Bannor did as asked. They both tried for a while and finally gave up. Even together they simply couldn’t outmatch the limber strength in the savant’s legs. She wouldn’t uncurl.
Sarai smacked the water. “So that’s the way she wants to be. I have a solution for that.”
“What are you going to do?”
She took the Wren by the shoulders and shoved her head under.
“No!” Bannor grabbed Sarai’s wrists, but her arms were slick with moisture.
“Let go.” Sarai shouldered him away and straddled Wren. Bubbles frothed to the surface. “This is the only way!”
Wren started flailing and splashing.
Bannor tried to pull Sarai off again, but his mate had a death grip on the savant. “You’re killing her!”
“If she wants to live, she’ll fight.” She bucked up and down as the savant struggled harder.
“Sarai, she can’t breathe!” His heart pounded as Wren groped.
“When she wants me off, she’ll get me off!”
Bannor wavered in agony. He wanted to trust Sarai, but it looked as if Wren was dying. The savant couldn’t last much longer. If she were going to fight back, it would have to be in moments.
He poised himself, ready to drag the both of them ashore.
Sarai jerked Wren to the surface and shook her. The savant gagged and coughed. “Loser—peasant—curl up and let the avatars win. Give up, be the nothing you are! Die like a simpering weakling.” She shoved Wren back under.
The level of the struggling didn’t change. Right when he feared Wren would suffocate, Sarai would drag her to the surface and curse the savant with a vehemence that would make the most foul-mouthed sailor cringe.
After the fifth dunking, Bannor’s stomach felt like an icy lump. If Wren were going to fight back, it seemed she would have done so by now.
“It’s not going to work, Sarai.” He took her wrist. “Wren’s will must be gone. My Nola must have done something horrible to her mind. Let her up.”
“Bannor, without her we’ll be trapped here!” The water started boiling as Wren started thrashing harder.
“Sarai.”
“Damn you!” She slammed Wren against the bottom. “Play-with-fire-and-burn-us-all!”
“Enough!” He grabbed hold of Sarai with both hands.
A blue light shone in the water. Sarai yelped. A flare of brilliance hammered into Bannor, sending him toppling. Air whistled. Images flickered through his vision. The moon, the waves, the sand, the moon. He crashed hard on his back in shallow water. It felt as if a fist had driven into his ribs.
He gasped and spasms wracked his chest. He couldn’t breathe. A ringing droned in his ears.
He heard a female yell and coughing. Energy crackled. Someone staggered rapidly through the shallows. More coughing.
Bannor couldn’t move. He concentrated solely on getting another breath. A wave poured over him, tumbling him further onto shore.
Sarai shrieked. “Bannor!”
A sizzling sound.
Everything went quiet, except for the rumble of the waves.
* * *
What is reality? Why can we bend and change something that should be immutable?
I don’t know. I’m just glad we can, otherwise there’d be no fun in life at all…
—From the Dedriad, ‘musings of an immortal’.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
« ^ »
Bannor struggled to rise. He had to find out why Sarai screamed. The yell had been cut short. A sound like the buzz of insects all but drowned out the rumble of the waves. An ache throbbed in his bones. He could only make out blurs and black water as the breakers spilled cold and foamy around him. The burst had flipped him at least twice before he slammed into the shallows.
He managed to get to hands and knees in the gritty sand. “Sarai!?” he yelled.
No answer. His chest tightened. He saw only the outlines of the crests rolling into the shore and the cliff side. He saw neither Wren’s floating body nor Sarai.
What happened?
He remembered the flash. It was the same color as Wren’s Nola. Such force. Focused, it would have killed. Had Wren awakened? Where was she? What happened to Sarai?
Bannor struggled to his knees. He wiped his eyes. The scenery moved and shifted. After an instant, he realized it was him doing the wavering.
Never been hit so hard.
He called again. Still no answer. He surged to his feet and floundered a dozen paces toward where they’d been dunking Wren. He collapsed in knee-deep water, sputtering as the salty liquid invaded his mouth.
“Sarai!”
Was it the wrong way? Wren wasn’t here. There was nothing visible on the shore. He shook his head. Clarity was returning, but slowly.
The hammering of his heart only worsened the buzz in his head. Bannor heaved himself to his feet and plowed into the breakers. Could Sarai been knocked into the trough behind the waves and pulled out to sea?
A swell hit him in the chest knocking him off balance. Panic shot through him as the turbulence banged him against the bottom. He clawed for the surface and emerged gasping. The world spun.
“Sarai!”
If she’d become trapped underwater, she might only have moments of air left. He heaved himself to his feet.
“I wish my damned vision would clear!”
A tingle rushed through him. The star-dotted seascape snapped into focus. He felt a jolt, realizing what he’d done. He shoved all thoughts away save finding his mate. To his left, in the trough of a wave, the water boiled.
Water splashed as he raked his way through the swell. A breaker crested over him and slammed down. He dove toward the turmoil.
Lost in an ocean of blackness, he could only grope for the source of the disturbance. He slashed the area in front of him with his arms hoping to make contact—find something.
The buzz in his head became a thunder. His chest felt crushed in a giant’s grip.
You have to be here!
His hands found only more emptiness. The current heaved, flipping him in the darkness, scrubbing him against the sandy bottom. The surface. Where was the surface!?
He lunged, trying to orient as the water tumbled around him. No air. Which way is up?
Something hard hit his ribs. Pain shot through his chest, forcing him to cough out vital air. He snatched at the object. It tried to jerk free in the chaos but he gripped hard. His feet touched the bottom.
The surface.
Bannor pushed off with all his strength. His head broke the surface and he drew in a breath of burning salt air. He pulled the squirming object with him.
It was a leg, still kicking viciously.
He heaved.
Two bodies, locked together, broke the surface. Wren and Sarai, at each other’s throats. They both gasped for breath, hissing and struggling.
“Odin’s breath! Stop it!” he ordered. They ignored him or were too locked in their conflict to respond.
Another wave plowed over him, pushing the three of them toward shore. He found footing, grabbed each woman by the leg and started towing.
In the shallows, he pulled them apart and shoved in opposite directions. “Enough!”
Wren fell hard on her haunches, chest heaving. The savant’s blue eyes were wild and her teeth were bared in a snarl. Scratches marred her face, neck and chest. Sarai landed on hands and knees, teeth gritted and eyes blazing. She took air in gulps. A fist-sized bruise discolored one cheek, and her left eye was red and swollen. An angry-red imprint of Wren’s fingers ringed her neck
When Sarai started to move, he pointed a finger. “Stay still, damn it. Either of you moves toward the other, it’s going to be a three way fight.” He snorted to get the water out of his nose. “Scared the ghost out of me. I thought you were both dead.”
“Thief tried to kill me!” Sarai gasped.
Wren sputtered. “Tried-drown me!”
She made to stand and Bannor shoved her back down.
“Fine way to wake me,” she wheezed. “By bashing my head on the sand in pace deep water!”
“She tried to strangle me!” Sarai spit and wiped her face.
“Not that you two liked each other much anyway.”
“I—” Wren stopped. She seemed to notice for the first time the alien surroundings. “Where in Ishtar’s name are we? Can’t be my dream.”
“You tell us,” Sarai snapped. “Your trying to steal Bannor’s Nola got us stuck here!” She convulsed and broke into a fit of coughing.
“What?”
“You’re jesting, right?” Bannor asked. “You remember being in my body?”
“Your body?” Wren grimaced. “I don’t remember getting back in my body.”
“She’s lying,” Sarai muttered. “She must be.”
“I don’t think she is. Come.” He held out a hand to both of them.
Wren rose first. The savant walked with a pronounced limp and held her ribs. She leaned on him, looking ready to fall without his support. Sarai looked equally battered. Her cheek darkened as he watched, stark against pale elven skin.
Not much steadier than the women, he helped them trudge ashore to the shelter of some boulders.
The three of them huddled in silence watching the last sliver of the sun vanish on the horizon.
Bannor rubbed his hands together wishing for a blanket or a change of clothes. He’d left their supplies on the barge. All that remained were his skinning knife, Sarai and Wren’s weapons and the contents of the savant’s knapsack. Sarai’s bow, a vital hunting tool, had been lost in the marsh when Mazerak took control of her.
“We have to get on that cliff to some wood or we’re going to freeze,” Bannor said.
Wren shook her head. “Climb that in the dark? You’ll kill yourself. Hurts. Right now, I can’t make it either.”
“Useless,” Sarai grumbled.
Bannor glanced at his mate with her swollen eye and bruised cheek. She must be in pain. These last hours had brought out shades of Sarai he never imagined existed. He hoped he wouldn’t see them again for a long time.
“If we don’t keep you two warm, those wounds will stiffen up. We haven’t seen a single stick of driftwood.”
Wincing, Wren massaged her side and legs. Bannor judged from her grimaces of pain that Sarai must have really pounded her ribs and thighs with kicks. Wren studied the steep rise of jagged rock for a moment then shook her head. The cold already appeared to be gnawing at the woman through the wet leather.
Bannor felt the chill too. The fear rush was ebbing and leaving him with that drained, vulnerable feeling.
“You don’t remember killing all those minions and finishing Mazerak?” he asked Wren.
She stared at him. “I remember next to nothing. Sarai beat the Hades out of me because I couldn’t make my Nola work right. I feel lucky to know my own name.”
“Trauma,” Sarai muttered, hugging herself. “Your Nola, switching bodies, the water… People lose memory from less.”
Wren put her face in her hands. “It’s hazy—I recall escaping from the cage. It’s muddled after that.”
“You did some incredible things with my Nola.”
“Like what?”
“You ripped out Mazerak’s power for one thing.” Simply remembering the scene of the dandy’s power being torn out and being stepped on made Bannor shiver.
“I did?” Wren looked amazed.
“You also let him go,” Sarai growled. “Should have killed him. He’ll be back to haunt us.”
“Doubt it. The avatars will want him killed for failing. He’ll be too busy running to bother us.”
Bannor rose. If he didn’t move now, the wintry air would soon make it impossible. “I’m heading down this beach until I find a way up. You two want to sit here in the cold or come along?”
Sarai and Wren looked at one another for a short span then stood with a chorus of grunts and moans. They left the rocks together and he went to pick up Wren’s knapsack.
The rumble of the waves had grown. The wind now a steady hum in his ears. His skin felt like ice. The next few bells would be some of the most tense since he, Sarai, and Wren met. Everything was going wrong.
Not everything, he thought, only the important things.
He loosened the pack straps and shouldered it. Best not to burden the limping savant. Bannor set out, Wren and Sarai falling into step beside him, one on either side.
“How’s the eye?” he asked Sarai after a while.
Sarai spoke in tight voice. “Feels like a demon chewing on my face. You plan to do something about it?”
“What do you want me to do? Punch Wren? Looks like you did enough damage.”
“Plenty enough,” Wren chimed in.
Sarai glared at him with her good eye. For a moment, it looked as though she’d say something, but she seemed to think better of it.
Bannor glanced at Wren who stumbled along with difficulty. “You know you could have let go when you heard your ribs starting to crack.”
Wren snorted. “I could have laid there while she drowned me too. Sarai didn’t seem friendly at the time.”
“Since you two have fought, I hope the feud is over.”
Both women stared at him.
So much for hopes.
They walked down the beach, occasionally sighting a notch in the cliff that might give them access to the summit. None tempted their weary bodies. Further on, it looked as if the headland dropped to meet the beach.
The wind moaned in the rocks. The clouds in the night sky grew larger and more forbidding, blocking out the moonlight. Bannor felt a prickling sensation as if something were watching them. Something here? Couldn’t be. This fast? He’d been on the run too long.
He glanced out to sea. It didn’t appear they would be able to reach shelter before the storm reached shore.
“Wren?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Think I should try and use my Nola? Maybe I could get us back to Titaan.”
“You could also get us more lost than now.” She ran a hand through her bedraggled hair. “I’m starting to remember part of what happened. If I used your power like you said, then there’s obviously some technique I recognized.”
“You said that my power was a window, not an axe.”
“Whatever that means,” Sarai mumbled.
“It must be a seeing ability like the Kel’Varan.”
“I can’t see anything special. Nothing like what I saw when I used your power.”
“You just don’t know what you’re looking at. When I use the Kel’Varan, it’s simply being aware of the hidden patterns my Nola puts in my vision. Over the summers I’ve learned to be able to discern them instantly.”
“How can I recognize a pattern?”
Wren shrugged. “It must be something obvious for me to pick it up that fast. Once you see it, then everything else falls into place. The operation of your power becomes apparent.” The savant groaned. “I can’t believe I’m coaching you. It’s freezing and it’ll be raining soon. Could there be a worse time to discuss this?”
“I can think of several,” Sarai murmured. She leaned against Bannor.
“The tracery,” he said. I can see myself. Could it be that simple? “Wren, when you astral travel, do you look into yourself, see your own pattern?”
Her words were slow and measured. “In a way.” She paused. “It’s not seeing, but touching. When you touch your true self. It’s like turning a sock inside out. What normally faces in is facing out.”
He turned to Sarai. She seemed to be considering that.
The patterns. It always came back to the pattern. In the beginning, he’d been good with the weaves. He’d known Sarai’s, Wren’s, and when he looked deep—his own. Bannor, I can see myself. That’s when his Nola had forced her out.
“Wren, what if you could see the true pattern of a
nything?”
“What if I could see it?” Wren’s expression darkened. “It could unravel the primal essence of anything. If you know the lock, making a key is simple. When you apply a key, that object is completely malleable. That’s what magic is based on. Unlocking the bindings of matter and manipulating them.”
Sarai narrowed her good eye. “That sounds complex. If Bannor’s power works the indirect way he’s thinking, how could he possibly know how to do anything?”
She asked the very question that occurred to him.
Wren sighed. “That’s what being a savant is about. For me, I know matter and energy down to their components; channeling force so exactly that it can’t hurt me. Rationally, dealing with that should be too complex. I do it all the time—without thinking about it. The Nola takes care of it.” She looked at the clouds starting to blot out the moon and frowned. She rubbed the back of her neck.
Bannor felt it too. An itchy sensation.
Wren seemed to ignore it, involved in the explanation. “With Bannor, it would be the same. He wants something, his Nola unlocks all the necessary patterns.” She sighed. “The danger is that his Nola doesn’t discriminate between volatile and nonvolatile weaves. Once he consciously knows what to avoid, so will the Garmtur.”
Bannor drew a breath. He slowly repeated Wren’s words spoken in the clearing after the battle. “You can’t see what I see. The whirling bindings of matter and energy and the road map laid out that links them. A little deeper and I can see the very underpinnings—the pillars that support time and space. All I have to do is reach out…”
Wren froze mid step. Her eyes went wide and her face drained of color. “Ishtar. I said that. I remember n-OW!” She gripped the back of her neck.
Sarai leaned around Bannor and fixed the savant with a one-eyed stare. “You almost did it.”
The blonde woman gazed at the two of them for thirty heartbeats, trying to mouth something. She reached for Bannor’s arm. Her eyes rolled up and she collapsed.
“Wren, this isn’t funny.” Bannor knelt and shook her. When she didn’t move, he put an ear to her chest.
“Bannor?” Sarai crouched by him.
Wren’s heart was silent.
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