Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (29 page)

“A dead end?” Samsin asked, annoyance in his voice. “Do you know how heavy Nikanor is? He’s a storms-cursed Earth Ward, for storm’s sake.”

Gavin ran a hand through his hair and turned about with a low sigh. He glanced back down the hall, then back at the stone wall facing them. There wasn’t any other way around it.

“I don’t understand,” Gavin said, blowing out an exasperated breath. “This is the way I went the last time I was here. I’m sure of it.”

“So you can walk through walls now? You Rahuli have sure come a long way in the last thousand years. I bet you’re so far removed from your original stock you can’t even breed with the regular slaves anymore, just like those cross-breeds in the menagerie fairs they have in the bigger cities back home.”

Gavin had no idea what Samsin meant by the last part of the statement, but the insult was plain. As if Gavin wasn’t frustrated enough with himself. After everything else, he had to go and get lost with Samsin there to watch.

Could this day get any better? And where was he going to find Nabil?

Samsin opened his mouth to start talking again.

“Just be quiet a minute and let me think, will you?” Gavin snapped.

Samsin closed his mouth with an audible snap, though his eyes smoldered.

Gavin did his best to ignore him. Placing a hand on his chin and rubbing at the stubble, Gavin went over all the turns again in his mind. He thought he’d followed the exact course he and Lhaurel had taken, except for the last turn. Evrouin had said the entrance to the hidden Oasis passages was exactly opposite the one which lead into the Oasis, but it was obvious that Evrouin had either lied or Gavin had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Assuming that Gavin hadn’t made any mistake—and Gavin was relatively sure he hadn’t—that meant the way out into the Oasis would be down the other end of the passage, perhaps a score of spans the other direction. But it was supposed to be flooded.

“We should be standing in water,” Gavin said, voicing his thoughts out loud.

“Water?” Samsin asked. “Did you inhale too much smoke? There’s no water here.”

Gavin walked around the taller man and down the passage, torch held high. No light glinted back up at him as if reflecting back up off water. He quickened his pace.

“Oi, slave boy. You. Gavin!” Samsin called, voice raising with each word until it echoed off the walls of the narrow passage. “Where are you going?”

Gavin broke into a jog. He neared the end of the passage and the light revealed another dead end, but a grin split Gavin’s face regardless. The tunnel exit was blocked by a pile of red sand. In moments Gavin had the torch leaned against the passage wall and had scrambled to the top of the sand drift. Ignoring Samsin’s continued shouting, Gavin began to dig, pulling massive handfuls of sand down into the tunnel. He thought about pulling his greatsword out and using it like a shovel, but discarded the idea. It was much too long to be effective. More sand sifted down into the area he cleared, but he persisted. He dug faster, cupping his hands together and scooping out as much sand as he could gather.

Light suddenly poured into the passage, making Gavin’s eyes sting from the brightness. He laughed and kept on digging, hollowing out a space between the sand drift and the passage’s ceiling until it was large enough for him to crawl through. With a grin, Gavin rolled onto his back and then pushed his upper half through the hole he’d just dug. Gripping the outside of the warm sandstone wall, Gavin pulled himself the rest of the way out, sand filling his clothes, and then got to his feet. He blinked away tears as his eyes fully adjusted to the blinding sunlight. He looked around.

Realization hit him with the force of a raging sandstorm. This wasn’t the Oasis.

“There are nine total Iterations and only seven Progressions, but there is overlap between the two areas of study in that evolutionary movement up each element’s Iteration hierarchy is accomplished by adherence to a particular Progression path and code of conduct.”

—From
Commentary on the
Schema, Volume I

Khari and Lhaurel stepped into the forge, blinking against the sudden, flaring heat that washed over them. The forge furnace blazed with such intensity that within only a few moments, sweat beaded on Lhaurel’s forehead and dampened her clothes, making them cling to her skin. The rows of harnesses that normally hung from the ceiling were missing, which left the entrance chamber seemingly twice as large as Lhaurel remembered. Oddly, Beryl wasn’t at the forge, despite the flaring furnace.

“Beryl,” Khari called.

Lhaurel moved around the shorter woman and further into the room. The heat from the furnace grew even more intense, more than Lhaurel had thought it would.

Khari followed her in, a look of confusion on her face. “Maybe he’s in the armory,” she said, scratching at her chin.

“What do you want?”

Lhaurel and Khari both spun toward the furnace. Beryl stood there, all but leaning against the furnace. The light from the furnace glinted off the bits of metal embedded in his skin.

How can he stand that heat?

“Lhaurel says you’re acting oddly, Beryl,” Khari said. “What’s going on? Who are the Orinai and what are those scrolls you’re having us read?”

Beryl laughed and the flames within the furnace flared. Despite the heat, Lhaurel had to suppress a shiver that crept up her neck.

“It’s too late for all that. Leave it behind and flee this place before the Seven Sisters and their armies get here. You should leave.”

“Not until we get some answers.”

Lhaurel glanced over at Khari. She was using her Matron’s voice, but it seemed somehow diminished when standing up against Beryl’s presence outlined by the furnace flames. Was the man even sweating?

“You don’t want answers,” Beryl said. “You want peace. You want to know that the life you so desperately cling to is worth protecting. You want to know that you’re worth something. The longer you live, the more you realize that life lives you, not you it.”

Khari opened her mouth, then closed it and shrugged.

“Beryl,” Lhaurel asked, taking a step closer to the man. “Why did you give us those scrolls. What are they?”

Beryl turned to look at her and, for a moment, his expression hardened before it relaxed again. “They are the record of the Schema and the three Iterations of magic. They are the best I can give you before the Orinai arrive.” His face clouded over again and he scowled, turning away.

“Did Elyana write them?” Lhaurel didn’t know where the question came from, but she was willing to give anything a try.

She got an immediate reaction. The furnace fire flared and Lhaurel stepped back from the heat. Beryl looked at her with narrowed eyes and a sudden tightening of his entire body posture.

“She did,” Beryl said. “She thought of you Rahuli as her greatest legacy, as her children. She would have done anything to protect you from her Sisters. She
did
do anything.”

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

Khari looked questioningly at Lhaurel, lips pressed into a frown, but Lhaurel kept her eyes locked on Beryl.

“I love her still,” Beryl replied. “She’s dead. It’s your fault, you know, though she was lost to me a thousand years ago.”

“A thousand years?” Khari asked, interrupting for the first time. “Come now. I know you’re old, but that’s ridiculous.”

Beryl pointedly ignored her.

“Why did she write them, Beryl?” Lhaurel pressed. “What was she afraid of? Who were her sisters?”

“There are no words to describe them. Elyana and I, we did what we had to do to make them leave. Me, I armed the Rahuli. I gave them weapons and taught them to fight. Elyana, well, she relied on her arts and passion to help drive her Sisters out. She even helped us kill one of them, atop the Oasis walls. You people, you call it the story of Eldriean and Serthim, but it wasn’t anything so great as that. It was a simple trick, and it worked for a time. But then they returned. Elyana was forced to delve into the heinous parts of her power. She did great evil in order to protect your people. The Sisters were driven out by the genesauri—Elyana’s children.”

Lhaurel had no idea what Beryl was talking about, but she felt dread spread through her like a bucket of sand dumped down her back.

“I don’t understand,” Lhaurel said.

“You can’t hope to.” Beryl laughed, a humorless expression. “You can only hope to flee. Run, while you still can. I won’t be able to protect you any longer. The Orinai are coming.”

“What are the Orinai?” Khari demanded. “Why should we fear them? How do you know they’re coming?”

“Because I told them to.”

“What?”

“They’re coming. For over a thousand years, they’ve assumed you dead, killed by the Orinai. This place, this Arena of theirs, it was the pride of the Orinai nation. The games here, the fights, they held together the broken pieces of the land like glue on shattered crockery. They’re coming.”

Beryl’s expression hardened again and the furnace flared even hotter. Lhaurel’s clothes clung to her from the sweat and the heat sapped all moisture from the air. Her lungs burned. Beryl seemed unaffected, but Lhaurel was at her limit of tolerance.

“I don’t understand,” Lhaurel said again.

“I’m sorry,” Beryl said, and the furnace flared even hotter.

Lhaurel was forced to look away. She felt a hand on her arm and then Khari was tugging her back toward the door. Lhaurel reluctantly followed her. Outside, Khari slammed the door shut and Lhaurel breathed in a lungful of cool air.

“He’s—he’s not well,” Khari said, though she sounded shaken. “How did you know what to say? Who’s Elyana? Do you know what he was talking about?”

Lhaurel shook her head, unable to speak for several minutes. Lhaurel struggled with it within her own mind. Beryl
had
known Elyana. Did that mean her dreams were real or was she just as mad as Beryl seemed? If she
were
sane, and the dreams were real, did they really have something to fear? The scrolls she’d read suddenly took on a new light. Instead of as instruction, had Beryl meant them as a warning? The Iterations, the pathways, the different levels of magic, were they really based upon a system which had been borrowed from another people beyond the Forbiddence?

What is happening?

“Lhaurel?”

“I don’t know if he’s sane or not, Khari. Maybe I’m crazy too.” Lhaurel chewed on her bottom lip and looked down at her blood-red fingernails. A lock of her matching red hair drifted in front of her face.
The Seven Sisters. Blood mages. Was she one of them?

“But I think I believe him. There’s a world out there, beyond the Forbiddence. A whole world about which we know absolutely nothing. I think the Rahuli have spent so long here, fighting the yearly battle against each other and the genesauri, that we’ve forgotten where we came from.”

Khari shook her head. “I don’t understand any of this. What are you saying? There’s nothing beyond the Forbiddence.”

Lhaurel shrugged. “I think it’s time you actually read those scrolls.”

Khari opened her mouth, but at that exact moment, someone ran down the hall at a sprint, skidding to a halt in front of them. The young boy stopped and dropped his hands to his knees, panting hard.

“Matron,” the boy said between gasps. “Farah just came back. She says she and Gavin found two strange, tall men, both wounded, but at least one of them with mystic’s powers.”

“Tall men?” Lhaurel asked.

The messenger nodded. “Yes, tall and muscular, wearing strange clothes and with odd accents, according to Farah’s report.”

Lhaurel felt the color drain from her face and spun to look at Khari. Blotches of color stood out on the woman’s cheeks. It couldn’t be the Orinai, could it?

“To the eyrie, then,” Khari said. “I’ll hear this report from her myself.” She straightened and started to walk off in the direction of the eyrie.

The young boy held up a hand. “Wait,” he almost yelled. “There’s more. Farah was going to wait for you, but as soon as she’d delivered her report Nabil arrived, half dead with fatigue. Gavin wasn’t with him.” The boy stopped talking for a moment, but held up a hand to indicate that he still had more to say. He sucked down a few more deep breaths before he continued. “She left immediately to go after him.”

Khari sword. “Idiot girl. Did she say where she was going?”

The boy nodded. “The old stoneway pillar near the Forbiddence. The one just south of the salt sea where the old Aeril Warren was.”

Khari looked over at Lhaurel, who swallowed hard and then nodded, holding out a hand to Khari. The shorter woman took it and helped Lhaurel to her feet.

Lhaurel stood at the door to the eyrie once more half an hour later. Khari had gone ahead and gathered a half dozen warriors, including the few new mystics who had been broken earlier that day. Once again, Lhaurel found herself sweating and loathe to enter the room. Last time, she’d been able to focus on something other than the aevians. Last time, she hadn’t had to face the memories of Fahkiri. This time, she’d have to join the aevian cast if she was to go with them, and that meant riding an aevian that was not Fahkiri. For some reason, that felt like a betrayal.

But the Orinai had arrived if Farah’s report was to be believed. Lhaurel grit her teeth, steeled herself, and pushed into the room.

Aevians danced from wall to wall, alighting on crags and calling to one another in agitated hoots. Several aevians were being fitted with harnesses near the opening out onto the Sharani Desert. Khari stood there in a heated argument with—with
Shallee
. What was
she
doing here? She’d just had a baby a few days ago. Lhaurel hurried across the sand, using Shallee’s presence to focus her will.

“You just gave birth, for sand’s sake,” Khari said in an exasperated tone, her face betraying a small portion of the exhaustion, frustration, and worry that Lhaurel knew she felt. “You can’t come with us.”

Shallee leaned forward, eyes wide. “Gavin is the only family I have left. I’m not going to abandon him now.”

“And what of your baby? He needs you even more than Gavin does. Leave this to us.”

Shallee’s face scrunched up in bitter anger, but she didn’t argue. “You better bring him back, you hear?”

Lhaurel limped over to the woman.

“We’ll bring him back, Shallee,” Lhaurel said. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Seeing Shallee, remembering her pain and realizing what it must have felt like to come here, Lhaurel felt suddenly better and smiled as she gave Shallee a brief hug. Shallee nodded, eyes brimming with tears, then hurried off.

Khari looked questioningly over at Lhaurel, lips drawn into a frown. Lhaurel shrugged and then let out a sharp whistle. It took her a moment to realize that she’d done it out of habit. For a moment, memory and despair threatened to break free, then one of the aevians up on a wall near her leapt free and fluttered to the ground near her.

Lhaurel blinked away the dust that flew up and into her eyes.

“Well, I guess that makes sense,” Khari said.

Lhaurel wasn’t paying attention. She walked up to the aevian, hand raised before her as if to stroke the creature. The hand shook slightly. For just an instant, Lhaurel thought that Fahkiri had somehow survived and stood before her. Then what her eyes were actually seeing caught up with her mind.

This wasn’t Fahkiri, though they were similar in appearance. Fahkiri’s coloring over his back and down the bands on his wings had been a deep, dark black. This aevian, though similar in size, was a lighter color, more brown than black, and the black orbs of his eyes held a small speck of gold around the edges. Still, the resemblance was remarkable.

“This is one of Fahkiri’s half siblings,” Khari said, a trace of amusement in her voice. “Gwyanth is the mother, but there’s a different father.”