Paladins of the Storm Lord

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Horace coughed and tried to muffle the sound with his hand. Cordelia looked to the crowd, but no one seemed to notice. Horace moaned, grabbing his head as shudders overtook him. Cordelia put an arm around him, covering his mouth. In the field, Simon sank to his knees, hands to his head.

  “What is happening?” Nettle whispered.

  Horace was sobbing, his head buried in Cordelia’s chest. “Horace, what is it?”

  “My…power.” He shuddered again, and blood dribbled from his nose. “He burnt out my power.”

  *

  Lazlo tried not to weep. He couldn’t feel those around him, couldn’t sense them in any way except with his ears, his eyes. He’d regenerated them one last time, and then he’d gotten rid of them the only way he knew how. Without his powers, they wouldn’t pursue him, wouldn’t bother. And now Horace would never be a slave to them, either.

  “Samira!” he cried, and she was at his side in an instant.

  “He burnt out his power,” she said to Christian and Marlowe, to Dillon.

  The others babbled, and Lazlo knew that Horace had to be suffering, but he couldn’t sense it, couldn’t help. On the long walk from Gale, the idea to do this had been pounding in his head. It was Dillon’s face in the temple, even after the bastard had called him Stephen. Dillon had been sorry, sorrier than he’d ever been, maybe, but there had still been that damned hope. Lazlo couldn’t fool himself into thinking the hope was that they could still be friends. The hope was that Lazlo would stay, sure, but it was also the hope that Lazlo could keep him alive and healthy. Dillon had said he couldn’t live without Lazlo, but with Lazlo around, he wouldn’t even try.

  And the idea that the rest of the Atlas crew was coming, everyone but Dué, just strengthened his resolve. There had been one sure way to make certain they left him alone, that they just got on with their lives.

  And Horace? Well, Lazlo wanted to be alone, right? The thought hurt more than he expected.

  “Why?” Christian and Marlowe asked. “This wasn’t our agreement.”

  “You don’t need me anymore,” Lazlo said as he stood with Samira’s help. “Now, you’ve got a long way to travel if you want to reach your own domain, and this is the only life you have. You can’t waste it fighting each other.”

  They stared for a long moment, and he knew they could do as they pleased. He couldn’t leash their powers anymore.

  “We’ll keep our word.” They started away, the breachies trailing in their wake, all of them carrying supplies they’d no doubt brought from the satellite. “Good-bye, Dr. Lazlo. I doubt we’ll see one another again.”

  Dillon paced up and down, looking toward them as if he’d start another fight.

  Lazlo stepped in the path of his rage. “Dillon, don’t.”

  “Why in the fuck did you do that, Laz?”

  “Now I’m nothing to fight over.”

  “For fuck’s sake! You could have bunked anywhere you wanted. I wouldn’t have bothered you!”

  “Not true, and you know it.”

  “What are you going to do now? You can’t go out in the world like this.” He gestured as if Lazlo had picked the wrong outfit.

  “We’ll be okay.” But he didn’t know that. Horace wouldn’t have him now. Who would?

  Dillon gawped. “Look, just stay, all right? I’m sorry if I made you feel trapped, but—”

  “You can’t make someone feel.”

  Dillon lifted his hands, dropped them, and Lazlo wished he could get a peek in that mind. Was he weighing his options, wondering if Lazlo was speaking the truth? Did he want to run after Christian and Marlowe and kill them? Lazlo would just have to watch him go.

  Dillon shook his head. “I guess I’ll see you around if you don’t get yourself killed. Which you will. Have a nice life.” He stalked toward Gale, muttering to himself. Lazlo supposed that was fitting. They’d already had the other kinds of farewells. Their final one being angry was par for the course.

  As Dillon crested the hill, Lydia came out of hiding. She raised a hand, eyes wide. Lazlo turned in time to catch a punch in the face from a wild-eyed woman, the same one he’d healed outside of Gale. Cordelia. It came to him just as his teeth rattled, and the sky whipped around him as he fell.

  Samira took a step forward, but a drushka rose from the grass and put a knife to her neck. “Stand easy, mind thrower.”

  Lazlo reached to his bleeding mouth. He fumbled for his power, but there was nothing. He couldn’t fix this. Cordelia was snarling down at him, and Horace stood behind her, staring at nothing.

  “Horace,” Lazlo said.

  Cordelia grabbed Lazlo by the shirtfront. “What the fuck did you do to him?”

  “Burnt out his power and mine, for his own good. If they’d found him, they would have turned him into me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re used to living forever. They’d never stop chasing it, and with his new abilities, he could heal them over and over like I did.”

  She shook him. “So you cripple my only healer?”

  “His telepathic abilities remain. I was careful.”

  She shook him harder and stabbed a finger in Horace’s direction. “You call that careful? What is telepathy going to do if one of us gets hurt?”

  “Let him go!” Samira cried, but the drushka didn’t budge.

  Cordelia pulled him closer. “When you told me my uncle had been stabbed, were you lying? Did you know the Storm Lord killed him?”

  “Yes.” She had every right to her rage. Dillon and the others had been playing with these people for too long, and he’d helped them.

  Cordelia let him drop as she paced up and down. “Motherfucker.”

  “Please,” Lazlo said to the drushka. “Let her go. Samira, don’t attack these people.”

  “Simon—”

  “There’s been too much death.”

  Her lips were thin and angry. “Fine.”

  The drushka stepped away and gestured toward where Lydia waited on the hill. “And that one?”

  “She’s no threat to you.”

  “You could have asked me,” Horace said as if just realizing they were talking. “You didn’t. You just—”

  “I’m sorry,” Lazlo said. “Truly. I saw my chance and took it.”

  “There seems to be lots of taking where you come from,” Cordelia said.

  “The Storm Lord knew about Horace. The others would have found out. Please, please, understand. They would have made you their slave, done whatever they could until you guaranteed their immortality.”

  “Immortality?” Horace asked. “I could have given them—”

  “It’s a curse.”

  Horace looked as if he might cry, and Lazlo stood, wanted to go to him, but Cordelia glared at him again, and he knew he’d be knocked flat if he tried.

  “You’re not coming with us,” she said.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you. I needed time. We’d been together so long, you see, and—”

  “Save it.” She gathered Horace under one arm and led him away. “You’re lucky I saw the universe today, or you’d be a fucking smear on the ground.” The drushka gave him and Samira a final look before following her.

  “I’m supposed to go with you,” Lydia called. Everyone turned to her. “I’m not a friend of his,” she said, gesturing to Lazlo. “I just met him today as he was leaving the city.”

  “Come if you’re coming,” Cordelia said.

  Lydia hurried to join them, not even waving good-bye. Lazlo couldn’t even call to Horace, not after his betrayal.

  “Well,” Samira said, “that went about as well as you thought.” When he’d told her what he was planning, she’d tried to talk him out of it but had relented in the end. Now he wondered if he should have listened. His mouth was aching, his head pounding, and there was so much he couldn’t fix.

  “Where should we go?” Samira asked. “Or do you want me to pick off that woman and the drushka from here, and you and Horace can ride of
f together?”

  “I know you’re joking, but…” He shook his head.

  She smiled sheepishly. “You’re stuck with me, Simon. I’ll try to be better company.”

  “I don’t know.” And he didn’t know much, couldn’t feel much except the wind in his hair, on his body. For a moment, he just stood and let himself feel it, the things he couldn’t change, the pain, the sensations. For the first time in a long time, he’d be at the mercy of whatever the world wanted to throw at him.

  “Onward?” she asked. “Maybe we should have kept Lydia, seen what the future holds.”

  He thought of Dué and shuddered. “I don’t know that it makes anything better.”

  She threaded her arm through his, and they picked up their supplies and headed into the plains to the east. Lazlo thought of how Christian, Marlowe, and the breachies had gone so easily, and knew he hadn’t heard the last of them, no matter what they said. He looked back over his shoulder at Gale, Dillon’s domain, and wondered what would happen there, too.

  He tried to put it out of his mind, telling himself it didn’t concern him anymore. All that was left for him was to put one foot in front of the other and walk into the future with no troubles but those he caused from here on out. He smiled at Samira. Without his powers, how much trouble could he possibly cause?

  EPILOGUE

  Natalya lay in an alley, listening to the dull sound of her own head banging against the stone. The strikes never hurt her. No matter what she did, nothing hurt her. She’d used her powers more than she ever had before, so her whole body should be aching, but the only thing that bothered her was the buzzing of her mind.

  “Get out, get out, get out,” she said. But nothing would banish these feelings, these powers. She began to wonder if she’d have to open her skull and pour out her brain.

  The last few days were hazy. It was light now, but it had been night a moment before. Hadn’t it? She’d been helping the Storm Lord, being his strong right hand, and she never could have done it without the calming force that came over her at times, the one that compelled her to do certain, awful things, but anything was better than the buzzing, than this constant need to just lash out.

  She stared at her own hand. Maybe these newfound powers would be enough to destroy her if she timed them just right.

  “You don’t want that.” Calmness washed over her, and she sighed. Her powers dampened, guided by an expert hand, by the voice that spoke in her mind.

  “Where have you been?” she wailed. The buzzing muted, and her legs could hold her up again.

  “Having a little fun here and there.”

  “With the Storm Lord?” Oh, how she’d wanted him to notice her, to see how powerful she was, how she could be his most trusted servant, but the way he’d looked at her the night before, it chilled her to the core.

  “He’s afraid of you,” the voice said.

  “He should be afraid of me.” Natalya walked up and down the alley. Several people had glanced in at her, but she’d brushed them away with her power, tweaking their fear so they couldn’t help but flee. “Even my imaginary friend has better things to do than spend time with me!”

  The voice laughed, the sound echoing through her mind into hundreds of voices, thousands. “You want me to leave again?”

  The blanket of sanity pulled away slightly, and Natalya felt the rhythm of the molecules around her, the gravity of the people and the buildings, the planet. Her chest tightened, and she staggered. It was too much. She had to destroy it all just so it would leave her be!

  “I am as real as real can be,” the voice said, a sultry whisper. “And I’m not afraid of you. I’ll appreciate you, unlike some. I have need of a strong right hand.”

  The comfort wrapped her again, and Natalya breathed into it. “I’m going mad.”

  “None of that without my permission. Now, you’ve got all this power, and it’s driving you crazy, so…”

  Natalya waited. “So?”

  “Well, shouldn’t someone pay?”

  Yes, she hadn’t been given any warning about what might happen when she volunteered to be augmented. She’d been happy enough before the process. She could have earned the Storm Lord’s trust instead of scaring him with her madness. The desire for revenge burned so hot within her, she tasted bile. “Simon Lazlo.”

  The voice tittered. “Among others. It’s time to play, darling. The world is my chess board, and you my queen.” She began to sing, a tune Natalya had never heard, but it comforted her, strengthened her shields so the world wasn’t beating down her brain.

  “Are you a god?”

  “Oh, unequivocally yes. The only one, you might say. Or could say. Or should?”

  “What is your name, Goddess?”

  “That is a tough one. Naos. I think. Yes, I like it best. Although sometimes…” She trailed into muttering.

  Natalya waited, sensing her future included a lot of waiting.

  “Focus!” the voice barked. “The first thing we have to do is leave.”

  Natalya stared at the wall before her. Her power flowed over it, and it crumbled like stale bread. She stepped over the broken bricks and then looked back and reassembled them with a thought, no seams or cracks to show where she’d taken it apart. It made her giddy.

  “A straight line, lovey, just like that.”

  She went through the city, making her holes, repairing them, scaring people or sending them scattering from her path. When she knocked a hole in the palisade, she caught the pieces with her mind before they even touched ground and mended them effortlessly behind her.

  With a satisfied smile, Natalya walked east into the plains bordering Gale, not bothering to look back.

  About the Author

  Barbara Ann Wright writes fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories when not ranting on her blog. The Pyramid Waltz was one of Tor.com’s Reviewer’s Choice books of 2012, was a Foreword Review Book of the Year Award Finalist and a Goldie finalist, and won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Fantasy. A Kingdom Lost was a Goldie finalist and won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Fantasy Romance.

  Barbara Ann can be contacted at zendragreatandterrible@gmail.com, or visit her website: http://www.barbaraannwright.com.

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