Sharani series Box Set

by Kevin L. Nielsen

  —From the Journals of Elyana

  Makin Qays, Warlord of the Roterralar, eighth clan of the Sharani, stepped back from the hidden opening high above the eyrie floor. Wrinkles born of the weight of leadership furrowed his brow. Age belied his once fine stature and slowed his step at times, but he still held himself with a proud and noble bearing. He had led the Roterralar against the genesauri for three generations now, over forty years. And during all forty years the genesauri pattern had never changed. Until now.

  Though the sailfins were the smallest of the three genesauri, their vast numbers made them as deadly as the larger two. Thankfully, there were generally several fortnights between when the sailfin packs showed up and when the larger genesauri, the marsaisi and karundin, awoke from their hibernation.

  Wind made the thin cloth that hid the opening that looked down into the eyrie flutter and shift slightly, but Makin Qays took no notice. The covering lay in a shadowed corner of the eyrie, high along the wall. Even knowing it was there, he often had difficulty finding it from the eyrie floor. He sighed, pulling himself from his troubled thoughts, and walked back to the edge.

  The woman that Kaiden had brought to the warren was still standing by the doorway, her gaze moving from one side of the eyrie to another in an aimless pattern. Confusion was a common sentiment among those they welcomed. This one was taking it better than most, he noted with interest. Perhaps she might even be ready to fight in this Migration. Sands knows they needed her.

  Khari, his wife and the matron of the eyrie, entered the room and joined the table of silent observers. She must have had to jog the whole way to make it up here this quickly, but that was her way. Silently, he applauded her performance with the woman below. She hated having to break the young men and women down, tearing them apart one piece at a time. But it was requisite that something be broken before it could be fixed.

  Breaking was a delicate process. It wasn’t simply a question of taking a hammer to a crockery pot and bludgeoning it until all that was left was a few tiny pieces and a smattering of dust. No, with people, the breaking had to take place in a way where the pieces could be put back together. Trauma wasn’t necessarily the best course. Each person was different.

  “So,” Makin Qays said, turning to the table of silent observers. “What news?”

  Tieran, one of the cast leaders, grinned. “The new girl is a pretty one. It’ll do my old bones some good to have her around.”

  Khari shot him a flat look.

  Tieran’s twin, a woman named Sarial who was nothing at all like her brother, snorted. “You’re not old, and you say that about every woman,” she said.

  “Well, it’s true each time.”

  Makin Qays silenced them with a word. “Any relevant news.”

  “She’s got a stubborn streak in her about a dozen spans wide,” Khari said, “but she is decent with a blade. I just have to break her first.”

  “I have a feeling we’ll need her before this Migration is through,” Makin Qays said thoughtfully.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Khari said.

  “She won’t break.” Kaiden’s voice was strangely resolute.

  Khari blew out a long breath. “Let’s hope you’re wrong, Kaiden. For all our sakes. We’ll give her a couple of days, and then I think we’ll let her know that her friend didn’t survive.”

  * * *

  A single long cut along the sailfin’s belly, then peel back the skin. It came off the flesh easily, only needing a few easy slices to loosen it from the muscle and sinew beneath. Once the skin was peeled all the way up to where the large dorsal began, Lhaurel had to roll the creature over and skin the other side. Long cuts sliced both the skin and the dorsal free, though she was careful not to let the tips of the dorsal spines pierce her flesh.

  Now the real work began. Milky white cords of sinew and gummy flesh coiled around the long, tubular body, which had to come free. The coils were tough and hard to cut, but she persisted, even with just a single knife whose blade was shorter than the length of her hand. Her first sailfin had taken her nearly half a day to skin and slice up into chunks for the aevians to eat. Part of it had stemmed from the fear that coursed through her at the sight of the creature despite knowing it was dead. Now, two weeks later, she could get through four or five sailfin corpses in that same time. And she was no longer afraid. Fear faded in the face of familiarity.

  What she hadn’t gotten used to was the smell.

  A foul odor came from the fat and the membranous white strands that she had to peel away layer by layer. The skeleton was also unique in that it was a mottled mixture of white bone and a dark grey, metal-like substance. It smelled of rust and age mingled with rotted meat.

  She cut out a thick steak and set it aside, lost in her work and her own thoughts. The past two weeks had been both the most exhilarating and the most frustrating of her life. Being with the aevians all day long, every day, seeing to their needs and even sleeping curled up in the sands near them—that was wonderful. She loved the majestic birds, their nobility and playfulness. She felt a special attachment to and a love for them that she had never before experienced.

  And she couldn’t leave. There was no feasible escape. Even if she did manage to climb down the thousand spans to the desert sands below, she had no idea where to go, nor any reasonable hope of surviving the journey. The sailfins, though smallest of the genesauri monsters, were the most numerous. Their packs ravaged the desert and destroyed anything living upon the sands. And the bigger ones—Lhaurel shuddered at the thought.

  Taking a deep breath, Lhaurel got to her feet and let out a shrill, piercing whistle, a skill that she had only recently mastered. Immediately, the aevians descended. Several skittered toward her low along the ground, rust-colored wings flapping and black eyes fixed on the meat she had prepared. Others dove from their places high along the cliff walls, sickle-shaped wings folding inward as they cut through the air, racing each other like children at play.

  The sight of the approaching flock would have terrified most people, but it made Lhaurel smile. She closed her eyes and listened to the beat of wings, the cries of pleasure, and the shrieks of friendly competition. The sounds were the sounds of friends and companions—the sounds of the one thing she trusted in this place. They bore down on her, talons extended, hooked beaks clicking in hungered anticipation.

  A thrill ran through her.

  The aevians parted around her, diving for the butchered meat and avoiding her as if she were an immovable pillar in their way and not a mere woman half the size of the smallest aevian.

  She breathed in and then let it out slowly, her frustration and anger burned away in the rush of adrenaline.

  “I already knew you were stupid,” a cold voice said, raised slightly to compensate for the noise thrown up by the feasting birds. “But that was sheer idiocy.”

  Lhaurel opened her eyes to find Kaiden before her.

  His flinty eyes penetrated her. She refused to blush and then grew angry as she felt heat blossom on her cheeks. Foolish woman, she snapped at herself. Don’t let him see that he’s getting to you. Didn’t all those years with Marvi and Jenthro teach you anything at all?

  “And I just realized the extent of your arrogance,” she retorted. “Well, it’s either that or you have a strange understanding of the meaning of an apology. Would you think someone was truly sorry if they left you a prisoner in strangers’ hands?”

  He shrugged, an expression heightened by his bare shoulders, exposed beneath his thin leather vest. An array of colorful bracelets adorned his arms above each wrist in differing patterns. Upon closer scrutiny, Lhaurel realized that they weren’t bracelets at all but tattoos. Bands of color wrapped up his forearms, ending just short of his elbows. Most of them were a deep, dark brown that stood out from his lightly tanned skin and the other bands of color around them.

  “You can think what you wish,” he said. “My apology was sincere and so has merit. It is not my fault if it falls on deaf ears.�
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  “Arrogance it is, then.”

  He shrugged again and stepped around a group of aevians fighting over a particularly juicy chunk of sailfin. “From what I’ve seen, you seem to like it here. Well, the aevians at least.”

  They’d been watching her? Worse, Kaiden had been watching her. She felt more exposed than when he’d seen her in her smallclothes. He’d watched her work, watched her toil, and sweat, and rant, and pee. How many more of them had watched her?

  “Lhaurel,” Kaiden said, then hesitated.

  Lhaurel looked over at him, chewing on her bottom lip to keep herself from saying anything else rash.

  Kaiden’s expression firmed. “The girl, Saralhn—she didn’t make it to the Oasis.”

  Lhaurel felt as if she’d had a bucket of freezing water poured down her back. Her vision swam. Dread spread through her, clutched at her heart. Her lungs seized up, and she gasped for breath, afraid and angry at the same time. She felt suddenly dizzy.

  Kaiden swore as she fell to her knees.

  Immediately she could breathe again. The feeling of icy dread washed out of her, bursting free like water held back by a dam in the Oasis.

  Kaiden knelt down beside her, resting an arm on her shoulder. “Are you ok?” His voice seemed both annoyed and concerned, an odd combination.

  She started to get to her feet, placing a hand on Kaiden’s knee to give her support, but her hand touched a patch of wetness. Jerking her hand back, she felt bile rise up in her throat, and she almost heaved.

  “It’s not what you think,” Kaiden said, his voice suddenly cold again. “My water pouch burst. Hence the cursing.” As if to prove it, he reached into the pocket of his leggings and removed a deflated waterskin, a large hole in one end. He tossed it aside, making several aevians hiss and skitter out of the way. He held out his hand.

  Lhaurel ignored it and got to her feet, pushing herself up with hands on her own knees. “Are you sure she didn’t make it?”

  Kaiden hesitated, then nodded.

  Anger, pain, and despair welled up within Lhaurel. Saralhn had been the only true friend she’d ever had. It wasn’t enough that she’d been forced to endure the strange ways the Roterralar had been treating her. What she’d gone through with the Sidena wasn’t enough. Now Saralhn was dead.

  Frustration, anger, and pain pushed past the inhibitions with which she had been indoctrinated. “You had no right to watch me without my knowledge, Kaiden,” she said vehemently. “No right at all.”

  Kaiden’s eyes steeled, becoming hard pools of grey reflectivity. “You don’t even understand what you’re talking about.” He jabbed an accusing finger at her. “We have every right to protect ourselves. You have no attachments to life, no understanding of what it means to be part of a clan or even of a family. It is you who have no rights here. No right to claim understanding. No right to even demand answers to your questions. I saved your life from the genesauri. I could just as easily return it to them.”

  Lhaurel’s shiver didn’t come from the threat. Rather, it was the monotone way in which he said it. No anger or fear colored the words. It was a simple statement. Fact. It quenched the anger and the frustration, leaving behind only the pain.

  “I didn’t choose my life,” she said, looking down. “I never had a family to be a part of. I don’t even know who my parents were. Not really. I didn’t choose this.”

  “You chose to take that sword. You chose to train.”

  She raised her chin, pride firming her resolve, but Kaiden’s expression stopped her. He wasn’t even looking at her, the arrogant little—Kaiden nodded at something over Lhaurel’s shoulder, his face angled high along the wall.

  Then he noticed her. “What?”

  “What were you just looking at?”

  Kaiden arched an eyebrow at her. “I wasn’t looking at anything.”

  Lhaurel gave him a look that clearly told him she didn’t believe a word. She’d already exploded once. One more outburst, albeit smaller than the last, wasn’t going to make any real difference.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “I really must be going now. Enjoy your solitude.”

  Lhaurel glared daggers into his back as he left, though once the door closed, she turned and glanced in the direction Kaiden had been looking. The corner of her lip tugged into a half smirk. He’d finally slipped.

  * * *

  A few hours later, after coming to terms with Saralhn’s death as best she could, Lhaurel stood in the same spot where Kaiden had been standing when she had caught him peering up at the wall with far too much attention. She scanned the sandstone walls, studying the area for anything that would appear, like an opening or a place where one could perform observations. She must have stood there for a good ten minutes, studying the stone.

  Nothing.

  The Lhaurel that had first arrived would have given up then, but Lhaurel’s stubbornness had grown. As she started her second scan, a slight breeze wafted up from the chamber’s opening, swirling in a complex pattern of eddies and whorls. High above her head and slightly to the left, thirty spans up, the rock shifted.

  She almost smiled but stopped herself before the expression could betray her discovery. Someone was surely watching her even now, wondering what it was that she was doing. So she continued to study the rock, allowing her expression to show feigned frustration and disappointment. After a few long minutes she hung her head in resignation, allowing her auburn hair to fall in front of her face. Behind the red curtain, though, she smiled.

  She put down her metal bucket and spade, leaning them against the wall of the cavern. Next, she divested herself of the nondescript brown robe she wore, leaving her only in her smallclothes. The robe would get in the way as she climbed. There were no steps carved into the stone—no easy paths of ingress or egress. Yet the entire cliff was made of the same rough sandstone, laden with streaks of dark grey metal. That meant it was rough and full of crags. She reached up, seized an outcropping of stone, and started to climb.

  She continued to climb, ignoring the ache in her shoulders, the burning angry pain stretching up her arms and down her back which screamed at the strain. Sweat dripped down her brow and pasted her hair to the side of her head. Her hand burned where she had been cut, and it continued to bleed, leaving a trail along the rock that marked where she had been. The occasional aevian would pop its regal head out of an outcropping or nest to peer quizzically at her as she passed, but she ignored them. Everything ceased to exist except the strange outcropping where she had seen the stone move.

  Halfway to the outcropping, her muscles forced her to stop and take a momentary respite on a large promontory of stone that jutted out from the regular semi-flat sandstone wall. Lhaurel pulled herself atop the lip and collapsed onto the gritty surface. She blinked away the stinging sweat, though more dripped into her eyes, making the gesture a futile one. Her vision was slightly blurry around the edges, as though she had just woken up and had yet to become fully alert. One of her hands, the one with the cut, trembled uncontrollably, like the wings of a grasshopper in flight. She closed her eyes and breathed as deeply as her oxygen-deprived lungs allowed. Was she really so soft that a simple climb like this would leave her this winded?

  Near her, Gwyanth, Khari’s aevian and the only one of the creatures whose name she had learned, and her son hopped from crag to crag, the younger aevian flapping his wings far less gracefully than his mother. Lhaurel smiled. The young aevian, called a fledgling, apparently, was one of her favorites. He had a funny little chirp he seemed to reserve just for her.

  A sudden thought struck her, one that left her sickened and enraged at the same time.

  They’d never told her not to try to escape. No one had ever threatened her about trying to run away. In fact, they had done everything in their power to frustrate and enrage her. They had wanted her to try and escape.

  Why else would they have forced her to do such menial tasks day in and day out? She’d forgone sleep for almost a fortnight caring fo
r the aevians and Gwyanth’s fledgling son. No one told her that Gwyanth would have done that herself if Lhaurel hadn’t been there. There had been other fledglings born while she’d been working with Gwyanth’s son, but none of them had been cared for by another person. Why had Lhaurel been forced to play mother to this particular aevian?

  The most powerful prisons were those whose bars were constructed by the one imprisoned within them. They had made her want to care for the creatures. They had used her own kindness and determination against her. She felt like a milk-besotted babe to have been so easily manipulated.

  “I’m such a fool,” she said aloud, clenching her fists and kicking some loose sand over the side of the ledge. Why hadn’t she realized what they were doing to her? They’d expected her to attempt something. They’d expected her to figure them out at some point.

  She looked up in a sudden burst of anger, her eyes flashing and fixating on the spot where she had seen the rock move. She could see it even though she was directly beneath it. Her ledge afforded her a slightly angled view of the spot.

  “I know you’re up there,” she shouted, her voice carrying and reverberating off the close walls. “I’m done playing your games. I’m done waiting for you to explain. Show yourselves! Kaiden! Khari! I’ve had enough!”

  Her voice echoed across the chamber, rolling and reverberating like a wave of rolling sand. The rock she was staring at shifted, and a head poked out over the edge and peered down at her—a head topped with dusty brown hair, a plain face, and grey eyes. And a frown.

  “Well, you’re not nearly as stupid as you’ve made Khari believe,” Kaiden said. “But not nearly as smart or as stubborn as you’re going to need to be.”

  Part 2: Roterralar

  Chapter 5: The Smell of Change

  “Having lived the solitary life, alone with my craft and with the creatures that I love, having another’s presence within my walls is uncomfortable. The girl is always there—always in the way. And her ceaseless chatter gnaws at my mind and steals away what hope I have left. She is a leech, sapping away my strength.”