in our present day, and the trees were different, but not smaller. It was more like at some point the trees that were huge in the past had been cut down, or destroyed, and those we knew as the redwoods in the present were the seedlings we saw here. The sensation of knowing and not knowing the Rim was disconcerting.

  There were far fewer homes and no Spiral to be seen. I could have stood for hours taking it all in, noting the differences. Seeing the similarities.

  Terralings flowed and ebbed on the narrow beaten paths around us. In several cases stepping so closely, I could have reached out and touched one of them. Maybe Raven saw my intent because he slapped my hand down. “Don’t interfere. I don’t want to mess up anything.”

  I rubbed my hand. “Right. Let’s go then. Talan said to just walk forward.”

  I took a step, half expecting the image to jump and move, but it didn’t. The step was like any other. I glanced at Raven. He shrugged and we stepped again, side by side.

  The farther into the Rim we got, the more differences I saw. The houses were very rough, nothing more than huts really, and the clothing on the elementals was nearly medieval in style. The women wore skirts that brushed the ground and peasant blouses that hung off their shoulders; not one of them wore pants. The men were not actually wearing anything terribly different, with pants and long-sleeved tops, thick belts and tall boots here and there on those who did not go barefoot.

  “Funny, I didn’t realize how much the humans had influenced our world,” I said.

  “It isn’t that different than our current clothes,” Raven said, agreeing with me.

  I snorted. “You see any women dressed like me?” I waved my hand at my Ender clothing.

  Our conversation slammed to a stop when a Terraling women stepped into our path, nearly colliding with us. I skidded on my heels and stepped to the side to avoid walking into her. I wasn’t sure that touching her was even possible, but as Raven had reminded me, we didn’t want to influence anything.

  “Piss on them all.” She snarled the words. Her long skirts were nicer than the other women’s I’d seen so far, thick and obviously well woven. The darkest of reds, the color of her dress brought out the red highlights in her dark brown hair. Her features, down to her dark brown eyes and full lips, were reminiscent of Cassava to the point they could have been sisters.

  “Shit, that’s Viv.” I had to fight not to step away from her. Viv, the false mother goddess. The one who was causing so much trouble in our own time. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her at the center of the problems in the past, too.

  “You sure?” Raven stared after her. “She looks like—”

  “I know who she looks like. Now hurry, she’s getting away.” I scrambled after Viv, and Raven was right there with me. Even in those few seconds, we were put far enough behind that we had to run to catch up to her.

  And when I did, I placed myself to her right so I could hear what she was saying. “Idiots, they have no idea who they are playing with. This world will kneel at my feet.”

  I kept half an eye on where we were going and the other half on Viv. I didn’t want to touch her. For all I knew, she would recognize me. I knew that wasn’t truly possible because in this reality, she hadn’t met me yet. But I wasn’t taking any chances either.

  She strode to the end of the Rim, spun and snapped her fingers. Coils of pink rose around her arms, and then just like that, she was gone—just like Raven, Talan, and Pamela could do—and I stood there staring at the image. “What the hell?”

  “Keep walking,” Raven said. “Maybe the images will follow her.”

  He was right. I took a step a
nd we were no longer at the edge of the Rim, but back in the center where four men stood talking in front of several small saplings of many kinds of trees. They looked to be brothers, so close as they were in both looks and build. Long brown hair, sand-colored eyes and strong jaws. There were hints of my own father in them and I wondered if we were related. I didn’t have long to mull over that thought. One of them wore the crown of the Rim, the crown that even now rested on Belladonna’s head in our time.

  We approached them carefully, each step taken as though an explosion waited for us under our feet.

  “Vivica is losing her mind to the madness of Spirit.” This from the king. “She thinks she should be queen. This is why the in-breeding between families is forbidden. Too much power in one elemental is dangerous not only for the world, but for the elemental’s mind.”

  “Why don’t you just bed her to shut her up?” one of the others asked.

  The king snorted. “You know I tried that, and even gave her a child. But that isn’t enough. She wants to rule. She is all that is wrong with those who carry Spirit no matter the amount in their blood.” He rubbed a hand over his face.

  “Well, she’s gone now,” one of his brothers said. I wasn’t looking to see who spoke, though, I was far more interested in the king’s response. He looked down the length of the Rim to where Viv had stalked.

  “Somehow, I doubt we’ve seen the end of her. Which is why we need to be prepared. Help me, brothers. Let us build a seat of power that will give us a place of protection from whatever she brings.”

  They turned together toward the different saplings at their feet. The small trees began to sprout and grow, flowers and leaves bursting then falling off their limbs as they were forced through season after season at a rapid pace. The smell of green living things filled the air, the sweet call of spring blossoms, the harvest of autumn fruit, the bite of winter pine and the heat of a tree trunk and hot sap under the summer sun.

  “The start of the Spiral,” Raven breathed, and we both took a step forward. I could not speak for Raven, but the desire to see the beginning of the first home I’d ever known was strong and I wanted to stay. Between one step and the next, though, the image in front of us shifted and we were no longer in the Rim.