“As you command, Sarra’esiah,” Lore Rayna said, bowing slightly. Straightening, she walked away.
Lore Rayna’s use of the Valen word surprised Crystalyn; it was the first time her large friend had.
The man in the doorway stepped aside. “Whoever is coming inside, please do so quickly. I fear we have already been the focus of many prying eyes, and my excuses will not fully alleviate suspicions.”
Caven waved them into a small room where a rough-hewn wooden desk and a tall object covered with a dusty rug claimed most of the space. From the look of it, the rug had lain on a floor for many seasons before getting the duty as a covering.
Hastel filed in last. Once inside, the broad-shouldered man closed and locked the door behind him. Then he took a seat behind the desk, glancing at the group briefly. “Since the monk—Prominence,” he corrected, prompted by Caven’s scowl, “has completed the condition I required of him for my services, my identity shall remain hidden. As for each of you, I know your backgrounds, even the noble warden. I make it a point to research anyone leading a force that nearly held back an army of Dark Users.”
Hastel’s thick arms folded at his barrel chest. “Why is it so important for us to not know who you are?”
The man at the desk smiled without mirth. “Revealing that would nullify all this subterfuge.”
With no other choice in the cramped room, Crystalyn sat on a rough-hewn crate carefully. The last thing she wanted was a splinter lodged in a hard to reach place. As she did, a name popped into her mind, one she’d heard from someone dear to her, as Jade related what happened to her on Astura at their reunion at the Dark Citadel. “Why are we here, Craight? What do you want?”
Craight’s blue eyes flared bright for a brief moment. “Your own network of knowledge is impressive, Crystalyn. Perhaps we can speak more of it after our business has concluded.”
Caven stirred, shifting his bulk from one leg to the other. “Can we get on with it, Craight? I granted your request for inclusion with this meeting for the sole reason of your promise of having information of great value to the leader of the Vale… what do you call your fighting force?” he asked.
Crystalyn stared. “We are not a fighting force. We are a band of refugees from the Vale.”
Caven nodded as if she’d agreed with him. “Your word choice is partly why I wanted to meet with you. With a little outfitting from the resources available to me, your people could fight back. Also, please consider not referring to them as refugees. Such a name aids the Dark Users with denouncing them as a force in this war. With over five hundred Valens at your command, you are formidable still.”
“Bringing them here to fight in your Hundred Season War wasn’t my intention, not after fleeing the Vale running for our lives. And I’m not their commander,” Crystalyn insisted.
Thumping his muscular arms on the desk, Craight leaned forward. “Are you certain? The reports I’ve read have the Valens naming you Sarra’esiah, is this true?”
The small of her back starting to ache, Crystalyn shifted her weight with care. “Yes, they think of me as their savior, so what? Such a notion is harmless, though misguided. As long as they followed and left their burning homes to those destroying it, I’ve allowed it.”
Caven exchanged a quick look with Craight. “Sarra’esiah has a longer meaning in the old Valen, the Alterran tongue, as the Valens were known as in ancient times. The closest translation known comes across as ‘Our Lady Savior of Intricate Light.’”
“This revelation has little surprise, Do’brieni. The plant people have an exceptional ability to discern extraordinary nature.”
Hastel gave a low whistle.
Even Atoi stared, her green eyes pensive.
“Stop it, all of you,” Crystalyn said, pushing a black cloud of rising irritation from the forefront of her mind. People always seemed to expect so much from her. “I get to decide what I’m going to be, not what everyone thinks I should. Let’s get on with why we have some need for this meeting, Prominence. The refugees require a place to regroup and heal. Your city of Brown Recluse has space outside its walls. My, our, intention is to set up temporary dwellings at the base of the south and east walls where several cleared fields converge. This will ensure minimal movement of the wounded and lessen the impact on cultivation. Will you help?”
Caven nodded before she’d even finished. “Yes, of course. The monks shall provide assistance; there is no further need for concern.”
“Good. You have my thanks. Though I am curious why you sent for me when handling this at the walls would have sufficed,” Crystalyn said.
Caven glanced at Craight.
Craight glanced quickly left and right though no one but the five of them occupied the room. “My… agents have discovered the whereabouts of someone who it is believed you search for. As a goodwill gesture toward a future relationship, I wish to share this information with you. Do you accept?”
Crystalyn grew irritated. “What kind of relationship? How do I know your free information has any value until I’ve heard it first?”
His muscular forearms resting heavily on the desk, Craight clenched and then unclenched his hands, though his face remained impassive. “The value of my words is for you to decide after hearing them. Darwin Darkwind roams the town of Shimmer in the south. At least he did until a few days past. He has since vanished into the Shimmering Sands Desert. Does this information hold value to you now?”
The mention of Darwin caused her stomach to flutter. “Yes,” she managed to hiss after he stared at her for a time.
Craight smiled. “Good, then I shall reveal what little is known. After a few days of no contact, he suddenly resurfaced as the head of a caravan owned and operated by a shrewd and not well-liked merchant. Perhaps you have heard of Guail?”
Crystalyn dismissed the name. “No.”
There was no indication if Craight was surprised or disappointed. The man could’ve been watching a holoflick for all he revealed. Craight continued. “Far into the harshness of the desert, the caravan set up camp at an old resting place for long-forgotten kings. What he searches for is unknown.”
Silence followed his words. Hastel broke the silence. “Whatever it is, if Darkwind’s involved, it cannot be good.”
“The question is, why choose such a desolate place? What would he want there?” Crystalyn asked.
Craight shrugged. “Our researchers believe it is a place of power, though exactly what, they cannot say. With the expense of such a massive undertaking, the gain must be great indeed.”
“Agreed—” Crystalyn began.
A loud rap sounded at the top of the door they had come through, followed by two centered knocks and one low.
Frowning, Craight pushed away from the desk and stood. “What is this? Not many know today’s code. Have you invited someone else here, monk?”
Caven wore his own frown. His thin white eyebrows had scrunched together, and his blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I told no one. There was no need.”
The rapping came again, louder this time, the door resounding in the same sequence, top, center, and bottom. Though it was the same as before, the pounding seemed wrong somehow, too demanding.
“Darkness comes!” Broth howled in her mind.
“Ignore it!” Crystalyn shouted though she was too late.
Craight wrenched the door open. “Blast it all Dolph, Sera! What in the bloody—”
A brown-robed figure glided past Craight’s wide body, slipping inside. A larger second form shoved the bulky man to one side, charging in with sword drawn, a black cloth wrapped around the head and face left only the eyes bare.
The robed figure reached Crystalyn as a symbol loomed in her mind, but it vanished as she gazed at the face under the hood. Dark eyes had bulged to grotesque spheres. Covered with a black cloth, the person’s head and forehead split in the center and then peeled away, dropping onto both shoulders. A man-shaped darkness detache
d from the person under the robe, slipping out from the body as one would clothes. The skin of the person sank to the floor, deflating without a sound.
A scream of terror froze in Crystalyn’s throat when the dark figure wrapped around her. Dank malice as thick and oily as tar permeated her spine, chilling her limbs and slowing her heart rate.
“Do not succumb to it, Do’brieni! You are strong! I am here.”
A fleeting thought drifted into her lethargic mind that she had to fight back, somehow push the vileness from her as one would let go wrongful dark desires, urges of blackest violence known to hurt, but it slipped away.
The foulness oozed along her spine. Sliding upward, it befouled her nerve endings by overriding motor control as it assimilated her neurons with a flow of darkness.
The foulness had rancidness behind it, an evilness that had permeated the planet from an age long past, when its reign was absolute. If not for an even older alien interference, something not of this world, Astura would know only darkness, its darkness, brought upon the planet by the absolute power it wielded, the True power. Avenging that other worldly intrusion upon its mastery burned strong within the evilness; the power of her symbols would help regain dominion measurably. For the alien entity stalked the dark domain still, skulking with such cunning and strength the master had grown wary.
Despair came with the revelation of the Dark Flow. She hadn’t the ability to fight such power, and soon she wouldn’t know she should.
The overpowering mind behind the dark thing raised a great axe. After its fall, her mind and actions would no longer be her own. The axe reached the top of the arc, and the vast power grew in glee.
White-hot pain tore through her instilling darkness of a different sort.
GENETIC INFUSION
The white light Crystalyn followed, simply from the sense of warmth and gentleness it exuded, led her to the luminous upside-down eyes of Lore Rayna. Concern creased the big woman’s inverted broad forehead, indenting a deep gouge at the bridge of her nose between her fine golden eyebrows. Then Lore Rayna smiled, and those wondrous eyes brightened. Her facial features smoothed, flushed with the vibrancy of youth and genuine happiness.
Crystalyn smiled back.
“Our illustrious leader awakens,” Atoi said from somewhere close by. The little girl sounded disappointed.
Crystalyn tried to turn toward her, but her neck refused the command; something rigid hampered it.
“Please make no attempt to move until I give the word,” Lore Rayna said. “A head binding was deemed necessary to quicken the healing and perhaps save your life. Though you seem to accept healing remarkably well.”
Fear made Crystalyn want to retch though she quelled it thinking of her training. “My neck is damaged? Is it broken?”
“Ease your fear. No fractures occurred.”
Crystalyn sent her gratitude flowing through the link knowing now Broth had taken some of the damage from her.
Lore Rayna’s tone was clinical. “As far as I can discern, your neck is well. However, I wish for complete assurance. Though he likely saved you, the prominence’s blow cracked open your skull, and the possibility of added damage to your weak human neckline is high.”
Caven spoke from the far side of the room. “Please forgive me for such a hard swing. I feared I was too late and you had succumbed to the Dark Man. If not for the quick action of your man with his blocking axe, I may have killed you with the next blow as Craight advised. Forgive me as well for not coming closer; I… cannot, not until the healing is completed.”
For a long moment, Crystalyn was confused. The tone of the stocky monk’s voice contained revulsion, though she knew not why. Then she thought of something, something in particular her big companion was one of the few capable of. “Is your splint your hands?” she asked Lore Rayna.
The pressure at the sides of her head lessened slightly when Lore Rayna shifted. “What is this splint you speak of?”
“Have you hardened your hands and fingers?”
“Oh, yes! Such a thing is so unnatural, my eyes refuse to look at it, and my mind shies away from the very thought of it,” Caven lamented.
“Nonsense,” Crystalyn said. “Lore Rayna is the most natural being I know. You did know she talks to plants too, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Caven replied. “They all do that, the entire race. The thought of a whole population whispering to foliage is not so alarming, but it is quite unsettling to have them change into vegetation.”
The pressure against Crystalyn’s ears grew stronger on one side, nearly painfully so. “Come here, Prominence,” Lore Rayna commanded softly. “Touch my living flora, feel the smoothness, revel in the wondrous art of the flor’e’form at its highest. Perhaps, should you carry an inherent affinity, you may even glean the beat of my heart underlying the hardened oak,” Lore Rayna said, the tone of her voice soft and mild.
Caven’s choked cough shot across the room. “Please, though what you suggest is intriguing, please, please refrain from such ardent detail. Wood should not have a heartbeat, living or otherwise.” His words sounded strained, going small at the end.
Lore Rayna laughed, and Hastel’s deep guffaw joined her. Even Atoi’s tiny tinkle rounded out the end as the jollity quieted.
Crystalyn smiled at her companions’ mirth though she sensed the subtle traces of forced tension relief. They’d been worried about her very much, it seemed. However, she wasn’t certain about one of them. “Atoi, come here, please.”
Luxurious black hair covering a tiny head above a ghostly white face popped into view on her left. Overlarge, brilliant green eyes, so like Jade’s, regarded her with only a trace of curiosity. “What is it you wish of me?” she asked.
“Did you not want me to heal?” Crystalyn asked. Her own curiosity held more than a trace of desire to know, considerably more. Had the little girl wanted her to die? She’d believed they’d become friends.
Atoi blinked. “Those going to stand before Onan exude an inner light I wish to understand.”
Crystalyn gazed up at her tiny companion. Then she, too, blinked. “I’m not certain I know what you mean, or perhaps, I’m afraid I do. Either way, it is not important right now. Do you still insist on a desert trip after leaving here?”
An odd frown creased Atoi’s normally impassive face as the little girl cast a quick glance at the rest of their group. The little girl once more gazed down at her, and her fine black eyebrows dropped with annoyance. “The catalyst shall have an outlet.” The voice that issued from Atoi’s mouth reverberated from the depth of an unseen chasm.
Crystalyn bit back a sigh. “That’s as cryptic as it gets. Just once, can’t you be more specific, Dark Child?”
Atoi’s deceptively innocent eyes gazed at her unblinking, her face as smooth as a statue. And nearly the same pallor, Crystalyn thought.
A slight feeling of warmth traveled up her spine from her lower back. Gathering at her neck, the warm feeling grew more insistent, heating as it moved from one side to the other until almost causing pain. Then, with a shocking abruptness, the feeling vanished. The rigidity that flattened her ears to the side of her head softened and then pulled away.
Inundated with new vigor, Crystalyn sat up without asking if it was safe for her to do so. The room they now occupied wasn’t the same as the one she’d entered with her companions. Wider and longer, the room contained a double set of rough-cut liquid-stained tables and chairs stacked at one end making room for her recovery. An open doorway behind her revealed a partial view of Craight’s blocky desk, and a closed door in front of her led farther inside the building.
Her companions had gathered on her left, except for Caven and Broth. His back to everyone, the portly monk stood beside the tables and chairs, staring, presumably, at a plain wall devoid of decorations. Broth lay with his great head on her legs; her hand automatically stroked the soft fur between his feline ears. The building’s owner, Craight, was nowhere in
sight. “Okay, someone tell me how I… how we all survived an encounter with that thing?”
“Not you, Broth, I know you were there.”
“Aye, my Do’brieni.”
Hastel offered his broad hand to her, which she accepted readily, gently slipping her legs out from under Broth. He pulled her gently to her feet as he explained. “Apparently, the creature’s sole weakness is with wood. Reacting faster than I would have believed, the monk clubbed the darkness, as it forced its vile way into you.” The one-eyed man paused to swallow, his face lighter by several shades.
Crystalyn felt a surge of nausea herself as she recalled the black thing’s oily touch.
“The monk’s first swing burst the dark shape, popping it like a festered wound,” Hastel said. “Doing that, he also cracked you in the head. When you collapsed, his blasted friend Craight shouted for him to finish you as he sprinted outside pursuing the second assailant. I put a stop to the monk as he raised the chair for a second, final blow—”
Lore Rayna’s gasp came as a booming hiss.
Hastel hurried past the interruption. “Atoi slipped into the tavern through that door”—he flipped his long curly brown hair toward the door in front of her—“and brought the Valen healer. Still, it was close… too close for my liking.”
Her hand going to her head, Crystalyn touched the damp stickiness of blood drying in her hair as she took in the situation, letting Hastel’s narrative settle in.
Caven’s shaven bald pate shone, his head bowed as if in prayer. The monk was a source of irritation. Crystalyn deserved an explanation after he’d brought her here, yet the man refused to look at her. “Was this all a ruse, Prominence? Did the two of you set that foul creature after me?” she asked halfheartedly, not fully believing it, but goading him would get a reaction.
Prominence Caven straightened. The frown that creased his forehead looked odd paired with his wide blue eyes. “If you knew me, you would not have spoken such a thought. Your sister trusted me without question.”
Beyond the Dark Gate Page 28