A Respite From Storms

by Robert J. Crane

  A simple flick of Baraghosa’s cane sent them flying. Scourgey pirouetted backward, a tangle of limbs, landing somewhere out of sight—

  Alixa also flew backward, arms and legs flailing like a ragdoll’s. Baraghosa’s blast had hit her more on one side, and she spun through the air like a top—

  A conduction rod stopped her. She fell in a heap at its base and did not move.

  From here, so very far, it looked as though Baraghosa had simply tossed a doll aside.

  Kuura surged in on Baraghosa’s opposite side. He hefted the axe in one hand, bringing it around, all three pronged blades on one side sailing for Baraghosa’s head while it was turned—

  But Baraghosa darted clear, ducking expertly. The axe swung overhead—then Baraghosa slammed his cane into Kuura’s massive chest. Kuura roared, flying up and backward in a lazy arc …

  “Kuura!” Jasen wished to cry … yet still his vocal cords did not work. He sucked in breaths that hurt. They were shallow, so very shallow. Had his ribcage been crushed onto his lungs? Surely they had. That or Baraghosa had pinned him with an invisible boulder, half the size of the mountain he had torn apart over Terreas.

  None of him could move, he realized. He half-lay, half-squatted where he had fallen. Prone, he could do little more than breathe and keep his head up to watch the battle—and even that was difficult. His whole body was agonized. The pain was complete, coming at him from every direction, burning through all his nerve endings at once.

  This was dying. It must be.

  Huanatha pressed in while Kuura clambered to his feet. She had been watching the battle intently, watching Baraghosa, taking stock of his movements, the way he worked his feet, the twist of his body as he contorted so easily to avoid the blows that he had been threatened with. Now, she had the measure of him—or perhaps time was running short, and with Jasen and Alixa out of the fight, and Kuura struggling to stand, she knew that the time to strike was nearly past.

  She drew Tanukke high overhead, then she crouched low and sprang forward, on her toes. She hurtled through the conduction rods, closing the distance between them, itself only fifteen feet perhaps as she had prowled inward while Baraghosa did away with the children.

  Lightning struck at the same moment she did.

  Jasen blinked. The image seemed to be paused, Tanukke raised high but swinging down over Huanatha’s head in a killing blow, and Baraghosa beneath it—

  The afterimage faded though, and Jasen realized: Huanatha had missed. How Baraghosa had done it, he did not know: but now the sorcerer was weaving on feet just as quick as Huanatha’s as she pressed in again, this time bringing Tanukke to bear from the left. The blade swung in a wide arc with a speed unlike any Jasen had ever imagined—

  Baraghosa dodged nimbly.

  Kuura came at him from the back. He lifted the axe—

  A backward twist from Baraghosa, a strike with his cane—Kuura wheezed as if punched as he swung around and backward, like he’d been backhanded across the face. He staggered.

  Huanatha thrust forward with Tanukke.

  Baraghosa parried the thrust with his cane. Blade and walking stick connected. But where the wood should have been cut right through, it held. Baraghosa met the force of Huanatha’s strike for a moment, the two of them frozen in a tableau. Then he swung, up and overhead. Huanatha was forced backward.

  Kuura came in again.

  “I tire of you, old man,” said Baraghosa, voice still somehow audible despite the storm thrashing around them, and the distance between them. He barely spared a glance for Kuura this time, simply striking out with his cane under his arm and behind him.

  Kuura was flung backward as another blast of invisible force slammed his chest. He rolled in the air, spinning exactly once. Then—

  CRASH!

  He collided with a conduction rod at the same moment another bolt of dazzling white lightning came down from the heavens.

  Jasen’s breath caught. The strike—surely it had not hit …?

  But Kuura was rising seconds later. A trick of positioning only; the Lady Vizola’s first mate had not been struck, nor had the conduction rod which had arrested his flight. One behind, then—though perhaps close. Too close.

  Jasen needed to rise. This fight was his. In his blind pursuit, he’d allowed people to be drawn in who should not have been. Kuura, whose head bled from a gash as he readied himself for another, increasingly unsteady approach to Baraghosa; Huanatha, who flung herself at Baraghosa, Tanukke carving through the air yet missing once again as he wove away from her on spry feet; and Alixa, who cowered at the bottom of a conduction rod, alive but moving little more than Jasen.

  Then Scourgey reappeared in his line of vision—Scourgey, who now sprinted again across the battleground that was the conduction field. She cut past a staggering Kuura, past a forest of lightning rods—

  Another strike illuminated her from the rear, a black, leaping thing—

  She flew, forepaws extended, claws out, her teeth bared for his throat—

  Baraghosa slapped the cane at her without even looking. And away she went, careening somewhere in the opposite direction with a howling whine, like a dog that had been kicked in the chest.

  No, Jasen thought. He reached out—

  Pointless. He could not stop her. Could not stop Baraghosa.

  Baraghosa had been able to dispose of him without so much as touching him.

  Kuura came in again, from the rear. He hobbled now but he still moved, still clutched his three-pronged battleaxe. Intense eyes watched as Huanatha and Baraghosa danced, her leading with strikes, him fending them off but granted no time to strike out himself. They pivoted, a series of strikes and quick dodges that cut a jagged line through the conduction rods—

  Huanatha was guiding Baraghosa toward Kuura, though. Jasen saw it now. His hope lifted in his chest as the gap between them shrunk. Fifteen feet … twelve … eight …

  Now six. Kuura clenched his teeth, baring them the way Scourgey had, a grimace as wide as any of his smiles—

  He leapt, when Baraghosa was barely three feet shy of him. Swung—

  At the same moment, Huanatha brought Tanukke around, low—

  Baraghosa just sidestepped. It seemed impossible, that he could avoid two strikes coming from two directions at once … but somehow he did, with unnatural grace.

  Then he thrust out with the cane again.

  Kuura bellowed as he was flung away from the battle once more. Jasen watched him go, spinning high this time. He sailed past a conduction rod, one of the horizontal bars at the top catching his arm and arresting his flight. He seemed to gasp, before falling into a heap maybe another ten feet on from it.

  This time he did not rise.

  Jasen’s stomach twisted. Another one down—another failure.

  Only Huanatha remained.

  The last of their hope resting upon her shoulders, she pressed in with even greater fervor. Her strikes came faster, her whole body was a blur as she wove, swung, withdrew, thrust forward again. Baraghosa blocked and sidestepped, blocked again. Huanatha gave him no time to blast her with his cane, or strike out to claim his own advantage in the fight.

  Jasen watched from a thousand miles distant.

  He had failed in his fight. But Baraghosa could still be bested. Jasen would not be the one to defeat him … but Huanatha could. She could avenge Terreas, avenge Jasen’s father, where he himself had failed.

  So he prayed:

  Ancestors. He closed his eyes. Breathing was hard. Give her strength. Aid in her fight.

  Just thinking, reaching out to them with his mind, cost him more energy than he had. He fell into a darkness where there was only him, his heavy breaths, drawn in like a death rattle, and the feel of the rain hammering down upon him.

  Lightning ripped open the hole he had fallen into.

  He opened eyes with heavy lids.

  Huanatha and Baraghosa still raged in battle. She swung high, Tanukke cutting through the air, glinting pure white as
an explosive bolt from the sky brought full daylight upon them momentarily. Baraghosa met the blade with his cane. He thrust her back—she danced on her feet, adjusting—and then she came back in, low.

  “You took my kingdom!” she roared, a thousand miles away.

  Baraghosa’s arm snapped around. He caught Tanukke with his cane just in time—

  “Usurped my throne!”

  Huanatha pressed. She whirled around, bringing Tanukke over her head again, and down—

  Baraghosa barely caught it.

  Jasen’s heart sped. The fog of pain threatening to overload him ebbed away, a surge of renewed hope flooding through his chest instead.

  The sword and cane held there for a long moment. Huanatha pressed down—and Baraghosa gripped tight, arms shaking as he held the warrior woman back.

  “You will pay for the dissent you sowed among my people,” Huanatha growled.

  Baraghosa said calmly, “I simply showed them the truth.”

  Huanatha gritted her teeth. “You bastard sorcerer.”

  Lightning flashed, casting them in a silhouette.

  Huanatha suddenly thrust forward. Jasen’s heart leapt into his throat—Tanukke would split Baraghosa in half down the center of his face!—but the sorcerer had sidestepped, using the brief flash of light as cover. His cane vanished, Tanukke fell through empty air.

  Huanatha stumbled after it.

  Too late, she recovered, twisting—

  Baraghosa’s cane swung through the air and smacked her hard in the cheek.

  Huanatha cried, a sound that was lost to the thunderous heavens. She staggered, as though the hit had not just been the whack of a rod of polished wood, but the hammer of a god slamming against her cheekbone. Given all his magic powers, it might have been close.

  And now the advantage was Baraghosa’s. Matching Huanatha’s backward floundering, he thrust with his cane. This time he did not connect, but Jasen saw the blasts those thrusts imparted all the same. Huanatha shouted, falling backward again and again. Past the conduction rods—Tanukke fell from her hand as her arm slammed one. She tried to scrabble to her feet—but Baraghosa was there, ready, and another blast pushed her down and away again—

  Closer to the edge.

  No!

  She struggled—

  Baraghosa slammed the end of his cane against the earth. An invisible wave plowed into her, and she was thrown back—she yelled, arms whirling—

  She hit the earth on her feet, just inches from the edge of the cliff.

  The momentum was too much. Ankles planted, her upper body tilted over, over—

  Then it stopped. Hanging suspended over the edge, almost flat, it appeared as though she had slumped against an invisible net, keeping her from tumbling over the precipice.

  Baraghosa stalked to her.

  Jasen’s stomach clenched.

  He was toying with her.

  Lightning struck again.

  A wake of silence followed.

  “Kill me then,” Huanatha growled.

  Baraghosa appraised her. Then:

  “No.”

  And he raised his hand. Huanatha lifted with it—and just as he mimed tossing a ball, so too was she tossed, end over end, back into the middle of the field of conduction rods. She flew, a tangle of limbs and shining blue armor—and crashed headlong into Kuura.

  She did not get up.

  No.

  No, no, no!

  Defeated, all of them.

  And Baraghosa had barely broken a sweat in doing it.

  He smiled faintly, peering around the masses lying in heaps where he had flung them all. Shaking his head very slightly, he tutted.

  Then he reached into his jacket and withdrew a glass flask. Stoppered by a cork on a piece of metal, its chamber was wide at the bottom but thin-necked.

  It was also empty.

  He strode deeper into the field of conduction rods, moving still as if the winds did not touch him, nor the floods of cascading rain.

  He looked skyward.

  His lips moved. This time, the sound did not carry in its unnatural way. But Jasen saw it, saw that he spoke what surely was an incantation, and his stomach filled with dread.

  A blast of lightning like no other rent the sky. It exploded, a cataclysm to rival a quake that ripped an island apart and consigned it to the bottom of the seas. Every conduction rod was licked by those jagged, blinding forks. The noise was terrifying, as if the very world had ended all around them. Jasen screamed out, wishing he could plug his ears, or cut out his eyes to stop from being blinded even though his lids were together, screwed up as tight as he could make them.

  The air hummed with electricity. The conduction rods whined, all that power unloaded into them.

  And then—

  Jasen opened his eyes. For long seconds he was blind, his whole vision replaced with a curtain of pure white.

  Then it peeled away as a hole first opened in it and then widened to reveal Baraghosa, holding his flask high … and pure energy, channels of searing white, streaking out of the conduction rods, through the air, and into the flask he held aloft. The power poured in, filling it … and when the white glow in the air faded and the last of the power had filled the flask, he capped it with the cork, pressing down the metal loop to hold it in place.

  He looked at it in his hand. It shone fiercely, as if he had ripped off a part of the sun and bottled it.

  The shadows it threw over his face were stark.

  His thin lips lifted at the corners, just a fraction. Just the barest trace of happiness—and it frightened Jasen terribly.

  Then he stowed the bottle in his jacket once more. Taking a final look around, he seemed to remember where he was, remember that four bodies and a beaten scourge lay around his feet where he had discarded them just moments ago.

  He set into an easy, long-legged stride.

  His dancing lights, high in the sky, followed along behind him.

  No, Jasen thought. Desperately, he tried to push himself up. Just the strength to rise to his feet, to cut Baraghosa off—to throw himself at the sorcerer’s back and take the both of them off the cliff, if that was the only way to defeat him.

  Yet he did not have it. Only agonizing pain answered him, racking his body with tremors.

  Jasen fought against it. He gritted his teeth—though they were so very far away now … He pushed—both arms trembled.

  Baraghosa had reached the path back down to the city.

  He descended without pausing.

  Just before his face disappeared out of sight, he said, “Adieu.”

  Then he was gone.

  But not gone yet—he would take the path down, to the Aiger Cliffs, to the docks, and to his boat. There was time yet to catch him up—time yet to stop him before he unleashed the power he had stolen from here … Jasen still had hope! He still had a chance—!

  Somehow, he rolled over—

  A pure, screaming pain overtook him. He felt it for a second that felt like a lifetime, roaring through his body, overloading his every sense—

  And then his body shut down.

  21

  Jasen woke, slowly at first. He felt something upon him, but he could not place it: just knew that it was touching his face, from all angles, an ongoing rush of motion—and as his awareness grew, he realized it stung.

  His eyes opened—

  He slammed them closed.

  Raindrops danced across his face. One had landed with particular force in his eye, as rude an awakening as any.

  He slammed his eyes closed again.

  His stomach dropped as it all came back to him: the march up the cliffside to do battle with Baraghosa; the way Jasen had run first, and then the others joined him, flying at the sorcerer with hate in their hearts—at least in his and Huanatha’s case, and surely Alixa’s too, though she had come more warily, her foray into the battle short-lived.

  Jasen had flung himself so tremendously hard at Baraghosa, sure of the justice he would bring the so
rcerer to … and he had been dispensed with using barely a flick of the wrist. Alixa too, and Scourgey, and Kuura.

  Huanatha had been his last hope … and though she had proven a worthy adversary for Baraghosa, she too had been bested, almost thrown from the cliffside.

  Baraghosa had sucked the power from the conduction rods—and as the air came alive with the diffusing electricity, Jasen’s body had finally given out after being pushed so far.

  He had passed out.

  And now he was returning to the Aiger Cliffs, his senses coming back to him after a dizzying moment of confusion as he tried to orient himself in the world. The sky moved as he twisted—and he realized now, too, that he was in the arms of someone, cradled like a parent carried a babe or a sickly child.

  He blinked.

  Kuura looked down at him. “Rest.”

  “Wh—” Jasen’s voice was strained. It hardly came. The noise he did make was more wheeze than word.

  He tried again. “We lost?” His throat felt like an old rope with little give.

  Kuura said again, “Rest, Jasen.”

  “Pl-please.” He tried to force himself up. Kuura’s hold was too strong, though—and Jasen was much too weak. Whatever strength he had in him had fled.

  Alixa’s words came back: Just a boy with a pilfered dagger. It was true.

  He was a boy, just a boy—and a failure.

  “No,” said Kuura, as Jasen struggled harder still. “Do not—Jasen, please, hold still. Your head—it is imperative you rest.”

  “Let go of me!” And he raked out with a hand, using the only weapon he had: his fingers and nails. They sliced Kuura’s neck, down to his chest—

  Kuura hissed and dropped Jasen.

  “Kuura of Nunahk!”

  “He scratched me!”

  Alixa rushed to Jasen’s side as he righted himself. Scourgey followed, whining sadly. She was limping and her head was down.

  The world continued to sway as Jasen clambered to his feet; the sky in particular felt as if it had come half-loose from where it was moored to the earth. The ground shifted as Jasen rose, and the sky wobbled precariously, taking a couple of seconds to catch up. It was nauseating.