Skies (9 page)

Lhaurel nodded and leaned heavily on her staff. She felt weak, even with the adrenaline still coursing through her. She breathed in through her mouth for a moment, the smell proving too much for her, but it didn’t help much. Lhaurel couldn’t remember feeling this drained after a fight since . . . well, since the first time she’d secretly practiced with the sword among the Sidena.

“Who were they?” Lhaurel asked. “Why did they attack us?”

Talha shook her head and signaled for one of the priestesses that accompanied her to fetch some water. “Just runaway slaves. Sometimes they band together and form a
resistance . . .
of a sort.” Talha’s lip curled into a small sneer as it worked around the word.

“Slaves?” Lhaurel’s brow furrowed.

“Yes, Lhaurel, slaves. We will discuss this later.”

An archer with golden bars on his uniform came forward. He stopped next to Talha and gave a slight bow, right hand clenched into a fist and pressed into the palm of his other hand in front of his heart.

“We only took three casualties, Honored Sister,” the man said in the Rahuli tongue, though with an accent and inflection that Lhaurel had to concentrate to understand. “Though they killed the gatheriu.”

“No matter. We’re only a short distance from the sea, a day at most. You and your men will need to pull them the rest of the way yourselves. Leave the bodies.” Talha’s tone was factual, without any emotion of inflection. Lhaurel thought leaving the bodies was strange, even callous, but she wasn’t about to argue after what she’d seen of Talha in the last few minutes.

“As you command,” the man said with another bow, hands clasped before him in the same manner as before.

Lhaurel looked a question over at Talha, but the Sister simply shook her head. “You’ll see soon enough.”

Talha turned and looked back over the scene of carnage behind them. Lhaurel counted almost a dozen bodies, each bleeding into the ground. Talha breathed in deeply through her nose and, for a moment, the orb on the end of her staff glowed. The deep red color deepened and some of the blood pooled around the nearest body simply disappeared.

Lhaurel swallowed hard.

“I do not envy you, Lhaurel,” Talha said in a voice that was almost a whisper, eyes closed. “To feel as we do, with the powers that we have, is beyond comprehension for those who have never experienced it. To be cut off from that . . .” Talha trailed off and opened her eyes. The look she leveled at Lhaurel was one of both pity and open curiosity. “I would not wish that upon anyone who has ever drunk from that cup. I will be interested to see how it affects you over the coming weeks.”

Lhaurel licked her lips and looked down at the bodies around her, ignoring the scurry of Orinai rushing through the makeshift camp. A breeze picked up, tugging at her cloak and stirring some fallen leaves and depositing them atop a fallen Orinai soldier. The soft smell of char mingled with the lingering stink of death. Lhaurel wrapped her arms around her own shoulders and shivered from more than just the cold.

“Goodwill is often seen as the weakest of the Progressions, though which is the stronger, the tree that remains unyielding in the storm and is broken by its passing or the one which bends and still remains when the storm is gone?”

—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 17, Year 1171

Lhaurel looked out at the expanse of water before her, sunlight reflecting off the perfect, blue-green surface. The sheer size of it took her breath away and left her speechless. Even the vastness of the underground lake in the Sharani Desert, Elyana’s grotto, was but a small drop in the bucket. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how astounding it would
feel
standing here if she simply had access to draw upon it. Profound regret at not having access to her powers wrapped cold fingers around her heart and squeezed.

“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Talha asked. She walked up to Lhaurel, staff making sharp thunks against the ground.

All Lhaurel could do was nod. Even that came with effort. Tears formed on her cheeks but she didn’t have the heart or energy to wipe them away. A small flush of chagrin at the tears colored her face, but Lhaurel chose to ignore it.

“You know, as the Sister who walks and guides others on the path of Knowledge, I end up cloistered in a room much of the time, nose pressed into the musty pages of a book. It’s a stale, stagnant sort of life sometimes. I love it, as I should; there really is no greater pursuit in life than the quest for Knowledge. But this.” Talha breathed in through her nose, straightening to her full height and closing her eyes. “The sea. It’s always so fresh and lustrous. It’s a visceral, emboldening experience that almost makes me regret my chosen Path. Almost.”

Lhaurel stared at Talha through the blurry edges of her tear-filled sight. Though Talha spoke the Rahuli tongue, many of the words were new to Lhaurel. The meaning and emotion still managed to come through in Talha’s tone, though. Something more than the passing curiosity that generally garnished her words filled her voice. Little actual passion lived in that, though there was often an intensity to the woman that made Lhaurel uncomfortable. No, this new color to Talha’s voice ran deeper by far. Talha clearly
felt
the awesome power and might of the vastness before her. She
experienced
it. She
lived
it.

“I miss being able to feel it,” Lhaurel said, not ashamed of the quaver in her voice. “I miss being able to be a part of things, to
live
them. I miss my powers. And yet, I fear them too.”

Talha looked down at Lhaurel and her face twisted into the first true look of sympathy Lhaurel had ever seen on the woman.

“I know, child,” she said, placing a hand on Lhaurel’s shoulder. “I know. What we had to do to you was necessary, though the moral ambiguity in it is not lost on me. To be a Sister, to have our powers, is to be a means of connection to life itself. It transcends the physical and taps into the spiritual, the holy, and the deific. Once you truly come to understand that, you’ll see why those who do not know this power still fear us. You will come to understand the divine and our small place in such vastness. It is right to both love and fear what you are to become.”

Lhaurel swallowed hard and scrubbed at her eyes. Her hands came away wet and dirty, but she didn’t care. She looked out over the blue-green horizon, stunned by the scope of what filled her gaze and struck by a great weight pressing down upon her.

“I think I’m beginning to understand.”

Talha pursed her lips and ran a finger along the side of her jaw and down to the tip of her chin. “I believe you are, indeed. When your powers are returned to you in Estrelar, you’ll understand even more. Until then, be careful. There are consequences when one of us doesn’t use our powers for an extended period of time. As I said, what was done to you was necessary, but not without consequences. I will watch over you carefully as we travel, but let me know if anything out of the ordinary happens.”

Lhaurel nodded her acceptance, her curiosity at the woman’s statement dulled by the sheer majesty and power of the ocean before her. Power which she couldn’t even begin to grasp.

***

An hour later, a small dark dot appeared on the horizon, marring the otherwise perfect view of the water’s vastness. Lhaurel pointed at the blemish from where she still stood at the water’s edge.

“Talha?”

The bookish Sister glanced up from her book, where she was busy taking down notes and squinted out over the sea, brow furrowed and lips pressed into a frown. Then her expression brightened and she smiled.

“Ah, that’s the ship,” Talha said and snapped her book closed. “And right on time, too. Sellia will be pleased. She didn’t like the lengths this journey would take, but I needed the time to teach you the necessary basics of being a Sister.”

“Ship?” The unfamiliar word fell off the end of Lhaurel’s tongue in a garbled mess and she grimaced. She was beginning to understand just how little she really knew about her own language, let alone that of the Orinai.

Talha nodded, not looking at Lhaurel. She gestured and one of the priestesses appeared at her side in an instant.

“Tell the Captain to make ready for the ship’s arrival. The tide will be on our side again before evening and I wish to be at sea tonight. I’ve been away from Estrelar for far too long and I do not wish to delay it any longer than absolutely necessary.”

The priestess nodded and scurried away. Talha turned back to Lhaurel.

“A ship is a vessel which travels across the water,” Talha said, standing and brushing off her clothes while a priestess collected her writing tools and book. “This particular vessel was commissioned from one of the Great Houses—House Kelkott, I believe.” Talha’s face took on a pensive look for a moment and she tapped a finger to her lips. “That reminds me, there are protocols we must discuss before it arrives.”

Lhaurel’s mind spun with the thought of a vessel travelling across such a massive expanse of water, but she tried to keep it out of her expression as she followed Talha away from the wagons. Lhaurel leaned a bit on her staff as she walked.

“When the ship arrives, there will be a lot of activity here on shore,” Talha began, her expression serious enough that Lhaurel gave the woman her full attention. “You are not to participate in it. You will remain by my side. You will remain silent at all times, not just as we board, but also for the entire time we are aboard ship.” Lhaurel’s lip formed a thin line and she half opened her mouth to ask a question, but Talha’s eyes flashed and Lhaurel closed it again.

“You will not question me, nor speak to anyone but me unless I have given you leave to speak. Only speak the Orinai tongue and not this barbarous slave dialect we’re using now. You will wear the clothing I instruct you to wear and you will carry your staff with you at all times. Is this understood?”

Lhaurel hesitated for a moment, trying to decide what sort of an answer she was supposed to provide or if she was going to try and ask a question anyway. She wanted to resist—the thought of simply following along without being able to interact left Lhaurel’s skin crawling with unease—but the hard lines of Talha’s stony expression stopped her.

“Yes, Talha.”

Talha nodded. “You should address me as Sister.”

“Yes, Sister.” A memory tugged at the back of Lhaurel’s mind, a memory of calling other women ‘sisters’ who had no real relation to her. That had been the tradition back in the Sidena. Lhaurel shook her head, wondering if that too was something that had been carried down from the ancient past.

“What?” Talha’s voice snapped like a whip.

“Just memories, Sister,” Lhaurel said. “And questions. Always questions.”

Talha nodded curtly, the sharp gesture softened by the small half-smile on her lips.

“Good. It is only through questions that you learn. Prudent questions, that is. Now, it’s time we started acting our part as Sisters. Do not speak from here on out unless directly bidden.”

Lhaurel sighed, but nodded. More and more, Talha reminded Lhaurel of Khari and the way the short, fiery woman had treated her when trying to break her. Lhaurel suppressed the small flush of irritation that crept up in the back of her mind at the reminder. Wasn’t once enough?

“Good.” Talha gestured back toward the wagons. “There are clothes for you in your wagon. Put them on and wait down by the water where you were.”

Lhaurel ground her teeth together behind closed lips, but did as bidden.

The clothes were oddly reminiscent of the Roterralar mystic robes. A tight, white shirt and light brown leggings that hugged Lhaurel’s form went underneath a pure white half-robe. At least, that’s how Lhaurel thought of it. The top was as tight as the undershirt, with sleeves that extended down to her wrists. The bodice laced snugly from the middle of her chest down across her stomach, but the rest of the garment—which extended all the way down to the ground—was split at the front and swept down to either side, exposing her legs and allowing her free movement as she walked back to the water’s edge. A blue belt of worked leather or a similar material fastened around her waist. Not a
shufari
, but it served the same purpose.

Over the next hour, the blot on the horizon grew until Lhaurel could make out its vague shape. It seemed to be divided almost in two, the upper half a strange pattern of white and the bottom a thick dark shape with space in between the two halves. As it drew closer, Lhaurel was able to see a few wooden pillars, so massive as to almost be unbelievable, between the white billowing parts of the ship. As the ship neared, Lhaurel was able to see that ropes and lines stretched from the pillars and the crossbeams and the whitish parts were actually giant pieces of cloth or canvas tied to the upright beams which came out of the ship. The main wooden section sat in the water and a number of indistinguishable people scurried about it.

On shore, priestesses and soldiers quickly broke down the wagons and set about placing all of Talha’s possessions into wooden boxes and piling them near the shore. Lhaurel didn’t have any possessions other than her staff, but her wagon was also broken down and the contents placed in a separate pile. Lhaurel once again marveled at the sheer amount of wood here outside the Sharani Desert. Between the ship fast approaching and the wooden crates, it was more wood than Lhaurel had ever seen in one place before.

Lhaurel watched it all mutely, lost in her own overwhelmed thoughts. Talha stood on the other side of the bustling activity, mutely leaning on her own staff, garbed in the white half-robes Lhaurel also now wore.

After a time, the ship turned in the water, exposing just how long and wide it was. For a moment, Lhaurel wondered if something had gone wrong and the ship was preparing to leave, then she let out a small gasp as a rope with a metal hook at the end was thrown off the side of the ship to splash into the water below and the ship slowed to a stop. Lhaurel brought a hand to her lips and gave a furtive look around her, but no one seemed to have noticed her small outburst.

The figures on the ship lowered several smaller vessels over the side. Several figures jumped into them as they were lowered down toward the water while other men clambered down once the vessels touched the surface. Lhaurel watched in openmouthed awe as the figures in the vessel pulled out some long pieces of wood and began steering the vessels away from the larger ship and toward the shore.

“Close your mouth,” Talha hissed in a whisper, walking up alongside Lhaurel.

Lhaurel jumped, but snapped her mouth shut.

It was only after a long moment that Lhaurel realized Talha had spoken in the Orinai tongue. Lhaurel frowned slightly, lips pursed in confusion. She’d only been learning the language for a few days. How had she recognized what Talha was saying?

A memory tickled at the back of Lhaurel’s mind, but it slipped away before Lhaurel could turn her full attention to it.

A half dozen soldiers in red armor filed in around Talha and Lhaurel, standing at attention. They carried long spears and wore swords belted at their waists. Lhaurel didn’t recognize them, but assumed they must have been with the other soldiers she’d known had been around their wagon, even when she hadn’t seen them.

The little wooden vessels came closer and Lhaurel was able to make out the men in them. Their skin bore a weathered and tanned look like the warriors of the Rahuli, though these men were taller and looked more like the Orinai soldiers than the priestesses and other servants. Lhaurel wished she could ask about that, or anything at all, in all honesty, but she retained her silence. Though the larger part of her wanted to rebel, she knew Talha’s power and also remembered that the safety of her people hinged on her obedience. For now, at least.

The little vessels thumped onto the shore and some of the men jumped out into the rolling waves and dragged them higher up the sand. Another man leapt out once his vessel was clear of the waves. He wore a large hat, a dark overshirt with no sleeves, and boots covered in golden buckles that came almost up to his knees. He strode up to Talha and Lhaurel and swept his hat off his head before folding into an elegant bow. Behind him, some of the other men leapt out of the vessels and started grabbing crates.

“Honored Sisters,” the man said in the Orinai tongue, though he kept his eyes fixed on the ground. “I am humbled to have you aboard my vessel.”