Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (21 page)

Lhaurel didn’t really know where she was going. She had a vague idea about trying to find Khari, but she had no idea where the woman was nor where to start looking for her without using her powers. The rooms Khari had shared with Makin Qays were in the greatroom, though Shallee had mentioned that part of the greatroom had collapsed in the tremors which had lead to her having her baby early. Lhaurel had thought about returning to her own rooms there a few times, but then again, she’d never really used them much. She’d spent time above the plateau with Kaiden and . . . her thoughts trailed off, a mental block cutting off thoughts of Kaiden and those who had supported him.

No, she wasn’t going to the greatroom. Lhaurel looked up and glanced around, looking for something in the passage that was familiar enough to let her know where she was. Ah yes, there, the strange striations of rock were only found near the eyrie. She stopped and leaned against her cane. Did she really want to go there?

Fahkiri.

No, she didn’t want to face those memories either. Lhaurel turned, and almost bowled over someone she instantly recognized, someone who also used a cane.

“What are you doing here?” Lhaurel asked, taking a quick step back and almost—almost—reaching out for her powers.

Cobb regarded her from beneath his bushy eyebrows, face set into its customary scowl. “I live here now, girl, same as you.”

“Why didn’t you leave with the others?” She knew she was being a little rude, but she didn’t care. The man had saved her and Gavin, sure, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. He’d also done nothing when she’d taken up the sword to defend Saralhn, nothing to defend the woman and nothing to stop the clan from leaving Lhaurel chained to the rocks and left to be eaten by the genesauri.

“That’s my affair, mine and Maryn’s. Now, move over so I can get by.”

Lhaurel didn’t move. “Why are you going to the eyrie?” Emotions surged through her, anger the most predominant among them, though she suppressed them with effort. Old Cobb had saved her after all, eventually.

Cobb regarded her coolly, appearing not even the least bit perturbed by her attitude. He leaned against his cane with one hand and gestured vaguely with the other. “Again, what makes you think it’s any of your concern, girl?”

“Because I’m making it my concern. Sure, you’re not as bad as some who might have stayed, but you were well-liked and well-respected in the Sidena. You could have become Warlord. Why would you stay here?” The questions weren’t what she wanted to ask, but they were what she allowed herself to say.

Cobb narrowed his eyes. “There is no Sidena clan anymore, not really. There are only three clans, now. When there were so few of us left, the clans banded together with their allies. There’s no place for me there.”

“And what makes you think there’s a place for you here?” Lhaurel asked.

The fact that the clans had dissolved into only three groups was disturbing. She’d heard mention of it a time or two, but she hadn’t really understood the full implications, hadn’t processed the information in the face of everything else.

Cobb snorted and ran a hand over his balding pate. For a moment, Lhaurel noted a marked resemblance between the man and Beryl, then the moment faded.

“Why don’t you come along with me and see, girl,” he said.

Curious, Lhaurel followed him through the warren without any further words between them. Lhaurel recognized the route to the greatroom. The greatroom looked different than what Lhaurel remembered. It wasn’t just the fact that part of the landings that surrounded each tier of the greatroom had fallen in and been replaced by a simple system of rope bridges. No, it was more than that. Part of it was that the greatroom was
filled.
Men, women, and children scurried in and out of the room, dozens of them. The Roterralar had been a small, hidden clan when Lhaurel had become a part of it. Now it appeared that there were almost over a hundred of them living here.

“I thought you said the clans had left,” Lhaurel said.

“They did, but some of us decided to stay,” Cobb said. “Some of us on our own conscience, others were persuaded by that little demon of a woman, Khari.”

Lhaurel couldn’t help by smile slightly at the description. She’d once thought that about Khari as well.

“Any Sidena beside you?”

Cobb’s expression darkened and he muttered a soft curse. “Only a few. Even my wife, Maryn, went with them.”

“What?”

“It’s none of your business, really. I’m here, let’s leave it at that.” His tone made it clear he would not answer any more questions along that line of thought.

A small child who was walking by noticed them and stopped. The boy’s eyes darted to Lhaurel and then up to her hair. “What’s wrong with your hair?” he asked.

Lhaurel felt a flush of embarrassment and started stammering an answer, a flush blooming on her cheeks. The child’s mother, a rather portly woman who had a fresh scar on one cheek, rushed over to scold the boy.

“Hellion, you don’t ask questions like that.” She chided and then turned to Lhaurel and Cobb. “Please forgive the boy. He’s not got a grain of sense in that head of his, he don’t.”

Lhaurel turned away and Cobb muttered something placating to the woman. Lhaurel leaned against the wall, her grip on the cane tightening into a white-knuckled grip. She’d been afraid of this. She was a monster, they could see it in her, just as she could. The red hair and nails were her outward badge of shame. The words from Beryl’s scrolls wafted through her thoughts, words describing the horrible power she possessed.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and she turned her head over her left shoulder to see who it was. Cobb stood there, a grim expression on his face. Actually, it may have just been his usual expression. Lhaurel couldn’t really remember a time when the man hadn’t looked grim.

“Come on, girl. Khari will want to see you.”

“The second Iteration of energy . . . is the Storm Ward, a tier higher than their lesser counterparts, the relampago.
These Storm Wards are the power behind the Orinai Navy and the means whereby the plantations are able to provide the food necessary to supply such a vast geographic empire.”

—From
Commentary on the
Schema, Volume I

Gavin awoke with a stiff neck and aching muscles, though there was a lingering smile on his lips. He blinked a few times to clear away the last few vestiges of sleep and looked down toward Farah.

She wasn’t there.

For a moment, Gavin panicked, then an overwhelming sadness drifted over him like a storm burgeoning on the horizon. Had he somehow upset her? Women were as foreign to him as whatever lay beyond the Forbiddence. Maybe he should ask Shallee for advice when they got back to the Roterralar Warren.

“Are you ever going to get up so we can go?”

Gavin’s eyes darted to the other end of the small cave. Farah, fully clothed again, sat on a long stone bench there, a grin playing about the edges of her lips. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back into a tight braid, which she’d wrapped up and pinned back with several long pins, probably clay. The style highlighted the two earrings perched on her right ear.

With a slow shrug, Gavin hopped down, trying desperately to hide the small smile of relief which threatened to overcome his face. Farah smiled and tossed him a small sack in which he found some dried meat, a little cheese, and some bread. Thankfully, it was a mild cheese. Some of the stronger ones left his breath smelling like a goat for half a day afterward.

Farah must have already eaten, for she busied herself with saddling the two aevians which had moved toward the cave’s opening to bask in the sunlight. As she worked, she hummed softly to herself. Gavin recognized the tune and, when he’d finished his last bite, began humming a deep, low counter melody. He’d never had the best voice, but humming didn’t use much of that and the counter melody was a simple one. Farah glanced over at him once and smiled, before finishing up with the saddles.

“You ready then?” she asked when she was done.

Gavin nodded and stowed the now-empty sack in a pocket. He buckled his greatsword on his waist, then grabbed his harness and tried not to embarrass himself as he did up the straps and fastened buckles. His fingers slipped on the last one, but he corrected quickly. He looked up, hoping Farah hadn’t noticed, but found Farah only a foot or two away from him, her eyes locked on his. He was startled at how much taller she seemed that close, though she was still a hand shorter than he. Farah stepped forward until she was only a few inches away and reached out a long, slender hand to cup his chin and cheek.

“You don’t need to try and impress me,” she said, softly. Gavin felt her breath on his face. “You already did that in the Oasis and every day since.”

Gavin hesitated, unsure what to say. Farah’s expression fell slightly and she stepped back, hand falling to her side.

“I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing one arm with the other. “That was improper of me, I think.”

On impulse, Gavin stepped forward and pulled her into an embrace. Before he could change his mind, he bent down and kissed her. It was a quick, unpracticed kiss and Gavin was sure he was doing something wrong, but Farah didn’t pull away. It was over too soon and some of the awkwardness returned, but the smile on Farah’s face seemed genuine and her eyes glistened.

“Your breath tastes like cheese,” Farah said.

Gavin laughed, and it felt good. “Well, let’s go then.”

Farah laughed and gestured for him to take the lead.

The sun rose over the Sharani Desert, warming the sands and adding strength to the upward thrusts of the aevians’ wings. The heated air rose in large columns, which allowed Nabil to slow the frequency of each stroke and soar along with the wind. Still, Gavin leaned forward to keep the massive, white aevian from getting too far above the sands for him to make out the minute details. Despite the fun, Gavin knew they were still on a mission. Kaiden was still out here among the sands. Somewhere.

They kept the Forbiddence always on their left side and followed its long graceful curve for several uneventful hours. Gavin watched small herds of goats, either wild or ones which had gotten loose when the Oasis had fallen, scamper along the rocks and hard, packed sands that lined the Forbiddence for several hundred spans, radiating outward from the dark, slick rock. The different parts of the Sharani Desert fascinated Gavin. From the rolling dunes around the Oasis, to the harder packed sands and desert plants out here, the Sharani desert was as different and varied as were the people that lived within it.

He couldn’t help but glance down at Farah as he thought this. The girl—no, the woman—was like no one Gavin had ever met. Granted, his experience with women involved either his grandmother, Shallee, or the women in the clans, none of which offered him much real insight, but Farah had such a vibrant nature to her. She seemed like an Oasis flower blooming in the middle of the sands, unique, free, and not caring what others perceived of her.

Nabil screeched, pulling Gavin from his thoughts. The aevian was generally silent in flight, so Gavin immediately looked around for something out of the ordinary. He found it after only a few moments and just as Farah whistled sharply to alert him of a similar discovery. There in the sands below them leading not to, but away from the Forbiddence, were a set of tracks. Gavin leaned forward and directed Nabil into a shallow dive. Talyshan was a smaller, brown shadow paralleling the motion to the left.

As they picked up speed, Gavin was forced to close his eyes against the stinging wind, but a moment later Nabil pulled out of the dive and landed gracefully in the sands. Almost by instinct, Gavin released the leads from his harness and slid off Nabil’s back, only opening his eyes when he was halfway down to the sands. Gavin’s booted feet crunched against the ground and he reached for his greatsword.

“Wait!” Farah’s voice was urgent and hard. Gavin froze and looked over his shoulder at her.

“Leave the sword,” she ordered. She was already deep in the process of removing her flight harness. “Take off anything made of metal. If it is Kaiden, we don’t want to give him any more weapons than he already has.”

Gavin nodded, grateful for Farah’s pragmatism. He removed his own harness, the greatsword, and his belt and hooked them onto Nabil’s saddle. Farah walked over to him and pulled a long, red knife from under her robes and proffered it to him. He took it, feeling the surprising balance to the cleaver-like blade.

“Glass?”

Farah nodded, pulling out a second one for herself.

“You’ve really thought this one through, then.” Gavin said, approvingly.

“Khari’s idea.” Farah said giving him a pointed look.

For a moment, Gavin wondered if he’d done something wrong, then realized that she was waiting for him to take the lead. He nodded and turned back to investigate the trail they’d seen from above. He was going to be the leader of the mystics, after all, if Khari got her way, which she most likely would. Behind him, Farah whistled a few quick notes and the two aevians launched into the air, taking the metal with them. From what Gavin had heard of the Oasis battle, it may not be enough, but then again, recountings of events had a tendency toward becoming stories, and stories drifted to legends when the experience was a horrifying one.

A few more steps brought them to the tracks they had seen from the air. Footprints marred the otherwise smooth desert surface, prints that were deep, wide, and long, far larger than any Gavin had ever known. Between the tracks, a long groove cut into the sand as well, almost like a tail. Gavin had seen similar markings when he’d stumbled across a sandtiger’s tracks. The groove there had been extremely shallow, and the tracks in two sets of pairs rather than a single one, but it was the only thing Gavin had ever seen remotely similar. He bent down to study them closer, looking questioningly up at Farah after a moment.

She shook her head. “We won’t know anything if we don’t follow them.” She glanced off in the direction the tracks were headed and Gavin followed her gaze. It looked like they were headed straight for an outcropping of rock in the distance. It was too small to be a warren, but it may have once been a piece of one of the stoneways.

“Come on then,” Gavin said, standing and turning to follow the tracks.

“On foot?”

Gavin nodded. “Yes, on foot. It will be harder for whatever it is to spot us on foot. Talyshan and Nabil will be close if we need them.”

“Alright,” Farah said with a shrug. Her expression had gone grim, but she gave him a forced half-smile when she noticed him looking.

He didn’t know what to say, so he started walking. Farah followed.

The outcropping slowly resolved into the broken pillar of an old stoneway. Gavin and Farah approached it cautiously, careful to watch all around them for an ambush. Farah jumped at the smallest sound, glass blade swinging up to the ready in seconds, but it was never anything. It took Gavin a while to realize that, after last night’s nightmares, after reliving the battle of the Oasis in her sleep, she half expected a genesauri to come rising up out of the sand.

At least, that’s what Gavin assumed. He didn’t have that same fear. As he walked across the sands he knew, without really understanding how, that the genesauri were well and truly gone. It was more of a gut instinct than true knowledge, but that was sometimes more sure a measure than was knowledge.

As they approached the broken pillar though, Gavin felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end and
he
even started jumping at the slightest sound. As a child, he’d wondered at the stoneways scattered throughout the Sharani desert. They were giant stone and metal roads suspended in the air on the backs of thick pillars. Everyone knew they were safe from the genesauri, though no one knew what they really were or how they had come to be in there. Gavin had asked his grandmother several times, but she only repeated what everyone else already knew. They were safety from the genesauri and a remnant of a different time. And really, in the face of the genesauri Migrations, what else really mattered?

“Gavin, look there,” Farah whispered.

Gavin’s eyes darted to Farah and then followed her pointing finger to the shadows behind the large pillar in the sand. He could make out a figure there, stooped over a second. For a moment, Gavin wondered if it was Kaiden, but then realized the sheer scale of what he was seeing. They were still at least a hundred spans from the pillar. In order for the standing figure to be as large as he appeared to be, he would have to be well over seven feet tall and twice as broad shouldered as Gavin was. No one was that big. No one . . .

“I’m going to circle around them and come at them from behind,” Gavin whispered. “You keep on, but give me a few minutes to get around them. Be ready to signal for the aevians.”

He moved to turn away, but she grabbed his arm with her free hand and stepped close. She stood up on the tip of her toes and kissed him on the cheek. She didn’t say anything else, but he nodded at her, unable to muster a smile, and then tugged his arm free and broke into a shallow, stooped run.

Gavin eased through the sand, careful to stay mostly obscured from view. When his line of sight to the mysterious figure was broken by the pillar, he broke into a run. The ground was covered in looser sand around the pillar where wind had blown it into massive drifts. Though it made running difficult, Gavin was also grateful, because it muffled the sound of his footfalls.

When he got close enough to be heard, even with the sand, he slowed to almost a crawl. He hoped Farah was ready, though he had no way of knowing. He crept along, red glass dagger held low, and then leapt around the side of the pillar.

The smell hit him first, even before the strange sight of the massively tall men. It was a putrid, rotting smell, like decomposing flesh.

One of the men lay on the ground, covered in bandages. The standing man looked up, slightly-too-large, blue-green eyes widening in surprise.

The man’s clothes were in tatters, though they had once been fine and unlike anything Gavin had ever seen before. He was dirty, and covered in blood, but there was a chiseled quality to his features, like a work of stone taken flesh. The man hesitated for a moment, then Gavin felt a massive
rush
of energy and the man’s hands exploded with crackling white energy. The wind picked up and blew sands into the air.