Wrong Alien (TerraMates Book 6) (34 page)

Before they could get there, the Shaddoc was lowering his
head and running at them full tilt, sword held aloft, sharp and ready to sever
their heads from their bodies if he caught them.

A grating sound that was probably a laugh spilled from the
thing's lips. "
Ackt te shighk'cftai,
" he said, lips pulled
back in a terrifying grin.

Mia had no idea what he was trying to say to them, and she
honestly didn't care much, considering it was probably some threat or taunt
about how he was about to kill them. She had to wonder if he knew who she was,
though it was doubtful that this Shaddoc was one of the same who had been
taking her for most of her life.

"Long live the king," Asher translated, and the
Shaddoc was on them, bearing down with its horrible breath and face, sword
raised to cut.

Asher lifted his arm in an attempt to fend off the thing,
and Mia shut her eyes, not wanting to see him get run through.

Another cry split the air, and Mia didn't open her eyes to
see how many of the Shaddoc's fellows had come to join the fray. She didn't
want to see it, and really if she could just black out before they killed her
in whatever brutal and terrible way they had planned, she would be plenty happy
with that.

Asher's sudden sharp gasp and the sound of metal cleaving
through flesh made her wince, and tears welled in her eyes. She should have
stayed on Earth, she should never have thought that things would be better if
she ran away. Things were never made better by running, she-

"Mia," Asher breathed. "Mia, it's okay. You
can look."

...Was she dead already? That had been fast. And painless.

Asher made an impatient noise and shook her shoulder. "
Look
."

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in front of
someone who looked very familiar. At Asher's feet were the remains of the
Shaddoc, head separated from his body while he bled out sluggishly onto the
ground.

"Abon?" she breathed, and he looked so much like
he had when she'd known him as a child. Tall and friendly, with an open face
and red hair. At his side, clutched in his hand was a silver sword, bloodied
and dripping into the dirt.

Well. That explained a lot.

Chapter 12: Home

It was sort of overwhelming to go from being sure you were
going to die to being saved by your uncle who you hadn't seen in years, and
Asher wasn't really processing it well. Mostly he was gaping with his mouth
open, looking from the body of the dead Shaddoc at his feet to Abon who was
standing there gripping a sword.

Where had he even gotten a sword from?

"It's good to see you," Abon said, and his warm
gaze went from Asher to Mia and then back again, seemingly waiting for one of
them to say something.

Mia seemed to have recovered before him because she was
stepping forward, but Asher was rooted in place. Just minutes ago, he had been
faced with the realization that he was probably going to die and that Mia was
going to die and it was all his fault for bringing her here. He hadn't known
how to fight back or anything, and he'd just
stood
there, terrified.

And people expected him to be king? To stand for all the
people when he couldn't even keep himself or the woman he was interested in
safe from a single Shaddoc raider?

When he looked up, it was to see that Abon was folding Mia
into a hug. She looked stunned for a moment, but then she seemed to melt into
it, and that shook Asher from his daze. "Have you been here this whole
time?" he demanded, striding forward and stepping over the corpse laid at
his feet. "Is this where you've been hiding?"

"Asher," Abon said, letting Mia go and moving
closer to him. "I haven't been hiding." 

"No? Because that's what it seems like. You
left
me!
You left and you came home without me." To his astonishment, his eyes were
wet. Asher had cried to find himself alone when it'd first happened, but he'd
thought that he'd done a good job of getting over it other than that. He had
moved on and done what was asked of him, but standing here right now and facing
his Uncle, he found that he could barely speak without trembling.

"I came back to see if I was right," Abon replied.
"And I was. Look around you, Asher, and tell me what you see."

He frowned and glanced at the landscape around them. Even
with things growing now, it was nothing like it had once been. It was still a
beaten down corpse of the place where he had lived and played, and it hurt his
heart to see it. "A ruin," Asher replied. Because that's all there
was.

Abon shook his head. "That's not what you see, Asher.
You see growth. You see promise. Building has been in the blood of the Nalyi
since before you or I came to be.
Re
building won't be a challenge for
our kind." He sounded so cheerful. so pleased with himself, and Asher didn't
know how to take that. Clearly there were still things that Abon knew and
hadn't told him, and Asher was all at once fed up with the secrets.

"What is happening?" he demanded. "You owe me
an explanation. You can't just. Just leave and leave behind little notes and
messages and expect that to be enough. You can't just tell me that I'm supposed
to be king because your time is over or whatever and then expect me to just
take up the crown. And in case you haven't noticed, there's not much here for
me to be king
of.
"

He started to ask where all the people were, but let the
question die in his mouth. He didn't want to hear it if they were dead or
captured or worse.

Abon seemed to be studying him, a surprised look on his
face. For several seconds that seemed longer than they could actually be, no
one said anything. Then Abon smiled at him. "You have grown up quite well,
Asher," he said. "And you do deserve explanations, so let me begin
with this. If I were still king of this place, then all the growth that has
happened since you stepped foot onto the soil would have already taken place.
Quantari would have woken itself up for me, but it didn't. Until you got here,
everything was dead and brown."

"What… I don't understand."

"There is an old Nalyi legend that goes like this. Many
hundreds of years ago, the Nayli were a warrior people. They fought tooth and
nail for their freedom and their survival against any other clan that might
come against them. They defended themselves with whatever they had, and in the end,
there was no one left to oppose them. They had created a land where they were
safe and could finally put down their arms and come to learn other things. They
learned art and craft. They stopped making weapons and started making beautiful
things. In time, they forgot they had ever been warriors. Of course, it's
impossible to ever defeat all of your enemies because new ones are always eager
to rise in place of the old ones, and this is what happened to the Nalyi.

"The Shaddoc came, eager to prove that they could be
the ones to finally defeat the Nalyi. By this point, no one who remembered
their warrior ways was left, and the Nalyi were defenseless. Calta, the king at
the time, and the one said to be responsible for the creation of Nalyi tunnels,
urged his people to go and hide themselves while he confronted their attackers.
What he didn't know what that his younger brother and heir to the throne
followed him, unwilling to abandon him. Calta was killed, and his brother fled,
seeking aid from nearby clans. He found it, and when he came back, he found
things in a sort of...suspended state. The people in the tunnels were sleeping
as if dead, and nothing he could do would wake them. The land had been ravaged
and burned, and he mourned the loss of his people, even while their allies
drove the Shaddoc out. ‘I am king of an empty land,' he cried to the heavens,
and miraculously things began to grow again, the people woke from their sleep,
and the Nayli prospered once more."

Asher stared at his uncle when he finished speaking.
"So...when there's no king…" he whispered, piecing things together in
his head.

"When there's no king, the Nayli and the land fall to
slumber. No one can say for sure why this happens. Maybe it was granted by some
benevolent powers that be. But in the legend, that's what happens. And it was
what I was banking on when I left the people and took you with me."

"But Mother stayed," Asher argued. "Shouldn't
she have been enough?"

Abon shook his head. "No. She was never king. Your
mother was perhaps the best queen the Nalyi have ever had, but she wasn't the
king. I was the king and now you are. That's why the land is responding to
you." He gestured to the path of lush greenery that had sprung up along
the way to the palace. "It welcomes you home."

For a moment, Asher was overwhelmed. He needed to sit down
or something before he fell over and wasn't any good to anyone. A soft hand
slipping into his made him blink and look up, and there was Mia, at his side
with a small smile on her face.

"Come on, your Majesty," she teased him.
"Let's go wake up your people."

It hit him all at once that if the legend was true, and from
what he could see around him, it seemed to be, then maybe...maybe all wasn't
lost. His mother would be down in the tunnels somewhere with the rest of the
people. And he could bring them all back.

Abon raised his eyebrows and looked at him. "Are you
ready?"

"Yes," Asher said. Mia squeezed his hand, and the
three of them set off for the last bit of the trek to the palace.

When they got there, Asher could see that it wasn't in as
bad of shape as he'd been expecting. The structure was still there,
multi-colored marble rising up from the ground in majestic sweeps and
platforms. Most of the walls were damaged, and one whole side was taken out. He
could remember the sound of the blasts that had shaken the ground and destroyed
the wall, and he could only hope that it would be rebuilt soon.

None of them talked as they walked through, footsteps
echoing in the quiet. Abon was on alert, sword held in his hand in case any
more Shaddoc were lurking within. So far, it seemed like they were alone.

Mia's hand was still in his, and she was looking around her
with open wonder on her face, the fingers of her other hand reaching out to
brush against the walls and the carved wood of the window sills.

There was a chunk of broken stone in the middle of the path,
and though Abon and Asher skirted it easily, Mia wasn't paying attention enough
to do the same. Her foot caught and she stumbled forward, but before she could
fall, Asher had pulled her back so she was pressed right against him.

He wondered if she could feel how fast his heart was
beating, both at what was happening and the proximity between them.

"Thanks," she murmured, and even her soft voice
seemed loud in the otherwise still air of the palace.

"No problem," he replied, smoothing hair out of
her face.

"I assume you two have talked, then," Abon said,
and when Asher glanced up at him, he was smirking.

Asher huffed. "Maybe. It's none of your business. And
that's another thing, by the way. You can't just shove two people together and
expect them to want to be together."

Abon hummed and smiled. "Seemed to work out well enough
for the two of you."

Neither of them said anything to that, but Mia's cheeks were
flushed as they made their way through the palace. The ground started to slope
downwards, and Asher's heart pounded in his chest. He'd never been in the
tunnels, but he knew how to get there, he knew where they were. The heavy
silver door was open, and he could only imagine that Abon had been in there
before he'd come to get them.

The air inside was stale and damp, despite the small holes
dug in to let in light and fresh air. It had been years, though, so Asher
understood.

As far as he could see, there were people. The bodies of the
Nayli spread out through the tunnels, and it was almost as if they were dead.
If it weren't for the gentle rise and fall of their chests, he would have
assumed that they were corpses in some suspended animation.

Here was the man who had brought him sweet dumplings to eat
sometimes. There was the little girl he had played with when their mothers
would stand in the square and talk. All of them looked the same as they had
that day when he'd been forced to flee.

"Asher," Mia whispered, tugging on his hand.
"Look."

She pointed, and Asher's eyes followed her finger to the
form of a woman with brilliant red hair, leaned against one of the walls of the
tunnel. "Mother," he whispered. He wanted to run to her, but there
was some part of him that was still convinced that this couldn't be real. That
he was dreaming, or maybe the Shaddoc had actually killed him and this was
where the dead went or something.

"She's alive," Abon said, voice just as soft as
Mia's had been, and Asher's heart leapt. "All you have to do is wake her
up."

"H-how do I do that?" Asher breathed, and it
seemed right to keep his voice down, almost afraid to break the silence in case
it shattered this moment.

It was Mia who spoke up then, to Asher's surprise. "In
the story, the new king had to declare himself king, didn't he?" she said.
"He said that he was king of an empty land, and that's when everyone woke
up. Because he accepted that he was king."

Abon's voice was warm with pleasure and approval as he
agreed. "That's right. As of right now, the Nalyi have no king. I've
stepped down and you have yet to step up. But when you do," He gestured
around them. "Your people will wake for you. They'll wake up for their
king."

For long seconds there was nothing. No sound, no movement.
Asher barely seemed to be breathing, and he stayed where he was, gripped by
nerves and indecision. He didn't know if he was ready to be a king, but he
supposed that when it came down to it, he didn't have a choice. There was no
way he could just leave the people sleeping while he tried to figure out if he
could be the king that they needed. That was beyond selfish.