Storm Phase Series: Books 1-3

by Hayden, David Alastair

“You — Chonda Lu always called it a fallen star. It comes from the Mountains of the Stars on the far side of the Yundragos Plains, which lie south of Tengba Ren. The stone is an excellent channel of energy, second only to dark iron.” Lu Bei shrugged. “That’s really all I know. I went there with Master once when he sought advice from the High Priestess of the Ojaka’ari, but I didn’t see where the stone comes from.”

  Channels were cut into the stone in complex patterns, except at the base where the channels fed into complex runes. The hexagonal shape matched the flow from the ley lines.

  “Did all the monoliths need to be on intersections of six ley lines?”

  “Only the intersection of two lines was necessary within Tengba Ren, but Master needed much more power to reach across the ocean.”

  It had taken his ancestors three weeks to sail from Tengba Ren to Okoro.

  “Did the monolith work?” Turesobei asked.

  “Unreliably with the homeland, but it did work, especially with the Monolith of Tagana. Until the Great Darkening, of course.”

  Contact between Okoro and Turesobei’s ancestors in Tengba Ren had ceased contact before Chonda Lu had died. Ships stopped coming. Those sent from Okoro to find out why never returned. For six hundred years now, they’d had no contact with Tengba Ren. The baojendari and zaboko cultures had blended together. The baojendari even adopted and modified the native language.

  “When the ships stopped coming, when the exchange of messages stopped from Tengba Ren, why didn’t Chonda Lu sail back? So many others did, but he was the great sailor, the great explorer.”

  Lu Bei shrugged.

  “You don’t know?!” Turesobei said.

  “He wouldn’t tell me, master. He came out here one night to contact the homeland. He spent an hour talking to someone. When he left the monolith, he was shaken. As disturbed as I had ever seen Master. It was worse than what she did to him. I — I don’t know that Master was ever really the same afterward. Whatever he learned, it was bad. That was the last time the monolith worked.”

  “You didn’t ask him? You didn’t hear what was said?”

  Lu Bei pointed to himself. “Don’t you know me? Of course I asked. Day and night. But Chonda Lu refused to talk about it. He banned me from hearing what was said and kept to that decision.”

  “Well, how does it work?”

  “You sit inside and open a channel with the monolith and direct your spell like you did before. The monolith will magnify the distance the magic travels.”

  “You’re sure it will work for me?”

  “Certain, master. All you need to work it is a kavaru, and you have the kavaru of the man who set the monolith here.”

  Lu Bei had explained to him earlier that anyone with a kavaru could communicate through one of the monoliths with anyone sitting inside another monolith: a one-way message to a normal human or a conversation with someone else bearing a kavaru.

  “And there’s no chance of me connecting to the other monoliths?”

  “The one in East Tagana was destroyed by an earthquake. The one in West Tagana was abandoned after the Great Darkening. The others … it would be a miracle if you connected with someone in Tengba Ren.”

  Enashoma listened patiently. Awasa rested. Zaiporo roamed around exploring the plateau, looking for artifacts.

  “How many monoliths were there in Tengba Ren?” Shoma asked.

  “Every major town and city had one, my lady. So … ninety, I think.”

  “How would you know if there was someone there to give a message to?”

  “Receivers were employed to sit in them all day and await messages.”

  Turesobei climbed through the archway and sat in the recess. The channel tugged at his internal kenja, trying to pull it upward through the monolith.

  “I can feel it! I didn’t expect the pull to be so powerful. I’m starting to think maybe this can work.”

  “Master used it for the spell of locating that which is hidden once, so I know you can do it.”

  “What was he searching for?” Enashoma asked.

  “Aikonshi.”

  “Did he find her?” Turesobei asked.

  “He found where she had been. Naturally, she was moving. We tracked her down from there. It … didn’t go well.”

  “Well, I guess I’m ready.” He drew a spell strip. “No sense in putting it off any further.”

  Shoma ducked her head in and kissed him on the cheek. “Good luck, big brother. Find her.”

  “Remember, master, do not panic as the energies go outward. Stay open throughout the process. Fortune be with you!”

  Turesobei sat lotus and meditated, clutching the spell strip in one hand and the letter from Iniru in the other. Embracing the tug of the monolith as it pulled his spirit upward, he chanted the complete spell, as if he didn’t even have the spell strip. He wanted the best possible casting. He opened the channel to the storm sigil as much as he could without risking passing out or entering the dragon dream.

  Turesobei completed the casting. The spell of locating that which is hidden was supposed to reach out and find the object or person, and then give him a sense of what direction and how far, a sense of location that would hopefully stay updated as he went. If it worked well, it would give him a glimpse of the exact location.

  The spell didn’t work that way this time.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The monolith’s channels jerked his consciousness free from his body. Around him, the world hazed into a vague mist of faded and fleeting images, as in a half-remembered dream … as if he had projected himself into the Shadowland, something he’d done only once, cautiously, as a training exercise.

  In this astral form, he rocketed out from the monolith and zoomed over the land. It felt like when he became a dragon, except he was only himself and had no control over where he went.

  This wasn’t how the spell was supposed to work. Worried that something must have gone wrong with the casting, he started to pull back. Then he remembered Lu Bei’s warning to embrace the monolith’s power. Had he known this would happen? Lu Bei was sneaky enough not to tell him.

  Turesobei traveled west of Sooku, up into the central portion of the Orichomo Mountains, the chain separating Batsakun and Zangaiden, through the clouds and high into the tallest peaks. He drifted down onto a ledge fifty paces deep and many more wide. On that ledge stood something lost to the modern world.

  Surrounded by a halo of blue-white kenja was a stone arch the height of two men and wide enough to fit three denekon. Tiny runes covered every inch of the portal. The Ancient Zabokan rune representing winter blazed at the top of the arch.

  The Winter Gate. The portal into the Celestial Realm of Winter, also known as the Ancient Cold and Deep.

  No wonder it was lost. How could anyone get up here to it? But what did this have to do with Iniru and the Lair of the Deadly Twelve?

  He passed the gate and floated through a stretch of tunnels leading from the gate deep into the mountain. His spirit form entered an expansive cavern, illuminated by torches and translucent moss sagging from the walls. One side of the cavern was level, with a polished floor; the other half was rough and interspersed with many raised sections. A series of doors lined one side of the flat half of the cavern. He glided through one door and into a small room.

  On a bed sat a zaboko child, maybe seven or eight, with plump cheeks, silky white hair, and brilliant, ice-blue eyes. She clutched a knitted rabbit to her chest. It was hard to focus for long on her features in this dreamlike state, but her aura burned bright, identical to the kenja that surrounded the Winter Gate.

  Looming over her was a terrifying ghoul of a baojendari man, taller than Turesobei and pulsing an aura of green and black kenja and bearing the ethereal stench of the Shadowland. The ghoul’s white hair clumped in greasy tangles. A tattered crimson robe, belted at the waist, hung loose on his gaunt frame. He was toothless save for fangs, and he had a face that didn’t belong on a man who still breathed. An eight-poin
ted star was tattooed on his forehead. A matching amulet dripping scarlet kenja hung from his neck.

  Turesobei’s breath caught. His heart hammered in his chest. This ghoul had to be one of the Deadly Twelve. Its devilish black eyes passed over him. It didn’t spot him, but that didn’t make him any less afraid of it.

  “All you have to do, child, is open the Winter Gate for us,” the ghoul hissed.

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “How many times do I have to tell you no?” She was impressively brave in the ghoul’s presence. “The priests said that I should never open the gate because the Shogakami imprisoned great evils in the Ancient Cold and Deep. The gate is never to be opened.”

  “No, child, they imprisoned the good spirits of winter there. Okoro used to have in winter the most beautiful snows that would cover the land. Everyone was happier and healthier then.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “I used to be handsome. The reason I am hideous now is because part of my soul was imprisoned in the Ancient Cold and Deep. If you open the gate, I will get my beauty back.”

  “I don’t think that’s true, either.”

  Anger flashed in the ghoul’s eyes. “Once you open the gate for us, you can go free. You can live anywhere you want. In fact, in the Ancient Cold and Deep you would be the Winter Queen. Wouldn’t you like to be a queen?”

  “I don’t want to open the portal. I want to go back to the temple, back to my old life, but you took that away from me so I can’t.” She stamped her feet. “And I don’t want to be a queen!”

  “But it is your destiny. You were born to open the gate and be the Winter Queen.”

  She spun away from him. As she did so, her nightgown lifted from her skin just enough that Turesobei spotted a hint of blue tattoo underneath. He knew those marks from a treatise Chonda Lu himself had written on ancient zaboko rituals. This girl couldn’t be harmed by violence! Powerful zaboko ritual magic that required blood sacrifice shielded her. Knowledge of how to perform the ritual was supposed to be extinct.

  “Just go away!” she said.

  The ghoul locked the door behind him. Turesobei ghosted along after him. In the cavern, the ghoul met up with another, nearly identical to him except for a hint of breasts and hips. She lacked the tattoo and the amulet. Something coiled and slithered like snakes beneath her sleeves.

  “She still resists,” the tattooed ghoul said.

  “We should break her, Barakaros. The sooner the better. Something could go wrong.”

  “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Jaskashi has not yet caught the qengai girl. He has been tracking her for days.”

  “Asusharus, you and Zaharalla are here in the cavern with me and the eight. The girl won’t make it past us. Besides, our brother always catches his prey.”

  Turesobei spotted the other ghouls. One leaning against the opposite wall, four at a tunnel leading deeper into the mountain, and four at the tunnel leading out to the gate. How had he passed without noticing them? The one on the opposite wall, Zaharalla he guessed, was tossing a sickly-looking goop between his hands. A chill ran up his spine as he recognized that the eight had no facial features.

  “I’m certain the qengai girl is what Jaskashi sensed in the child’s room that night,” said the tattooed ghoul named Barakaros. “I think she was there then, hiding from us. I think she came to kill the girl and couldn’t do it. Now she’s trying to save her, or kill her. Doesn’t matter. She can’t get to her, and she never could have killed her anyway.”

  “The Sacred Codex is a joke. Why send one girl after the child, to kill or rescue? It should’ve have sent an army.”

  The two ghouls unlocked a door and followed a long tunnel to a second door. This one was warded by a powerful blood magic, with the most intricate locking rune Turesobei had ever seen. Barakaros placed his hand on the rune and spoke a string of unintelligible syllables. After a few minutes, the door swung open. Inside, a gray-haired, skeletal baojendari man dressed in outdated formal robes sat in a chair, muttering to himself and raking his fingernails over the skin of his arms. Hanging from his neck was a sapphire kavaru.

  Twelve heads lay stacked in the corner. They hadn’t begun to rot. Perhaps because of the cold.

  “Have you come for my head at last?” the wizard wheezed in an oddly hopeful tone.

  “We still need you alive,” said Barakaros.

  “But I performed the blood ritual and worked the spell. You owe me!”

  Asusharus bared her fangs and hissed.

  “I do not fear you,” the wizard said.

  Asusharus stepped forward, but Barakaros held her back. “You called for us, wizard. What do you want?”

  “I want to die. Can’t you see that? I sacrificed three grandchildren and both my daughters. You were dead, trapped in the Shadowland. You were nothing without me.”

  “We killed your upstart apprentice, your former king, and the ten other enemies you named.”

  “And now you’re supposed to claim my head and soul and go. A deal is a deal. I wish to be done with life.”

  Barakaros smiled. “Once we kill you, we must return to the Shadowland again. As long as you live, we have time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time to take our own vengeance,” Asusharus hissed. “We are hiring ourselves.”

  “The sooner the Winter Child opens the portal,” said Barakaros, “the sooner this will end.”

  “Then break her will and be done with it,” the wizard snapped. “You have the power.”

  “Breaking her will could break her mind so badly that she would not be able to open the gate,” replied Barakaros. “I will not risk that unless I must.”

  “Why open the Winter Gate?”

  “To release the One Hundred and the Eight from the Ancient Cold and Deep where the Shogakami imprisoned them. They will serve our vengeance upon all Okoro, slaughtering thousands. The gate shall spread eternal winter and blanket the land in ice. And the One Hundred and the Eight shall rule forever, with no one to oppose them.”

  “You despise this land that much?”

  “Yes! The Jade Emperor tricked us and bound us to this backwater island. We hate Okoro, so Okoro must suffer.”

  “But we hate Chonda Lu even more!” Asusharus hissed.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Because of him we can never come back and be as we were before,” Barakaros said. “For our vengeance to be complete, Chonda Lu must die, along with one hundred and forty four of his closest friends and family. Twelve heads for each of us. Then we will claim yours and cease to be.”

  Chapter Forty

  “No!” Turesobei screamed.

  He slammed his hands over his mouth, but the wraiths showed no response. They hadn’t heard him — he wasn’t really here. That was why it was like a dream — a nightmare, actually.

  The Deadly Twelve … back for revenge.

  Chonda Lu was long dead, but Turesobei wore his kavaru. They were going to kill him. They were going to kill Shoma and Grandfather Kahenan. Lu Bei and Aikonshi. Mother, Awasa, King Ugara and Prince Chien. One hundred and forty-four. The clan numbered thousands. But they would kill his friends and family … everyone in the direct Chonda bloodline. The nobility would be decimated ahead of war with the Gawo. The clan would be ruined.

  Before he could learn more, the spell pulled him out of the room. He ghosted back up the tunnel to the main cavern, then past the ghouls at the entrance to a passage that led deeper into the mountain. He floated through the tunnels, turn after turn. It was a maze of caves and carved tunnels. Sometimes he passed doors or empty rooms.

  Something moved ahead.

  Another ghoulish sorcerer, but this one was different from the others. He was barrel-chested, with bulging muscles and patchy fur on his limbs. Turesobei drifted in front of him and gasped. He had the snout and jaws and wild yellow eyes of a wolf … or nearly a wolf. He was still half-man, but far more wolf-like than Hakamoro.

&nbs
p; This must be Jaskashi. He scanned the passageway, paused, and sniffed. He turned his head toward a crevice. He plunged his arm in. His claws struck stone. He growled and moved away.

  “I know you’re nearby, girl! I will find you!”

  He moved on. Turesobei didn’t. His eyes fell to the bottom of the niche, below where Jaskashi had struck.

  Iniru!

  She crouched in the niche, holding an onyx figurine in front of her. She silently mouthed a chant with her eyes closed.

  Seeing her …. it was like a demon reached in and gripped his heart. Her face was bruised. Her uniform filthy and torn, hanging loosely on a gaunt frame. Cuts lined her arms. But her eyes … her eyes were haunted, terrified. She was lost, alone. As good as dead. She knew it. He knew it. He had to get here, somehow, and save her, but the chance of making it here soon enough ….

  She stopped chanting and glanced around the corner. Her ears twitched. She sniffed. She took off, heading the opposite direction.

  Four jagged cuts had sliced through her uniform and across her back. Festering scabs had sealed over the inflamed wounds. Oh gods. If the ghouls didn’t get her, that would.

  With a hitch in her step, she darted down one tunnel, left turn, right turn, right turn. She went so fast, he didn’t think she even knew where she was going.

  Water pooled on the floor ahead. She dipped her hands in it and drank. Dark moss draped from the ceiling. She ripped a handful down and stuffed it into her mouth. She gagged but kept it down, chewing and swallowing as quickly as she could.

  Iniru ran again. The hitch became a pronounced limp. She grimaced and slowed. A recess opened into a tunnel, immediately past a turn. She paused and glanced around. Her ears flicked. A painful sigh passed through her lips. She limped in and collapsed against the wall.

  She faded in and out. Dozing or passing out, he wasn’t sure. Her eyes widened. They locked right on his.

  “Sobei,” she mouthed.

  She leaned forward and reached out … and her hand passed through him. She coughed a laugh and threw her head back against the stone. Her eyes faded.