Apostate's Pilgrimage: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 3)

by L. W. Jacobs

  Marea struck resonance, and the power flooding her bones felt fuller than it ever had, richer, like the difference between a street bard’s cheap instrument and the fine, deep-bodied sandalwood lutes of a Brinerider bard. She found her place in the harmony easily, an octave above Tai, and as her resonance settled in the power in her swelled again, like the chaos of the sea channeled into a single current, rushing from the stone through her.

  She felt giddy on the strength of it, almost drunk. Ella had said they wouldn’t need to use their resonances, just strike them, but what if she did? What luck could she cause, what fates could she change with this kind of strength?

  “Stop,” Aeyenor demanded, and the shaman nearest them raised his hands.

  At ten paces Ella struck, lined face pale but determined. Despite her giddiness, despite her dread, Marea found a moment of compassion for the woman. Her man had dragged her here too, and the power they needed to open the stone was the same one that was killing her.

  The timeslip resonance locked in like the keystone of an arch, an octave above Tai’s, and Marea’s whole body shook. It was like she’d been struck, like she was the fourth note of a lute now vibrating on all strings.

  Looking at Avery she realized her mistake—his body shook the same way, as did Ella’s, as did the shamans. She hadn’t been struck, the stone had, like a massive bell. The power they felt rattling through them now was its power, a giant instrument laying silent for centuries suddenly come to life.

  Marea stared. The shamans stared. Even Nauro looked about in wonder. And at the head of their group, Tai brushed past the shamans to place his hand directly against the vibrating stone.

  It sank like water into sand.

  58

  Tai moved on pure instinct, pressing his hand to the stone, something deep within it calling to him. It sank in past the wrist, and he had the feeling if he reached deep enough he would touch the spear, could draw it out in his fist.

  But thunder erupted in his right ear, a flash of light and heat so bright it blinded him. Tai felt the lightning strike him, directly in the chest. The shamans. This was how they’d killed Nauro.

  Only the lightning passed through him into the stone. It was one wave in a mighty current, a current he floated in up to the elbow. He turned and found the shaman just behind him. Turned and extended one hand to touch the man.

  Another thunderclap sounded and the man spun backwards in air, smoke trailing from Tai’s fingertips.

  It was effortless, but he had more important things to do. Tai pushed deeper into the stone, feeling the pull of the spear, like the center of a whirlpool where two rivers met, the current of power swirling around it.

  Then something impossibly strong ripped him from the stone, sending him hurtling into space. Tai struck resonance while he was still tumbling in air, slowing himself enough to see a storm of fire and lightning descending on one small area at the base of the stone. The area where his friends were.

  Where Ella was.

  With a cry Tai shot back toward them, his uai a trickle compared to the stone’s current but swelling as he got close. Distance from the stone—that was the key. These shamans were only strong so long as they were physically near the waystone. That was why they’d thrown him off it, because with a hand in the stone he’d been more powerful than they.

  Time to use their own tricks against them.

  He swooped in close, seizing the nearest shaman to sling him out of the garden. Instead thunder clapped and he found himself spinning away again, chest aching like he’d been struck with a giant hammer. He’d probably be dead if it wasn’t for the strength of uai surging through him.

  Tai pushed against the outward spin, slowing then shoving back toward the stone. Distance. So long as the shamans were closer they would be more powerful—but he could do better than close.

  Tai wafted onto the stone ten paces and a quarter turn away from the fierce firestorm around his friends, praying Nauro’s skill and the stone’s uai would keep them safe a little longer. He stuck his hand into the stone.

  Only to smash his fingers, like the stone was ordinary rock. He frowned, heart beating. What was wrong? Fire and thunder roared from the other side of the stone, where his friends held the other five notes of the harmony.

  That was it! None of the shamans had entered the stone, though surely they’d tried—likely because they were not part of the harmony. His resonance had probably fallen out of tune too.

  Tai focused, pressing himself against the stone, feeling for the group’s resonance, for the way it reverberated through the stone. There. He flexed his power—and felt the rock give under him, like the soft mud under the docks of Riverbottom. Power rushed again into his bones, doubling the roaring current already there. Tai wafted himself around the stone, dragging hands and feet inside the stone, until he caught sight of the fight.

  No need for lightning here—that was a shaman’s trick. He was more familiar with air. Tai opened himself to the raging uai current, letting it flow through him, and directed it out in three giant fists of air, each aimed at a different shaman attacking his friends.

  They exploded outward, tumbling in air, lightning bolts sparking out. Nauro spun as they did, clapping his hands together to send something light-eating and silent, like black lightning, streaking toward the nearest of them.

  The shaman’s body turned to ash.

  Tai dropped down the face of the stone, trusting Nauro and Avery to do the rest, and rushed to Ella. “Are you okay?” he asked. The lines on her face stood out and her breath had a rattle.

  “Fine,” she panted. “Fine, I just need to—”

  Her eyes went dull and she fell.

  “Ella!” Tai cried, catching her limp form.

  Feynrick spun at the cry, face deadly serious for a change, axes raised. “What is it—”

  The axes fell from his hands to clatter on the stones. His body followed a moment later, flopping like scarecrow with the stick pulled out.

  “Feynrick!” Tai called, but behind him Marea was falling too, slumping against the waystone. Avery followed her.

  Some shamanic attack. It had to be. “Nauro!” he called. “What do we do?”

  Nauro turned to him, face still calm despite it all, and held out a hand. Then he fell like the rest, body slumping over Marea’s.

  Tai stared, still holding Ella’s limp form. He held two fingers to her neck. Nothing.

  How was that even possible? “It can’t be,” he whispered, looking around, seeking some explanation. “It can’t be.”

  One of the four shamans wafted toward him, arms spread, his face beatific. “They are gone, Sekaetai. As you should be. Give up, and join them.”

  “Never!” Tai yelled, summoning the uai still raging through him.

  A harmonic uai.

  Suddenly all the strange parts of the last few moments clicked: the too-easy deaths of his friends, the strange coincidence of him not dying, and the harmony still shaking his bones. A harmony impossible if his friends were dead.

  “It’s a trick!” he yelled. “Hallucinations!”

  And as soon as he realized it, the scene snapped back to focus, Ella screaming and Marea cradling something in empty arms, Nauro and Avery still standing, trading black lightning and volleys of stone with the shamans in the sky. Their harmony was coming apart, and without it they had no chance.

  Tai seized Ella by the shoulders. “I’m alive!” he yelled into her ears. “It’s an illusion!”

  Her eyes met his, dazed at first, then clear. Her resonance snapped back in place. “The spear,” she said, voice deadly focused. “Get it. I’ll wake Marea.”

  He spun for the stone, only to have her spin him back. “I love you,” she said, eyes bright on his, the eyes he’d always known despite the newly lined face. She kissed him.

  There was no kiss like one in the middle of a battle. It was over too soon, not soon enough, and Tai ran for the stone, praying their harmony held up long enough to get his hands in
. Something slammed into his back as he ran, a pepper of stones, each one burning like a stab wound. The momentum flung him into the stone and his whole body sunk in, light blotting out as the pillar swallowed him.

  Power flooded him and even as pain burst in a constellation along his back. Power and belief, Avery had said. Shamanic magic is at its base just power and belief.

  He had power. So he just needed to disbelieve in his wounds?

  No—believe in their healing. Like brawlers did. Like the way he’d healed, when he overcame his voices.

  The moment he thought it the pain in his back stopped, like it had never been there, and in his heightened awareness he felt five stones push out of his back.

  The spear still called to him. He could feel the current of uai pulling him toward it. If he took it they won—all the power animating the shamans would cut off. But who knew how long it would take him to find it, while those shamans sent hallucinations along with lightning bolts and stones? They’d killed one. They could kill the rest, then deal with the stone.

  Tai turned, rolling in the stone like it was a forest pond in the heat of summer, stone melting cleanly off his face as he pressed it out. Two shamans were left, closing on them from either side, Avery and Nauro trading attacks with them in what looked like an even fight.

  Time to change that. Tai let the stone’s power flood into him, hardened it into two fists of air that struck each of the shamans, knocking them away from the stone, from the source of their power.

  Nauro again reacted without pause, spinning to follow them and sending two arcs of black lightning after them. One shaman dodged it, sending a narrow bolt of lightning arcing back. The other puffed to ash.

  A hail of pebbles shot from Avery’s hands, streaking through the air with an audible whine, and spots of blood appeared on the last shaman’s clothes. A moment later a second arc of Nauro’s black lightning caught him, and the man ceased to exist.

  “Yes!” Marea cried, face exultant.

  “Go,” Nauro barked, looking upwards. “All of you. Go now. Get the spear.”

  “Very clever,” a voice boomed from above, as Tai was beginning to push into the stone. “Harmonizing the resonances. I never would have thought of that. Thank you.”

  Despite himself Tai looked up. Aeyenor was there, the one perched atop the stone, only now he was walking down its side as though gravity had shifted, feet ankle-deep in the stone.

  “The resonance,” Tai said. “He must have figured out how to tune to us.”

  “Very good, Sekaetai,” Aeyenor said. “Or should I call you Savior of Ayugen? The Achuri Menace? Pity for you you didn’t take all this power when you had it in your grasp the first time. Or did you have these pathetic notions of victory without violence even then?”

  He knew Tai’s inner thoughts—Aeyenor had broken through whatever screen Nauro and Avery had held then. He knew their secrets, their plan. All that would matter now was who got to the spear first.

  “Go,” Nauro said again, voice more urgent. “I will handle him.”

  Aeyenor laughed at that. “Will you, Nauro? Like you handled me last time we fought?”

  “I have learned much since then,” Nauro said, thrusting a hand into the stone. His whole body seemed to light up. “And we are on equal terms this time.”

  A black sword appeared in Aeyenor’s hands, the blade drinking light as Nauro’s black lightning did. “No,” Aeyenor said, “we are not. I have centuries on you, old friend. And while you have chased your myths across three continents, I have been honing my skills.”

  He streaked downward, raising the blade behind him for a downward strike. Nauro met it with a black blade of his own, and where the two met there was neither clang nor thunder, but absolute silence, like the sound had been sucked from Tai’s ears.

  “Go!” Nauro shouted when it came back. “Go now!”

  He was right. There was nothing Tai could do here, but he could still feel the spear inside, pulling him, like a current in the river. He pushed into the stone.

  The stone turned to rock around him, most of an arm and a leg trapped inside. Tai looked back to see Feynrick staggering, clutching an arm spotted with blood as the shaman’s had been. His resonance—he must have lost it when he got hit. And with only five resonances, the harmony was not enough to soften the stone.

  Meaning he was trapped.

  Tai growled helplessly as Aeyenor and Nauro once again exchanged blows, black blades stealing light, anything and everything they touched turning to ash. Avery shot more pebbles at the shaman, but they vanished almost as an afterthought. Tai summoned the power of the stone and sent that at Aeyenor, who Nauro had managed to separate from the stone, but the man cut through fists of thickened air like they were a light breeze, eyes intense and focused on his opponent.

  Then Avery was at Feynrick’s side, hands on his arms, and with a howl Feynrick stood bolt upright. The stone softened around Tai’s limbs. Time to go. Aeyenor could likely end his friends while fighting Nauro, and Tai would not be able to help until he got the spear.

  He pushed in, stone molding around him like churned butter. It was warm inside, almost hot. The sounds of battle came muted through the stone, punctuated by moments of silence when Nauro and Aeyenor’s blades hit. Good. So long as they were fighting he had a chance.

  Tai felt for that internal current—up. The uai was flowing up. He tried swimming with it, or pulling himself up, but couldn’t get traction. For an awful moment he thought he might be falling, even, sinking deeper into the earth.

  Then he remembered wafting, and pushed up. It seemed to work, stone flowing against his face and the spear’s call getting closer. He reached out a hand, an arm, ready to grasp it and end this thing.

  Then the stone went solid around him again, and he remembered he needed to breathe.

  59

  Ella watched Tai disappear into the stone, heart beating with fear and hope. She had just seen that stone turn to rock around him. What if it did again?

  But she felt hope, too—hope that they had killed all but the last of the shamans. Hope that Nauro was holding Aeyenor off, however desperately.

  Hope that Tai would walk out holding the spear, and everyone else’s power would vanish.

  Silence thundered as Nauro and Aeyenor traded blows in the sky, and a thought occurred to her: she didn’t have to wait for Tai to get the spear. She could get it too. Prophets, she probably stood less chance of dying in there than out here.

  What better time for a swim in some stone?

  Ella took a deep breath and pushed inside, the stone flowing around her like the black sludge that would take unwary boots along the outer islands of the Worldsmouth delta. It was warm, which was surprising, and dark, which wasn’t. She had the strange sensation she was floating, the solidity of the ground replaced with more softness beneath her feet.

  Focus, Ella. You’ve got maybe sixty seconds of air, and a small spear to find in a big stone.

  She could feel it, faintly, somewhere above her. Ella tried to pull her way up, then kick up, then sort of worm her way up, but all it seemed to do was get her out of breath. Which was bad, when you couldn’t breathe.

  She pushed out of the stone again to find Nauro and Aeyenor spinning around each other in air, black blades a blur. Avery and Marea watched the battle, similar looks of concentration on their faces.

  They were fighting too, in their own ways—Marea trying to push luck in Nauro’s favor, and Avery doing whatever clever shamanic tricks he could do.

  “The stone,” Ella said, panting. “Put your hands in the stone. More power.”

  Aeyenor blasted Nauro back in the sky, and spun to hurl a fistful of newly-formed boulders at them. Marea shouted and the boulders crashed all around them, each one miraculously missing. Ella shivered. She hated surviving on pure luck. But what could she do in this fight, or in Tai’s?

  Nauro attacked again, the narrow man surprisingly elegant in his motions, the blades leaving trails of darkne
ss in their wake. Ella turned back to the stone. How long had Tai been in there? Was he taking air breaks?

  Marea screamed and Ella spun back to see a cloud of daggers flying at them, jet black like Aeyenor’s blade. She held her arms up instinctively, though it would do no good.

  The daggers hissed all around her, making ash-filled holes in the ground, but she felt nothing. Marea’s luck.

  Then Avery shouted and fell clutching his leg. His resonance dropped out of the harmony, and Ella’s stomach lurched as a significant portion of what had been his thigh drifted away as ash.

  “Avery!” Marea cried, running to him, eyes full of fear. Then the full meaning of Avery’s resonance dropping out hit her and Ella’s stomach clenched: the stone would go solid. Trapping Tai inside.

  “Your resonance!” she cried, crouching down next to them. “Avery, you have to strike resonance! Heal yourself!”

  “Can’t—heal—calignite,” he whispered, eyes squeezed shut in pain. Two clashes of silence sounded above, then Avery’s body went slack. He’d passed out from the pain.

  Ella lost no time, dropping to one knee and slapping him. “Wake up!”

  “What are you doing?” Marea screamed, grabbing her hand.

  “Tai! He’s trapped inside the stone!”

  “And Avery’s hurt! We have to do something!”

  “If we don’t get his resonance back,” Ella said, clenching her jaw, “it won’t matter what we do, because Nauro is not winning that fight up there, and once Aeyenor gets the spear we are all dead.”

  “But he’s hurt!” Marea cried, voice carrying the full weight of terror.

  The cold, calculating part of Ella’s brain saw there would be no convincing the girl, and likely no waking Avery either. But the passionate, in-love part of her brain refused to accept that meant Tai was going to die. What could she do?

  If Nauro was to die, Aeyenor would likely strike his own resonance again, and slip into the stone. She could harmonize with him and pull Tai out. But he’d be dead by then.