“I have been ready for three years. I'm nineteen now and you still treat me as an apprentice.”
Turesobei thought of how Kahenan taught him and how he sometimes felt constrained and treated like a child. But he always knew that Kahenan was being fair and had his best interests in mind. He certainly hoped he wasn't as pompous and arrogant as Haisero when frustrated.
“You are a journeyman sorcerer,” Yureigu said. “You cannot do everything.”
“But I can, Father! Look at the orb!” Sparks of lightning shot forth from the Storm Dragon's Heart and arced into the sky. “I control the heart of Naruwakiru. I control the very storm that ravages our land and the Chonda’s. I can stop it and punish only the Chonda, but you'll have to make me the High Wizard and my friend Sotenda must become the heir to the kingdom!”
“This is ridiculous!” countered King Gawo. “And who is this ruffian anyway?”
“I am the High Priest of Naruwakiru!” announced Sotenda.
“He is a great man and my dearest friend,” said Haisero. “He is the only one who has understood me, the only one who has comforted me and helped me develop my true talents.”
“This charlatan is using you,” Yureigu said. “He has turned you against us.”
“He has allowed me to wield the sacred power!”
“Any two-bit sorcerer could do what you are doing, son. Look at you. Your face is scarred, and so are your arms. The heart is consuming you.”
“I gained those scars when I first wielded the orb, but I know all the rituals now.” A maddened look took over Haisero's eyes. “I have been chosen to wield the heart. No one else. And I won't bear your presence any longer. I do not have to. You have hurt me for the last time!”
Haisero lifted the orb, but Sotenda rushed forward and grasped his arm. He pulled him close and whispered to him. After a few moments, Haisero relaxed.
“If you will not meet our demands,” Sotenda announced, “then you must pay our ransom. Otherwise, we will destroy you.”
“What ransom?” King Gawo said.
“One hundred thousand jade, fifty denekon, all the white-steel you have, and those lives Haisero wishes ended.”
“My father, my mother, and my siblings!” Haisero screamed. “Give them to me! I will sear their bodies with the goddess' sky-fire!”
Haisero cackled and twitched until Sotenda calmed him again. The orb was killing Haisero, starting with his mind. And Grandfather wanted Turesobei to take it!
Sotenda gestured toward the Gawo with his sword. “If you do not meet these demands, we will destroy all your holdings. You have three days.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Iniru leapt up and tugged Turesobei with her. “Back to the denekon! I have a plan.”
As they mounted, Turesobei glanced back. Haisero held the heart aloft and shouted. The storm tunnel collapsed past him, stranding King Gawo and his men in the raging storm. Laughter rang out from the cultists as Iniru urged their denekon into a sprint.
“Keep an eye on them,” she said.
“We're going down their tunnel?”
“It must lead to their base, don't you think?”
“Yeah. Ride fast, though. We can't let them spot us.”
Soon, the cultists were out of sight.
“Niru, what are we going to do when we get there?”
“Wait until we have a chance to steal the heart. We can't fight them all at once.”
The denekon began to foam around the mouth, and their bodies heaved with deep breaths. Turesobei and Iniru slowed them to a jog, the medium pace for a denekon, because denekon could only hold to a sprint for a few minutes at best.
An hour passed, and with his kenja-sight Turesobei caught a slight glimpse of the heart’s aura. “They're getting close.”
“How fast are they going?”
“A jog, I would guess.”
“This mount can't keep going. We're going to have to abandon the tunnel.”
She urged the poor denekon into one last sprint, which turned out to be slower than a normal jog. They left the tunnel and rode into the forested hills. They dismounted and peered out, through the storm, at their enemies from behind a bush-covered outcropping.
Suddenly, the cultists sprinted toward the spot where Turesobei and Iniru had exited. As they moved, the tunnel closed behind them. The cultists roamed about looking at tracks. They discussed something amongst themselves, but after a few minutes they began to move on.
Haisero hesitated, and then he called out a command.
The storm's intensity doubled, as if a full hurricane lay overhead. A relentless gale forced Turesobei and Iniru to crawl along the ground, holding their heads down to keep debris out of their faces. Lightning increased with bolts randomly striking all around them. Twice Turesobei felt electric currents run through the ground beneath them. The enchantments Kahenan had placed in their armor protected them from harm.
Drenched by the downpour and bruised by hail and flying debris, they inched forward. At times they pulled each other along. Turesobei led them, trusting to his sense of where the heart lay.
A towering water oak moaned and creaked beside them. Iniru climbed to her feet and dragged Turesobei with her. “Run!”
They ran with the wind at their backs. The tree crashed down behind them. The topmost of its limbs struck and knocked them down, but they suffered only a few more scratches and bruises.
“We've got to keep moving!” Iniru yelled over the wind.
“I can't take much more!”
“No choice!”
“We should at least find shelter and rest!”
“Only if we have to! Otherwise, Haisero will get away from us!”
Turesobei lay panting, ready to give up, but Iniru pressed her face against his and kissed him. That gave him the strength to go on. If he gave up, she would be lost, too. They crawled onward, and at last they reached the shore of a swollen, thrashing lake.
The wind switched directions again and now blew water from the lake along with sand from the shore into their faces. Turesobei held an arm across his face and looked at the lake as best as he could.
“The heart's on the opposite shore!”
“Are you sure?”
“Look closely. It’s not storming on the other side.”
“We'll have to find a way around.”
“It's calling to me stronger now.”
“Are you sure it's safe for you to go to it?”
“The alternative is to die in this storm.”
“Well,” she said, “which way should we go, left or right?”
“Neither.”
“Then how do you plan to get there?”
“Through the lake,” he said.
“Are you mad?”
“It's the fastest way.”
“With all this lightning, we'll get electrocuted if we go into the water.”
“We'll have to take that chance. The armor will help protect us.”
“But there's no way we can swim that far in this weather!”
“We're not going to swim it,” Turesobei said. “We're going to walk across the bottom.”
“Magic? Are you strong enough for something like that?”
“Grandfather taught me the ritual when I was a child, when I first learned to swim. I haven’t done it in years, though.” He took a deep breath and thought about all the steps the ritual required. “I'll need to rest for a little while, and I'll need some shelter. Some place where I can scribe the runes.”
Lightning struck a tree nearby. With a loud crack, the oak split down the middle. The peal of thunder nearly threw them to the ground.
“Gods!” Iniru cursed. She tugged Turesobei down into a safe crouch, further away from the water's edge. “You can't just cast the spell now?”
“No. It’s a ritual. It takes time.”
Iniru sighed. “The hill we passed a half-hour ago. There are some outcroppings at the top. Perhaps we'll find a cave there. The lightning may be worse, though.�
��
“Just do your best.”
“Sobei, it might take less time just to go around the lake.”
“We need to go through the lake. I'm sure of it. I've been here before. Two creeks flow into the lake on one side. We'd have to cross them, and there's a swamp to the other side. Besides, if we come through the water, we can sneak into their camp. They'd never expect that.”
Iniru nodded. “Well, at least you’re beginning to think like a qengai. But be careful. If you black out while casting, we can't rest out here for days.”
“Don't worry,” Turesobei said darkly, “I'm using blood magic for this spell. If I pass out, I'm sure it will kill me. I see that look in your eyes. Don't even start with me. I've made my decision.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
The water was dark and murky, as if the black clouds above had bled onto the earth. Weighted down by their gear, Turesobei and Iniru trudged across the lake bottom like clunky marionettes being walked across a stage. Muck stirred with every step as they crossed land that had once lain far outside the lake's edge.
The ritual of watery life gave them air to breathe, taken from the water itself, but it did not grant them sight through the darkness. They couldn't see more than five feet ahead, and even the spell of darksight couldn’t penetrate the lake’s murkiness. A rope tied around their waists kept them together. Turesobei just had to trust the call of the Storm Dragon's Heart to lead him in the right direction.
Waves chopped on the surface above, illuminated by lightning flashes. Muted rumblings of thunder reverberated within the depths. So far, lightning hadn’t struck the lake, but it was only a matter of time, so they went as fast as they could. Turesobei had no idea how deep the charge from a strike might travel, and he didn't care to find out.
The frequency of drowned plants decreased as they descended into a depression lined with slimy tendrils growing from a thicker muck of leaves and decay. They had reached the lake proper, as it had been before the storm caused so much flooding.
“We're maybe a third of the way across,” Turesobei said. His words sounded normal to him.
“You sure the spell will last long enough?” Iniru said. To Turesobei, it sounded as if she were speaking into a giant, wobbling vase.
“Of course,” Turesobei lied. He couldn't be sure how effective the ritual had been, cast through tremendous fatigue and performed in a shallow, waterlogged cave. He’d done the best he could, though.
A strangely garbled, high-pitched voice, almost a wail, called out, “This is our lake!”
“What?” asked Iniru.
“Our lake,” the voice said again.
“Some type of nadaji,” said Turesobei. “A water spirit. I can think of nothing else.”
“Sobei! I felt something stirring past me. It wasn’t a fish.”
They glanced around fearfully but saw nothing.
“Our lake!” the voice wailed.
“We are sorry to intrude!” Turesobei called out. “We seek only to cross to the other side. We are trying to stop the storms! I promise we will not harm anything within your lake.”
A terrible green face appeared in the murk before them. Turesobei and Iniru both gasped, sending a mass of bubbles toward the surface, and stumbled backward.
“A shaidera,” Turesobei muttered.
Shaidera were the dreaded, tyrannical queens who ruled many nadaji colonies. This one looked angrier than those depicted in the bestiaries Turesobei had studied. A green-blue luminescence highlighted the lines of the shaidera’s distorted, half-human and half-fish face. Large fins fanned out from the sides of her head. Air bubbled out from gills at her neck. The nadaji queen wore only a necklace of shells. Except on her smooth, pink breasts and stomach, scales covered her body. She had a tapered body as tall as Turesobei with a sinuous, eel's tail twice that length. Her flesh beneath the scales, like that of all proper nadaji, was made of compressed water but within that water was muck from the lake bottom and luminescent algae.
A score of transparent, algae-stained nadaji gathered behind the shaidera, and schools of large carp massed behind Turesobei and Iniru.
Turesobei made a half-bow. “We are sorry, dear queen, for intruding on your territory. We just need to get across to the other side, so we can stop the storm that rages above and floods our lands.”
“My domain is growing,” she said. “Why should I wish for the flooding to stop?”
Turesobei glanced fearfully at Iniru then continued. “Well, the waters would not be stirred so much. And the lightning—”
“None of that bothers us below, in the deep. Your sword, that bothers us. You must remove it and yourselves at once. Return from whence you came!”
Turesobei dropped a hand to the hilt of Sumada, his father's white-steel blade which Kahenan had insisted he carry on this trip, though he'd given it back to him as a replacement for Yomifano.
“I would not harm you with it.”
“But you would stop the expansion of our domain,” she hissed.
“The expansion is not right. It’s not natural. You would not ultimately profit from it.”
“I will decide what benefits me, not you, foreigner.”
“Please let us pass,” said Iniru. “We must to save our people.”
“I care not.”
Turesobei had tired of this. The water breathing spell wouldn't last forever. Taking care not to pierce the energies of the spell surrounding him and Iniru, he drew the white-steel blade and leapt forward. Faster than he could move, the shaidera darted out of reach. But he kept the blade drawn and held it forward.
“You will let us pass or I will destroy you.”
“You may try!” she said. “But you will fail!”
Turesobei swung the sword in a wide arc and stopped it, just barely, before he cut into his spell. Water spirits fled in all directions, though some surrounded their queen.
“I see that you've had few dealings with people, but that is no excuse. We are not here to harm you. People are destroying our land and changing yours. Soon everything will be different. Other lakes will join this one, and other queens will compete with your power. Your lake may even grow into a new sea and touch powers far beyond you. I know this, for I have encountered spirits greater than you.”
Turesobei was not sure of this last, but there was no reason to let the shaidera know otherwise. The queen didn't reply, and the other nadaji remained silent.
“Come,” Turesobei said to Iniru. He moved forward carefully with the sword still drawn. Spirits parted from his path, but the queen didn’t move. Fish gathered around her.
Turesobei hesitated no longer. “Donusai arukai!” he yelled, calling out the command of a binding spell. He placed only a slight burst of kenja within the binding spell. Not so much that it would weaken him or could work. A natural spirit like these was ten times more difficult to bind than a shadowy Zhura demon. However, the spell worked in the manner he had intended. The queen fled in fear, though the fish stayed behind to exact her revenge.
“What did you do?” Iniru asked.
“I threatened her with a binding.” And she was too ignorant of people to know it couldn't work. “We must hurry.”
They half-ran and half-swam along the bottom, swinging their weapons to cut through the schools of carp and catfish that charged and battered them. They got ahead of the larger fish and reached a precipice where the lake bottom plummeted down.
“We have to swim now,” Turesobei said.
Iniru cut the straps to her pack. “We'll have to go without our supplies. Keep only what you must.”
With fish swarming about and banging into them, they abandoned their non-essential gear. Then they swam out, still weighted by their light armor but not so much that they immediately sank into the depths.
Turesobei kept up an awareness of the energy currents, which was tiring with his other spell going and with the storm above. It was good that he did, though, for as they neared the old lakeshore on the opposite side, the n
adaji began to stream toward them.
“She's decided I'm too weak to bind her. I think they'll try to rush us. You go ahead of me, and I'll try to ward them off with the sword.”
Iniru let slack into the rope, many feet of it, and swam ahead until he couldn't see her. She was a much faster swimmer than he was.
The first nadaji reached him and Turesobei knew he couldn’t hold back any longer. He felt sorry for them, for their queen had led them to this. Most water spirits were peaceful. Only the shaidera carried such venom in their hearts.
The sword swept through the first ones rushing him. There were bubbles and an increase of muck as if the bottom had been stirred and then those spirits were gone.
But more charged, and so he swung and slashed, destroying dozens. One reached him at last. A solidified hand of water punched him hard in the stomach and he recoiled, gasping out bubbles. More charged him, and the queen rose into view behind them carrying a spear.
The rope jerked taut, and he was pulled backward with speed. The spirits rushed toward him, and he continued to strike out with the sword. At last his feet brushed against the bottom, and he turned and ran up onto the shore. Iniru pulled him with the rope that she had wound once around a tree on the bank.
There was no wind above, not even a slight breeze. Overhead, the sky wasn’t dark but a light grey and no rain fell on them. They had reached the eye of the storm.
The shaidera rose onto the surface. They saw her, illuminated by a lightning strike. She threw the javelin of petrified oak, and before Turesobei could get away, it struck him in the chest and knocked him to the ground. He felt Iniru tugging at him. He stumbled. And then he felt nothing at all.
Chapter Fifty
Turesobei groaned as he awoke. He opened his eyes and saw, dimly, Iniru hunched over him. “Unnh, where are we?”
Iniru slapped him on the back of the head. “Shh!”
“Ouch!” he whispered. He looked around, but except for a shaft of moonlight he couldn't see much of anything. Wherever they were, it was dank and dark like a cave, and wooden crates were piled in front of them.
Storm Phase Series: Books 1-3 Page 26