Shara would fight to protect what she loved, but Ayna could only see her as the little girl who had returned home from that cave in Hafi’s arms, trembling with fear and guilt. Earlier that week, Hafi gave Ayna the updated battle reports from the Pact analysts. He had seen the look in her eyes then: she knew inevitably, Shara would have to be used—especially, after the execution. Things were not as bad as they could be, but they were damn close. Within a month the Xenai would be outside Prin, he took unless drastic measures to slow, stop or destroy the Xenai in the mountain passes.
It surprised him to receive a second message from Ayna just ten minutes after the first one. It simply said, “Now. Bring Scotch.” Hafi laughed at the fearless projection of her need to fight with someone or—when she was like this—anyone. She made him the target by calling it scotch. He was always quick to point out that old Terra only classified a liquor as Scotch if it was made in Scotland and aged at least six years. Not only were they nowhere near what had been Scotland, but they also only had a single distillery that only aged their whiskey four years. Her use of the word would give them something other than Shara to argue about. It would serve as a warmup argument, like stretching before going for a long run.
Hafi shoved his LightTab back into his jacket pocket, then ambled along slowly, enjoying the walk from the wall to his house to pick up the alcohol and then on to the Shae home. Walking down the path that winded up and down the various hills of Prin, he soon stepped onto the well tended path that Ayna’s mother had put in from the States House to the Shae home. The path was a mix of cobblestone, re-purposed ceramic pieces and poured concrete to fill in the gaps. The hills around here were bright green at this time of year, with a chaotic mess of the native trees growing in clumps as they had for hundreds of years. They stood unaware of the rise and fall of the Terrans near them. They did not care about their attempts to rise again, and in his peaceful walk through them, he could almost not care as well. He could almost let Ayna win the argument again and keep Shara safe in Prin.
He reached the foot of the hill. The outline of the Shae home emerged from the trees. In his practicality, he could imagine the masses of Xenai, having killed the entire Pact army, swooping down this last hill to swarm and destroy the last of the Shaes. He needed Shara.
He stepped off the path, heading to his left into the thick of the trees, his footfalls crunching as he heard Jo’s hearty laugh filling the air. Picking up the pace, the woodworking shop that Jo had built behind the house came into view as the surrounding trees thinned. Jo put up the building himself with wood that was going to be discarded after the Sokolov family had built their home nearby. Jo had snatched up the wood and now had a dedicated area for when he wanted to get off his ass, reading or playing music, and make something. Joe had built or re-built half the furniture in the Shae home over the past 20 years. When the doors were shut and ventilators open, friends and family knew to leave him to his work. This evening, he had tossed open all the doors and windows and stood with Ayna near the large shelf that ran up one side that was usually filled with pieces of Jo’s projects. Tonight, they had brought out several decanters of alcohol and turned the thing into a bar.
Ayna nodded her head towards Hafi with an air of determination when she saw him emerge from the trees. Jo turned and greeted him with an open smile and immediately turned and grabbed an extra glass from beside the glass containers of alcohol. Ayna set her mouth in a tight line as she looked from Hafi to Jo; she was prepared to fight both her boys tonight; it seemed.
He sauntered up and placed his jar of aged whiskey on the shelf. Jo picked it up, unscrewed the lid and poured him a few ounces.
Ayna jumped right in, “Lets sit and talk about the report from Hunt while you drink your scotch.” She waved at the bench beside them, “Did you have time to read it?”
Hafi took a sip of his drink, standing firm near the makeshift bar, “I skimmed it. Is that what you wanted to talk about? I didn’t think the field was my concern.”
Ayna glared at him, but Jo cut in before she spoke, “There are some—complications.”
“Well, I saw that there are unidentifiable substances in it, and he wants to try Source-casting on it as an experiment. Seems like a horrible idea. I wouldn’t get near it.”
Ayna shuffled and looked at the shelf behind him before letting out a sigh—he could see her defenses being let go as she looked to meet his eyes again. “Shara already did Hunt’s experiment. I walked in on her playing with the sample I had here,” she said.
Hafi felt like someone had dropped him from one of the nearby cliffs even before Ayna went on to explain what she saw and heard from the crystal.
Hafi felt his blood pounding through his veins. He could practically see the horrible fluid pulsing out of the crystal in strands and screaming while it happened. He sat down on the bench outside the workshop, “Voices? What is that shit? Does Hunt have any idea?”
Ayna shrugged, “I sent him a message right before I told you to come over. No response yet. I doubt he will know anything. He will have to recreate the tests. It’ll be awhile before we know anything—about the element itself or about what casting against it could do to the caster.”
Hafi nodded, “She seems fine now, though, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, seems fine. But, she was asking about it. She wants to know more, and—you know how she is.”
Hafi sat quietly, thinking over all the time he had spent training the girl and how single-minded she was once something caught her attention. Practicing a Source infused hand to hand combat maneuver until she had a bloody nose was a common occurrence, which always ended with her mastering the new ability and laughing. That mindset would be perfect for experimenting with a new source element, but was also the most dangerous approach for the caster—or for any caster that wanted to keep on living, anyway. But it was too late to control, now. If the crystals had caught her attention, she would get as much information on it as she could muster, or worse, play with them more. He looked up at Ayna and saw the possibilities racing behind her furrowed eyebrows and, even more clearly, the emotions cascading behind each shift of her eyes that accompanied a thought.
Hafi placed his hand on her upper arm—the closest they ever got to hugging—and said, “You aren’t sure if keeping her here around that stuff or sending her off to the war front is worse.” He turned and sat on the bench behind him, patting the open space next to him. Ayna said nothing but sat.
Jo caught Hafi’s eye, and he nodded at Jo, as if to tell Jo that he understood Ayna needed her silence—the peace to let a thought form fully, so she could tell them what it was. He leaned back on the bench and looked out at the trees and the pink and purple lights of the sunset. What was a few minutes when he had already waited ten years?
17
Ayna
Ayna let herself sway a bit as the weight of Hafi’s words rolled over her, then she sat on the carefully crafted bench. Hafi slid down to the grass to her right, and Jo swooped around to take his place next to her on the bench. He draped his arm behind her, but was careful not to touch her. It was his way of telling her he was there if she needed him, and ready to give her space if she needed that—just as Hafi’s silent content as he watched the sky was to allow her to process. Their consideration for her emotional state both angered and consoled her. The three stared in silence into the trees that hid the hillside and the States House looming above it.
She could see the surrender in Jo’s posture. He hadn’t said a word to influence her decision, even though Shara was his daughter as well. One of three daughters, but still the one that had commanded their attention the most. They had put so much into her for it to wind up here—at war—when she had so much life left to live. Even if she survived, she wouldn’t be the same, just as the encounter in the cave had changed her. It had taken years for the nightmares to stop for Shara, and as they slowed, as she came to terms with herself, she had grown a shell outside her little heart. Her tinkling laughter had dul
led ever so slightly. Ayna wasn’t even sure that Hafi and Jo had seen it, but she had.
She picked up the conversation as if minutes had not passed in silence, “No, I am not sure which is more dangerous. But, one of the dangers I do know. And, we can try our best to protect her, even in a war. But this—this thing—I can’t protect her from it when no one knows what it is.”
Jo reached down and rubbed the back of her neck for a second before resting it on the back of the bench again and spoke, “Everyone thinks of the horrors in Illara history—when we started working with new elements and it cost a lot—but, everyone also forgets that the ones who really discovered it—mastered it—they were gifted. Like Shara. Maybe she is the only one who can figure out this thing. And it would keep her away from the Xenai.”
Ayna felt his words as if they clamped onto her gut and squeezed. No, no, no. The imagery of Illara source history’s gruesome tales was all that came to her. Perhaps he was right, but she would rather see this new thing never be known at all than risk her daughter going mad or killing herself with it. “No. I’ll have to find out what it is, while you protect her, Hafi. Out there.”
Ayna leaned into Jo and felt his arm finally move around her and squeeze her shoulder as he held her close to him.
Hafi had won. It had only taken him ten years, but the night was his. He wasn’t gloating; he wasn’t even happy that she had given in. They all knew what it meant. Ayna had stayed firm for ten years because no situation had seemed so bad that they needed to throw a dangerously gifted child into a battle against the monsters that had come charging at their walls screaming her name. But here they were, at the intersection of Shara nearing adulthood and a situation that was bad enough to send her into it.
Hafi sat his glass down and laid on the grass, his eyes moving over the cloud formations above him, “I remember one of our first training days together. She was terrified of hurting me. I kept telling her it would be fine, she wouldn’t hurt me. She refused to use any source for weeks during our training. Finally, I convinced her she needed to use it, so we could train properly—a good soldier uses all the tools at his disposal, I told her. I’m just glad that having a shaved head works for me, or else her little fire trick would have been a lot harder to get over.”
Ayna laughed, “Having a shaved head worked for you, but the missing eyebrows were a little creepy.”
“I told her next time she did that, I would shave off her hair to match mine. She didn’t cast any fire near my face for years after that.”
Jo and Ayna both laughed.
Ayna leaned back on the bench, feeling Jo’s hand draped over her shoulder, she turned to put her back to his chest and leaned her head back onto his shoulder. She felt Jo’s arm slide around her as she joined Hafi in looking at the clouds--wispy and faded to darkness. Sixteen years of memories rolled over her, “Remember the first time we took Shara to Cafe La Vie? When they opened?”
The coffeehouse near the States House had seen many successes over the years and had turned into one of Prin’s primary restaurants. They had taken Shara there for her seventh birthday, not long after the ambush. Ayna had wanted to plant a pleasant memory next to the unpleasant one, hoping that the pleasant one would stick more firmly.
Jo laughed. “I remember a small girl that finally found her sweet tooth.”
Ayna smiled. She did not turn to Hafi, but she explained, “Shara had a strange aversion to sweets. Jo’s girls love their sweets, as most children do. But Shara found them all too sweet. At Cafe La Vie they make their own whipped cream with just enough honey that it has a hint of sweet but not much more than a hint. Shara ate every pastry they brought to her, piling the whipped cream into a small tower on each one. She would have kept going until she threw it all up if the host hadn’t come over to inform her that, sadly, they had run out of whipped cream. It took us five minutes in the bathroom to get all the whipped cream out of her hair and off her face and hands.”
“I don’t remember if we could save her dress.” Jo chuckled.
Ayna laughed and reached her arm up to grasp at Jo’s hand on her waist, “I am pretty sure we had to burn it.”
Ayna glanced down at Hafi, the smile on his face struggled to keep the floodwaters back -- Ayna knew that look. All three of them were wearing it. They were mourning Shara. The only chance they had to bring her home safe was to figure out what this unknown element could do before the Xenai killed her. Ayna stood, poured herself another drink, and sat quietly as the boys continued the stories. She laughed at the right parts, but let her mind wander and work its way to the start of a plan to deal with the crystals and bring her baby home.
18
Shara
Shara spun a chunk of hair between her fingers, twisting it around itself as she laid on her bed. The room had long since gone dark, but she did not turn on the light. Her parents and Hafi had been drinking and laughing outside, but that too had faded away with the day. Her train of thoughts flickered between remembering Xarie—reimagining the pain of her death—and the new type of source that she found. She kicked her leg off the side of the bed as she contemplated the Blight crystal and its reaction to her manipulations. She could still sense it, downstairs and locked in her mother’s old rusted safe.
When she was casting against it, she had felt it deep in her, as if it was speaking to her, guiding her and teaching her what was inside of it. She had pulled out the threads of fluid from it and with it, the voices. Nothing in all her studies of Source was as intriguing to her as the way the voices changed with the environment. Even though she still could not understand what they were saying, she had felt moments away from unlocking the stone’s most prized secret when her mother interrupted her. Before her mother had stopped her, she was going to try further tuning the crystal with Intuition—connecting to a voice like she had connected to Xarie.
Poor Xarie. Sitting on her bed, she could conjure up the impression of her connection to Xarie and through it, feel the pain and the emotions all over again—regardless of whether she wanted to. She shook her head, cursed at herself, then refocused. Shara had to get her hands on the Blight Crystal sample again, somehow.
She recalled her mother talking about Hafi’s discovery of the field and the hum he had mentioned. She wondered if it was the same hum her crystal had made when she had manipulated it. What made the sound come out of the crystals in the field?
If she couldn’t get ahold of the sample again, she could go to the field. She hopped off the bed entirely, swinging her arms through the air as she landed on her feet and paced around the floor as her excitement made her body long for motion. The field was guarded, as was she. She could find a way. There would be a gap in her guard somewhere, and then she just had to find the weak spot of the patrols around the field. Grabbing her LightTab, she hunted through the SatNet to see what the talk was about the field and the surrounding guard. The lack of information quickly frustrated her. Her mother’s data would have the information she needed, but was not simple to get into. She walked to the door and paused, contemplating sneaking down to the library again. Her mother may have locked down the sample, but she might not have locked down everything in the library. If she hadn’t requested a shutdown for the private line to the SatNet’s redundant terrestrial network and into the States House servers, then Shara could get in and get the information she wanted.
She turned to place her hand on the doorknob just as someone knocked.
“Yes?”
“Shara? We need to talk.” Her mother’s voice came through the door.
She sighed and opened the door, then turned back and sat on her bed.
Ayna walked in and sat on the seat in her bay window, “I spoke with your father and Hafi tonight.” She paused and took a long breath, “We have decided that you will deploy with Hafi next week.”
Shara was stunned. “What? I mean—I’m glad. But, why?”
Ayna remained quiet for a moment and just glanced around the dark room. She crossed her l
egs and placed her hands together in her lap, “We decided it is time. That’s all.”
Shara smiled to herself. About time. Her smile turned to a scowl as her mind reminded her of Xarie. Would the Xenai army have any Xenai like Xarie in it?
Why would her mother change her mind so suddenly?
Shara reached out with Intuition, looking through her mother’s feelings, but being careful not to project any of her own. She sensed something she had never seen in her mother before: fear. Not of the Xenai, but of the crystal locked away downstairs.
She is sending me to war to keep me away from the crystals.
Shara had been pushing to enlist since before the skirmishes had evolved into a war. She escalated her efforts once the war became a reality. She was getting what she had wanted for the past year, but her own deep disappointment surprised her.
“A week?”
“Yes. You are to stay home until it is time to deploy.” Ayna stood and left the room.
Shara returned to thinking about the crystals. When the house went silent and she was certain that everyone was in bed, she snuck out of her room and down to the library. Using the faint light from the LightTab, she looked around her mother’s desk. She pulled out the dock that held the dedicated line to the States House, unplugging the large LightTab that was hooked in to it and plugging in her own.
The upper corner of her tablet blinked with a red error symbol. No connection. Her mother had the line turned off from the States House servers. There was no way for her to get the information other than sneaking out of the house and going to the field herself. She stood and looked out the back window. There were two guards there, still.
Just a week to get myself a sample… A week under guard.
Shara plugged her mother’s desk back in and went up to her bedroom.
I will find myself a sample, somehow.
Song of Sundering Page 12
