“We’re passing through the outer rind,” Nassir said for Dayn's benefit. There were a thousand descriptions for the variegated rock and detritus stream that made up the torrent, most of them fairly intuitive. “We’ll have little time for words once we reach the pulp. Remember everything around you, Shardian. Do you see the half dozen pale rocks about to cross our path? Moving away from our sunward side?”
“They’re all moving together, like a flock of sheep.” Dayn's reply came timidly through the speechcaster.
“Those are called chasers, you see how they don’t spin? Their paths are influenced by something larger. That makes them perfect for a talon. We’re moving close enough to their speed. Watch and learn. I’ll cast out a talon to bring us fully into the flow.”
Lurec did not strain to see for himself, lest he throw off Nassir's ropework by jostling him. Besides, plenty of rock occupied his own vision as the Defender delved deeper into the torrent.
A pockmarked granite drunkard arced a haphazard path below their course. Fifty spans wide, it just missed striking a cloud of thousands of glinting obsidian hornet stones that swept a half mile beneath them, close enough to make Lurec moan. Rock swept past them in every direction now, as though they were caught in the middle of a living, breathing landslide.
Six jagged darts―he could not decide whether ice or gemstones made their surface sparkle―streaked straight down beyond Dayn, like some sleeker transport design. They were a hundred spans away, but again, much too close for comfort.
The debris grew impossibly thick, and much larger in size. More dust and random matter that could be a hundred different things began to appear. Soon they would hardly be able to see the stars.
“What in peace's reach is that?” The boy gestured with his ridiculous staff. Lurec looked off to his own right. A globule of liquid three hundred spans across shone brightly perhaps two miles away, surrounded by swirling mossy rock. Lurec could just see shadowed shapes within the water, if it were indeed water.
“Preceptor, my angle is poor,” Nassir said. He felt the Defender move at his back. “Are we in danger?”
“No. An anchor. It doesn’t look to pull us closer,” Lurec said. “Dayn, the strength of ground fluctuates within the torrent, because of the largest stones, or the hearts of old worlds. There are also ancient...devices, called anchors. They act like worldhearts, and help lock the torrent within the Belt. Without them there would be chaos, storms on every world like we witnessed on Suralose. Most are built into wayfinders, but the one you see is an orphan.”
“They can provide drinkable water if your need is great,” Nassir added, “but you can drown if the anchor is in flux. Or the water may flash to steam.”
“I think I can see fish swimming inside of it,” Dayn marveled.
The anchor swept out of sight. Ironic to encounter something so rare on the way to Ara, Lurec mused. His stomach tugged, and the view of the horizon jerked around him.
The Defender must have latched his wingline to one of his targeted stones. They would soon be pulled into the core of the torrent where the fastest moving objects lay, like rapids in a river. The tapestries on the Ring that showed coursers gliding languidly through the torrent seemed the worst kind of lie right now.
“To your left,” Nassir said. Another tug. Lurec strained to see. He felt the impression of moving faster. They now kept pace with the surrounding torrent, which grew even more intimidating.
The surroundings now looked like dismembered mountain ranges. The awesome slabs of jagged stone were pocked with fearsome craters, like ancient warriors flaunting their battle wounds, or perhaps begging for someone to heal them. Sometimes angular masses several miles wide billowed yellow and blue jets of gas from the massive cracks in their surface.
The torrent made Lurec painfully aware of his own fragility, sheath or not. The Defender's breathing remained easy and measured despite the fact that rock abounded in every direction.
Still trailing them on the wingline, the Shardian craned his neck. He arced away from their backtrail whenever the Defender changed course, but seemed to take it in stride. “Farmer, what do you see?” Nassir asked.
Dayn answered after a moment of gazing. “There’s a clear space in the flow. It’s swirling away from the rest, like something is draining it away.”
Relief flooded Lurec. “A loop eddy?” If that were true, an erratic must be close.
“Yes. At this distance, maybe six miles wide. We will easily catch it from here.” Nassir paused. “Mind your breath, Shardian. You don’t want your draught to air out now.”
The Defender heaved his wingline. After a slow lurch, Lurec could see the bottom edge of the eddy taking shape around him, as though they were passing beneath a flowing sheet of boulders. Several of them were crusted with turquoise lichen, but he did not spy any torrent snails feeding on it, peace be praised. The creatures were harmless, but often attracted dangerous predators.
Dayn gripped his staff nervously as Nassir's wingline pulled him along. He began to twirl in place. The Shardian flailed his arms for balance, but that motion accomplished nothing in the weightlessness of the void, and his spinning slowly grew worse.
“I don’t know which way is up,” Dayn rasped. He jerked his head around rapidly, and appeared to be on the edge of panic.
”Calm yourself,” Lurec urged. “Look past your feet, back toward Suralose to get your bearings.”
He felt a tug in the pit of his stomach as the Defender cast out again, latching onto another guide rock. Lurec could not deny his skill, nor even begin to calculate how many leagues they covered each minute. They were gaining speed, and closing the gap between them and the erratic’s safety.
“Do you see more lichen above us, Preceptor?”
Lurec peered up toward the rocks, stretching above them like a landslide of giant sapphires, frozen and still. Green lichen coated the sunward side of the field liberally, several feet thick.
Cold sweat broke out on Lurec's back. “Not one snail grazing on it.”
“Completely picked over,” Nassir agreed. Dayn looked up at the sluggards, but wisely just listened to the Defender. “We must be cautious. This erratic may be hawk-infested.”
Lurec licked his lips. Ragehawks in the torrent! Why did the Force Lord dream up my involvement in this dreadful undertaking?
Humor carried in Dayn's voice through the speechcaster. He still twirled at the edge of the rope, but the motion no longer bothered him. “Hawks that eat snails? I could lend you my staff.”
“Don't dismiss them so easily, lad. If you ever saw―” A shadow passed over them suddenly, and Lurec's heart jumped.
To his back, he felt Nassir freeze. “Shardian, for the love of peace, you must stop spinning.”
“Clusterthorn,” Dayn whispered, barely audible through Lurec’s speechcaster. He grabbed onto the Vatdra collar and soon recovered his balance. Just watching him spin made Lurec’s stomach lurch, but the farmer kept his calm. They all watched as two monstrous birds tailed perhaps half a mile above them. Their feathers glinted with a greenish hue, and metallic talons flashed in the sunlight. Dayn’s efforts meant nothing, for the ragehawks passed them by.
“I suppose we weren’t worth the effort,” Lurec ventured.
“Or they’re fleeing something,” Dayn put in. “There are no birds that big on Shard. I can’t imagine them skipping any meals.”
“Likely, they’ve already fed. Ragehawks have been known to pry open transports if they wanted the navigators badly enough, or felt their territory threatened.”
“Peace, protect us,” Lurec said faintly. He wished Nassir would keep those tidbits of information to himself.
“I see the erratic ahead!” Dayn exclaimed. “It’s huge!”
“This course will align us with it perfectly,” Nassir said in his self-satisfied way. Lurec strained for a glimpse―he positively abhorred this arrangement! “Stillness, Preceptor. You’ll throw off our course. The fissures look to be old and deep.
Stable. We’ll pass through the torrent swiftly within it.”
“Something is wrong,” Dayn said suddenly.
“What? What do you see?” Lurec asked in alarm.
“Calm yourself, Shardian. That’s only―”
“Look at the edges!” Dayn shouted. The speechcaster rang painfully in Lurec's ear. “Peace! It's breaking apart!”
Lurec's body wrenched savagely to one side as the Defender cut a new course. Dayn groaned as the Vatdra collar sawed forcefully against his torso. Lurec could finally see the erratic now on his right, and felt fear gnaw at his stomach.
The mass swallowed his entire field of vision, a dreadfully ugly mixture of worn gray and black mineral. Deep cracks along the surface looked almost organic. Gas streamed from the sunward side, forming a strange blue nimbus along the edges.
The edges...Dayn is right. The entire erratic appeared to shimmer as though near boiling.
Realization dawned on Lurec. “The resonance wake is upon us! It’s pelting the erratic from the other side.”
“We must find a new guide rock,” Nassir said, still calm. “Help me look, Preceptor.”
Lurec wanted to scream at him. The erratic began to splinter into thousands of great fragments. Dust and shattered bits washed over them, lighting their sheath brilliantly. His entire body grew noticeably warmer, a warning sign. The sheath could withstand the smaller bits, but any of those larger fragments would end them as surely as a boot would squash a beetle. “Look? You fool, I can't see anything!”
Jagged pieces of the erratic drifted toward them, each several miles wide. Lurec could hear the wake faintly now, a terrifying, angry sound. The torrent beyond the shattered erratic churned violently, driving air currents toward them.
“Nassir!” Dayn cried out. He whipped around roughly in the debris, trailing behind them like a torn kite. A cloud of obsidian darts swallowed him from view. He reemerged, and immediately pulled his legs high, just avoiding a sand-colored dart five spans long that almost cut him in half. A fist-sized chunk of rock took him directly in the chest. Light exploded around the sheath, illuminating the terror on Dayn’s face. A spray of dust flashed around them all and Lurec squeezed his eyes shut.
“Brace yourselves, I've lassoed another―” Nassir's words were cut off as they changed direction so sharply Lurec feared for the Defender's arm sockets.
“Nassir, my sheath. It’s hot!” Another cloud of dust and rock swallowed Dayn. His sheath glowed yellow.
“You must help him!” Lurec cried. “He’s being pummeled to death!” Nassir did not respond, for at that moment a spinner seven spans wide slammed into them both. Lurec cried out in terror as they were enveloped in rock and light. The sheath sizzled, and he felt his body being squeezed within it.
Then just as suddenly they pulled free. The sheath broke through the spinner. How much more of this can we survive? Lurec wondered.
Their new guide rock moved on a path angling away from the storm. Then Lurec saw the wingline flailing behind them.
“No! Defender he’s lost to us! Dayn, can you hear me?”
“He’s in the slipstream ahead of us―look to your right. I see a wayfinder ahead, too.” Tension filled Nassir's voice. “Shardian, I’m coming. Curl yourself so the sheath can protect you!”
“I think I can reach you,” Dayn said.
“Just stay there,” Nassir commanded. He heaved his wingline. Lurec watched in dismay as the talon clinked off his intended guide rock. It held fast to a column-shaped drunkard, about fifty spans across and covered with purple roots. The Defender pulled mightily to free it, but to no avail. The wingline went taut in his grip and they lurched into the slipstream.
“I see him now!” Lurec said, craning his neck. Nassir moved frighteningly fast, closing the space between them and Dayn in seconds. The tumbling drunkard pulled their wingline at an angle, so they curved out behind it.
Dayn seemed uninjured. He had snagged a small guide rock with his own wingline, but they were approaching much too―
“Look out!” Dayn shouted.
An axe-shaped chunk of granite covered with fiery cracks dropped toward Nassir. It obliterated the drunkard pulling his wingline in a shower of sparks. Nassir released his hold too late. The collision jerked them into a new course. They now careened straight toward Dayn.
Lurec held his arms up protectively. The impact of two sheath-covered surfaces at this speed could have unpredictable, fatal results.
He barely fathomed what happened next. He caught a glimpse of Dayn, jabbing his staff at a fragment of purple-veined rock blurring past him. The silver grain flared brilliantly on impact, pushing Dayn upward.
The Shardian arched his back. Lurec saw the briefest blur of Aran leather and red cloak as Dayn flashed past them. Lurec heard the boy strain with exertion through the speechcaster. Nassir passed within inches of the small of his back.
“Peace be praised,” Dayn's relieved voice croaked. “Are you two alright?”
“You...you covered your staff in sheath,” Lurec managed feebly. A collision at that speed―sparks might have flown from the three of them as well!
The Defender said nothing. Lurec was sure that Dayn’s maneuver had rendered him speechless. They had been travelling towards one another at hundreds of feet per second. The reflexes the boy would require to deliberately avoid a collision were simply impossible.
“Favor certainly sees you, farmer,” Nassir finally said. “Quickly, hold out your staff!”
Lurec heard a faint burst of compressed air. The Defender's talon cast out from his clutch, an arcing coil of wingline snaking behind it. “Got it!” Dayn called out. He nimbly snagged the line as it floated through his path and retied it to his original Vatdra Collar.
Nassir exhaled imperceptibly, no doubt relieved his foray into the torrent did not cost them everything. They moved further from the resonance wake, and the torrent appeared to settle around them.
“Do you see that light, flashing through the sunward side of the torrent? Look toward your feet, Shardian.”
“I see it. What is it?”
“A wayfinder. We should do better there, it appears to have strong ground.”
Lurec strained to see. “The torrent is much calmer around it,” he observed.
Little distinguished the wayfinder from any other erratic. With rounded edges, it was smaller than the one they had just escaped, although still massive at a quarter of a mile wide. A large fissure nearly ran across the entire mass so it looked in danger of breaking in half. The battered tower built into the top held a powerful, strobing light.
“Hold onto your staff. Preceptor, take this wingline.” The Defender made quick work of the intervening space, hooking the boulders orbiting the wayfinder to course his way to it. “Watch the sentinels, Shardian. Preceptor, don’t lose him.”
“Of course I won't,” Lurec snapped irritably. He wrapped the wingline around his wrist, silently vowing never to let the Defender separate him from the Seed again. He could feel the wayfinder's anchor pulling at him, the ground might be strong enough to bound.
Their momentum shifted and suddenly the Defender ran instead of floating. They lurched to a stop. Lurec saw porous brown rock all around him, they were inside the wayfinder. The crevasse Nassir landed them in went deeper inside, forming a passage. Nassir untied him, and he dropped to the rough ground, happy to stand on his own two feet. The Defender took the wingline back, and turned immediately to Dayn.
“You’re nearly here!” Nassir called. “Just relax and let me reel you in.”
“I should have thought of that,” Dayn muttered. He swept rapidly toward them now. Lurec held a hand out and he caught it gratefully, looking just as relieved to feel ground under his feet again. He moved his left arm experimentally and drew a deep breath.
“Are you alright?” Lurec asked anxiously. He did not want to sound calloused and ask after the Seed, not right away. He hardly believed it, but the boy appeared little worse for the wear.
“That was fantastic!” Dayn hooted, his eyes shone with excitement. He was panting hard―they all were. “Lurec you should have seen your sheath. It was brighter than the sun!”
“So was yours.” Lurec shook his head in disbelief. Pure madmen surround me, would-be coursers and Defenders. Peace! “I’m glad you’re safe.”
Nassir removed his mask, but his jaw clenched at sight of the wingline hanging at Dayn’s waist. “You cut the collar, farmer. Why?”
“You needed to be free of me, with Lurec already to account for,” Dayn stammered defensively. “And I couldn’t do anything to protect myself without throwing you off.”
Not even Guardian Benlor could course the way he did just now, Lurec thought. He lamented to be so far from Master Irwin Dosay’s counsel, or at the very least, a repository full of books that touched on Seedlore. He took little stock in myths about the wonders before the Breach, but now he was seeing them come to life before his very eyes. The Seed’s influence is upon him, without question. Is it enhancing his abilities, or is it bending the torrent around itself?
A contemplative light shone in Nassir’s brown eyes. “You’ll represent Shard well in the Course of Blades.” He spit out the speechcaster before half floating, and half stepping deeper into the erratic.
“This is a wayfinder?” Dayn asked doubtfully as they picked their way after him. He removed his face guard. A distant light provided scant illumination for the dusty, rough-hewn granite beneath their feet. “I expected there to be more to it.”
“A wayfinder is not your village inn, Shardian,” Nassir replied, his voice echoing. “The Guardians use them for only the briefest stay overs.”
The boy’s face crumpled, but he smoothed it when he saw Lurec watching. Must you be so heartless about his burned village, Defender? Lurec lamented silently.
Nassir stopped before a crude vapor array, flat stone a span across carved into a nook of a wider chamber. “Favor smiles on us,” Nassir said. This section of the wayfinder appeared to be maintained, at least. A water source was in place, the vapor lit up at Nassir’s touch.
The Seedbearing Prince: Part I Page 24