Gathering Storm (The Salvation of Tempestria Book 2)

by Gary Stringer

  “Extraordinary,” Calin breathed.

  Cat shrugged and pulled a face. “Thought it quite boring myself. Would you believe the inside of a pocket dimension looks like a completely ordinary night sky? How rubbish is that?”

  She was hoping the silver box might contain something more exciting. Inside the box was a piece of parchment – a letter.

  “It’s addressed to you, Cat,” Daelen told her.

  “It’s OK, just read it out loud,” she replied. “I don’t intend this to be a secret.”

  So, Daelen read:

  Dear Catriona Redfletching,

  There’s no easy way to say this, but basically, I’m here in the past, but from the future. Sort of. Things have gone horribly wrong on my world, and I’m giving you a chance to fix them. Not for us – it’s too late for that – but for you, for your Tempestria. So, yeah, no pressure. Sorry.

  In your future, I have gained the power to manipulate Time. Thus, I was able to whizz back a few centuries and leave this letter for you. This is my second Intervention, having laid the groundwork with my first, although if everything goes as planned, you’ll experience them the other way around. (Time travel is complicated.)

  There are some major events unfolding in your life right now, but the test that is to come is greater than you realise, and you must be prepared. As ever, knowledge is the key and knowing you as I do, you’ve already borrowed most of what you need from Calin’s Tower, but there’s one other reference you cannot afford to miss, and you won’t find it here. I put it all together too late, so I’m giving you a clue.

  You recognised the ‘unknown language’ on the ground in Calin’s Tower. Besides your notebook, it exists in one other place. You saw it once, but you weren’t paying attention. Don’t blame you, neither was I, but you can’t make that mistake again. You need it in your hands before you face Kullos, and you can’t delay your mission. You have connections: use them.

  I also offer you some advice: Keep Mandalee close, for she will play an essential role in your future. The three of you are bound by Time and Magic. More than this I cannot say, for to do so would break the laws of time…may the cosmos forgive me, I have already stretched them to their limit.

  Aye, ever yours,

  “Who is it signed?” Cat asked, already knowing the answer – there was only one person she knew who signed off like that.

  In a slightly shaky voice, Daelen answered, “Catriona Redfletching.”

  Cat brightened, “Oh well, that explains that, then. Time magic.”

  Daelen couldn’t say anything for fear of blowing his cover, but telepathically, he told Cat, ‘I have made portals into the past, but it takes a lot of effort, and even I couldn’t do something like this.’

  Underneath Catriona’s signature, there was a postscript.

  p.s. Tell our boyfriend, he was adorable when he was younger.

  Cat and Daelen turned matching shades of red, while Mandalee burst out laughing.

  “Dear gods, it’s totally a love across the ages!”

  Just then, a voice came out of the air, instantly sobering the mood:

  Red faction first attempt gone. Two attempts remain.

  *****

  A pair of acolytes were already waiting with the books Cat had requested. She immediately put them safely in her pocket dimension.

  On sudden impulse, Cat asked Calin if she had a camera on the premises. She replied that she had indeed introduced a small photography studio as a new way of communicating information.

  Calin led them there and showed her how to take a clear photograph of her letter. As she did so, she couldn’t help but marvel at how the parchment was in pristine condition and the script so clear, apart from a few spots that looked as if they had been made by droplets of water. Had she been crying when she hid this letter, she wondered?

  Satisfied with her photograph, Cat explained that she needed ‘a contact’ to see it, but she didn’t dare risk losing the original, and she wasn’t confident that sympathic communication would be precise enough. She asked Calin to keep the photograph safe until someone came asking for it. She had already sent a sympathic message, and they would be along shortly.

  “How will I know this person is the right messenger?” Calin asked.

  “There is a three-word code phrase. The same words that are written in stone.”

  Calin gave a sharp nod of understanding.

  “Mistress Calin,” Catriona declared, formally, “thank you for sparing your time for us. When our quest is over, I plan to return here and get lost in your Tower for at least a year.”

  “And you will be very welcome, my dear,” embracing Cat and each of her other companions. “I hope I live long enough to witness the birth of time magic first-hand, but if that is not to be, I pray only that the knowledge will be brought here to my Tower.”

  With that, she escorted them to the exit and wished them a safe journey.

  Mandalee, who had been reading the letter for herself, suddenly spoke up, “Erm, guys, a p.p.s. just appeared on the back of this letter.”

  “What?” the others exclaimed at once.

  Mandalee read it out:

  p.p.s. Get out of there fast. Daelen’s dark clone is searching for you, and you need to be well away from Calin’s Tower before he strikes. The Tower must be protected.

  Cat rolled her eyes, and remarked, “Next time I write that note, I swear I’m going to give us more time. Let’s go.”

  Needing no further encouragement, the three companions ran back to the waiting Dolphin and as soon as they left the harbour, Cat whipped up an excellent tailwind to take them back to StormClaw as quickly as possible.

  Chapter 17

  Out there, in open water, Aden appeared amid his signature dark lightning and accompanying unnatural storm. He flew down to hover above the Dolphin, and greeted Daelen with his customary, bright and cheerful, “Hello, you!”

  “Hello, you,” Daelen returned, darkly.

  “What’s this, brother?” Aden wondered. “You have two pets now? Hey, is this how they reproduce? Just split apart, and suddenly there’s two of them? It would explain why there’s so many of them infesting this world. You know, I tried to get a pet of my own, but she bit me. Ungrateful witch.”

  “What do you want, ‘brother’?” Daelen asked in a wearied tone. “Actually, forget that question, here’s a better one: what happened to you?”

  From his energy reading, his dark clone was as critically drained as he’d ever seen him.

  “Send your pets away, Daelen,” Aden ordered him. “I want things back how they used to be – just you and me, as it should be.”

  “Alright,” Daelen agreed and told his friends, “I’m going to send you on ahead while I deal with him safely.”

  “But we can help!” Mandalee insisted. “Right, Cat?”

  To her astonishment, Cat just shrugged. “I’m sure Daelen knows what he’s doing.”

  As Daelen’s power teleported them away to StormClaw, Mandalee just stared at her, in utter disbelief.

  *****

  “Look,” Aden sighed, “I don’t have the energy to argue, and for once, I’m not here to fight. Just to talk. I want to…what’s that term these mortals use…parley?”

  Daelen was suspicious. “We’ve been fighting for centuries, and suddenly you want to parley? You’ve never been interested in that before.”

  “I’ve never had my aura kicked by a mortal before, either,” Aden pointed out. “If it makes you feel better, we can fly away from your ship, and talk out in the middle of the ocean, well away from your precious little mortal crew.”

  Still wary, but intrigued, Daelen was torn for a moment. Ultimately curiosity won out.

  “Very well,” Daelen acknowledged, “I accept your terms of parley. Let’s go.”

  With that, the two shadow warriors flew away from the Dolphin, away from Esca, and closer to StormClaw. As soon as they were clear of the main shipping routes, they initiated their signature stor
m powers to deter any vessels from straying too close. Only when he was sure they were alone out there, with just the seagulls for company, was Daelen prepared to parley.

  For the first time ever, thanks to Daelen’s new mortal friends, and Aden’s mistake of taking on Dreya the Dark, Daelen had a clear advantage. He could afford to be patient for once and listen to what his dark clone had to say.

  It would turn out to be a momentous occasion. One might even say a meeting of minds.

  *****

  Meanwhile, in Daelen’s base on StormClaw, Catriona pulled a book out of her pocket dimension and sat down.

  She looked up at an annoyed Mandalee and, with a sigh, asked, “What’s up now?”

  “I used to think I understood you,” Mandalee replied, shaking her head in disbelief, “despite your ridiculous radical ideas, but this is unbelievable. After everything you’ve gone through to protect Daelen, even talking me into saving his life, you’re just going to leave him to fight Aden alone?”

  The druidess gazed out of a window that looked out to sea in the direction of Esca. There was a storm on the horizon. A tempest of incredible power and magnitude. A storm that was utterly impossible without some kind of build-up.

  “Yup,” she answered simply.

  “Look at that storm, Cat! They must be going all out over there. Daelen could be hurt, badly, and you’re just sitting there like you don’t care, which I know for a fact isn’t true.”

  Catriona’s feelings were bleeding out through their sympathic connection. She was only winding her friend up about them because she knew there was a truth to them.

  “Yes, of course I’m worried about him,” Catriona replied, “and OK, I will admit I’ve felt a certain…attraction, but don’t you dare tell him I said that.”

  “Ha!” Mandalee cried. “I knew it! I knew I was right about you two!”

  “There is no ‘us two’!” Cat snapped. “Just because I love him, that doesn’t mean I want to do anything about it.”

  She winced. She hadn’t intended for the L-word to slip out.

  “Why wouldn’t you want to?”

  Catriona thought for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “Let’s just call it personal honour and leave it at that.”

  The White Assassin knew better than to push Cat into revealing more than she was willing to, so she returned to worrying about Daelen.

  Catriona glanced out at the darkening sky with disapproval, before settling down and using her light from the staff’s blue crystal to illuminate her reading.

  “I don’t know how you can be so calm about this,” Mandalee grumbled, pacing restlessly. “I can tell he’s alive out there, yet at the same time, he’s not.”

  To her magical senses, it seemed like his power was both fading and growing. Waxing and waning at the same time. Shyleen was equally baffled. The disruption to nature was playing havoc with her nerves, and she knew Catriona must feel it, too, in addition to her emotions regarding Daelen himself. Yet the druidess continued to ignore it in favour of studying her books.

  “You know more of Daelen’s past and power than I do. If you know what’s going on, tell me. Please!” she implored her. “Something major is going down out there, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “So don’t do anything about it,” Cat suggested. “Please, Mandalee,” she continued, exasperated. “I don’t mean to sound heartless, but I’ve got a lot of studying to do, and you’re being very distracting.”

  “What? You can’t study at a time like this!”

  “Why not?” Cat wondered, absently.

  “Have you lost your mind? Daelen could be in all sorts of trouble, his power’s all over the place and the storm’s coming closer.

  “Well, as to the first two,” Cat replied, turning a page in her book, “there’s very little I can do about them right now. Daelen teleported us here; if he needs our help, I’m sure he’s perfectly capable of teleporting us back again. As for the storm, it’s nothing I can’t keep under control. It may be magically generated, but what he continually fails to understand, just like wizards, is that no matter the cause, the effect is a simple storm. A thing of nature. Therefore, it makes sense to use druid magic – the power of nature – to control it. If Daelen ever comes down from his lofty, arrogant perch, he might actually realise that himself and quit wasting his own power on things that I can deal with in a much less draining way. Right now, it seems to me that I can either spend the waiting time fretting and worrying, or I can stay calm and study these priceless texts. Please, Mandalee,” she implored her, a wearied expression on her face, “do us both a favour and learn to relax.”

  Mandalee directed the full force of her ire and frustration at her friend.

  “Well, excuse me! You’re the one who dragged me into this, and I seem to remember you telling me that you were Daelen’s shadow, and you weren’t supposed to be separated!”

  “Huh?” Cat wondered. “Oh that – that was before I got my note at Calin’s Tower. It’s not so important now. I have what I need. And I didn’t drag you anywhere, your client did. I just made you question the terms of your contract. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it together. For now, sit down or go for a walk, but either way, please relax.”

  Mandalee made a show of controlling herself, but she was still tightly wound.

  Catriona smiled affectionately and shook her head in mild exasperation.

  “First you tried to kill him, then you saved him, then you started to like him, and now you’re worried that the dark clone that has singularly failed to kill Daelen for a thousand years when he was at full strength, is suddenly going to find a way to do it in his weakened state. You think I don’t make sense? You’re not exactly a rock of consistency yourself.”

  The White Assassin had to admit when she put it that way, she had a point. There was just too much going on that Mandalee didn’t understand, and she didn’t like it.

  She decided a walk was the preferable option, Shyleen at her side, leaving Catriona to her book. A book on photography, of all things. Mandalee had no idea why Cat would want to study that at a time like this, but then she’d never understood half of what her friend was interested in.

  *****

  When at last Daelen returned, appearing high above StormClaw Island, his power level was far beyond anything his mortal companions had felt before.

  “Catriona!” he boomed, “I want to begin your training right now. Come on, do you really think that you can ‘deal with me,’ or are you all talk? Just look at the powers you have – none rival mine, and nor do yours, Mandalee. You two think you can beat me? Then come on, get your butts up here. Now!”

  The building shook as if Daelen’s voice was an enormous thunderclap. Powerful gusts of wind seemed to come from every movement of Daelen’s hands and feet.

  “Come on! At least give me a taste of what little powers you have. I mean, you say that you can deal with me, so come on and try it!” Daelen boomed.

  Mandalee and Shyleen rushed to Catriona’s side. “What’s happened to him?” the assassin whispered.

  Daelen heard her.

  “Something amazing!” Daelen bellowed. “I’m more powerful than I have been for centuries, which means I don’t need my pets anymore.”

  Calmly, without hurrying, sitting in a bubble of serenity, untroubled by Daelen’s storm, Cat put her book away in her pocket dimension.

  Leaning on her staff to help her to her feet, she demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you, Daelen? This is not like you. Is your dark clone too powerful for you to keep in check, now that you’ve merged?”

  “They’ve done what?” Mandalee gasped.

  Cat did not reply.

  “You look down on our powers, shadow warrior,” she continued, “but at least we can control ourselves. You can’t even do that. You’ve lost it Daelen; get a grip.”

  “How do you know about our joining?” Daelen thundered.

  “You just don’t learn, do you? Knowledge is my b
usiness. You think you can dismiss me with a wave of your hand, but you can’t. It’s time somebody taught you some respect for others. You come here, issue your orders and expect us to jump to comply. Well, forget it. I am on this mission for my own reasons, but now that I have the information from Calin’s Tower, maybe I don’t need you anymore. Now I know my destiny, I can choose to walk away. If you kill Kullos by yourself, that’s up to you, and if he kills you…well, right now, I’d say that’s no great loss.”

  “Just as I thought – a weakling and a coward.”

  “Oh no, it takes courage to choose not to fight and strength to walk away. It is cowardice for you to join with your dark clone just because you’re scared you won’t be able to defeat your enemy. It is weak to join with someone and allow them to dominate you. Ha! When I join sympathically with Pyrah, it’s on equal terms even though she’s powerful enough to kill a shadow warrior. I, a ‘mere mortal,’ have more willpower than you do. You’re pathetic.”

  With that, Cat deliberately turned her back on Daelen and calmly walked away.

  Livid, Daelen roared, “Don’t you dare turn your back on me!”

  Cat just ignored him, and Daelen’s rage got the better of him. Without warning, he powered up his beam cannon and fired, killing Catriona on the spot.

  “No!” Mandalee screamed, running to her friend’s side. “To think I was just beginning to like you!” she spat at Daelen, cradling Cat’s lifeless body in her arms. “You think you’re some kind of hero, but you’re just a filthy, stinking monster – I should have fulfilled my contract and killed you when I had the chance!”

  Daelen didn’t respond; he was too stunned.

  ‘How could I do this to her?’ he wondered, floating down to the ground.

  Had he spoken that aloud? He didn’t know; he didn’t care. In blackest despair, he did what few people had ever seen him do – he sat down and wept.