by Jon Sprunk
Alyra caught up to him at the top of the tunnel. “Are you all right? You’re trembling.”
“I just needed some air.”
She peered into his eyes for a moment, and then nodded. “It’s just as well. There’s something I need to tell you.”
The tone in her voice made his stomach tighten.
She took a deep breath and then let it out in a rush. “I’ve been given another mission.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m leaving.”
He stared at her, not sure how to respond. His first reaction was anger, that she could do such a thing without talking to him first. Fear leaked into his heart, that what they built was all a sham and now she was abandoning him. Finally he was deluged with cool detachment as he considered how this might help him make his decision. “All right.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“I support your decision.” He sighed, letting his anxiety drain away. “Alyra, you’ve been right all along. You’re a spy, and a damned good one. So whatever you decide to do, I support it all the way.”
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. When Horace reached out, he felt her shoulders shaking. “What’s wrong?”
“I was afraid to tell you. I didn’t think you would understand.”
“This is what you were born to do, Alyra. You’ll fight until every slave in this empire is free. I respect that. We all have our roles to play.”
She grabbed him in a tight embrace. He hugged her back.
“What about you?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”
She didn’t add after I leave, but it hung between them anyway. He thought back to his dream, or vision, whatever it had been. He could still feel it calling in the back of his mind. “I don’t know.”
He bit down on his tongue as the lie slipped out. It’s just a small lie. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do, although I have an inkling. . . .
“I have to get back to the meeting,” Alyra said, her voice clear again. “Can we have dinner together?”
A shiver passed through Horace, stronger this time. He ignored it and focused on Alyra. “That sounds good. See you then.”
He listened as he started back up the tunnel to the outside, thinking she would say something else, but there were no sounds except for the soft tread of her feet as she went back to the table. Relieved, he went out.
As the council broke up, Jirom caught up with Emanon at the top of the tunnel ramp. “Hold on.”
Emanon turned halfway around and waited. “I’ve got to check on the watch stations.”
“I need to talk to you. We have to finish this.”
“What’s to finish? Everything is settled. We’re lying low, just like you wanted.”
“Just for now, Em. We don’t have the strength to undertake a major attack. At least until the Blades return.”
“There was no ‘we’ in that decision either, Jirom. You sent those mercs off without consulting me.”
Jirom’s teeth ground together as he counted backward from ten. “I didn’t think I needed your permission, Em. I thought I was free to run the combat units on my own. That’s what you said when you offered me command.”
“I didn’t think you were going to scatter our forces from here to the sea.”
Jirom glanced around to see if anyone was overhearing their conversation. Seng and Ralla were talking at the table, but everyone else had left. “We need allies. Even counting the new recruits, we can field less than five hundred fighters. That’s not enough to win this war, and you know it.”
Emanon shook his head. “But a cause like ours loses momentum with every day we sit here. People set down roots. They get comfortable. They start thinking that mere survival is enough. When that happens, the idea of risking their lives for a notion like freedom becomes almost unthinkable.”
“I’m not going to let that happen. These men need time to develop. It doesn’t do us any good to toss them into battle half-trained. I’m trying to build an army.”
“Time is a luxury, Jirom. Giliam was right about that. We can’t last long out here. If the empire is distracted, then now is the best time for a big attack. We throw everything we have at the softest target.”
Jirom clenched his hands into fists but kept them by his sides. This was why he had never sought a command position. He didn’t have the patience. “Risk everything on one roll of the bones?”
“Damn right.”
“Em, we’re not ready yet. We have to wait. At least until the Blades return.”
“You never should have let that old wizard go with them,” Emanon grumbled. “You’re too attached, and it’s affecting your judgment.”
Maybe, my love. But you’re the one pushing us to run before we can even walk.
Jirom held out a hand as Emanon started to leave again. “Wait. What are we going to do about the civilians? Giliam may be annoying, but he represents a lot of people.”
“This is our rebellion, Jirom. Those people are only alive thanks to us. If they can’t fight, or won’t, then we drop them off at the next stop.”
“We can’t just abandon them.”
“Then leave them here or cut them loose.” Emanon shrugged. “It’s all the same. This is what comes with the big chair, Jirom. You make the tough calls, and you don’t look back.”
“So when my lover questions my decision to send scouts to Omikur, I should . . . what?”
“Tell him to shut his gorgeous mouth and get to work.”
“So shut your mouth and get to work, soldier.”
Emanon threw him a half-hearted salute and started up the tunnel again. Jirom called after him, “I’ll go walk the perimeter with you.”
“I’ll be fine. Go check on the recruits. They need a strong hand.”
As Jirom watched his partner leave the tunnel and walk out alone into the bright light of day, a memory flashed through his mind, of the night long ago when his sister had discovered him and Tabir fumbling with each other in youthful passion by the riverbank. He had chased after her, begging her not to say anything, but she told their father anyway. He and Tabir were exiled from the village. Jirom recalled walking away from his life with nothing but the clothes he wore, his hunting spears, and a package of food his mother had tearfully packed for him wrapped in an old blanket. His sister had stood by their father and the rest of the village elders, stone-eyed and not deigning to even wave good-bye.
Tabir had been a mess. He cried during the exiling ritual and cried harder as they trudged away into the brush. Tabir went out into the world empty-handed. His mother had packed him nothing, and he hadn’t yet earned his spears. Jirom recalled how he’d felt bad for his young lover at that moment, how he had wanted to protect him, take care of him. Then how his heart had broken as Tabir turned and ran back, heedless of his cries to stop, back to the village. Jirom never knew if the tribe had killed him, or driven him off, or let him stay in shame. He just kept walking, off to start a new life.
Tabir of the kind eyes and gentle heart. He hadn’t thought of him in years.
Jirom waited a couple of minutes, and then headed to the training fields.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Go get something to eat,” Horace said as they approached the southern side of the chain’s largest hill. A series of shelves and niches formed a crude ladder up the sheer slope. “Or grab some sleep.”
Gurita leaned on his spear, and Jin stood beside him, striking a similar pose. “We’re fine, sir,” Gurita said. “You go on with your pondering. We’ll be here when you come down.”
Horace started up the hillside. The exertion felt good with the sun at his back and the open air. His anxiety lessened as he reached the summit. The hilltop was weathered and bare. Two guards stood watch.
Heat penetrated the soles of his boots as he walked over to the only spot with any shade, a small patch of stone under a thin overhang on the north side of the hilltop. He sat down and crossed his legs. The stone had a nat
ural indentation like a saddle that made for a comfortable seat. He had found this spot a couple of weeks ago and had taken to coming up here whenever he needed some time alone. It was peaceful with an excellent view of the desert. Best of all, no one bothered him.
His last words with Alyra lingered in his thoughts. Sometimes talking with her made him more confused, but she wasn’t the problem. He couldn’t believe these powers at his disposal had been designed only to kill and destroy. There must be more to it than that. And these visions that plagued him day and night. What did they mean? They felt as if they contained messages, but he couldn’t understand them. If doom was truly coming, what was he supposed to do?
The desert view—the dunes rolling under a flawless azure sky, the scattered lumps of rock thrusting up from the sand like nuggets of red gold—brought him some measure of peace. Certainly more than the close underground confines of the camp. Down in those tunnels, time seemed to stand still with the hours feeling like days and the days passing with frustrating sluggishness as the stone walls closed in tighter around him every moment until he couldn’t breathe. . . .
Horace inhaled the dry desert air and let it out. It was time to begin.
Closing his eyes to narrow slits, he listened to the wind blowing across the hilltop. With each breath he focused on feeling it fill his lungs, and then a long exhalation that left him empty. Inhale and exhale, slow and steady. With each breath he slipped deeper into a calm state. As the outside world faded from his consciousness, he heard a slow rhythmic beat. Heavy and solid, it sounded like the beat of a giant heart.
As his power had grown, he’d begun to see the world differently. The elements of the zoana were vibrant and alive all around him, every moment of the day. Sitting here, he felt it rising up through the rock beneath him and floating in iridescent ribbons in the air around him, dancing at the edges of his vision as if inviting him to pick them up, and the temptation to be constantly embracing their power could sometimes become almost too much to resist. Meditation helped to sharpen his attention, and it also provided a relief from the stresses of his new life.
He was following a strand of Imuvar through the breeze, just playing with it to practice his control, when he felt the beckoning call tug again. It pulled him out toward the desert, far to the north. He shifted his mind’s eye toward that direction, but all he saw were sand and sky. An endless ocean of nothingness.
A distant voice whispered on the wind, too low to make out, but it reminded him of the dream where he had walked the streets of the old city. Then, suddenly, he was there again. He stood on the ancient stones of a street with squat, angular buildings on either side. Horace held out his arm, feeling the sun beaming on his skin, just like in the real world. Ahead of him, the avenue opened into the now-familiar open plaza at the heart of the city. The massive pyramid towered above the skyline, drawing his gaze. What was it about this place that drew him back again and again? Was this his imagination of a perfect Akeshia?
A chill ran down the back of his neck as thunder boomed overhead. Black clouds rolled across the sky, blocking out the sun. Horace shivered as a cold wind swept around him. He gagged as he breathed in a foul odor. It reeked like moldering decay.
The sound of crashing water made him look beyond the pyramid. Huge black waves battered the city walls, cracking the stone and washing over the battlements. Horace took a step in that direction, wanting to help but not sure how. He reached for his zoana, but he couldn’t find it. His qa was gone. The impotence yawned inside him like a bottomless pit.
Give me my power back!
He awoke with a start, opening his eyes. Dark clouds had gathered on the northern horizon while he was lost in the trance. A stiff breeze beat against him. As Horace started to get up, a flash of movement caught his eye from out on the desert floor. Shading his eyes, he looked closer. Shapes ran across the dunes. Hundreds of them, racing toward the hills. They ran low to the ground, sometimes dropping to all four limbs like animals, but they appeared to be people, with long, lean torsos and wisps of hair wriggling in the wind.
One looked up, and the blood slowed in Horace’s veins as he saw the black orbs in their sockets. A sinewy jaw stretched opened in a silent shout as the invaders leaped forward in a ragged mass.
He reached for his power and sighed with relief as the zoana filled him like a river of molten iron. He had no idea what these approaching things were, but he could feel the malice radiating from them even at this distance. The itch told him that sorcery was involved, and that was all he needed to know. He wove an interlacing matrix of Imuvar and cast it between the invaders and the chain of hills. A small twister touched down amid the dunes, gathering speed as its tightly funneled winds spun faster and faster. The gusts tugged at Horace’s clothes as he watched his magic work. He expected the creatures to scatter as it approached them, or perhaps even fall back in a haphazard retreat, but they charged right into the sandstorm as if it didn’t exist. Horace held his breath, waiting to see them thrown back by the violent winds. The air left his lungs in a rattling gasp as the creatures appeared on the near side, scurrying faster. More were coming behind them.
The rebel sentries had spread the alarm. Fighters were emerging from the network of caves. Horace worked another sorcery as fast as he could, forcing the threads of zoana into the pattern he wanted. He thrust out his hand, and a blazing red sphere arched down from the hilltop. It detonated in the midst of a cluster of invaders, unleashing a torrent of fire that reached as high as the hill where he stood. Horace didn’t hear any screams. Then a cold finger scraped down his spine as the creatures emerged from the fire, running forward even as their flesh burned off in flakes of black ash.
Horace swallowed the coppery taste that flooded the back of his mouth. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. No living thing could have survived those flames. The chill returned, much stronger this time, as he recalled the rumors about the Manalish’s invincible army.
Out on the desert plain, more of the enemy were closing in, racing past the dwindling inferno. They moved faster as they came nearer. Horace was contemplating another large-scale attack when the first peals of thunder shook the skies. The thunderclouds had rolled in with startling swiftness.
Horace sent multiple threads of the Kishar dominion down into the sand at the base of the hill. The material was denser than he expected, a few dozen feet beneath the surface, but he was able to shift it around. When he was ready, he searched for his first targets. A group of a dozen or so creatures was coming in fast from the northwest. Horace picked a spot in front of them and waited. A drop of sweat rolled down his nose to hang from the tip. When the invaders crossed the spot, he struck. The sand opened up beneath them, forming a hole more than twenty feet across and a hundred paces deep. Their fingers clawed for purchase as they slipped down the funnel he’d made. A moment later, he closed the chasm, and the sands covered the spot as if nothing had happened, leaving no sign of the creatures.
He was choosing his next targets when a crack of thunder echoed directly overhead, startling him. All of a sudden, the zoana poured out of him, leaving him empty as the tide of black clouds rolled over his position.
Down below, the first invaders reached the camp. The rebels had set up a line of defense among the rocks. A flight of arrows and spears rained down. A few creatures dropped, but the rest came on, leaping over the barricades. Behind them, many of the fallen creatures climbed back to their feet and rejoined the fight. Horace clenched his hands into tight fists, trying to find a solution.
He turned to the nearest sentry, who was staring at the scene below. “Go find Jirom! Tell him we need to pull back.”
As the soldier hurried away, Horace considered his options. The rebels were grappling with the first wave of invaders in close quarters. They leapt onto the rebels like beasts, tearing with claws and even using their teeth. Another group was climbing the north face of the hill, bounding from handhold to handhold. Horror infested him at the sight, but he couldn’t
do anything more from up here.
Before he left the hilltop, Horace summoned more zoana and sent it tumbling down the slope beneath him. Stones and heaps of newly formed gravel descended the hillside, sweeping away a dozen creatures. He sent another landslide of broken rock sliding on top of them for good measure and then turned away.
He half-climbed, half-slid down the ladder of handholds of the southern exposure. He had to find a way to stop these things before the camp was overrun. He just hoped it wasn’t already too late.
Jirom ran up the sloped embankment along the western sweep of hills. The alarm bell echoed throughout the camp, accompanied by the shouts of fighters hustling to their stations. He and Emanon had planned for an attack on the base, but part of him marveled that it was actually happening. Out here with nothing but sand and scorpions for days in every direction. How in the Seven Hells did they find us?
As he reached the top of the bank, he looked across the dunes for telltale flashes of metal armor, but there was nothing to indicate an army was approaching. He frowned at the dark clouds hovering in the north. A storm was the last thing they needed. Then he spotted movement to the northwest. Several dark shapes moved across the sands. His initial instinct was to take them for hyenas, but they were too big. The way they moved was almost reptilian, fast and jerky.
“What are they?”
Emanon had appeared beside him. His lover appeared ready for a fight, almost eager.
“I have no idea. But they’re coming this way. Fast.”
More shapes moved in the distance, scores of them. The lump in Jirom’s stomach threatened to rise. These were no animals, and not men either. At least, not any longer.
“I’ve already initiated the defense plan.” Emanon hefted his spear. “Let’s see how well they bleed.”
They joined the western command post. A chest-high bulwark had been built out from the hillside. Fighters were arrayed along the barrier with weapons ready.