Are ‘they’ Daramons? Use your telepathy to ward them off.
I’m not good at telepathy like you are. I don’t know how!
Velsa clutched her head.
Dennis looked grim. “Get on my back. We’ll go to her.”
“But—”
“No arguments. We all go together. I’ve been living alone in the woods, going slowly crazy, for two years. If someone’s important to you, you have to try.”
She climbed on his back. “Thank you.”
Kessily was watching them, slumped in the entrance of the rocks, looking resigned to the situation.
Dennis ran. “What happened to you?” he said. “You’re heavy!”
“I’m stuffed with diamonds!”
“Oh. Well, I hope I get one, after this.”
“You can have three diamonds. One for each girl you rescue.”
Another shot put an end to their chatter. This one had a different quality, with more boom and crackle. Sorla, are you all right?
Velsa gripped Dennis tight. An explosive could hurt Sorla more than a simple rifle shot.
“Almost there!” Dennis made a perilous leap down from some rocks, hitting the ground hard. He dashed toward a few men in gray uniforms, immediately punching one of them in the face.
Velsa tumbled off his back, trying to avoid the fray. “You could have warned me!” she said, but he wasn’t paying attention. Three soldiers were fighting with him at once, trying to grapple him and beat him with the butts of their rifles.
Where was Sorla?
Velsa ran a few steps, trying to distance herself from the brawl, before she spotted another soldier crouched in the brush. He was looking at something—
Sorla, pinned under his boot.
Another shot rang out behind her—this one sounded like a pistol. She glanced back. Dennis clutched his stomach for a mere second before he continued fighting.
Velsa blasted the fourth man with her mind. All of the soldiers seemed to be Daramons, and thus relatively easy targets for her. This also suggested they were not looking for Velsa or Dennis specifically, they just happened to be patrolling the woods—security had probably been increased everywhere.
The soldier was knocked back into a thorny bush, an extra lucky break for her. As he tried to free himself, with a more pointed burst of telepathy, she knocked him out.
Her head was throbbing, though. He might not stay out for long.
“Sorla?” She hurried to help Sorla up.
“Velsa? Is that you?”
“It’s me. I have Pin’s face.” Velsa was glad someone noticed. She was positive Dennis had no idea.
Sorla’s chest had been blasted, busting few of her ribs.
“They have some explosives,” Sorla said.
“Yes—I see that.” Velsa looked back at Dennis. He was down to two opponents, and one of them looked hurt, but Dennis had slowed down too.
“Help me get them,” Velsa said.
“I’ve never used my telepathy before!”
“Imagine your anger is a hammer hitting them in the head.” Velsa took her hand.
“Okay.” Sorla sounded determined. She clutched her head and a second later, the wounded man clutched his too as her powers reached their mark.
It wasn’t much, but it gave Dennis an opening to take him down, while Velsa knocked the third man to his knees. She was trying to knock him out, but it didn’t seem to have worked. He had more natural telepathic resistance than the man who had been pinning Sorla down, and she was tiring.
From where he had fallen, the man threw a knife at Dennis.
It stuck in Dennis’s side. He growled.
Velsa sucked in her panic and tried another telepathic attack, still clutching Sorla’s hand. She felt Sorla’s mind with hers, weak but eager to be useful.
He went down for good, head slumping in the dirt.
Dennis had yanked out the knife, but he looked even more pale than usual, despite the golden light of sunset. Then he yanked his shirt up from his waistband, to look at the wound. It was bleeding sluggishly, and didn’t look especially bad. “I think it was poisoned,” he said. “I feel funny.”
“Oh—no—” Velsa put a hand on him. His skin was still cold, as always. “I wish I had any skill at healing…”
“I don’t know how well you could heal me anyway, since I’m already dead. I think my body has to let it run its course…” He looked at the men collapsed around him. “Daramon blood might help.”
“Yes,” Velsa said, hopeful again. “Just a little. Quickly.”
That was the moment three teleportations split the air, and another trio of soldiers appeared.
Chapter 18
“Go,” Dennis snapped at Velsa.
“Go?”
“Yes. Take Sorla. Go. I’ll be all right. I’ll find another way to get out of here.”
“But—we all go together.”
“All I really want is to go back to America anyway,” he said. “You truly want to go to Laionesse. So go. Keep those diamonds for me, though, in case.”
He sank burgeoning fangs into the wrist of one of the fallen Daramons, and the newcomers’ attention was immediately on him.
Hand in hand, Velsa and Sorla ran. Velsa shielded them from attention, but once they were reasonably out of sight, she shifted her focus to Kessily. We’re coming! Wait for us!
It was almost dark before they had climbed up the rocks that Dennis had jumped so easily before, and made their way back to the cave. Kessily was waiting, shifting nervously from foot to foot.
“We lost Dennis,” Velsa said.
“For good?”
“I think so…he wants us to go on without him.”
“Gods. All right. We’d better go, then. It’s already late. Get the lantern and the map.”
Velsa was stuck playing navigator, not an enviable position when the terrain was dark, rocky, and treacherous and she could have used her hands free. They forged their way down a path that was barely a path, staying mostly quiet as each of them concentrated on the task. Kessily’s breathing sounded increasingly labored as they trekked uphill.
Velsa’s mind was already tired from the skirmish with Dennis, but she still kept her senses pricked. We really could have used Dennis. His hearing was so acute.
But the moon was almost full. That was a blessing—at least, for now. Maybe less so when they tried to sneak Grau out of the northern camp.
They reached Flynn’s designated meeting place eventually. Velsa had no idea what time it was by now, but Flynn was waiting with a boat pulled up onto a patch of shore.
A disconcertingly small boat, long and wooden, open to the elements—perhaps able to seat ten people at best. Not that she probably should have expected more out of their escape boat. But both she and Sorla were very vulnerable to getting wet, and if they fell overboard that was the end of them.
“You made it,” Flynn said. He didn’t speak until they had climbed down to the shore, obviously wary of shouting. “Thank goodness. I was starting to worry. Where is Dennis?”
“He stayed behind to fight the guard…,” Velsa said. Flynn didn’t seem to notice her face was different either, although it was dark.
“Damn. Well…if Kessily can make it out, I’ll have to consider it a successful mission.” He was wearing rugged all-black clothing. He looked to Kessily and gestured to the boat with a flourish. “Will this boat suffice, madam?”
“It’s better than a rowboat, so it’s better than I expected, although sails would have been nice.”
“I packed a few things up for you under the seat. Blankets, a canteen of water, sunrise cakes.” This was a dense concoction made of light bean paste, dried fruit, crushed coffee beans and stimulating herbs, obviously intended to keep Kessily awake.
“You’re not coming?” Velsa asked.
“No, no, I like to keep my friends and enemies nearby, and lately they’ve been one and the same. You’d better go. No time to waste. I’ll see if I can find out wha
t became of Dennis and send him along after you if I can.”
Kessily stepped into the boat with an air of authority. Velsa and Sorla followed more reluctantly. The wooden structure of the boat creaked as they all settled onto the seats.
“Watch out for sea monsters,” Flynn said.
“Are there—?” Sorla’s eyes were wide.
“No,” Kessily said. “Don’t scare the children.” She lifted a wing and the boat scooted off the shore and skimmed into the water, as if it weighed nothing. “Good-bye, Flynn!”
“You grew up on the river, didn’t you?” Velsa asked Kessily.
“I’ve spent more time on the water than I have on land,” Kessily said. “I’ll get us there safe and sound, supposing nothing else goes wrong. But I’d better not get too conversational. It’s a long trip.”
The water was fairly calm. The waves had a gentle roll that made Sorla very nervous, but Kessily had a sense of them. Velsa trusted an accomplished sorcerer; she knew how well Grau was able to feel the world around him and work with it. Kessily had the eyes of a girl who never slept and had perhaps forgotten how to do it. Even though it was late and they had hours of travel ahead, she didn’t look like she would need any sunrise cakes for a while.
The tiny boat traveled close to the shore, following the rocks. Hills, steep-faced and carpeted with green, made beautiful and forbidding silhouettes. There was almost no sign of civilization, north of the congested city, just the very rare light on a hilltop.
Before long, Sorla started to droop. “You can sleep on my lap,” Velsa offered, and the girl settled her head onto Velsa’s cloak. Velsa resisted the urge to push a stray curl off Sorla’s cheek. Sweet Sorla, Velsa thought. She’s never had any kind of a life. I hope Laionesse is good to her.
They traveled through the night. Sorla slept, Kessily navigated, and Velsa sat in wide-awake silence. It was calm now, but she couldn’t rest, knowing where they were going but not what they would find.
As hours passed, the landscape changed. The glow of bright lights rose against the sky behind the hills. Electric lights. And then they started to pass occasional guard posts and lighthouses dotting the shore. Velsa used her telepathy to deflect attention, but every time, she wondered when they might be unlucky enough to brush past a Halnari with particularly keen awareness.
Just before sunrise, Velsa suddenly felt Grau in her head.
Please let me see Velsa again.
Please let Velsa be all right if something happens to me.
It was like listening in on his thoughts. He must have been thinking of her so hard that she felt it. Grau? What’s going on?
She sensed commotion. He was moving around, stirred from sleep, grabbing things and talking to people. He seemed too distracted to receive her projection.
“Damn,” Velsa whispered. “I’m picking up something from Grau. I think they’re under attack.”
“What’s going on? Can you ask him?”
“No…it doesn’t really work like that. We can’t have a chat in our heads across the miles. Sometimes we just send each other a muddled mess of emotions.” Velsa sighed. Sorla stirred from her sleep.
“Is Grau okay?” she murmured, like she had half-heard the story in her dreams.
“He’s fine…”
Then, as the first suggestion of sunrise made the ocean glow to the east, they heard a loud engine noise from the direction of land, like multiple machines growling and buzzing, followed by the sight of five silvery metal flying machines.
Airplanes.
Velsa should not have been surprised, since Parsons’ father had told them about airplanes, but it was eerie to see them in the sky. They didn’t have broad flapping wings like dragons or birds, just little stiff ones. They left trails of smoke in their wake.
For a few harrowing seconds, Kessily and Velsa were riveted by the sight of them, expecting the airplanes to head their way and spot them, but no, they were headed north. They never even got close to the boat.
She tried to reach Grau again, and this time she made contact.
Grau, I’m coming to you. We’ll be there soon. I’m with Kessily and Sorla, and we have a boat to go to Laionesse.
She felt relief from him, to hear from her, but he was also wary. Dragons, he thought. The dragons are coming.
Now the trip seemed interminably long.
Kessily was starting to look fatigued. She had been sensing and manipulating the water all night.
At some point, another batch of airplanes came from the same spot as the prior group. They must be fighting the dragons. Did this mean the first group had been taken out? How many airplanes do they have? Velsa wondered.
Here, a fence walled off the shore from the mainland, with frequent guard posts. The terrain was not so hilly, and she saw buildings rising up past the low line of trees. Velsa was sure they would be noticed before long. In the distance, they heard booming, like huge guns firing.
Sorla gripped the seat, obviously scared. “What’s going to happen?”
The bad thing about bringing a thirteen-year-old along, Velsa thought, was that she couldn’t admit she was scared herself. She had to act adult about all of this.
Kessily stared up at the sky, and then trailed a wing into the waves.
“Hmm,” she said.
“What?”
“Give me a minute…I’m reading the water.” She made a little sound of frustration. “There are loads of ships in the water ahead. Big ones. See the edge of the land up ahead, where that little tower is? When we get past that, we’re going to start running into them, and we’ll be like an ant in comparison. The navy is out in full force.”
“What do we do, then?” Velsa asked.
“If they’re engaged in battle that way, I don’t think they’ll be paying as much attention to the back side of their defenses, so…sneaking around this side seems our most likely bet. Let’s head for land.”
“Kessily, do you know anything about all of this weaponry Calban seems so confident in?” Velsa asked.
“They didn’t tell the details to sorcerers…” Kessily grunted with exertion, using magic to steer the boat to shore. “But—I know the basic theory. Telepathic powers work best when you can focus on a single person, or a small group—when you can look in their eyes. That’s always been terrifying in war. Even archers and skilled elemental sorcerers have to get dangerously close to be able to attack a Miralem. But now they’ve developed guns that fire on people so far away, you don’t even see them. The ship I worked on had huge, powerful guns. When they were training me, they told me the guns were more effective than anything my magic could do, offensively. They wanted me to focus strictly on navigation.”
“Isn’t magic still more precise?”
“I don’t think precision has much to do with it. Or even power. The guns are simply easier to operate. I mean, I spent my whole life on a boat learning the magic of water and wind, since I was a kid. You can’t just grab someone and teach them sorcery in a month. But you can teach them to work a machine.”
“Grau won’t like hearing that…”
“He likes magic better than machines, hm? So do I. I mean—usually.” She shrugged her wings.
As the boat dragged itself onto the shore, propelled by magic, Velsa caught another flash from Grau—
The vision of a dragon, flying toward them.
This was a sight she knew. She would never forget the way the dragon seemed to hang in the sky as they waited in the patrol camp, frozen and terrified. There was not much defense against a dragon, or at least, there never used to be. Flying beasts, covered in tough scales, who could breathe plumes of fire capable of engulfing houses in mere seconds, and on top of it all, they were intelligent and telepathic.
But the images she saw coming from Grau told a different story. Five airplanes came toward the dragon, each veering in a different direction, so the beast wasn’t sure which way to turn. Rapid-fire guns hammered on the dragon’s wings and its underside, where the scale
s were softer.
The dragon took out one of the airplanes quickly, with one of its deadly blasts of fire, but in the meantime, it was getting pinged from other directions. The dragon screamed.
Another one of the planes broke apart mid-air. The dragon’s telekinesis must have split the wings from its body, so it plummeted into the ocean, joining the charred wreckage of the first plane.
Now a deafening boom shook the air—she heard it through Grau’s ears, but she also heard it in the distance with her own ears. Something struck the dragon in the chest—this must be one of the huge guns Kessily spoke of.
Velsa, it’s horrible—stay back, you don’t want to see it.
This was the clearest thought Grau had ever spoken directly to her mind.
I don’t care; I want to see you, she responded. Don’t get killed.
The connection slipped away. Sorla was looking at her.
“Velsa? Are you okay?” She sounded like this was the second time she had asked.
“Yes—Grau is trying to talk to me telepathically. They’re fighting, and he’s trying to tell me to stay back, but…we really can’t, at this point, can we?”
“We need Grau,” Kessily said. “I can’t get that boat to Laionesse all alone.”
They crossed the shore to a ragged field of tall grasses. At least the terrain here was not so rocky or steep as the southern part of Nalim Ima. Before long, they hit a fence.
“I can’t climb that,” Kessily said.
“I might be able to lift you over it,” Velsa said dubiously.
Velsa and Sorla climbed the fence and dropped to the other side. Velsa felt a little silly doing it, because she had to push her cloak back and expose her bare arms and legs.
Their telekinetic power combined could barely lift Kessily for a few seconds.
“I want to fly,” Kessily said. “I don’t even want these stupid wings, but I keep feeling this compulsion to be in the air.”
“The bird you killed is a part of you now,” Velsa said. “At least, that’s what Irik said about the leopard she killed to be able to shift. So—maybe it’s the bird that wants to fly.”
“The bird is part of me?”
The Sorcerer’s Wife Page 22