“Don’t be silly, Johnny, Dalph wouldn’t do that!”
“Uh-huh. Should have seen him when he got word you’d been taken.”
My hero. “Does Trusca have like Judo or Karate, or something?” I asked.
“Cabrote,” Johnny said.
“Cabrote?”
“Combination of stuff, got a little of everything in it. Lot of work, lot of conditioning. Fluid, smooth. Like dance moves almost. Hard to counter, an opponent’s never sure what’s coming. Ain’t gonna be easy, darlin’.”
“I will never be helpless again!” I reiterated, and so the next few days passed, full of physical activity that blessed me with the benefit of easy sleep-filled nights until the full moon waned and the Tornans rode back through the gates.
Johnny had been right; Dalph seemed very pleased by my new goals, though I don’t think it had filtered through to him yet that I fully intended to participate in adventures that he probably wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about, but as I certainly wasn’t near the level of skill that would even make such participation feasible, I didn’t worry about it. I would be near the level of necessary skill, and sooner rather than later, even if I died trying. Dal was flat-out delighted, and was, I was somewhat surprised to find, considering his age, an excellent teacher. Johnny’d been right; he looked for ways to turn liabilities into advantages and as such, was just what a female, late to the study of swordplay, required in the way of martial education.
The nights were heaven. Dalph, somewhat disappointed immediately upon his return to find that Mother Nature was in residence and consequently curtailing activity to a certain extent, was considerably mollified by my instigation of a few sexual activities. I didn’t think, based on his amazement at my reactions during our two first hurried encounters, he’d be familiar with them, but I was certain he’d be ecstatic.
He was, and in fact, jokingly accused me of trying to kill him. Then Mother Nature departed and more mutual activity resumed, turning the nights even sweeter and when, finally sated, we slept, we slept so entwined with each other that it was difficult for me to tell where one of us stopped and the other began.
I’d never been happier in my life. So of course, I was only allowed a few weeks of such perfect contentment before this damned country and her damned gods raised their heads again and once more, bit me in the butt.
I woke slowly, at first uncertain as to what had roused me, and then I realized that I was almost wringing wet and so were the bedclothes, and that the arms circled around me were pouring sweat and shaking. I sat up quickly, moving out of Dalph’s arms, whose hands, although he was not awake, rose to cradle his head as he moaned.
I shook his shoulder, calling his name, my mind running through the list of possibilities. Heart attack? Stroke? Epileptic seizure? Some Truscan malady with a high fever? It wasn’t a full moon and I’d never seen the change—but was something wrong with the moon’s cycle and was he shifting? Did it hurt? I hoped not, I’d hate to think of all the Tornans going through this every time the moon came full.
“Dalph!” I kept shaking and finally he sat—bolted, actually—upright, still holding his head between his hands with a final cry that tore my heart.
“Dalph, talk to me! What is it?”
“It’s in the mountains to the south. Five, six days ride, maybe more.”
“What is?”
“The Power Stone. It’s calling me. I have to go.”
I didn’t say anything, could not, in fact, have said anything at that moment had I tried. I got up and grabbed some toweling, wiping down my arms and slipping into my chamber robe. I came back to the bed and started toweling Dalph’s chest and back; he looked as though he’d just emerged from a lake.
“C’mon, you have to get out of that bed, it’s drenched,” I urged, and he stood and slipped into his own chamber robe. I started pulling the covers back to get them off, and he stopped me.
“No, it’s almost morning anyway, leave it for the girls. Come, just sit with me.”
He pulled me over toward the fireplace, settled in the chair, and I settled in his lap, almost afraid to start talking. I think he was, too, so I bit the bullet.
“So Brentar the Strong told nothing more or less than the truth. The stone did help him save Trusca. And it does call when it’s needed.”
“Apparently so.”
“What was that your mother said? She wasn’t Truscan enough to find the answer?”
“Nor me. Or any of the last kings who’ve searched. So simple. Just wait. You can’t find it, it must call you.”
I didn’t want to put into words how truly frightening it was that in all this time, the stone had called no one between Brentar the Strong and Dalph, so I didn’t.
Dalph spoke again. “I’ll leave at first light. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Promise me that you and Johnny will hold Trusca for Dal if I don’t come back.”
I sat up, stiff as a board.
“You wait just a minute, here! I’m going with you!”
“Absolutely not!”
“Absolutely so! Even if you leave me locked in the dungeon, don’t you think that Dal and Johnny wouldn’t let me out, because they would! The minute you ride out the gate! And I’ll start following the minute they do!” How absolutely astounding that in such a short time, one’s whole position in life could change so radically. And they would let me out no matter what Dalph’s orders would be, both because they loved me, and because they respected my intelligence enough to trust my judgment. Or at least, I hoped my judgment was worth trusting.
“Dal needs—”
Damn him, he was going to make me say it. “Dal does not need me! Not right now! Because Dalph, the stone has called no one in over five hundred years! If it’s calling now, then there is no hope for Trusca or Dal or any of us if you don’t get to it and find out what the hell it wants you to do!”
“You won’t be able to keep up with me.”
“I most certainly will! And besides, suppose it calls you again? To keep you on course? It almost killed you, I thought you were having a stroke, you’d be helpless if something happened while you’re in the middle of one of those-those-whatever the hell that is the stone does to get your attention!”
“All right,” he said quietly, which was almost as scary as the fact that the stone was calling in the first place. It was not an easy thing to convince Randalph of Trusca to change his mind.
“All right? Just like that? Are you sure you’re not really hurt, or—”
He shook his head. “No, I’m not hurt. Well, my head still throbs a little. I didn’t want to actually say it, but since you did—no, whatever’s about to happen, if I don’t get to the stone, nothing else matters. And I want you with me no matter what happens. It seems-maybe-maybe you’re supposed to be with me, my head stopped really pounding as soon as I agreed.”
“Smart stone,” I said and got up to summon the girls. No point in waiting until morning, we needed breakfast and we needed supplies. I started issuing orders. I was getting pretty damn good at this queen gig.
We didn’t leave at first light, but it wasn’t long afterward when we prepared to mount the faltons in the stables, Johnny and Dal standing silently to the side. Johnny was shell-shocked, I think; Dal rebellious. He wanted to go, too, and stubborn as his father, tried one last time.
“Two is not enough on such a quest. Please let me go with you, I won’t be any trouble, I’ll—”
Dalph stepped in front of him and knelt on one knee, so that Dal didn’t have to look up.
“Son, you are the heir of Trusca. We can’t take you with us. Trusca is your responsibility should anything happen to me. And Johnny will help you hold her just as he helped me. Please don’t make us ride away with the memory that you’re angry at us.”
Dal threw his arms around his father, and I moved in to get my hug, too. We led the faltons out of the stable and prepared to mount. I looked back before I urged Andromeda into movement and could see the tears
on Dal’s cheeks as he stood by Johnny, Johnny’s hand resting on his shoulder.
“Johnny, you will take care of my son, won’t you?” I called back.
“With my dying breath,” he answered, and there being no kindness in delay, not for us and not for the ones we were leaving behind, we touched our heels to the Faltons’ sides and raced through the city gates, headed south, toward Trusca’s stone of power, which had finally decided to make its presence known.
Chapter Twenty-One
One summer during my college years, some of my friends got a hare-brained urge to drive cross-country to Los Angeles and unfortunately, they’d convinced me to go with them. What I remembered most about that drive is that once you passed out of the last wooded areas of East Texas, the country from there to the California foothills consisted of nothing but miles and miles of nothing.
This was pretty much the same thing. We were out of the usual patrol boundaries within a day and a half of leaving Trussa, into country that was not totally unknown, but seldom explored, as the Truscans concentrated their energy on the threat before them, not on the emptiness behind them. We relied on the dried provisions packed in our saddlebags, and we were lucky enough to find a little water here and there. Dalph didn’t want to waste riding time on hunting, and fresh meat became a fond memory, much mourned by the fourth day.
The nights were uneasy; we were restless in each other’s arms, and I was afraid to fall fully asleep in the event the stone decided to call Dalph again. I hadn’t been exaggerating when I argued my case for accompanying him based on the fact that he was virtually helpless when the stone reached out to him; I couldn’t imagine the pain that had made this man actually moan aloud in his sleep.
During our fifth night in what I had privately dubbed to myself the Truscan Badass, with some uncharted mountain range looming larger and larger, the stone did call again, though thankfully not with the same impact as it had attacked him back in Trussa. I was alerted this time by that fact that he was shaking, but at least he wasn’t wringing wet (and a good thing, too—it was cold out in the Badass at night), and he wasn’t moaning. When I got him awake, he admitted that his head ached, but said that it wasn’t anything like the first time.
“So what does it mean? Are we close?”
“Yes, another day, maybe two. But-but—”
He seemed at a loss as to how to explain, which surprised me, as I believe I’d made it abundantly clear that Dalph was extremely articulate in both Truscan and English. I tried to help out.
“But are we going the right way?”
“Yes. But it’s showing me things, things I don’t understand.”
“Like what?”
“We’re in Pria. I think. The capital.”
“And that would be?”
“Well, we call it Pig City. The Prians call it Prius.”
“And what else would you or they call it? Of course. So the Truscan troops are invading?”
“I think so. But what’s happening, what I see, I don’t know what could do that, there’s nothing, no weapon that I know of—”
“The stone?”
“No,” he said immediately. “It’s not the stone itself. I don’t know how I know, I just do. But the city’s on fire, only not all at the same time, and Kruska’s stronghold, it’s still intact. But the fires are moving, they’re coming, only not together. It’s like one structure goes up in flames. And then another does, only it’s not the next structure as it would be in a fire; it’s one several buildings over. And I don’t know, I’ve never seen—”
I hated to see him so agitated. And I had never thought to be so Truscan, but that’s what this journey through the Badass was doing to me. The closer we got to the mountains and the stone, the more I believed that the stone had helped Brentar the Strong save Trusca, and that it would do the same for Dalph.
“Let it go, Dalph. When we get there, it’ll tell you. Let it go. Let’s try to get a little more sleep, dawn’s still pretty far off.”
We settled back down and did at least grab a few hours of rest, however fitful, and though Dalph said we were close, the start of the actual mountains slowed us somewhat. I equated the mountains with those of the American west; not the towering Rockies, but the mountains further west and south, like the Sierra Nevada range, beautiful, but precipitous and treacherous. We still hadn’t made it by the next night, when the stone sent Dalph the same message.
“But what is it trying to tell me?! I’ve never seen anything like that, Tess! We have nothing, nothing, in this world that could wreak that type of damage!”
“You have the stone,” I repeated. “And it’ll tell you.”
And by early evening of the next day, we approached the entrance to a cave, and even I knew the Power Stone was inside. It hummed; raw power crackling through the air. An ordinary horse would have been spooked, I’m sure, but the faltons never even tossed their heads; rather, it seemed as though the humming was calling them home, too. And what further proof did you need, I thought, that the faltons were überhorses, beloved creations of the Truscan gods?
We dismounted, dropped the faltons’ reins loosely over the scrub on the outside of the cave, and walked toward the entrance. Dalph and I paused as one, and joined hands. No one had laid eyes on the Power Stone of Trusca for five hundred years, and only a fool would not be fearful. Both of us had a lot of faults, but neither of us was a fool. We gave ourselves a couple more seconds and then, there being nothing left to do but walk inside, we did.
Our respective reactions, which were not exclamations so much as softly breathed prayers, immediately labeled us as products of our own worlds, no matter how Americanized Dalph was, or how Truscanized I was becoming.
“By Trusco’s sword!”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God!”
They twinkled; they entranced; they beckoned. The lights that pulsated from their centers met and merged and played against each other as they ranged over the light spectrum, varying shades of red twining with orange and yellow, hitting blue, changing to green, darkening to indigo, twisting to violet and then to darkest royal purple, constantly shifting rainbows of color dancing in the air above not one, but five of the legendary Stones of Power, arranged in a circle on the pillar of stone that stood in the middle of the cavern.
We simply stood and stared for a moment, entranced, in awe. They appeared to be made of clear crystal and yet managed to capture within them every shade of color. They varied in size from probably four inches in circumference down to one. If the legends were right (and why should they be doubted at this point?), the largest stone would have been the one originally hidden in Trusca. There was a noticeable gap in the circle, a gap wherein, by my calculations, the second largest stone should stand.
I was the first to break the silence.
“The legends say that Canton of Canor terrorized the world, looking for the Power Stones.”
“Yes.”
“And so obviously, Brentar was either always ahead of him or behind him. And brought them all here.”
“Yes. Except one.”
“Pria’s stone.”
“Exactly.”
“You think—”
So close had we grown, both physically and emotionally, that there was no need for me to complete the question.
“I know. I know that Pria has found the stone. And it’s in Kruska’s stronghold. That’s why in the visions the stone sends me, the surrounding buildings are in flames, but the stronghold isn’t. We have to reach Pria’s Power Stone.”
“Yes.”
“But I still don’t know how.”
“I don’t think the stones went to all this trouble to just leave us hanging. We wait.”
“We wait. Let’s tend to the faltons, they’ve earned a rest.”
“Should we make camp here, do you think? In the cave?”
“Yes. I think I ought to be near the stones.”
That certainly made sense, though it was a little disconcerting to be so close to
this legendary power source. We brought the faltons in, unsaddled them, and left them to move freely about. There was actually a small spring on the far right side, which would certainly make the wait easier, both for us and for the faltons. There was no worry that they would bolt or stray, as there would have been with ordinary horses; both Pegasus and Andromeda would stay near us.
And when we had settled in, for how long a wait we didn’t know, we sat down beside each other on the bedrolls that Dalph had fixed as comfortable as possible, locked hands, and stared at the stones. It was hard not to; they were mesmerizing, and in hindsight, I think they intended to be, were meant to be. In only a matter of minutes, I found myself actually unable to look away and, I swear, began to feel myself float. Then I heard the wind. The noise began as a slight whistle and quickly moved into what felt like gale-force, a physical impossibility in the confines of the cave. I clutched Dalph’s hand even tighter, struggling to hear him as he spoke over the rushing roar.
“Tess! The moon! The moon is—”
And then I heard no more until I came to my senses, how much later I didn’t know. No bedroll was beneath me; I felt the softness of sugar sand. I opened my eyes to the night sky; velvety blackness as only graces the semi-tropics, with brilliant points of diamond star light dancing over the slow and inevitable movement of the tide. I didn’t feel Dalph’s hand; I was holding onto soft fur. The moon, he’d been saying something about the moon. I shifted my eyes, and there it hung, not fully risen, but at least fully emerged from the depths of the ocean waves. It was yellow. And it was full. And I knew why we were here.
I struggled a bit to sit up, the sand kept giving way beneath my hands, as only the finest beach sand does, and over to my right, saw the landmark that, to my relief, established for me exactly where we were. I reached over to Dalph.
Miami Days and Truscan (K)nights Page 16