Skies (32 page)

Gavin raised an eyebrow at her, but she ignored him.

“You’re going tonight, then?” Evrouin interjected. “You’ve been planning this for a while, haven’t you?” There was a note of suspicion in his voice, a hard edge that was like a burr in an otherwise smooth and polished surface.

“Wait a minute,” Darryn protested, holding up his hands. “I’m not going anywhere with
him
.”

“You complain for weeks about wanting to leave and run away like a coward,” Evrouin said, “then complain when you have
orders
to leave?”

“He put an arrow in me,” Darryn said.

“You’re right. He did.” Gavin stepped up and jabbed a finger into Darryn’s chest. Though he was smaller than the man, and thinner, Darryn took a half step away from him after the first jab. “And I’ll tell him to put another one in your heart if you do anything as stupid as what you just did again. You could have gotten us all killed because you couldn’t see reason. Tadeo will be in command. You will do as he says or he’ll leave you behind. Do you understand?”

Darryn’s expression hinted at a glare, so Gavin pointedly raised his hand again and clenched it into a fist. He gathered his powers and a brief spark of energy made a small white light burst from his fingers.

Darryn swallowed and nodded. “Alright.”

“Good.” Gavin turned to Tadeo. “If he does anything stupid, kill him. I assume you’re going to use the attack tonight to get past the army?”

Tadeo nodded and then held Gavin’s gaze for a long moment. Understanding passed between them. They both knew what was at stake here and that they’d likely not ever see each other again. It was a long shot just to survive the winter, even if they managed to survive long enough for the first snows to make movement in the passes impossible. If they did, and the sun’s summer heat opened them back up again in five or six months, it would be highly unlikely they’d survive the ensuing battle.

“Is everything ready for tonight then?” Gavin asked.

Tadeo nodded and the moment between them was gone.

“Evrouin, are you and your men ready?”

“As ready as we can be for something like this.”

Gavin turned to Farah, who was already nodding. “We’re ready, Gavin,” she said.

“Good. Until tonight then.” Gavin said, looking at each of them in turn.

“Until tonight,” everyone echoed.

“The Sisters claim the right to grant or deny travel on that Path, but is it truly theirs?”

—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 19, Year 1259

The clans decided that I was in need of more direct assistance. They provided me with an aide—a young girl named Briane. There was a time when these people would not have let one of their children come within a thousand spans of me. Now they provide me with one. One whose presence is a constant reminder of their desperation.

I know not what to do with her. Having lived the solitary life, alone with my craft and with the creatures that I love, having another’s presence within my walls is uncomfortable. She is always there—always in the way. And her ceaseless chatter gnaws at my mind and steals away what hope I have left. She is a leech, sapping away my strength.

Elyana jumped as Briane crashed into the table, sending the ledger and a bottle of ink flying skidding across the tabletop and toward the perilous floor. Elyana swore and reached for the ink with her left hand, spots of discoloration on the back of her wrist highlighted by the act. She caught the glass bottle before it toppled, but missed the book. It toppled to the ground with a heavy thud and sent dust flying to the air.

“Sorry, Elyana,” the girl said, pushing herself back up and checking a cut on her hand.

Blood pooled there. Elyana sensed it, and a deep abiding hunger welled with within her like a roaring sandtiger, clawing to reach out to it, to pull it in toward her, to feed her deep, desperate need. It clawed at her pragmatism, her honor. The power surged against the Elyana’s will and battered at the barriers she put in place to contain it.

Elyana resisted.

“Just be more careful!” Elyana snapped, probably more forcefully than the girl deserved. Briane jumped and backed away, bumping into a set of wooden shelves upon which rested Elyana’s tank of eels. The creatures stirred fitfully in the water as it rocked back and forth in response to the jostling.

Elyana sighed and got to her feet, running a weary hand across her forehead and surreptitiously massaging her temples. A silent battle still raged inside her, though the weariness and exhaustion were starting to set in. Documenting the entire history of the Seven Sisters, of the Orinai and their magic, their religion, was a weighty task indeed. They’d met with the mystics earlier, those who were the first tier of the Schema and Iterations, to see if any of them were simply unbroken 2nd tier magic users, but her search had proved in vain. She’d used a small portion of her abilities then, using her own blood to gain the power to discern abilities and progress on the Path. It had taken everything she had since then to not use them again.

The blood on Briane’s arm began to pool. Elyana bit her lip to keep from lashing out with her abilities. She looked away from Briane, focusing her attention elsewhere.

“Sorry,” Briane muttered, idling sideways. She found a cloth and wrapped her wound. Some of the desire within Elyana abated, but it was like removing the thunder from a gale. It did little to change the force of the wind.

Elyana shook her head and strode over to the tank of water containing her precious eels. She watched them swim for a while, feeling the stresses ease as memories of the sea overtook her. Even as a young girl, before fully understanding her role as one of the Seven Sisters, Elyana had always been fascinated by the creatures and admired the ferocity and intensity of their existence. They swarmed over their prey as they ate, taking down prey sometimes far larger than themselves through sheer force of numbers and will.

“It’s sad they’ll die when the water runs out,” Briane said. The girl had walked back toward them, peering around Elyana into the glass tank too.

“There’ll be enough for now,” Elyana said.

“But what about when it’s not now? It’s sad they can’t just live out of water. You know, like maybe they could burrow in the sand or something. I kind of like them, I wish they didn’t have to die.”

Elyana rolled her eyes.
Live out of water, eels
? That is . . . that is . . . preposterous, isn’t it? They . . .

Elyana narrowed her eyes, a plan forming in her mind.

We lost half the clans today in our struggle with the enemy. Briane cried over the loss of an uncle. What would it be like, I wonder, to have a family who cares about you? I didn’t know how to comfort her, but she didn’t seem to need much comfort after her tears were done. The cause, she said, was worthy of the sacrifice.

The enemy drove us like rats before a sand tiger. The remnants are scattered. The clans look to me for guidance, for hope. At times I feel drunk with the power of it. The hope of our people rests in my hands—hands trained by the masters of the Orinai. Hands that could just as easily crush their abusers as save them.

But the losses of today are pain enough for them. They turn to me for hope and I find myself loath to speak the truth. I have failed them. As they always thought I would. Our experiments have proven fruitless. There is some element missing—some means of combining the forces at work here that refuses to coalesce.

It eludes me.

Elyana paused in her writing, quill hovering in the air a few inches above the parchment. She stared at the back of her hand, where small splotches of discolored skin made a small pattern across her knuckles and down toward her wrist, like splashes of spilled ink. It was the price of not using her powers. Actually, it was the cost of using her powers for all these years. The blood of others, their essence, had extended her life well beyond the time her body should have given out and returned her to the endless cycle of the Incarnation. Life granted life. Now that she didn’t have that supply of life blood flowing through her regularly, her actual age was returning with a vengeance. It would have been an easier transition, something much less drastic, if she’d been younger. But she was three hundred and forty-seven years old. That was a lot to catch up to.

She longed to use her powers. At this point, it was more of a craving, a deep seated need. She moved through each day by sheer force of will, keeping it contained. She and the mystics had worked on the eels, despite their confusion over what the purpose behind it was. They’d made some small successes in augmenting their skeletal structure and enhancing their electrical output. But they needed to change too much. There was simply too much more to do without the aid of a more powerful magic, abilities which Elyana had promised never to use again.

“Are you alright?”

Elyana glanced up at Briane, who stood near the table looking over at her with anxious eyes. There was red around the rims and they looked bloodshot. She’d been crying again.

“Yes, Briane. I was just thinking.”

Briane gave a half-hearted smile and sniffed a little, scrubbing at her face with the back of her hand. She picked up one of the glass bottles of ink and began fiddling with it.

“Are you alright, Briane?” Elyana asked, putting down her quill.

Briane nodded. “I just wish there was something I could do. We just sit here all day, while the war is fought out there. People are dying. I—I feel useless in here.”

“And what would you rather be doing? Fighting? You’re just a young girl. War is no place for you.”

“I know, but I want to do something. I want to be something. Like you.”

Elyana sat back, stunned.
She wants to be like me?
No one had ever said that before, none of the Rahuli at least. The sound of shattering glass stopped any further thoughts on Elyana’s part. She looked up as something within her seemed to come alive.

Briane stood next to the table, staring down at her hand, blood dripping down from a cut caused by the broken glass of the ink bottle.

Blood. Life. The power of change.

Elyana sucked in a sharp breath as her powers surged within her.

Need. Desperate, terrible need filled her and shattered her will. Power flooded through her and reached out toward the only source of fuel in the room.

***

Lhaurel leaned back in the chair, shutting her eyes and pulling her staff up to rest the cool metal against her forehead. That dream had come while she was awake, as if a hallucination by one who had the sun fevers. She gasped and sat forward, struggling against the overwhelming feeling of power and darkness which surged within her in accompaniment to the dream which had assaulted her.

Now that she was alone, she allowed her mind to register the anxiety and panic that she had suppressed while with Talha and the other Sisters. Throughout her journey back to Estrelar, essentially a prisoner, becoming a part of the Orinai society had been there in the back of her mind, though it hadn’t been something she’d ever truly understood or acknowledged. True, she’d made the decision to come, for various reasons, but, in the end, she hadn’t really understood what she was getting herself in for. And the dreams . . . what had Elyana done? What had
she
, Lhaurel, done?

The Seven Sisters. They were simultaneously even scarier and somehow
less
than what she’d expected. The few times Lhaurel had seen Talha use her powers, it had been terrifying to behold. Their magic was the ability to give or take life. Blood was life, even more than water had been in the Sharani Desert. The power they possessed was almost too much to comprehend.

And the Progressions. Lhaurel didn’t fully comprehend them either. Were they a path to walk, a way of life? How did they relate to the Seven Sisters and the magic of the world around them?

She blew out a long breath.

Always before when she’d been confronted with a difficult task, a hard decision, she’d been able to more fully grasp and understand it. There’d been a clear motivation, a clear choice. Protect the ones you love.

When the genesauri had come in the Sidena Warren, she’d broken all laws and traditions to defend Saralhn. When Kaiden had called down the genesauri to destroy those in the Oasis, she’d done what had to be done to protect the people she had been growing to understand, if not love entirely. Later, she’d done the unthinkable partly out of fear of becoming a monster, but mostly because she had to protect those she had come to consider family. Between knowing who to protect and her own internal insecurities and fears of being useless, Lhaurel had always been able to make those decisions and know what she had to do, even if she didn’t enjoy it. Now . . . who was there to protect? What did someone who was
worshipped
have to fear from being useless?

And she no longer had access to her magic.

Lhaurel didn’t want to admit how much she missed it or how deeply the longing for it ran within her. How much she’d come to rely on it. She felt as if someone had cut off one of her arms and then told her to wield a spear. It was possible to do so, but never to the full extent of her abilities. It was like living life with her eyes half closed, her mind half asleep. Between all of that and Elyana’s voice and memories always present in the back of her mind, Lhaurel felt as weak and helpless as she ever had, if not even more so.

Someone cleared their throat. Lhaurel opened her eyes.

“Shall I provide some refreshment to your priestess, Honored Sister?” Lance asked from behind the table. “Some water, perhaps?”

Lhaurel couldn’t tell if he was trying to be humorous or not. She didn’t think so, considering her status and station, but he had an easy, simple charm. Lhaurel sat up enough so she could look over at her priestess secluded in the corner of the room. She could just make out the outline of her form through the cloth partition.

“Water,” Lhaurel said, getting to her feet and walking toward the counter.

Lance nodded and pulled a simple wooden cup out from somewhere Lhaurel couldn’t see and set it atop the counter with clunking sound. He poured in some water from a glass pitcher and bowed toward Lhaurel, forehead almost touching the wooden counter.

“Thank you.” Lhaurel picked up the cup and walked over to her priestess, using her staff to move the cloth partition aside.

The woman started when Lhaurel entered the small half room, but retained her silence.

“Here,” Lhaurel said, handing the woman the cup and taking a seat on the floor across from her. “You look like you could use this.”

The priestess took the cup with a shaking hand, then cupped it in the other before hugging it to her chest. Her reddish-brown hair draped down over half her face, leaving it covered, but Lhaurel could still make out the tear stains that marred her otherwise flawless cheeks. She looked so
young
. Maybe only fifteen or sixteen. Odd, how only a few years’ difference in their age seemed so much greater than it was.

“Have you been to Estrelar before?”

Josi’s eyes widened and she shook her head in the negative.

“No? You haven’t been there?”

Again, the girl shook her head.

“So you
have
been there?”

She shook her head harder and then pointed at her mouth. With a shock of realization, Lhaurel suddenly understood.

“I give you permission to speak. We just won’t tell Talha, alright?”

The priestess looked hesitant still, but Lhaurel smiled at her and the girl seemed to relax a little.