by Dan Allen
It seemed the head citizen knew the vote was foregone conclusion.
Dana’s spent will left her apathetic to the eventuality of the outcome.
This is what they want.
They don’t want to risk losing their will to Vetas-ka.
But it wasn’t just her depleted will balking at the challenge. Dana had experienced things in the past weeks. Most remarkable of all had been the revelation bought on by the blazing pain of the viper’s embrace. The pain Dana had experienced put suffering in a totally different light.
All her life Dana had tried to avoid suffering of any kind. Her illegal attempts to save animals from traps hadn’t wholly been out of a desire to help the animals, but to relieve the pain she felt.
Dana was having second thoughts about stealing the stone.
She drew a shaky breath. And third thoughts. And fourth.
A greeder bearing a ranger strode toward the back of the platform in the square, the long-legged mount sifting through the crowd as if wading through tall grass. As the mounted greeder approached, the speaker stopped speaking and walked to the edge of the platform to lean down and talk with the ranger.
Dana guessed this might be some word of warning about her arrival in the city. She probed the area and was surprised to feel several other greeders in the square. They had come in at the periphery.
She was surrounded.
Dana’s throat tightened.
They had cut off her every route of escape. Perhaps the rangers, whose jurisdiction was outside the walls, had been called in to provide extra security.
Thankfully, the attention of the crowd was focused on the platform, and no one appeared to be looking back to see what escapee acolytes might have just joined the throng.
A glint of metal shone in the hand of the ranger on the greeder. The scene seemed to freeze in Dana’s mind.
A knife!
The ranger on the greeder grabbed the citizen on the platform by her coat, pulled her off-balance, and drove the blade into the councilwoman, who shrieked in pain.
All at once rangers shoved forward through the crowd from all sides, some on greeders, some on foot. One ranger pushed past Dana, headed for the platform.
Korren’s eyes widened in surprise, while the ranger with the knife leapt off the greeder’s back and onto the platform. The previously bright blade was now dark and dripping.
The murdered councilwoman, the head of the council, tumbled off the platform, and the others of the citizen council drew back toward the edges.
The ranger was a woman with silvery hair pulled back into a tight braid, possibly some kind of desperate extremist bent on saving the bloodstone. She darted across the platform.
Korren reached his arm out, and the door to the glass case flew open.
Before the bloodstone had even moved, the woman clenched Korren’s arm. His eyes defocused. His hands fell placidly by his sides.
“Enchanter,” Dana gasped. The woman had Korren in some kind of trance.
Dana looked to the ranger who had shouldered past her on his way to the platform. She didn’t know him, but she did recognize the fancy scrollwork on the handle of his crossbow. It was just like the ones used by the group that had attacked her and Ryke.
What is going on?
Around the plaza rangers raised their crossbows, and a hail of bolts converged on the platform.
The remaining citizens on the platform fell in the storm of metal bolts—all except the woman.
They were helping her.
Torsicans! The Vetas-kazen are trying to steal the stone.
Meanwhile the kazen and acolytes of Shoul Falls were helpless thanks to the angel’s kiss.
Dana and Korren were the only ones who could stop them.
Dana called on the hawk to dive. Get the stone!
It refused. Instead it turned its head, scanning the crowd before locking its gaze on her. Somebody else was controlling it.
There’s another druid kazen here.
In a rush, the gathered crowd fled, knocking Dana aside.
Perhaps the kazen enchanter was urging the people to flee instead of fight.
She was probably the one the thugs outside Jahr had called Poria.
Fighting the enchanter’s influence, a raging citizen climbed to the platform with a rock in his hand.
But before he could assail the silver-haired woman, a crossbow bolt sank into his chest.
He staggered back.
In the moment’s distraction, Korren knocked the woman’s hand off his arm, raised his hand, and clenched his fingers into a fist. “Enough!”
Without so much as a cry, the woman collapsed to the ground.
To drop someone that fast, Korren had probably used his powers to disrupt the blood flow to her brain, like a powerful choke hold or a knockout punch.
Dana could hardly believe what she was seeing. Korren had actually defended the stone from the Vetas-kazen.
Does he want it for himself?
It was the only answer she could believe. But even though he was closest to the stone, Korren couldn’t fight off so many rangers, most of whom were halfway done reloading their crossbows.
Dana had to get the stone out of the city—and quickly.
But how can I stop Korren and the Vetas-kazen?
A grin slipped onto Dana’s lips. Turn them on each other.
I’ve got to find the druid. With a desperate thrust of will that left her feeling like a long nap was in order, Dana managed to turn the hawk’s head and spot the druid controlling it.
“There.”
Across the courtyard stood a ranger with no crossbow. His coat was open, showing shiny brass waistcoat buttons no ranger would wear.
Dana pointed at the man and shouted, “Korren, get that kazen!”
Korren whirled and reached out with his hand, attempting to stretch his warlock influence across the large distance.
From the hawk’s view Dana watched the man fall to his knees. He wasn’t affected as violently as the closer enchanter, but the moment’s lapse was all Dana needed.
Dana forced the hawk to swoop.
Korren reached his arm out for the stone. It flung toward him, only to be snatched in midair by the bird-hunting hawk.
In two blinks of an eye the bird was outside Korren’s telekinetic range.
His influence for controlling matter directly decreased far more rapidly than her connection to the living creature’s mind. He had to overcome its muscles. She merely had to alter a thought.
As the hawk took to the sky, flying north, away from the Torsican druid, Dana leapt aboard the greeder that had brought the silver-haired enchanter.
“Go!”
The animal bounded easily through the crowd, and unlike the young bird she had ridden out of Norr, this full-grown greeder—at least eight feet at the head—easily leapt the outer wall. Then it tucked its wings and dashed into the cover of the forest.
From the view of the hawk overhead, Dana scanned the forest for other rangers. There were at least six, as well as other hawks patrolling the skies.
“First things first.”
The hawk dove, picking a rapid descent that met Dana’s trajectory in an open clearing. The hawk pulled up and released the stone in an easy arc. Dana caught the precious crystal and tucked it in to her jacket pocket.
The hawk rose to do battle with the others.
Then the idea hit her.
Stop.
Turn back.
Dana pulled on the greeder’s reins.
It clambered to a halt on a lichen-crusted section of bare granite.
Dana fought, trying to resist the strange, disruptive thoughts she could hardly distinguish from her own.
An enchanter had her. It was over.
All for nothing?
Yes, better turn back. Peace is the only way.
It all came down to this. Dana had nothing to fight with.
No. I have the stone. I have their will.
The people of Shou
l Falls did not want Vetas-ka to get the stone. Of that Dana was certain.
Was it a sin to touch the stone if it was the people’s will?
No. They need my help. And I need theirs.
In desperation, Dana reached into her pocket and gripped the bloodstone as hard as she could. It stung the fresh wound on her palm from sliding on the cord.
“Please. Please. Help me.”
The enchanter’s voice in her mind demanding she go back faded as a thousand other voices rose, some panicked, some praying, some pleading.
As Dana held firmly to the stone, her hand and wrist lit with a brilliant blue-green glow. The sayathi within her recognized the master crystal.
With renewed force of will, the greeder accelerated. High above, her hawk locked its talons with a pursuing raptor.
For a moment Dana could distinguish individual voices. They came in turn, rising from the mass of chaotic feelings to brush against her.
“Keep it safe.”
“Help me. I’m dying.”
“Don’t let them get the bloodstone.”
Dana channeled her own thoughts into the stone with one last push of will. “Fight them!” Then she collapsed forward, hugging the neck of the greeder as it nimbly picked a path through the forest, heading north, toward Norr.
It was now a game of hide-and-seek. She had the stone. The Vetas-kazen would follow her anywhere.
Dana looked up to the peaks of the barrier range. The tips were already locked in frost.
I’ll take them to a place they’ll wish they were dead and see how long their will to survive lasts.
The question was, how long would she last? Dana had neither winter clothing nor provisions. Soon her body would ache with chill. Dehydration would steal her strength.
But Dana was no longer afraid of pain.
Take me higher!
Dana’s greeder surged forward, bounding through the rockfall, headed for the nearest pass.
Chapter 23
Jet looked over Monique’s shoulder as she sat reclined at the comms station, watching the live feed from the satellite passing over Shoul Falls. The magnified image appeared to show a young Xahnan female riding one of their ostrich-like greeders.
Decker leaned over from the pilot’s chair. “What was it she took from the platform?”
“It could only be a bloodstone—the thing that gives the ka their power,” Monique said. “Nothing else would draw so much attention.”
“So, this renegade thinks she can hold the entire city hostage?” Jet narrowed his eyes. Even with the pixelated image from space, she had a striking figure. She looked tall and toned, and somehow savage, close to nature. “Where is she from?”
“I think you know already,” said Yaris. His narrow face gazed placidly at the wide-field composite image of Aesica.
Caprians: either elusive or blunt, Jet thought. Never anywhere in the middle.
“I’d say Norrian. They’re the ones without a ka,” Teea chimed. “Only she doesn’t look it—dark hair.”
“She did flee north,” Jet said. “The AIs will have noticed that. They’ll look for her in Norr.”
Dormit let out a low whistle. “Whoever she is, she’s got trouble on the way.”
Dormit pushed his image onto the main screen. It showed a harbor packed with steamships and its docks laden with boxes and barrels.
“Where is that?” Jet asked.
“Torsica—the shipyards of Tenek. It looks like a full naval mobilization.”
“Let me guess,” Jet said. “ASP convinced this big bad ka on Torsica to consolidate his power on Xahna before the Believers arrived.”
“I agree. It looks like a devil’s bargain.” Monique leaned closer, her distracting figure passing between him and Dormit’s screen. “He supports ASP; they let him rule Xahna. I estimate Vetas-ka has three thousand kazen. He’ll crush them—a massacre.”
“How will the Pantheon of Aesica respond?” Yaris wondered.
“They won’t know for weeks,” Dormit said. “Unless they’ve got some way to communicate across the coral sea.”
Jet turned up his hands. “Well that makes my decision easy. Drop zone is North Aesica. Tiberius, can we get there before Vetas-ka’s fleet arrives?”
“I’ll run the numbers.”
Dormit stroked his beard. “That means it’s going to be close.”
* * *
Dana lay in a crevice under a rock on the backside of the barrier divide at an altitude so high she had to squeeze the breath in her lungs periodically to keep from getting nauseated. The exhausted greeder slept nearby. It was anyone’s guess when it would wake.
I don’t have time to wait.
Dana traced her finger over the scabs on her palm where the skin had torn sliding on the cord. So that’s how they got in.
The ruling sayathi had accessed her bloodstream through the cuts on her hand, giving her a limited connection to the crystal.
No wonder it’s called a bloodstone. Early adepts probably had to cut themselves to use it.
So, there was truth to the Norrian warning against touching a bloodstone.
For a short time, Dana had made a small connection to bloodstone, sensing the vast untapped will to draw from, the chaos of thousands of voices, the fears, the pain.
Dana could still almost taste the hope, the expanse of will, the raw emotion. She could not stop wanting it. It was like trying to not want to breathe.
The stone was right there.
Togath was right.
Touching that stone had changed her. She could not go back to merely wondering what it would be like. Curiosity was a mere candlewick to the blaze of actually knowing.
Dana looked at her hands again, trying to imagine a life of denial in which she vowed to never again taste the power. No amount of will seemed to make it feel at all realistic. She would have cut herself again if not for the fear that the people of Shoul Falls would feel her as well and know what she was doing.
Of course, if she were somehow chosen to become the next ka, she would have to find a way to survive the high temperature long enough for the molten bloodstone to seep into her bloodstream and then cool slowly enough that crystallites didn’t form in her blood.
Forz could build something to keep me at the right temperature.
But Forz was in Norr. He had the skills to get her through the exalting alive.
Norr. If she was ever going to have a chance at the exalting, she would have to go back to Norr—and before she was caught.
I can’t wait.
Resolving to finally leave the greeder behind, Dana stepped out from under the boulder, leaving the sleeping greeder that had brought her from Shoul Falls. It would be easy to track. And it wouldn’t travel at night, nor could it endure for long at this altitude.
She began running across the barren basin of a glacial bowl.
Besides, Dana thought, no land animal can outrun a Xahnan over long distance at this altitude.
She fanned her sifa.
Especially not me.
Dana had lived her life in the forests of Norr, only a thousand feet below the tree line. She knew every peak in the barrier range better than the rangers, and she had climbed most of them.
She was on the western side of the divide now and headed north.
With luck, they won’t figure out I crossed over the divide for a few more days. By then I’ll be back below the tree line and out of sight.
She kept her legs moving at full speed, scampering over barren dirt and loose rock.
Vetas-ka was coming. What wasn’t under his control soon would be. His sights were clearly set on Aesica.
Without a ka, Shoul Falls would offer minimal resistance. Then it would serve as a base for expanding his empire. Fear would keep the Aesican Pantheon from challenging him for Shoul Falls. One by one their cities would fall.
The only option was to fight hard enough to make the battle not worth the cost—deny him an access point.
And the people
would fight if they had a ka.
They need a ka.
They need me.
She had the stone. She had the will to fight. She only needed a way to survive the exalting chamber.
And she had to survive a seventy-mile journey at high altitude with minimal food and temperatures dropping dangerously.
I’ve endured worse—far worse.
Dana picked up her pace.
She was glad she had found some theeler root in the greeder’s saddle bag. The dried pieces of dense, chalky tuber would get her through another half day. But the last day above the tree line would be a fast.
For once, I’ll have to do it.
And in order to keep from freezing, Dana would have to keep moving constantly.
Three days without sleep. Was it even possible?
“Just go.”
Dana’s mind melded into the numbness of the distance race. Before nightfall she had drunk from several water-filled depressions in the stone and was already nibbling at the last theeler root.
Dana crested a pass and descended a rockslide, leaping from boulder to boulder as the sun began to set.
Brother and sister moon rose into the stars early. With so little atmosphere above her and the night, the sky was bright and the rocks ahead painted in silvery starlight.
She dug her hands into her fur-lined pockets. The chill was already becoming bitter.
The bloodstone lay in a buttoned pocket that she checked habitually—perhaps too frequently.
Before dawn, her food was gone and Dana felt dead on her feet, as if she could just lie down and expire in the darkness.
She had already covered thirty-five miles of rugged terrain.
Coming to a mountain wash and finding it bone-dry, Dana fell to her knees and cried precious tears. “Ka, help me.”
Cutting herself and using the bloodstone was a growing temptation. But borrowing will would not give her energy. It could only use up what she already possessed more quickly.
Her forehead touched the ground, and when she looked up she nearly couldn’t believe her eyes.