Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (12 page)

More murmurs, though this time they were less positive. Gavin heard someone near him whisper about demons.

“What about the quake?” someone shouted.

“We believe Kaiden may have created it to cover his escape.” Evrouin said. “Part of what we will do when out on the sands once more is to assist in looking for him. We can only do so much, but the Roterralar will help us.”

“Do you trust them?” someone else from the crowd asked.

It was Alia who answered. “We don’t need to trust them. If they attempt to go back to the way things were, we know where they live. We can come back here and enact justice.”

“Do you think anyone will choose to stay?” Farah asked, turning to Gavin.

Behind them, the clan leaders began issuing orders and making the preparations to leave.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Lhaurel sat back in her bed, knees pulled up against her arms. Near her, the infant cried softly until his mother, the outcast woman, hooked the child to her breast. Lhaurel smiled softly at the noises of the baby eating hungrily in great gulps. The woman glanced over at her and smiled.

“So you’re awake,” she said.

Lhaurel didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel like talking right now.

“They call me Shallee,” the woman said with a small smile. “They tell me you saved my child.”

Again, Lhaurel remained silent. It was better not to say anything, not to draw attention to herself.

“Thank you.” Shallee said. “In fact, I think I owe you even more thanks. Gavin speaks most highly of you. He says you saved his life once already too.”

If she spoke, the woman was sure to think of her as a monster, see her how Lhaurel saw herself. Instead, Lhaurel nodded. There was a cheeriness to the woman’s voice that Lhaurel simply found herself unable to resist. Lhaurel shifted to get a better look at her. The movement brought her hands into view and Lhaurel noticed the red stain of her fingernails. She closed her hands into fists. A part of her recalled the memories of people dying, of the genesauri exploding into pools of red around her, part of her remembered the insane, wonderful ecstasy of that much power channeling through her. Part of her longed to hold all that power again, no matter the cost. That part of her was the monster.

“Khari says you should be feeling better soon. She left you a cane if you want to try using it.” Shallee nodded toward the door. A metal cane rested there, more of a walking stick than a cane, almost as tall as Lhaurel was herself. Lhaurel contemplated going over and picking it up, but she lacked the strength to stand.

“Did you feel the quake earlier?” Shallee asked after a long moment of silence. Lhaurel figured she was one of those people who simply like to fill all the empty space she could with sound. That was one way of living, at least.

Lhaurel nodded.

“They say it was Kaiden.”

Kaiden
. The name rocked Lhaurel to the core. Kaiden. He was the cause of all this—it was
his
fault she’d become a monster. Lhaurel sucked in a deep breath, feeling a strange
surge
of energy. Red mist formed around her. Where had that come from? Lhaurel gasped as
awareness
sprang through her. Her senses swelled outward and she felt not only the woman and child near her, but the whole warren came alive. She felt everyone in the greatroom above, from the smallest child to the oldest adult. She felt the goat herds, the sheep, and the few remaining cattle in the narrow grain fields up above. She felt them all. Part of her hungered to take them all, to pull at their blood as she had the genesauri and revel in the power they would provide.

Lhaurel gasped and pushed the power away. No! She wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t.

“Lhaurel?” Shallee asked. The baby was crying softly again.

“Kaiden.” Lhaurel repeated. It wasn’t a question as much as a plea.

“I overheard them talking. Kaiden escaped his cell here—one of the guards was killed. They think he did something to cause that quake and cover his escape.”

Kaiden. Lhaurel struggled to her feet. The effort was enormous, but the residual effects from using her powers gave her just enough energy and capacity to make it standing, one hand against the wall to give her support.

“What are you doing?” Shallee asked.

Lhaurel ignored her. Kaiden was loose. The man who had been responsible for so much death and destruction, the man she had once thought she may grow to love. He was loose. She supported herself along the wall until she got to the cane. Grabbing it, she used it to help her to the door.

“Wait, where are you going?”

Lhaurel flung open the door and limped into the hall. In the back of her mind, she knew what she was doing was foolish, but she didn’t stop herself. She kept right on walking. She had to stop after only a few steps and take a brief rest, but she kept at it. If Kaiden was loose, she couldn’t do anything else except what she had already done before. She would find him and stop him. And this time, she would make sure he was dead before moving on.

The clans were in the middle of preparations to leave, gathering the supplies they claimed were theirs and working—reluctantly in many cases—together to make the logistical plans to expedite their departure. Gavin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It was a testament to the failure of his plan that he was left out of any other decisions, relegated to the sidelines. How had he gone wrong?

Instead of one unified people, they were four divided clans. Well, really three clans and a fourth messenger corps, if the three clan leaders had anything to say about it. Three clans. That was all that was left of the seven clans of the Sharani Desert. Three from seven.

At least there were that many. At least he still had some influence with the clans, portions of them at least.
And
Khari was giving him a chance to—as she put it—learn true leadership as the head of the mystic order. He was certainly leery about that. He knew next to nothing of his power, even less about the other two . . . and then there was Lhaurel. She wasn’t any of the three known types.

When the woman had shown up in the greatroom, hobbling on that cane, Khari had taken into her with such harsh words that Gavin himself had cringed. They were off somewhere now, discussing things. Gavin had little desire to know what about.

“Well, get up then, Gavin.” Gavin turned to regard Farah, who leaned against the wall next to the door.

“How’d you find me?” He asked, turning back to face the wall.

“I followed your trail of broken dreams and shattered hopes. It led me right here.”

Gavin shook his head and breathed out a heavy sigh. “Very funny, Farah.”

“No, what’s funny is that you’re in here moping instead of working to gain back the trust and respect you lost with your stunt earlier. You don’t give up just because a sandstorm blows. You fight it, with everything you have. Get up and act like a leader.”

The words hit him and echoed in his mind, merging with similar words his grandmother had instilled within him. The true test of leadership, the true test of a man, she’d say, was not how he acted during victory but how he came back from defeat.

Gavin pushed the melancholy back and got to his feet.

“Alright. I guess you’d better show me how to start using these powers, then,” he said.

Farah smiled, which banished a portion of the shadows within Gavin’s mind. “That I can do.”

She gestured for him to follow and pushed off from the doorway. Gavin followed, grabbing his greatsword before leaving his rooms. He had a habit of leaving it behind. Actually, Gavin mused as he followed Farah down a side passage, it was more of a lack of habit than a particular proclivity for leaving it behind. He’d never owned a sword before, though his grandmother had taught him the forms with sticks and the odd sword which could be found among the outcasts.

Farah led him down the hall and down another passage, dodging around various Rahuli in the middle of preparing to leave. Gavin had already memorized the well-used passages within the warren and knew where they were headed and so he was not surprised when Farah reached one of the doors to the eyrie and stepped inside. Gavin followed behind.

As always, the sheer size and majesty of the room seeped into Gavin like the icy drizzle of an Oasis rain. Aevians flitted from crag to crag along the walls. The creatures chirped and cried to one another and the wind whistled through the cavernous opening opposite them.

There was an odd smell in the air, more than the pungency that came from the birds themselves. This was a deeper scent, something familiar . . .

“Can you smell that?” Farah asked with a sniff. “What is it?”

Gavin took a deep breath. He knew that smell if only—

“It’s the smell of wet,” Gavin said. He fell into a jog and passed the confused Farah. He reached the eyrie opening on the side of the plateau and looked out over the sands. Clouds blackened the sky to the east. Rain pelted the sands and killed dunes, melting them into crimson pools.

Farah walked up beside him.

“It’s a nice smell, don’t you think?”

“Sands!” she swore. “Have you ever seen—?” She didn’t finish the thought.

Lightning flashed so close Gavin could feel it sizzling through the air. The hair on his arms stood on end. Thunder crashed overhead almost instantly. The floor rumbled and the aevians fell silent. Only the sound of the rain remained.

Something scraped against rock and sand. Gavin turned his head to look behind them and his eyes widened. The solitary aevian he’d seen earlier stood less than a handsbreadth behind them, close enough that his hooked beak hovered only about a foot above Gavin’s head.

“Don’t spook him,” Farah whispered. There was a note of surprise in her voice, though it was somewhat dampened by the whisper.

Gavin swallowed and carefully turned back around to look out at the rains. The aevian shuffled to the side a few spans and hopped up onto the lip of the opening, talons digging into the soft sandstone.

“What’s he doing?” Gavin whispered, trying hard to keep his attention on the storm.

“Watching the storm,” Farah said. “He’s probably just as curious as we are.”

More lightning flashed. Gavin felt it and sucked in a sharp breath. The storms were raging across the sands. Things were changing. Ever since the battle of the Oasis, the weather itself had changed. Gavin sometimes wondered if the death of the genesauri had caused it, but he couldn’t see what they had to do with it. There was no logical connection.

“Well, let’s get started then, Farah.” Gavin said, turning away from the storm. “This storm isn’t going anywhere soon.”

Farah didn’t follow him at first. She lingered near the opening, looking out across the sands. Her blonde hair streamed out around her, tossed on the wind. After a few moments, she finally threw up her hands, sighed, and turned away from the storm.

“Maybe this will keep the clans here longer.” She said, striding toward Gavin.

“They’re too resilient, too set on leaving for a little water to stop them now.”

“Two days ago you were vehemently opposed to
anyone
leaving the warren. Now you’re all for it. What changed?”

“I’m not all for it.” Gavin said. “I claimed leadership of them all, but I knew it wasn’t going to work with everyone all together here, especially not the Heltorin and Londik.”