Shatter (The Children of Man)

by Elizabeth C. Mock

  "That reckless fool," Sheridan whispered and looked up at Faela. "I saw you checking him after I popped in; are you a Tereskan?"

  Faela nodded. "I am."

  "I've had Tereskan training, but Eve bound him using a Daniyelan binding spell. If he goes too far from the person he's bound to, his heart will stop," Sheridan explained. "I need you to keep his heart beating while I retrieve Eve. We can't move him like this. Can you do it?"

  Scarlet light bathing her eyes and hands, she placed her palm over the orange lines that pulsated with increasing intensity. Humming a rumbling series of notes, Faela followed the flows she already knew would lead to his heart. As she stretched out the tempo of her breathing with the notes, it slowed her own pulse and coaxed his into matching its regulated pace.

  Opening her eyes, she nodded. "Go."

  Sheridan squeezed Faela's shoulder and stepped back from them as indigo light enveloped her and she vanished with a pop.

  Faela returned her attention to Kade who slumped into her shoulder for support, her hand held up his chest. Her humming transformed into singing quietly in a rhythm that matched her heartbeat. "Shine, shine like the sun. Light will come and night be done."

  His heart beating at a normal rate, Kade’s eyes found hers as she sang. Saving me again, eh? We really need to find a better way to spend our time.

  Faela concentrated on keeping their hearts in time and did not respond, but sweat trickled down the sides of her face as she continued the song. Jair paced inside the yard, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Faela felt the world tilt with swirling vertigo. Fighting the binding spell for control of Kade's heart was steadily draining her energy. The scarlet light around them flared and Faela's hand shook. The orange light intensified and Faela's song stopped as she cried out in pain. Her hand had burns across her palm.

  Without a second's hesitation, Faela put her hand back on Kade's chest and began singing again. Seeing Faela's burns, Jair stopped his pacing and dashed to her side supporting her. She was running out of energy. If she continued much longer, she would soon lose consciousness and Kade.

  Jair closed his eyes and reached around him to help her. Eve had been correct; where there should have been rivers of energy there were only tiny trickles. Jair expanded his reach farther and farther until he reached where he knew the magic would be, his hometown, Garon. Jair found the barrier he had erected all those months ago. With a burst, the barrier tumbled and the magic rushed back into its natural courses. Pooling its energy within himself, he channeled it into Faela.

  Gasping as the energy rushed into her, Faela hesitated and regained her focus making use of the new resources pouring into her. The lines of the binding faltered as scarlet from Faela's hand enveloped Kade's chest. His spine arched and he bucked away from Faela. With Jair steadying her, Faela cushioned Kade's violent tremors and held him upright. All the while her voice remained strong and true, weaving the rhythm that kept Kade's heart pumping one beat after the other.

  Somewhere far away, Faela heard the clamoring of hoof beats getting louder and louder as each second passed. As Jair directed what energies Faela needed, he siphoned away the excess energy so that it returned to the channels in the land around him. He saw the pooling of magic that sped down the hill in the form of Kimiko and the twins, though the horse's energy had threads of green magic that linked her to Eve. While he focused on keeping the energy flow from overwhelming Faela, a part of his mind recognized Kimiko as Eve's familiar.

  Sounding far away, he heard voices that seemed to echo from the bottom of a well. Sheridan slid off of Kimiko's back, making directly for the trio. Eve vaulted to the grass without making a sound when she landed. Where her sister had run, Eve approached with wary steps. Kade's breathing had slowed from its rapid pace now that she had returned. The color in his cheeks returned as well as he lifted his head off of Faela's shoulder.

  "You had no right, Eve," he said in a choked voice. "You had nothing substantial."

  Arms folded across her chest, the lines around Eve's eyes strained. She leaned her weight onto one leg where she stood. "You fled. What was I supposed to think?"

  "Think what you like," he responded coughing, "but think before you act."

  Sheridan crouched behind Kade, taking his weight from Faela who fell back into Jair. "Eve, a binding spell can only be removed by one on the Daniyelan council in Finalaran and only after the person has passed the Trial of Fire."

  "I know," Eve said her voice even.

  Sheridan shook her head. "I knew you were going to try. I could feel you building the spell all the way from Montdell. It's why I came, to stop you from doing something so blasted reckless." Sheridan couldn’t look at her sister and instead concentrated on the skeletal remains of the rusted mill. "I thought I made it in time."

  "Well, he's fine, isn't he?" Eve directed her question to Faela.

  Faela pushed her hair back, contempt clear on her face. "He is now. But I almost lost him. I had used all my reserves. He was going to die."

  Pushing off of Jair's leg, Faela stood. Her energy had returned thanks to Jair's efforts, so she stood without so much as a tremor. "Do you understand, Daniyelan?" Faela continued to close the distance between her and Eve. "Life might mean little in your Order, but mine is sworn to protect it." Faela's eyes flashed a dangerous crimson. "And that vow is the only thing protecting you right now."

  Sheridan had her arm under Kade's back to help him as he struggled to make it to his feet to intercede, but before he could say a word, Mireya spoke. "Rafaela Durante, you will hold your tongue."

  Faela turned toward the commanding voice and Mireya did not look her short nineteen years. An ancient authority infused her. Opening her mouth as if to protest, she thought better of it and closed it again. Averting her gaze from Eve, Faela returned to Jair who stared at one of the deep ruts in the yard.

  Eve licked her lips and approached Kade. She lowered her voice. "I'm sorry, I won't leave like that again."

  "Oh," Kade said smiling without any mirth, "you're right about that."

  When Faela knelt next to Jair, she was unsure what to say. She had never experienced anything like what had just happened. The energy he had given her seemed endless. She put a hand on Jair's shoulder as she crouched in front of him. At the contact, she felt a wave of guilt knock the air from her lungs.

  "Jair?" she questioned peering into his bowed face. When he raised his eyes, they were silver.

  "By the Light," Faela breathed and fell back onto the ground to sit across from him.

  "It's my fault," he told her, his voice shaking. "I did this."

  Faela reached for his hand to reassure him. "Jair... what?" Too many questions swirled in her mind. All she managed to ask was, "What happened?"

  The people standing around them noticed the change in the tall boy’s demeanor, but didn’t interrupt their conversation.

  Jair choked back his emotions and replied, "The green magic, it was my fault, its absence."

  "How is that possible?" Sheridan murmured her large eyes wide.

  "You?" Kade scoffed in weak disbelief.

  Jair nodded, miserable. "I never knew it was unusual," he explained. "My mother just taught me to mold the energy I saw everywhere when I was six. She found me stealing energy from her garden. I used it to age a sapling into an old tree. Because my mother could do it, I never knew everyone else couldn't."

  Eve's eyes lit with recognition. "You were the channel I saw evidence of in Oakdarrow."

  Jair nodded again and glanced at Faela unwilling to reveal her secrets to this woman. "I didn't know that's what I was until the Phaidrian Order came looking for me about six months ago."

  "You're a channel?" Sheridan’s shock turned into excitement. "Okay, honestly, Kade, you collect the most interesting people."

  "Why were the Phaidrian's looking for you?" Faela asked rubbing her thumb in circular patterns over his knuckles.

  "They said that I had upset the Balance. I had no idea what they wer
e talking about. When they questioned me as to how I had done it, I had no answer. They threatened to send my mother and sisters to work as indentured servants unless I told them what I had done. But I didn't have the answers they wanted to hear.

  "I told them that all I had done was siphon off some of the energy to help the crops grow in Garon, my hometown." Jair kept his gaze on his and Faela's hands. "There had been a battle just outside our town during the war. It left the land sick. I was just trying to help. I didn't know it would do this. I didn't know it would hurt the people here."

  "How could you not know?" Eve asked looking down at his bent head.

  "I mean, I knew that the energies would be a little low in the areas I had redirected it from, but I didn't know that it would do this."

  "Oh, Jair," Faela said quietly, "upsetting the Balance is an offense punishable by death. It takes a very powerful channel using black to do it. That's why Caleb and Talise were hired, isn't it? The Phaidrians hired them."

  Jair nodded. "When they threatened my family, I ran and made sure they were safe and hidden. Then I went in the opposite direction. I didn't think I had done anything wrong – until now."

  Mireya sat next to Jair and rubbed his back with her hand. "Jair, that's why you just turned. Do you know that your eyes are gray now, just like Faela's?"

  Jair raised his head to look at the girl next to him. "What?"

  "It's true. You just released the green magic from where you had redirected it, didn't you?"

  Jair nodded.

  Mireya smiled. "That's why you're a Gray now. By trying to alter the harm that you've done, you renounced the black you used. Don't you see?"

  Faela squeezed his hand again. "She's right, Jair. You're one of us now."

  Jair smiled and Faela wrapped her arms around his neck in a hug. He hugged her back and rested his chin on her shoulder.

  "We'll figure this out together, Jair," Faela promised in his ear.

  *****

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Okay, so being with these people is like being caught at sea in a storm." Sheridan confided to Kade. "Is it always like this?"

  Once tempers had cooled, the party had left the mill to head up to the abandoned village. Faela, Haley, Jair, and Mireya all talked in front of them, while Eve led the way with Kimiko and a silent Dathien. At the top of the hill, the buildings that comprised Moshurst huddled above the river’s headwaters. Even at this distance, they could see the cattails from the marsh that stretched out below the town.

  "Life is a bit of a whirlwind with a Nikelan around," Kade admitted as he watched Faela and Jair.

  "Did you have any suspicions that Jair was a channel?"

  "Oh, we knew he had done something.” Kade chuckled remembering Jair’s face when he had realized why Caleb and Talise had come to the cave.

  Sheridan looked at him significantly and gestured for him to continue as she took in deeper and deeper breaths the further they hiked up the incline.

  “Caleb had been contracted to retrieve him.” Kade slowed down his pace when he noticed Sheridan was winded.

  "Thanks for that,” she said with an appreciative wink. “You know how I hate hiking, all that sweating. I’m horribly out of shape.”

  “You’re out of shape because you’re lazy, Sheridan. Didn’t you just finish a circuit?” Kade asked shaking his head in amusement. The closer they got to Moshurst, the more Kade felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. After spending the last weeks traveling in uninhabited areas, he had grown accustomed to the absence of people. He expected that absence. This abandoned husk should not be empty.

  “I’m not lazy,” she argued. “I’m inventive and efficient. It’s not my fault that I lose all that travel time by popping ahead of Eve to the towns I know. We can finish a circuit twice as fast with my method.”

  Kade nodded as if in agreement. “Only to be defeated by a gentle hill."

  Sheridan poked him in the side between the straps of his pack in retribution. “Getting back to the point. How'd you know Caleb was contracted to collect Jair?"

  "Because Caleb and Talise caught up to him over a week ago after he had already crossed my path."

  "How'd that happen?"

  Kade narrowed his eyes in remembered annoyance. "He stole my clothes while I was bathing in a creek."

  Sheridan’s laugh rang down the hill behind them. "Okay, even if he is a Gray, I like that boy."

  "You've always been so sympathetic to my suffering," Kade said in a monotone.

  "You can take care of yourself," she said with a dismissive wave. "How does Faela fit into this farce?"

  "When I was chasing Jair, he found Faela and used her as a shield."

  "How does that," Sheridan asked, pulling her hair that clung to her sweaty neck up into a ponytail, "add up to you all traveling together?"

  "It didn't. Faela took Jair with her, because she was convinced I'd do him harm if she left us alone."

  "A distinct possibility," Sheridan conceded. "Smart girl."

  "I realized after they left that he had stolen more than my clothes. He had also pinched my circuit kit, which had my logbook from Montdell."

  “This explains why you went after them, but not why you're still with them right now.” Sheridan stopped for a moment to catch her breath.

  They had reached the edges of the town now. The streets were empty. Only their approach and the noise of the nearby river disrupted the silence. There were no birds, no dogs, no children, no signs of life, just the wind and the water.

  “When I caught up to them, they were being attacked by bandits. I helped. In the process, I got hurt.”

  “Scrape-on-the-knee hurt?”

  “Sword-through-the-right-lung hurt.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, just a little. I'm just grateful that the itching has finally stopped.”

  “You should thank the Light,” Sheridan said, nodding in Faela's direction as they walked between the abandoned buildings, “that she's a Tereskan.”

  “Aye,” Kade responded watching Faela examine the debris-strewn street looking for any sign of inhabitants. She had stowed her hat earlier. Since they had met, he had always seen her mask herself before entering populated areas. Her quick and sharp movements betrayed her anxiety at being exposed, but she made no move to hide herself here.

  Returning his concentration to Sheridan, he continued his story. “My recovery took longer than I would have liked, but it was probably faster than it should have been and I'm beginning to see why.” His gaze slipped to Jair’s long back.

  "I get that you had to stay with Faela while you were healing," Sheridan prefaced, "but that doesn't explain why you're still with them."

  She didn't voice the rest of her question. Why had he run from Montdell in the first place? Her investigation had uncovered Kade's involvement with Gareth Burke's death, but not the extent of his involvement, nor his motivations. She had many things she needed to ask, but this was not the time.

  "Patience, girl." Kade tugged on her hair, just as he had when she would pester him with her questions as a child. "I'm getting to it."

  Sheridan arranged her face into a mask of virtuous perseverance. "See, this is my waiting face."

  "Mmm, right." Kade eyed her skeptically before telling her more. "Caleb and Talise tracked Jair to where we were recovering."

  "We?"

  "Yes, we. Faela had been injured pretty badly herself during the attack and had drained herself healing me."

  "Tereskans are completely mad." Sheridan shook her head in amazement. "I swear, they're all a few apples short of a bushel."

  "What does that say about us then?" Kade asked raising an eyebrow significantly.

  "Maybe there's something about handling magic that rots the brain? Or at least common sense, maybe?"

  The main thoroughfare of the village, like everything else they had encountered, was starkly empty, but the usual signs of an abandoned human settlement simply could not be found. Plants and
animals should have begun reclaiming this village, but there was nothing but dusty streets without so much as a weed or a rat to mar its surface. Only bits of branches and other dead plants blew across the road.

  "Looks like everyone's cleared out," Eve called back to Sheridan and Kade.

  "Satisfied?" Sheridan asked her sister holding her thumb up in question above her head.

  "I'd like to check a few of the buildings first," Eve said rocking onto the balls of her feet.

  "Just to make sure no one moved in once the townsfolk moved out,” Sheridan said illuminating her sister’s thought process.

  "Sounds like a plan. Will it be safe to get water from the wells here?" Kade directed his question to Eve whose eyes flashed green momentarily.

  "Not yet." She shook her head. "Whatever Jair did, things are equalizing. It should be safe soon, but don’t drink any standing water. The water from the river should be safe. Running water tends to remain stable with an unbalancing of the green. It has its own equilibrium, being neither alive, nor static."

  Most of the signs that should have hung outside each establishment proclaiming the proprietor’s trade had been removed. Eve entered a building with large windows patch-worked together in leaded diamond crisscrosses. From its proximity to the center of Moshurst, she assumed it was the town's tavern. When she pushed its door open, a layer of dust billowed out into the street.

  Haley broke off his conversation and jogged over to the tavern. "Exploring in pairs might be a good idea, yeah?" Haley suggested. "Never know what you might find." When Eve snorted skeptically at his proffered help, he clarified his motivation for exploring. "Me? I'm hoping for some ale."

  "It's not a bad idea, minstrel," Kade agreed. "No one should go off alone. Just stick together until this place is behind us."