“You begin to understand how much you do not understand, brother,” Jorune’s voice descended upon them from elsewhere. “All you have seen is at risk.”
Iris pulled Lorace back. “I think that means we have seen enough for now. Promise me, when you learn the answers to those questions, you will try to explain it all to me.”
Lorace slowly let his sight fade away, returning them to the deck of the ship where they had stood all the while. He gazed into the infinite depths of her eyes with a slight understanding of what infinite truly may be.
The voice of his brother echoed in his mind. “All you have seen.”
“I promise,” he softly replied.
“Thank you,” Iris said in her husky whisper, “for showing me this, for sharing everything with me. You have kept your promise, and I love you all the more for it.”
In reply, Lorace swirled his spirit around her, briefly matching the white whorls within her gold glow. She swayed and blushed brightly. “I love you infinitely,” he said, then brought his lips down to hers for a long kiss.
Tornin and Falraan interrupted them. The couple brought a folded cloth full of dried fruit, strips of salted pork, and a wide clay jar of water. “Sorry,” the young knight apologized. “You have been here at the rail, and Oen insisted you two needed to take a break from standing perfectly still to eat something. He would also like it if Lady Iris could see her way to continue the priests’ training in the sorcerous arts.”
“As soon as I have eaten,” Iris sighed at the rough fare, “I will continue their training.”
Lorace and Iris shared their plain meal in silence while he maintained their spiritual link like a close embrace.
“How much effort is it taking to be connected to me in this way?” she asked between delicate nibbles on a slice of dried apricot. “It is close to everything we felt last night.”
“It takes a share of concentration, like doing more than one thing at a time does,” Lorace admitted. “Doing that and maintaining the wind is a bit like the focus it requires to walk while waving your arm at the same time. Very simple. The more I do it the more it becomes effortless. Even now I have to concentrate to feel the effort the wind in the sails requires.”
“Good.” Iris lifted onto her toes to kiss his cheek. “Keep it up and do more besides. I can feel you through your link as well. You are stronger now than before our trip to the stars. Try to link with everyone you can without your chain, push your limits. And it would not hurt you to share in what I teach to the priests.” She paused to look up at him sternly. “Under no circumstances will you share your vision of anything under my dress! Slow, painful death, remember that image.”
Lorace grinned at her words, but nodded his quick acceptance of her threat. Iris gave him a last hug and kiss before heading to the bow of the galley where Oen and the priests had taken up station. As he gazed upon her departing form, he sincerely hoped that Micah worked equally hard at practicing his gift. They all must train hard.
chapter 4
KVARRAK’S GIFT
Twenty-Ninth day of the Moon of the Thief
-upon the Vestral Sea
He drew out his chain and wrapped it around his waist, tasking a slight amount of air to hold it in place. He practiced unwrapping and wrapping it back around using just that manipulation of air. Once satisfied with his facility to do this quickly and easily, he removed the satchel from his shoulder and set it aside. One more task. He thought.
Lorace reached to the spirits of Sir Rindal, Tornin, and Captain Falraan, forging links with them until the hum of their life force mingled with his. Three more.
Tornin broke the easy silence. “Lorace, is that you I feel dancing around in me? What are you doing?”
“Practicing,” Lorace said. “I have forged a link between us, just like the link that exists between Sir Rindal and the Lady.”
Lorace squared his shoulders and unlimbered his arms. “Tornin, how fast can you move with your gift? Do you know your limits?”
The knight lowered his eyes. “No. It tires me greatly to maintain it long. I have not taken the time to practice it now that I have my sword.”
“Good, you can practice with me then, but do not touch your sword for its vitality; I will guide your spirit to it.”
He plucked at Tornin’s spirit of whirling green and silver with his golden sparks, guiding it into contact with the radiant glow of magic surrounding Defender of the Youngest. He pulled it as he had seen Iris draw on the spirit of Vorallon. Lorace intertwined the two until both forces held fast to one another. Tornin should now be able to restore his stamina from the magic of the sword just by willing it, regardless of whether he held the hilt or not. Only when he had completed the bonding did he realize he was moving Tornin’s spirit as he would the air under his command.
Kvarrak’s gift! Lorace halted, surprised at his realization. This moving and pushing of Tornin’s spirit was his gift of air, shifted to the realm of spirit. He did not shift his body, as Kvarrak did; he shifted his gifts. Kvarrak’s gift allowed the man to become insubstantial to the material world, allowing him to pass through physical barriers. Now, after at least one complete cycle through death and rebirth, that gift had descended to him as the ability to shift his gifts to the spirit realm rather than his material being. He could manipulate his own spirit, and to a degree, the spirits of others with the same facility he manipulated air. He had been doing this ever since bracing against Vorallon’s core and pushing Aizel’s tendrils away.
“Falraan, what of your gift?” Lorace asked, though his mind was whirling. “I have only seen you use it once that I know.”
Falraan took up a guarded posture, crossing her arms before her chest. “Lorace it is too dangerous. I do not know if Iris can release someone from her influence once she has charmed them, but once I have burned something there is no going back, it remains burnt and often destroyed to ash.”
Lorace gave her his most reassuring smile while calming her blazing red spirit with a touch of his tranquility. “Trust me. You are going to practice with me as well. We all must train.”
When he turned his gaze upon Sir Rindal, the paladin shook his head. “I have no gift to exercise.”
“That may be so, but you have one of the most powerful wills of anyone I have met. That is what you will exercise with us.”
Across the gliding ship, a fraction of his awareness listened to and observed Iris as she began marching the priests through a simple spell to focus their magic into a brilliant spot of light dancing at the tip of her finger. The glamour of the star they had seen made her choice of spells a simple one.
Lorace nodded to Sir Rindal. “Release the tiller, my wind will hold it steady.” Yet another task.
Iris was explaining the importance of not drawing upon the magic of Vorallon without directing it into a task. The sorcerer must guide and control the energy by words, gestures, or other elements of the spell. More complicated and powerful spells required the greatest precision of this directing force. A sorcerer who failed to guide the power properly could suffer a burnout—instant death or maiming—as the undirected energies flashed back on them.
Lorace assumed an air of command over his knight, much as he had seen Falraan do many times. “Tornin, pick up one of those scraps of wood that Sir Rindal cut earlier. I want you to throw it far out over the sea, as hard and as fast as you can. Do not shame me by giving your throw anything less than everything you can. Falraan, I want you to burn that piece of wood with as much force as you can after it leaves Tornin’s hand.”
“What are you and Sir Rindal going to be doing?” Falraan’s dubious suspicion oozed out through her spirit.
“For this first throw we will just be watching, nothing more.” Lorace flashed his smile again. “Sir Rindal and I are going to focus on your spirits through the link I am sharing between all of us. We are going to see what your spirits are up to when you use your gifts to their fullest potential, a potential I hope to help you increase
.”
Lorace focused on shifting his sight to show the spirit and the physical world flawlessly overlaying each other. Sir Rindal gasped in wonder as he saw the perfect overlay of spirits on everyone around him. The deep red of Falraan’s spirit was pulled in tight about her while the silver and green of Tornin’s whirled around his body and limbs. Sir Rindal’s own spirit of turquoise planes and angles was darting about at everything upon which he focused. Lorace’s shimmering gold sparks surrounded and flowed through them all.
“How do you pull our spirits together like this?” Sir Rindal asked. “Yet another gift?”
“It is,” Lorace nodded. “I understand my legacy from Kvarrak at last; it allows me to shift my gifts. My sight is shifted to reveal the spirit realm to us, but my gift over air can also shift to the spirit realm to manipulate the substance of our spirits. It is forging links between us as I flow my spirit into contact with those around me.”
Falraan looked puzzled. “But we are not in contact with your chain.”
“Yes, is that not amazing? I discovered I could do this quite by accident last night.”
Falraan stared at Lorace for a moment before she turned away blushing.
At the bow, Iris had all of the priests now emanating light from their upraised hands. Akin to the Ritual of Light that Oen had cast upon their entry to the darkened hall of Vlaske K’Brak, but this light pulsed with the life of Vorallon.
“Are we all ready?” Lorace asked. Tornin hefted one of the chunks of severed wood from the broken railing. Falraan composed herself and watched her mate closely. “Let fly as soon as you are ready, Tornin.”
Tornin took a deep breath while his spirit drew heavily on the magic aura of his sword. He cocked his arm back to throw, and a deep red ball of spirit enveloped the hunk of wood in his hand, completely detached from Falraan, but clearly originating from her. The whirling speed of Tornin’s spirit accelerated into a blur all across his limbs, and then he threw. In an instant, Tornin’s arm and body swept explosively through the throw. Lorace snapped his sight in on the wooden missile, whistling high through the air on its way toward the horizon. Still climbing upwards, it ignited in a brilliant trail of flame as the orb of Falraan’s spirit collapsed into it.
“Did you see all that, Sir Rindal?” Lorace crowed to the paladin who gave a wide-eyed nod. “Phenomenal!”
“Was that throw hard and fast enough?” Tornin asked.
“Impressive, Tornin,” Lorace clapped him on the shoulder, “but nothing compared to what it could be. I barely heard it whistle, and it was never moving so fast we could not see it. Falraan had no trouble burning it before it could get beyond her reach.”
“Oh.” Tornin appeared crestfallen, but the corners of his mouth were smiling.
“Falraan, it was impressive seeing your gift in action,” Lorace praised. “We are going to have to really test your range and power. Did you put everything you had into that?”
“I believe so,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I have not put it to such a test before.”
Lorace used the air to lift a second piece of wood up for Tornin to grasp. “All right,” he rounded sharply on Tornin and Falraan. “I am expecting a lot more from you both. Sir Rindal and I are going to help you this time. Sir Rindal, I want you to focus your will on Falraan’s spirit, as you did your sword when you struck me with it, giving her your strength as powerfully as you can. I will do the same for Tornin, willing him to even greater speed.”
Lorace paused to check the wind then chuckled at himself. The air from horizon to horizon was his to command. “Captain Falraan, I want you to let this one get as far away as possible before you burn it, to the very limits of your range and with as much force as you can muster. I will follow it with my sight for all of us so you need not worry about losing view if that is a dependency of your gift.”
“Very well, Lorace,” she said with her lips set in a firm line. “I will do my utmost.”
Lorace tugged on Iris’s attention through her spirit. She was demonstrating a large plume of frost that she blew before the ship with a gesture of her hand. She released her spell and directed Oen and his priests to look toward the ship’s stern. Lorace grinned and gave Tornin a nod to throw when ready.
As his young knight once more cocked back his arm, Lorace gave him every bit of spare focus he could muster. He willed Tornin’s spirit to even greater acceleration and his golden sparks streamed into and around the whirling green and white, intensifying and bolstering, removing barriers, known and unknown. He willed it as he willed his own body to take on the strength of his chain, pushing himself every bit as much as he did Tornin.
The explosive result of Tornin’s throw shattered the quiet and calm of the entire ship, indeed heads turned their way from the galleys furthest ahead. Lorace’s initial dread was that the crash of force and thunder was Falraan unleashing her power too soon, potentially incinerating her own mate, but the smoking ruin splattering the deck and remains of the stern rail was the blasted remains of Tornin’s chain mail sleeve. His throw had proven too much for the integrity of the steel links and they disintegrated in the instant. Hissing splashes of debris peppered the sea for many ship-lengths behind them.
Before the piece of wood could likewise disintegrate to the heated air that compressed ahead of it, Lorace cut a gap through the sky. His own speed amazed him. While linked with Tornin’s spirit he seemed to share in a fraction of the young man’s haste. He pushed air aside in a long line ahead of the missile, as he had when he had ‘thrown’ a rock at the empathic demon of Aizel’s horde. Despite this, the wood did not whistle as it flew, it screamed.
The chunk of wood flew upwards into the sky, while they awaited Falraan’s burn. The deep red orb of her spirit never left the missile. With Tornin’s task complete, Lorace refocused his will on that small orb of red spirit. The scream and thunder of the missile’s passage faded to the distance, but another wail began. It was coming from Falraan. Her fists clenched tight. Her eyes squinted shut and her mouth had curved into a grimace. Before Tornin had recovered from the shock of thunder he produced to flicker to her side, she released her power in a burst of light that brightened half the afternoon sky.
Tornin embraced her tightly, his bare arm unscathed. She grinned up at him breathlessly before scowling at the damage he had done to his armor, disregarding that the skin of his arm remained whole and unharmed.
Sir Rindal, breathing heavily in sudden weariness, stepped up to Lorace and grasped his forearm in honest amazement of what he had both witnessed and done. “Lorace,” he rasped, “we broke the ship some more.”
Lorace laughed. He was the only one breathing normally. The wind still blew into the sails of the flotilla, his chain remained firmly held to his waist, and their spirits remained linked together with his.
Sir Rindal nodded toward a raised flag upon Moyan’s galley. “That is a request for parlay.”
“I will be back shortly,” Lorace embraced them all with a hug of gold sparks. “Take what remains of your armor off, Tornin, and throw a few more pieces of wood while I am gone. There is plenty of unneeded railing left if Sir Rindal will cut more missiles. I am very, very impressed with you all.”
Lorace walked down the length of the galley amid the apprehensive stares of sailors and guardsmen. To them all he gave a reassuring thread of his tranquility.
“All is well,” Lorace said to Oen and his priests when he arrived at the bow. “We were just practicing our gifts. It seems that Tornin’s and Falraan’s are a bit rusty from disuse. They are going to work on it while I go tell Moyan that we are not in danger of sinking from sudden lightning strikes out of clear blue skies.”
“You are scary sometimes, Lorace,” Iris looked up into his tranquil eyes, “very scary.”
“I had better go to Moyan,” he said with sudden apprehension. “I think there may be something else on his mind beyond needing my reassurance that we are not destroying the fleet.”
With that, he stepp
ed up into the air and ran well above the cresting sea toward the lead galley. He halted after a dozen strides, standing motionless on the slightly glinting platform of air. In the spirit of practice, he chose to attempt to overcome his difficulty with balance. He accelerated the platform gradually until he felt the immediate threat of spilling off into the sea. He placed his feet further apart on the platform and wrapped them in air, holding them in place as he had the limbs of Moyan’s Black Hands. He accelerated the platform once more. With no danger of having to catch himself from a fall, he leaned his body forward into the thrilling speed.
He descended to the deck of Moyan’s galley a moment later to land before the wide-eyed general. “Is everything all right?”
“Well, just before it seemed we were about to be down to three galleys,” Moyan chuckled and pointed ahead of them, straight off the bow, “our lookout spied smoke on the horizon to the west.”
Lorace turned to Hethal with a raised eyebrow.
“It is good news,” the monk lifted his chin toward the bow, “look.”
Behind them, another piercing whistle and boom of a wooden missile sounded. Any smoke from Falraan’s burning was on the opposite horizon.
“Hethal will not tell me what you are doing back there,” Moyan said with a shake of his head. “He just smiles and tells me you are practicing—not the answer I was looking for.”
“Tornin and Falraan are using their gifts together,” Lorace said. “They do something that I have wanted to better understand since rescuing Sir Rindal. I was linked with many spirits, making my attack upon the demons chasing him incredibly powerful. I have them experimenting with similar forces, and we are learning what happens when spirits unite in concerted effort. We have discovered some very interesting things about how their gifts function, and in turn how our willpower affects that function.”
Gifts of Vorallon: 03 - Lord of Vengeance Page 4