by David Wind
Stepping back, Sirod nodded to Neleh and start away, but Neleh stopped her with a hand on her arm. “My Lord,” she said to Nosaj.
Nosaj smiled at Neleh. He had liked her from the moment he’d met her. Although Neleh was older than she looked, she somehow reminded him of when Areenna was little. “What is it, Little One?”
“Areenna is safe…both she and Mikaal are safe. They cross the wastelands now, and go toward…the south.”
“Toward Llawnroc?” he asked.
Frowning, Neleh shook her head. “I am unfamiliar with the names.” She found a patch of earth without grass and, kneeling by it, sketched out a small map with her forefinger. Then she pointed to a spot that showed the badlands bordering the sea.
Frowning, Nosaj studied the crude map. “Why would they go there?”
“To secure the safety of Nevaeh,” Neleh stated, matter-of-factly.
Nosaj looked at the map again, and then at Neleh. He studied her pale eyes; yellow bordering on amber, then looked at Sirod. “Shortly before she died, my wife asked me to set aside a section of land, to hold it for an unnamed purpose. She said I would know its purpose when the time came. I did as she asked, and have kept it secure. I never understood my wife’s request until you arrived. This section of land is the one I have assigned to you. I will have our smiths meet with you and help your people build. Nevertheless, until the building is complete, you will need to stay in the tents, here. It will take several days for everything to begin.”
“It is more than we could ever ask. We thank you for your kindness.” Again, Neleh stopped her mother from leaving. Sirod looked at her. What is wrong?
Neleh shook her head…a strange feeling, one I do not know. Neleh frowned, because she knew it was more than just a feeling, something pulled at her, calling plaintively to her.
Before Nosaj could speak, Neleh bent and quickly drew another map. Looking up at Nosaj, she queried, “What is this place?”
“It is the forest before the Blue Desert. Why?”
“I feel a…something calls me there.”
Nosaj stared at her. The sun, slipping from behind a cloud, lit Neleh’s features in a soft melding of light and shadow; and, the king of Freemorn suddenly saw a resemblance to both his wife Inaria and his Areenna. There could be no mistaking the similarities of the small girl’s features to his own daughter.
Turning to Sirod, he saw the same. “How is this possible?”
“What? Sirod asked.
“You…you have similar features to Areenna and to Inaria, my wife.”
Sirod nods, “Such is true, My Lord. We are of the same lineage. Did not your wife, Inaria bear this?” she asked and leaned forward to expose the space between her breasts where a dark brown and circular birthmark showed. Within the birthmark were lighter lines forming the shape of a six-pointed star.
“It is the same as on the back of my wife’s neck, beneath her hair,” Nosaj whispered.
“And Areenna, too,” Neleh stated.
“You are related,” he says. “Now I understand why she asked this of me. Inaria knew you were coming.” He turned back to Neleh. “Can you tell me what it is you feel about the Blue Desert?”
Neleh took a breath. “I am not sure, it is something…perhaps someone who draws me.”
“How old are you?”
“I have seen fourteen years.”
“It is time for your training.” He turned to Sirod for confirmation.
She shook her head. “The time has passed.”
“Passed? How is that possible?”
“She has been called to the Island and returned. It is something else.”
Nosaj’s brows rose. “You have strong powers?”
“She is learning of them.”
Nosaj smiled then. “The Blue Forest calls you as it did to my Inaria and to Areenna as well. You must go, but not alone. Something awaits you there, something you must find.”
Nosaj glanced around the Great Lawn. He spotted Noslen, the head of Roth’s Six standing a short distance away. Aware that Roth hads tasked Noslen with the safety of ‘The People’, he motioned Noslen to him and asked for two of his men to accompany Neleh to the Blue Desert.
“It is not necessary,” Neleh interrupted.
Nosaj smiled. “I understand, yet I am King, and such is my decision.”
Neleh stared at him and then slowly reached out and took his hand securely within her own six-fingered hand. At the touching of skin, a snap echoed between them and a moment later, Neleh lowered her arm. “As you say, Highness.” Then the fourteen-year-old woman smiled. “There is much of you within Areenna. This is good.”
Neleh walked away with Noslen.
Watching them go, Nosaj and could not stop from smiling as he wondered which, the large warrior or the small woman-child, was the stronger of the two. “She is very…strong, eh?” he commented to Sirod, who also watched her daughter’s retreat.
“Not as strong yet as she will be. She has barely touched her powers. But she will.”
<><><>
Late on the fourth day after leaving the Landing, Areenna and Mikaal came upon a small village a half-day’s distance from the wastelands of Aldimor.
From the time they’d left the ruins, until today, they’d fallen into their old pattern of training. During the day, they spent hours looking inward, seeking, finding, and testing the gifts granted them by The Eight, and by the Staff itself. The increase in her ability with the blue light she had used at the ruins near the Island was only the beginning of the revelation of the powers.
Master Jalil’s statement that the Staff had strengthened their powers and abilities was proving true. The Staff had also given them new abilities, such as the ones Areenna used to capture and hold the three-legged being in the ruins and create the shield. They had found others, and were constantly testing them, but Mikaal was still most comfortable with those powers he had originally discovered within himself.
As Areenna started Hero around the village, a strange sensation caught Mikaal. He stopped them. “We can go into the wastelands tomorrow; we have not slept in a bed for four months. Let us see if there is an inn and perhaps a decent meal as well.”
“It could be dangerous.”
Mikaal gazed at her while he tried to understand the sensation skipping through him. Its pull was familiar, yet he was uncertain. “Yes,” he agreed. “But it could also be beneficial. We have not spoken to anyone in Aldimor, other than nodding in passing. Let us see how these people act. Are they free? Are they part of the coming darkness, taken by this new black sorceress? We should learn what we can before entering the wastelands.”
Closing his eyes, he cast his senses toward the village, seeking a touch of darkness. He found none. I sense no danger, he told her.
Areenna sought an argument against doing this, but could not find one. She pushed her senses to the village and discovered no feel of dark powers. Before saying anything, she asked Gaalrie to fly over the village.
The treygone, scouting ahead, circled back and then flew lower over the village in ever narrowing circles as Areenna watched through her aoutem’s eyes. The village was nothing more than a grouping of old, small buildings, perhaps thirty in all, with two larger buildings near its center. There was a square, as in most Nevaen villages, with a small green in the center.
From the eastern edge of the village, a narrow dirt road led to the edge of the land, and a wooden stairway led downward to the sea below, where two dozen or so freesh hunting boats docked or anchored close to shore.
Areenna closed her eyes for a brief moment and called Gaalrie back, and then she turned to Mikaal. I sense no dark forces there, either. All I sense is…you hold something back…
Mikaal half laugh, half snorted his response. “I should have known you would sense such. A forewarning, but different. I am unable to see it clearly, but I feel we need to be there, in this village.”
Without trying to understand, Areenna nodded. Then we shall do so.
No argument?
Areenna shook her head. “No,” but said nothing else as heat spread deep within the lower part of her abdomen, bringing forth a power she did not recognize. She closed herself from everything around her, concentrating deeply on what was happening.
A dozen seconds later her eyes snapped open. Before her was a swirling gray fog. Then, slowly, the fog thinned just enough for her to see a figure standing within it. Focusing on the misty figure, she pushed through the fog and saw…Jalil. How?
Jalil spoke no word: there were only his eyes glowing in the fog, and she realized it was not Jalil but a memory fragment. The heat in her belly grew stronger and with it was the familiar feel of Queen Layra’s gift of Truth Sensing. Somehow, it was stronger and different.
As soon as she recognized the ability, the fog disappeared. The village shimmered before her, and the wavering group of small buildings changed into an abandoned ruin of rotting wood and crumbling stone.
Join me! she called silently to Mikaal, who was with her in an instant. The village is an illusion.
Mikaal stared at the village within Areenna’s mind. How did this happen?
Look into yourself; call up your ability for truth.
Mikaal withdrew from her mind. When he did, the village was complete again. Seeing the change, he delved within himself and his power rose. The village shifted, wavered, and then became hidden by a fog. He focused on this ability, which he had never had to force, for it had always come when needed. This time he pushed himself toward the fog. The misty gray parted under his efforts and in the span of an indrawn breath, the ruins of the village appeared.
“It takes effort to use this ability in this manner,”
“Yes, but helpful. I sensed something wrong, as did you, but how could we know…”
“Before,” she said, looking into his deep gray eyes, “you said you sensed something, a pull to go there. I had sensed it too. Now I know what it was.”
He smiled. “And you will enlighten me?”
She laughed, the tension easing from her muscles at his smile. “It was a ‘calling’ spell. It is of the Dark. The village is a trap, to catch unwary wanderers and turn them into slaves of the Dark Ones.”
Would it work on us?
Areenna shook her head. “Perhaps for a minute or two, but it does not have the strength to hold us—not with our abilities.”
“Can we destroy it?”
“We could, but the moment we do, the black sorceress—Lessig—will know we are here.”
“Then we should move on, now, agreed?”
Agreed, she replied.
They guided the kraals to the south, where the badlands lay and, as the sun passed the mid-way point between horizon and the sky overhead, they stopped.
Swamp, stumpy bent trees, and mist-bound bogs greeted them, stretching out as far as they could see in any direction.
Areenna turned to Mikaal. “Tell me we took the wrong direction. Tell me we are not going in there.”
Mikaal drew in a deep breath. “I would never lie to you.”
CHAPTER 11
AREENNA SENT AN asking to the giant treygone. The bird dipped lower, banked sharply, and headed over the badlands. Mikaal, joined with Areenna, studied the land spread out below.
Swamps and bogs stretched for miles. The grassy knolls dotting the badlands were as sparse as were trees, which there were but few. As the treygone continued her flight, Mikaal noted everything Gaalrie saw.
When Gaalrie returned to circle above them, Mikaal had worked out the pathways. Two miles ahead was a grassy knoll he hoped was large enough and dry enough to make camp. That would be today’s destination. We camp here. He sent a mind picture as well.
Entering the swamp, Mikaal zigzagged through the marsh, keeping to the dry or shallowest areas. Green and yellow striped aligoras nestled in the grasses on the edges of the water channels, or floated in the water with only their snouts and eyes visible. Areenna sensed no aggression. At one point, a large aligora turned its black eyes on them and they stopped in their tracks.
It raised its head and flicked its tail sideways. The scaled fourteen-foot-long, carnivorous terror had triple rows of saw-band teeth and jaws two and a half feet long. An aligora’s six legs and webbed feet could propel it at incredible speeds.
They waited for a half-minute, Areenna’s ability flaring in her abdomen, until the scaled monster laid its head back on the grass. Then they moved on, ever wary of what moved in the swamp.
There were snucks aplenty, small and large, poisonous and non-poisonous, but they too ignored the two huge kraals and their riders. They reached the knoll Mikaal had selected for their campsite, as the sun kissed the horizon. The knoll was a good three feet above the wet, spread out in an uneven semicircle a hundred feet across at its widest point, and as dry as any patch of ground could be within the swamp.
Although smallish, it would hold them and the kraals.
<><><>
The Blue Desert was the opposite of where she’d been born. When she and Noslen first arrived in the forest, her mouth had dropped open at the wonder of this place, so filled with trees and animal life that it astounded her.
The pull had grown stronger the moment they’d entered the forest. “Noslen, I understand not why they call this a desert. I learned a desert is barren of trees and bushes. What is this forest?”
Noslen studied her. From the moment he first saw Neleh, battling in the Frozen Mountains, she fascinated the captain of Roth’s Sixes. Although a young girl just entering her formative years, he found her to be so much older than those years and, to add even more to the unusual mix, she was already a woman of great power.
“The wastelands are made of three sections,” he began. “First we have this band of forest, which is, perhaps, three miles deep and stretches in a long arc from Fainhall to Llawnroc, but originally the lands belonged to Freemorn.”
“When Roth accepted the duty of High King, he decreed all lands between domains to be open and free and that no domain shall rule or fight over it. And while the Blue Desert was, by rights, Freemorn’s property, King Nosaj followed Roth’s decree.” He paused to smile at her.
“So, the forest itself curves from Fainhall to Llawnroc, and is filled with animals of every sort. There are several water sources within the forest, and there are exiles as well, although most exiles live deeper in the wastelands, nearer the badlands.”
“The wastelands come after the forest and extend to the sea. That is the real desert, the sand is thick and rocky, and for some unknown reason, at dusk, when the sun is at the horizon, a bluish cast rises from the surface of the sand. That section of the desert takes at least two, and usually three days to cross before you reach the badlands…we go not there!”
Neleh heard the steel in his voice and nodded. “I understand.” Then she urged her kraal into the forest.
Neleh’s eyes never stopped moving when they entered the forest, still following the strange pull; the deeper they rode, the stronger the pull. After a half hour of riding, they entered a grove–like area. Two giant gazebow trees stood before them like an entry arch, their massive branches and leaves forming a solid curving roof under which Neleh and Noslen rode. The trees led to a grassy area with low bushes and tall trees spread out in a not-quite-circular pattern.
She moved forward again, and the pull grew sharper. A pain lanced through her head. Grabbing her head between her hands, she pressed tightly; the pain eased, but remained. Carefully, Neleh inched her senses forward, following the pull and the pain.
“My Lady,” Noslen called, concern thick in his voice.
“There!” she said to Noslen and kicked the kraal’s flanks. Stopping suddenly, she whirled to fix Noslen with a piecing gaze. “You cannot go further. Wait here.” Before he could respond, she started forward, taking three steps before a flash of insight made her draw back on the reins. She looked over her shoulder to Noslen. “No matter what happens, no matter what you see, do nothing.”
> “My Lady, I…”
“Noslen, whatever this is, it is for me only. You must trust I know what I do.”
The soldier stared into the pale eyes of the girl and slowly nodded. “I will do my best to stay back, My Lady.”
Neleh frowned at the second use of the title, but said nothing as she prodded the kraal forward. When she reached the center of the grove, the sensation grew sharper and within it, came more pain.
She crossed the remaining open area of the grove and, as she reached an area that dipped down, her kraal stopped dead and began trembling violently. Not twenty feet ahead, a large female rantor stood over a small cub. This female rantor was tall and broad, its tawny coat dotted with patches of pale blue. Its eyes, locked on Neleh’s, were a deep shade of blue.
Neleh held the rantor’s gaze while she pushed her senses to the giant cat, and discovered it was the rantor who had been calling her. The pain, she suddenly understood, was not the rantor’s but the cub’s.
Deep within her, the heat of her abilities erupted and flowed through her until she was pulsing in tune with the call of the female, and knew exactly what to do.
Dismounting, she dropped the reins of the kraal, giving it a push to return to Noslen. She walked toward the rantor and the cub. As she moved closer, the mother’s blue eyes followed her every step, yet, Neleh sensed neither aggression nor fear from the rantor, only the same anguished call that had brought her here. She was half the distance to the cub when she saw the cub’s unnaturally twisted left front leg, a white shard of bone sticking out from its skin.
Neleh looked into the mother rantor’s eyes and sent an asking. The response was quick and open, and Neleh started forward. She froze an instant later when a loud roar echoed through the trees and a male rantor raced forward. Almost twice the size of the female, he stopped next to his mate and stared at Neleh. He gave vent to another blasting roar, and three more females and half a dozen cubs emerged from the thicker forest behind him.
Although she was only familiar with the few rantors she’d met in the Frozen Mountains—the aoutems of women of power—she knew how deadly fierce these huge creatures were.
