The Story Raider

by Lindsay A. Franklin

“Why would it be wanted?” I asked as I stared at the mass, bewildered. “They seem able to twist strands however they want without the help of the ancients.”

  But then the memory of something Father had said struck me. “A weapon.” The threads of thought came together slowly in my mind, muddled by all my memory loss, no doubt. “Remember, Mor? Father said whoever is behind the strands is hunting us.”

  “We have nothing for them anymore. Not even a vessel.”

  “The weapon.” I whirled around toward Mor. “Us.”

  “What?”

  “Remember what my father said?” I gestured between us frantically. “We are the weapon. Whoever is behind this . . . just look at what he’s doing with these strands. They’re story strands, but twisted. He wants storytellers. Linked ones. He wants to use us to do more of that.” I pointed to the torrents of ill intent speeding over the waves.

  “Cethor’s tears.”

  The mass was too close for comfort. “Better start talking to the Creator instead.”

  “We have to get back to Kanac.”

  My heart tripped. “Father’s there.”

  “And Gryfelle,” Mor whispered.

  Kawan was already at the canoe, dragging it into the ocean. “My mother!”

  That was all the prompting Diggy needed. She bolted down the beach. “I’m coming.” She spared Mor half a glance over her shoulder. “Well? Are you?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  TANWEN

  Mor and Kawan paddled as though lives were at stake. Which, of course, they were.

  “Should have grabbed more knives,” Diggy muttered to herself. “No, no time.”

  “I don’t think knives work on strands,” I told her.

  “They kill those making the strands.”

  Couldn’t argue with that, but still it chilled me to the bone.

  She watched the mass move closer to the island. “Not sure we’ll make it in time.”

  “We’ll make it.” Mor’s arms strained with each stroke.

  When we reached shallow water, Kawan didn’t pause to pull the canoe to shore. He leapt out, splashed through the water, and sped toward the village, Diggy running after him. Mor and I followed a few paces behind.

  “Where was the strand meant to be?” I shouted to Mor as we ran.

  “There was a carved stone monument in the jungle somewhere. Dylun said they only needed a colormaster to pull it up.”

  Which was why they could spare us, of course. My mind was a muddled mess. I had no idea what we were supposed to do. The hail of dark magic had been too much to fight when we were on the ship, and now that we were here, beaten down and exhausted, I didn’t see that we could fare any better. That mass of sorcery was rolling toward us, and we had run out of time to save Gryfelle.

  Now we all needed saving.

  “Tannie!” Mor’s voice snapped me back. “This way.”

  We ducked into the trees, onto the jungle path, and somehow it was worse not to be able to see the strands coming toward us. They could overtake us at any moment without warning while we were in the jungle. But thank the stars there was a path, at least.

  “Looking for your friends?” Diggy appeared beside me out of nowhere and nearly sent me jumping from my skin.

  “Aye. What about Kawan and his mother? The other villagers?”

  “Kawan’s doing what he can to secure his village. If I really want to help them, I need to stop whatever that thing is before it gets to them.” She paused, then raised her voice to address Mor. “You are going to stop it, right?” Her voice took on a frantic pitch. “You will not leave them to die, Mor. Don’t you run away again!”

  Which was a bit ironic because we were literally running.

  Mor did not answer her, but I saw his shoulders tense. I hoped he could prove himself to her in all this somehow.

  “Off the path here,” Mor said, and he took a hard left into the trees. “This way.”

  “There are ancient stones here,” Diggy said. “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Yes,” I said between breaths. “We’re unearthing some ancient strands. It’s kind of a long story.”

  “For Mor’s dying lass.”

  “Aye.”

  “Interesting.”

  What a strange choice of words. But no time to wonder over Diggy’s oddities at the moment.

  “Mor!” I called. “To your right, through those trees!” I could see my father’s gray head.

  And now I could see the others. They were huddled around a stone that looked to be a giant carved head, though the features had worn down so that it was barely recognizable as a face. Karlith sat on the floor of the jungle, Gryfelle cradled in her arms. Everyone else looked stormy and frustrated, especially Dylun.

  “Tannie?” Father frowned at me. “What are you doing back so soon?” Then he turned to Diggy, and his eyes widened.

  I could barely catch my breath to speak. “We—”

  “Found Mor’s sister.” Father’s intuitive eyes were focused on Diggy’s face. “Remarkable. She’s alive.”

  “Aye,” I managed between heaving breaths. “She’s alive.”

  Alive, though not well.

  “Amazing.”

  “Father,” I interrupted. “Did you get the strand?”

  “No,” Dylun said, impatience punctuating the word. “It won’t come out. I can’t understand why.”

  He touched the stone head, his fingertips glowing, and painted some sort of design in the divots that served as eyes.

  “There!” I pointed. “The strand is right there!”

  And sure as seastones, there was the tip of a red strand, just visible, poking out through the stone mouth.

  “Box that strand and let’s go,” Mor said, “because we have trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Warmil asked. Lines of exhaustion etched his face. “What trouble?”

  “Strands,” Mor said. “A whole mess of them, like the ones that sank the ship.”

  “Coming here?” Warmil drew his sword, as if that would help.

  I remembered Diggy’s point about her knives.

  “Yes, coming here,” I said quickly. “So, grab the strand. We need to do something.”

  “But I can’t get this one.” Dylun looked like he was ready to punch the rock. “It barely comes out, and whenever I get near, it disappears again. We need all four strands for the cure to work.”

  “No.” Warmil shook his head. “This can’t have been for nothing. Think, Dylun. What did the scrolls say?”

  Dylun closed his eyes.

  I tried not to imagine the mass of dark strands flying toward us. How far away had they been? The ocean’s horizon could play tricks of distance on you. Had they been closer than they appeared? Farther away?

  “Diggy, will you check the horizon?” I asked.

  She nodded once, then took to the tree canopy in her agile, critter-like way.

  I was surprised to hear Gryfelle’s voice. “Oh, that’s strange,” she said weakly. Her gaze fixed on Diggy. “What an interesting little person she is, up in the trees . . .” She blinked slowly. “She looks like a sailor I knew once.”

  Stars.

  “Dylun,” I said. “Is there something you’re forgetting? Something we missed?”

  Dylun’s eyes popped back open, and at first, relief surged through me. Surely he’d had an idea. But then my heart plummeted. His eyes conveyed only anguish.

  “We need a stoneshaper.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I missed the first time. We need a colormaster and a stoneshaper.”

  “But we don’t have a stoneshaper,” I said.

  Dylun ignored me. “How could I have missed this?” He shook his head in despair. “I’ve failed you all.”

  My gaze darted from weaver to weaver, then to my father. Panic flared. Tears welled. “Daddy?”

  His voice was quiet, spent and exhausted. “If we had time. But this darkness . . .”

  Diggy dropped into the circle
from above. “A league off but moving fast,” she reported. “You best hurry this up so we can get to the west beach.”

  A little life seemed to return to Mor. Perhaps the idea of failing his sister again spurred him to grasp at hope. “We have three colormasters here,” he said.

  I tried not to remember that we would have four if Aeron were with us.

  “What are you thinking, Captain?” asked Father.

  “Maybe War and Dylun could link. Try to double their energy. Karlith could help too. Maybe it would be enough even without a stoneshaper.”

  Father looked at Warmil. “Do you think you could link with Dylun?”

  “Perhaps. He is like a brother to me. We should try.”

  And they did. Father handed me the box of strands, then took over caring for Gryfelle. Karlith, Warmil, and Dylun positioned themselves in front of the stone head. Dylun and War clasped each other’s forearms. The fingertips on their unclasped hands glowed a little brighter, but it wasn’t much. Definitely not like when Mor and I linked. Zel and Mor stood back far enough so as not to be in the way, but I stood nearby to capture the red strand with its fellows in the velvet-lined box.

  With Dylun and War linked and Karlith doing her part, the head gradually transformed into a painted masterpiece with lifelike features of exquisite detail. I expected it to blink and start speaking to us. But the red strand barely showed another inch of length. It looked more like the head was sticking out its tongue at us, mocking our efforts.

  “It’s not working!” I heard the panic in Mor’s voice.

  Diggy fidgeted beside me. “There’s no time.”

  And then she raised her hand. At first I thought she must be holding a knife, and I almost dropped the box of strands to tackle her before she could attack the three colormasters.

  But there was no knife. Lightning crackled across her palm, and then she thrust her arm forward, toward the colormasters and stone head.

  A wave of unseen force pulsed from the head where Diggy’s burst of energy collided with the colormastery strands. The colormasters stumbled back a step at its impact. Then the stone head shook, and the red strand whipped from its mouth. Diggy lifted her hand higher, then twisted it and made a flinging motion in my direction. The red strand, like liquid fire and blood, careened into the box with the others.

  The force nearly knocked me from my feet. But I kept my balance and watched in amazement at the extraordinary scene unfolding before me.

  The red, purple, gold, and blue ribbons met and melded, a kaleidoscope of colors swirling together in an ancient dance for the first time in centuries. For a moment, I held a rainbow in my hands.

  Then the rainbow shot into the air beneath the tropical trees. It paused there, pulsing.

  “Creator above.” Karlith stared up at it. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Magnificent,” marveled Father.

  Every gaze remained transfixed.

  The rainbow exploded into white light. I threw my arm over my eyes to shield them. It was like the threads of white light that had appeared in my stories five moons ago—these past five moons that felt like a lifetime. But this was no mere thread, no tiny ribbon of truth to counteract the lies forced upon me by Gareth and Riwor and a society so far from truth that it could no longer recognize it when it stood in plain view.

  No, this was a solid beam of the same stuff, and I knew I couldn’t look at it. Not if I wanted to live.

  But after several moments, the glow seeping through my closed eyelids lessened, and I ventured a glance. The beam was gone, and in its place hovered an orb—clear, bright, with tongues of white fire licking the surface.

  Diggy stepped toward it, hand outstretched. “There’s no time.”

  “Stop!” I cried. It came out so forcefully, she obeyed.

  Somehow I knew this was not a thing she should touch or command or manipulate. This was the cure. Its Source was something beyond my understanding, but instinctively I knew to respect it.

  I carefully held out the box. The cure floated toward me, turned a graceful circle, and lowered itself onto the velvet.

  We all looked at it, an orb of white fire full of promise, hope, and mercy.

  If it worked.

  But Diggy was right. We were out of time. That dark mass of strands must be at the shore, and we had promised to not run from those who needed help. It was time to try to save this island full of people.

  I closed the box and latched it. “We need to get to the beach.”

  Everyone started to move, checking weaponry and flexing fingers and shaking our minds from the trance.

  All except Mor, who stepped over to his sister. He put his hand on her shoulder and looked her straight in the eyes. “What was that?”

  She shrugged off his contact with a shriek. “Don’t touch me!”

  He backed off, but his gaze didn’t let up. “Diggy,” he repeated. “What was that?”

  Her defiant eyes darted around like she was looking for a way out. She didn’t answer his question. “Kawan and his mother are on this island. Prove to me you’ve changed. Save them.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  TANWEN

  We scrambled to the west beach of Kanac without any idea what we were doing. Karlith limped behind with Gryfelle.

  Were we sprinting to our deaths?

  I skidded to a stop in the white sand behind the others. Warmil drew his sword. My father nocked an arrow on his bow. Diggy crouched like an animal ready to spring, a knife in either hand.

  “Dylun? Warmil?” Fear seeped through my voice. “Father? What are we supposed to do?”

  The black mass of strands was a heartbeat away.

  “Try to think of them as strands like all others,” Warmil shouted above the whip of the wind. “Fight them with yours like you did before.”

  Yes, except those strands had overwhelmed us on the Cethorelle. Fighting them one by one hadn’t worked, and this gathering looked many times larger than the mass that had attacked us.

  Mor stood beside me. The black cloud rolled closer. It blotted out the sun an inch at a time until the world turned gray.

  We weren’t going to make it through this. The certainty of death enveloped me, sorrow swallowing all my thoughts. It pressed in on me, squeezed until I couldn’t draw a full breath.

  “Tannie!” Mor was reaching out his hand to me across the whipping wind and the darkness and the terror.

  “We were so close, Mor,” I said desperately.

  Everything we had been working toward, the cure we had sought, the desperate attempt to save me and Gryfelle, had been for nothing. We were all going to die on a Kanaci beach.

  “Tannie.” Mor’s voice was firm but tender. He still held his hand toward me, and I saw my sorrow reflected in his eyes. “Together?”

  Yes. Together.

  I forced my mind to work through the problem. What were these twisted things? Stories? Ideas? Yes, ideas about pain, heartache, destruction, domination, greed. Who knew what else.

  So we should counteract them with the opposite. Counteract them with the good.

  I grabbed Mor’s hand, and I felt that familiar click of our gifts linking. Our eyes met, and he nodded.

  What was the best, most wonderful thing I could imagine?

  A world with none of the evil things that comprised the mass of smoky strands now upon us. Not a world where good always won, but a world where good didn’t have to fight because it was all that existed. A world with no sickness, no pain, no death. Only love and joy, flowing straight from the origin of goodness. People would live with each other and not grab for power or give in to selfish desires. Only love. Only joy. Forever.

  White ribbons of light poured from me and Mor. Not quite as impressive as that beam from the cure, but close. Our white ribbons of love and joy were joined by splashes of color from the colormasters and streams of orange coils from Zel, the only other storyteller present.

  I smiled to think of his wife, Ifmere, and her beautiful orange hair.
This seemed to be becoming Zel’s signature story strand, and perfectly so. Ifmere and their baby boy were never far from his heart, so what else would come out when it was time to fight for what he loved?

  Our light and color and hope poured out down the beach toward the torrent. Strands of life to beat back those of pain and death. The mass retreated back to the ocean, and for a moment, I thought we had managed it, just like that. We had saved ourselves and the island and Diggy’s friends, and Diggy herself.

  But then it redoubled its strength and surged toward us.

  I gripped Mor’s hand as tightly as I could, but it didn’t matter. A ribbon like liquid metal came straight for me. It wrapped around my waist, and I let out a scream. It didn’t just look like burning metal. It was burning metal, and it seared my flesh.

  “Tannie!”

  “Tanwen!”

  I couldn’t tell Mor’s shouts from Father’s. I was twenty feet in the air, a searing stream wrapped around my waist. I screamed again and then went numb, unable to think of anything to counteract the pain or the fear. I just let the strand dangle me there, and again the thought flittered through my mind: Why wasn’t it killing me?

  Then I remembered. We were the weapon. The strands weren’t there to kill us. They were there to capture us and bring me and Mor to their source. To use us.

  But what about those who weren’t useful weapons? What of Father? Gryfelle?

  I came back to myself, pain and fear be blazed.

  I didn’t try to filter anything. I let my first thought of happiness form itself into a strand and made no apologies for it.

  It was a future with Mor. Maybe a future telling stories together. Maybe one sailing around the world. Perhaps both. But no curse haunted this idea. No conflict or twisted-up feelings. Only happiness for everyone. Maybe it was the story of what might have happened if I had met Mor when we were younger.

  Maybe Mor and I would have fallen in love before his ill-advised courtship with Gryfelle. Before Brac got it fixed in his mind that he and I should be husband and wife. Then Mor and I could have adventured on the seas in his father’s ship. We might have entertained the crew together, and Gryfelle would never have been cursed or forced away from court life. She would have met a brave knight or wealthy nobleman and entertained the court and His Majesty, King Caradoc II with her beautiful songs.