King Of Souls (Book 2) (7 page)

Danielle shifted into human form and squinted.

The hot sand whipped Danielle's face as the winds gusted.

Danielle pulled her hood tight and hunkered down.

Keely shifted into human form as she touched down and doubled over covering her eyes and face with her exposed forearm.

“The storm will bury us in the next five minutes,” Danielle yelled over the raging wind. ”If we catch the upper air current, we might outrun the storm to the north.”

Keely shook her head. “It’s coming in way too fast. We’ll never make it. Besides, Arber’s riding one of those smelly pakas. I can feel it.” The wind increased its intensity, forcing Keely to her knees. “He can answer all our questions. We can’t turn back now.”

The wind howled pulling mountains of stinging sand from the dunes caking their hair, nose, and eyelashes.

Danielle closed her eyes and raised her voice. “Use the horned viper we learned last week. When the storms over us, burrow deep into the dune, but stay near me.”

Keely nodded, and her iris’s glowed with red and green energy before she shifted into the black and brown desert snake. She slithered between Danielle’s legs. Her forked tongue flickered, and she moved sideways up the shifting dune.

Danielle shifted into the horned viper and added a thick layer of protective cactus around her body to ward off the biting sand. As she crested the dune, the black storm front raged fifty-feet ahead.

Danielle’s heart hammered. The storm moved at speeds far greater than she’d ever imagined. If they’d taken to the sky, the storm would’ve swallowed them whole. Biting gritty sand chewed at her body ripping away layers of the cactus sheath.

Danielle’s pulse raced faster as she found herself engulfed by a storm she’d no business playing with. She cursed her stupidity. Once again, she found herself dealing with a looming disaster for which she’d no skill. She knew nothing about the desert and had underestimated the power of a real Chukchi sandstorm. Few plants and animals survived desert conditions for a reason. It showed little mercy for the ignorant fool.

Keely, a few feet in front of Danielle moments earlier, had vanished behind a daytime sky turned black.

Danielle wriggled into the sand dune keeping just ahead of the wind-born erosion. She burrowed deeper not stopping until the world fell silent. She could hold her breath for ten minutes in snake form. But, the storm could dump a mountain of sand atop her leaving her buried dozens of yards underground.

In the dune’s dark silence, she remained motionless forcing calm through her torso. Her survival hinged on the precious minutes of oxygen stored in her lungs and the speed of the storm’s violent front. But she hadn’t any idea if desert storms followed a rainstorm’s more predictable pattern. Like her every experience the past month, she made a blind guess.

Minutes passed and dizziness crept into her head. Danielle could no longer wait. She needed air or she’d die buried beneath a sea of hot dirty sand. What would happen to Lora’s magic if she died?

Danielle lurched upward carving a hole through inches of loose sand. Blood pounded in her head, and she grunted her body begging for breath. As pinpoints of white light flashed behind her eyes, she broke the surface and pulled in deep lungful’s of hot dusty air. She’d never tasted anything so sweet. Danielle breathed, and her mind cleared while the pounding blood faded.

The storm still raged, but the violence had faded, leaving behind a strong steady wind. The storm’s harsh winds had gutted the dunes, leaving behind a flat, barren sea of never ending sand. High overhead, sand flowed like a river on high-pressure currents. The sun stayed hidden behind the storm clouds draping an uneasy twilight over the dessert.

Danielle coiled into a protective ball. The storm had jumbled her sense of direction leaving her lost and disoriented. She couldn’t begin to guess Keely’s whereabouts, and the Paka convoy had disappeared. Keely couldn’t survive without air, and she didn’t have the added benefit of the warden’s protective armor.

An idea sprang to life in Danielle's mind. She channeled and opened her senses to the threads that bind those gifted with animal-born magic. She searched for Keely’s thread and gasped when the line ended a foot away. Keely’s deep green strand appeared dim and fading fast.

Danielle plunged headfirst into the sand and slithered downward toward Keely. Her forked tongue flickered outward and she touched Keely’s leathery torso. Danielle coiled her body around Keely’s and pulled her to the surface.

The forest green thread grew brighter as Keely breathed in the harsh but breathable air. She held motionless for a full minute before coiling her body into a tight circular defensive posture. Shed buried her head underneath her body and rested.

Against the grim twilight, strobes of white light flashed. Dazzling light reflected off the grains of flowing sand, creating a surreal light show on the desert sandscape. Danielle would describe the haunting light show as beautiful under less desperate circumstances.

Danielle braced herself for the inevitable thunder to follow, but it never came. Her skin crawled as something about the light felt wrong. Had these storms produced the strange light shows over the desert last autumn? No Ayralen history book had ever mentioned the freak storms. Why had they started now?

As the light flickered across the still desert floor, Danielle coiled into a tighter ball and kept one eye trained upward.

The moments crept past and the light’s intensity ebbed and flowed with the storm’s strength. An hour later, conditions calmed enough to allow Danielle and Keely to shift into their natural human form.

Danielle retrieved her staff where she found it half buried in the shifting sand a dozen yards away. The sand flowing through the sky’s upper atmosphere ruled out flight. If a thermal updraft pulled them into the currents, they wouldn’t last ten seconds. “Keely, did you see which way the paka caravan went?”

“No. Until I see the sun, I can’t tell one direction from another.”

“Care to hazard a guess?” Danielle said.

Keely shook her head. “Until we’re airborne and over this storm, I can’t. I’m sorry.” She gazed upward into the black clouds and raging sand current. “But, I don’t see an easy way of making that happen.”

On the murky horizon, faint light appeared several shades brighter than the sky overhead.

Danielle pointed toward the light. “Look over there. The sky’s much brighter. Maybe we can get above the storm if we head that way.”

Keely nodded. “I’m game.”

“We’ll make better time in cat form,” Danielle said.

“Too bad we couldn’t get closer to those Paka,” Keely said. “That form would give us a great advantage.”

“At this point I just want out of this desert. We can fly back to Ayralen as soon as the weather breaks.” Danielle secured her staff, reached into her belt pouch, and handed Keely a piece of the fruit from the oasis. “Here you go, never say I didn’t keep my end of the bargain.”

Keely laughed and gobbled down the offered fruit. “It’s even better than I remembered. Thank you.”

Danielle and Keely sat in silence eating the yellow fruit.

“How long do these storms last?” Keely said.

“Arber once told me they could last for weeks. We just need a long enough break in the clouds to pass through without turning to pulp.” Danielle finished her last bite and wiped her sticky hands against her sand-crusted shirt.

“Let’s go,” Keely said and shifted into the forest cat’s lithe form.

Danielle shifted into a sleek, pure white saber cat. Together, they bounded across the flattened desert sand at top speed.

Keely and Danielle traveled for hours toward the bright horizon without pausing. Over time, the landscape changed with subtle differences. Dark sections of exposed rock protruded from the barren sand. The desert’s composition changed from a fine powder to a coarse mixture of gritty sand, stone, and dirt.

Another hour southward revealed remarkable change. Jagged obsidian rock flecked with flakes of gold and crystal jutted from the hard packed desert floor. In the distance, larger sections of the strange crystal merged to form small hills of sharp glassy rock.

Danielle paused, changed into her human form, and pulled free a water canister from her belt. She took a long drink and offered the canister to Keely.

Keely shifted into her human form and accepted the drink. “Thanks.” She tipped back the canister and took a long swallow.

“What do you think Keely?” Danielle glanced at the fast moving clouds overhead. “Can we take to the air?”

“Maybe,” Keely said. “Those clouds are moving fast, but I don’t see any sand.”

“It’s getting late, we should make camp and try our luck in the morning,” Danielle said.

“I don’t know Danielle. This place doesn’t feel right. What’s with that crazy looking rock? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Danielle knelt, scooped up a chipped piece of the strange crystal rock, and examined it resting in her palm.

The edges of the chipped sample appeared razor sharp, but the sides felt smooth as polished glass. Bits of gold and crystal hung suspended in its center. Danielle had seen glassblowers create similar effects in Freehold’s Artisan District.

“Arber never mentioned this crystal.” As Danielle slipped the sample in her belt pouch, the ground beneath her feet rumbled.

Pockets of sand-crusted earth shuddered and crumbled. Whole sections of the glittering crystal forced their way through the desert floor.

Danielle froze as adrenaline washed through her muscles. She’d heard the occasional rumble of a distant tremor, but she never experienced an earthquake.

“Keely watch out!” Danielle channeled nature magic, and a sheath of living armor sprouted from her skin. It covered her body in a writhing mass of black vines and needle-sharp thorns. She extended her heartwood staff and poured magic through it.

Keely dropped the water canister and whirled. Beneath her feet, the ground shook before splitting apart and toppling Keely. She crashed to the ground appearing too stunned to move. Between her legs a jagged point of sharp, clear blue crystal blasted through the sand.

Earthquakes didn’t push rock through the earth. Danielle reached into her pouch and tossed a hundred small seeds in a wide radius around her and Keely.

Keely barrel rolled as mounds of crystalline rock powered upward shredding the ground’s crust. She moved to her knees, running her hand along her side and leg before holding her palm before her face as if checking for blood.

A six-foot mountain of blue and silver obsidian shifted and groaned before stretching a dozen feet across. Keely shifted into cat form and eased backward, creating distance between her and the rock pile.

Eight more piles of crystal rock rose from the ground. They surrounded Keely and Danielle before the trembling stopped and the air grew still.

Danielle stood frozen with green magic pulsing in her outstretched palm. She couldn’t see any sign of imminent danger, but she would shroud the entire area in a thick jungle canopy at the first hint of danger.

The quiet calm shattered as the rock heaps shifted grinding and scraping in an upward direction. As the rocks shifted, larger stones gathered forming into a massive crystalline head. Menacing gold and crystal eyes glowed, and rocky arms stretched outward from the gathering piles. The rock beast stood on thick pillars of glistening obsidian legs.

It opened its mouth and groaned. A deep rumbling foghorn-like sound rumbled from its throat. Lightning sparked from the rock beast’s mouth traveling along its legs, torso, and arms.

Danielle released the stored magic resting in her palm. The seeds erupted with explosive growth, transforming into full-grown vines, trees, and thorny shrubs.

Danielle wrapped heavy vines around three of the stone beasts locking them in place. Vines slithered upward circling the beast nearest Keely. It roared and swung downward with its massive stone fist like a controlled rock slide.

Keely flexed her cat form’s agility and leaped to one side as the beast’s fist hammered the ground, missing her by inches. The earth rumbled with the tremors and Keely staggered losing her footing.

Danielle wrapped layers of her strongest vines around the beast’s arms and legs trying to topple it.

Enraged, the obsidian beast stretched its mouth wide and screeched a shrill high-pitched wail. Inside the creature’s throat, gold pinpoints of light sparked across the massive span of its jawline. A bolt of blue lightning arced from its mouth and sliced the air striking Keely’s hindquarters with a sickening crack.

Keely roared as black smoke curled from a dark smoldering hole in her rear flank. She stood to run, but her leg gave out and she stumbled and fell lying motionless in the tall jungle grass.

A raw flash of panic swept through Danielle’s mind. She opened her mouth to scream, but found herself unable to make any sound. Her staff felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, and she willed her body to move.

The obsidian beast turned its full attention on Danielle as fresh streaks of lightning sparked in its open mouth. Beyond the mass of dense vegetation, five more beasts lumbered toward Danielle.

Tara's Surprise

Rika flew over a towering seaside cliff gliding through falling snow under a cloudy gray afternoon sky. A hundred feet below, the tiny village of Porthleven appeared.