Brisson grinned and scrubbed at his well-muscled arms to take away the dirt and grime. His fingers ran over the bumps and ridges of countless scars, though he paid them little heed. In the twenty-six years of his life, he’d lost count of the times he’d been beaten, whipped, or tossed about by one Orinai or another. They didn’t even have to be Great Ones. It was something in their blood. They were meant to be damned nuisances. It was simply what they were.
A door creaked, announcing someone entering the room. Brisson started guiltily and almost sucked in half the bath water. He spluttered and coughed, spraying water onto the tiled floor as Ellia walked into the room. Brisson was about to scold her for walking in on him like this—a fifteen-year-old child walking in on a man in his nakedness, what was the world coming to—when he noticed the stumbling way she was walking, the paleness of her normally olive skin, and the sunken hollowness around her eyes.
“Ellia!” Brisson cried, struggling through the water and up the steps. “What happened, girl?” He bounded up the steps and over to the young woman, any thoughts of propriety and modesty falling away. The girl staggered and stumbled into his arms. He was just quick enough to catch her before she fell.
“Ellia!” Brisson shook her roughly. She stared up at him, eyes unfocused. “Curse the Sisters, girl, what is it?”
Ellia reacted to the curse as if slapped, shuddering in his hands. “The Sisters,” she hissed. “The Sisters . . .”
“Dammit, girl.” Brisson held her up with one hand as she continued to mutter incoherently and used his other hand to feel for cuts or breaks on her body. He almost missed it. A large cut lay across one wrist, deep and deadly. But there was something wrong. Where was all the blood? A cut this deep should have . . .
His thoughts trailed off as his subconscious came to a horrid realization. Color drained from him and he found himself pulling Ellia into his arms, hugging her close. He wasn’t sure which one of them it was who was trembling. After a moment, he pulled away from the girl, tears in his eyes. She mumbled and muttered under her breath, but it was weak and completely incoherent. What strength she must have had, to move at all after being drained by one of the Sisters. There was nothing he could do for her now. She was as good as dead.
“They’re here, aren’t they?” he asked, though he knew she couldn’t answer. She blinked up at him, then went limp in his arms. Her chest continued to rise and fall for a few more moments, noises and commotion beginning to drift into the room from outside, then her chest fell for the last time and became still.
Brisson laid her gently on the floor. There was nothing else to be done. He hurried over to where he’d left his clothes and pulled them hurriedly on as the noises swelled and the sounds of screams and pain rose in pointed accompaniment. He smelled smoke, like acrid fog, begin to seep into the room. Part of him wondered what the Sisters were doing here, what they wanted, but he’d learned long ago that the ways of the Sisters, the ways of the Orinai, didn’t make sense. The master had warned him this may happen, though Brisson hadn’t given the warning much heed.
To question, even to indulge in the simple things like taking a bath, was pointless when it could all be taken away from you on a whim. The Sisters were at the head of the Orinai’s religion, they were Gods as far as the slaves were concerned. Part of him wondered if the arrival of the Sisters was a punishment for his lack of propriety in taking a bath in the Great One’s bathing chamber.
He walked to the door and poked his head out into the night. Several of the outbuildings were ablaze, the orange light highlighting hundreds of silhouettes dashing across the fields. In the distance, torches and smaller lights gleamed, hundreds of them, thousands of them. An army.
Someone ran past and Brisson grabbed them, his arm nearly getting ripped from its socket in the process. The man, Brisson didn’t know his name, turned on him, fear coloring all his features.
“What’s going on?” Brisson demanded.
The man wrenched his arm free. “The Sisters are here. They got the message the master tried to hide.”
Brisson swallowed hard and let the man run away. The master, Nikanor, had been worried about the Sisters coming to the Plantation. The message Nikanor had received hadn’t stopped with the master, though he’d implied to the Great One called Samsin that it had. Brisson hoped Nikanor had at least gotten the time to warn them. The master had left instructions, in the event the Sisters came before he returned. Brisson struggled to remember them.
He grabbed the next person he saw, taking strength in having orders, having something to do. He was not a man of action, no slave was really, but he did follow orders well. It had been ingrained in him since birth, since his grandfather’s grandfather’s birth.
“Gather whoever you can,” Brisson ordered. “Make for the mountains north of the gap, the master’s orders.”
The man Brisson had grabbed hesitated for a moment, the fear slowing his reasoning and response to the words. Then the order registered and, like any good slave, he galvanized to action around the order.
“Yes, sir,” he said, and scurried away into the night.
Good. Brisson steeled himself for the next part of his orders. He hurried through the night, stopping those he came across and issuing the same orders. Soon there was a steady stream of figures vanishing into the night opposite the fires. Brisson hoped some of them would make it out. Odds were that a portion of the ten thousand slaves on this plantation would make it there. Maybe.
Brisson broke into a jog, hugging the shadows, though that grew difficult as he approached the bonfires which consumed several outbuildings. The torches resolved from small pinpricks of light into flaming brands. The amorphous shadows grew into the figures of men, both slave and Orinai, standing in long, neat rows. At their front, surrounded by a ring of guards in glittering armor and resting upon palanquins borne on the shoulders of a dozen slaves, three of the Sisters sat, regarding the chaos with imperious looks.
A score of archers with short, blood-red bows stood just in front of the three Sisters. One of the slaves ran through the light. Quick as lightning, one of the archers drew an arrow, knocked, drew, sighted and fired in one blurring motion. The arrow hissed through the air—Brisson could hear it even from where he hid over a hundred spans away—and caught the running slave squarely in one shoulder.
The slave screamed and seemed to convulse. For a moment Brisson thought that perhaps the arrow was poisoned, but then he realized it was something far more sinister and the slave flopped, lifeless, to the ground. The Sisters had drained him. Brisson shuddered and thought about turning back for perhaps the hundredth time. He even turned away this time, moving to vanish into the night, but his eyes fell on the field of smokeweed and he noticed the still mounds there for the first time, mounds with but a single arrow sticking from them. All the Sisters needed to kill you was for you to bleed. That stopped him and, despite the fear which froze his veins, turned him back to his goal. He crept forward through the shadows, careful to keep to the paths he knew so well.
Brisson dropped to his knees and crawled along behind a stand of bushes which grew at the edge of a small irrigation ditch. He slipped down into the thin film of muck and water, feeling the fetid liquid seep into his clothes. That didn’t bother him so much, despite the bath. If anything, he preferred the dirt. It was surprisingly comforting.
At the edge of the small copse of bushes, Brisson stopped and crept as close to the Sisters as he could. He was still fifty or so feet away, but from this distance, hidden in the shadows, he could make out their pale, stick-thin bodies, and the almost glowing red hair. He knew that in the confusion of the battle, with the dead and dying around him, the Sisters would miss sensing him hiding there. He cupped a hand behind one ear, hoping that someone would say something to give him an indication of why they had come. That was his mission, the one Nikanor had given him. He had to know the Sisters’ plans.
An hour passed without anyone saying a word. Small parties of soldiers broke
off from the main group, rushing through the plantation and setting fire to each building through which they passed. By then, most of the other slaves had disappeared, though it was all Brisson could do to contain himself when the few who stumbled within the range of the archers were stuck with a single arrow and then drained of their life blood. Brisson had no idea what the Sisters needed it for—they didn’t appear to care at all. It was as if they had no real emotion about it, not fear, retribution, not even anger. They simply killed anyone who came within their range. Brisson managed to remain hidden through it all.
He was just about to give up hope when the center Sister raised a hand. It was the first motion any of them had made outside the rise and fall of their lungs.
“I tire of this,” she hissed, her voice the rasp of steel against leather. “They are not here. Take the troops north. Let us return, once again, to the land where my Sister was slain.”
Chapter 16: Broken Powers
“If not managed properly, the magic itself can be deadly to the user. For this reason, those born with the abilities have mental barriers created by their own minds in order to protect themselves. This internal wall must first be broken before their abilities can be manifested.”
—From Commentary on the Schema, Volume I
Lhaurel stopped before the door to the eyrie and then scuttled back, her breathing rapid and pulse racing. Her hand shook on her cane and her knees threatened to collapse.
“What’s going on with you, girl?” Cobb asked over a shoulder.
Lhaurel shook her head, hand going to her mouth. She bit down hard on one finger. “I can’t. I can’t go in there. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
Cobb turned around to face her. “What are you about, girl? Come on. Khari is waiting for you in there. You shouldn’t leave the Matron waiting.”
Lhaurel shook her head and took another step back.
Cobb’s face hardened. “Come on, now. No games. Quit acting like a child.”
Something twisted in Lhaurel’s gut. “You don’t know anything about this at all, old man,” she hissed. “None of you do. I saved you all from certain death. Not Gavin, not the Roterralar, me. I felt death, I felt loss and pain. There were only two things in this world I cared about, and both are lost to me now. Both died after I tried to save them. Don’t you dare try talking about something you don’t know anything about.”
Cobb’s face twisted into a scowl and his jawline hardened.
Lhaurel immediately felt like a fool for her words, though anger still radiated through her. It had come on suddenly, a white-hot suppressed rage like nothing she had felt before. It took her only a moment to realize that she’d drawn upon her powers. She was standing straighter, neck stiff, chin up, and she could feel everything around her. The aevians in the eyrie felt like a massive wave of life, though she could pick out the individual creatures and the half score of people within the room. They all felt different, like Khari or Beryl did when she could sense them at all. Mystics?
“You never did know anything about respect, girl,” Cobb growled. “But what can I expect after your time here with the Roterralar. That demon woman, Khari, acts like she’s the Warlord or something. I’ve lived through almost sixty Migrations, girl. Don’t you try and compare your pain with mine. Now are you coming or not?”
For one irrational moment, Lhaurel felt like lashing out with her powers and striking the man, then she pushed the drawn-in strength away. She shuddered as the strength she had gathered in vanished and the great awareness faded, but did not fully disappear. She slumped as a great sense of exhaustion overwhelmed her and a headache bloomed at her temples. Why had she gotten so angry? Where had that flare of sudden rage come from? She blinked a few times, trying to clear her head, but when it didn’t fade she simply grit her teeth and decided to press on. The look on Cobb’s face wouldn’t allow her to back down now.
“Are you going to open that door?” Lhaurel asked as she limped forward, using the cane far more than she had before. “Or do I have to?”
Cobb grunted, lips a hard line and jaw set, but reached out and yanked the door open perhaps a bit too forcefully. Lhaurel didn’t even glance his direction as she limped by. Memories of her first fortnight among the Roterralar flooded into her mind as she entered the massive cavern which made up the eyrie. She’d spent that entire time here among the aevians, butchering sailfin corpses and cleaning up after the regal creatures. She’d grown to love and care for them like she cared about so few other things. This was also the place where she’d bonded with Fahkiri.
She pushed that thought away. It was still too fresh, too painful, to dwell on.
The aevians were mostly inactive, roosting in their crags along the eyrie walls opposite from where she had entered. To her right the eyrie opened to the Sharani desert, allowing in light and clean air. Lhaurel was as grateful now as she was those first few days trapped in here for that renewal of air. With that many creatures living and defecating in one place, even with the fresh air the smell was pretty powerful.
Khari stood in front of an odd assortment of individuals before the cavernous mouth, her back to the sands. Most of them were Lhaurel’s age, a handful even younger, though there were a few older individuals scattered among them. They all looked different physically, but they all felt similar to Lhaurel’s heightened senses.
No, actually there were three distinctly different feelings emanating from the group. Lhaurel stopped in her tracks as that realization hit her. She closed her eyes, feeling at each of them. The wettas she recognized almost immediately. It was a familiar feeling, though slightly different from how she felt about her own powers. It was like the difference between sand and the soil found in the Oasis. With a start, Lhaurel realized she could sense which type of magic each mystic held.
She opened her eyes as Khari’s words registered in her ears.
“. . . you are those who have within you the abilities of a mystic. I warn you, the things you will be asked to do in order to unlock your abilities may seem extreme. They may seem strange. They will be cruel. But they are for your own good. We must begin by trying to get you to manifest your powers, find out what type of mystic you are, and that only happens when you have broken through the mental barriers holding back your abilities.”
Lhaurel chewed on her bottom lip. Find out what type of mystic they are? Lhaurel reached out with her extra awareness, eyes closed in concentration. She was close enough to them now that their abilities were easily discernible. Six magnetelorium, four wetta, and eight relampago.
“Girl!”
Cobb’s gruff voice snapped Lhaurel out of her probe of the others in the room. Her eyes fluttered open and she turned to look at him.
The old, grizzled man jutted his chin back toward Khari. “The Matron is talking to you, girl.”
Lhaurel turned back, her ears seeming to suddenly return to functioning in a rush of sound.
“Lhaurel,” Khari said, a trace of mild irritation in her voice. “These are the mystics who decided to stay here.”
Lhaurel turned to regard them, watching as some of them fidgeted under her gaze. Others shuffled from foot to foot or looked down at their feet. There was a distinct feeling of unease, and it took Lhaurel more than a few moments to realize that it wasn’t so much a reaction to her specifically, but to being here and discussing magic at all. Lhaurel remembered her own foreboding as if it were a distant memory, though it was only a few short months ago that she was in here too. She pushed those memories aside before they could get too painful.
“Hello,” Lhaurel said by way of introduction. Some of them looked up and gave her a half nod. “Khari is half right. You will be broken so your abilities can seep through the cracks, but you won’t have to do that to determine which abilities you have.”
Khari looked at her sharply.
“I can tell you.”
With quick efficiency, Lhaurel pointed out individuals and separated them into three respective groups. She was only ha
lf surprised to notice that all four of the wettas were women. She thought she recognized one or two of the faces—they may have once been Sidena—but she couldn’t recall their names. Though the clan itself had not been overly large, Lhaurel had been shuffled around from family to family so much she’d stopped bothering to learn their names outside of a select few. And now most of those were gone.
“Excuse us for a moment,” Khari said when Lhaurel had finished.
Khari grabbed Lhaurel by one arm, towing her away. Lhaurel limped after her, unable to use her cane because Khari had that arm in a firm grip.
“Are you saying you can sense their abilities?” Khari whispered, shooting a quick glance over one shoulder at the assembled groups, some of whom were now whispering among themselves.
“I would think that is obvious,” Lhaurel said, a flush of her earlier irritation returning. “Beryl’s scrolls hinted at it, but it wasn’t until just now that I realized I could tell the difference. I can’t always sense mystics, but that’s only when they’re actually using their powers. Then I can see them using it and don’t need to sense it.”
Khari stared at her, unblinking, lips pursed. “Alright then. I guess I’ll set them to work until Gavin and Farah get back.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you waiting for Gavin and Farah?” Lhaurel had no idea who Farah was, but Gavin she did know.
“Gavin is taking over for Sarial as leader of the mystics,” Khari said. “I assume he’d have Farah train the other relampagos and I’ll handle the wettas. Maybe Beryl can train the magnetelorium . . .” She trailed off, as if thoughtful, and tapped a finger to her pursed lips.
“What are you going to make them do?” Lhaurel asked. “There’s no genesauri for them to skin and no Kaiden here to torment them.” She said the last without letting much of the bitterness out, but it still tasted like an unripe sidium fruit to her lips.
Sharani series Box Set Page 48