by Kelley Grant
Tori felt the now-dying Knight reach desperately out to the energy around him. Tori found herself caught, spiraling to death with him. Shane and Sandy fought with her against the Knight. Then suddenly she felt Zara in her mind, the feli’s energy slicing through the Knight’s as though she’d slashed it with her claws. Tori slumped to the ground, exhausted.
A great roar echoed over the battlefield. Tori opened her eyes to see a chaotic scene unfolding before her. Evan screamed orders, and the Descendants broke off, retreating toward the woods. The energy of the remaining soldiers flared and then disappeared as furious Forsaken troops, no longer bound by their geas, turned against their commanders. Other fighters simply dropped their weapons and fled. A man on the battlefield bellowed for the troops to surrender.
A scrabbling behind their rocks made Tori reach for her knife, but it was Zara who appeared around the side, looking pleased. She was followed by Sandy’s spotted Shiv. Shane’s Ruta limped in behind, her flank bleeding sluggishly from four deep claw marks.
Zara flopped down beside Tori, and her energy began to return as soon as she threw her arms around the great cat. Shane exclaimed over Ruta’s wounds, and Sandy pushed his hands aside to send healing energy to the wounded cat. The claw marks stopped bleeding.
“That’s a new trick,” Tori said.
“I spent a year with Aryn,” Sandy said. “I have a very slight healing gift, but feli are easy. The One always grants healing for them.”
Tori peered around the rock as horses galloped toward them. Evan swung down from his mount.
“Are you well?” he asked. “Cleo said you collapsed.”
“Unharmed, but drained of energy. We’ll be fine as long as we don’t have to go anywhere very quickly,” Tori told him.
“What’s happening on the battlefield?” Sandy asked.
“The troops surrendered, but not before the Forsaken killed Voras’s soldiers,” Evan said. “The Forsaken leaders and Aaron Hasifel are waiting to greet us at Stonycreek.”
Tori tried to lever her body up against the rock and failed. Shane grimaced and managed to stand, but sat heavily against the rock. Sandy didn’t even try.
“Well, this is embarrassing,” Tori said. “But it looks like we’ll need a chariot to cart our triumphant butts to the town, if they’ve got one.”
Evan frowned, but Tori sensed he was more amused than irritated.
“I think the army had some supply carts,” he said. “Not exactly a chariot but it’ll have to do. Wait here.”
“Don’t know where else he thinks we’re going,” Sandy muttered as he rode off.
“Not exactly how I’d planned to meet Aaron Hasifel,” Tori said. “Fainting and carried around.”
“If he’s Sulis’s uncle, he’s probably used to it,” Sandy said. “Try cursing and protesting that you don’t need help like Sulis would and he’ll feel right at home.”
CHAPTER 10
“I don’t need help,” Sulis growled at Ashraf as he put a steadying hand on her elbow when she tripped over her own feet. They were walking into the Obsidian Temple and she was already off balance, both physically and mentally.
He gave her a wounded look and she sighed.
“Sorry,” she said. “You’re not the one I’m irritated with.”
He frowned, looking toward the center of the temple. “I know. An uncertain Amon is even worse than an arrogant Amon. I’m getting tired of being accused of hiding information from him. Not my fault he doesn’t know things a Southern child learns in his small clothes.”
“Are you going to dawdle all day?” Amon called sharply to them. “We’re wasting precious time.”
Sulis growled under her breath. Ava was already drawing her mandala on the stone floor with her energy and chalk. Clay was supervising her. But Grandmother and Master Anchee had not arrived yet with their Guardians. Sulis couldn’t dance alone.
Sanuri played her own little game with the statues of the deities, humming. The Obsidian Temple seemed to shield her from hearing the deities and she was happiest wandering around the statues. Alannah and Dani leaned against the wall their feli were sleeping by. Alannah was glaring at Amon and would occasionally mutter something to Dani. He looked both amused and apprehensive about what she was saying.
They’d been at the temple a ten-day and Amon still hadn’t figured out how to empty the statues of the deities’ will and energy. He’d been making Ava chalk every mandala she knew, and some that Clay taught her as they went. Then he made the Shuttles—Sulis, Master Anchee and Grandmother—dance them, raising as much energy as they could in a place devoid of green life force. He was able to channel that energy and send it. But where he sent it, Sulis didn’t know. Amon had been growing angrier as his attempts failed, and he directed the blame at whichever Chosen caught his eye. Alannah believed that the same ritual Amon knew to trap the deities and then combine them back into the One’s energy could be modified and used to empty the statues of the deities’ essence. Amon had coldly told her she knew nothing of the ritual—it was sacred, and to play around with it would be sacrilege.
Grandmother, Master Anchee, and their Guardians arrived, tailed by temple master Sari, as Sulis was beginning to study the lines of energy in the mandala. This circle was directing energy to the One’s statue, rather than any of the deities, and used heart energy. Sulis’s back ached thinking of the heart-opening poses she’d have to move through in this form.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Amon snapped as Master Anchee came abreast of Sulis.
Master Anchee raised his eyebrows, but Grandmother bristled and growled low in her throat. To Sulis’s disappointment, Palou touched her arm and she subsided. Watching Grandmother take down the arrogant Northerner would have been fun.
Ava connected her last line and stood, swaying slightly. Dani stepped forward and steadied her, helping her over to a cushion he’d brought for her. Nuisance pounced on her feet and she pulled him onto her lap, giggling as he batted her hair and purred. He was almost full-grown now and his legs spilled off each side of her lap. Sulis smiled to see Ava looking happier, less tense than she had been.
“We’ve had some bad news,” Sari announced to the group. “Master Tull contacted me this morning. The Tigus intercepted messages being sent to the troops along the border. The caravan leaders Voras captured in Illian were forced to reveal the locations of the oases. They told Voras everything—where the waymarker is, the words of power, and the mudras to use to release the wards.”
“Then my Tarik died for nothing,” Grandmother said, anguished. “They will find us before we are ready for them.”
“No,” Sari said. “The caravan they captured was one of the Tasharas’. The leader was new and had been permitted travel only to and from Tsangia. They don’t yet know the way to the oases deeper in the desert.”
Sulis stared at her in horror. “But they’ll go after the towns on the path to Tsangia,” she said. “My family lives in Shpeth, Aunt Janis and my cousins. You have to send the warriors of the One to protect them.”
Sari shook her head. “We are counting on the Tigus to winnow down Voras’s army as they move through the desert,” she said. “There aren’t enough warriors of the One to stop Voras’s army all at once.”
“Then change the words of power that reveal the oases,” Sulis said, turning to her grandmother. “Or hide the waymarkers so they can’t find them.”
Sari spread her hands. “The spells that set the waymarkers into the ground also prevent them from being hidden,” she said. “So that if desert tribes went to war, they could not damage or destroy access to the oases.”
“We don’t know how the ancients did it. How they created words of such power that have lasted five hundred years,” Master Anchee said. “It must have taken five or six energy users, more powerful than we are, to set such illusions.”
“
Do the Descendants have records of how it was done?” Sari asked Amon. He shook his head.
“It was only one person,” Ava said.
They turned to look at her, and she ducked her head into her feli’s fur.
Alannah knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, her voice warm, confiding. Sulis wasn’t certain if she was using magic, but even Sulis wanted to respond to that voice. “Did you read something on it that could help us?”
Ava raised her head. “Aryn told me,” she said.
They all glanced at Aryn’s statue and Sulis shivered.
“Blood magic?” Master Anchee asked.
“No,” Ava said softly. “Worse than that. Death magic.”
They stared at her in horror and she nodded solemnly. “Aryn put a lot of things in my mind. It’s un-healing, so she knows how to do it.”
“Knows how to do what?” Alannah asked.
“Make the waymarkers. They’re planted in the body of a powerful energy user,” Ava said. “Blood of the energy user anchors the illusion and the ward over the oases. The waystone is planted into their bodies as they kill themselves: a death offering.”
Dani looked horrified, but the elder Southerners nodded.
“Such a sacrifice,” Sari murmured. She put her hands together and touched them to her forehead, lips, and breastbone in tribute.
Sulis blew her breath out. “Well, then we can’t change the markers,” she said. “We can’t ask someone to make that sacrifice. We need all our energy users.”
“They wouldn’t have to change all the markers,” Lasha said thoughtfully. “Miss one or two oases, and horses and people would die before reaching the others. They’d have to turn back.”
Sulis turned to her. “Don’t even think about it,” she exclaimed.
Lasha smiled ruefully. “I don’t have that kind of power, anyway. Just thinking out loud.”
“I’ll discuss this with Master Tull,” Sari said, looking troubled. “We’ll see what she has to say.”
“If that’s all, we have work to do,” Amon said, dismissing the temple master.
Sari pursed her lips, but nodded to the others and left them.
“That woman is the most powerful channeler of the One’s powers I have ever encountered,” Master Anchee told Amon coldly. “You will treat her with respect.”
“Enough talking,” Amon ordered harshly. “Shuttles, do your dance.”
Sulis conferred with Master Anchee as they decided which lines to start and end with and which forms they would move through to raise the highest energy. Grandmother listened in. Her dance was outside the circle, but she would echo their energy. She’d tried sending energy to Sanuri to weave and ground it, but had been unable to connect to the girl. Sanuri had been completely uninterested in the energy they raised, and Clay had clutched his hair even harder as he tried to talk to her about it. Grandmother was sending the energy to Amon instead.
Sulis took mountain form, hands at heart center, as Master Anchee faced off across from her. She flowed to the next form, stepping over the line of energy of the mandala and filling that space with heart energy. Alannah had told her the entire quadrant of the mandala glowed with the color of the energy she raised, and at the end the mandala was as brilliant as a rainbow. But Sulis could not see energy. She felt it, created it. She reached her senses out to Anchee as he flowed with her. He took the energy she raised and echoed it into the quadrant of the mandala he stepped through, expanding her energy. She adjusted her pace to his, making certain that their steps matched and their motions were synchronized. She was barely aware of Grandmother swirling around them, sucking in the raised energy. She shut out the people watching and focused on the mandala and the dance.
She was panting when she and Master Anchee finished together. He was drenched with sweat, and Sulis realized she was as well. He smiled approvingly at her and she flushed with pride. She hadn’t missed a step, hadn’t faltered or forgotten what the next move was.
They bowed to each other and slowly released the circle. Ashraf was standing outside the mandala, ready to support her if she needed his energy. This time she did not, though she was weary.
All eyes turned to Amon, who stood like a statue by the Altar of the One. His face was drawn in a scowl as he tried to contain the energy Grandmother had thrown him. His hands and body shook. Sulis wasn’t certain if they’d raised a different type of energy or they’d raised more than he was capable of holding, but he was clearly struggling to contain and channel it.
Alannah made an inarticulate sound and hurried over to Amon and the altar, Yaslin by her side. Sulis didn’t know what Alannah would do if he lost control, but she and Lasha stepped up beside Alannah in case she needed help.
Amon opened his eyes and turned, barely able to control his body enough to take the two steps to the altar.
“Stay out of the way, you fools,” he rasped, though they were out of his reach.
He placed both hands on the round stone of the altar and light flared around him, so bright Sulis had to look away, her eyes watering.
The light dimmed and Sulis looked back. Amon was sitting on the floor beside the altar, his head in his hands. The altar’s orb glowed, suffused on the inside with light and energy. It occasionally sent small sparks off.
“Very pretty,” Alannah said dryly. “What were you trying to do?”
Amon looked up at the altar. “Give the One enough power to take the deities’ power by himself,” he said, standing again. He swayed slightly, but none of the Chosen gathered around tried to support him.
“I don’t think it worked,” Ava said, her hand on Parasu’s statue. “I can still feel them here.”
Amon turned on Ava, furious, and she cringed against the statue.
“And where was your focus, when you messed up the mandala? It would have worked if the lines were correct!” he shouted at her. “You were playing with that stupid kitten of yours, weren’t you? I should have that beast killed! You’re a useless little bastard, and crazy besides . . .” He advanced on her, arm raised to strike her.
Sulis stepped forward, afraid that he’d either harm Ava or that the girl would draw something ugly from Parasu to defend herself as she had from Aryn. She stopped and turned as Yaslin snarled. At Yaslin’s squall, everyone turned toward the Altar of the One.
Alannah had slapped her hands on the glowing orb and now glowed with energy herself. Unlike Amon, she was taller and radiant with it, her pale hair crackling in an aura around her head. It took no effort for her to control the energy. Sanuri giggled. Amon stared at her, mouth open, attack on Ava forgotten.
“This is how you control energy,” Alannah said, her voice otherworldly. “With acceptance, not force. You seek wisdom inside yourself, my son. But you ignore my wisdom. Who do you truly serve?”
She became radiant, too beautiful to look at. A being of light. An embodiment of the One. Amon fell to his knees.
“I don’t know what to do. You have given me an impossible task,” Amon cried. “How can I do this alone?”
Grandmother stepped forward. “You aren’t alone, you young idiot. The One chose us as much as she chose you.”
Alannah smiled. “My Chosen speak wisely. Be guided by them. This Counselor will share the burden. I will be whole again.”
The altar and the being beside it flared with light, and Sulis looked away. When she looked back, Alannah was standing in front of the altar, her brow furrowed.
“Well, that was something,” Dani said. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Alannah.”
“Had what in me?” Alannah asked. “Why is everyone staring at me?”
“You know, becoming a being of light, channeling the One,” Lasha said, walking over to her. Alannah stared at her, baffled. “Well, maybe you don’t know. Don’t you feel any diff
erent? Tired perhaps?”
“We will use the ritual, as you requested,” Amon declared, bowing to Alannah. “I will train you in the final words of power. We will start tomorrow. We will move forward together as the One directed.”
He turned and walked out of the temple. As he passed Sulis, she saw he was trembling. Whether from fear or excitement, she couldn’t tell.
“What beat sense into his thick head?” Alannah asked. Lasha and Sulis exchanged glances, bemused. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on? I walk over to the altar and everyone acts like I’ve grown a second head.”
Lasha slung an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll explain on the way to late meal. Somehow, I don’t think Amon will be there.”
“You were right,” Ashraf told Sulis as they walked to the meal hall. “With you three troublemakers around, things are always interesting.”
Abram felt Sari nudge their mind connection to get his attention. He had just fetched breakfast for himself and Master Tull and was pouring tash for her in her office. He put the carafe down and sat on a bench, opening to Sari’s farspeech.
Master Tull looked up from her papers, eyebrows raised.
“Sari is contacting me,” Abram said, and closed his eyes, focusing inward.
Sari’s mindvoice was impassive, but Abram listened in growing horror to Ava’s revelations about how the waymarkers were set. Abram hesitated, opening his eyes to stare at Master Tull.
“Well?” she asked.
Abram’s silver tongue stumbled as he repeated Sari’s gruesome description of how the ancients created the waymarkers.
“Tell her this confirms the information we found in an old scroll. We’d deciphered its instructions, but were worried it was a fake. Thank her. I will speak with the other masters and decide a course of action,” Master Tull told him.
Abram relayed her words and broke the connection between Sari and himself. Silence fell over the room as Master Tull stared into space, her expression brooding.