by R S Penney
The Weaver was forced to retreat, compelled to sit on the wooden stool. She didn’t choose it; her legs moved of their own accord. “Yes,” she conceded. “You can exert a measure of control over this body. But can you do the same for my power? Go ahead, Uncle. Produce a bolt of lightning, a gust of wind.”
“What are you saying?” he breathed. “That you will refuse to fight? I will force you onto the battlefield anyway. If you do not fight, the savages will destroy your vessel.”
“I would merely be exchanging one prison for another,” she replied. “It might take another ten millennia, but I will be free again. And I will have the thought of your misery to comfort me. I can’t tell you the joy it brings me to imagine how you will react when all of your ambitions turn to ash.”
Timothy was trembling with fury that he failed to contain. His face was red, his eyes wild with raw hatred. He strode into the cell and struck her across the cheek with the back of his hand. Pain flared hot and bright. She nearly blacked out from the dizziness, but she could see him through the stars that filled her vision. “You will not speak to me in that tone ever again! Do you under-”
Her scaly hand shot up, fingers closing around his throat, producing a gurgling sound. Her other hand snatched the crystal out of his grip. “Now, now, Uncle. I think it’s time we reevaluated the terms of our relationship.”
Standing up, she easily lifted him off the floor, the top of his head nearly brushing the ceiling. His legs kicked feebly. He seized her wrist with both hands, trying to free himself, but it was no use.
The Weaver lifted the crystal, allowing him to look upon it one last time. Then she closed her fist around it, crushing it to dust. Black flakes fell to the floor. “You see,” she said. “I grow stronger every day.”
His cheeks were puffed up, his eyes watering.
“I could kill you,” the Weaver murmured. “But I want you to understand the depth of your defeat. The scope of your humiliation.”
She dropped him, and he fell to his knees before her, gasping for breath. Hunched over, he massaged his tender throat.
Touching the claw of a scaly finger to his forehead, the Weaver released a trickle of her power. Black veins spread over his brow, dipping into his eyes, which became pools of darkness for a few seconds before returning to their natural shade of brown.
“You work for me now,” the Weaver said. “And we’re going to have some fun.”
8
The blue crystal began to glow, rays of light drawing the image of a woman who floated in the middle of an empty field. Just the outline at first, but colour filled the image a few seconds later. The sight of a goddess on her knees was so unnerving to Desa that she barely noticed the fact that Mercy was hovering about three feet off the ground. Gods knelt to no one. But then Mercy wasn’t a god. Her real name was Nari, and whatever she was now, she had once been as mortal and fallible as Desa.
Those turquoise beams expanded, drawing a bed under Nari along with walls and a chest of drawers. Desa breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that the other woman wasn’t actually floating. A bedroom then? Strange that Nari would choose to record her message here of all places. And stranger still, it wasn’t even her bedroom.
Desa could not say how she had reached that conclusion. Perhaps it was the lack of personal effects. She would have expected to see knickknacks atop the dresser. Jewelry, bottles of perfume, something! She could have been wrong – maybe Nari wasn’t the sort of woman who cared about such things – but this place felt remarkably impersonal to her. A hotel room? Did that mean that Nari was on the run?
She was just starting to wonder about the strange, rectangular device that had been bolted to the wall when Nari sprang into motion. The woman twisted around, looking over her shoulder at the door. Was she afraid that someone might walk in on her?
“Something went wrong,” Nari gasped. “The…the Gateway Project. They brought something back with them.”
Standing at the foot of the bed, Desa covered her mouth with one hand. Her brow furrowed as she considered the implications.
“It destroyed Ulonsia in a matter of minutes,” Nari went on. “Devastation for miles. I barely got out.”
Hanak Tuvar! That had to be it. It must have taken possession of someone as it did Adele. It could wreak all sorts of havoc once it claimed a host. But something felt off about that. These people knew how to Field Bind. Nari’s previous entries made that perfectly clear. They should have been able to put up some resistance.
Touching her fingertips to her temples, Nari forced her eyes shut as if she had a terrible headache. “I tried to record it,” she panted. “Something…Something went wrong with the equipment. I-”
She was cut off by a knock at the door.
Nari was on her feet in an instant, pacing across the room and rising up on tiptoes to look through the peephole. She unbolted the door when she was satisfied that she was in no danger, pulling it open to reveal the same redheaded woman that Desa had seen in a previous recording.
Vengeance strode into the room, shouldering Nari out of the way. “We have to go forward with the project,” she declared. “You’re expected to report to General Lanson first thing tomorrow.”
“It’s too dangerous!” Nari protested.
Vengeance rounded on her, a scowl exposing her rage. It was the same scowl that Desa had seen in the Borahorin. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re out of options. You saw what it did to the capital.”
“Driala, listen to me!” Nari exclaimed.
Unmoved by her pleas, Driala shoved her finger in the other woman’s face. “Seven O’clock,” she said. “Don’t be late.”
And then the image vanished.
Another day in the saddle brought Desa and Midnight further north and west across the Plains of Kalai. They had been traveling for ten days across the empty countryside, encountering very few human settlements. Two days ago, they had crossed the Mira, a narrow river that ran south from Lake Paula to the Emerald Sea.
If Kalia had not insisted on stopping at Hedrovan, Desa would have turned west after crossing the Halitha, following the coast to the town of Solsmar. From there, she would have been able to book passage upriver. But there was no point in fretting about what might have been. Her friends were still alive. At least something good had come out of their detour.
She had purchased supplies in Beck’s Landing, a village on the eastern bank of the river. She had filled a knapsack and several saddlebags with bread, pork jerky, white cheese and raisins. From there, she had taken the Ford of Keltana across and continued her journey north and west. If she was careful, she would have enough food to last another two weeks. That would get her past Pikeman’s Gorge and halfway to the southeastern corner of the Gatharan Desert.
It was what came after that worried her.
If she had read the maps correctly, she would have to make a hard right three days after passing through the gorge. She intended to skirt the desert’s eastern border. Going that way would add at least a week to her trip, but it couldn’t be helped. Sticking to the grasslands was the only way to make sure that Midnight had enough to eat.
She put those worries aside, choosing to focus on the moment. There were plenty of obstacles between now and then. These lands might appear desolate, but five long years of wandering the wilderness alone had taught her to keep her guard up. You never knew who you might run into out here.
And she was riding into danger.
Pikeman’s Gorge was the only way through the Avaline Escarpment. There were trails that would lead her up the rockface and down the other side, but almost every one of those involved some amount of climbing, making them impassable for horses. The gorge was the preferred route for most travelers, which was why it had developed quite a reputation. Bandits sometimes hid there, waiting for some unsuspecting trader to come stumbling through.
She had come this way once, a very long time ago. With Martin. They had been pursuing a man who had killed three people in
the city of Carthinas. Martin had gotten a tip that he was heading south in search of a ship that would take him across the Sapphire Sea to Ithanar. They never did find him, but they did encounter a pair of sisters who had been passing through the gorge on their way to the southern coast.
When they first met Emily and Annie, the pair had run afoul of some highwaymen. A trio of louts who thought they could rob two helpless women. A few well-placed shots from Martin and some mischief with a Gravity-Sink had been enough to send those men running for the hills, leaving Desa and her husband alone with two very grateful sisters, one of whom happened to prefer women.
They spent nearly a week with Emily and Annie, and by the time they parted ways, both sisters insisted that Desa and Martin were the strangest married couple they had ever met. Those were good days.
Sometimes, she missed that innocence. Back then, her biggest problem had been a single man who misused Field Binding. And now…Best not to think about that.
Her heart ached for Kalia.
Whenever that longing started to nip at her, she soothed it by reminding herself that sending Kalia to protect the others had been necessary. They needed a skilled Field Binder. Tommy had come a long way in one year, but he still had much to learn.
So, the miles wore on with nothing to look at but grass and the odd tree. The sky had been a mass of gray clouds for the last three days, and sometimes – when fate was feeling particularly cruel – it let loose a cold drizzle.
On one afternoon, she saw a farm, which was a good sign. It meant that there was another settlement nearby. The farmer was a barrel-chested man in a flannel shirt whose beard was coarse enough to scrape the rust off iron. She offered to split his firewood in exchange for a hot meal and a night in his barn. At first, the man laughed, but he shut his mouth right and proper when she turned up at his door an hour later with a wheelbarrow full of split logs. A night in a hayloft was hardly ideal, but it kept her out of the rain.
The next morning, she visited the village of Holbrook. She could not recall having seen the town listed on any of the maps she had studied, but here it was! Not much to look at in Desa’s estimation – just two concentric circles of log cabins around a central well – but it gave her a chance to resupply.
Her days were spent in quiet solitude with no one to talk to but Midnight. It was perfect! As much as she missed Kalia, she had forgotten the simple pleasures of traveling alone. Sadly, those pleasures were short-lived.
A full moon hung over the eastern horizon as twilight set in. The clouds had finally dispersed, allowing her to see the first stars twinkling in the deep, blue sky. Fourteen days had passed since she had set out from Hebar’s Hill. She was starting to feel the first hint of spring creeping into the land.
Desa sat in the saddle with the reins in hand, closing her eyes as the wind caressed her face. “It’s a misnomer,” she said. “Both of them are actually.”
Midnight flicked an ear toward her, urging her to elaborate. The stallion was always happy to listen to her prattling on about whatever passed through her head.
“The Sapphire Sea and the Emerald Sea,” she explained. “They’re not seas at all; they’re gulfs, each one extending to the Caliad and Anrael oceans respectively. One might hope that cartographers would take that into consideration, but I suppose the name ‘Sapphire Gulf’ just doesn’t sound as good.”
Midnight plodded along without comment.
Desa wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Well, what do you know?” she muttered, gently scratching the back of his neck. “It’s not as if you pay much attention to-”
She cut off when Midnight crested a hill, and she saw the cliffs of Avaline like two shadows against the twilight sky. They had arrived at last at Pikeman’s Gorge.
She brought Midnight to a halt, then swung her leg over his flanks and dropped to the ground beside him. Sighing softly, she stood upon the hilltop with her fists on her hips. “This is as far as we want to go tonight,” she said. “We’ll press on tomorrow.”
The gorge was about sixty miles from end to end. Midnight could not cover that much ground in one day, which meant that she would be forced to spend at least one night between those towering cliffs. And given the place’s reputation, she would rather keep it to just one night. Starting after dawn would be wisest.
With nothing else to do, she ate a small meal of hard bread and pork jerky and then crawled into her bedroll.
The next morning, she set out bright and early. Pikeman’s Gorge wasn’t quite so intimidating in the light of day. With the sun still hovering over the eastern horizon, the interior was bathed in gloom, but she traveled for several hours without encountering another living soul.
The gorge had been carved many thousands of years ago by a mighty river. What remained of that river was now a narrow stream of brown water with tufts of ricegrass sprouting from the mud on either side. The cliffs were made of some kind of beige rock. Desa had been told once that it was limestone, but she couldn’t say whether that was true.
Leading Midnight by his bridle, she looked up at the blue sky with her lips pursed. “See?” she murmured. “It’s not so bad.”
Step by step, they continued their journey northward, keeping to the easy terrain near the stream. The ground was lumpy near the base of each cliff with dense thickets of pine trees, some growing over two hundred feet high.
By mid-morning, they had crossed paths with a family that was going south on the other side of the narrow river. A mother and father with several children and two brown horses pulling a covered wagon. Desa waved to them, but they refused to acknowledge her. She couldn’t blame them.
Metal wheels and tarp over a wagon box: that was their method of transit. What would these people think if they ever saw an automobile? Or one of the Al a Nari’s lightning pistols? Technology was sparse here on the fringes of the Empire. Most of the villages she had passed through had not seen a tax collector in decades. Some might not even know who their Member of Parliament was.
It was well past midday when she decided to stop for a quick lunch. More bread and dried meat. Midnight nibbled on some of the tall grass. All the while, Desa kept her eyes on those pine trees. If any troublemakers were lurking in this canyon, that was where they would hide.
An uneventful afternoon led into a quiet evening, and the shadows lengthened as the sun dipped toward the horizon. Dusk came on fast, making it too dark to press on. Desa could have used the Light-Source in her ring, but that might draw the wrong kind of attention. Better to get a good night’s sleep and complete their trip through the gorge tomorrow.
Desa led her horse up the muddy slope to the pine trees under the eastern cliff. As she suspected, all that foliage had kept the ground dry despite the recent rainfall. A good place to get some sleep. She ate a quiet dinner and then curled up in her bedroll, trying to fall asleep. Under normal circumstances, it would be far too early for that, but she was tired. Finding sleep wasn’t hard.
She awoke several hours later to the sound of laughter.
Sitting up, Desa tossed off her blanket and then ran a hand through her hair. She blinked a few times. “What time is it?”
All she could say was that sunrise was a long way off. It was dark, but her eyes had adjusted enough for her to see Midnight as a silhouette against the blackness. The stallion stood over her, but he wasn’t the least bit interested in Desa.
It didn’t take long to find out why.
When she crept out of the trees, she noticed the flickering glow of a campfire on the other side of the stream. Three people sat around it, enjoying a late dinner. They were rather loud – foolishly so, in her estimation – but at this distance, she could not make out what they were saying.
“It’s no business of ours anyway,” she murmured to Midnight. “We’ll just stay nice and quiet. They won’t even know we’re here.”
Everyone knew that the best way to cross through Pikeman’s Gorge unscathed was to avoid drawing attention to yourself. Why these idiots insis
ted on ignoring that rule was beyond her, but if they wanted to risk an encounter with some bandits, it was no concern of Desa Kincaid’s.
She snuggled back into her bedroll, curling up on her side with her back to the fire. She tried to drift off again, but that brief nap had left her with an abundance of energy. It was going to be a long night.
On several occasions, she came within an inch of falling asleep only to have some noise jolt her back to full alertness. More often than not, it was laughter from those louts around the campfire. She wanted to scream at them. But that would be unwise.
Perhaps she could make a Sonic-Sink.
Tommy had shown her the method, but she had little experience with that kind of Field Binding. More to the point, trapping herself in a pocket of silence might leave her vulnerable if someone decided to sneak up on her. She would just have to put up with the nuisance. Those fools had to be turning in soon.
She told herself as much every time they did something loud and obnoxious, but commonsense aside, those idiots seemed determined to stay awake all night. They were still going an hour later. Well, it wouldn’t be a trip through Pikeman’s Gorge without-
Her reverie was interrupted by a shill scream.
Desa didn’t bother getting up to see what had happened. Instead, she made herself one with the Ether. The world changed before her eyes, and her consciousness swept through the canyon, noting every rock, every bump in the ground.
She sensed three clusters of molecules around a fountain of light that her mind identified as the campfire. Two men who might have been father and son and a woman who couldn’t be much older than seventeen. The younger fellow had his arms around the girl’s waist. She squirmed, legs kicking as she tried to free herself from his grip. Had the lass been fool enough to get involved with a pair of highwaymen?
It didn’t matter.
The Ether fled as Desa threw off her blanket and got to her feet. She fetched her pistols from the saddlebags and slid them into their holsters. With any luck, the sight of an armed stranger would be enough to dissuade the two men from whatever it was they were planning.
