by David Wind
Suddenly, Neleh felt herself attacked by emanations from the male. No, she realized, not her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Noslen riding forward, an arrow notched in his bow. She did two things at the same time: she raised her hand, her palm toward Noslen; and, stepped between him and the male rantor.
The soldier stopped, but did not lower his weapon.
Turning back to the rantors, Neleh dropped her arms to her sides and held her palms toward the animals. Slowly and carefully, she started forward; the heat in her belly pulsed heavily, sending her blood rushing through her body in pounding waves.
The male tensed, a low warning growl came from deep in his throat and grew stronger. Black and gray, its muscles trembling with rage, the rantor took a step toward Neleh.
Before it could take a second step, the female spun and swiped the male with a large paw, knocking it backwards despite its larger size. Then the female jumped atop the male, pinning it to the ground. She held him there for several breaths before stepping back and, rising slowly to her full height, she let loose a screaming roar at the male.
The male held still, and the female turned her head to Neleh, who felt the rantor’s plea so deeply she was staggered. A second later, she went to the cub and knelt beside it. Bending low, she put her hand on the cub’s head and gently stroked him while inspecting his broken leg with her other hand.
The instant she touched the cub, a wave of immense warmth washed through her body, bringing with it the most intimate sensations she had ever experienced. Strangely, she felt the cub’s heartbeat within her own chest.
A moment later, her vision cleared and she looked at the broken leg. It was a clean break; the shard of bone sticking through the skin showed it had not been shattered. She bent closer to the cub, stroked its head again, and closed her eyes. When she did, the world faded from existence.
She called forth the healing power Areenna had gifted her with and, without touching the cub’s leg, sent the potent energy into the limb. After several minutes, she put her hands on the cub’s leg. It held still, but Neleh sensed the pain, even though it had not moved.
Using both hands, she grasped the two sections of the broken limb and quicker than the eyes could follow, pulled them back and then snapped them forward. The cub whimpered but did not cry out.
Then, Neleh lost herself to the blindness of the healing, concentrating on but one thing, to mend the broken bone. For Neleh, time was suspended and all that remained in her universe was she and the cub.
<><><>
Noslen, seeing the giant male rantor appear from the trees, pulled his bow from its hook, an arrow from the quiver. He started forward, prepared to kill the male and rescue Neleh, but the small girl held her hand up to him, signaling him to stop. He reigned his mount, but kept the bow raised. Then he watched the impossible happen. Neleh walked toward the rantors: the male challenged Neleh. When he did, the female spun and attacked the male, knocking him back and down, then rising above him to bar the way to Neleh.
Noslen lowered the bow when Neleh kneeled next to the cub. A few seconds after she did, a golden globe encased Neleh and the cub. When the globe appeared, the male rantor, the four females, and the cubs, encircled Neleh.
Noslen remained mounted, the bow in his left hand, knowing it could be minutes or hours before she finished—yet, however long it took, the captain of the high king’s personal guard would not move an inch.
<><><>
By the time their lean-to was set, their sleeping silks spread, and a fire built, not only had dusk settled, but Gaalrie had made two hunting trips and brought Areenna and Mikaal freesh. Together, Areenna and Mikaal created both a block and a strong shield around the knoll to protect them as much as possible from whatever darkness sought them. While the shield could not stop animals, there was enough of a sensation of the area being ‘off’ to hold them back.
Areenna cleaned the Freesh, as Mikaal finished securing the area. He brought the kraals close to the lean-to, and, with his hands on each side of Charka’s head, gave a gentle asking for his aoutem to keep Areenna’s kraal close.
In response, a low vibration danced through him. Bending closer, he pressed his forehead to Charka’s long snout, holding it there for several seconds before stepping back. Then he turned to Areenna and watched her.
She had changed much during these past ten months, as had he, he reminded himself. He no longer felt like a boy wondering who he was or what the future held; rather, he knew the future would be what he made it into—he and Areenna.
A rush of emotions swept through him when he gazed at Areenna’s back. A heartbeat later, Areenna looked over her shoulder and smiled. I felt that.
When Areenna turned back to the fire and the freesh, he walked to the edge of the knoll. To his left, a triangular V of ripples caused him to look more closely at what created them. He spotted a small snuck, perhaps a foot in length, moving away from the knoll.
He started to turn back, when a wave of vertigo washed over him. He held himself steady and waited for what was becoming a familiar sensation. It hit him hard, and he was no longer standing at the edge of the watery swamp; instead, he stood in the center of the grass, the lean-to at his back as hundreds of animals circled the knoll, preparing to attack.
The vision faded as suddenly as it had come, leaving him to slow down the racing of his heart. He closed his eyes and replayed the vision, looking for any detail to help. Within the vision, the sky was dark, with only a few pinpoints of stars. There was no moon, which told him the moon had set and they would have time to be ready.
<><><>
Areenna finished setting the freesh over the fire, stood, and turned. Looking around, she spotted Mikaal near the edge of the knoll. She smiled, both outwardly and inwardly. So much had changed since the day she’d ridden into Tolemac with her father. Neither she nor Mikaal was the same person they had been before that fateful day. And she realized she would not trade a moment of it for anything.
She started toward him, but stopped the instant he stiffened and froze in place, knowing the part of him that was always within her mind, turned cold. A premonition, she realized. She waited, not moving or breathing until his body relaxed. Then she joined with him instantly, and watched as he worked out what he had been shown.
Mikaal raised his head and looked at her. She knows we are here. She prepares to strike during the night.
We will be ready.
You saw her weapons...snucks, aligoras and rantors. It seems she seeks our deaths.
Which we guessed before we started. She will not stop us.
No, she will not, Mikaal agreed and walked back to the fire. “The freesh smell good.”
“And they will taste so. What think you about our defenses?”
Mikaal laughed, and when he stopped, he shook his head. “What defenses?”
“Our shield is set, and powerful it is against her magic,” Areenna stated.
“Yes, it is. Nevertheless, the animals? The new powers we discovered will aid us, but for how long?”
“We will work out the way.”
<><><>
The sun had set, and the moon risen while Neleh tended the cub. Blinded within the healing, she saw nothing other than the leg upon which she worked. The adult rantors had not moved in the five hours since she’d begun, while the half-dozen cubs slept soundly next to their mothers.
Finally, knowing she’d sealed the broken ends of the bone together, she eased from the healing and waited for her eyesight to return. When it did, the first thing she saw was the cub’s mother sitting regally across from her.
What now? She asked herself, unsure of what would happen next. Although she had connected the bone, and sealed it, it was but the first step. The cub needed time for the leg to heal completely. If he stayed with the family of rantors, that would not happen.
She put the cub gently down on the grass, urging it to lay still. Then Neleh bent forward from the waist, reached her hand toward the cub’s mother, and used
her mind to call to the animal. The female rantor rose on all fours. Its blue eyes widening slightly at Neleh’s asking. It took two steps forward, lowered its head, and pushed against Neleh’s hand.
Neleh settled her hand on the rantor’s head. Before she could push a further asking, as Areenna had explained to her, the rantor bent lower and licked the cub’s leg, and then its head. When the huge cat-like animal raised its head again, it locked eyes with Neleh, raised its leg and placed a paw on Neleh’s thigh.
There was a strange push in her head, and a picture of Neleh and the cub walking together. Then it was gone. The female took her paw from Neleh’s thigh, bent to the cub, picked it up by the scruff of its neck, and placed it in Neleh’s lap.
The female back-stepped, and went to the male. A quarter-minute later, the rantors walked away. Neleh watched, stroking the cub and called, both aloud and in silence, “I will protect her.”
The female glanced back for a moment before disappearing into the forest. When they were gone, she turned to look for Noslen, and found him exactly where she’d seen him last, sitting on his kraal, the bow still in his left hand, the arrow notched in the gut.
She smiled at him as she stroked the cub, who turned on its back to lick her fingers. Today, she knew, was a milestone, for she had found her aoutem, and found as well, an exceptional friend in Noslen.
CHAPTER 12
IN THE DEPTHS of the badlands, twenty miles southeast of where Areenna and Mikaal slept upon the grassy knoll, a woman of great dark power stood beneath the star-speckled sky. Lessig, the Dark Sorceress, stared into the night and, through an animal’s eyes, saw two sleeping figures upon the grass.
She smiled not, although she sensed victory over them within her grasp. Her Master had instructed her to capture the two, and she would do so, but he also warned of their powers and instructed her that if they had to die, their heads must be undamaged. She had spent the night preparing her army for the moment to come. Dozens of mutated beasts, rantors, gorlons, snucks, and other animals surrounding the knoll, were ready to overrun the two people.
Areenna’s magic will not help her this time. With a mental flick of her wrist, she sent the animals forward.
<><><>
Two hours before dawn, the orchestra of insects, serenading the badlands since nightfall, went silent. In that very moment, Charka and Gaalrie—who sat upon the blue kraal’s back— sent warnings to Mikaal and Areenna.
Like their aoutems, they awakened instantly, threw off the tops of their sleeping silks, and grabbed their weapons. When they stood, back to back, scanning everything around them, Areenna took in a calming breath, to counter the pounding of her heart and, a moment later, her heart beat normally again.
They had gone to sleep, fully dressed and wearing padded jerkins. All they were missing was the armor itself. She comes, Areenna told Mikaal.
No, it is my premonition. She sends her army, Mikaal stated.
The army of the animals and creatures from your vision. Areenna squinted into the night, but saw nothing in the intense dark. I cannot see beyond the grass.
She called to Gaalrie and when the giant treygone rose from Charka’s back and lifted into the night sky, Areenna joined her. The treygone’s night sight was as sharp as when she flew during the day. Areenna saw everything and it turned her blood icy.
Animals of every species and some defying any description other than creature, circled where they stood. How many she could not even guess.
“Too many,” Mikaal acknowledged aloud, still joined with Areenna as well as the treygone.
Gaalrie flew above one of the strange-looking creatures, not quite a coor, not anything else. A strange and sudden hatred burst from Gaalrie, transmitting her need to kill it even as she dove. Acting quickly, Areenna pushed at Gaalrie, holding her back. Not yet, she called to her aoutem. Return…return!
In one of those rare moments between her and her aoutem, Gaalrie resisted her asking and arrowed toward the ground. The treygone’s almost mindless need to attack drove the giant bird. Wait! Return!
Not until the very last second did Gaalrie pull from the dive, spin a hundred and eighty degrees, and shoot skyward, her scream piercing the night. Forty seconds later, Gaalrie dropped to Areenna’s padded shoulders, one taloned leg secured upon each shoulder.
Thank you, Sister. All Areenna felt was her aoutem’s anger, not at Areenna; rather, at the unnatural creature she’d wanted to kill. Turning her right palm skyward, Areenna created a globe of light, and sent it toward the edge of the knoll. Within seconds, the animals surrounding the knoll were illuminated.
“I have never seen this before. These animals are natural enemies, yet they band together,” Mikaal said.
“Lessig controls all aspects of them. She seeks to be one with The Masters. She is strong, Mikaal.”
“Stronger than you? Than us?”
Areenna faced him. No. Closing her eyes, she called up her powers. Carefully, with one hand extended, she sent a blue-white streak of power at the largest of the creatures, a huge deformed rantor that was almost on the grass. The instant it touched the rantor, the light exploded harmlessly upward.
Mikaal shook his head. “She shields the animals as we shield ourselves from her. We must use our weapons.”
“There are too many.” Lifting her bow, Areenna notched an arrow. She pulled the bowstring back, but then eased off. Lowering the bow, she protested, “It’s not their fault. They are innocent.”
Mikaal, his sword in his right hand, cupped her cheek with his left. “As before, fault plays no part in this. She uses them to kill us. We have no choice.” She uses your love of life to defeat us.
She covered his hand with hers, pressed it tighter to her face. Releasing his hand, she drew the arrow back as the first of the animals, the mutated rantor, reached the grass. She aimed at the large beast and let the arrow fly. The feathered shaft flew true, sliding between two ribs to pierce the rantor’s heart. It dropped instantly. As it fell, another misshapen rantor took its place and at the same time, a blast of dark power struck their shield.
The meeting of the two forces created an explosion that turned the night into a day so bright it blinded Areenna and Mikaal. Areenna grasped Mikaal’s hand. Combine our powers, now!
He melded with her; joining and opening himself to her. They became one entity, in the way they had when they’d escaped the Dark Masters’ trap.
Areenna went deep inside herself to access both her and Mikaal’s abilities and brought them forth. As the animals began to flood the grass, she opened their shield. Now!
Mikaal stretched out his arms, and streams of fire shot out from his hands. He whirled his hands in a circle and ten feet away, fire surrounded them, stopping the oncoming charge of animals.
With their combined powers burning through her like a torch, Areenna pushed for a sense of Lessig and, catching an emanation directed at the animals, she tracked it to its source. The instant she reached the dark aura, she sent a stream of blue-white power directly at the woman. With her other hand, she pushed a stream of Mikaal’s potent fire to chase the white light, while Mikaal continued to keep them safe within the flaming circle. Each worked independently of the other, but every move each made was part of the other’s consciousness.
Without knowing how, Areenna followed behind the weapons she’d released at Lessig and watched them hone in on her. The light struck first, and Lessig’s shield flared powerfully for a half-second before shattering. Then the fire hit. In the instant before the destruction of her shield, and the fire-bolts’ arrival, Areenna saw the sorceress’s face clearly. The sight sent her entire being to reverberating.
Lessig’s creatures kept charging them, as Lessig pushed them through the ring of fire and left Mikaal no choice. Releasing the most powerful fire he could, Mikaal threw staggered shafts of flame at the charging animals and, as it struck each animal, the creature disappeared in an eruption of flames.
“Lessig!” Mikaal shouted the name to Areenna
, who picked up his thoughts and pushed the harsh striking fire at her, but Lessig had already built a new shield, which turned into a flaming globe surrounding the woman.
Areenna and Mikaal, acting as one, kept the fire pouring at Lessig until she was no longer fighting; rather she stood still, staring at the sky, both arms raised. Above her, a gray mist descended to cloak Lessig within its wavering embrace. Then, in the blink of an eye, Lessig was gone.
At the same instant, a wave of repulsive, nauseating scents washed over them. Then it was gone, leaving in its wake, a heaviness Areenna had never before known: a despair as the truth of what she’d witnessed tore through her.
As one, the animals surrounding them halted in their tracks. A moment later, free of the dark woman’s control, most turned and ran off, while others turned on each other in a frenzy of nhatred and violence.
“We’re too late. She will be Afzaleem before we can stop her,” Areenna whispered.
“How can that be? The Masters have not reached Nevaeh.”
“Can not The Eight of the Island find us wherever we are? Why could The Masters not do the same?”
“Then we move on in the morning. We continue.”
“To what point? Our purpose here has fled. We have failed.”
Mikaal turned to her angrily. “Failed? Did you see what you accomplished? Did you not feel the power that rose when you called? Yes, she is gone. Not by her own abilities, but taken by The Masters. Their presence was a black cloud in my head, but one I could read. They fear you!”
“Fear me?” Areenna looked at the far edge of the knoll. “The animals fear me because I slaughter them.” She pointed to the dead rantor lying on the edge of the grass. “Exiles who were once good people but caught under the spells of the Dark Ones fear me because I slaughter them as well. Now I must kill more of these innocents. Is this what my life…what our life has become? If so, there is much wrong in that!”
