by Terah Edun
“Of course I am,” she replied quietly.
“Then why are you doing this?” He couldn't keep the rising level of anguish out of his voice.
“Because I know my place in the realm,” she said, “and it's by your side to lighten your burden whenever I can, your imperial highness. And that includes putting myself in peril if it means allowing you to accomplish what needs to be done.”
Sebastian swallowed harshly and something changed in his eyes. Like a subtle light that grew brighter.
Stiffening his shoulders, he stepped back to stand behind her.
Formally he said, “Very well, Lady Weathervane. Let us proceed. Do your very worst.”
Ciardis reached back and clasped him on the shoulder. “I always do.”
Terris let out a small laugh at that.
Sebastian shook his head and chuckled to himself. “You always seem to win no matter the cause.”
Ciardis let a sweet smile dip into her voice as she turned back around. She loved it when she was right. “So glad you agree.”
11
Ciardis took a deep, bracing breath, stepped forward, and placed her hands palms forward onto the curiously flat stone.
She didn't have to grip anything because the wall was smooth and unmarked. Unlike the jagged walls of crystal formations that surrounded them, this one had no imperfections.
Which made it all the more eerie when it joined its brethren and started to glow.
Beneath her splayed hands, red and purple lights began to converge in swirling eddies, like the kind a fish would make as it swam within the confines of a small pond.
She closed her eyes briefly and held her breath, almost as if she was jumping into a body of water instead of opening her mind to the land around them.
In more ways than one, it felt like much the same thing.
Just as the waters of a strong lake could drown her in its depths, she knew she could link with the consciousness of the land around them and never emerge again.
Still, she squared her shoulders, opened her eyes, and let loose her magical gift.
She sent it questing, without destination or purpose. Merely infusing it with a welcoming light, a beacon to the awareness that resided in the land that she was here and that she wanted to…commune.
Before long, the land's consciousness met her head-on.
It had the same enthusiasm as before as the power enveloped her in a cocoon of its own making.
No, not enthusiasm, Ciardis thought as she gingerly opened her mind to the emotional feelings that came with the awareness, it's something else.
As soon as she did, it bombarded her with thoughts and feelings. Feelings she couldn't decipher one from the other. It was like waves of color that crested overhead and hit her again and again without cessation.
One thought would come and another would go. It all came so fast that she couldn't shield against it or stop it. The colors began to meld together and she began to lose what control she had on her own magic.
She could feel herself being forced back into her own consciousness.
It wasn't a deliberate push; the land may not have even been aware that it was hurting her.
But hurting her it was, and she had to do something about it.
Frustrated beyond belief, Ciardis called up her magic in a golden, effervescent wave. She had no other way of getting its attention.
She put all her thoughts and emotions into the wave. Her pain. Her strength. Her confusion. Her heartache. Her hope.
All in one tidal wave designed to get its attention.
Before it could send more colors and break her tenuous hold on whatever consciousness she had left, she sent that golden wave out from herself in her own wave.
And the land paused.
It sent no more colors.
It waited.
Ciardis took a breath and exhaled. It worked.
The land came back, but this time it wasn't in a tidal wave of colors. It was a thin stream. One that she could decipher. One whose thoughts and feelings she could almost see.
She reached out with her magic, wishing that this union of minds between herself and the land had been as easy as the one facilitated by the prince heir, but knowing that her way was different.
Had to be different. Because she wasn't Sebastian and he wasn't her.
What was it that Sebastian said? Ciardis mused with a weary laugh. Just because it looks easy doesn't mean it is?
She took no more time amusing herself with her thoughts; instead she reined in her golden wave and peeled off a single rope of gold.
Gently, slowly, she lowered her golden rope to the thin stream of the land's own consciousness.
She didn't bother trying to meld her own thoughts with the land.
She had the feeling that it wouldn't work, and she trusted her instincts.
Besides, it sounded like a sure way to go mad after what she had just experienced alone in the land's consciousness.
Instead she twirled her rope around the land's stream until they braided together like a fisherman's rope.
Softly she felt the land's pulse. She knew that it was restraining itself. Holding its enthusiasm in place.
And for that she was grateful.
She tried to exhibit that gratitude through her own mage power. Letting this one emotion above all pulse out from her thin rope like a beacon of light.
Apparently it felt her gratitude and it somewhat understood.
Instead of returning to the waves of emotion from before, it settled into one range of emotions at a time.
First it showed her surprise.
Then it showed her confusion.
She saw images along with those thoughts. Images of her barrier slamming forth with the surprise. Images of a glowing man dissipating with its confusion.
It was like drawing pictograms with a child, and she was fairly sure she understood what it meant.
It was sorry it had hurt her and it wanted Sebastian.
She sent waves of comfort to the land and tried to open a dialogue.
Ciardis concentrated hard.
This would be the most difficult part.
She imagined several forms hovering together, and above them a flat object in the air.
She pushed the forms through the flat object and sent the land's consciousness her hope.
It was as simple a request as she could make, and she hoped it knew what she wanted.
Apparently it did, because the image it sent to her mind came with mage auras. The auras that matched her friends and travel companions.
Yes, that's it, she shouted in excitement.
The land's curiosity grew.
It asked her, in its most basic sense, Why?
For a moment Ciardis herself was confused, then she understood what it meant.
Why did they want to go to the surface?
Why not stay within the land?
Because, she said to herself, we must.
In her mind there was a strong emotional push. Determination.
The land waited. It mused.
She didn't think it debated. Merely that it internalized her request.
For a moment, she feared that it might not consent to her inquiry. That she would have to return to the group a failure and hope that Sebastian could persuade it with his unique tie to the land.
But it didn't make her doubt herself for very long.
It sent her a wave of acceptance and then let her go.
She was adrift, as if she had never built the braid tying them together, and then she was conscious.
She stumbled back unsteadily.
More than one pair of waiting arms caught her dizzy form and held her up as she tried to regain her stance.
“Did it work?” she said in a slurred voice.
Ciardis frowned. What's wrong with me?
Sebastian changed his grip from her shoulder to her waist, bracing her weight with his own.
It accepted your request, he said.
&nbs
p; Then why are we still in a tunnel? she thought back with a snap.
We won't be for very long, he said. Get ready—the initial contact was only a quarter of the magic it will drain from you to get us to the surface.
Then the tunnels around them began to quiver and Ciardis felt herself shooting up.
She had barely opened her mouth with a horrified scream at the stalactite-like crystals that were about to impale her, impale them all, before she passed through them and emerged on the other side of the earth whole.
No bloody tears in her side.
No holes in her chest.
Just a heart beating too fast and a magical gift that felt like she should have been dead.
She didn't even have the strength to stand on her own two feet.
It had been a long time since she had been completely drained down to her reserves, and she didn't like the feeling at all.
“Everyone all right?” she heard Christian ask in a strong tone.
“Yes,” came the chorus of assent.
Ciardis didn't bother responding.
Instead she forced herself to stand on her own unsteady feet. It was more a wobble really but Ciardis wasn’t thinking of her tired body. She was looking up and up and up with a dumbfounded gaze.
Her mouth was agape. She knew that.
She couldn't help it.
They stood in front of the gates of Kifar, although gates was far too small a word.
The city walls stretched to the left and right as far as her eyes could see.
Beautiful white stone with perfectly placed lines of mortar.
The walls soared so far into the sky that she couldn't see their top. Not standing five feet away from the wall itself, as she was.
She said in a shocked voice, “Do you all see this?”
“Do you?” said the soldier Samuel in much different tone.
His voice didn't hold awe. It was instead horror.
Ciardis frowned.
“Of course. Whatever do you mean?” she said as her eyes searched the front of the walls for some semblance of an entrance.
There didn't seem to be a gate to open. Or a drawbridge to lower. Or an even a human-sized door to knock on.
It was just flat stone.
Ciardis said briskly, “Sebastian, I don't mean to burst your bubble, but are you sure we're in the right place?”
Sebastian didn't say a word. His hand had left her waist, but she knew he was still nearby.
She continued, oblivious, “I mean, I know this is Kifar. But could we have been deposited on the wrong side of the citadel where no entrance lies? Could the land have misunderstood me?”
“I don't think it misunderstood you, Ciardis,” Sebastian said in a tight voice.
“How do you know?” Ciardis said as she looked left and right and took a couple steps back in order to get some perspective.
She kept going. Five steps. Eight steps. Twelve steps. No matter how far she walked, it was impossible to see anything but an unbroken stone wall in front of her.
Though she did see that further west and east of them, the wall began to angle until it came to a sharp edge and turned from her sight.
She was sure that its design ensured that, even on those edges, no entrance would appear.
She kept taking steps back to be sure.
“Ciardis, I wouldn't,” said Terris in a weird tone.
Ciardis shot her a look, and as she was passing her friend turned in the opposite direction.
“This is no time to give up,” she admonished Terris. “It's a wall. It's not insurmountable. We'll find a way in.”
“She wasn't talking about the wall,” the shaman said woodenly as she barged up to Ciardis, took her by the shoulders, and brusquely turned her around.
“See, Weathervane?” the shaman said. “See what your land has done?”
Ciardis felt her stomach dip as she unwittingly moved into place. She lost her perspective on the city of Kifar.
Instead her gaze took in a whole other level of wrong.
Ciardis had thought what she had imagined in the tunnels was horrific.
It turned out that even her imagination had done it no justice.
The desert sands stretched a few miles south of her. Sand dune after sand dune and endless expanse until it stopped abruptly at the cliff face that they had traversed to enter the valley and thread the eye between the two encampments.
Her eyes swept from western vista to east, trying to process what she was seeing. And what she was not seeing.
It was almost unfathomable.
She waited for her eyes to adjust, to tell her she was wrong. But as the day dawned and the sun shot its brilliant rays down from its position east of where they all stood, she could not deny what she saw in broad daylight.
Pools of midnight black and bright red dotted the landscape for as far as she could see.
Some congealed together into vast wastelands; others stood serene and alone, as perfectly placed as if they were in a garden back home in Sandrin.
She swallowed harshly and stammered, “But I thought… I thought. Rachael. Thanar.”
She couldn't say anything more. She wasn't accusing them of anything. She was asking for their help. Wanting their clarification.
Thanar stepped forward to her other side while the shaman squeezed her left shoulder and stepped away.
“We didn't do this,” the daemoni prince insisted. “Not all of it.”
“But—” Ciardis said weakly.
Sebastian stepped in take the shaman's place on Ciardis's left.
“They called in the acid rain,” Sebastian said in a low voice. “But we invoked the land's help.”
Ciardis protested, “It was only supposed to attack a few dozen men. For us to get away. For Christian to get to us.”
Thanar said from her right, “I may not have been connected to the land as you and Sebastian were, but I felt its craving.”
“It hungered,” Sebastian said flatly. “And it saw a chance. It took the little cloud that Thanar and the shaman grew and made it its own.”
“Its own what?” Ciardis said hollowly as her eyes swept from left to right in disbelief.
“Its own death storm,” Thanar said as he shrugged and turned away from the scene of carnage before them.
Some of the red and black liquid oozed close enough to touch Ciardis's booted foot.
Then the land in front of her toe swallowed it as if it hadn't even been there.
“And it's still feeding off it,” Sebastian said with weary anger. “Let's leave it to it.”
There was nothing she could say to that. Nothing she could protest. She had, in effect, given the storm its power.
Trying to deny it would have been futile.
So with a shiver down her back, Ciardis turned away from the vision of over five thousand brigands and mercenaries who now lay in a liquefied state on the desert floor.
A new Valley of Death.
12
Ciardis felt discontent rise in her belly, but she didn't say anything.
She couldn't say anything.
If she did open her mouth, she wasn't sure what would come out.
A castigation?
A reprimand?
A curse?
It all seemed appropriate, and yet at the same time none of it did.
This time she couldn't solely blame Thanar. She had willingly gone with the plan.
She had put forth her gifts alongside Thanar, Sebastian, and Rachael, not in an effort to do some good but in an effort to survive.
And survive she had. At the expense of thousands of other souls.
Souls that you can't help now, she whispered in her mind, resisting the effort to say a prayer in the name of the gods.
She wasn't sure if the gods would answer her. She wasn't sure if they would flay her alive for the presumption that she, of all people, had the right to speak to them. Because everywhere she went, death and destruction seemed to follow. No true follower of the god
s impacted the community they committed to so atrociously, except her.
Ciardis sucked in a sharp breath and secretly wiped a solitary tear from the edge of her eye.
She would not cry.
She would not drop to her knees.
She would not give in.
They had work to do and she would get it done. Whatever the cost.
Looking over at Sebastian, she said in a steady voice, “What next?”
Ciardis was proud that not a single quiver introduced itself into her tone. She may have been crumbling on the inside, but she would be damned if she showed it on the outside.
Sebastian gave her a hard look as he searched her eyes.
Whatever he found must have been enough, because he pursed his lips and nodded at her before turning with arms crossed to review the city walls that stood like a fortress before them. It is a fortress, Ciardis decided privately as she looked it over once more with a practiced eye. She saw no entry points high up or down below. Nothing suggested a way in or out of the city that stood in the midst of a deserted land.
Ciardis turned to Thanar and asked hesitantly, “Can you give us an aerial analysis?”
He looked down at her with a raised eyebrow.
“I mean, can you fly up and see if there's a gate visible in the distance, one we can't see?” she said slowly.
“Maybe take a look inside the city itself while you're up there,” said Christian with a yawn as he stretched his arms above his head.
Ciardis let out a small and tired yawn herself. It was contagious as it spread through their group.
It makes sense, Ciardis thought. We haven't slept for half a day.
Actually it's been over twenty-four hours, she heard Sebastian say in her head.
He didn't turn around, but she sent a thrum of surprise through the emotional link.
As soon as she did, she felt sick. She'd almost never deliberately sent Sebastian or Thanar feelings before.
Must be a bad habit I picked up from the land, she thought as she rubbed her neck in irritation.
She decided it would be better to have this conversation aloud. “What do you mean it's been twenty-four hours?”
With the sun rising in the east, Sebastian's face was in stark profile.
“I mean, we were underground for far longer than you think,” he said. “The time it took for the land to increase the death storm to its maximum potential and dissolve its prey in a rain of acid was almost a full day.”
