Grackas’s face emerged from behind a cloud. “Fine. Let’s hear it.”
“Rael?” Shann prompted. The boy was still staring at his boots. She felt like jabbing him in the ribs and telling him to buck up, but she restrained herself.
Finally, his mouth moved. “It’s hopeless.”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure whether he was speaking of the current dilemma or of their relationship. Then he continued. “Lyall indicated that it all had to do with this stuff.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a dull, flat metal slab. “Slag. It’s the runoff that’s produced when lodestone is refined from ore.”
“So, what does it do?” Leskin asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. As far as I can tell... ”—Rael tossed it onto the ground in front of him—“... it’s worthless.”
Keris leaned forward. “Are you quite certain?”
The boy let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe we misinterpreted Lyall’s signals. Or... ”
He glanced sideways at Shann for the merest instant, but she caught the full force of the unspoken accusation as surely as if he had slapped her across the face. Or maybe he was deliberately trying to mislead us. She glared at him, but his face was turned away from her once more. No. I won’t believe that.
Grackas finally shattered the hiatus. “Well, if that’s all, then I suggest we each retire and consider what is best for our people.”
He got up without waiting for consensus. Slowly, like sleepwalkers, the others dispersed. Keris, the last to leave, opened her mouth as if to say something, then clamped it shut and wandered off, leaving Shann seated all alone in the place of slaves.
<><><><><>
Chapter 43
It was a lake of pure ice, marred by a single scission. It was a dammed-up flood. Waters upon waters. Pressure building. It was a flow of magma, heaving against an ancient cap of rock...
She found him seated alone on an empty pallet in one of the former tribute huts. Hands wrapped around his knees. Sullen.
“What was that about?”
No reaction. No indication that he had even heard her.
“Are you listening to me? I said, ‘What was that’?”
Eyes rose to meet hers. A vast empty space lay behind them. “What was what?”
“You told them it was hopeless.”
“It is.”
“But you promised me that you wouldn’t give up. You promised.”
“Why don’t you ask your friend Roanol? Maybe he has some ideas?”
“Roanol?” she spluttered. “What’s he got to do with it?”
“I don’t know. Y... you two seem to be getting along p... pretty well. That’s all.”
He was making less and less sense.
The ice sundered. The dam burst. The mountain exploded.
“You’re an idiot. You know that? An idiot. You think you’re so smart. You don’t know anything. I wish I’d never met you.”
She turned on her heel and wound out of the hut like a windstorm. As she blew across the compound, her eye fell on the discarded slag. Without thinking, she picked it up, shoved it inside her tunic, and headed out into the open desert.
~
The suns were incandescent lamps, floating in a red-gold pool. The desert was a burning brass bowl. She carried neither shade nor water, but she did not care. If I die out here, what will it matter? she told herself.
She whirled over wind-sculpted dunes and kicked up sand in long-undisturbed gullies. After a while, she glanced back and saw that the compound had dropped out of sight, although the upper part of the fortress was still visible, like a black scar.
She flopped onto the sand and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. Stars danced in the black. She dropped her hands and blinked at the flood of new daylight.
Rael. She hated it when he got this way. All she had to do was say the wrong thing or look at someone the wrong way, and it was like talking to a wall. Was it her fault if someone like Roanol was nice to her?
Besides, there were far more important issues at stake here. The survival of all of them. Why couldn’t he see that?
She extracted the small slab from her inside pocket, placed it on the sand in front of her, and stared into it.
Worthless. That was what Rael had called it. Lyall had used the same expression. What was it he said? His throne will be elevated. Well, that had certainly been fulfilled in a literal sense. The keep now dominated the skies above Chalimar. And nothing of worth will ever bring it down.
Then he had handed the slag to Rael. The slag was ‘nothing of value’. The link was too clear—too obvious to be coincidental. But if it was worthless, what possible use could it be?
There was something else—something Lyall had said to her.
Remember your first lesson, Shann, and all will be well.
It was during their earlier journey to Gort. She had donned the flying cloak for the first time, and he taught her the basics—scanning for deposits, balancing lodestone and bronze, controlling jumps. At his suggestion, she took up a position directly on top of a deposit and fully extended her lodestone layer. The next thing she knew, she was hurtling upward like a cork in a fountain. She ended up sprawled flat on her back, while Lyall stood over her, laughing his head off. It was a pleasant memory and she lingered with it a while.
Her forehead wrinkled. That was actually her first training session. Her first lesson had taken place a few days previously—on the day that she and Lyall had first met.
She sat at the kitchen table at the farmhouse in Lind, hands folded in her lap, whilst a man with fair hair and intense blue eyes explained how the Keltar use the power of lodestone. Using the training stones, he demonstrated the properties of attraction and repulsion and how pushing and pulling the stones produced different effects.
She asked about ‘Kal stones’, from the story of Kal the Wise. He had set up the stones in the appropriate configuration to show that there may indeed have been truth to the legend.
A thought struck her. A familiar chord. She dived into her pouch and pulled out Lyall’s training stones that she had retrieved from the wreck of Annata’s Reach. Ahead of her, in the shade of the gulley, a small flat rock protruded. She hastily brushed away the loose covering of sand. Was it possible? Had the answer been staring her in the face all along? Her fingers trembled as she began methodically setting up the stones.
~
In a corner of the compound, close to the now disused ore carts, Keris, Patris, Alondo, and Rael held their own private council.
“It’s bad,” Patris reported. “People are talking about breaking up— going their own way. Grackas’s troops don’t want to hang around and wait for the Keltar to show up. Most of them seem determined to head for the wasteland to the south, on the grounds that the Prophet’s forces are less likely to chase them all the way down there. The tributes just want to return to their homes and families. Can’t say I blame them.”
Keris cast an eye about the compound. “Where’s McCann?”
“He went back to the fortress,” Patris replied. “He claims he’s suffering from the effects of the three suns. Says there’s only one where he comes from. Boxx went with him. Not sure why.”
“What about Shann?” she asked. All eyes settled on Rael, but he merely shook his head and stared at the ground.
“I do have some good news,” Alondo said. “I Rang Oliah after the meeting broke up. I just needed to hear her voice. It seems that the Prophet’s forces withdrew from Sakara this morning. They’ve all been ordered back to Chalimar. The port city is free once more.”
Patris was all smiles. He clapped Alondo on the back. “I told you the Thief Guild would drive them out. This is a great day.”
“No. No it isn’t.” Keris’s face was a thundercloud.
“What are you talking about?” Patris demanded.
“Don’t you see? Wang now has the power to create lodestone weapons in short order. If he were going to strike a particular l
ocation, the first thing he would do would be to get his people out of there. He intends to hit Sakara first, probably as a salutary lesson of what happens to those who actively resist his rule. I’m afraid we’ve run out of time.”
There was a commotion from the direction of the main gate. They turned to see Shann running towards them as if a horde of sand scarags were on her tail.
She screeched to a halt, flushed and breathless; hugged Alondo, released him; then flung her arms around Rael and kissed him full on the lips. The boy looked as if he were about to die from shock.
“I know it,” she panted.
“You know what?” Keris inquired, patiently.
“I know what Lyall’s plan is. I know what we have to do.”
<><><><><>
Chapter 44
The second meeting was a very different affair from the first. Soldiers, tributes, and townsfolk crowded around the large table in the casemate, pushing and shoving like curious children for a better view, while Shann held centre stage. Carefully, she laid six of the smooth atramentous stones on the table in a perfect hexagon. Then she took a seventh stone and placed it so that it floated above the others, resting on invisible lines of force.
“Kal stones,” she began. “Each of you knows the legend. The great and wise Kal was led into the wilderness, where he first set eyes on the stone of destiny cast from the heavens—a gift from Ail-Kar, the white sun. Lyall showed me the power behind the legend—the power of lodestone. The Prophet and the Keltar exploit this power for their own ends, but it is not exclusive to them. The lore can be learned by anyone.
“The Prophet, the Unan-Chinneroth, has used this power to rend the keep from its foundations and raise it above Chalimar. I now believe that Lyall was behind this—that he flattered or goaded the Unan-Chinneroth into a useless and extravagant display of power, both as a way of buying time and as a means of bringing about his ultimate destruction. Lyall has turned the keep, the Prophet’s throne—the seat of his power—into one gigantic Kal stone.”
The crowd was pressing in on Keris, so that she looked distinctly uncomfortable. “How does that help us?”
“The system is not stable.” It was Rael. Understanding was beginning to dawn behind his eyes.
“That’s right,” she said, rewarding him with a warm smile. “Any significant interruption in the forces”—she knocked the aerial stone with her finger so that it fell to the table with a clack—“will bring it down.”
“How you gonna knock the flying keep off its perch?” someone from the audience cried.
“That is the second part of the plan,” she said. “And it’s the part where we come in.”
She plucked the fallen stone from the table and set it in mid-air over the tabletop once more. “Lyall discovered a vital piece of information from Lafontaine—another hu-man we met during our travels. When refined lodestone is extracted from lodestone ore, it produces a by-product: slag. Slag is widely believed to be worthless— of no practical use—but it does have one interesting property.”
She pulled the slab from inside her tunic and began to move it slowly through the empty space between the floating stone and the others on the table. Suddenly, the airborne stone toppled and fell to the table once more. “It interrupts the force of lodestone—disrupts it, so that its power is no longer effective.”
The fallen stone’s surface swirled as if it harboured a miniature storm. Patris stared into it. “I don’t understand. Why has no one ever figured this out before?”
“The Prophet taught the Keltar lodestone lore,” Keris replied, her face grim. “No doubt he told us as much as he wanted us to know.”
“Actually, I think it’s more likely that he knows nothing about it,” McCann said. “He’s no more a scientist than I am. All he cared about was building the weapon to destroy your people.”
Patris ran thin, bony fingers through his lank, black hair. “Yes, but there are heaps of it at Persillan. How come a Keltar hasn’t flown over them and fallen out of the sky?”
Keris flattened her palms, bringing them together and then apart. “Slag merely interrupts the push between lodestone and lodestone. Even if a pile was dumped directly over a lodestone deposit, it would simply mask the lodestone beneath it. The cloak would not read anything to push off.”
“Can this stuff really bring down the keep?” Grackas demanded.
Shann did her best to sound confident. “If we bring a sufficient quantity of slag into Chalimar and lay it over the sections of transformed lodestone that support the keep, then the keep will fall.”
“It would mean massive destruction to the centre of Chalimar,” Leskin rasped.
Shann nodded. “We would have to evacuate the affected area as quietly as possible.”
Rael spoke as if he were the only one in the room. “The best thing would be to beat it out into overlapping plates. It’s a soft metal, so it should be pretty easy. The plates could then be dragged over the pockets of transformed lodestone on the ground. We need to know what thickness would be required for the slag to remain effective. I can do some tests on that…How many pockets are there?”
The question was addressed to no one in particular, but Grackas spoke up. “I do not know.”
“We will need to find that out,” Rael mumbled.
“How many would we need to disable?” Shann asked.
“Depends.”
“On what?” Shann prompted.
“Number and size of each pocket, radius of the surrounding ring, height of the keep’s centre of mass.”
“So you can work it out?”
His face brightened as if he had just woken from a trance. “With the correct data, absolutely.”
Grackas leaned forward. “There’s a problem with your plan. Bringing that amount of slag into the centre of Chalimar, and getting it into position, is going to take time and involve a lot of people. I told you, the entrances to the keep are heavily guarded. Even if we move in at night, they are going to realise something’s up. The Keltar and soldiers will descend from the keep on those floating platforms and put a stop to your efforts.”
“Then we dam up the entrances.” Keris glanced up. A roomful of people were waiting for her to elaborate. “We divide our forces, secure the routes to both platforms, and hold them with everything we’ve got until the slag is in place.”
“The Keltar control the platforms,” Grackas said. “How do you propose to reach the flying keep?”
Keris’s eyes flashed. “I think I know a way.”
~
The ethereal song of the Chandara suffused the air once more, enveloping the forest like a diaphanous blanket. At length, the larval Chandara emerged from the undergrowth and surrounded Keris and Boxx, crawling over one another or standing on hind limbs for a better view.
Keris took a deep breath. “Boxx and I have returned, just as we promised. We are here to lead you out of your forest.”
The creatures parted and before them stood the wizened Chandara, supported on its crooked staff. “Chandara Will Not Leave The Forest. The Chandara And The Forest Are One.”
You could order them to leave. She had made the suggestion during their journey to Illaryon, but Boxx was resolute. I Will Not.
You overruled the chief the last time.
The creature replied as if reasoning with a child. Young Chandara Do Not Instruct Adults. My Future Is Of Me. Their Future Is Of Them. They Must Decide.
For once, Keris understood the Chandara’s reasoning. However, it made her job that much harder.
“I mean no disrespect,” she began. “But if we Kelanni are to help you, then it will be necessary for you to leave your forest for a short while.”
“Where?”
“At the edge of the forest, groups of Kelanni are waiting for you. They will conduct you to their towns and villages. There is where you will be transformed.”
“Kelanni Despise Chandara.”
“Those who are with us are called ‘The Fourth Circle’. They h
ave pledged to assist the Chandara in their transformation.” In truth, she had told Miron that if any of his people objected to helping the Chandara, then the Heroine of Gort would be happy to ‘explain’ matters to them personally. No one had taken her up on her offer.
“There is something else.” Keris tried to wring the desperation from her voice. “Those who enslaved us—those who burned your Great Tree—have now taken refuge in... in a high place, a place we cannot reach. When you have been transformed, we need you to fly us there, so that we may remove the threat to both our peoples.” Orange, yellow, and purple leaves rustled in the silence. “Will you help us?”
The larval Chandara stirred like leaves in a breeze. Finally, the chief spoke. “A Destroyer Walks Among You.”
A Destroyer Walks Among You. The chief had said the same thing during their last meeting, but she had assumed that it was talking about her, as a former Keltar. It must have meant someone else—those who had set fire to the Great Tree, perhaps.
“You are mistaken,” she said, raising her voice so that the mass of Chandara could hear. “The destruction here in Illaryon took place when my companions and I were far away from here. I can vouch for each of them.”
It was Boxx who replied. “The Children Speak Not Of Here, But Of The Forest And The Chandara Beyond The Great Barrier.”
The Forest of Atarah. But... according to the old-timer she spoke to in Kieroth, that forest, along with its Great Tree, had been destroyed decades before. With the exception of Patris, they would all have been children at the time. Shann and Rael would not even have been born.
“I’m sorry, but what you are saying is not possible.”
Boxx gazed at her with an expression that might have been sympathy. “I Can Show You The Truth.”
“You can show me? How?”
“I Can Give You The Memory.”
The aged Chandara shuffled forward and raised its head. The effort seemed to sap every ounce of its energy. “Chandara Memories Are For Chandara Alone.”
Boxx gazed down at the wizened creature, her bejewelled eyes scattering the forest’s gentle fire. “Remember... Once, Long Ago, There Was A Sharing Between Chandara And Kelanni. Keris Must Know The Truth.” Boxx addressed her. “Allosteric Activation Induces Synaptic Plasticity.”
The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) Page 106