Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (23 page)

“If not managed properly, the magic itself can be deadly to the user. For this reason, those born with the abilities have mental barriers created by their own minds in order to protect themselves. This internal wall must first be broken before their abilities can be manifested.”

—From
Commentary on the
Schema, Volume I

Lhaurel stopped before the door to the eyrie and then scuttled back, her breathing rapid and pulse racing. Her hand shook on her cane and her knees threatened to collapse.

“What’s going on with you, girl?” Cobb asked over a shoulder.

Lhaurel shook her head, hand going to her mouth. She bit down hard on one finger. “I can’t. I can’t go in there. I thought I could, but I can’t.”

Cobb turned around to face her. “What are you about, girl? Come on. Khari is waiting for you in there. You shouldn’t leave the Matron waiting.”

Lhaurel shook her head and took another step back.

Cobb’s face hardened. “Come on, now. No games. Quit acting like a child.”

Something twisted in Lhaurel’s gut. “You don’t know anything about this at all, old man.” She hissed. “None of you do. I saved you all from certain death. Not Gavin, not the Roterralar, me. I felt death, I felt loss and pain. There were only two things in this world I cared about, and both are lost to me now. Both died after I tried to save them. Don’t you dare try talking about something you don’t know anything about.”

Cobb’s face twisted into a scowl and his jawline hardened.

Lhaurel immediately felt like a fool for her words, though anger still radiated through her. It had come on suddenly, a white-hot suppressed rage like nothing she had felt before. It took her only a moment to realize that she’d drawn upon her powers. She was standing straighter, neck stiff, chin up, and she could
feel
everything around her. The aevians in the eyrie felt like a massive wave of life, though she could pick out the individual creatures and the half score of people within the room. They all felt different, like Khari or Beryl did when she could sense them at all.
Mystics?

“You never did know anything about respect, girl,” Cobb growled. “But what can I expect after your time here with the Roterralar. That demon woman, Khari, acts like she’s the Warlord or something. I’ve lived through almost sixty Migrations, girl. Don’t you try and compare your pain with mine. Now are you coming or not?”

For one irrational moment, Lhaurel felt like lashing out with her powers and striking the man, then she pushed the drawn-in strength away. She shuddered as the strength she had gathered in vanished and the great awareness faded, but did not fully disappear. She slumped as a great sense of exhaustion overwhelmed her and a headache bloomed at her temples. Why had she gotten so angry? Where had that flare of sudden rage come from? She blinked a few times, trying to clear her head, but when it didn’t fade she simply grit her teeth and decided to press on. The look on Cobb’s face wouldn’t allow her to back down now.

“Are you going to open that door?” Lhaurel asked as she limped forward, using the cane far more than she had before. “Or do I have to?”

Cobb grunted, lips a hard line and jaw set, but reached out and yanked the door open perhaps a bit too forcefully. Lhaurel didn’t even glance his direction as she limped by. Memories of her first fortnight among the Roterralar flooded into her mind as she entered the massive cavern which made up the eyrie. She’d spent that entire time here among the aevians, butchering sailfin corpses and cleaning up after the regal creatures. She’d grown to love and care for them like she cared about so few other things. This was also the place where she’d bonded with Fahkiri.

She pushed that thought away. It was still too fresh, too painful, to dwell on.

The aevians were mostly inactive, roosting in their crags along the eyrie walls opposite from where she had entered. To her right the eyrie opened to the Sharani desert, allowing in light and clean air. Lhaurel was as grateful now as she was those first few days trapped in here for that renewal of air. With that many creatures living and defecating in one place, even with the fresh air the smell was pretty powerful.

Khari stood in front of an odd assortment of individuals before the cavernous mouth, her back to the sands. Most of them were Lhaurel’s age, a handful even younger, though there were a few older individuals scattered among them. They all looked different physically, but they all
felt
similar to Lhaurel’s heightened senses.

No, actually there were three distinctly different feelings emanating from the group. Lhaurel stopped in her tracks as that realization hit her. She closed her eyes, feeling at each of them. The wettas she recognized almost immediately. It was a familiar feeling, though slightly different from how she felt about her own powers. It was like the difference between sand and the soil found in the Oasis. With a start, Lhaurel realized she could sense which type of magic each mystic held.

She opened her eyes as Khari’s words registered in her ears.

“. . . you are those who have within you the abilities of a mystic. I warn you, the things you will be asked to do in order to unlock your abilities may seem extreme. They may seem strange. They
will
be cruel. But they are for your own good. We must begin by trying to get you to manifest your powers, find out what type of mystic you are, and that only happens when you have broken through the mental barriers holding back your abilities.”

Lhaurel chewed on her bottom lip.
Find out what type of mystic they are?
Lhaurel reached out with her extra awareness, eyes closed in concentration. She was close enough to them now that their abilities were easily discernible. Six magnetelorium, four wetta, and eight relampago.

“Girl!”

Cobb’s gruff voice snapped Lhaurel out of her probe of the others in the room. Her eyes fluttered open and she turned to look at him.

The old, grizzled man jutted his chin back toward Khari. “The Matron is talking to you, girl.”

Lhaurel turned back, her ears seeming to suddenly return to functioning in a rush of sound.

“Lhaurel,” Khari said, a trace of mild irritation in her voice. “These are the mystics who decided to stay here.”

Lhaurel turned to regard them, watching as some of them fidgeted under her gaze. Others shuffled from foot to foot or looked down at their feet. There was a distinct feeling of unease, and it took Lhaurel more than a few moments to realize that it wasn’t so much a reaction to her specifically, but to being
here
and discussing magic at all. Lhaurel remembered her own foreboding as if it were a distant memory, though it was only a few short months ago that she was in here too. She pushed those memories aside before they could get too painful.

“Hello,” Lhaurel said by way of introduction. Some of them looked up and gave her a half nod. “Khari is half right. You will be broken so your abilities can seep through the cracks, but you won’t have to do that to determine which abilities you have.”

Khari looked at her sharply.

“I can tell you.”

With quick efficiency, Lhaurel pointed out individuals and separated them into three respective groups. She was only half surprised to notice that all four of the wettas were women. She thought she recognized one or two of the faces—they may have once been Sidena—but she couldn’t recall their names. Though the clan itself had not been overly large, Lhaurel had been shuffled around from family to family so much she’d stopped bothering to learn their names outside of a select few. And now most of those were gone.

“Excuse us for a moment,” Khari said when Lhaurel had finished.

Khari grabbed Lhaurel by one arm, towing her away. Lhaurel limped after her, unable to use her cane because Khari had that arm in a firm grip.

“Are you saying you can sense their abilities?” Khari whispered, shooting a quick glance over one shoulder at the assembled groups, some of whom were now whispering among themselves.

“I would think that is obvious,” Lhaurel said, a flush of her earlier irritation returning. “Beryl’s scrolls hinted at it, but it wasn’t until just now that I realized I could tell the difference. I can’t always sense mystics, but that’s only when they’re actually using their powers. Then I can see them using it and don’t need to sense it.”

Khari stared at her, unblinking, lips pursed. “Alright then. I guess I’ll set them to work until Gavin and Farah get back.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you waiting for Gavin and Farah?” Lhaurel had no idea who Farah was, but Gavin she did know.

“Gavin is taking over for Sarial as leader of the mystics,” Khari said. “I assume he’d have Farah train the other relampagos and I’ll handle the wettas. Maybe Beryl can train the magnetelorium . . .” She trailed off, as if thoughtful, and tapped a finger to her pursed lips.

“What are you going to make them do?” Lhaurel asked. “There’s no genesauri for them to skin and no Kaiden here to torment them.” She said the last without letting much of the bitterness out, but it still tasted like an unripe sidium fruit to her lips.

Khari smiled and Lhaurel was struck by the mischievous gleam which shone through that look.

“Stick around and see,” Khari said.

Three men, all potential magneteloriums, struggled under the weight of the massive stone they were trying to move. Lhaurel stood to one side of the greatroom, leaning against her cane. Khari had brought them here to clean up from the earthquake. Other groups worked on other stones in the room, where Khari had transferred them, leaving Lhaurel to watch over these particular three men.

Khari and Cobb each watched over the other groups, though Lhaurel wasn’t sure what Cobb had to do with anything here. Nevertheless, he had been the most effective so far. With his acerbic tongue, gruff demeanor, and low rumbling voice, Cobb was a nightmare taken flesh. He yelled, cursed, and even threatened.

So far only one of his group hadn’t tried to spit at him or gotten into a shouting match. The rest of the greatroom had emptied except for the potential mystics, so the arguments were heard only by those who could benefit from it.

The one who hadn’t tried anything was actually the only one who had broken so far.

Lhaurel had watched it happen. The man’s group had been lifting a particularly large stone and were walking it over to the carts that would take it to eyrie to be dumped to the sands below, when he’d been pushed up against the wall by his overzealous companions. Instead of shouting with anger or pain, the man had simply grown red faced and ground his teeth together. Cobb, noticing this, began yelling, not at the man’s companions, but at the man himself.

It had been painful to watch and Lhaurel had been about to step in, when she’d seen the man’s muscles bulge along his jaw and noticed a cloud of red-grey mist form around him. A chunk of metal
exploded
from one wall and shot toward the back of Cobb’s head. Without even thinking, Lhaurel had reached out then and dismissed the man’s hold on his powers. The lump of metal continued forward for a few feet before dropping to the ground and rolling across the sand before stopping against Cobb’s feet. Khari had shown that man to another room shortly thereafter.

Lhaurel turned back to the three men she’d been supervising. One of them slipped and the stone came crashing back to the ground amid the accompanying curses of the other two men. They quickly got into a heated argument. Lhaurel hated having to put them through this, but at the same time, she half thought they got off easy. This was a simple, almost harmless endeavor compared to what she’d been forced to endure. Still . . .

“Enough of that,” she snapped, voice seeming to crack like a whip with the remaining vestiges of hoarseness from her encounter at the Oasis. “Pick up that stone and get it into the cart!” She tried to keep her voice firm, but this was new to her. She didn’t like the scrutiny and her attention constantly wandered, thoughts trickling back over her dream and what Beryl had made them read.

The man who had dropped the stone glowered at her. “Why don’t you come over here and try this?” he shot back.

Lhaurel chuckled. “How about you try what I had to do and then tell me how hard you have it.”

“Sands take you,” the man snapped. “I don’t have to take this from you, girl.”