The Azureans

by R Gene Curtis

  The first knife sails above the rock and drops behind us. Ler sends one in the direction it came from, and then knives fill the air, clanking on the rocks. I can’t see Ler or Dynd. I shove my shaking hands on the dirt and scrape it off the rocky crust. I rub my hands together.

  Feel the dirt. I stare at the ground and concentrate.

  A huge arm grabs me from behind. It wraps around my neck, and jerks me into the grip of a huge, muscular body. The man smells like sweat and rotten meat. His strong arms pull me into a tight grip. I don’t struggle long before I realize it’s of no use. A weird feeling of triumph distracts me momentarily, but I scream it away as I’m dragged from my friends.

  The man’s beard scratches the back of my neck. “I got one of them,” he yells. His putrid breath washes over me, as does his anger and hunger.

  “Don’t you worry,” he says in a soft, scratchy voice. “Once we’ve taken care of your friends, we can take care of you. I’ll just hold you right here.” His strong arms grip me even more tightly, any tighter and my bones will break. I struggle helplessly as he holds me tightly.

  Finally, I stop struggling long enough to remember the dirt. It’s all over my hands, and I’m touching the man. I shove my panic away and close my eyes. I push my thoughts past the anger and the fear and the pain. It’s no small feat, but I find a connection to the dirt. My body goes limp as my consciousness shifts to it, and the world around me disappears.

  I’m in the man’s body. There are no feelings of concern; nothing is wrong here. But I don’t need to create. I need to destroy.

  Suddenly I feel the man’s anger so powerfully that I nearly lose the connection to the dirt. I feel the tightness of his grip again, feel his hands gripping me so I can’t move.

  No. I refocus, push harder with my mind. I push myself back inside the man. To the man’s veins. They lead me to his heart.

  The heart is fine, of course. It’s beating rapidly. I explore it, momentarily interrupted by a jolt of pain in my own body as the man slaps me. He yells, and for a moment his voice nearly breaks my consciousness again.

  I need to act fast or I’m going to die.

  I don’t know what to do. I close an artery. It’s a big one, one that comes straight out of the man’s heart. It’s harder than healing—I can’t trust instincts of concern, but I can still tell the dirt what to do. As soon as the artery is closed, I feel concern. That’s good. I ignore the feeling.

  Pain brings me back to my own body.

  I have dirt in my eyes and my body hurts. I’m face-first on the ground, and the man is on top of me. He moans and clutches his chest. He’s going to die.

  I did that.

  Did I have to kill him? I feel the man’s fear. It’s my fault he’s going to die. I wiggle, but I can’t push him off me. Knives clink nearby and Dynd and Ler’s shouts ring through the air. I can’t see anyone, or anything, from under this man. This man that I’m killing. That I killed.

  He finally stops moving. I grab the grass and pull myself forward. I move a little. I kick my legs, but the man doesn’t move, and I’m not strong enough to get him off me. So, I arch my back and pull again, and I feel his weight slide down my back. Again. And again. I hear the shouts of my friends. I hear the chink of the knives. I feel the weight of the man. He moans, and then he stops breathing. And then finally I’m out from under him. He doesn’t move again. Dead. I grab a knife from his belt and move slowly down the trail toward the shouts.

  My friends are still alive, hiding behind the boulder, barely keeping four other men at bay. I try my luck at throwing the knife I took. It flies through the air, not even close to the men. It bounces off a rock and lands in the dirt. I wasn’t even close to my target, but I was close enough to alert the other men to my presence. The man closest to me leaves the others and rushes at me. He’s just as big as the other man. I barely manage to drop down and get dirt on my hands before he hits me.

  He grabs my hair and pulls me out of my crouch, slamming my body against the rock wall. The wind is knocked out of my lungs. I gasp for air, and try to feel the dirt. Somehow I find it through the pain, and I slap the man’s face, giving myself to it.

  I’m in the man’s body.

  Pain. Real pain. From my own body. My head feels fuzzy, but I force myself to stay with the dirt on the man’s face. I have seconds before he kills me.

  Not far down from the man’s face is his jugular vein. I split the skin apart, and the vein bursts, spraying me with his blood. I let go of the dirt. Hot red blood drips down my face and over my lips. I wipe it with my sleeve and struggle out of the man’s grip.

  He lets me go and screams. He falls to his knees and grabs at his neck, trying to stop his bleeding. I also fall. A knife is lodged in my side, just below my ribs. Blue blood flows from the injury, mixing with the man’s blood on the ground, creating a purple river that glistens in the setting sun. Frantic from seeing my own blood, I reach for dry dirt. Can I heal an injury this serious fast enough? Will I pass out before I can do anything?

  I’m so absorbed in my injury and the pain that I don’t see the next man until he’s on top of me.

  I scream and roll, pushing my consciousness into the dirt in my hands and hit the man’s shin as he stumbles past me. His knife lodges into the dirt inches away from where my head was.

  Without time to move around the man’s body, I break the first thing I encounter. A bone. The man’s shin. I break it, and then I move to the other leg and break it, too.

  Instantly, I’m back to my own body. My face is on the ground in the river of blood. I push myself up; the blood and dirt stick to my face and body. My latest attacker is lying on the ground with two broken legs, but he’s far enough away that I’m not worried about him. I spit dirt and blood out of my mouth and look around frantically.

  I can’t see anyone else. I need to heal myself before I pass out.

  I grab more dirt and push my consciousness to my side. I feel the warm blood seeping out; I feel the pain of my dying body. The dirt takes over. I replace open blood vessels with scar tissue and stop the bleeding. I work sloppily and fast. Within a few minutes the bleeding is stopped. I’m not healed, but I’m not bleeding to death anymore.

  The knives and shouts are gone. A light wind rustles the trees nearby. I stand, which makes me woozy and my vision black. I catch myself on a boulder and suck in the thin mountain air. Then I half run, half stumble to where I last saw Ler and Dynd.

  Dynd is the only man standing. He’s leaning against the cliff with his hands on his hips as he breathes rapidly. Four men lay at his feet.

  Then I see Ler. “No!” My shout echoes around the little canyon. He lies face-first on the ground. Two knives poke out of his back.

  I put my hands on his back, and his blood mixes with mine and the blood of the other man I killed. He’s still breathing. Barely.

  “There is nothing we can do,” Dynd says. “Are the others dead?”

  “No. One’s alive.” Tears sting my eyes. I need to save Ler. “Will you protect me?”

  “We’re safe for now,” Dynd mumbles. “I’ll take care of the other man.”

  The wounds in Ler’s back are bad. Very bad. One of the knives is into his lungs. The other is in his stomach.

  I don’t have time to worry about what is easy or hard. I go to work. I clean blood out of his lungs. I move stomach acid away from the tissue it burns. It’s clumsy, slow work. Every breath Ler takes gives me motivation to keep going. I’m not a doctor, but I have to figure this out.

  I don’t want anyone else to die because of me.

  Time passes. A lot of time. My mind is dim and tired. My own side aches. I keep working.

  Finally, there is nothing left to fix. Ler’s body rises and falls. He’s alive. He’s okay. I open my eyes and look around. The sun is rising over the mountains. A new day. I worked through the evening and all night.

  My side hurts, my stomach aches for food, and my body begs for sleep. I’m caked in dirt and dried bloo
d. Whatever has been pushing me burns out, and everything goes black.

  ✽✽✽

  I regain consciousness again that night, largely because my side is aching. I spend several hours healing my side before going back to sleep.

  When I wake again, it’s morning. Ler rushes to me with food and water as soon as I sit up. I pour the cold spring water down my parched throat. Water doesn’t even taste this good after a long soccer game.

  I don’t say anything, and neither do Ler or Dynd as they watch me eat. We owe each other our lives. We’ve faced death together. We respect each other in a new way.

  But I’m different, too. I’m a killer now.

  Not a very good one. Awkward, unsure, forced by necessity. I fought with very little skill. Still, despite my inexperience, large grown men fell dead in front of me. They never knew what hit them.

  What hit them was me, the shy soccer girl who wouldn’t even play war video games with my roommate Maria’s guy friends.

  “Princess?” Dynd asks. He calls me princess now.

  I smile weakly.

  The legends say I will fight Wynn. He can’t be this awkward with hemazury.

  What right do I have to show up in these mountains and start to kill people? I’ve put my friends in danger. Some have died. More may die.

  Yet somehow, I’m supposed to be the Blue Princess.

  5 Intervene

  Lydia

  Dynd is anxious to leave, and I don’t blame him. I don’t even finish eating before we leave our attackers’ corpses and start down the trail to Shan.

  The village is completely deserted. Trash and partially decayed corpses line the streets, and we don’t see anyone alive. The eerie feeling from the wind, smell, and images of the deserted city stays with me all day.

  Near dusk we cross the main hunting trail and camp for the night. The next evening, we summit a steep hill and I see what we have been looking for. A small pocket valley opens before us. The valley floor is completely barren and rocky except for a perfectly circular grove of pine trees in the center. The circular pine tree grove—just as Cylus described. A light slushy snow starts to fall, and I shiver in the wind that rushes over the top of the hill and down into the valley.

  It isn’t obvious how to get down to the trees. The trail winds around the valley rim, leaving at least a 50 foot drop down at the lowest points.

  “We’ll have to scale down.” Dynd, resourceful as always, has rope in his bag.

  “What would we have done without you?” I ask him. It’s a flirty thing to say, and it makes me blush to say it. It isn’t that I’m attracted to Dynd. I just want him to know I appreciate all he’s done to get us here.

  He smiles, which takes away the awkwardness. “I came on this trip to decide if you’re the Blue Princess. I’ve made up my mind. I’ve been waiting for you all my life, and at times I thought you were just a myth, but I’m convinced that you’re the Azurean we have been waiting for. You will free all of us. Getting you here and helping you on your journey is small, but it’s something I can do.”

  Ler lashes Dynd’s rope to some large trees and we scale down the rocks. I’ve been repelling a lot of times—Mom loved repelling—but I’ve never been without a harness and waiver form. I’m not sure if that makes it more fun or terrifying.

  Once we’re off the rope, Dynd pulls jerky and dried fruit out of the packs, and we huddle together away from the wind and rain in a small cave next to the cliff.

  The meal is light, and my stomach is still growling after I finish eating. Despite Dynd’s skill and planning, I’m sure we’re low on food. The original plan had us halfway back to Keeper by now.

  “I better do what we came here for.” I stand up and shiver in the wind. In just the short time we’ve sat here, the storm has increased in intensity. I can barely see the grove of trees through the slushy rain. I’m going to be soaked by the time I get to the trees.

  Ler smiles, but Dynd doesn’t look up. He’s going through the pack, taking inventory of the food with a dark scowl on his face.

  I take a deep breath and ready myself for the shock of the cold.

  “The Blue Princess will lead us from despair,” Ler sings behind me. I recognize the song; Ler sings it often. I stand at the edge of the storm and whistle along, letting my courage build. It’s like standing at the door of the locker room, watching a downpour outside, but knowing you’re going to run out there and give everything you have to win the game. I take a deep breath, and I start running. The storm hits me like a wall of ice, colder than Seattle’s late-fall downpours, but I don’t stop.

  The few yards between the cave and the trees seem to take forever, but finally I’m in the trees, which provide some shelter from the beating storm. In the center of the grove, I find a stone tablet with a hand engraved into it. I know what to do. I kneel on the rocky ground and place my hand on the stone.

  The ground shifts under me, and I’m again suspended in the air by my arm. A short slide ride later, I’m in an underground cavern—exactly like the one in Keeper. There, Cylus told me how to heal my knee. I wonder what he has for me here. Will he tell me more of his story? What other powers do I have access to?

  The warm cavern air wraps around me like a blanket and stops my shivering, even though my clothes are soaked through. Ler and Dynd are still shivering up in the storm, though. Hopefully, for their sakes, this doesn’t take as long as last time, when I spent all night in the cavern.

  Cylus appears at the far end of the cave, hunched over and tired-looking. I walk to him. Everything is so similar to the last cave, I feel like I’ve been transported back in time. Yet so much has happened in the few weeks since I spoke to Cylus. I’ve healed my injured leg, I’ve scaled mountains, I’ve killed people, I’ve snatched friends from the brink of death. I feel like a different person.

  Will this encounter leave me as changed?

  “Wynn?” Cylus’s voice echoes around the chamber.

  “Lydia.”

  “I have another story for you.”

  “I was hoping for that.” I speak even though I know he can’t hear me. It makes everything seem more real somehow. I settle in the dirt at his feet, grateful my knee isn’t aching this time, and Cylus begins another story.

  We pick up a few years after my encounter with the Azurean. I was in my early twenties at the time. After a decade in the city, I hired on as a farmhand to a wealthy lord in the nearby countryside. I was good at farm work, and after just a few months on the job I was running most of the farm. The fields reminded me of home in a way that the city never did, and I realized how much I missed my mother.

  As I mentioned in our last visit, the kingdom had been in turmoil for many years. But, things were much worse now. The surrounding kingdoms had come under the power of profligate dictators who wasted their men in raids and disputes that were more for sport than for position or power. War was the reality of our lives.

  I still remember the day when rumors started circulating that the battle might end up right in the middle of my lord’s farming land. His farm and livelihood would be completely destroyed.

  Gravely concerned about his property, my master wrote a letter for me to take to the castle. The goal was to entreat the king to move the battles away from us to spare the lord ruin. Though we both knew the mission was futile, I left for the castle that morning.

  Those were troublesome days! I saw armies everywhere on my journey, and the war was the subject of every conversation. It was doubtful I would even see the king if I made it to Sattah, yet I found myself the next day standing in the main castle entrance hall with the king himself.

  I had never seen King Webun before, but I had heard much about him. He was known for his kindness and concern for the welfare of his subjects. While the people in the surrounding kingdoms were suffering under tyranny, King Webun cared for and loved his people.

  King Webun’s kindness, of course, was making his kingdom unpopular among tyrants who were tired of losing subjects that
fled to King Webun’s domain. A recent alliance had just been created to take down our kingdom once and for all.

  Hesitantly, I explained my master’s case to the king. Tears filled his eyes as he told me how much he regretted the fate of my master’s farm.

  “There is little I can do now. This war is all but lost before the fighting starts.”

  This was the response I had expected, but it hurt more than I thought it would. I turned to go, wondering why King Webun had agreed to meet with me in the first place.

  “I now put my last hope in legend,” the king said. “The legends of the Azureans. They could save us.”

  “The Azureans?”

  The king sighed. “When I was a boy, my mother used to tell me stories of those who lived long ago. Some of them, Sapphiri, had bright blue eyes, and others, Azureans, could control the elements in ways that we cannot, which she called hemazury. In her grandmother’s time, there was a great war, and all the Azureans were hunted down and killed. When looking at our desperate situation, I bring up old stories only as a wish for a miracle. It’s said that the day of the Azureans would be a short day of peace, and that is what I long for now. Peace.”

  My mind flashed back to the day the leopard nearly killed me. I made a promise to the man who saved my life. In all the days up until that day, I had kept my promise and never said a word to anyone about it. But on that day, seeing the hopelessness in the king’s eyes, I broke my promise.

  “I have met such a man,” I said, hoping that the desperateness of our situation would justify my actions, “in the woods when I was a small boy.”

  Surprise flashed across the king’s face, but it quickly turned to disbelief. “Where is this man today?”

  “I would imagine that he lives in the forest where I first met him. It was a brief encounter; he healed me from an attack of a wild animal.”

  “He used hemazury to do so?”

  “He used some kind of magic. Perhaps it was the hemazury that you speak of. I was on the verge of death. I would have died without his help.”