“Naruwakiru!” he yelled. “You will answer to me! You will obey me! Me and no one else!”
Turesobei's consciousness slammed back into his body so hard that he staggered and nearly lost his grip on the heart.
Haisero sneered at him. “The heart is mine.”
So many lives had already been destroyed for this one jade orb, for the power of Naruwakiru. But no more innocents would die. Turesobei knew his will was stronger, that he would not give in, despite the odds against him, despite Haisero and Naruwakiru, despite Garizu with his throwing blade in hand.
“Blade!” Turesobei thought, and he remembered the other half of his vow. His eyes fell upon the hilt of Yomifano hanging in its scabbard from Haisero's belt. Then, with sheer force of will, he did what Haisero could not do. He relinquished the Storm Dragon's Heart. His hands slipped away and Haisero exulted in glee.
But even as Haisero fell back from him, Turesobei dropped his hand to Yomifano's hilt and pulled the blade free.
“Sobei!” Iniru cried out weakly.
Turesobei ducked. Garizu's throwing spike whistled overhead, missing its mark. The assassin charged toward him. But Garizu wouldn't make it in time.
Lightning-fire enshrouded Haisero as the heart, jilted by Turesobei, at last gave to him its full power. His mouth opened in a scream of both agony and ecstasy. “I am Naruwakiru!” he screamed, no longer conscious even of himself. Haisero had talent for wielding power, but this was too much. He began to scream and rave incoherently.
The screams made Sotenda spin around before his final strike against his brother. His companion's name issued softly through his lips, and yet everyone could hear it over the roaring of the heart. “Sero. What have you done?”
Turesobei lifted Yomifano and lunged forward. He yelled as he brought Yomifano's edge down onto the orb. The white-steel blade cut into the jade heart with a piercing crack. He drew the sword back for another strike, but it wasn’t necessary.
Fault lines appeared on the heart, glowing crimson and brilliant white. Flailing lightning tendrils shot out from the cleft and lashed everything within twenty feet, scoring cuts into the wood floor, burning holes into the ceiling, filling the air with the stench of ozone. The building shook with thunder. Rain and fog appeared within the training hall and swirled around in a growing vortex.
Garizu halted his charge and backpedaled, but too late. A random tendril struck him in the chest, burned through his ribs, and seared his heart.
The Storm Dragon's Heart began to consume Haisero, sucking out every bit of kenja within him as it tried to repair itself. Smoke rose from his simmering hair. His clothes burst into flame. His screams turned shrill and inhuman and then faded into the sizzling of burned flesh as his body became a blackened hull. Screaming and maddened, Sotenda blindly rushed forward to aid his friend.
Two tendrils locked onto Obu Sotenda and within moments burned him into a smoldering lump of charred flesh. His screams echoed long after his body was no longer recognizable.
The tendrils didn't strike Turesobei. He held Yomifano forward and warded them away. Haisero's body collapsed into ashes and charred bones, but the orb didn't fall. The heart hovered in the air and expanded with larger and larger cracks in its surface. The lashing tentacles of lightning grew longer and multiplied in number.
Turesobei glanced at his fallen grandfather, to Iniru who was pulling herself up to her knees, to Onudaka who was breathing heavily and clenching his hands over the wound to his stomach. He couldn't get them out of the room before the tendrils reached them. It was only a matter of moments. And the imminent explosion he now sensed would probably level everything for miles around anyway.
A tendril lashed out toward Turesobei, and he dispersed it with Yomifano. At that moment, through some mental connection he still had with the heart, he understood how it had been made so powerful. Hundreds of storm spirits had been bound into the heart and were now seeking to escape. That was what had so greatly increased her power millennia ago. And to rebind the spirits would require a new, unbroken vessel. It would require dozens of wizards and powerful blood magic. Years of preparation would be necessary.
And Turesobei had only Yomifano. The sword could disrupt much of the energy, but it could never cut through all of it. But there was something he could do.
He waded toward the heart, slashing tendrils of lightning with the white-steel blade, killing storm spirits with every sweep of Yomifano.
“Sobei!” Iniru called. “Don't take it.”
“There's no other way to save everyone.” He smiled and almost said, “I love you.” But what he was doing said it better than words ever could.
Turesobei drew Yomifano back and reached out his free hand. Lightning struck him and alternating waves of numbness and pain shot up through his arm, through his shoulder and into his chest and head. But he remained confident, and the lightning didn't kill him.
Because the heart wouldn’t kill him. It wanted to be saved.
He kept the image of Iniru's worried face in his mind. For her and for Kahenan and for Onudaka and for all the Chonda, he willed the hateful orb to obey him and called on the blood-magic sigil Noboro had drawn onto his cheek. It was all he had to call upon, so it would have to do.
The goshawk sigil flared, the amber kavaru of Chonda Lu glowed like the sun, and Turesobei screamed as kenja from the Storm Dragon's Heart poured into him at full strength, as he became the vessel for the heart's power. His flesh did not burn as Haisero's had, so he knew in part that it was working, though his body did glow as if he were made of lightning. He dropped Yomifano. Tendrils of lightning wrapped around him and lashed him across the back.
Time meant nothing to him anymore. His only thoughts were of what he must do. The orb emptied, and the jade fragments clinked and clattered onto the floor.
Turesobei staggered out of the manse and down to the lakeshore. His insides began to boil. His skin began to bubble. Pure glowing kenja seeped from his eyes and from in between his fingers where the skin had split open. But he willed the energies to stay within. Just a few moments more, that was all he needed.
Envisioning the magic runes of banishment, Turesobei commanded the storm spirits to go far out into the upper reaches of the atmosphere where he hoped they would dissipate. Then he fell to his knees and unleashed a primal scream.
A bolt of lightning, the size of a hundred of the largest bolts ever seen on Okoro combined, shot out from his mouth. The bolt pierced the sky for twelve agonizing heartbeats. A thunder blast rocked the land for hundreds of miles with the force of an earthquake.
Turesobei's burned-out body collapsed onto the cold shore with a final breath wheezing out from between his lips. His heart stopped beating, and with it faded his last pain-filled thoughts.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Turesobei glided along on the currents high above Okoro. The land scrolled beneath him, a patchwork of valleys and plains, forests and rivers, all dominated by hills and mountains. Large cities like anthills dotted the coasts. Towns were motes of dust. Coiling reefs wrapped around the shores, and the ocean stretched out endlessly beyond. Turesobei felt omnipotent and eternal, free without the least restraint. Was this an afterlife? The path to the heavens? Perhaps this would soon end and his soul would be reborn into a new body. Perhaps he would ascend into a realm of bliss. Of course, he hadn't attained perfection in life, but maybe the gods would reward him for the sacrifice he had made for his friends and family.
For days he lived like this, as a cloud above Okoro. Sometimes he flew high and nearly froze. Other times he swooped down low and dropped rain onto the land. Never once did he rage and storm.
And then one day, Turesobei rolled across his homeland. Below him, zaboko farmers struggled to rebuild homes and gather food stores for the coming winter. Their fields lay in ruin. Rice paddies had been washed away to the ocean, livestock had drowned, fruit had been torn away by the winds. Townspeople fared no better. Things were worse for them. Farming supported t
hem, and the farmers had no food to share. Ekaran was half ruins. Soldiers worked in the fields all around and were helping to rebuild homes. Repairs to the palaces would have to wait for winter. The people had to come first.
Turesobei's pride in his lineage swelled, and his heart ached that so many had been hurt by the Storm Dragon's Heart. And then he felt his body, his actual physical form below. He wasn’t dead. Not yet. He was a cloud, and yet he was like a kite in the wind with a kenja string tethering his soul to the earth. He could let go and fly away with perfect freedom. But his people needed him. Loved ones surely missed him, and there would be endless labors for a high wizard's apprentice at a time like this.
I may even be the High Wizard now.
Turesobei knew he must return.
The dream that was more than a dream ended. Turesobei's lungs pulled at Cloud-Turesobei, drawing his spirit back in. He opened his eyes to daylight streaming through his bedroom window. He was alive. And strangely enough, he felt good. His muscles were cramped as if he hadn't moved them in days, but that was all. Over the last weeks he had endured wounds and complete exhaustion, even torture, and the effects had lingered and plagued him. But now, he felt good. Perhaps better than ever before. Something or someone had healed him entirely. How many days had he been asleep, recovering? Weeks? Months?
Turesobei sat up, and immediately his sister tackled him.
“Sobei! You're awake!”
Turesobei laughed as he fell back onto his sleeping mat. “I am, Shoma.” He hugged his sister tightly and his eyes began to tear up. “I'm awake and I'm alive.”
“Of course you're alive. Nothing could kill my big brother. Not even Naruwakiru.”
He pulled back and looked into her bright, admiring eyes. Tears streaked down her face. She dabbed at them and smiled. “I've got to go tell the others.”
“Wait, Shoma. Grandfather….”
The smile drained from her face. “He's alive, but we don't think he's going to make it.”
“Did he wake up?”
“Only once, they said, after you broke the orb and then released the lightning into the sky—we saw it all the way here—then he fell into a coma.”
Turesobei’s heart sunk. “What about Onudaka and Iniru?”
“Onudaka's recovering. It'll take him a few more weeks, but he'll be fine. He's been downcast, what with his brother's death and all, and he's been worried about you. Iniru is recovered, too. She’s already practicing her martial arts again. She checks on you all the time.”
He smiled all the way down into his belly. “Shoma, how long has it been?”
“Two weeks.”
“And I just lay here asleep the whole time?”
“You glowed sometimes.”
“What?!”
“You'd better let one of the wizards tell you about it. I think it's just some of the excess energy discharging from you.” She touched his cheek. “There's also the…well, I should let someone else tell you about that.”
Turesobei frowned, but he had so many questions that he decided not to pursue it. “Besides you, who's been—”
“Master!” cried a voice from the hallway and Lu Bei, bearing a tray with a steaming—and now sloshing—cup of tea, zoomed into the room. “Master, you’re awake. You’ve returned to us!”
Lu Bei was a good six inches taller than before and there was an indigo lightning bolt sigil emblazoned on his chest. Turesobei was stunned. “Lu Bei, what happened to you? You’ve grown! And that symbol….”
Lu Bei carefully set down the tray. Then he shot into Turesobei’s arms. “Much to tell, master. Oh, there’s so much to tell you.”
“Lu Bei has been helping me,” said Enashoma. “He’s very dedicated, and he doesn’t have to sleep. And he is so incredibly awesome!”
“But he’s not supposed to be seen….”
“Oh, well,” said Lu Bei, sitting back, “I wasn’t having any of that. Master needed me. Besides, I never left the house. Only Enashoma knows about me. Not your mother or the servants. I am careful not to be seen.”
“Wait, how could you be in your fetch form while I was asleep? And travel so far from me? And—”
“The storm energies, master. They affected us both.”
“Because we are linked by the kavaru?”
“You absorbed so much energy. In turn, the kavaru and myself took on some of that power. That is why I am changed now. I’m bigger, faster, and I even have a few magic tricks I can do now.” The amber fetch lifted his hand and sparks shot out from his palm. “See?”
“That’s very impressive, Lu Bei.”
Enashoma was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “Please let me go tell everyone the news. Lu Bei can answer your questions.”
“Go on then.”
Enashoma skipped out of the room. Turesobei touched his cheek. It felt tender, like a bruise, where the Sigil of the Chonda Goshawk sigil had been. Kenja still gathered there. With the vow complete, it should have left him, but if anything it had grown twice as intense. Yet he had used the blood magic to contain and release the heart's power, so anything was possible. He really shouldn't be alive, and he didn't doubt strange things had happened to his body over the last week.
“Lu Bei, how did I survive the blast?”
“I’m not certain, master. All I know is that the energies healed instead of killing you. I mean, your heart did stop. Iniru had to resuscitate you, but after that you were fine. One of the wizards who checked on you said you had the kenja of a newborn babe, only a hundred times more of it. You're still charged with energy from the heart.”
“Do you know how Grandfather found us?”
“He had secretly placed a tracking charm in your armor, and they rode a team of denekon to death to reach you while the storm was down. After the fight, the remaining cultists fled.”
Soft footsteps pattered down the hallway. He recognized them immediately and said, “Niru,” as soon as she walked into the room.
“Sobei,” she replied in a warm, smiling whisper.
Iniru took his hands, and he drew her toward him. She held back at first, until he assured her she wouldn't hurt him.
“I don't know how you're all right,” she said. “Honestly, you should be dead.”
“I know. Lu Bei says you revived me.”
“That should not have worked.”
“But it did,” he said cheerfully.
“You're not worried about it? That seems unlike you.”
He shrugged. “I'll worry about it later. Right now I'm just happy to see you again.”
Their eyes met, and then their lips.
“Ahem!” said a woman.
They drew apart as Wenari, her face painted with disgust, marched into the room. Iniru backed away, as if cowed, though Turesobei knew that was only an act to keep things civil. Lu Bei was suddenly a diary, an inch thicker than he used to be, sitting on the table. Wenari's expression threatened an outburst, but then she exhaled and relaxed. She gracefully bent, hugged her son, and kissed him on the forehead.
He hugged his mother and assured her he felt fine. After a few moments of having her coddle him, he asked for food and water. He was absolutely starving. “Cold things only, please. I don't want anything hot.”
“I'll see to it, my poor darling.”
Wenari left, and Iniru knelt beside him.
“You don't have many friends,” Iniru said.
Turesobei groaned. “Thanks. That's just what I needed to pick up my spirits. I almost die and that's what you have to say to me?”
Iniru shrugged. “You seem well enough for some criticism. Besides, it's true. No one has come to check on you except the two of us, Imi and Shurada, and a bunch of adults. Lu Bei, of course. And the ones who weren't your instructors were all nobles whose well-being depends on your well-being.”
“I don't have time for friends. And I don't get along well with people, either.”
Iniru agreed. “Shoma and I have decided you need more friends. A f
ew male associates your own age would be good for you. Sobei, you just don't even try to get along with people.”
“What about Awasa? Did she even bother to ask how I was?”
“Oh, I forgot. She checked up on you.”
“Yes, she did,” Enashoma said, returning to the room. She handed him something from the table beside his sleeping mat. “She brought this letter here for you and actually sat with you for several hours.”
“You're kidding, right?”
“Nope.”
“What does the letter say?”
“How would I know? I didn't open it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Check the seal. See? No one touched it.”
“I don't believe it, as nosy as you are.”
“Niru wouldn't let me open it.”
“Ah. Well, I'll read it later.” He set the letter on his pillow. “Niru, what's this about my cheek? Shoma wouldn't tell me, and I didn’t get the chance to ask Lu Bei.”
Iniru and Enashoma exchanged glances. There was a puff of smoke and Lu Bei joined them.
“Well,” Iniru said, “the goshawk is gone and a new sigil has replaced it.”
“Bring me a mirror.”
Lu Bei returned with one. Turesobei stared into it. The crimson goshawk sigil was gone, and in its place rose the storm-blue and black sigil of Naruwakiru, reminiscent of a jagged lightning bolt within a cloud, all contained by a black circle.
“It won't wash off,” Enashoma said. “We tried.”
“I'm cursed,” Turesobei muttered.
“The wizards were concerned about it,” said Iniru.
“They should be. I used the blood magic my father started to bind the storm kenja within me. I had hoped only long enough to release it. It seems not all of it left. Lu Bei and I are carrying quite a bit of it.”
“The clan wizards,” Enashoma said, “are still puzzled by how all of this worked out. They kept mumbling that none of what happened out there should've been possible. We really need grandfather to figure it out, but he may not….” She couldn't finish her statement.
“After I eat,” Turesobei said, “I'll go visit him.”
Storm Phase Series: Books 1-3 Page 29