Reign the Earth

by A. C. Gaughen

  “Of course I don’t.”

  “Then save her, Shalia. You tore down the bridge to the desert—you can save one little girl, can’t you?”

  I shut my eyes. “I don’t have my power anymore, Calix. I can’t show you what isn’t there.”

  “Then I will continue my work, and you will watch,” he told me. “Open your eyes.”

  I didn’t respond, and he pushed me, enough that my weak knees gave out and my body jerked down on the chains, cutting my wrists. I cried out, pushing my feet underneath me. “My feet will never fail me,” I murmured.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  I opened my eyes, looking at him. “I am a daughter of the desert, and my feet will never fail me.”

  He pushed me again, and he laughed as I fell again. “Well, they seem to fail you a little bit, my dear.”

  The girl whimpered. She was pale now, and the amount of blood in the bowl was growing.

  “She controls air,” Calix told me. “I have found many powers of water, and air, and a few of fire. You’re the first earth. I wonder if that is the limit of these powers, or if there are more.” He looked at me like he expected me to answer and shrugged. “No matter. I’ll discover eventually.”

  “You are a monster,” I whispered, shaking my head as I looked at the girl. “She’s not even a person to you anymore. She’s an insect whose wings you tear off.”

  “I am a god,” he growled at me. “And this—unlocking the secrets of this damnation—will not only please the God but it will prevent my enemies from coming for me. I will stop them all, Shalia. I will have all the power, and no one will question my reign again.”

  “You are making your enemies,” I told him. “And losing your soul in the process. You don’t see what you’ve done? You killed our—you are making your own prophecy come true. Your god will never forgive the torture of innocents. Do you think Danae will, when she finds out? What about your mother? She would be ashamed—”

  “Do not mention my mother with your filthy mouth!” he roared, and everyone in the room jumped. “You know nothing about her!” he screamed, hurling his finger at me but not touching me.

  The sounds of harsh, fast breathing filled the room, and I turned back to the girl. Her skin was disturbingly pale, and she was breathing hard, sweat breaking out on her gray forehead.

  “Calix, she’s dying,” I told him. “Stop!”

  “What?” she whined. She looked to the quaesitori, and blood kept flowing out of her arm, dripping into the bowl. “No! No, please!”

  Tears rushed out of me as I reached for my power, but it wasn’t there. I tried to think of my family and Galen, but every good memory was stained with heartbreak, and I couldn’t call my power to my hands.

  No one moved, and within moments her confusion and anxiety melted away. Her eyes went half lidded, and her breathing was still too rapid, like a tiny, frightened animal.

  “Calix, stop,” I begged.

  He turned to me, wiping tears from my cheeks. “Your power, not your tears, will save her life, Shalia.”

  Her body went limp, and still several minutes passed before the blood stopped dripping.

  Calix lifted his shoulders. “Too late, it seems.” He pointed to the blood, and one of the quaesitori picked the bowl up and brought it down the hallway. Two guards came forward and took her body away.

  Calix followed the quaesitori down the hallway, and I was left there, chained and staring at the table where they had murdered a girl without thought or care, like blowing out a candle just to see the trail of smoke it would leave.

  Alive

  The next time the guards let us go down to the river to bathe, I could barely hold myself up. I stumbled, and Iona caught me, wrapping her arm around my waist and pulling my arm around her neck.

  The contact rushed through me, and I looked at her. “Did you feel that?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  “Has that happened before?” I whispered.

  She shook her head.

  As we walked, I felt stronger, her healing power just like Kata’s. The cuts on my wrist scabbed over, and she held her hand forward. The redness in the stumps was gone. “Healing?” she whispered.

  I showed her my wrist. “Yes. If you can control your powers,” I whispered, “and heal some of us to do the same, we might be able to get out of here.”

  She pulled out from under my arm. “Don’t say that. They’ll hear you.”

  “Iona—”

  “No,” she said vehemently. “I can’t. Don’t ever ask me to.”

  I wanted to change her mind, to convince her that her power could save us all. But I knew I couldn’t guarantee her safety. How could I justify her risk? So I said, “Very well. But thank you, for what you did.”

  She moved farther from me, putting her head down.

  As we took our clothes off and went into the water, I cleaned myself and saw no new blood coming from me.

  I went still in the river, shivering and staring at the cloth, without any red stripes on it. “No,” I gasped, and cleaned harder. Still, no new blood came from me, and I slipped to my knees in the shallow water, clutching the cloth to me.

  I felt the weight of stares on me, but I didn’t pay attention until Iona knelt in front of me. I was rocking now, moving back and forth, trying to find some way to breathe around the horrible, huge pain in my chest. Iona touched my arm, and with the rush of healing, something broke inside me.

  Curling around my knees until I almost drowned myself, I sobbed. She was gone. Nothing was left of her, not even a little trail of blood between my legs.

  I had lost my daughter, my family, my whole heart. My faith, and my way.

  The guards didn’t take me from my room for a long time, and I had no way of knowing how much time had passed. They fed us, but either the intervals were irregular or I was losing my understanding of time. There were no new screams. There were murmured words about how the blood hadn’t worked, and the quaesitori suggesting solutions that I barely understood, something about the freshness of the blood, a way to bind vein to vein.

  The next time the guards took me to bathe, I didn’t see Calix anywhere. I hadn’t heard his voice either, and as they sent me back to my cell untouched, I wondered if he had left.

  They stopped feeding me and gave me only water. I had no idea how many days passed, only that my power didn’t return and they didn’t hurt me. Locked in my cell, I heard Dara as they continued to test her, making her scream until the room blazed full of light and fire.

  One morning Iona came to me while we were bathing, catching my hand in her own. My body drank in her power, giving me strength where I had none. “I can’t heal the others,” she whispered to me. “I’ve tried. You pull it from me, but I don’t know how to do it on my own.” She met my eyes. “But he said—he said you took down a mountain. Is that true?”

  I shook my head. “In a way. But I can’t even feel my power anymore. It’s not just that I’m hurt; it’s gone.”

  She jumped away from me, looking at her hand and frowning, then shaking it.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She looked at her hand for a moment more. “I don’t know. When I was touching you, something … jumped. Do you know what that is?”

  I felt broken, and weary, and empty. “No,” I told her. “I know almost nothing about these powers.”

  “But—”

  “If I knew, my family wouldn’t be dead. My baby wouldn’t be—” I halted, shaking my head. I moved away from her. “I don’t know anything about these powers, Iona.”

  She sighed, and left me alone.

  When we returned to the room, Calix walked in, and my heart stopped when I saw Danae behind him. “Danae!” I screamed. The guards grabbed me when I tried to run to her, but she turned to me.

  “Shalia,” she said, her throat working. She glanced back at Calix, and then walked over to me. “Three Faces, you’re thin,” she said. She glared at the guard holding me back but
didn’t order him to release me.

  “Danae, please,” I said. “Tell him to let me go. Please!”

  She nodded. “I’ll try, Shalia. But I have a chance,” she said, looking impossibly sad, “to help him. I need to help him so I can help you too. Do you understand?”

  “No!” I cried. “Danae, please! Please!”

  Regret filled her eyes. “I’m sorry for all that you’ve suffered. I still think of you as my sister, you must know that.”

  I slumped against the bonds of my guard. “Please,” I cried. “Don’t leave me here, Danae. Please.”

  She turned away, and Calix put his arm around her, pulling her farther from me.

  I was left alone in my cell, and this time I couldn’t hear anything.

  The next morning Iona nearly ran over to me while we walked to the river. She clasped her hand in mine, and I felt the immediate rush of power. “They killed her,” she breathed.

  “Danae!” I gasped.

  “No,” she said, looking forward at the others. “Dara. The fire power.”

  I looked around. Iona was right; she was missing.

  “You have to heal yourself,” Iona told me. “You have to heal yourself and get us out of here. Yours is the only power that could do it.”

  “I told you—”

  She squeezed my hand, and her face looked panicked. “I don’t care. He’s right, you know—I’ve been here for God only knows how long and everyone presents their powers in the end. The power is always there—it’s always in you, it’s always inalienable. You have to find a way to get it back. You have to save us before we all die here.”

  “Iona—” I started.

  She gasped, cutting me off and holding up our hands. “There it is again. Concentrate—you must be able to feel it too.”

  “Wait,” I told her, and we took off our clothes to go into the river. Once there, we locked hands again, and her power felt even stronger. I could feel it, like the threads of my power, but instead it was one single thread that slipped between our hands and connected us. Following it, I felt it give a strange little pulse. Like following a trail, I traced the thread through my body.

  “The Three-Faced God is great,” she breathed. Her face was full of wonder, like I was some kind of miracle.

  “Iona, what are you talking about?” I asked, but she didn’t break the hold, and I felt the pulse again, stronger this time. Steadier. Even and low.

  It wasn’t my power, or hers. It was a heartbeat. And it was coming from my womb.

  It shouldn’t have been possible, but my daughter, my fierce daughter was still there, still clinging to life. She was a daughter of the desert, of me, of my murdered family that had sent their spirits like soldiers to keep her alive.

  Even in the small, secret touch under the eyes of the guards, Iona’s power rushed through me, healing me, healing us, and I sobbed, clinging to her, praying to every Sky and spirit I knew, thanking them.

  My daughter was alive.

  Sweeping the Stone

  When we returned to the room, Calix stood there, smiling at me. I wiped my tears away, standing up straight, feeling a new kind of power rushing in my veins.

  “Those two,” Calix said. He pointed at me and Iona.

  We looked at each other as they brought us forward. Calix locked me into the manacles from the ceiling and drew my arms up again. “You look thin, wife,” he said. “Not enjoying your stay here?”

  I drew a breath and shut my eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his breath close to my ear. “You won’t be here much longer.”

  I opened my eyes as I heard Iona’s whimper. They tied her down to the table, and she looked at me, breathing rapidly, blinking back tears.

  “Shalia, it’s time for you to present your power. I hear you’ve become quite close with her, yes? I knew I could count on you to make friends, even in a place like this. So just know that every bit of pain she’s about to feel will be your fault. Unless, of course, you want to show your power.”

  Iona looked up at the ceiling, and I glared at Calix. “I am not responsible for your choices, Calix,” I told him. “You masquerade as a leader, but a leader would take responsibility for his choices. He would save people, not hurt them.”

  “Really?” Calix asked, smiling. “You’re naive, Shalia. You have so many grand thoughts of leadership, but peace is always bought with death. Safety is inherently at odds with freedom. And you know nothing of what sacrifices leadership demands until you have fought for the lives of your people. You know nothing of what it takes to lead.” He turned to his quaesitori. “Begin.”

  One of the men approached Iona with a small vial in his hand. Another came to the other side and blocked my view of her, holding a cloth and arranging it on her face.

  She tried to buck and fight, but they held her tight.

  “What are you doing?” I cried. “Calix, what are you doing to her?”

  He didn’t answer me.

  She whimpered and cried, kicking her legs, but they opened the vial.

  “Calix!” I yelled.

  “Do it!” Calix snapped.

  With only a glance at him, they dripped something onto her eye.

  She screamed, a guttural, tortured noise, for barely a moment before her body went limp.

  “Do the other eye too,” Calix said. “Unless you want to show me something, Shalia?”

  Desperate, I curled my fingers, trying to call up the threads, and I yelled out in frustration as the quaesitori switched places, opening her other eye.

  The power is always there, she had told me.

  Like my heart. Whether I liked it or not, even if it was shattered in my chest, my heart was still there. It wasn’t as easy as saying I didn’t know how to love anymore. The thought of my child, still growing inside me, was enough to make me believe that.

  I shut my eyes and thought of her. My tiny girl, my little survivor.

  My power had always been my ability to care for people. To love people, even in the bleakest of situations. Calix could say what he wanted, but that was truly what it meant to lead—to love people when they didn’t deserve it, to love people when it wasn’t in your best interest.

  I would not let Iona die.

  Like a thunderclap, the threads rushed back to my fingers. I tugged, and the chains tore out of the ceiling. The ground trembled and shook, and the quaesitori capped whatever dangerous liquid they held. My chains fell from me as cracks ran over the ceiling, and my husband turned to me, an evil light in his eyes.

  “I knew it!” he crowed. “You see? I’m always right, wife. I will always be able to force you to show this filthy side of yourself.”

  “I’ll be honest, Calix,” I told him, holding my hands wide. “I don’t know how well I can control this. You might want to run.”

  I pushed my hands at the doors, and some of them unlatched, but most shattered on their hinges. The other Elementae stumbled to the doorways. Someone ran for Iona, but most stayed where they were.

  Calix started laughing. “Magnificent!” he crowed. “You are a fine specimen, aren’t you? And you know, I considered what you said—what happens if I don’t ever find the elixir? If I can’t ever re-create it? Now I have my own answer to your little power. Danae!” he shouted.

  A chunk of rock ripped free of the ceiling, and with a gasp I pushed it out of the way so it wouldn’t hurt the others. As I put it safely down, Danae came out of the hallway. Her eyes were sunken and shadowed, and I saw bruises so dark her skin looked black spread wide around stitched cuts in her arms.

  I stared at Calix, and suddenly the experiments, the cuts, the disappearing blood, and the dead girl made a stunning amount of sense. “You didn’t. You couldn’t.”

  He went to Danae, smiling at her for a moment. “Kill her. Meet us back at the City of Three,” he said before disappearing into the tunnel behind her.

  “Danae,” I said.

  She held up her hands, and fire wrapped around her fingers. “He mad
e me one of you,” she said, her voice choked. “He made me one of you so I have the power to stop you. To keep him safe.” She swallowed. “He made me into the thing he hates most.”

  “Danae, please,” I told her. “Your power is new; you won’t be able to control it. You have to stay calm or you’ll kill all of us.”

  “Don’t tell me to stay calm!” she screamed, and fire shot from her palms, running over her arms as if flames were bleeding from her cuts. One of the others dove over Iona’s body to cover her. “Galen—Galen turned from him years ago. But I have always loved him—he’s my oldest brother!” she yelled. Her hands dropped, and the fire stopped flowing from them, but it raged out of control around us without anything to burn. She fell to her knees, covering her face. “My mother—my mother told me that he just needed someone to love him. That I had to love him after she was gone. And no matter what he did, I loved him. I did whatever he wanted. I protected him. I killed for him,” she cried.

  I called up dirt and dust and rubble, trying to tamp out the flames, but they just grew.

  “Get out of here!” I screamed at the others. I couldn’t see them. Fire was all around me, encircling Danae and me, forcing us closer together.

  I could hear noises coming from beyond the fire, but I couldn’t see through its glaring light enough to know what was happening. Someone screamed.

  Coming forward, I knelt beside Danae. I pulled her into my arms, and fire burst from her hands. Crying out, I jumped back from her. The cave was thick with smoke, and I didn’t think we could survive much longer.

  Shaking, I touched Danae’s face. “Come back to me,” I told her. “Please, Danae—I love you. Galen loves you. No matter what, Calix did this because he trusts you more than anyone.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t look at me. The fire was burning closer to me, searing my back, and I cried out, shaking her. “Danae, please!”

  Something cool rushed over me, so intense it hurt for the first stinging moment. Then I was drenched in water, and water was flying through the air, swirling around the fire and fighting it back, containing it.