When she judged the distance safe, Crystalyn wiggled out of her pack. Setting it on the ground, she brought out the Tiered Tome of Symbols, tier three, and opened it.
Page after page, Crystalyn flipped through, getting a sense of a swarm from one with squiggly lines speared by diagonal lines inside a radius. Another symbol, drawn with interlocking squares inside a circular diagram, exuded coldness.
Moving on, she paused at a simpler symbol depicting a ring of wider than usual forked lines that seemed to moisturize her skin as she looked at it. How would a water symbol help?
Going with an impulse, she brought it out to hover before her along with the one emanating coldness. Combining the two, she now had forked ends with square handles inside a radius that was black on one side and white on the other. “Here goes nothing and everything.”
She sent it zooming toward the beckoning blackness. Most of the symbol hit outside the gaps, breaking apart and frosting the cliff face next to it with big splotches, but some of the symbol vanished inside the crack. At first, nothing happened. Then, a loud pop rent the air. Chunks of stone poured from the crack, widening it. Clattering into the channel below, the shards of stone formed a pile of dirt and rock.
A deafening scraping heralded the slab dropping heavily into the gap left in the cliff wall. For a brief moment, the slab hung there, and then teetering once like a boat sinking in deep water, it slid down the side and flipped onto the pile with a thunderous CRACK.
Silence fell with the dust cloud that hung in stasis above the slide, even as it slowly settled upon the pile.
Hastel cleared his throat, breaking the stillness. “That certainly did it,” he said, the tone of his voice thick with awe.
Wicked laughter, echoing from a great distance, sounded from Atoi. “Now, what do you intend to do with it?” she asked. A short jump put her on the flat stone.
Ignoring the question, Hastel’s head full of curly hair turned toward Lore Rayna. “Now it’s your turn.” Flashing their largest companion a brief smile, he joined the smallest of their group by clattering up the pile and stepping onto the limestone boulder.
Lore Rayna frowned at his smile. “Now you have use of me? What game do you play, little man?”
Crystalyn cut into the conversation, her anger growing, though there was little cause for it. Calm yourself, Crystalyn. Another bout of dealing with your broken mind is the last thing you need, she told herself. “Hastel has shown he can be a gentleman at times. Accept it for what it is and move on.”
Lore Rayna laughed. “There is nothing refined about that man!”
Hastel chuckled. “Yes, I’m as rough as they come. Will you help us?”
Lore Rayna blinked. “What would you have me do?”
Hastel pointed to the spillway’s edge. “Can you slope this pile of rubble that way with your special talent?”
Lore Rayna’s arms and hands and feet elongated as her skin hardened to the roughness of tree bark, and then snaked toward the rocks. Branching out as they extended, each new branch, each limb, slipped under and around a loose stone and roped it tight. Lifting and tugging with superb dexterity, her tree-branch limbs adjusted the stones in a surprisingly short amount of time as if they weighed little.
Retracting swiftly, Lore Rayna’s limbs returned to normal as she moved closer to the pile inspecting her handiwork. “What comes next?” she asked, her orbs brightening.
Hastel tapped a foot on the flat rock, which teetered slightly downslope. “Join us on our little mound. You too, mistress, please, and your link mate.”
“Go ahead Broth; let’s find out what he has in mind.”
Having an idea what may come, Crystalyn clamored up the pile and slowed at the top in order to step on the flat rock at the same time as her Valen companion. Hastel, too, took a step forward. Broth leapt beside Atoi, his paws barely contacting the path of rock he chose.
As soon as their combined weight rested upon the stone, the slab tilted and slammed onto the rocky slope. With a loud scraping groan, the limestone slid, rumbling toward the spillway. “Everyone hold on!” Crystalyn shouted.” Dropping to her knees, she clutched at a crack too small to get her fingers inside.
Plunging over the edge, the massive rock listed at a sharp angle, picking up speed.
“Blast it! There’s nothing to keep us on this!” Hastel roared.
“I cannot hold, Do’brieni!”
“Lore Rayna!” Crystalyn shouted as her feet slipped. She slid helplessly toward the stone’s edge.
Something wrapped around her waist as a brown pole wider than a spear dropped in front of her. Acting on instinct, Crystalyn grabbed at the pole as others fell into place on each side of it. Shifting her legs, Crystalyn supported herself, risking a quick glance over her shoulder.
Resplendent, Lore Rayna stood at the rock’s center; the vines of her dress had extended in many directions, the ends roped around her waist.
Like a vibrant willow tree, arched branches protruded out from Lore Rayna’s shoulders, arms, outstretched hands, and legs. Climbing higher than her golden head, the branches drooped to the edges around the circular stone, making a living cage.
The wind whipped past Crystalyn pulling harder at her hair as the bottom of the spillway came into sight. Though the slope had a gentle curve to leveling out, there was a serious flaw to riding a ton or more of rock down it. Sand had filled the channel long ago.
WOLF FACE
Though Crystalyn braced her heels on the living cage and the vines at her waist cinched uncomfortably tight, the force of the impact catapulted her into a dense cloud of exploding sand. Darkness enveloped her as stinging wind rushed past. Banging something hard, her breath whooshed from her lungs. Crystalyn rolled and slid. Finally, sand clutched at her side, pulling her to a stop.
Scrambling to sit up, Crystalyn brushed grains of sand from the left side of her body. Her pack still rode on her back, intact. In no hurry to rejoin the desert floor from where it came from, thick tan dust floated around. Straining to see through the surreal landscape, Crystalyn sought the flat rock they’d imprudently ridden down the ancient waterway.
Plowing into the sand-filled channel, the limestone monstrosity had gouged a deep rivulet in the ancient waterbed. As the desert grit had accumulated under it, the sand had won the battle of momentum by burying it half under its grainy embrace.
Broth leapt over the rock, his sienna-colored fur standing out in the lighter-colored dust as he stopped moving a couple of meters from the slab. Her link mate’s great head bent toward the desert floor. Lore Rayna lay nude below him, her bosom still and her legs covered in sand from the knees down.
“The tree woman has sustained grievous injury, Do’brieni.”
Crystalyn struggled to stand, ignoring the burning on her left hip, left arm, and face. Going to the fallen woman, she passed Atoi helping Hastel regain his feet. Both looked to be in fair condition.
Not so with her large companion. Embedded in a massive abrasion, grains of sand stuck within Lore Rayna’s muscle filaments pooling blood. The wound marred the right side of the big woman’s beautiful face where her eyelid clung above her non-glowing eye by a strand. Lore Rayna’s hair had turned a sickly brown, which was the least of Crystalyn’s worries.
Lore Rayna’s breathing had grown shallow and her fingers had unnatural bends to them, yet she’d suffered the worst injuries to her arms. Multiple breakages were apparent by the shattered bone shards penetrating her forearms in too many places.
Fearing her Valen friend’s injuries were too great, Crystalyn brought out her golden symbol and combined it with one she’d read under the heading dilutions in tier one of the Tiered Tome of Symbols. The symbol reformed. Intricate gold and silver lines wound back and forth, filling the symbol with a hedge maze with no beginning or end.
Glowing faintly silver and gold in color, the symbol floated before her, and Crystalyn laid it horizontally over the prone woman, let it sink into h
er, and attached her awareness to it, though she sensed a difference this time.
The warmth of her link mate’s mental presence still resided with her though more tangible than she’d felt before. An image of his wolf face drifted about in her mind as if Broth rode with her somewhere on the symbol. Crystalyn walled the sensation away; there was no time for it.
First, Crystalyn swept the symbol past her Valen companion’s internal organs, happy to find them intact.
Then Crystalyn tackled the worst damage by tying a portion of the symbol to each fragment of bone, whatever she could find, however small.
Reordering the shards from the inside out, Crystalyn fused them by phasing a portion of her symbol into every fracture, every gap, and stitched muscle and sinew around them losing a fourth of the precious substance in the process.
Sealing the puncture holes and knitting the skin closed on Lore Rayna’s arms took another fourth. Straightening the big woman’s long slender fingers required two-thirds of the remainder.
With less than a fourth of the symbol’s original size left to her, Crystalyn traveled Lore Rayna’s capillaries to the socket of her right eye and stitched the skin around it from there; then she concentrated on the organ itself. A wide tear on her Valen companion’s previously unseen pupil and the crystalline lens behind it made her pause, and not only for the obvious fluid loss. Crystalyn lacked the experience of healing the delicate complexity of an eye with its rod and cone cells that added color and depth perception as light passed through, though she had trained with it in medical school.
Broth’s comforting presence sharpened, as if to say he had every confidence in her; he would see her through to the end simply by being with her. Gratefully, she drew upon the strength of his warmth and then continued the task.
The torn muscle holding Lore Rayna’s lens in place was a quick fix. A small part of her symbol unraveled and reattached it, fusing it in place.
The tear was trickier. Working her way deeper inside her friend from the cornea back, Crystalyn fused as she went, though she needn’t have worried about the fluid loss between it and the iris. The glowing substance of Lore Rayna’s eye returned. Traveling from her spine and then the brain, the Flow flowed in replacing the loss of substance once the breach to the outside world was gone.
Repairing the gash through the iris and part of the pupil took some ingenuity. The ring-shaped iris with its fine filament membrane and the adjustability of the pupil made it a delicate task of fusing many varying fibrous lengths, matching those on the opposite side of the break.
After the iris and pupil, the retina came with its countless layers of cells, causing anxiety. There were too many missing cells, and her now tiny symbol floated inside a cavernous space. After expending so much energy getting this far, weariness made Crystalyn’s thoughts slow to come.
Determined, she sent her symbol unraveling along the right wall of cells where it made it the full length before finding her awareness dangled by a single minute thread. She’d done what she could, but the left cell wall lay untouched.
Again, she needn’t have worried. The cells reacted to the healing exceptionally well, multiplying at an incredible rate. Soon the little strand she clung to brushed the left cell wall. Releasing the symbol, her awareness snapped back to herself.
Blinking, Crystalyn stared into the golden hourglass eyes of her warden friend and companion, the one being who knew her with an intimacy no one could match, nonhuman or not. Broth sat on his haunches beside her. Crystalyn could almost swear her companion’s wolf face held a grin.
TREPIDATION
Pausing only to shift the straps from her pack higher on her shoulders, Crystalyn strode through the large bustling tent camp in the Valley of the Forgotten Kings boldly, hoping her little group didn’t stand out. Most of the camp consisted of silk-robed or leather-clad armed men striding purposely on some mission known only to them. On rare occasions, a woman dashed by or darted out of a tent only to vanish along one of the several packed walkways serving as streets. No one glanced overly long at them, not even with an enormous Valen and warden in tow.
In the center, erected away from all others, a large black tent came into view. “That must be the one,” she said.
Hastel’s curly, brown-haired head swung from side to side. “Of course, it is, but this is madness. Strolling in here midday. Why haven’t they put us under guard yet? What are they waiting for?”
Atoi strode unconcerned beside him. “Methinks he waits to pounce upon us in his lair.”
Crystalyn shoved down the sneer growing within. “Darwin? Not his style, he likes to stage a grand show, right out in the open. Something else must be going on.”
“I have agreement with the human of one eye. A bold risk we take by traversing about in the light of day,” Lore Rayna said. Her melodious voice held a note of tiredness. She’d lost a lot of her natural vibrancy to the heat of the desert. The sickly brown color of her hair added much to the effect.
Crystalyn felt much the same way after putting the big woman back together. Though she’d had to rest for two hours afterward and then lean on Broth for the remaining bell it required to reach the camp, she was still weak and in no mood for idiosyncrasies. “Why not just call him Hastel, Lore Rayna? It is what he calls himself after all. The daylight is precisely why we couldn’t afford to wait for darkness. You, my Valen companion, need shelter from the heat. The only extra shirt and pants I brought along are doing a poor job of covering you. Look at us, your stomach is turning the same ugly red as your abrasions, and I am baking from my own weakness to the heat.”
Lore Rayna paused, looking down at herself. “Water.” She spoke the word as if angered, her frown adding to the intensity of her tone.
Surprised, Crystalyn stopped. “What?”
“Where?” Hastel asked, gazing around. “We need to replenish our bags.”
“The brown-green woman speaks of her crawler wear,” Atoi said over her shoulder without slowing. The large black tent loomed not far from her. “Her people refer to it as a liana sash. The plant wear thrives with water.”
Throwing her head back, Lore Rayna dropped to her knees. “I am a great fool and not fit to have been blessed by the Great Mother. I have failed the life bonding!” The big Valen woman wailed. “Someone bring water!”
Lore Rayna’s raiment had not fared well; a sickly brown strand of the vine dress the same hue as her hair wrapped around her waist, clinging there and quivering.
Though Crystalyn now understood her companion’s distress, loitering in the desert heat would cause worse things to happen to her body. “Come, my Valen, we have to get to shade. Your dress needs shelter from the sun.”
“I shall not move until water is brought! Someone bring water!” Lore Rayna roared.
A crowd gathered, silent and watchful.
A haughty-faced man stepped forward from the crowd. Although clad with no hood or cloth wrapped about his head, his face and skin remained light despite his bright red hair and clean-shaven face. The yellow robe he wore was open at the front, the suppleness of brown kell leather noticeable underneath. Two scimitars hung from straps near his waistline. “I have what you seek,” he declared. Reaching in the front of the robe, he removed a clear hose clipped to the leather, offering the tube to Lore Rayna.
Crystalyn gaped. The hose glowed with the radiance of the Flow. Crystalyn grabbed the man’s wrist. “What do you think to give her?” she asked. The man’s powerful muscles tensed under her grip. The pattern for her knockback symbol formed in her mind.
Lore Rayna laid a hand over hers. “Stay your concern, Sarra’esiah. I must have moisture.”
“I believe it’s only water, though some is reclaimed if I recall right,” Hastel said.
Confused, the symbol dissolved from Crystalyn’s thoughts. She released the man’s wrist. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“You are correct, warrior,” another man said, waddling forward from t
he crowd. Short of stature and wider of frame than average, he wore gaudy silks of bright colors denoting him a merchant. His small blue eyes regarded Crystalyn from a pudgy face. “The Sands nomads have developed an advanced method of filtering out the impurities of body fluid using the cleansing properties of the Flow, thereby recouping water. Nothing is wasted.” He turned to Lore Rayna. “Go on, Valen, have your drink. They do not offer lightly.”
Grabbing the tube between her thumb and forefinger, Lore Rayna put it in her mouth. Her big laryngeal—as Crystalyn recalled the term for an Adam’s apple from med school at the farm—was prominent and shifted up and down as she drank. Crystalyn suppressed a shudder at the thought of reclaimed fluids. “Who are you?” she asked the merchant instead.
The little man bowed low and then straightened with a speed and grace belying his rotund stature. “Guail, the premier purveyor of northern comforts in southern extremes, at your service, and this”—he waved an expansive arm toward the nomad—“is Long Sand, sand reader for the Clan of the Searing Sun.”
The merchant’s name she’d heard before, in Brown Recluse. Crystalyn moved beside Lore Rayna. On her knees, the Valen woman still had to bend to drink. Crystalyn nodded to the sand reader. “I am Crystalyn and these are my companions, Lore Rayna and Hastel.” She glanced around for Atoi, but the little girl was nowhere in sight. Some of the crowd had dispersed, continuing errands.
Countering a tug from Lore Rayna, Long Sand widened his stance. “Might I inquire what has brought you to this remote encampment?”
Crystalyn was reluctant to answer. “I… we come for someone,” she said.
Guail spoke, his beady eyes wide. “Then the master has sent for you as we suspected. Speak no more; it is well known how he prefers to keep his own counsel.” A look of cunning cleared the wariness from his eyes. “I am certain he will want to see you right away. Are all of you required? Perhaps, even the Dark Child?”
Saving Crystalyn from coming up with a reply, Hastel spoke. “How does that fit into ‘say no more’?”
Beyond the Dark Gate Page 32