The beast thrashed, trying to unpin its head from its own chest, but its movements were awkward and unbalanced. It reeled and fell, twisting over to slam down on its back. The woman let go of the spear at the last moment and unlocked her legs, pushing herself away so that she tumbled free and skidded across the stone as the monster fell with terrible finality.
Nissikul saw her opportunity then, and she took it. Though she had never hunted a burug, not as far as I knew, her execution of the hammer-and-spike technique was as perfect as I had ever seen from any veteran ranger- and she performed it with one arm. She took a running step, leaped, and brought down my hammer with astounding precision right on the butt of the jutting spear, slamming it home so hard I heard it crack the stone beneath the monster's back. The beast gave one more feeble groan, and twitched wildly, but it didn't get back up.
Hobbling, shambling steps drew my attention, and I turned to see Thukkar making his way towards the monster, leaning heavily on the borrowed short spear cane. Calmly, with the single-minded focus of a ranger, he made his way over to where the creature had fallen, eyed it critically for a moment, and then plunged the spear-point of his "cane" into its broad chest where the heart would have been on a man. He leaned down hard on the point for a moment, and we heard something crack and break inside the vast chest. Then, just as nonchalantly as he had approached, he withdrew the spear and hobbled back away from it. Speaking to no one in particular, he muttered, "You may want to back up from this one."
Thukkar, I reminded myself, was a veteran ranger, and his advice was not to be taken lightly. All four of us drew back from the monster, moving to the opposite side of the little clearing, and putting a monolith between us and the enormous corpse. For a few seconds, nothing happened. I cleared my throat and opened my mouth to speak. Then the body burst, splattering foul rot all across the impromptu arena. From within the mound of desecrated meat, something crawled free, something vaguely insectoid. It was made of a bright metal smeared black with rotting blood, and it had hundreds of miniature legs propelling it fitfully over the stone. It thrashed and hissed, rolling over and over on the befouled stone, and as it writhed, I saw a neat hole driven through its carapace. Sparks and fluorescent fluid sprayed from the wound in spurts until the strange creature gave one last spasm and was still. Behind me, Thukkar spoke. "Fought one of those about ten full cycles ago. Children of the Eater King. Don’t know how many of those things are still around, but they're pretty rare. Anyway, they like to play dead. Get you when you sleep."
Nissikul whistled, impressed. “Then I’m glad we have you along, ranger.” She and Thukkar shared an eye-narrowing smile, and I suppressed the urge to bare my teeth at him.
I turned to the warrior woman and found her facing me in a fighting crouch; her lone climbing axe was raised before her in a defensive stance. I could just make out her eyes beneath the hood- wide, liquid brown eyes, framed by thick black lashes and set beneath a prominent brow. It was her! Struggling to remember the fragments of her language that I had learned, I bent and placed my bow on the ground, straightening and raising my empty palms toward her. "Joh-ahna, mye freend," I said, fighting to wrap my lips around the unfamiliar sounds. The "f" in particular, was difficult to manage with fangs. I remembered my helm, which obscured most of my features, and so I reached up and peeled it off, shaking out my thick, crystalline hair.
Joanna didn't lower the axe. "Volistad," she ventured, and then continued in Erin-Vulur, "Truly you?" Her eyes moved past me to take in Nissikul and Thukkar, and they abruptly narrowed. She pointed the weapon at Nissikul and said something in her language that I couldn't follow. The meaning was unmistakable, however. It was a threat. She bared her teeth to make clear her meaning, and I smiled inwardly. She was using our customs. Just a month and we had learned so much from each other. Then I realized that the god probably thought my sister was going to try to kill her again. I matched gazes with Thukkar, who wasn't moving. He shook his head, wanting no part of this.
Nissikul let my hammer fall to the stone and raised her single remaining hand, showing Joanna her open palm. Mollified, Joanna returned the ax to the belt of her borrowed ranger’s furs. She sighed and put a hand on my shoulder, then managed, in the Erin-Vulur tongue, to say, “I happy you alive.”
I forced my face into one of her smiles. “And I also,” I stammered in her language.
She said something else, too rapidly for me to understand, but then she stopped and began to gesture with her hands. She made sure we were all watching her, and she pointed at one of the pillars. "Atvaqa," she said. Monster. In our tongue. She had remembered the word. She waved around at all of them. "Atvaqa." When it was clear we all took her meaning, she turned and pointed in a direction that would lead us through the forest of silent stones. "I need go Ravanur. Help?"
"We'll help," I answered immediately, not waiting to speak with the others. This was why we were here, was it not? Nissikul murmured her agreement. Thukkar just grunted. Joanna sagged with obvious relief, and then walked back into the circle, picking up the source of the illumination in the circle; a strange, clearly improvised device that reminded me strongly of the Deepseeker's work. As she moved, I saw the torque wrapped about her left arm. It was a blessing- a fine one too, but very old. How had she made it work again? Those typically worked just once, and then they were little more than decorative baubles. I shrugged it off as just a feature of her obvious godhood. Of course she would be able to renew a blessing.
Joanna made it clear through a series of quick gestures that she wanted to get out of this place and away from the pillars that she had labeled as monsters. We obliged. Those stones made me uneasy, even if I didn’t know what they did. One of them had been defaced somehow, and covered in lines from the High Epic, over and over. I decided that the less I knew about this place, the better. The four of us made our way out of the stone forest, careful -at Joanna’s urging- not to touch any of the pillars.
…
We made camp that night, far from the stone forest, on the side of a rocky ridge we had been forced to scale. We seemed to be heading towards the buried mountains- though whether we were close to the hidden Erin-Vulur village I couldn't tell. This was too far down, too deep. We didn't descend to the place below the ice, not on purpose. The High Epic made it clear that this was forbidden, as well as cause for summary execution due to the chance of corruption by the Dark Ones. But I had been accused of corruption already, and I seemed much the same as I had been, and I didn't know what to believe. Nissi seemed anxious about the possibility, but she wouldn't discuss it with me. Thukkar didn't appear to care. I got the feeling that any talk of gods and ancient laws didn't concern him overmuch. He was a ranger, and a ruthless pragmatist, and that was the end of it. I supposed I could respect that.
Nothing grew down here on the stone, so we didn’t have a fire for hot food. There was still some of that dukkar seal meat left, and I passed it around. Joanna shook her head, showing me her teeth and pointing at them, then pointing at my own mouth. I didn't understand, but I didn't push the issue. I looked over at Nissikul and Thukkar, but they were engaged in their own quiet conversation while they ate their meal, and weren't paying much attention to Joanna or me. I turned back to her.
She seemed so small out of her armor, though she appeared no less self-assured. If anything, she came across as fiercer than before, more intense. I noticed that she wasn't speaking to any invisible spirits anymore. I wondered why that was. I couldn't think of some hand sign to describe the question, so I dismissed it. There was something much more important that I had to ask her. "Joh-anna," I began.
She looked up from what she was working on, and I saw the little makeshift light she had been carrying in her lap, wires protruding from it seemingly at random. She wasn't wearing the hood now, and I marveled at the dusky smoothness of her head and face. I wondered if all of her people had no hair. It lent her countenance an alien aspect when combined with her wide eyes and dark skin. She was so much like one
of us, and yet she was so much different. I realized that I was just sitting there looking at her and felt my face heat with embarrassment. Joanna shaped her eyes into an Erin-Vulur smile. She responded in her tongue, her voice high and sweet, reminding me of music. "Yes, Volistad?"
I struggled on, wracking my brain to arrange the few words of her language that I knew into the meaning that I was trying to convey. "You… you say one time you no god."
Joanna made an expression I couldn’t read. “No. I’m not. Not yet.”
I frowned. Not yet? “What that mean?”
“I brought…” she said, and then she paused, perhaps stopping to try to remember which words she had taught me. “I brought someone bad with me.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she put up a hand, asking me for silence. I obliged her, and just waited. “My friend. His name is Barbas.”
“Barr-boss,” I repeated, tasting the name as I said it. It was a strange name, just as difficult to say as Joanna.
She smiled a little at my repetition and continued. "Barbas was not bad before. But we came down here and…" she trailed off.
“We found something very bad.” Her face was drawn and pained. “Barbas is now… Barbas is atvaqa.”
I understood, or at least I thought I did. Barbas was her spirit. When she had fallen into the ice, they had come in contact with the darkness, and her friend had become corrupted.
I remembered the appropriate word, and I uttered it then. "Sah-ree."
Joanna smiled again. She seemed to like doing that. I didn't mind it at all. In fact, it looked good on her. It didn't really resemble the expression of threat that my people used. It was more in the shape of her red lips and the corners of her wide eyes than it was related to the showing of her teeth. "No, Volistad. I am sorry. I brought atvaqa to your people. Now I must find him, and I must kill him. I spoke to your god, Ravanur, and she told me to do so.”
The phrase was long, and I missed a few words, but I heard the name Ravanur, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. The Great Mother had spoken to her! She was now doing the bidding of Ravanur! Even if she wasn’t a god, as she said, this at least made her special, didn’t it?
Joanna seemed to read my evident excitement, and her expression became troubled and distant again. “I am not a god. But Ravanur wants to make me into one.” That drew me up short, but Joanna continued. “I have to stop Barbas. But to do that…” she trailed off and shuddered, clutching her head, and when she continued, still clutching at her skull, she was speaking the language of the Erin-Vulur, smoothly as if she had been born into it. “A god answers to no one but a greater god,” she intoned through gritted teeth, and I felt apprehension raise all the hairs on the back of my neck. Those were words straight from the high epic, like the phrases that had been carved in that standing stone, back where we had slain the spawn of the Eater-King.
I looked over at the others, who had gone silent. Thukkar and Nissikul were both watching Joanna intently. Nissikul seemed, for the first time I could remember, terrified of what she was seeing. What did her mage's senses tell her was happening? Joanna continued speaking in our language, her face tight with obvious pain, and a vein began to pulse over her temple. "Barbas has been consumed by one of the Dark Ones, and he will destroy this place. He will set free all of the Elder Ones lying dead beneath the stone, and unleash an irreversible doom on your people and mine. I have to save your people and mine. I am looking for the lost temple of Ravanur, and I need your help to get there." Sweat had begun to run down her face. It froze as it dripped off of her chin and clattered on the stone in tiny cloudy beads. Then, as suddenly as the fit had gripped her, Joanna relaxed, and looked up at us, trepidation written clearly on her face.
I was confused, but Nissikul evidently was not. Without hesitation, she pressed her forehead to the stone and lifted a hand in Joanna’s direction. “One thousand pardons,” she intoned formally, “Chosen of Ravanur, for my attempt on your life.”
Though it was clear that Joanna didn’t understand the words that Nissi was saying, she seemed to catch the meaning. She stood, weariness apparent in her movements. She crossed our little camp, and crouched beside my sister. She placed a gentle hand on Nissi’s shoulder and said something in her tongue that I didn’t understand.
"Of course we will help you," I said. Then, remembering myself, I simply said, in her tongue. "Yes." I looked over at Thukkar, and he shrugged, the meaning clear. He didn't know what in Palamun's name was going on, but he had come along. It wasn't like he had much choice since Nissi and I were with Joanna. This was it. The reason I had been chosen to see her descent from the stars, the reason I had been killed and made into the champion of my people. It was the reason I was down here, with Thukkar and my sister. We all had a role to play. We had to find the lost temple of Ravanur.
...
Chapter Fifteen: The Great Mother's Temple
Joanna
The four of us traveled beneath the ice for a week before the stone beneath us began to rise, taking the shape of mountains long entombed in the depths of the worldwide glacier. At first, I was worried that space would run out between the ice and the stone, but it proved not to be an issue. When the ice was just a foot or so above our heads, Nissikul reached one hand up and ran her fingers along it, and a way was opened for us. The black witch-ice, as she called it in her tongue, would snake out ahead of us and consume the ice in our path, rendering it into powder and piling it behind us as we passed. Between the call of Ravanur's compulsion and Nissi's abilities, we made good time, and it took only two days for us to find the mouth of the cave that contained the temple. Camp that night was a somewhat more festive experience than normal, and even though our rations were scarce, when we woke in the morning everyone's spirits were high. We packed our things quickly, excited to see the interior of the temple and find the conclusion to our quest. Before we knew it, we were standing at the entrance to the lost temple of Ravanur, and our excitement was very quickly tempered by unease.
"It doesn't look like a temple," Thukkar commented, disquiet evident in his voice. Volistad and I had been drilling in the language of the Erin-Vulur during the whole trip, and though I wasn't going to be carrying on a complicated conversation anytime soon, I could at least understand the gist of what everyone was saying.
Nissikul snorted and swatted Thukkar playfully on the back of the head, elaborately unconcerned. “Have some respect, ranger. You stand before the ancient heart of our god. It would not do to anger her here.”
The front of the temple was not particularly impressive. The cave we were standing in simply ended in a smooth, unadorned, unmarked wall of stone. Set in the center of the wall was an open doorway, gaping black like a window into the abyss. I shrugged. “I guess we just go inside?”
Volistad grumbled impatiently and started forward. "We came here to get you to the center of this place; we should just go. The Erin-Vulur are in great danger." He strode to the door confidently, his shoulders squared and determined. The rest of us followed a short distance back, wary even in the face of Volistad's obvious boldness. As the ranger approached the unassuming door, prickles of trepidation began to crawl up my spine, growing ever more intense the closer he got to the opening. Soon, the anxiety was so intense that I couldn't help taking a step forward and calling, "Volistad, wait!"
The ranger did not wait. With the kind of exaggerated nonchalance only displayed by someone who is very nervous, Volistad stepped into the doorway and disappeared into the darkness. We waited, all of us holding our breath. Three or four seconds passed in agonizing silence, and then Volistad called from within, "It's fine, come on!" We all sighed together and trudged to the door. My heart still raced in my chest, and that unfocused sense of unease remained. I looked over at Nissikul as she stepped past me and approached the door. She didn't seem to feel it. Sure, she seemed nervous, but no more nervous than her brother, or Thukkar. Why was I the only one affected like this? I shook my head and followed the Stormcaller inside, stepping into th
e darkness with my spine tensed against some unknown threat.
Nissi's light was making lazy circles of the room, and I was gratified to see that this room actually looked like it belonged in a temple. Every wall was covered in dense, circular script, just like the monoliths. Hanging from pins driven deep into the stone were long, limp banners, marked with Erin-Vulur phrases. They were lines from the High Epic, just like the graffiti on the monoliths had been. Had the priests here made the marks on the standing stone prison cells? There was no way of knowing. The room was broad and circular, arranged like an amphitheater. The stonework was the same as the outside of the temple. Everything seemed to have been shaped straight from the stone, worked by some method that left neither chisel mark nor errant chipping. The stone had not weathered or crumbled- though I guessed that had more to do with the glacier sealing this place off than it was the result of some magick or divine intervention. Scattered across the whole of the amphitheater was the detritus of regular ritual and use. Several vellum scrolls crumbled to dust on a low stone table that grew directly from the ground, flanked by several ritual tools, whose uses I could not divine from their shapes.
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 54
