The one remaining man, the one with the spiked staff, swung at Sam with both hands from the end of the staff like he was swinging a baseball bat for a homerun hit. Blood streaming from his nose, the man yelled a savage roar, trying to overpower Sam’s defenses. Sam, still in motion from the last man he defeated, turned his body like a windmill.
In the moment of battle, everything slowed down for Sam. He saw the man’s face, bloody and enraged. He saw his mouth wide, roaring with defiance. He saw the muscles on the man’s arms stand out as he swung the staff as hard as he could, wanting to crush Sam’s skull.
In a perfect moment of peace, he twirled his body around, rotating counterclockwise toward the incoming staff. As he turned, he whipped the stick in his left hand around to strike the staff, stopping its momentum and rattling the man’s arms. Then, continuing with his rotation, he struck the staff in exactly the same place with the right stick in a powerful overhand strike, snapping the staff in two pieces. As the half of the staff not being held spun off at an odd angle, Sam made one more turn, slowing his rotation to connect his left heel to the man’s face, knocking him aside and making him lose consciousness.
Sam stopped then, breathing heavily and looking around warily. He saw Rindu standing near Dr. Walt, looking like he had not moved in the time it took Sam to dispatch the four men. Nalia, too, was standing casually, shrapezi in their holders on her back. Dr. Walt appeared frazzled, apparently not used to being so near violence.
Inspecting the men he had fought, he was thankful to see that they were all breathing. The big man, Malcolm, sat in front of Rindu, dazed with his head in his hands.
Rindu stepped toward the man, and put his hand on the man’s head. His hand hovered over the man’s skin for a moment, moving in a slow circle, and then Rindu pulled his hand away. The man’s eyes cleared. “Will you kill us now?” Malcolm asked.
The Zouy looked down to the man, reached his hand down and, after the man had taken it, helped him to his feet. “No. As we tried to explain to you, we are not the Gray Man’s followers. We have used as little force as possible to prevent the death of any of your men, but many are injured. That was unavoidable. We will be leaving now. You are free to go as well.”
The man looked toward the ground, face flushed. “Maybe we were wrong about you. You obviously could’ve killed us all, if that was your goal. We will be asking some hard questions when we see that woman again.” He began to help some of his men up, the ones that were still conscious.
Rindu called out to him: “In the future, perhaps you should be more careful to whom you listen and what you are told. This could have been much worse for you. I hope you know this.”
The man nodded and muttered a “thank you” as he continued to rouse his men.
Turning to Sam, Rindu asked: “Are you hurt Sam? Did they strike you?”
Looking himself over, Sam was surprised to find that he wasn’t injured. He had not even been hit. “No, I’m all right, thanks to Skitter. I froze when those men came at me. If it wasn’t for him, I would be injured or dead. Thanks to Nalia’s training,” he bowed his head to her, “I was able to keep from hitting myself with my own weapon.”
He heard Nalia chuckle and whisper: “It is nice to know that you listen to my tutelage at least some of the time, you clumsy oaf.” It was a stage whisper, loud enough for him to hear. Loud enough for everyone to hear.
“You did well,” Rindu added. “I see that you did not use more force than necessary. The men will recover, though they will have to deal with the pain caused from their hastiness. I see, too, that you had no trouble in transforming your weapon. Very good.”
“Thank you. It felt right to do so.”
Dr. Walt sat down on the ground. “Well, that was…frightening. None of the men had any chance in getting past Rindu and Nalia, but still, it was quite a shock to my heart. I’ll need a few minutes to compose myself before we break camp and leave, if that’s ok with all of you.”
It was, and while the doctor rested, the other three took down the tents, packed them up, and prepared to leave. Finally, when everything was ready and all traces of the camp were erased, the rakkeben were called in. Rindu’s idea of sending them far afield to look for food was a good one. Things would have been complicated if the wolves would have entered the battle.
Packed up and mounted, the party set off, wanting to put some miles between them and the village of Raihar. As they started moving, Sam realized that things would never be the same. The Gray Man knew who they were and had sent at least one of his minions after them. He had no doubt that the woman he saw in the tavern was an agent of the Gray Man.
Crestfallen, he finally admitted to himself that he would have to confront, and defeat, the Gray Man. There was no getting out of it. If he tried to run, they would eventually find him. Their only chance was to attack him on their terms. Wistfully, he thought that if he faced the villain now, he and all his friends would die.
Determined to focus even more intently on his training, he rode toward his fate, trying to outrace his black thoughts.
*****
None of the others noticed the shadow in a tree several hundred feet away. Ix watched as the party packed up and left, not moving and hardly breathing to keep from being noticed. She would have to go and report to the Gray Man what had happened. She had been hoping that she would have been able to join the battle at a crucial moment to kill one or both of the protectors. She saw quickly enough, though, that the men were no match for the three who fought. Even with the men distracting them, it would have been too much of a risk for her to enter the fray to snatch the old man.
With a shake of her head, she teleported away from the camp site and directly to her room in the Gray Fortress. She was not looking forward to bringing news of her failure to him. With a resigned shrug, she left her room, heading to where she knew the Gray Man would be.
26
As the party settled into the routine of trying to cover the miles toward their destination, Sam took every opportunity he could to practice and perfect both his physical fighting abilities and his use of the rohw. Whenever possible, he practiced with the seed pods and he was beginning to improve, able now to keep three of them in motion, even when he was riding Shonyb. He still tried to transport himself home each night, hoping he would be able do it because of his developing abilities with the rohw, but had no success yet. Of course, he was still taking language lessons from Dr. Walt too, but those lessons would not save his life or get him home, so though they were interesting, he didn’t spend much of his spare time on that subject. Besides, Sam figured that speaking with everyone was practice enough.
“Master Rindu,” he said as he pulled up alongside the Zouy as they started off again after a midday break. “What was it that you did with that man, Malcolm, after we turned back their attack? He seemed injured and dazed, but you did something I couldn’t see well. Did you heal him with your rohw?”
“I was wondering when you would ask about that. The short answer is that, yes, I healed him partially with my rohw. Do you understand how healing can be done in this way?”
Sam paused to put his seed pods back into their box before turning his attention back to Rindu and answering. “I have read about people healing through vibrational energy. The basic idea, I think, is that many ailments or injuries are caused by blockages in the energy pathways within the body. A master can use his own energy to dissolve those blockages and make the person healthier.”
“Good. Yes, that is the basic idea. It is as it was with the porzul tree. There were several locations where the man’s energy was out of balance, so I readjusted things. I did not dissolve blockages so much as I rearranged the way the energy was flowing inside his body.”
“You can do that?” asked Sam.
“I can. It is simply a matter of manipulating the energy flow within the other person’s body and making it do what it should be doing. I will teach you this, in time. Unfortunately, for now we must concentrate on de
fending and attacking, not on healing. There are a few more concepts you must understand yet before I can teach you any healing. It is the great tragedy of the universe that it is always harder to heal than to harm. Most often, killing is easiest of all. It saddens me, but some things cannot be changed. As it is said, ‘to wound is easy, to kill easiest of all, but to heal requires great skill and knowledge.’”
After a few minutes of silence, it was clear to Sam that Rindu was not going to speak further, so he settled back to a slower pace, letting Nalia pass him, waving a greeting in the process, and settling into a pace to keep even with Dr. Walt. The two chatted for the rest of the afternoon, going over histories and records, speaking of (and in) the different languages Sam was learning to research in Dr. Walt’s collection of records, and speaking fondly of their home and what they missed about it. By the time they stopped, Sam was homesick again, wondering how his mother was, as well as that silly cat of his.
After setting up camp, training with Nalia in combat, training with Rindu in vibrational energy use, and eating dinner, he found himself sitting on a log near Nalia. She was perched on a rock beside the fire they had built to chase away the night’s chill. Dr. Walt had retired to his tent to read and Rindu had gone off into the forest to meditate. Skitter was curled up near Sam’s feet, his breathing and occasional clicking or murmuring indicating that he was dreaming of whatever it was that hapaki dreamed of.
Sam looked to Nalia, off to his right. Her head was pointed off toward the forest, but her eyes could have been focused anywhere. He took a moment to look at her, really look at her, one of the few times he had ever taken the risk to do so. The last thing he wanted to do was to insult her or make her feel uncomfortable. If such a thing were even possible.
She sat with perfect posture, her back straight, her head poised proudly on her slender neck. The sliver of her neck he saw between where the mask ended and her clothing began was tantalizing, the skin firm-looking, smooth and perfect. For some reason, Sam found looking at the curve of her throat as something incredibly sensual. He quickly shifted his eyes away from her neck.
Her clothes, while still covering her well enough to hide her exact form, gave small glimpses here and there of what lay beneath. She was fully covered, but in certain spots her clothing was stretched tighter than the overall loose fit. In these spots, he could see the angles and curves of her body. Or maybe he was imagining the whole thing. He didn’t know.
Still fixed in his mind were the images of her fighting that first night, in the compound. She was wearing some type of undergarments that night, tighter than what he normally saw her in. Her body was exquisite, forged from years of intense combat training. He decided he better put his mind, and his eyes, on something else. The current train of thought was much too distracting. Better not to go down that road. Better not to even look toward that road. Or admit that road even existed.
“Are you looking for anything in particular, Sam?” Her voice shocked him in its suddenness. She turned her head so her mask faced him.
“What?”
She repeated. “Are you looking for anything in particular? Or are you just leering at me for no reason?”
“I’m, uhh, ahh…no. I mean, I’m sorry. I was just…well, you know, it’s hard to find a place to look in the uncomfortable silence. I can’t very well look at your eyes. The mask is…disconcerting.”
“I see,” she said. “Relax, Sam. There is no reason to fill every silence. Silence is beautiful in its own way.”
“Yes,” he agreed, perhaps putting just a little too much feeling in the statement. “Yes it is.”
“What?” He got the sense of her eyes narrowing at him. That damned mask!
“Oh, nothing.” He took a deep breath, waited a moment, and then spoke. “Nalia, do you miss your mother?” He saw her stiffen and was afraid that he had made a terrible mistake.
He hurried on, trying to explain. “I’m sorry. I was just asking because I have lost a parent, too. I was just wondering how you dealt with it, if it affected you profoundly and invades your thoughts constantly, like it does with me.”
She appeared to relax a little, going from diamond hard to only as hard as steel. “I see. You lost your mother as well?”
He looked down at his feet. “No, my father. When I was young.”
“Tell me,” she said.
Looking toward her, he scrubbed his hand through his hair. It was getting long. He’d have to cut it soon. “I was only four years old. He died in an accident at work, though I don’t know much more than that. It devastated my mother, so much so that she has never talked about what happened or much at all about my father. I don’t even know what kind of work he did, what kind of work caused him to lose his life. She says it’s too painful for her to talk about.
“When it happened, we lived far away, on the other side of the country, thousands of miles away. She left everything and took me to the town where I live now. She cut off all contact with friends, relatives, everyone. We started a new life. I don’t know any of the people from the first four years of my life. Not any of my family, except my mom.”
Picking up a small twig, he began to break pieces off, section by section. “I remember when I was very young feeling like I had been betrayed, like my father had abandoned me. It made me afraid that others would do so. I don’t know, maybe I still feel like that.
“But that’s not an issue. For my mother, even after all these years, I’m really all she has left. Being gone for all this time, it’s tearing me apart. I don’t know how she has reacted to it, but I’m sure it’s not good. I need to get back home. I need to get back to my mother before it’s too late. She needs me.”
He looked over then and saw Nalia’s hooded head nodding softly. “I am sorry, Sam. I did not realize you too had lost a loved one. Perhaps your grief is greater than mine because I still have my father close, whereas your mother, the only thing left to you, is in another world. Have you no others in your world who need you, no one else your absence would affect?”
“There are no other relatives with whom I’m still in contact. I don’t have many friends, just one or two. They’ll be wondering what happened to me, but it won’t destroy their lives as with my mother. No, it is my mother I am concerned about.”
She nodded again and then turned her head to look at him. “My mother was amazing,” she started. “She was strong and skilled and beautiful. I have been told with how good-looking my father is and how beautiful my mother was, everyone expected that I would be breathtaking. It was a cruel joke the universe played on me that caused me to be so ugly.”
Sam interrupted. “Please don’t say that, Nalia. I find you to be a beautiful person, as well as honorable, courageous, and kind.”
Nalia laughed. “That is because you do not have to gaze on my hideous visage. No, Sam, it is right for me to speak of it openly, because it is the truth. It does not bother me. That stopped long ago. I accept it. I only mentioned it because in describing my mother, I had to mention her beauty, which was renowned.
“She was a tender mother as well. When we were in public and training, she was harder on me than on anyone else, but I understood that she did it so that none could say I was given special treatment. In our home, she was affectionate and supportive, loving. She made me see how it was possible to be a fierce warrior and also love the simple things. Things like being with one’s family and just sitting quietly with those who are important to us.
“When the Gray Man killed her in front of me, I felt my world end. Honor and duty bound me to deliver his message, but I had already died inside. If not for the fact that none remained to bring the warning message to the Sapsyra, I would have attacked the Gray Man and died as my mother did. To this day I still wonder if I made the wise choice.
“I love my father and he is a source of pride and of consolation for me, but my mother was a part of me, just as much as my hand is a part of me. When she was killed, that part was savagely ripped away. I do not kno
w if killing the Gray Man will help—I do not know if it is even possible to kill him—but I intend to try and then we will see if the hole that burns in the center of my soul is filled. Our philosophy says that emptiness caused by hateful deeds cannot be filled through hatred, but we shall see. I owe it to the memory of my mother and I owe it to the grief my father still feels over it, even after all these years. I will help to kill him, or I will die trying.”
She exhaled forcefully and seemed to deflate, looking out toward the darkness. Then, taking a deep breath, she straightened and looked back at Sam. Her voice was now husky, with an edge that, if Sam didn’t know better, sounded like she was fighting her emotions. “And I will help you, Sam. You have proven to be honorable and brave, even recklessly risking yourself to help others. To help me. I will, in turn, aid you in getting back to your mother because no one should suffer the loss of both parents. This I swear to you. Whatever I can do, even should it cost me my life, I will do to help you.”
Sam felt her eyes meeting his, though he couldn’t see through the mask. Impulsively, he reached out and clasped her hand in his, cupping it reverently in his own. “Thank you, Nalia. I appreciate that. I can’t even explain how much that means to me.”
They sat there, facing each other for just a moment in time, an endless eternity to Sam, the first real moment of comfort he had felt since he arrived in Gythe. Then Nalia jerked slightly as if she was waking up and slowly pulled her hand away. “We should get some sleep. I plan on working you hard in training tomorrow. You should take your ease while you can, clumsy oaf.” Somehow, he heard in her voice that she was winking when she said it.
Vibrations: Harmonic Magic Book 1 Page 19
