by Shannah Jay
As the blade struck his chest, he called in a loud voice, ' Brother, take me instead! ' He tried to say something else, but his life force was fading too swiftly and he crumpled to the ground.
Petur screamed in terror as his uncle turned towards him and fumbled for another dagger. 'Save me, lady!' Petur called then, catching hold of Herra's hand.
The boy's life energy was hers to use now, freely offered, and she seized it, amazed at its force and power in one so young, astonished at how much it augmented her own. It made a difference, just enough difference.
Lapped in light, holding one another closely, they waited as a cleft opened up again in the ground, then Herra tumbled all three of them into it. Petur was still clutching her and she held Jiran's lifeless body against her as they fell endlessly into a sticky darkness she had felt only once before. 'Quequere!'
she gasped. 'Quequere, we thank you.'
Behind them thunder rolled and lightning flashed, but louder than anything was the sound of Sen-Sether's screaming fury mingled with the rumbling vibrations of his God's rage. Three of the Initiates died as that fury lashed out, then another tongue of darkness licked towards the outer circle of men and six more were swept into a churning pit of black nothingness to appease the Serpent's boundless wrath.
In the sky, the beam of silver light cut out abruptly as Terraccalliss, who had once come down to Sunrise as the Second Manifestation of the Sisters' God, withdrew shaking and enfeebled to recover his strength. Pure light was a two-edged weapon, like all others, for it drained the user as well as deflecting the attacker.
When Herra regained consciousness, she was lying beside a stony outcropping of rock. Thunder was rolling around her from hilltop to hilltop, but more softly now, as if it had lost its anger, and with it, most of its force. Lightning flashed, but the flashes lit the sky only briefly and didn’t linger. The ground trembled beneath her and a voice within it whispered, 'Herra!' as Quequere's force faded.
'Thank you, Quequere,' she called for a second time, but wasn’t sure he’d heard. He must, she thought, have given his all to get them here. And surely there had been some other being behind the light in the sky. Who? What? And why should it help them?
At first the silence seemed as loud as the noise had been. She clasped her hands to her head, rocking to and fro in agony at the roughness of the transition from a deafening cacophony to a vast echoing silence.
The pain of the encounter faded to discomfort then to a mere tingle in her skull. Herra looked around her. 'The High Alder,' she sighed, nodding in relief. ' Thank you, Brother! ' She looked down at the bodies of the two lads, tumbled in a heap beside her.
Jiran was dead, the blood already drying on his chest around the dagger hilt. She had known that when she brought him here, but she wouldn’t leave his body for Those of the Serpent to abuse. His arms were still outflung with the force of the blade that had sunk into his tender flesh, the poisoned blade that had been meant for her. But the expression on his face was radiant, as if he’d welcomed death. She couldn’t doubt that their Brother had called him or that he’d answered that call gladly.
Petur was unconscious, lying in a huddle next to Jiran, rendered unconscious by the portal.
She heard voices calling, footsteps running towards her, and raised her eyes to see Davred and Katia. But the price of her safety tugged her to her knees, where she gave in and wept bitterly over the bright soul who must now be reborn and tread this world again. 'We shall not let you down, Jiran,' she told him, as if he could still hear. 'We shall fight and we win. Your life hasn’t been given in vain.'
Only then did she allow Cheral to help her to her feet and take her back to Northwoods, scolding her softly all the way, as only Cheral dared. Herra stopped after a few steps. 'Someone bring the boy Petur,' she called over her shoulder. 'And keep a watch on him. Let him not escape. And lay out Jiran's body with the greatest honour you can devise. He has earned it.'
She didn't see the shocked glances they exchanged at the sight of her grief-ravaged face. She didn't even notice the companions of her quest stepping forward to greet her as she stumbled back to Cheral's cosy hut. They stepped back again, their welcome unvoiced in the face of her drooping body.
She knew she was spent, and that was all she knew. She was far beyond speech or action, far beyond the capacity to acknowledge anyone else, except her friend and Sister, Cheral. Tomorrow she would start to think and plan again. Tonight she wanted only to sink into a sleep of utter exhaustion.
'We're all here now,' she said as Cheral helped her remove her soaked garments. 'All here to plan how we shall defeat the Serpent.'
'You'll do no planning for a good few days,' Cheral stated. 'Just look at you. Burnt to the bone.
There's more flesh on a new-born chuckle-fluff than there is on you.'
'Our Brother's quest is more important than my health. We must plan how to . . . '
Cheral ignored her and began to rub her Sister's chilled body with a warmed towel, calling out to somebody to bring a bowl of broth 'on the instant'. When she had Herra's body tingling with life again, she rolled her in soft blankets, then sat on the edge of the bed to clasp her friend's hand and pat it gently as they waited for the broth.
'There's no need to worry about planning how to defeat the Serpent till you're well and truly recovered, Herra. Katia, Quinna and the others have done nothing but plan for the last few weeks.
We're all to learn fighting skills and we're to share our Brother's training with anyone who has the capacity to use it.' She nodded and again patted the hand she was holding. 'We're well started here, Elder Sister. So you can take the time to recover properly before you lead us again.'
Herra smiled, drank the broth and sank into a deep and dreamless sleep. For the first time in years she felt the need to rely on someone else.
***
Terraccalliss groaned and tried to gather his mental forces together to communicate with Ebrlk, but it was so hard, it hurt so much, he decided to wait.
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He had, he thought grimly, used more power in the recent battle than he should have done on this plane of existence.
Pain was coursing through his whole body, yammering through his brain. And if it wasn’t quite as substantial as the body he’d used in his last life, yet this body was still solid enough to feel pain.
But he’d saved Herra, at least he’d saved Herra. The Quest for Peace and Wisdom which he and his companions shared with her still had a chance, though only a bare chance, of success on this planet. The evil that had manifested itself as the Serpent God continued to grow stronger. And there were so few of them on this plane of existence to carry on the struggle for peace, so very few, that their efforts were spread thin.
Not many beings were capable of progressing to this plane of existence. The soul's evolution was a slow business, requiring many lives to give it the wisdom to move on. Herra was the first human in a long time who had looked so promising. That was why she was important in her own right, as well as for the quest she led, the quest which would allow humans to develop more quickly along lines which prepared them for the transition to the next stage on the Ladder of Life.
That was why he would do almost anything to save her.
The pain was subsiding a little. He felt his brain beginning to function more clearly, his wings starting to relax again, instead of clenching into a tight scroll down his back. Tentatively he flexed the wings, just the merest hint of unfurling, but gasped and desisted at the agony that stabbed through him. Not yet, he told himself. I must keep still a while longer and gather my forces.
It was so hard to be back to Sunrise after spending so long on the next level, so hard to endure the physical constraints that made every movement an effort. On his own plane of existence he could soar for hours in the astral brightness, catching the perfumed spirit winds that wafted through the upper levels and drifting with them, exchanging thoughts and ideas with any being which wished to commu
nicate; here on Sunrise a short physical flight was all he could manage and there was no true mental communion, not even with Herra.
He sighed and flexed the slender bones that stiffened the membrane of his wings. Yes, that was better. Soon he’d be able to make his report.
It wouldn’t be good news for the others. The Serpent was gaining in power in spite of all they’d done to prevent it.
Never had evil grown so strong on Herra's plane of existence, and now threatened their own. He sometimes wondered, they all did, whether evil threaded all the planes, even the one they sensed dimly above their own, whether evil was ready to erupt into existence everywhere given half a chance. He’d even wondered at times in his long existence whether evil was a necessary counterbalance to lethargy and smugness, a necessary stimulus to move them on, to make them do better still, to force them to try to understand the universe in all its aspects.
They’d never been able to penetrate the hollow tunnelled darkness where evil lay in wait. They’d managed to set barriers around such places on their own plane, but they’d hardly begun to understand it all. What were these places? Why were they there? The questions were always forming, but the answers had eluded them so far. All they had was conjecture.
He hoped it would be enough to help them defeat evil in all its guises. It was. It must be.
The one thing he was sure of was that this was necessary.
CHAPTER 10 THE SANDRIMS
Years passed after Herra finally rejoined her companions and brought the boy Petur back to the High Alder. They were happy years, on the whole, for the Aldrani. The threat of the Serpent was there, but people can learn to live with threats. As long as war didn’t erupt, as long as the Serpent's evil didn’t touch them directly, they were able to build new lives and found new settlements for the refugees who still kept trickling in. The new generation of children all learned to develop whatever inborn Gifts they carried, using Sisterhood training methods.
And when the Serpent began to stir in the south, to rise higher and cast its dark shadow over the northern lands, it wasn’t at first obvious that the final confrontation was approaching.
***
One morning, almost exactly twelve years after Herra and her companions had left the Sandrims, Quedras looked down on South Vale from the highest point of the grain fields and nodded in satisfaction. The land which had once been so barren was now green and lush, because Herra's River was still splashing down from the heights near Drythroat Pass where it had started as she crossed the mountains. The spring provided more than enough pure sparkling water to irrigate the land, and then what was left flowed on into North Vale, which wasn’t as pretty as South Vale, but which had good enough land to raise some crops and feed those who now lived there.
The main cause of Quedras's satisfaction was that he had done all that - with the help of his mate Querilla, of course, and the help of the rest of the people who lived below the big square outcrop of rock they called Quequere's Quoin. But still, it had been his idea.
Guilt nudged him as he claimed that mentally. Herra's idea, actually. But he was the one who’d persuaded people it was the right thing to do and he was the one who’d seen that they carried out the huge changes to their lifestyle in a sensible manner. The changes had turned them from people who planted few crops and struggled to survive into farmers who were growing fat and careless, or so he’d just been telling them.
Even the desert which had once brought madness to those who ventured upon it was changing.
The sand was no longer glittering white, but had taken on a faint, dirty beige tinge. Plants were beginning to grow at the edges, scrubby plants of no value except to hold the sand down, but nothing at all had grown there before. Not a single thread of green. Even the wind didn’t seem to blow as wildly across the Great Desert nowadays.
And although people still crossed the desert to the Sandrims occasionally, with the same purpose of escaping from Dsheresh, the land of the deleff, they didn’t succumb to sand madness and they didn’t lose the weaker members of their group to the Vortex. They found it an exhausting crossing and were grateful that the deleff's servants, the SS'Habi, had provided them with plenty of food and water before they left.
Yes, twelve years has passed since he’d seen Herra dance out of the Vortex, Quedras thought, letting the memories flow. Not a long time, really. Not quite a sixth of a lifetime for those who didn’t get killed fighting. And yet, in that short period his community had changed drastically because of her influence. They were no longer a desert people who moved their habitations with the seasons; they now dared build stone houses and village meeting halls, inns and barns - and even a covered market where they could barter their spare produce and their handcrafts. Yes, they had all the paraphernalia of a settled people.
He should be proud of them - well, he was proud of them, of course he was! He sighed. But he was also bored. Peace was all very well, but for a fighting man like him, it left a lot of hours to fill each day.
As he walked back into the village, he heard the sound of a woman's voice raised in a roar of anger and grinned. Querilla was bored, too. They'd had three children together, which she’d then decided was
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enough for a noted swordswoman like her. Quossim was five now, Quialla eight and Quedler eleven.
They lived in the children's quarters, members of the same squad, and spent their time under the tutelage of the older folk. But he kept an eye on them and they were fine, healthy children.
Even Herra had said this was a good system for organising a community, one which didn’t waste the wisdom most people gained as they grew older, so they’d kept it in their new life. The children came home regularly to visit their parents, of course, and everyone went as birth family groups to the Midwinter Revels which Querilla had organised one year when everyone was getting fed up of snow and ice, and which now happened every year, or to the harvest celebrations held every autumn.
The angry voice died down and Querilla stamped out of the house she and Quedras shared with Quall and the rest of their squad. She glared at him as if he was the one who’d upset her.
'What's wrong, Quer?'
She shrugged. 'Nothing.'
Cliff cats snarled more gently than Querilla in a temper, he thought, not allowing himself to grin at the thought. 'Fancy a bout with the swords?'
She shrugged again. 'I suppose so. Though why we bother, I don't know, when there's no one left to fight since the last of the Rimrascals settled in North Vale. It's so damned peaceful here now it wouldn't matter if I let my sword get rusty.'
He put an arm round her and gave her a rib-cracking hug. 'I know what you mean. Tame, isn't it, lately?'
She nodded. 'Mmm.' For a moment she was stiff in his arms, then she sighed and hugged him in return.
He ran his hands over her body, but just as he was opening his mouth to suggest they discuss the situation in the privacy of their bedroom, a loud booming sounded from up on the Quoin. Both of them froze, then exchanged astonished glances.
'Quequere!' he said. 'Quequere's calling. Hey, he hasn't called us to see him for a long time.'
'Years,' she agreed.
The booming continued, long rumbles of sonorous sound. The two of them stared at each other.
'He's not just calling,' Querilla said in an awed voice. 'It's a Summons.'
When that happened everyone in the community had to go up to the Quoin to hear the will of the being who’d saved them in the hungry years by carving out great caverns inside the Quoin for their winter quarters and stores. All Quequere asked in return was that one of them spend time acting as his Voice. So when one Voice was ready to die, or when Quequere wished to change his Voice, they all had to attend to see whom he would choose this time. It was a fair exchange and no one complained about that.
'Later,' Quedras breathed in Querilla's ear and she nodded. He felt excitement run through him and saw the same excitement sparkling in her eyes. You nev
er knew what would happen when Quequere called. 'Come on, then. What are we waiting for?' Quedras ran across to the big triangle of metal in the village centre and clanged it loud and long.
People poured out of the houses.
'What's wrong?'
'Is someone attacking?'
'Didn't you hear it?' Quedras roared, incensed at how unwatchful they were nowadays.
Some of them nodded, but others shook their heads. 'Hear what?'
'Quequere's calling. Listen to it, you stupid rrockbrrains! Have you gone deaf?'
During the hush that followed, the booming sound seemed to intensify.
There was a buzz of voices, then someone asked, 'Do we have to go up there?'
' What? ' roared Quedras. 'Who said that?'
A man was pushed to the front, one who’d joined the community fairly recently.
'Of course we have to go up there! Are we Rrrimrrascals, to ignore one to whom we owe a grreat debt - whether we happen to need his help at the moment or not?' Quedras's voice beat around the crowd, making them shuffle their feet and avoid his eyes. As usual, when he was angry, he was rolling his Rs, a thing which usually warned people to tread carefully.
Quedras picked the man up by the front of his jerkin. 'You were told when you settled here that we're Quequere's people.' An extra shake, before he shouted, 'Well, weren't you?'
'Yes. '
'Then rresolve to do your duty or go back across the desert and rreturn to Dsheresh!' Quedras shoved the man away suddenly, so that he stumbled and fell. People near him shuffled backwards, as if unwilling to be associated with him.
Quedras spent a moment, hands on hips, turning slowly round to stare at everyone. 'Does anyone else have any rreserrvations about what they should do?' he asked.
There was a vigorous shaking of heads.
Beside her mate, Querilla was fingering her sword, slipping it out of its scabbard then shooting it back in again, as if impatient to draw it fully and attack someone. The anger in her face matched that of Quedras, for she still remembered very clearly the year Quequere had taken them all under his wing, the year that had nearly seen the end of their community - and the bad years before it, when hunger was a regular winter companion.
