by Ginn Hale
“And what was it that you felt?”
“Wind, ice crystals,” John replied. He tried to think of a way to describe the swirling, searing trails of agitated electrons. There were no words for atomic structures in Basawar.
“Lightning,” John said at last.
“Really?” Ji cocked her head slightly. “When I attempted to touch the storm I felt fury. It radiated killing rage. The very air seemed to scream with hatred. You didn’t notice anything like that?”
John frowned at the mug in his hands. It had grown ice cold.
“That cup isn’t going to answer for you,” Ji said.
“I felt some anger,” John said at last.
“And that anger is yours, isn’t it?” Ji asked.
John didn’t answer. He knew he was to blame for the storm.
“You burned your fury into the sky when they took you to the Holy Road, didn’t you? You wanted to destroy everything.”
“I just didn’t want to die,” John replied. “But I never wanted to destroy anything.”
Ji studied John. Then she sighed heavily.
“Maybe not,” Ji said. “Maybe that’s why we are both alive now.”
John stared down at his hands, unwilling to comment on Ji’s last remark. Ji leaned in close to John. Her strong animal smell rolled over him.
“I know what you are, Jahn. And I know what you can become. There is no point in trying to deceive me. Long ago, when I was bound to the Issusha’im Oracles, I saw you tear Basawar to pieces. I saw you burn the mountains down into the sea and nothing remained but the boiling waters.”
John stared at Ji as sick horror spread through his body. He wouldn’t destroy Basawar. He refused to accept a prophecy as his condemnation.
“The issusha’im can be wrong,” John said.
“Certainly. The entire point of creating the issusha’im is to make them wrong, to undo the future they foresee. That is their purpose.” Ji’s eyes narrowed slightly. “That, and to find the Rifter.”
John couldn’t look at Ji.
“But they didn’t bring you from Nayeshi,” Ji said. “If they had, then you would be in the Payshmura’s power and Basawar would lie beneath the sea.”
John remained silent. Thunder rolled and crashed through the sky outside.
“Who brought you to Basawar?” Ji asked.
“No one. It was a mistake. I found the key and a message that had been sent to the Kahlil. I crossed through the Great Gate by accident.”
“What did the message say?” Ji asked.
“Don’t. That’s all it said.”
Ji closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes. That is what I was planning to write.”
John stared at her in confusion. Then he remembered that ten years in Basawar’s future was his own past.
“You sent the message?” John asked.
“I will send the message. That is my vision. In ten years, the Fai’daum will break Umbhra’ibaye’s defenses. I will send a false message to the Kahlil, Ravishan. The deception will cost me my life, but it will keep the Payshmura from bringing the Rifter to Basawar.” Ji returned John’s gaze levelly. “It’s nothing personal, but it will save all of Basawar if the Kahlil were to kill you in Nayeshi.”
“All for a good cause, then,” John managed to croak out. His head still ached from the fathi administered the previous night, but now the pain seemed to grow more intense. He drained the last of the daru’sira from the mug.
“Why didn’t you say any of this last night?” John asked.
“The Fai’daum are fighting to ensure that another Rifter is never brought to this world.” Ji watched John intently. Her animal features obscured any hint of her inner thoughts from John. “I don’t think the knowledge that you are already here would do much for morale. It could cause a panic.”
“So you’re going to keep this a secret?” John asked.
“If by that you mean your true identity, yes, I plan to keep it secret.”
A feeling of relief washed over John. He set his empty mug aside. “Then what are you planning to do now?”
“First, we will stop this storm.”
“And then?”
“Then we will see,” Ji replied.
John frowned. Ten years from now she would attempt to have him killed. She had already attempted it in John’s own past.
“If I was going to kill you,” Ji said suddenly, “I would have done it last night while the fathi was still strong in your blood.”
“Of course.” It wasn’t the most reassuring thing to hear, but he respected Ji’s honesty. If their positions had been reversed, John doubted he would have admitted anything.
“Now, for all our sakes, we had better see how well your power can be controlled,” Ji said.
“You still want to teach me?”
“Better to have you trained than walking the world completely out of control.” Ji jumped down from the straw bale.
John started to rise to follow her, but Ji shook her head.
“Stay there. I’m raising a ward around you. I don’t imagine it will hold you, but if you lash out it will be better than nothing.”
Ji circled John, scratching her long toenails into the dark wood of the floor. She whispered words John didn’t understand. He guessed they were Eastern incantations. As she closed the circle, John felt a hum of energy rise around him. It wasn’t a strong sensation. It reminded him of middle school science class when he had placed his hands over a plasma globe. A rush of static had swept over him, making the tips of his short hair rise and causing sparks to dance from the globe to his fingertips.
John extended his hand and watched as a white spark arced up and snapped against his palm. The shocks felt oddly alive. John thought he heard words hissing in his ears as each arc struck his skin.
“Stop that,” Ji growled.
“Sorry. I was curious.”
“You’re worse than Tanash,” Ji said. “Keep your hands at your sides.”
John obeyed her instruction, but a thought nagged at him.
“Ji?” John asked.
“What?”
“Will you still go ahead with the plan to assault Umbhra’ibaye?”
“If the Kahlil has been sent to find the Rifter, I must.”
“What if he hasn’t?” John asked.
“If he hasn’t?” Ji cocked her head slightly. “Hasn’t he?”
“No,” John admitted. “He saved me on the Holy Road instead.”
“Do you know where he is now?” Ji asked.
“No, but I know he hasn’t gone to Nayeshi. The Payshmura have put a price on his head. They won’t send him.”
“I see. That changes things.” Ji stood silently, apparently thinking, her breath blowing out in white wisps. John shoved his hands into his coat pockets. He wished he had another warm cup of daru’sira. Finally, Ji said, “This storm has to end. That’s all we can do right now.”
“I’m ready.”
“Good. Now, listen to me and don’t interrupt. You need to focus on the storm. I don’t want you to extend your senses out into it. Instead, I want you to pull it into you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand, but I’m not sure how to do it. If I don’t reach out to the storm, how will I know where it is? How will I manipulate it?”
“You’ll know because it is a part of you. It is linked to you, just as this ward is linked to me.” Ji sat down. “When you reach out, you feed the storm. You push more of your emotion into it. You give it life. That is not what we want. Instead of reaching out, imagine that you are pulling the storm in from the air as if you were drawing in a deep breath.”
“I’ll try.” John took in a breath, concentrating only on the air around him. It felt crisp and smelled slightly of straw and animal feed. He felt the cool structure of atoms warm in his lungs. Oxygen saturated his blood cells in a rush of energy. He exhaled carbon dioxide.
He thought of the storm and how it must be linked to him. Ji had said it was an embodiment of the rage h
e had felt on the Holy Road.
He drew in another deep breath. This time the memory of veru oil clung to him. The air felt like ice in his throat. It stung and bit his flesh as he drew it down into his lungs. When the oxygen hit his bloodstream, it felt like fire. It burned through him and sent pain flaring over his muscles. He remembered the agony of his broken bones. John exhaled and ribbons of smoke streamed up from his mouth.
Snow poured from the air, churning around John. As he pulled more frigid air down, he could hear his own voice howling in the wind.
He drew the sound back into himself. The air slid down his throat like a knife blade. John tasted blood. He clenched his eyes closed, concentrating on holding the tearing storm inside himself. Bolts of cold pain shot through his chest. His lungs tore the energy from the storm. For a moment a blind, black rage surged through John. Then heat flared through his body. The storm seared to vapor. White flames and steam poured from his mouth as he exhaled.
Frost covered his skin and clothes. Thin needles of ice encased the straw bale where he sat. A long filigree of frost filled the entire circle between himself and the tracings of Ji’s ward.
Ji stared at him, wide eyed. Her jaw hung slack.
“I think it’s done.” John’s voice was barely a whisper. His throat felt raw and ragged. If he was going to keep doing this kind of thing, he thought, he really was going to have to learn the Fai’daum sign language. “Can I get another cup of daru’sira now?”
Chapter Eighty-Two
Over the next week, John grew accustomed to life in the Warren. The nearness of so much stone and earth soothed him. The warm halls offered respite from the cold blue winter skies. His eyes adjusted to the green light and deep shadows.
He spent the mornings in a huge room with Ji and her other six students, all of whom were girls. The unfamiliar fragrance of flower perfumes and spice-scented soaps wafted from their skin and hair.
Delicately carved stones and woven boxes of bones lined the shelves. A grid of symbols had been carved into each of the stone benches where John and the other students worked. The grids reminded John of primitive charts of the elements. Ji explained that the symbols were Eastern blessings and curses. They helped a student focus her energy and thoughts as she carved her will into wood, stone or bones.
John tried to concentrate on them, but he couldn’t easily focus on curses or blessings. As he turned a stone over in his hands he thought of silica, quartz and feldspar. He felt the mosaic of fused crystalline formations.
Still, after his first success in dissipating the storm, John was eager to see what more he could do. But his attempts to create delicate charms ended in failure after failure. The moment he focused his will on the granite stones they cracked apart. The bones that he was meant to curse blackened and burned under his touch. The intensity of his power ripped through the very structure of any object he attempted to manipulate.
Tanash teased John about being even worse with bone charms than she was. Hers just didn’t work. His turned to ash in his hands.
John remained after the girls left for their private studies. Ji stretched out on a workbench, watching him and offering instruction from time to time. Often she simply answered John’s questions.
Earlier in class, Tanash had mentioned that Ji had once been an issusha. John couldn’t help but think of Laurie. He hoped that she was still safe. The slab of granite in John’s hands suddenly cracked. John tried to stop it. Instantly, it crumbled.
“You seem distracted today,” Ji commented.
John brushed the remnants of stone off of his hands and shirt. “I’ve been wondering how you escaped from Umbhra’ibaye.”
Ji studied him for several seconds. There was always something about the way she watched him that made John feel uneasy. She gazed at him as if she were looking into every secret that he had hidden throughout his entire life.
“I did not escape on my own. Ravishan’s mother was one of the sisters in Umbhra’ibaye. She took pity on me and stole my bones from the oracles’ chambers,” Ji said. “We escaped together.”
“Ravishan’s mother was a nun?” John asked.
Ji nodded. “You see why I should be so concerned about him. He is not only a possible Kahlil but also the son of my friend and savior. I knew him when he was just a child. I named him and his little sister, Rousma.”
John just stared at her. He knew that Ravishan’s mother had been a witch and a member of the Fai’daum. He hadn’t ever associated that with Ji and her teachings.
Ji bowed her head. “Their entire family paid dearly for my freedom.”
John felt a spark of anger flare toward Ji. Immediately, he realized the pettiness of blaming her. It had been the Payshmura who had forced Ravishan to kill his mother. It had been the Payshmura who had punished and tortured Ravishan.
“I owe a great debt to both Ravishan and his sister.” Ji glanced to John. “If he needed something, I would try to help him.”
“Oh?” John asked.
“Yes,” Ji said. “He’s an enemy of the Payshmura now. He’ll need sanctuary.”
“And you’re willing to offer that to him?”
“Lafi’shir might oppose allowing him in, but Giryyn will support me if I choose to sponsor Ravishan into the Fai’daum and Lafi’shir will come around.”
“Can you be sure?” John asked.
“Yes. Lafi’shir knows that an ushiri would be a valuable fighter and a Kahlil who has taken our side against the Payshmura would crush the morale of our enemies.” Ji cocked her head slightly. “Even so, it would be best to make a slow introduction. Ravishan should meet Giryyn and Lafi’shir first, then a few of the captains, before the public initiation.”
John nodded. His own initiation hadn’t been much more than standing up in the crowded dining hall with Saimura and swearing to abide by the laws of the Fai’daum. The gathered Fai’daum fighters had only briefly glanced up from their meals when John had received his tattoo. Already the tiny red tattoo over John’s heart had healed.
But John guessed that initiating Ravishan would be much more important. As an ushiri, Ravishan represented so much. There was no way that his initiation could simply be walked through before dinner.
“So why are you telling me this?” John asked.
“You’re the lover who he left the Payshmura for. I can’t imagine that he would want to be separated from you for too long.” Ji’s dark eyes narrowed as if she were attempting to somehow peer deeper into him.
“No,” John said. “Probably not.”
“When Ravishan comes to you, tell him what I’m offering. All I ask in return is that he serve the Fai’daum.”
“I will.” Relief swept through John. He couldn’t have hoped for more than this.
“Since you arrived my visions of the future have been changing. More and more I dream of Ravishan and the strongholds of the Payshmura crumbling. I see flames and shattered walls.” Ji pawed meaningfully at the dust and debris of stone at John’s feet.
John felt a cold dread sink through him. If he brought down the Payshmura, there was no assurance that he would stop there.
“Will I destroy them?” John asked.
“I’m not sure that my dreams are of your future as much as they are my own temptations,” Ji replied. “So much could be achieved with your power, Jahn. The promise of destroying an enemy so utterly is hard to resist.”
“You mean purposefully unleashing the Rifter?” John asked.
“It must never happen,” Ji said. “But watching stone crumble at your touch I do understand the temptation the ancient Payshmura must have felt.”
John frowned down at his hands. It did seem that his power was supremely crafted for destruction. There was little else he could do.
Ji jumped down from the workbench.
“Don’t look so depressed, Jahn. Immense power is always difficult to control. You have the will and spirit to do it. Now you simply need to take the time.”
“What if the power of
the Rifter can’t do anything but tear the world apart?”
“Power never has only one function,” Ji replied. “It is neither good nor evil—neither inherently creative nor destructive. It’s just a matter of control. Right now, you have very little control. But it will come with practice. Once it does, no one will be able to use you as a Rifter.”
John picked up another piece of granite and concentrated on it. He felt the structure of the stone, sensing the iron, calcium and oxygen that molten heat had fused into silicate mineral.
“Don’t try to force your will on it the way the girls do,” Ji said quietly.
“Then what should I do?” John asked. All he had practiced for the past week had been concentrating his will against the structure of the stones Ji gave him.
“Just hold it,” Ji said. “Feel it.”
That came easily to John. Crystals of black quartz and milky feldspar hung in a white matrix of silica. The granite lay in his hand like a beautiful, tangled necklace.
“Very gently,” Ji whispered, “imagine it moving, rising upward.”
John closed his eyes. He concentrated on one edge of the dark, glittering mass. He lifted it slowly, untangling the twisted strands of feldspar and slipping apart the tiny knots of sodium and silicon. Dark biotite and silvery muscovite flashed like filigree around black quartz. The stone unfurled.
Ji said something but John couldn’t hear her.
The structure of the stone filled his mind. He could taste the acidic nature of the granite. The flavor was sharp and almost as fragrant as a lime. Miles of it surrounded him. John followed the thick veins of granite down deeper into the earth. Tiny streams of water flowed between insoluble masses of minerals. Dark warmth enfolded John.
Again he distantly heard Ji. Perhaps she said his name. John didn’t think too much of it. Ji seemed far away. Long crystals of white feldspar piled over each other like the bones of long-buried creatures.
Suddenly John felt a sharp pain in his forearm. He opened his eyes. Ji gripped his arm in her mouth, bearing down but not breaking the skin. John drew in a breath. Ji released him.
The granite stone in John’s hand stretched up nearly to the ceiling. Long black crystals jutted from the thin spear of silica like thorns. Other black quartz crystals rose in long needles from the workbench where John’s elbow rested. Tiny outcroppings of feldspar studded the floor around John’s feet.