The Exalting

by Dan Allen

He gave a wry grin and then stood. “I know.”

  “What’s happening now?” Dana said as he turned to leave. “Why is everyone going to the city?”

  “It’s time for work. Are you going to join us?”

  Dana slurped the dregs of the porridge and hurried after him.

  The curiosity she had felt about the strangely genial welcome returned. There was something missing in the equation. Perhaps the kazen were trying to take her off her guard.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  “Most of our days are spent in training or in service,” Ryke explained. “Today is a service day.”

  “So . . . all the kazen are coming?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Dana felt a touch of relief. Since all the kazen were coming, it meant none of them were scheming in secret back at the sanctum or off looking for the stone.

  She would have to be on the watch for that sort of thing, at least until she felt like she understood why they had simply forgiven her for taking their stone and not bringing it back.

  Granted, they knew it was nearby, but not where.

  In any case, service was the perfect opportunity to build rapport with the people of Shoul Falls, if she was to convince them that she was their next ka. There wasn’t much time to impress them before Vetas-ka’s fleet arrived.

  Dana kept beside Ryke and Kaia as acolytes and kazen descended in small groups, each taking different paths to the city, part of the effort to keep the entrances to the sanctum secret.

  “The whole mountain above the city is sacred,” Kaia explained. “And generally off limits to anyone who doesn’t want to dedicate their life to community service.” She bobbed easily beside Dana on a steep path that cut diagonally away from the city. The way became more apparent as it switched back and joined a wagon road that passed through several fenced tree stands. These were farms that raised the chubby northern marmar monkeys that had three to five offspring twice a year. In the same pens were dozens of howler fowls that announced the arrival of any passing traveler with ear-splitting shrieks.

  “So basically,” Dana said, “the promise of a life of community service is the price of having a chance at being made ka.”

  “An outsider like you would see it that way,” Kaia said.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t know about it before you came,” Ryke said with a grin. His dark skin contrasted her light hair, with Kaia between them taking the middle tones.

  “Here’s the strange thing,” Dana said, her voice dropping low. “I get back without the bloodstone, and I’m welcomed with open arms—just like that. No questions, nothing.”

  Kaia didn’t answer right away as she usually did, and Ryke didn’t seem to mind the silence. Perhaps they didn’t know any more than her about what was really going on.

  Finally, as they approached the outer gates of the siege wall that Dana had last leapt over on a greeder as she fled with the bloodstone, Kaia spoke in a quiet voice. “You didn’t ask Sindaren any questions when he showed up. You simply believed him. Why?”

  “I knew he was honest.”

  “How?” Kaia said, seeming to already know the answer.

  Dana shrugged. “I just . . . I felt it.”

  “We’ve all felt you, Dana. When you touched the bloodstone, you got one twenty-thousandth of each of us, but we all got a heavy dose of you. We felt things.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’re a fighter,” Ryke said.

  “You’re stubborn,” Kaia said. “You don’t give up. Impetuous. Loyal to a friend.”

  Again, Dana thought of Forz, and drew a shaky breath as she pushed that thought to arm’s length to keep her composure.

  “Aren’t you curious about what I did with the bloodstone?” Dana asked.

  Ryke tilted his head to one side. “Only if it makes a great story. But if not, you had better come up with one quick.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s market day. School is out.”

  The city gates burst open, and three dozen children came running.

  “Ryke!”

  “Kaia!”

  To her horror an equal number called out her name.

  “Dana of Norr!”

  “Look at her hair.”

  “She touched the bloodstone—that’s what did it!”

  Children from age three to thirteen condensed on her like dewdrops on the spines of a leather cactus. Ryke and Kaia got equally mobbed.

  “Are all Norrians so messy?” asked one of the children.

  “Not all,” Dana said. “I’ve been traveling.”

  “Tell us! Tell us!”

  Hands pulled at her fingers and yanked on her clothes as she passed through the siege wall gate and into the city proper, feeling as if she were a howler fowl being shepherded to market by twenty underaged handlers.

  Dana was led to a corner of the square, set upon a hay bale, and surrounded by children seated and standing, leaning and crowding. She looked around hoping for some sign of Korren or any of the other kazen. A few passed in and out of view as they moved through the market, apparently on important war preparation tasks. None came close enough to listen to her plea for clemency.

  “Tell us everything!” cried a young girl.

  “Yes, tell us!”

  “Oh,” Dana began, “it’s much too frightening.”

  “We aren’t afraid, Dana of Norr,” said a young boy. “We love adventures.”

  Maybe I am home after all.

  “Well this story is very sad. I would have to tell you that Sindaren was killed and my best friend broke his leg and became a cripple—is that a story you want to hear?”

  Because I don’t want to tell it.

  “Are there any good parts?” asked a young girl in a dress standing in the front. She was only a little higher than Dana’s knee. The girl wrapped her tiny fingers around Dana’s forefinger and pulled, as if trying to milk her of the details.

  Dana’s sifa fanned as she thought of a few moments she would love to re-live. Moments in the cave, with Ryke. “A few.”

  “Then tell us those.”

  Dana breathed in and then said, “Have any of you ever traveled by river barge?”

  The children all shook their heads.

  “Or shall I tell you about a kiss?”

  “No kissing!” shouted a bevy of boys. “Barge! Barge! Barge!”

  If only to be contrary, an equal number of girls cried out, “Kisses! Kisses! Kisses!”

  “Both then,” Dana said. “For I once kissed two bargemen in one day and nearly died—shall we begin with that story?”

  Children dropped to the ground like sacks of milled grain and stared at her.

  Dana began her tale with her escape from Norr, not even avoiding the fact that she stole the greeder. Why hide it from them?

  She wasn’t perfect. She shouldn’t pretend to be. The children laughed at her imitations of Turigan and Jila.

  “But if I catch any of you stealing—” Dana pointed her finger. “You won’t like it. There are plenty of marmar pens to be cleaned.”

  “Gross!”

  “Orchards to be dunged.”

  “Gross!”

  “Rotten vegetables to be composted.”

  “Gross!” All the children were now shouting in unison.

  “And centipedes to be eaten.”

  “GROSS!”

  “One for every lie. And a worm for every insult.”

  “Ew!” A girl shuddered.

  Dana winced as a twinge of pain shot down her leg. She looked up to see a man passing by on a greeder.

  “Hey!” Dana stood and waved to the man. “Your greeder has a pinched nerve in its left leg. That’s why it’s limping.”

  The man dismounted immediately and looked at the side of his greeder. He began to loosen the saddle.

  “It’s spinal degeneration, I’m afraid,” Dana said. “She’s not fit for riding anymore. But she might do light draft work.”

  “You’re
sure?” the man said.

  Thirty heads turned from him to Dana.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was just getting lazy—or maybe arthritis.”

  Dana nodded. “She does care for you. Otherwise she would have thrown you off.”

  The children laughed at that.

  “I’ll not ride her anymore,” the man said, stroking his beloved greeder’s feathers. He drew the reins and put his face close to the greeder’s. “Why didn’t you say so, you proud bird?”

  The greeder squawked in answer, sending the children into another fit of laughter.

  From the back of the group a girl stepped forward. She carried a green-streaked forest cat in her arms. “Something’s wrong with it, Dana.”

  “Not really. It’s pregnant. Give it lots of time alone and make sure it has a warm place and plenty of food.”

  The girl beamed. “Kittens!”

  In minutes a large queue had formed at Dana’s spontaneous veterinary booth. After all, her services were free.

  A man offered her a small sack of food for compensation, which Dana took willingly, not worrying about whether it was allowed and devouring it before any of the other acolytes could arrive to tell her it was forbidden to take payment.

  A bearded man with a potbelly held out a mangy marmar.

  Dana twitched as something seemed to nip at her. “Mites. Bathe it in alkali and rinse with vinegar—and clean its enclosure more often.”

  The man’s belly shook with laughter. “Mercy—she’s like a fortune teller. Never got information like that out of old Ritsen.”

  “What happened to your hair?” a girl asked.

  “Maybe I fell in love,” Dana said, trying to avoid getting into another story.

  “With Ryke!” the girl gasped. Her hand was on Dana’s arm.

  “Next, please!” Dana called, pulling her arm free of the young enchanter who had sensed who she was thinking about with merely a touch.

  “You’re in love with Ryke, and it’s not even allowed!”

  Dana knelt down and whispered in the girl’s ear. “How would you like to wake up tomorrow in a bed full of spinning scorpions?”

  The freckle-faced girl’s face blanched and her sifa shot straight out.

  “Then let’s keep other people’s thoughts secret unless they give permission.”

  The girl nodded.

  Dana reached down, and a tiny scorpion crawled out of the hay and onto her hand.

  The girl bolted.

  That was close. She had nearly let it bite the girl. I’m losing will.

  “I’ve got a problem with termites. Any ideas?”

  “Make a house out of stone.” Dana smiled as kindly as her tired cheeks would allow, thinking to herself that she shouldn’t have said it aloud.

  Then she laughed at her own joke.

  Wasn’t supposed to do that either.

  Dana knew the symptoms. Her behavior was only going to get worse the more she extended herself into animals to diagnose their problems.

  In a moment of desperation, she shielded her eyes with her hand and looked across the market at nobody in particular. “Is that Kazen Ritser, er—Ritsen, calling for me?” Then she scurried away from the corner where several more people waited for their turn at animal divining.

  “I think she’s well and spent,” mumbled an old lady.

  “Never can tell with those mad Norrians,” said her husband, who earned a smack from his wife’s handbag.

  Away from her spontaneous veterinary clinic, Dana walked the market, past other stalls where vendors hawked goods, past other bales of hay where acolytes sat and mended socks with old ladies or checked calculations in ledgers. A few kazen were seated at negotiating tables acting as arbiters—probably regarding requisitions for battle supplies.

  Dana hoped it would never come to arbitration for her as she carefully picked a path back to the sanctum that avoided other acolytes and kazen.

  The next few days were challenging, if not terrible—filled with the most thankless and dreary work the kazen could imagine. It was like being an unpaid house servant.

  Dana consoled herself that at least she wasn’t skinning game. She would take drudgery over the sick pain of re-living a creature’s last moments when she touched it. Especially if it meant a chance to be chosen as ka.

  Because if they didn’t choose soon, she would have to take matters into her own hands.

  With his kazen repeatedly failing to get the stone, Vetas-ka himself was coming for it.

  And what will these people do when he comes? The city had made some progress in shoring up defenses and recruiting more young men into the garrison for training. But what was any of that worth, against a ka? A supreme?

  Dana thought of the mechanodron she had left with its motor roots in the sayathi pool.

  There was no more time to waste.

  Shoul Falls needed a ka. Now.

  Chapter 28

  “Hey, Jet.”

  Jet opened his eyes, wincing at the low-gravity sinus headache. Engines are idle. The ASP dropship must be in view. The dim lights in Shuttle 23’s control panel blinked softly.

  Jet sat up in the copilot seat. “Sorry. Must have dozed off.”

  In the seat beside him, Monique pointed at the countdown clock on the shuttle’s navigation display. “You have less than twenty-four hours. What’s the plan?”

  “Step 1: Space jump to North Aesica. Step 2: Make powerful friends.”

  “So . . . crash into a farmer’s barn, emerge in a cloud of smoke, and be like, ‘take me to your leader.’”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Seriously—what are you going to do?”

  “He’s going to find that renegade that took the bloodstone from Shoul Falls.” Angel’s voice sounded from a speaker on the console that Jet’s tactical suit was plugged into for charging.

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, it’s obvious from the amount of time you stare at pictures of her.”

  “Alien fetish?” Monique snickered.

  “It’s just,” Jet paused, “something the High Seer said. She saw a girl who would help us.”

  “And you believe it?”

  Jet only took a moment to consider. “Yeah.”

  She turned to face him. “Really? What’s gotten into you? Are you turning into an honest-to-Creator do-gooder Believer?”

  Jet locked his hands behind his head. “Maybe.”

  Monique gave him a quarter of a smile. “This is new.”

  “I think I understand what I’m supposed to do,” Jet said.

  “And this started when?”

  Jet considered the question.

  Angel piped up. “The night you told him about your date with Ahreth.”

  “Thank you, Angel.”

  “You’re welcome. Anyway you weren’t sure, and you weren’t going to tell her.”

  It was true. Both parts.

  Monique leaned closer. “You’re talking about failure—losing the battle?”

  Jet brought his hands in front and cracked his knuckles. “The High Seer saw our ships falling from the Xahnan sky in droves.”

  Monique covered her mouth in shock.

  “We are going to fail,” Jet said. “In fact, I’ve been planning it.”

  Monique’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Jet, what are you talking about?”

  This was the first time he had told anyone on the mission about his plans, except Decker, who had demanded to know why his energy budget was off. Jet had been forced to admit that Angel was running a massive fleet-level simulation.

  “Angel, what’s the status on Speaker for the Dead?”

  “I sent the results on a tightbeam to the Excalibur a few hours ago.”

  The fleet was half a light-day away. “So we could get a reply from Fleet Command before we hit the atmosphere,” Jet said. “I hope they like it.”

  “Hope they like what?” Monique’s sable eyes searched his.

  Jet swallowed. “The
greatest charade in the history of interplanetary warfare. Sort of a reverse ambush.”

  Monique pushed herself down into the pilot’s chair. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  “I thought you couldn’t stand not knowing.”

  “It’s true,” Monique said, her lips barely parted this time in a genuine half smile. “But sometimes it is better not to know—it’s like bitter medicine.” Her eyes locked on him. “You’d better not be hiding anything else.”

  Jet’s breath halted in his chest. “Only that I’m in love with you.”

  “Wow,” Angel cooed. “For once, I didn’t have to say it.”

  Monique leaned across Jet and pushed the kill switch on Angel’s charging console. Doing so left her leaning right in front of Jet. “You were saying?”

  Jet found himself completely speechless. Then the two of them burst out laughing.

  * * *

  Exhausted, with scarcely any will left to burn, Dana slipped into the greeder’s stall. The eight-foot bird outweighed her three times over.

  “Down.”

  The bird dropped to the floor, and Dana lifted its foot. She took a knife, and then putting the bird in a trance of bliss with thoughts of feed and rest, she cut directly into the pad of its center toe, lancing a lesion.

  She drained the wound, then poured alcohol onto it.

  The bird gave a cry of protest.

  “Quiet, you big baby. You’re embarrasing yourself.”

  It was true. There were females in the rangers’ stables. The greeder quit squawking, and Dana tied a bandage around its gargantuan foot-sized toe.

  “Stay off of that until tomorrow.” Dana stepped out of the enclosure.

  She had seen or treated nearly every greeder in Shoul Falls. They had all been requisitioned by the core of rangers. And every active and former ranger had been called up for duty.

  The rangers would be the first to fall to Vetas-ka in their own provincial forests, when the demon arrived in Aesica to fight for the most powerful bloodstone on the planet.

  Preparing so many animals for war was an experience she never had dreamt of, an opportunity she never would’ve had without being an acolyte and dedicating herself to a life of service.

  Her eyes turned to the corner of the stables where two rangers watched.

  They kept their distance.

  Are they afraid of me?