Gathering Storm (The Salvation of Tempestria Book 2)

by Gary Stringer

  ‘Do it,’ she insisted.

  With that, he kissed her full on the lips, and she kissed him back with equal passion. When he broke the kiss, she was reeling from the multitude of unfamiliar sensations. There was a piece of Daelen StormTiger inside her, and she could feel it.

  ‘You’re sure that was nothing? It sure felt like something to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she assured him. ‘My choice, remember?’

  Meanwhile, Aden looked ready to throw up.

  “Yeurch!” He pulled a face at the sight. “That is truly disgusting. Snogging your pet? Kullos is right – it ought to be illegal, consorting with lower life forms. Thought you’d got it out of your system way back, but looks like you’ve had a relapse. Yeurch!”

  Daelen powered up, apparently enraged. “How dare you speak about Cat like that! I’ll tear you apart!”

  ‘Cat, get ready to fly.’

  Daelen pulled his beam cannon out of his pocket dimension and fired it at Aden, who shielded, quickly and powered up his own version, firing back.

  ‘Now! Go!’ Daelen shouted in Cat’s mind, who immediately shifted to her falcon form and took to the sky.

  However, she couldn’t resist the urge to at least do something to Aden, after all she’d had to put up with.

  Shifting back and standing on her Windy Steps, she fished a pebble out of a pouch and called out, “Hey, Aden!”

  Glancing her way, he saw her repeatedly toss the stone in the air and catch it again.

  “Let’s see if you can catch this while you’re flying! I’ll be so impressed if you can!”

  “You’re going to throw a stone at me?” Aden scoffed. “What do you think that tiny thing’s going to do?”

  “You’ve lost perspective, Aden!” Cat shouted back, throwing the pebble and asking the wind to guide it straight and true. “Far away things may look small, but when they get closer…” the stone grew into a boulder about the same size as Aden himself, “…they’re much, much bigger!”

  She laughed as it slammed into him, but then, not being foolish enough to wait around for any retaliation, she retook her falcon form and flew away.

  Daelen smiled. Her intervention distracted Aden – only for a moment, but it was enough for him to get on top in the fight. Hopefully, he would be able to keep his clone on the defensive and thereby minimise the damage to the local area.

  “You see?” he grinned. “My new girlfriend’s amazing!”

  *****

  Cat flew only a short distance to the FaerWay Tavern. The name and winged sign rankled her even more after Aden’s remarks, but it was the nearest, best landmark for Dreya’s teleportation. Otherwise, they might waste more time trying to find each other in some other, less specific location. Dreya materialised just as Cat shapeshifted. She took her hand and, thanks to that physical contact, Dreya was able to teleport them both to a secluded spot, as close as possible to Michael’s Tomb, without setting off any defences.

  Once there, Dreya handed Cat a map, showing the Rhynas Desert, overseas, as Catriona had thought, on the continent of Northern Alloria.

  When Cat thanked her, Dreya simply shrugged. “It’s only a map.”

  “You know I don’t mean just for the map. I mean for everything. For…you know.”

  “I know, but I am going to ask for something in return.”

  “Better be quick – Daelen needs Michael’s help.”

  “It’ll only take a moment,” Dreya assured her. “I just want to propose something.”

  “Didn’t our whole relationship start when I proposed to you?”

  “It did,” Dreya agreed, “Now I’m asking you.”

  “Propose away, then,” Cat invited her.

  “Keep me a secret. Let me be a rumour, a story, nothing more. I’ll be the ace up your sleeve. I can strengthen our link so I can be at your side in a heartbeat wherever you are.”

  “You make that sound so altruistic, Dreya,” Catriona remarked with a wry smile, “but I know you better than that.”

  Dreya returned the smile. “Better than anyone, and I’ll keep nothing from you. You’ve convinced me to stay my hand for now, but I’m still not ruling it out.”

  Cat understood. “If it comes down to it, surprise could be key, and you know I won’t stand in your way. Just please, give me as much time as you can to gather information.”

  “Have you ever known me to be reckless?”

  Cat laughed and shook her head. “Never. That’s more my thing. Alright, my answer to your proposal is ‘yes.’ I promise. From now on, until the time is right, you’re my little secret. Actually,” she considered with a mischievous grin, “I think I kind of like that.”

  “Shall we seal it with magic, then?” Dreya asked.

  “Absolutely,” Cat agreed.

  The word had barely left her lips before Dreya stepped forward and kissed them. Catriona returned the kiss, tenderly at first, then with increasing passion.

  Cat thought back to the first time they had done this. The night she lost Mandalee. She had been devastated, inconsolable. It was all her fault.

  *****

  Dreya was a revelation. Cat’s feelings had already started to surface, and she’d begun to realise how Dreya felt, too. The way she expressed it was unconventional and not everyone would understand, but that didn’t matter. That night, once Cat began to calm down and recover, they had shared something special, sharing not just their magic, but their bodies, too. That was the first time Catriona had seen the Faery woman beneath the robes, and a million things about her suddenly made sense.

  There on her back, were a pair of tiny, vestigial wings.

  Growing up with the Faery, Catriona knew that prejudice was not a uniquely human trait. Faery such as Dreya always took great pains to hide their wings – literally, because strapping them down was painful. Most modern Faery claimed to consider it barbaric, but still, if anyone ever found out, such individuals were often the object of scorn, bullying and discrimination. Therefore, they might well choose the pain of the strapping over the pain of rejection.

  While Dreya never talked about her childhood, Cat could guess how it must have been. The stares, the comments, perhaps even violence. All of which the child Dreya had been powerless to stop. It was beyond her control. But the child had magic, and as the child grew up, she swore she would never be powerless again. She would be the Greatest Mage Who Ever Lived, and she would be in control of her life. Always.

  “You are beautiful, Dreya,” Cat had told her. “All of you, everything about you is absolutely beautiful.”

  “Flesh is fleeting,” Dreya insisted, “magic is all.”

  “No, it’s not,” Cat disagreed. “Actually, I think a balance of the two is just about perfect.”

  “With you here, I think you might be right,” Dreya accepted.

  *****

  That night was beyond anything either woman had ever experienced before. And after what they had agreed today, it would likely be some time before they experienced it again. This kiss would just have to sustain them both until then.

  But this kiss wasn’t just a kiss. It was a kiss that sealed the binding magic, ensuring the promise could not be broken, except with another kiss to release her from it. From this moment, Cat would find ways to hide any hint of their relationship. Until they could meet again.

  After a moment, the magic subsided, and they broke the kiss.

  “How was that for you?” Dreya inquired.

  “Magical!”

  “And how did mine compare to the other one?”

  Cat made a dismissive noise. “Pfft! The other one? That was just an essence transfer. It meant nothing.”

  With one last, brief embrace, Cat took off towards Michael’s Tomb, and Dreya teleported back to the Black Tower.

  Chapter 7

  The ancient crypt lay on a rocky outcrop of the northernmost tip of Elvaria. Below, the ocean swelled and churned, while above the winds swir
led and howled. The whole place looked ready to fall into the water with the very next gust of wind, the next raindrop, the next breath, yet it had stood unmoving for many hundreds of years. Some even said thousands, but that was surely impossible.

  From her memory of seeing Michael on the Day of the Angel, his tomb seemed the perfect match for the Champion of the Gods himself. Made as he was, from all skin and bone, seemingly devoid of flesh and muscle, one would think he would be a fragile creature, ready to collapse at any moment. Yet, he was an imposing figure. Next to the shadow warriors, he was the most powerful being in the world and had endured longer than any other on Tempestria.

  Catriona walked up to the large iron gates that served as the entrance, saying, “I, Catriona Redfletching, have come to free you from the bonds of death. I come here to break the rune seal that binds you to your prison.”

  With a short wave of her hand, the gates and the mighty doors beyond them began to grind loudly open. Dust and debris flittered out from the now-gaping orifice. Silence rose to greet and envelop Catriona as she stepped inside.

  She began to walk up the long staircase. Daelen had been very clear on this point: she must ignore the stairs leading downward to ‘The Wishing Well’ and instead climb upward, following the illuminated sign that read, ‘The Tower of Dreams.’

  “I wonder if he does,” Cat murmured to herself. She’d never thought about it before.

  Catriona did not dream. Not that she knew of, anyway. Her whole life, she had never once woken up with even the slightest impression of anything since she settled down to sleep. Cat didn’t value dreams the way others seemed to, so she didn’t feel she was missing anything. Still, if her life were like Michael’s – waking only to help Daelen tip the scales in his favour, in his recurring battles, and Fated to die at the end – it would surely be a mercy to at least dream of a life.

  Or would that be even more cruel, she reconsidered? To dream of a life one could never have. Surely, that would make his real life a waking nightmare.

  She made a mental note to discuss none of this with Michael when he woke, because either way, she didn’t think she could bear the answer.

  The spiral staircase wound so high, the top was shrouded in darkness. Assuming it had a top.

  “What if it’s like a bottomless pit,” Cat wondered, “only in reverse?”

  She dismissed the idea. This wasn’t the time for flights of fancy. Thinking of which, flying seemed a much preferable option to all those steps, so she shifted to Tawny owl form, the better for seeing in the dark, and flew up the stairwell.

  As Catriona reached, at long last, the uppermost level – for it did have one, after all – the air grew increasingly stagnant, and that made flying difficult, so she alighted on the balcony and shifted back again. Despite the stillness of the atmosphere, impossibly, there was dust dancing in the non-existent winds. Torn tapestries clung to the walls, though the scenes depicted on them were long faded. Reaching a metal door, she paused, sniffing at the air, almost tasting the remnants of age-old magic still present there in that dusty crypt. Cat stopped for a moment and looked at the door, wondering what might lay beyond. Pushing a button at the side, as Daelen had told her, caused the metal door to open by itself. A moment later, she was stepping beyond to end the speculation and find out.

  *****

  What my mother saw in that chamber was beyond her ability to describe, and so, if you’ll forgive me, gentle reader, I shall use my own words, rather than my mother’s impressions.

  One might expect a crypt or tomb to be dark and foreboding, with stone archways and thick pillars supporting high domed ceilings, filled with candles and cobwebs. And in many ways, so it was, but set against the walls were control panels with buttons and flashing lights. Bleeps sounded a very slow, rhythmic heartbeat, matching the progress of oscillating lines on screens. In short, gentle reader, it was high technology on a world where the word had not yet been used in that context. To my mother at the time, it was magic – just magic unlike any she had even imagined, much less experienced. She immediately had a million questions and probably a million more that she didn’t have the words to frame into sentences.

  *****

  But Catriona didn’t have time to stop and stare. Daelen needed her. Secretly, she found she rather liked that idea. A being from a realm far beyond the gods for whom, it was reasonable to assume, rooms such as this crypt were commonplace, needing the help of a simple half-Faery druid girl. Her overriding thought, however, even above that, was the firm belief that one day, the people of Tempestria would also have commonplace rooms like this. One day, the magic in this place might be contained in something no larger than her staff. Perhaps, even, one day, Tempestrian children would play with toys that were more sophisticated than this, and this Crypt would stand as a museum of knowledge and skills long since surpassed by newer and more wonderous invention.

  On a dais in the centre of the room, was Ossian Miach Kaidool, Champion of the Gods, asleep in all of his bony glory…

  In all of his bony naked glory, it turned out, as Catriona stepped closer.

  Daelen had called this a ‘Regeneration Casket’ and told her that all she needed to do, was wave her hand over something called a ‘hand sensor’ on a ‘control panel,’ which would recognise that part of his essence that she now carried within her, awakening Michael from ‘stasis.’

  The words were strange, but looking at the bank of tiny dancing lights before her now, there was one area upon which there was inscribed the outline of a hand. It seemed to Catriona that whatever fancy language one might use, it was clearly saying, ‘Place Hand Here.’

  Doing so, she closed her eyes and prayed, “I call forth both heaven and hell, all that is holy and all that is demonic; I call forth the Powers of Magias, Blessed Alycia and the Great Maker that Created all. I plead that you breathe life back into this great warrior’s body. I know that I ask for both heaven and hell to be moved, but please Great Ancient Powers, do this, that he might help us save this precious world.”

  Catriona couldn’t see or hear anything outside, but she imagined that the sky began to grow eerily black. The howling of a wolf could be heard over the growing howling of the winds. Surely, the whole world quaked as if to swallow its people down into its depths.

  In reality, though, gentle reader, this was nothing more than my mother’s overactive imagination at work. Indeed, the task had been completed before she even stopped speaking.

  The ancient warrior sat up and quite startled Catriona, saying, “A simple ‘Wake up, Michael’ would have sufficed.”

  “Really?” Cat sounded disappointed. “Seemed a bit anti-climactic to me, although I do have a…friend…who always says I have a flair for the dramatic.”

  “Did you make up that whole speech on the spot?” Michael asked.

  Cat nodded while trying desperately to keep her eyes firmly fixed on his face and not anywhere…lower down.

  “Then your friend is right. It was very impressive.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The second thing that strikes me about you is that you are not Daelen StormTiger.”

  “It’s the long hair, isn’t it?” she joked. “That’s what gave me away. It’s happened before. Seriously, I’m Catriona Redfletching, you can call me Cat. I’m here on Daelen’s behalf. He needs you to tip the fight in his favour.”

  “Just for a change,” Michael nodded, wearily. Catriona turned her back as he rose and stepped free of his coffin-like bed. (Or bed-like coffin, if you prefer.) “Which one is it this time?”

  “Both, really,” Cat replied, “although Aden’s the more immediate danger.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry, I mean the dark clone. That’s what he calls himself now: Aden-El, Aden for short. My fault. I suggested anagrams.”

  “And he went with Aden-El?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Cat could hear him getting dressed, so she continued to stare at the entryway.

  �
��So why did Daelen send you and also, how?”

  “Why? Short version: his alarm clock broke, someone changed the time, and he overslept. So now he doesn’t know when either Kullos or ‘Aden’ are going to be around. How? Again, short version: he put a piece of his essence inside me so I could get past the security.”

  Michael touched her shoulder, gently but firmly, and spun her around to face him. Thankfully, he was fully dressed now. He looked angry, but not at her, it seemed.

  “Did he explain what that could mean for you?”

  “Yes, he did.” Cat nodded, solemnly. “He had to make it brief, there wasn’t much time, but yes, everything he did was with my fully informed consent. I had to make a choice quickly and I made it.” She smiled, nervously, and Michael let her go. “Anyway,” she added, trying to lighten the mood once more, “believe it or not, this isn’t even the most ridiculous radical idea I’ve ever had in my life.”

  “I believe you,” Michael replied. “Please excuse me, I need to charge up so we can join Daelen as soon as possible.”

  Cat decided not to ask what he meant by ‘charge up,’ and simply watch instead. He moved over to a bank of flashing lights in the East wall, pressed some buttons and placed his hand on another ‘control panel hand sensor.’ In response, an alcove sprang to life, buzzing with higher planar energy. Words and numbers scrolled down a screen like some kind of incantation, which meant nothing to Cat but clearly did to Michael who muttered to himself that ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ was) was now safe.

  “By the way,” Cat remarked, “the magic in this place is fascinating.”

  Michael explained that it was actually technology. “But your mistake is understandable. How did Daelen put it? Ah, yes: Any sufficiently advanced form of technology would be indistinguishable from magic.”

  “Then how do you know it isn’t?” Cat wondered, challenging the concept. “If it’s indistinguishable, by definition¸ you can’t tell the difference. So, if it was sufficiently advanced, even for you, even for Daelen StormTiger himself, how could you be sure it wasn’t really magic, rather than technology?”