Skies (26 page)

Gavin raised an eyebrow.

“They caught us within an hour,” Benji explained. “They killed her, but beat me until I couldn’t stand anymore. My master said there was no point in wasting us both. He sold me to master Nikanor a little bit after. He was a good master. He made sure I was taken care of and fed. Now he’s gone too. I’m all alone.”

Gavin shook his head, running a hand through his hair. His own heart ached for the boy, knowing from personal experience what it was like to have your family torn from you and feel terribly, desperately lost.

“Not anymore, Benji,” Gavin said. “You have me. Do you have anywhere to stay at night?”

Benji shook his head. “I switch from house to house with those that will take me, but no, I don’t have a place to go.”

“You do now. There’s space with me. It’s just a bit of floor next to the fire, but it’s yours for as long as you want it.”

Benji looked up at him and Gavin smiled. The boy had an expression on his face that Gavin could only barely begin to describe. Fear, hope, disbelief, anger, and other, deeper feelings only manifested through the flicker of his eyes or the way he held his head cocked slightly to the side with his shoulders slumped as if to shield himself from danger. Then, without any warning, Benji threw his arms around Gavin and sobbed into his chest. Gavin put an arm awkwardly around him, holding him close.

“The people go on much the same as they always have, doing much the same things as they have always done. Politics, government, even the religion of the Seven Sisters, do little to advance the name of the very ideal upon which they are all founded. Progress. Progression. Movement.”

—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 16, Year 1101

Elyana pulled up her book, setting a jar of ink and a quill out on the small table next to it. Stacks of books bound in leather and bearing neat, hand-drawn numbers lay in rows along the side of one table. Lhaurel didn’t recognize them from the last time she’d dreamed, though she knew Elyana’s handwriting. Several scrolls lay tied up and sealed within glass containers there as well. Lhaurel recognized them from the grottoes beneath the Roterralar Warren. Had
Elyana
written them all?

Elyana picked up her quill and began to write.

Hope is a solitary flame standing alone against a gale. Will alone cannot keep it alight—it requires fuel. Our hope rests close to me now, a feeble force against the coming storm. But it is all we have. Still, there are some among the elders who would not even have me try.

But the people have spoken. They accepted my plan. Me. The one they called crone. Witch. Outcast. Monster. Now their lives rest in my hands.

What is the test of honor? To uphold the flame, or to snuff it out? The decision has fallen to me.

The enemy has come.

The quill dropped onto the small wooden desk as Elyana let out a long sigh of exhaustion. She shifted in her chair and knuckled the small of her back, massaging the knots there. It didn’t help. No pain clouded her eyes. Only determination.

And the solitary flame of the candle reflected on their surface.

A knock sounded at the door. Elyana looked over to it as it opened and a young woman entered. The girl wore a loose tunic of undyed wool, belted at the waist with a thin sash which reminded Elyana of the
shufari
her old priestesses had worn. So strange, the things this people clung to.

“The others sent me to fetch the scrolls for the grottoes,” the girl said, looking down at her feet. “Are they ready?”

Elyana nodded, watching the girl with a curious expression on her face. The girl took a hesitant step forward, then stopped, chancing a glance upward. Elyana met the girl’s eyes and the girl immediately looked away.

“Is it true what they say about you?” the girl blurted suddenly.

Elyana leaned back in her chair, a wry smile tugging her mouth upward.

“What do they say?” Elyana’s voice sounded haggard and tired, but there was still some life to it.

The girl went suddenly quiet and she took a half step to one side as if unsure what else to say.

“Let me guess,” Elyana pressed. “They call me a witch, a demon taken flesh. They say I’m one of them. The enemy.”

The girl looked up, her sheet of blond hair slipping back to reveal startling blue eyes just like Elyana’s own.

“Oh no,” the girl said. “Well, some say that, but none I care about. They say you can help me be a better mystic, like you’ve been doing for the others.”

Elyana frowned. “Aren’t you a little young to be a mystic?”

The girl shrugged and Elyana’s frown twisted up into a smile. She reached over and picked up the scrolls and one of the books and handed them to the girl.

“Take these down to the others and then come back. I have more you can do around here.”

The dream went dark and Lhaurel felt a moment of panic. None of the dreams had ever done anything like this before. They’d all been constant and when the scenes changed, the dreams ended. In the space of an instant—or it may have been an eternity, both were the same in absolute darkness—Lhaurel found herself back in the room again, Elyana busily writing away in one of her books, writing words that Lhaurel recognized. A small form lay huddled in one corner of the room.

The true enemy of any ideal is a lack of persistence. And persistence is the true ideal of a fearsome enemy. Our enemy is as persistent as the rising sun, invariable and unyielding. And so we must be as well, the people and I. They feel our efforts have been fruitless, but there have been some small successes. Existing strengths amplified, new abilities and structures added. The mystics are more than they were. Though not the ultimate goal, it is a step along the journey, a means to an end. The Rahuli are hardy, if not yet their own salvation.

They tell me that the enemy grows stronger. The battles are not going well for us. I feel their urgency—their impatience. But history is not changed in the course of a single passing. Change is the autumn leaf on its journey to the ground. It is not the first leaf that heralds autumn’s hold, but the last, and all the ground is brown and red and gold.

She paused and glanced over to the small form huddled against one wall. A shock of blond hair stuck up from beneath the blankets. The girl was finally asleep, the only noise escaping her the quiet snores of an exhausted soul. A frown touched the corners of Elyana’s lips and she rubbed thumb and forefinger across her chin before proceeding.

Nevertheless, I will proceed. The pressure is mounting. There was a skirmish not far from here today. We could hear the sounds of battle echoing through the rock, howling through the wind, screaming on the air. Our cause grows desperate.

The pressure is taking its toll. My bones ache, eyes droop. I feel the clans are beginning to understand that there will be no escape from this. They begin to understand the enormity of the task before us. And I am coming to accept it as well. I will continue, for there is no other cause left to me, but I know now that I may be proceeding in vain.

I wish my old mentor were here to help with this cause, but alas, he is gone from this world. I shall see him no more. The importance of my task weighs heavily on my shoulders. Should I fail, perhaps I shall see him again.

A knock came at the door. Elyana looked up and closed her book, placing her quill on the table next to her inkwell. She got up and walked to the door, glancing over at Briane’s small form sleeping in the corner to make sure she hadn’t been disturbed. Elyana opened the door. Beryl walked into the room.

“May I enter?” he asked.

“You already did,” Elyana said. “Now keep your voice down. The girl is sleeping.”

Beryl looked where Elyana pointed and gave a small smile, his worn, haggard face showing the true brightness that lay beneath for half a moment. Elyana couldn’t help but smile too.

“So they did send someone,” Beryl said, brushing off his clothes, which were covered in dust and sand. “I had worried they wouldn’t listen, given your old reputation.”

Elyana narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin, meeting his eyes with all the tempest of the seas in her own. “I thought you had something to do with it? I can do this on my own. I have no need of your prying and reputation. I’m dying, bit by bit, but I’m not an invalid. Each day is harder to not reach for my powers. I feel them within me, struggling to get out. I fight them, but I may not be able to control them. But I still don’t need your help.”

“Peace, my dear, peace. I simply suggested that you would need help. The knowledge you’re passing along to the clans is helping us in our battles. Knowledge is proving a more lucrative commodity than water around here.”

“Odd, how I’m now a purveyor of knowledge when that was never my part of the Path.”

Beryl shrugged one arm.

“There’s still been no rain?” Elyana ran an ink-stained hand through her hair, pulling free a small handful of greyish locks and tossing them aside with a scowl.

“None. Thankfully, the grottoes provide as much water as we need for drinking or bathing. It’s the land out there that’s suffering. The grasses are all but gone. Soon this Arena, this monument to power and cruelty, will be but a desiccated, barren wasteland.”

Elyana shuddered, closing her eyes. Deserts were terrible places devoid of life. With her attachment to water as the ultimate source of her powers, the thought of living in a desert was the closest thing to ultimate torture that Elyana could fathom. Not that she actually used her powers. Her aged, wrinkled appearance was enough of a testament to that, but the simple thought of it, of the land being deprived of the life blood
it
needed to survive. It was dying too.

“We’ll adapt,” Beryl said, reaching up a hand to stroke Elyana’s face with the back of his hand.

She reached up and held his hand there, pressing it against her cheek.

“We all make sacrifices.”

“Some of us more than others.” She tried and failed to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “But you’re right, we will adapt. What choice do we have?”

“None at all.”

Elyana nodded and let Beryl pull her close.

No choice at all.

***

Talha woke Lhaurel early the morning of the twelfth day aboard the barge. The sun shone red in the sky, long rays peering up over the horizon like a curious child. Lhaurel had drifted off with the door to her small cabin open, listening to the sound of the rain and wishing she had access to her powers with a passion that frightened her.

“What is it?” Lhaurel mumbled, sitting up. Consciousness and recognition returned so slowly it felt she was moving backward through sand.

“We’re entering the Anichka locks this morning,” Talha said. “It links with the Steinacker Ocean, the southern canal routes, and Estrelar. It is not a site you will want to miss out on, I think.”

Lhaurel got to her feet slowly, feeling a dull ache smoldering through her back and lower legs. By reflex, she turned inward, toward her powers, but found nothing there. Despair crept through her, though Lhaurel schooled her external emotions. It wasn’t like before, when she hadn’t known she had abilities, or even after when she was trying to break down the barriers her mind and body had put in place for her own protection, though her treatment at Talha’s hands was reminiscent of Khari’s attempts. No, then it had been like an invisible internal wall stood in her way and she had to either go through or around it somehow. Now? Nothing. No resistance, no barriers to access, just nothing at all to even attempt to touch. The absence itself was so absolute it was almost a thing unto itself, the hunger of a dying woman, like Elyana.

Lhaurel pushed that thought away, ignoring the implication of the dream and forcing herself not to look at the splotches of discoloration that now spread across the back of both hands. Talha told her not to worry about it, that she’d get her powers back in Estrelar, but the journey itself was starting to seem like it would never end. The journey still had a purpose, according to Talha at least, which probably meant more things to learn.

Lhaurel groaned and forced herself to stand, relying on her innate stubbornness to get her to her feet. Still, she was noticing the absence of her powers more and more, like a wound that slowly grows infected and begins to fester. She dressed quickly, donning the white, tight-fitting half-robe and, on a whim, decided to tie her hair back with a dark blue strip of cloth she found among her things. Talha appeared in the doorway.

“Come quickly, Lhaurel, or you will miss the archway,” she said.

Lhaurel did as bidden and hurried to the door and out onto the deck of the barge.

Talha shifted to one side to let her out, but then held out a hand to stop her. “Where’s your staff, Lhaurel?” she said in a muted whisper, red eyebrows coming together over her nose. “Go get it. And be quick.”

Lhaurel suppressed a sigh and turned around, moving to the back of her room in a few short steps. She reached behind a stack of books and beneath some discarded clothes to retrieve her staff from where it had fallen. Her fingers closed over the cool metal.

A small jolt of
something
ran up her arm. For an instant, Lhaurel felt an enormous presence surround her, like the moment when she’d felt the entire Sharani Desert beneath her. It surged within her, radiating outward ahead and behind her, powerful and insistent. Hungry.
Ravenous
. Her body reached out to it with strength born of desperation. Her emotions clawed toward it, thoughts reaching deep within herself toward the place where her powers dwelt. Then it was gone.

Lhaurel gasped. Her fingers lost their strength and her staff dropped from her open grip. It clattered to the wood with a sharp, metallic ping and rolled across the floor. It rolled away, the orb at the top of the staff catching the light from the open doorway. Lhaurel stared at it, transfixed. The light which passed through the glass orb refracted through it and cast spears of shattered luminescence across the walls like colored dye.
Red
dye.

The orb, which had been clear and devoid of any color up until that point, now glittered with a light rosy hue. It wasn’t the deep, rich, vibrant color of Talha’s staff, but there was definitely color to it now. Lhaurel felt a surge of pride well through her from some unknown source, a rush of such eager gladness it made the hair on the back of her arms stand on end. At the same time, she felt dread spread through her, like the feeling created when one heard the high-pitched keening of a sailfin pack.

“Lhaurel!” Talha said from the doorway, her voice a hard whisper.