Skies (7 page)

“So your abilities aren’t lessened in any way, then?” Gavin asked, then shook his head and removed his hand from his freshly healed shoulder. “I guess you wouldn’t know, seeing as you didn’t have your abilities before.”

Alyson pursed her lips and gave him a flat, penetrating look. “There’s a lot of moisture here, a lot of water. From what I know, that means the wetta magic will work just fine.” Alyson shrugged. “Well enough for this lot, anyway. We save most of the ones that make it this far.”

Gavin raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped, a rough burr of irritation creeping into her voice. “You didn’t really expect those Orinai types to just up and let us go without any more fighting, did you? Or even this lot here. The Orinai don’t seem the sort to just let anyone out of their clutches for long.”

“You mean they’re out looking for us?”

“Obviously.”

Gavin narrowed his eyes at the woman. “Of course I didn’t think we’d be safe for long, I just thought it would take them longer to figure out where we were.”

Alyson sighed and leaned back against the wall and raised one bare foot, absently massaging it with one hand. “These here—” Alyson gestured idly toward the man on the counter, who was now resting quite peacefully. “—have patrols of a sort, but they’re far from warriors. The weakest Frierd could eat them for the midday meal and not even think twice about it. A sailfin pack would make most of them wet themselves and curse themselves to the lowest level of the seven hells.”

Gavin pursed his lips, musingly, and stroked his beard. A few tendrils of thought and idea flirted with one another within his mind. “So you were a Roterralar before, then?”

Alyson opened her eyes long enough to glance over at him and give a little snort. “Hardly. I was part of the Mornal for a while, until we all ended up together with the Roterralar. Khari persuaded me to stay behind when the clans all separated. She thought I had been using my abilities to some degree for years. I’d always been a healer of some skill among my clan. Maybe she was right.” Alyson’s voice carried a foreign note to it as she spoke, something Gavin recognized. Pain.

“And when Maugier and his group didn’t come back?” Gavin asked.

Alyson stiffened. “I have patients that need attending, boy,” she said, voice hard and cold. “See yourself out.”

Gavin watched the older woman get to her feet and stalk off across with room without a backward glance. He was unsure of what to do, but his mind was busy thinking, processing the information he’d gathered. Eventually, he got up and wandered out into the night once more.

“A single word has as many meanings as there are people to use it.”

—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 14, Year 854

They traveled southwest for several days, moving at the same plodding pace. Lhaurel spent the majority of the journey in the rear section of her wagon taking lessons from Talha, the back door left open to let in fresh air and to watch the plume of smoke shrink in the distance. This time, however, they’d blessedly been able to stop and take lessons while sitting a small distance away from the wagons.

Lessons in language and politics quickly gave way to ones on the common trade practices of the various Dominions, which were what the territories of the Orinai were called. Talha also took every opportunity possible to question Lhaurel about life in the Sharani Desert and the traditions and practices of the Rahuli people. It was one of the few times the generally emotionless woman showed any real passion. That, and when she was explaining odd vagaries of the religion to which Lhaurel supposedly belonged. Not only belonged, apparently, but administered over.

“What?” Lhaurel asked, voice rising slightly with the emotion behind the question. “The Sisters do
what
for the people?”

“We are the guardians of the Progressions,” Talha said in a weary voice. “Really, child, do you hear nothing I try and teach you? As we reincarnate, we move along a great invisible Path. This Path has seven segments, called the Progressions. Each of the Sisters represents one of these paths and administers in its ministry here on this side of the seven hells.”

Lhaurel ran her fingers through her thick, red hair. The motion was much easier to do now that her hair lay straight, rather than the frizzy, unruly mane it had been before, though she would have gladly dealt with the tangled mess of hair again if it meant not having to listen to Talha’s seemingly endless lectures. The Sister’s lessons, while vastly entertaining, were exercises in memorization and information retention.

At this point, it was all starting to run together in Lhaurel’s mind. Mingled with the latent fear and stress she kept suppressed just below the surface, Lhaurel was surprised she didn’t have a headache far more often than she did. She wouldn’t have even tried, if the threat of the Sisters returning to destroy the Rahuli wasn’t there in the back of her mind. The plume of smoke rising into the air behind them was a constant reminder of the deal she had made for their survival. She would keep her word and the headaches could be damned to the seven hells.

“So explain reincarnation to me again,” Lhaurel said. “Our bodies are just vessels for someone else’s past life?”

“No. Our internal selves, our conscious souls, are forever travelling on an eternal path. But mortal bodies are frail vessels. It would make little sense if the eternal progression of a soul was limited to the confines of a single body. Because of that, each soul is reborn shortly after physical death. Movement along the Path occurs when the body catches up to its soul’s position on the Path and they are then able to jointly move forward in Iteration.”

There it is
. Lhaurel felt the headache swell to wince-worthy pain in a few short moments.

“And that movement along the path is part of the Progressions?” Lhaurel asked, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Essentially, yes.”

Lhaurel blew out a long sigh and got to her feet, pushing back from the table with more force than was necessary. Talha’s eyes followed her, but didn’t immediately say anything, not verbally at least. Open appraisal and a constant curiosity bored into Lhaurel through those eyes. It was like looking into the gaze of an inquisitive child, but with the wisdom of ages keeping the torrent of questions that would normally fall from such a child’s lips at bay. Sometimes, at least.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Lhaurel said. “I’m not sure I can handle much more.”

Talha shrugged. “I will be here when you wish to return to your lessons.”

Lhaurel sighed and turned her back on the woman. Setting a brisk pace, Lhaurel strode toward her wagon with purposeful steps. Her headache subsided somewhat as she walked. Talha wasn’t so bad, but her thirst for knowledge and desire to spread it was as annoying as the keening sound of a sailfin. Talha never seemed to sleep or do much other than study and learn, making Lhaurel’s life a long string of boring acts. Sellia and the other Sister, Aiam, had departed with the bulk of the army earlier, leaving Lhaurel solely at Talha’s mercy.

As she approached her wagon, Lhaurel allowed her gaze to wander across the massive gatheriu attached to leads in front of it. The shaggy-haired behemoths still sent shivers of fear and awe through her every time she saw them. She’d taken the time to study them up close, even touching one under the careful watch of one of the handlers. Lhaurel was a little ashamed to admit how intimidated she’d been initially, worrying that the animal would rear up and kill her in one swift stroke, but she’d found the creature to be so docile that she half wondered why she’d ever been intimidated at all. Still, something about the gatheriu tickled at the back of her mind, reminding her of the genesauri and the aevains back in the Sharani Desert.

When Lhaurel reached her wagon, she did her best to ignore the line of white-robed priestesses waiting there. All of them were at least as tall as she and fair complected, though none had any true red coloring in their hair. Despite that, and perhaps
because
of the
shufari
about their waist, Lhaurel felt a strange kinship to them, as if they reminded her of the Rahuli. Still, Lhaurel honestly had no idea what to do with them, so she pretended they weren’t there at all as often as she could manage it.

“Shall I fetch something for you, Honored Sister?” one of the priestesses asked.

“No,” Lhaurel said curtly. Then her stomach rumbled. “Well, I suppose I could eat. I’ll be busy for a moment, but arrange a table for me over there.” She gestured vaguely at a spot of grass—that’s what the green squishy stuff was called, though it didn’t resemble the grass in the Oasis at all—and then turned away from the women as they moved to carry out her request.

Once she was sure the priestesses were gone, Lhaurel reached underneath her wagon and wrapped her hand around a long, wooden staff she kept tied there. Her fingers found the ties and tugged them loose, letting the staff fall into her waiting hand. She walked with it to the center of the open meadow. A simple affair, the staff was just a straight length of wood about a foot taller than Lhaurel herself, but sturdy and strong. Lhaurel gripped it in both hands and planted her feet, then fell into the sword forms of the Rahuli people. Though they didn’t translate perfectly from sword to staff, Lhaurel had discovered soon after speaking with Talha that they weren’t going to let her anywhere near a sword, not even a practice one. The staff was all she had.

Lhaurel stepped forward, eyes closed in concentration. The staff made sweeping circular motions in front of her, then whipped back behind her. Lhaurel moved through the forms, breathing steady and deep, and slowly increased the speed of her movements.

Lhaurel opened her eyes as the staff spun over the back of her hand and up around her head, becoming a blur of motion. She spun and dropped her right hand down to the end of the staff and swept it out in a long, wide arc, which—Lhaurel assumed—would have knocked her opponents off their feet if she’d been fighting real foes instead of the imaginary demons within her mind’s eye.

It felt good to move, to sweat, and to be in motion after so long sitting stationary. She preferred
doing
things instead of learning about them. Still, without her powers, without her abilities lending her strength, balance, and endurance, she felt slow and lethargic. Her motions were precise, the forms were still perfect, but they weren’t the graceful dance of the warrior she’d been. They weren’t anything of which Khari would have approved.

“To prance about like that is unseemly for one of your station.”

Lhaurel pulled herself to a stop in mid-motion. She turned to regard Talha standing only a few steps away.

Has she been standing there the whole time?

Impossible. Lhaurel’s staff had passed right through where Talha now stood. How had Talha approached without Lhaurel noticing her?

Sweat beaded up on Lhaurel’s forehead and dripped down the side of her cheek. Lhaurel’s brows came together over her nose for a moment and she considered the question, then remembered the absence of her magic and scowled. She’d gotten used to knowing when others were approaching.

“Nor is that amount of sweat proper for a woman of any superior station,” Talha chided, lips pursed into a frown, though her hands were busy taking notes.

Lhaurel felt a flush of irritation building on her cheeks. She narrowed her eyes slightly as she regarded Talha.

“It’s not going to stop,” Lhaurel said. “So why don’t we simply move on from there? I’ll learn what I need to learn, but I’m not going to give up the one thing that gives me any sense of peace. Alright?”

Talha’s pursed lips relaxed into the barest hint of a frown, but gave a small nod.

“As you wish, child.” Talha made a curt gesture. As if out of nowhere, several of Lhaurel’s lesser priestesses—Lhaurel still cringed at the thought of calling them that, but she had to call them
something
—appeared bearing a long, thin wooden box. Lhaurel leaned against her staff as the women walked forward and placed the wooden box at her feet. It was only then Lhaurel noticed the bright metal clasp and the hinges that glinted faintly in the light.

A chest?

Such a massive amount of heavy, dark wood was unheard of in the Sharani Desert. Lhaurel hadn’t really ever considered the lack of real wood in the Sharani Desert until she’d been presented with the overabundance of it here. Anything there paled in comparison next to the masterwork that was the chest before her. Most of the crockery and containers among the Rahuli had been fashioned from stone or ceramics of some kind. What wood there was often yielded a poor quality product, held loosely together by iron nails or bands. This—this was something of great worth indeed if the container itself was of such elaborate and extravagant design. The wood even gave off a faint earthy smell and shone in the sunlight.

“What is it?” Lhaurel asked.

“Why would I tell you when you can just open it for yourself?”

Lhaurel would have rolled her eyes, but her curiosity proved superior to her irritation. She reached out a hand toward the clasp and noticed a slight tremble to her fingers with a note of surprise. Memories flitted through her mind, images from the only other times she’d received gifts of any kind. A bone comb and a forgotten sword. Both memories left a bitter tang behind.

Cool metal greeted Lhaurel’s fingertips as they closed on the latch and, with a sudden firm resolve, Lhaurel flipped the latch and pulled the surprisingly heavy lid open. Light glinted off the long, thin metal staff lying on rich velvet cloth within. A sphere of clear glass the size of Lhaurel’s fist adorned one end of the staff. The rest of the shaft descended in a gradual taper until it was only two fingers wide, a perfect twin of the staff Talha and the other Sisters often carried.

“If you’re going to be eccentric you may as well use a proper staff.” Even though Lhaurel didn’t look up, she noted the extra emphasis Talha put on the word “staff.” They were still speaking mostly in the Rahuli tongue—or “slave speech” as Talha called it—but Talha tried to trick her sometimes by throwing in Orinai words. She’d recognized the word for “staff” this time, though she’d missed it several times before.

Lhaurel held that bit of information for the moment, though. She reached out and slipped a hand under the staff, lifting it free from the case. There was a surprising heft to it, which—when Lhaurel considered it—wasn’t that surprising for a staff made entirely of metal. Lhaurel spun it around in her hands a few times, feeling the balance. Lhaurel vaguely heard some hushed whispers from the women around her and a distant hum of activity in the background, but her attention remained fixed on the staff in her hands. She spun it up and stilled its spin so she could study the glass sphere.

“Sister, look out!” someone shouted.

Lhaurel looked up in time to see one of the priestesses hurtling toward her across the grass. Lhaurel reacted instinctively, reaching for her powers, but found only emptiness inside her mind. An instant later, the priestess slammed into her and took them both to the ground.

Lhaurel struggled under the enveloping cloth of the priestess’s white robes, losing her grip on the staff and feeling it roll free of her fingertips. Heaving, Lhaurel pushed the woman off her and rolled to her feet, heart pounding.

An arrow screamed by overhead. Lhaurel ducked to one side by reflex. As she did, her eyes caught sight of the metal staff only a few feet away. It had rolled until stopped by a loose stone in the grass. Keeping her head low, Lhaurel dashed over and snatched it off the ground.

Over twenty archers stood at one side of the camp, a few swordsmen with shields placed before them. Red blood glinted off the tips of their swords or lay smeared across their shields. A small group of Orinai soldiers, taller and broader than the attackers, formed a thin line between them and the priestesses and servants near Lhaurel. She cursed Sellia and Aiam to the seven hells inside her mind for taking the bulk of the army with them when they’d left a few days before.