“You! You’ve sucked me up in this place in the flesh. What madness is this little sister?”
“Not mine, Catane. I’d rather be on the battlefield showing your troops who the true masters of Canderabai are.”
He flexed his impressive musculature and the tattoos danced along his rippling arms and shoulders.
“I’ll make short work of you here,” he said, as he sent a tendril of unwoven thread towards me.
I unwove my own thread, lashing it against his.
“We shouldn’t be using the Common. Our ability to unweave is unraveling Ra’shara,” I said.
Our threads zapped where they met, sparking off little lightning flares. His thread lashed towards my face. I ducked, sending my own thread back at his.
“It doesn’t matter. When I finish here with you, I will have no need of it. My birthright will be my own again, and glory will return to Canderabai. All will bow before me, as I made the High Tazmin and his allies bow.”
“Why are you so obsessed with ruling Canderabai? Why not just take the piece you have and leave us with ours?”
I skipped over a thread that lashed at my feet and sent my own thread whipping towards him with a crackle of sound and light.
He ducked. Above us, I heard thunder cracking so loud that I glanced upward to see the sky of Ra’shara was cracked in two, extra color bleeding around the edges of the crack. The smell of rotten citrus filled my nose. We were destroying things again, just like in Axum. I would lose everything if Everturn was lost.
“Because they thought I wasn’t worthy. They banished me to Axum. I made those sycophant priests pay. I made the High Tazmin pay. And now I will take what is mine – all of it.”
I shivered as thunder filled the sky again. Catane pulled a thread loose that whipped and flared red in his hands, lashing it towards me at the same moment as I saw Garedun appear behind Catane. He placed his spectral hands on Catane’s shoulders, allowing his life force to flow into his descendent.
“And what should I do with you when all this is finished, sister?” Catane’s whip swelled to twice the size with Garedun’s help. “Should I offer you the chance that was offered to me? Your beloved stolen and taken by another and your fate a life in a foreign world behind a magic door? It could be arranged. In fact, I think that’s perfect. Do you have any questions?”
I felt Kjexx materialize beside me as he spoke.
“Only one,” I said, whipping my own blue light towards him. He dodged, but he had to work for it, spinning and flipping at the same time to avoid the whip of light. Garedun threw himself out of the way just in time. “Why can’t you ever seem to wear a shirt?”
Kjexx’s laugh made me bolder. He leapt for Garedun at the same moment that I lashed out at Catane again. We had to focus now that the attacks were coming faster and smoother. I danced my way through spectral figures on the battlefield, whipping my threads of reality double-handed, with a thread in each fist. Catane fought back, just as smoothly, slinging his own threads so quickly that it almost felt as if he had done this before. We wove, dodged, leapt in increasingly narrow spirals, closing in on each other.
I caught glimpses of movement in the corner of my eyes, but my focus remained on Catane. I didn’t dare let him make a move without me countering it, or it would spell the end.
“The tattoos give me strength. You wouldn’t understand, sister. Your marks are a fraud, a spur to force my hand.”
I laughed. At one time that might have hurt, but I knew now what power and authority were – a reason to give your life for someone else.
“Maybe they started that way, but I’ve earned them more certainly than if I had been granted them true from the start. These marks are mine, and do you know what they mean, older brother? They mean something you can’t understand.”
“Try me.” He flicked a wrist and I dodged but realized too late I had miscalculated. His lightning branched towards me, as I desperately tried to find a way block it, but there was no way. I prepared myself for the pain when Kjexx leapt at me and threw me to the ground, just in time. The lightning passed just above us, leaving a smell of ozone and singeing my hair. Kjexx rolled off of me, springing back to his feet in one sleek motion. He saved my life - again.
“They come,” he whispered, with a wink as he rushed away.
I scrambled up, whipping three threads out of the pattern at once and flinging them at Catane. He laughed, batting them away with ease.
I spun, letting the threads swirl out from my hands like streamers waved by a child in a parade.
“My marks mean that I have the right and the obligation to give my life for something greater. Just as lives were given for me. They mean I have the right to accept their sacrifice and choose to make my own.”
His laugh filled Ra’shara, but now I could see that the flickers of motion at the edges of my vision weren’t just from Kjexx and Garedun. The battlefield was filling with figures. They arrived from all directions, every race, gender, and generation. If I had to guess, I would have thought it was every ancestor still existing in Ra’shara. As they arrived, they flung themselves at one another, engaging in their own battles. How did they know what side each other was on? There was no way for me to tell.
“You want to die for a cause? That’s good,” Catane thundered, taking me by surprise as he flung five separate threads at me. I batted away the first one. When it hit one of the fighting ancestors, he turned to stone right where he stood, his arms still raised defensively. I gasped. I batted away another, but there were still three more headed my way.
Catane laughed. “Because it means we want the same thing.”
They were too quick. I wouldn’t be able to stop them all. I unwove one from the pattern, throwing it aside, and met the next one with my own thread-whip. I clenched my teeth, bracing for the impact of the last one, when a body leapt between me and the thread, taking the hit and falling to the ground, a pillar of stone. I gasped at the frozen features of Buhari.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“SO, WE DIDN’T DIE FOR nothing,” Jakinda said from beside me. “Not if it ends with you finally understand what it means to lead.”
I looked up for Catane, but he had disappeared, though the ancestors continued to fight amongst themselves.
“Jakinda,” I gasped, clasping her forearm and she mine. “I … sorry. I have no words. Just sorry.”
What did you say to someone who had died for you while you were selfish and useless? What did you say to someone whose dearest love had died for the exact same reason?
“I think a simple ‘thank you’ will be enough,” she said curtly, but there was a glimmer in her eye that almost looked like pride.
“Thank you,” I said, and then the world faded and I was back in the battle behind Rusk on Graxx.
“Hold Fast! Do not take the bait!” Rusk was yelling as the Veen army before us fell back just enough to try to lure us out from our defenses.
The hill! Do not fail. It is nearly too late.
Couldn’t the voices in my head see I was a bit busy? I had a battle to fight! Across the field of battle, I saw a swath of lighting crackle. Catane was out there killing our people. I had to stop him. I reached within, seized the Common and grabbed a thread in the earth under the Veen as they tried to lure us. I let it snap free and earth shot upward in a burst, lightning crackling and branching out from where it exploded. I followed it up with three more strikes, as rapidly as I could. Should I be saving power for later? There was no later. Either I won today or we all lost.
Rusk swivelled in his saddle.
“You’re back with us?” Can you cut a path to Catane? He’s chasing down the Eaglekin cavalry.” Anxiety painted his features.
“Follow the path I carve and I won’t stop until we reach Catane,” I said, feeding my passion and determination into my words. I didn’t like taking life, but what option had they left us?
I let my eyes unfocus so I could take in the panorama all at once. Fires dotted the
field of battle interspersed between heaps of carnage and waste. The lightnings had already done their damage. How long had Catane and I been gone? I could tell by the way the straps dug into my skin that I’d been riding with the strap rubbing painfully for some time. Rusk looked worn, and time in Ra’shara didn’t pass at the same rate as time in the real world. Had it been merely minutes or hours? The ground was trampled and wet with blood.
“Hold the line. The Tazminera and I are going to take out Catane,” Rusk called down to the men below.
“Prince of Hawks!” was the enthusiastic response.
I kept my eyes unfocused, letting the bright ko hovering over the heads of my enemies be my guide. I searched for the greatest concentration of the symbols between Catane and me and then I started tugging at any thread I could grab in their midst. Lighting crackled, booming and splitting the air, sending bodies pinwheeling upwards and flung about on every side. I turned to striking the ground under the soldiers just in front of us.
Above us, the sky filled with black clouds, roiling and swirling. The lightings Catane and I were throwing around were generating their own weather. If we weren’t careful, this would be a storm for the ages. Thunder crackled from where Catane fought down the line and the sky answered it with a boom of its own. We needed to hurry.
So close. Head for the hill. It’s your destiny.
This time I found it hard to mock the voice or even dismiss it. My head swiveled to the round hill, eyes scanning for what it might be talking about.
“Tylira!” Rusk said, drawing my attention back just in time to beat back a knot of men firing arrows at Graxx. He stumbled slightly but caught himself.
I stood in the stirrups, letting loose another blast, refusing to look at the terrified faces of those opposing me. They didn’t have to be here. They didn’t have to do this. I did.
“Rusk,” I said as we grew closer to the knot that held Catane. “How long was I out?”
“An hour at most,” he said through gritted teeth as he leaned down to slash at a man attacking Graxx’s feet. “Don’t do it again. If you vanished now, Graxx and I would be in real trouble.”
“It’s not on purpose,” I said.
“What could possibly be so important there that it trumps a battle here?” he asked.
I drew in a deep breath, sending a whipping thread of reality at the elephants charging towards us. “The cataclysm hasn’t stopped in Ra’shara, and if I don’t find a way to end it there it will do the same thing to Everturn that it did to Axum. It’s sucking me in and I can’t stop it.”
I didn’t get to see the look on his face before I was sucked back into Ra’shara.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“SHE’S BACK!” AMANDERA STOOD BESIDE Kjexx, glancing behind her shoulder at me while weaving desperately to ward off the enemies that surrounded us. Jakinda stood shoulder to shoulder with her. Together with Toure and Sesay, they formed a ring around me as they fought back to back.
“Why are they opposing us?” I asked, standing. “They can’t all be with Catane!”
“They don’t like that you plan to fix the cataclysm here,” Jakinda said as she parried a blow from another ancestor.
Without a second thought, I pulled at a thread in his chest, letting it flap free, spark with lightning and then freeze him into a scaly white pillar.
“How could they object? I’ll be saving all their … whatever spirits have to cling to .. and keeping the world their descendants live in safe.”
“This end was prophesied,” Amandera said, her nose held high in the air as she wove a barrier of air and thrust it outward.
Kjexx laughed as he picked up a lunging specter and tossed him to the side. Toure gave him a jovial clap in the shoulder before turning to plunge a spectral sword into his own enemy.
“Some people don’t like changes to prophesy,” Amandera finished her thought, weaving a second wall and shoving a new group of people aside, even as I struck them with a reality whip, lightning crackling and flashing everywhere the whip touched. Two more people were left as pillars of stone.
I fell back to the real world so suddenly that I was blinking. I hung like a doll from the saddle. Rusk was leaning far over to the side hacking and slashing at a swarm of men beneath is.
“A little help here!” he called, as Graxx dodged to the side, scooping up an enemy in his mighty jaw and flinging him to the side. The soldier screamed as Graxx’s beak broke his bones with a snap.
We were jostled roughly to the side, but I pulled the Common towards me, unweaving the earth under the feet of the men to the right of us in a burst of stone, sand, and lightning. Screams and the scent of burning flesh met my nose. It was enough that Graxx was able to pull free and surge forward.
Where was Catane? I twisted in my saddle looking one way and then the next.
“He disappears when you go limp,” Rusk called back, still busy keeping the enemy from Graxx’s softer underbelly. “Can you carve out some space for us back toward our line? I think we should give up on trying to catch him directly. He hit Cadram’s elephants and our river anchor in in chaos.”
I looked obediently for a route back, sending my lightning flashing back the way we came. Men and elephants fell in smoldering heaps. The dark clouds almost blotted out the sun completely, leaving them unidentifiable in the poor light once they’d fallen. The thunder rattled high in the sky, like the toy of an angry god.
I blinked and I was in Ra’shara.
“Don’t seek him out intentionally. Don’t put me in that position!” Amandera sounded shrill, despite the fact she was still fighting.
“I thought you’d chosen to stand with the Windbearer,” Kjexx’s tone held none of her reservations.
“I’d just rather it wasn’t me who struck the blow that kills him.”
“You must realize it will have to be her. Who else could do it?”
I blinked and I was back with Rusk.
“Almost there, Wild Girl. Just one more blast. Aim for a path toward that round hill.” He pointed with his sword as if I wasn’t incredibly aware of the position of that particular hill at all times.
I unwove the threads directly before us, letting the lightning crackle and strike down all who stood in our path.
Finally. Run! You need to get there as soon as you can. You must realize what this means. Everything hangs on you right now, on your sacrifice.
Sacrifice?
Death. Use whatever word you want, just get there.
Wait. I had thought we might be past the point where I’d have to choose to die. I knew it was a risk in a battle, but I thought I might still have a chance to live.
You have to get to the hill. Stop second guessing and just go!
I lashed out with my lightning, letting my fear and anger funnel into its power. Graxx thundered down the path I cut, rushing towards the round hill, our line, and my possible demise.
“Did you mean what you said about Ra’shara, Wild Girl?” Rusk asked, holding on Graxx as he sped up. “What does that mean for us?”
Mercifully, Ra’shara snatched me back before I had to answer.
“I don’t see why they can’t both live. Why do you just assume that Catane will have to die?” Amandera was still arguing with Kjexx.
I looked over her shoulder and saw the telltale sign of Catane’s unweaving where the colors swirled the most vividly across the battle. I aimed for where I thought he must be and let my lightning rip. In response he sent his own, missing Amandera by an arm’s length.
“Maybe because he doesn’t care who he kills – even you,” Kjexx argued.
“I’m already dead,” Amandera said through gritted teeth.
“But your life force lives on for a short time to be donated to the good of the world.”
“Preach your religion to someone else.”
“Oh yeah, do you have a better answer to why we’re here?”
“Yeah. We’re just a pathetic neural echo of people who once lived and never will
again.”
“Enough!” I forced power into my voice to cut across their argument. “It doesn’t matter how we got here, only what we are here to do now. All of us are here to keep destruction and chaos from stealing the life from everyone we love.” I let my voice grow softer as I made a final confession. “And I think … maybe … that you’re here to help me die.”
CHAPTER FORTY
AMANDERA ROLLED HER EYES, BUT a shot of lightning from Catane’s direction forced her to dodge out of the way, ending her mockery. I tugged a thread loose and whipped it back at him.
“Run to the hill,” I shouted. “Let’s get to high ground and see if we can turn this tide in our favor.”
We fled, dodging masses of ancestors who battled in their ghostly forms, fading in and out of sight. One man in full battle armor roared at a woman in the strangest bulky garb I’d ever seen. She calmly pointed at him and he erupted into a salt pillar, his frozen arms forever raised above his head. The round hill was before us, and no one had climbed to its pinnacle.
I blinked and I was back with Rusk thundering towards the round hill in real life. I rubbed a hand over my eyes, trying to get my bearings back.
“…broke the line at the river and through the center point where the Lesser Tazmin Nur was supposed to be holding it.”
“We need a rally point for the men retreating, Edrixx, or they’ll destroy us before the hour is passed. Spread the word to rally on the hill there.”
As soon as Rusk pointed the Clan Leader to the hill, the voice in my head started clamoring.
The hill, at last! Find the crown. The key is there.
“As you say, Prince of Hawks,” Edrixx said, riding off on an Eaglekin.
Our forces were spread out, the line broken in several places and the men moving in ragged clusters instead of the solid line of bodies they had been before. The mass of black-armored Veen pressed them on every side. Rusk stood in his saddle, waving towards one of the Tazmins rallying his elephants. His men grappled with the Veen warriors trying to hamstring the elephants. Rusk made three signs with his arms and then the elephants began to coalesce into a formation.
Thunder Rattles High (Unweaving Chronicles Book 3) Page 16