Storm Phase Series: Books 1-3

by Hayden, David Alastair

  Sotenda gave them each two sips from a wooden bowl then splashed the remainder into their faces. Turesobei bore the insult because he knew the water would keep them alive for a while longer. Of course, that was probably what the cultists wanted. Sotenda might tire of this, Turesobei reckoned, but Haisero wouldn't stop until Turesobei had suffered at least twice as much as he had.

  A cultist rushed into the room and bowed. “My lords, Garizu has returned.”

  “Send him in at once,” Sotenda commanded.

  Moments later, a baojendari in garb almost identical to Iniru's sauntered into the room. Turesobei recognized the eyes at once. Garizu bowed to Sotenda and Haisero then approached Turesobei.

  “I thought I killed you months ago.”

  “Not hardly,” Turesobei spat.

  A knife suddenly appeared in the man's hand, and he danced the tip of it lightly across Turesobei's throat.

  “Don't hurt him,” Haisero said. “He's mine.”

  “Of course.” Garizu looked over Haisero critically then said, “Is he the one that ruined your face?”

  Haisero's unmarred cheek reddened, and he turned away.

  “I meant no offense,” Garizu said with a shrug.

  “None taken,” Haisero hissed. “Did you get the book?”

  “Of course.” Garizu drew a satchel from his backpack and handed it to Haisero. Sotenda placed a hand on his companion's shoulder, and they gazed at the satchel's contents with awe.

  “You found the other volume, too!” Sotenda exclaimed. “I wasn't sure it existed.”

  “They had them both all right. Stealing it wasn't easy, though. The West Tagana Imperial Library is more like a prison than a place of learning.”

  “Well, you will be rewarded greatly by seeing the return of Naruwakiru!” Sotenda exclaimed.

  “Lovely,” Garizu said sarcastically. “What about money and power?”

  “You will have those things in plenty when our goddess returns.”

  “I would like to be paid now.”

  Sotenda finally looked up from the books, though Haisero continued to brush them longingly with his fingers. “Of course, Garizu. You have done better than I expected, though you are late.”

  “I couldn't penetrate the storm you put up. I waited outside for several days until it dissipated. I killed a denekon getting here before you put it back up. As it was, I still spent several hours struggling through wind and hail.”

  “We had to use the storm to pin down our enemies. The Gawo have not yet given in and the Chonda are not yet destroyed.”

  Haisero lifted the books toward Turesobei. “Now I shall learn greater command of the powers within Naruwakiru's heart. Soon we will restore her! This second text will teach me rituals that can reconstruct Naruwakiru using her heart.”

  “The heart will destroy you,” Turesobei said. “You are nothing more than a second-rate sorcerer.”

  Haisero fumed and stuffed the books into Sotenda's hands. He stormed over to Turesobei and lifted the orb, which throbbed menacingly. The heat from it began to blister Turesobei's face, and he thought Haisero was about to consume him with lightning.

  But Haisero withdrew. “You will not trick me into killing you so soon. I have many hours of vengeance to meet upon you.” He laughed. “You should have known, Chonda dog, that the orb would not respond to you. Naruwakiru would only entertain a high priest or a wizard of quality like me. You don't know the least about the rituals and prayers needed to calm her raging spirit. Besides, the heart hates you. I can sense that well enough.”

  “Soon,” announced Sotenda, “you will see the full and awesome power of our goddess. And you will know firsthand what happens to the fools who resist her.”

  Laughing, Haisero and Sotenda exited the dojo with Garizu. Two cultists remained behind to watch Turesobei and Iniru. Two more stood right outside the door.

  “Are you all right?” Turesobei asked Iniru.

  “I've felt better,” she muttered through her swollen, cut lips. “At least they didn't beat you.”

  “I think they're saving me for worse pleasures than that. I was afraid the heart had killed you when you touched me.”

  “I still feel numb. Every time they hit me at first, sparks flew, like touching metal in the winter. I think your grandfather's lightning charm saved me. If we make it out of this, we must thank him for keeping us alive.”

  “Any chance of winning free?” he whispered, noticing the guards didn't seem to actually be paying them any attention as they knelt at a table and shared a bowl of tea.

  “Not in the state I'm in, if at all.”

  Turesobei sighed. “That assassin, Garizu. Is he a qengai?”

  “No. He's from Okonuji. They're not prophecy-bearers. They use similar fighting techniques, though.”

  Turesobei groaned. “What should we do?”

  “Rest and bide our time until an opportunity presents itself. That's all we can hope for at this point.”

  “I can try Lu Bei.” He whispered the fetch’s name several times, but he didn’t appear. Turesobei could only assume that wherever they had placed his satchel and the diary, it was too far away, given his strength right now, for him to summon Lu Bei.

  Despite the uncomfortable positions they were in, Iniru drifted off into sleep immediately. Turesobei tried to think of ways to win free from the binding spell on him, but he couldn't see any way he to do it without killing himself.

  He cursed Naruwakiru's evil heart. He was certain it would kill Haisero eventually, unless their rituals succeeded in resurrecting her into her true dragon form. But Turesobei had doubts about whether such a thing was possible. He guessed it was more likely that her lingering spirit wanted to possess a human host. But only a suitable one.

  Haisero's talent for handling raw power and his knowledge of the Storm Cult rituals had kept him alive this long. But Turesobei could see the strain in Haisero's face and knew his enemy couldn't last forever this way. Naruwakiru would burn through him to get the host she really wanted. And Turesobei knew the heart wanted him more than Haisero, for whatever reason. The heart only had to break his will first, so that it could gain a hold in his mind and dominate him forever.

  * * *

  Twice more during the first day, Haisero woke Turesobei and Iniru and tortured them. Turesobei grew angry each time, especially when Haisero shocked Iniru. He refused to show it, though. Haisero didn't spend nearly as much time on her, and Turesobei knew that if he let Haisero see how much it bothered him, Haisero would only treat her worse.

  Iniru spent most of her time sleeping. How she could do it, Turesobei didn't know, but he suspected that it had something to do with her training. Pain and discomfort didn't bother her as much. She would begin to breathe deeply, and soon she would be fast asleep.

  Turesobei's arms felt as if they were going to rip out of the shoulder sockets. He would twist his hands and feet as much as he could to loosen them. His muscles ached, the ropes chafed his skin, and his hands and feet had fallen asleep and were now consistently numb. His chest wound was an entirely different realm of pain, and it was starting to burn. He feared infection would soon set in.

  He fell into shallow sleeps filled with dreams of loved ones followed by sudden nightmares. He would see his father paint the sigil on his cheek. The blood burned like the shocks Haisero gave him, and he would scream as the blood turned to acid and ate through his flesh down to his bones.

  Turesobei dreamt of Awasa. She stood naked under a cherry tree. Tender blossoms rained down upon her. They got caught in her lustrous black hair and stuck to her ivory skin. She laughed softly, with a glint in her eyes. She spoke, but he couldn't hear her. She became distressed that he didn't answer, and then she disappeared.

  And he dreamed of many past times and people long dead—daring enemies, beautiful women, exotic lands, dazzling treasures, endless hours of spell casting, and searching through musty tomes. These were, he knew, memories within the kavaru. Most likely they were those of Ch
onda Lu and not the later owners of the channeling stone. Yet he felt they were his memories, and he felt that he was Chonda Lu. And he could hear Lu Bei telling him, “Master, you and the stone, you and Chonda Lu, are one and the same.”

  Suddenly, he was awake, and Iniru was whispering harshly at him. The glint in her dark-rimmed, swollen eyes was nothing like the glint that had been in Awasa's, though he'd seen Iniru's eyes filled with love for him before. Or he guessed it was love. Something like it at least. Right now, a qengai's intensity filled them.

  “Stop dreaming and pay attention,” she said. “Something's going on.”

  “Sorry.” He looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. One guard napped with his back against the wall. The other was shaping a rock. “I don't see anything,” he whispered.

  “Can't you feel it? Something's happening, or something's about to happen.”

  Turesobei opened up his kenja-sight. He began to shake his head and say no, but then he glimpsed a tiny current of air kenja. It seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't figure it out. Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Turesobei hoped for a rescue as the doors flew open. But Garizu, Sotenda, Haisero, and six guards strolled in laughing. Even Garizu was chuckling. Judging from his mood, Turesobei guessed that they'd paid the Okonuji assassin.

  Haisero closed on Turesobei, shooting sparks at him as he went. The cultists continued to laugh as Haisero grasped Turesobei around the neck and shot electricity directly into his body so that he jerked and flailed.

  Haisero pulled back with a look of pure ecstasy twisting his face into a maniacal grin. Then, suddenly, one of the cultists standing guard in the doorway stood painfully erect with his mouth locked open in a silent scream. The body toppled forward with a steel spike embedded in the throat, sparkling amongst the crimson blood. A moment later, the other guard fell.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Haisero, Sotenda, Garizu, and the remaining cultists fell back from the doorway and drew their weapons. Six Chonda soldiers in mud-covered lamellar armor and a bedraggled Onudaka burst into the hall. Grandfather Kahenan strolled in behind them. He looked worn and weary. Water dripped from his tattered robes. One hand rested on the hilt of a borrowed white-steel short sword. The other was tucked into his spell pouch. His kavaru was alight with power. A headband was wrapped across his brow, holding aloft a strange gemstone with a glowing rune Turesobei didn't recognize. Whatever it was, it wasn’t another kavaru.

  Turesobei had never before been happier to see his grandfather. Their eyes met for a moment, and then Kahenan turned his gaze to Haisero. “So, it comes to this, twisted spawn of the Gawo.”

  Standing below Turesobei, Haisero cackled and raised the orb. Lightning blasted forth. At the same moment, Kahenan, with a bamboo strip clutched between his fingers, swiped his hand diagonally across his body and spoke a spell command.

  The thunderbolt fired to within an inch of Kahenan's chest and struck an invisible barrier. Crackling webs of electricity sparked all along the invisible shield. The talisman on Kahenan's forehead glowed a brilliant azure. As the electric web faded, the talisman grew brighter, then….

  Whoosh! The electricity and the talisman’s glow disappeared. Kahenan collapsed to the ground, unconscious or worse.

  “Grandfather!”

  Even as he yelled, Turesobei realized the talisman had worked automatically to protect Kahenan. The spell he had cast, however, did something else entirely, and Turesobei had less than a heartbeat to prepare. The ropes binding him and Iniru disintegrated. Turesobei painfully extended his cramped, bruised muscles as he fell and tackled Haisero.

  The jade orb thunked against the bare wood floor, but it didn't leave Haisero's relaxed hand. The skin of his palm had melted onto the heart's surface. With horror, Turesobei realized Haisero must have done it intentionally so that no one could easily take the orb from him again. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen Haisero's left hand leave the heart since he had awoken as their prisoner.

  Despite her injuries, Iniru tucked into a ball, hit the floor shoulder first, and rolled to her feet. The others rushed into action, and the dojo erupted into a chaotic frenzy.

  The Chonda soldiers engaged Garizu and the cultists, while Sotenda conquered his fear and faced his older brother.

  “We will end our quarrel today, Daka.”

  Onudaka hefted his quarterstaff and rolled his shoulders. “Fine. But it would go easier if you'd just give up. You are not stable, Tenda. You need to return to the priests. They can care for you, help you.”

  “Never again!”

  Sotenda lunged forward. Onudaka parried the attack, sidestepped, and redirected Sotenda's energy. Sotenda stumbled past, and Onudaka slapped the quarterstaff into Sotenda's lower back. Sotenda tumbled to the floor but rolled back up to his feet before Onudaka could strike again. His face reddened with humiliation. Then his eyes narrowed and all the emotion drained from his face.

  “I won't make that mistake again. You have always angered me when we fight, always made me lose control. But no more. I think you were the one who made me overreact to things in the first place. You twisted me and sent me to the priests to make it worse, all because you wanted to be father's only child, because you hated my mother, because you hated me for being what I am.”

  “I never hated you, Tenda. I loved you. And if you will recall, you killed our father and your mother before I sent you there.”

  “It was their fault I was born nazaboko! Not even a noble baojendari's son, but a pitiful bastard of society.”

  Sotenda leapt forward, swords whirring, chipping away at Onudaka's quarterstaff as he parried the blows. Sotenda's confidence increased and Onudaka grew tired. His step faltered, and a sword stroke cut deep across his thigh. Sotenda shouldered into him and knocked him down. The back of Onudaka's head struck hard. He tried to climb to his feet, but only got up to his knees as Sotenda hammered away at his defenses.

  Meanwhile, the Chonda soldiers and the cultist guards fought, but they were not evenly matched. Kahenan had brought the best men available to him. Swiftly, they killed the first four cultists who stood against them. Then they faced Garizu, whose skill they had no hope of matching. Garizu fought with movements so fast that only a qengai could have noticed the subtleties. Within moments, two Chonda soldiers lay clutching fatal wounds.

  Turesobei thought about rushing to Kahenan, but he knew he had to deal with the Storm Dragon's Heart first. Haisero tried to squirm out from under him for several moments before he remembered the power he commanded.

  “Get off me!”

  Electricity flared down his body and shocked Turesobei, who screamed and tried to let go, but couldn't. The current locked their bodies together. Turesobei would have died within heartbeats, but Iniru appeared out of nowhere and kicked Haisero in the jaw.

  The electricity discharged to her instead with a tremendous boom that knocked her back against the wall. Turesobei didn't waste another moment. He reached out and took hold of the orb.

  At the same moment, he said to Iniru, “Help the others!”

  As she picked herself up, again saved only by the lightning wards Kahenan had placed on her uniform, Iniru gave Turesobei a look of admiration, then darted away.

  The energies of the Storm Dragon's Heart poured into Turesobei like liquid fire and tried again to enthrall him. He stood, tugging the heart and trying to exert his will over it. Haisero rose with him and added his other hand to the jade orb. Neither could wrest it away from the other.

  Turesobei's mind expanded as before, becoming one with the storm clouds above. But as he fought to stay with the orb, somehow his awareness ended up hovering above the room, not in his body and yet not in the clouds, either.

  Haisero remained himself, and Turesobei knew at least one reason why the heart wanted him. Haisero couldn't do this. Either he lacked the talent or his cult rituals protected him. And Turesobei was now more than certain that Naruwakiru still wanted him and was only using Haisero to weaken him first.<
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  Sotenda had Onudaka backed up against the wall. Several cuts on his arms and the gash on his leg bled profusely. Sotenda attacked, and his brother blocked the strikes slowly. Sotenda feinted with a lunge, slapping his foot down on the floor. Onudaka fell for the trick and raised his quarterstaff to block the high cut. But the cut never came. Sotenda leapt in and with his off-hand sword stabbed Onudaka deep in the stomach.

  Onudaka gasped, dropped his staff, and slid down the wall. He looked up into his brother's gleaming, hateful eyes. “Finish it then.”

  Iniru had rushed in to help the Chonda soldiers. Despite being injured and exhausted, she was still a qengai. Garizu, on the other hand, was well rested. He was also stronger and more experienced. While Garizu engaged the two remaining Chonda soldiers, she lunged in. He dodged her attack, and elbowed her on the base of the skull. She fell limp.

  The two soldiers attacked when Garizu spun and put his back to them. Garizu parried the sword of one without looking, but the other slashed him across the back. Garizu turned, slowed just barely by the wound, defended against three more attacks, and then disposed of the soldiers in successive maneuvers.

  Turesobei saw, heard, and somehow sensed all of this from where he hovered above the room. Soldiers were dying or dead already. Kahenan and Iniru might be dead as well. Onudaka would soon be murdered. Already, Garizu had turned and eyed Turesobei. The assassin's hand dipped into his vest, to a place Iniru kept throwing blades.

  But Turesobei wouldn't let them win. He wouldn’t let Haisero and Naruwakiru get the best of him. He was a Chonda, and for the moment, he was their high wizard. The fate of his entire clan and the people he loved most in the world rested in his hands. Self-doubt left him—worries, anxieties, and fear as well. The crimson goshawk sigil on his cheek burned more intensely than any lightning strike of Haisero's. The sigil burned down into his soul, connecting to who he was.