by D. H. Dunn
“Here they come!” Nima said, pointing to two shadows running up to them from the gully. The moonlight soon revealed them to be Trillip and Merin, both out of breath but thankfully unhurt. Drew released a sigh of relief he had been holding for hours.
“Thank God,” he said, standing just in time to have them both collapse at his feet.
Nima vanished into the dark, returning only seconds later with water canteens for each of them. Both accepted the drinks without speaking, Merin draining hers in what seemed like one gulp.
“Nalam Wast?” Drew asked, not caring which one of them answered. From his vantage, the city had seemed empty.
“Abandoned,” Trillip replied between sips. “Not a soul in sight, nor any sign of where they went.”
“No struggle? No signs of an army?” Nima asked. Beside her, Lhamu watched the exchange with her eyes wide, her gaze shifting to whomever spoke.
“None,” Merin said. “So, we decided. . ..” She paused, taking another deep breath. “We decided to see if we could see the bridge - the bridge to Rogek Shad. It is always manned.”
“There is a grain silo toward the west side of the city,” Trillip explained. “It took some doing, but Merin and I were able to climb to the top and get a far-off view of the bridge and Rogek Shad. That is when we saw it.”
“Saw what?” Drew asked.
“We have a problem, Drew. We saw people - too many people,” Merin replied. “All of them are in Rogek Shad, the people of both cities. The bridge, the outskirts, all the entry points we could see, they were all guarded.”
“The Line has seized control of the city,” Trillip said. “We could see their insignia, as well as their weapons.”
“Garantika wanted reunification.” Drew felt adrenaline already building inside him. “I guess he decided to force it.”
Merin tossed the canteen aside, standing. “Drew, my family. Trillip’s family. Everyone we care about is there, under control of that monster. I know this isn’t the Dragons but-”
“Then we can’t afford to wait for Upala and Kater. We have a job to do, so let’s start thinking about how the six of us can take back Rogek Shad.
Chapter 13
Upala trudged up the last snow hill leading to the entrance to Kater’s fortress. Off to her right she could see the mangled wreckage of the digcart she and the others had crashed at this very site just a few days earlier. It seemed much longer ago than that.
She felt the thinner air of the higher altitudes of Ish Pumori where her brother had chosen to make his fortress so many years ago. Farther from the dampening effect of the world’s crust, her abilities grew stronger even as the thin air sapped her strength. She hoped that was not why her brother had retreated here, just for another pointless attack against her.
There were bigger things at stake here than their personal rivalry. She needed to find a way to make Kater see that. Taking the last few steps toward the carved-stone entrance, she prepared herself for anything.
The entry opened into the circular chamber she recalled from the previous visit, the walls adorned with tapestries, minus the one Merin had ripped and left on the floor. Kater stood in the center of the room, but rather than being ready to battle, he smiled, arms open wide.
“It is about time you got here,” he said. “I thought maybe you had given up and returned back to Adley. Now that we are together, I can show you how I have the answer to all our problems. All around you, you can see the progress of my research, the path I took that will lead us to victory.”
She sighed. At least he was not fighting her. He gestured to the tapestry closest to the door, made of fading, red cloth. It showed a man who was clearly Kater, doing battle with a Dragon while wielding a magical, glowing sword. The edges were frayed, and several holes had developed in the material.
“Here, this is the first artwork I had created, to inspire me. I was, I admit, more foolish in my thoughts. By depicting myself against the Weight, I thought I could emulate the Hero. But as I learned, the Hero did not defeat the Dragons but rather negotiated them into the Vaults.”
“Yes,” Upala said, ”I discovered this as well, though I never knew how they accomplished it.” She walked along the curve of the wall and examined Kater’s tapestries. As he’d stated, the images displayed began to move away from Kater defeating Dragons, shifting to Dragons bowing down to him.
“It hardly matters. I began to realize, whatever leverage the Hero had over the Dragons, we would be unlikely to replicate it.”
Upala reached the last and newest tapestry, Kater clad in a brilliant helm pointing forward, several Dragons rushing at his target.
“Why defeat them?” he asked with a grin, “When you could control them?”
Control them? How? Control them to do what?
She gaped back at her brother as he continued grinning. She wondered how long he had waited to tell her this insane plan.
“Kater, that is impossible. You cannot control the Dragons!”
“Why? Because the great Hero could not do it? Because the best our hero could manage was a negotiation?”
Upala chewed the inside of her lip as she watched Kater’s eyes light up. This was finally starting to make sense, if she applied her brother’s twisted logic to the situation. All this time she had thought that Kater looked up to Orami Feram, wanted to emulate him.
Or them, she reminded herself. Perhaps that was wrong, perhaps his goal was to surpass them.
“Assuming it would be possible-”
“It is possible!” Kater shouted, pointing at two of the tapestries. “The Thread and the Voice! They make it possible!”
He ran over to the artwork that depicted the thin, twisted form of the Thread, the body of an old man running with the energy and enthusiasm of a teen.
“The Thread can link to all the other Dragons, that is its special gift.” He stopped, pointing to his temple. “This, Upala, this is where you have to use your mind. Orami Feram saw only obstacles, not tools! The Thread can connect them all and The Voice-” he ran down to another tapestry a few steps away. “The Voice can control others with its speech. Combine those two abilities, and you could control them, Upala! The Fears would obey us, do our bidding! After all the history of the Dragons using the Manad Vhan, the tool would become the hand!”
She turned away from the artwork, storming back at her brother.
“For what? To what end? What would you do with control of the Dragons, Kater? Why would that help us?”
His eyes narrowed, the wildness leaving them for a moment. He reached out, took her hands in his.
She looked down at his wrinkled, spotted skin, enfolding against her own smooth hands.
“The day our parents were killed, what do you remember sister?”
A claw streaked across her vision, a reptilian cry of anger followed by another scream. Her mother’s. Blood rained down upon her.
“Not. . . not much.” She shivered, a cold sensation running through her at the memory. “Blood. And running. I try sometimes to remember the details, but it just comes through as images. Nothing focused.”
Kater nodded. “You were younger than I. For me, the memory is a painting I can study. Exquisite in its detail. How easily the beast tore through father’s shield, laughed off his feeble flames. How useless our parent’s Manad Vhan abilities were against the claws and teeth. The rage and anger. All they succeeded in was dying.”
“They bought us time to run. You ran, Kater. You took me with you and saved me.”
“But it lives, Sister. The Fifteenth Fear lives somewhere. It was none of the Fourteen entombed by Orami Feram. Its existence has forced you and I to live our lives with an ear to the door, an eye to the shadow. No more, though. After this, there will be none who can threaten me. Dragon, Manad Vhan, Rakhum. Sessgrenimath himself would do to fear me once I had a flight of Fears at my command!”
“You are insane.” She pulled her hands out of his, backing away. All these years, this is what you have been w
orking on?
“Am I?” he asked, grinning. “Maybe. I guess I would be the last to know.”
She took another step back, her mind struggling to process all this. What he had done to the Rakhum for centuries was horrifying enough, yet he was considering the actual mental domination of another being.
Not just any being, she reminded herself. Not just one Dragon, but all of them!
He seemed gleeful to finally be able to reveal this to her, all of his previous hostility vanished from his face and voice. Yet the danger was still there, Upala growing more worried than ever.
“How? How could you accomplish this?”
“I will show you. I have waited so long to show you!”
Kater grabbed her hand again, pulling her toward the next room, his excitement shaking through him. The tapestries blowing lightly against the stone as they passed into the next chamber. Upala smelling the dead guards before she saw them.
She had forgotten about Kater’s dead men, each of them staring out with slit throats as he ran past them toward a shadowed corner in the room. Kater stopped ahead of her suddenly, dropping her hand like it was dead. He stared straight in front of him at an alcove in the stone wall.
The lighting was so poor it took Upala a moment to realize what he was staring at. There was an opening carved into the alcove, clearly meant to hold an item. But the space was empty.
“Where is it?” he cried.
Upala had only a second to react to the sudden heat that filled the space before fire erupted from Kater’s hands.
She ducked back into the other room as he screamed, “Where is the Helm?”
Drew peeked out of the window of the small dwelling in Nalam Wast. Like the city itself, the home was abandoned, and it looked like it had been left in a hurry. Food still sat on the table, chairs still pulled out. He could see clothing still in a washbasin in the corner, a child’s doll on the floor like a forgotten sentinel.
He knelt in front of the sill of the stone window, Merin on one side of him and Trillip on the other. Positioned close to the bridge separating the two cities, the house had an excellent view of Rogek Shad. It was hard to see in the night, but they were fortunate to have a full moon and a cloudless sky. It was good enough for them to see the situation was bad.
Not the bad Drew had expected though. He had thought he would see legions of Line troops with an iron grip on the city, Garantika laughing like a movie villain while they all chanted that chant they were so fond of.
Instead, there were masses of people milling about, Drew unable to tell which ones were from Nalam Wast and which from Rogek Shad. To Drew, it had the looks of a food line, the crowd forming a marginal queue into one of the large yurts near the bridge. Surrounding the crowd and walking their perimeter were soldiers of the Line, their distinctive triangle symbols occasionally visible.
Some of the soldiers were armed with what looked like short swords, but most were not. They just carried wooden clubs, Drew seeing more than one simply wielding large tree branches. The crowd allowed themselves to be managed, but Drew saw more than one Rakhum push a guard back when pushed, and even from this distance they could hear the murmuring from the people.
“The Line does not have a good hold on this situation,” Merin whispered.
“No,” Drew said, nodding. “I don’t like this. I can see this going bad pretty quickly. These people don’t want to be detained like this, and I’m not sure these Line people prepared for this fight. Fighting Rakhum, not Manad Vhan. Someone is going to panic and make a mistake.”
“I do not understand, what was the Line’s plan anyway?” Merin voice raised for a moment, then she quieted herself.
Drew reminded himself that Arix and Lam were over there. He was sure she was tempted to dive out the window and go after them.
“I suspect Garantika overestimated the desire for reunification,” Trillip said. “He may have wanted to accelerate combining the communities so that they could evacuate before the Dragon’s attacked, lest they be caught in the cross fire.”
“That makes sense,” Drew said. “Wanting to get everyone out, I mean. Why would the Rakhum resist reunifying though? I thought that was what you all wanted.”
“The concept, yes.” Trillip pointed at the bridge. “We would talk about crossing that bridge all the time. But the reality is more complicated. Without the Manad Vhan, what is the governmental structure? Rogek Shad has far more food than Nalam Wast, but Nalam Wast has superior shelter and industry.”
“I also suspect Upala has inspired them,” Merin said. “She swore to the people of Rogek Shad she would return their families, and she did accomplish that. The people of both cities saw a Manad Vhan sacrifice her freedom to secure the safety of Rakhum, secure them from capture by the Line. An organization of other Rakhum!”
Trillip nodded.
“Not to mention, thus far the Line has only killed fellow Rakhum.”
“Okay, that tracks.” Drew felt a brief surge of pride in Upala. Maybe she had won a few hearts and minds of her own. For a moment, he allowed his worry for her to push other thoughts aside. He didn’t like her being off with Kater, even if he knew she could defend herself. She still cared for her brother in some twisted way, which might give the old man an opening.
“Well,” Drew said. “We’re going to have to do something. This is unstable, someone is going to get hurt.”
“Yet if we attack, will not more people be hurt?” Merin scanned the bridge and the nervous Line soldiers walking its length.
Drew looked at the men and women of the Line again through the shadows. The way they looked over their shoulders, how none of them would stay alone for more than a second. They were afraid of the crowd, they were just afraid of Garantika more. Either of his anger, or of letting down the legacy of the Line.
“Look at those guys, they don’t want to be there. This is all on Garantika. We get him, we’ll get control back.”
“I doubt the Line soldiers, nervous or not, are going to let us reach their commander without hurting them.”
“No, you’re right about that, Trillip,” Drew peered into the darkness of Rogek Shad. So many questions, so many variables he couldn’t confirm. He’d have to go with his gut. “That’s why we make Garantika come to us.”
“What do you propose Drew?”
Merin looked in his eyes, and he wondered if she had already guessed his plan. If Upala were there, she’d likely try to stop him. Nima would be enough of a problem.
“Let’s give him what he wants. A Manad Vhan, ready to surrender to the Line.”
Chapter 14
Upala realized she might have to leave without him.
She did not want to face Merin, who had sacrificed so much to bring Kater back, but her brother was simply not engaging with her. There was still information they desperately needed about the Dragons and the weapon Tanira used trapped inside his head. Following his fiery rage on the discovery that his helm had been stolen he had slumped against the wall, refusing every attempt she made to bring him out of it.
She watched him as he sat, head down, looking no more alive than the dead guards Tanira had left strewn in the room. Strands of his gray hair hung in his face, their movement her only evidence of his breathing. He looked more than old to Upala, he looked defeated.
She took a deep breath. She needed to try one more time. Drew and Merin were counting on her, as were the people of Rogek Shad.
“Kater, I know you are humiliated. It was a long deception by the Line, one that we both missed. Yet despite their attempts to trap us in the Under, we are still here. We still have an opportunity to defeat them.”
He sat there, unmoving. She may as well have been talking to the stone.
“Maybe Tanira does not know how to activate the Helm,” she took a step closer, hating the pleading tone her voice was gaining. “Maybe she will fail in using it. It could be she may not even know how to open the Vaults.”
These were faint hopes, and Upala knew it
. The Line would not have spent all of this time setting up their intricate plan if they did not have the details worked out. Kater had reasoned this out too, she supposed. Every contingency thought of, she and her brother had both walked blindly into their machinations, outmaneuvered by an enemy neither of them realized was there.
The frustration rose in her as she turned to leave. Without Kater, a difficult task could become impossible. While she had a stronger idea of how Tanira planned to use the Dragons to exterminate the Manad Vhan, knowing so little about the workings of the helm left them in a weak position. The people of Rogek Shad and Nalam Wast would suffer further due to her brother’s ego and vanity.
She stopped at the archway leaving the room. The smell of the corpses mixed perfectly with the ashes circling her heart.
“After all of this, you know what the most disappointing thing about you is, Brother?”
One hand on the stone, she looked over her shoulder at the man who had been opposing her for centuries. “You were right. You miserable bastard, all these years you have been right. I was the selfish one, I looked for a way to run and hide from this danger. I was willing to walk away from all these people, just to save myself.”
Her words echoed into the darkness, heat from her shame rising to her face.
“But you, Kater, you wanted to fight. Even if I think your plan is madness, even if you were only doing it to soothe your ego and need to play the hero. You were going to fight, and fight Dragons. Dragons, Kater!”
She thought she saw a slight tremor in her brother, a faint movement of his shoulders. She trembled herself.
“But now you will hide here because you were beat by a quicklife. A Rakhum! Now I am the one who will run toward the danger instead of away. I will fight and I will die, while you stay here and cower.”
After all these centuries, her fear of him now blew away like snow in the wind. Finally, she was about to do what was right, with or without him.
“Should any survive, they will remember me. They will talk of my brave charge into battle against a fearsome foe. They will speak of my bravery, my valor.”
