Desert Rose
Page 29
Biao Tanu for protection? Or is the mark you all bear just a side effect of worship?"
"Yes," Atothka nodded. "It comes with the acceptance of the faith. How is it you do not know this, paladin?"
"Because I came to Biao Tanu utterly ignorant of her, seeking release from a geas and protection from future enchantments."
"It is a sad day that one of the most ancient divinities in this natural world is so little known."
"I know little of any deity," Lorrine assured him. "Probably other people still know her just fine."
"Questions of theology aside, Lorrine, we should get back underground and make some of this stuff into a meal. And we need to find a place to sleep tonight. I'm assuming the plague, whatever it was, has succumbed to time, and is no longer viable."
"I hope it isn't! By the holies, I hadn't even considered plague still living in those houses!"
The troll, Gumpa, approached, looking far more solid than he had an hour or so ago.
"Go inside," he groaned at them. "Darkness comes. Not safe."
"Yes, we'd just decided that," Kama assured him. She realized, looking at the shape of his mouth out in the dying sunlight, that he probably spoke as he did out of physical necessity, rather than lack of intelligence. His mouth looked great for eating plants, but not very flexible, and speaking like a human definitely required a flexible mouth. Plants! When everybody thought trolls ate babies.
The glim started moving again, each one slowly stretching, then ambling back to the cave entrance. Lorrine watched one of them go inside, past the bar on the ground, and noted that the crystalline being glowed somewhat yellowish now with its middle full of sunshine. Then she looked back at the bar, and thought about it dropping into place.
"Um, Gumpa? Can you pick up that heavy bar and take it inside with us? I don't want to think about someone locking us inside."
"Yes."
"Good idea," Kama whispered, watching the troll stump his way over to the bar. "Well, then, let's get inside. There's not much time before the sun's gone, after all."
Laketown was just as beautiful as they'd left it, with its elegant construction and elaborate embellishments. Kama chose a place to sleep, in a modest home near the shore, not in the massive pile of a palace her ancestors must have used. Inside, they found nothing, just walls and floors. But that reassured them both, because plague seemed less likely to survive in an empty house than in, say, spell-preserved bedding. Kama dismissed her attendant cloud of ashantri, telling them she'd call if she needed them. They fluttered off and found perches scattered throughout the house, clinging to walls and windowsills, a watchful army of glimmering squares.
"So," Lorrine said, after they'd eaten their dinner of dried meat and fresh vegetables, washed down with lake water that tasted strongly of minerals, "will you tell me about the magic thing now?"
Kama sighed. "I suppose. There's not really any reason not to, it's just an uncomfortable subject. You see, after you left with Derfek, I fell into a truly deadly depression. I gave up on life."
Lorrine gasped, hand to her lips, then found a way to gather Kama into her arms as the woman continued speaking.
"I quit eating. I barely drank anything. I couldn't function. In short, I was a wreck, living out on the streets. I used to sleep in an alley. It was the worst time of my life. I'd never experienced anything so dreadful as the pit losing you threw me into. And that's how I was when Mistress Bancheck found me and hauled me off to the school, mostly dead. And she told me to get myself up into the school, and make something of myself before I died, because no woman is worth that. Then she let go of me and I fell down on the steps. That's when it happened. I could feel myself dying. It was like the world was fading in and out, and I couldn't move, and I almost didn't care anymore. But I got scared, and found some strength somewhere, and got moving again. As it happened, that strength came from a completely blocked off and ignored mage talent."
Lorrine held her closer, kissed her forehead.
"So when I got a little better, I met the Mother, and she sensed the talent. She told me it's not like a normal mage talent. No, I'm something weird, something tremendously powerful and invariably evil in her experience. She called me a Stormrider, a mage with the potential for mastery over every element other than earth. And when the power came upon me, I could understand why Stormriders could turn to evil, for it seems strongest when fed by negative emotions. It does not have to be evil, of course. It's just an ability. But evil is seductive, and keeping on the side of the Light is. . . rather challenging, some days."
"Why Stormrider?"
"I asked that very same question. The Mother told me it's part of my native ability to ride storms, to. . . um, I think spirit-project is the closest I can come to describing it. I haven't tried it yet, because my control isn't all that good, but I will. It sounds terrifically exciting, riding a storm."
"Wow. That's some talent." Lorrine gave Kama a final squeeze, then released her, stretching for the packs. "I'm going to make up our bed. Because hearing how close I came to losing you for good is enough to make me want to hold you forever. And I can't do that sitting on the floor, with a kink in my back and my ass going numb."
Kama laughed, and helped arrange the bedroll. Then she stripped off her clothing in an overtly sensual manner, lit by the faithful glowsticks that created intriguing patches of light and dark on her fair skin.
"If you want me, then come get me, my own desert rose."
Lorrine smiled, wiggled out of her own clothing with much efficiency and no sensuality, and slid into Kama's arms with the joyful feeling of coming home.
* * * *
Visit the author online at
the Evil Kitten Project
Other titles from Marie Brown
Closer To The Stars
Prince of the Northlands, Book 1
Larantyne
Prince of the Northlands, Book 2
Apprentice
Breaking Traditions, Book 1
In Service of the Light
Breaking Traditions, Book 2
and many more
* * * *