by D. H. Dunn
“He’s coming closer to the mountain,” Lhamu continued, her breathing getting faster as her voice got louder. “It is a big mountain, all by itself. Lots of snow. He is really worried, his heart is beating faster.”
“I don’t like this,” Nima said. It was getting too intense. Even if what Lhamu was seeing might help them, she seemed so scared, like she was feeling the same thing the Dragon was.
“I can see something on the mountain. Something about half way up, its partially covered in snow. It’s a door, a red, metal door. He sees it, and he doesn’t want to go in it. Tanira wants to open it, but he doesn’t want it open! Something bad is in there!”
“Can you see more of the door?” Drew asked. He was staring at Lhamu, his voice nearly as intense as hers. “Do you see any writing?”
“That’s enough!” Nima said, putting her hands on Lhamu’s shoulders. The girl continued to stare straight ahead as if Nima was not there.
“He’s really scared!” Lhamu yelled, her crystal glowing so bright it was almost blinding. Nima was shaking her shoulders. “He’s looking around! In his head, I think . . . I think--”
Lhamu’s crystal winked out, and she collapsed to the ground.
“Lhamu!” Nima cried, diving in to hold her head upright. The Speaker leaned over them, the crystal in Lhamu’s head slowly growing bright again.
Nima rocked Lhamu back and forth, stroking her sea-green hair. The Speaker was talking, Drew was apologizing, but she was not listening, not really processing any of it. Her heart felt caught between beats, her whole world Lhamu’s face.
Lhamu looked up at Nima, her dark eyes blinking as her crystal glowed a crisp white once again.
“He was falling, he was falling out of the sky. But worse, Nima, I think he saw me.”
Tanira lay face down and nearly in the snow, only a thin blue field of energy separating her from the white powder she had just fallen into.
She had just managed to activate the Hero’s armor after being thrown from the Thread. Had she not, she was sure she would be dead. The impact had knocked the wind out of her and she figured she’d be sore for a few days, but she had been fortunate.
The Thread was crumpled nearby at the center of the massive impact crater the beast had created when it collided with the mountain. Tanira could just see over the edge of the crater from her vantage point, the Dragon half-covered in snow and shaking its head back and forth. Clutched in one massive talon was Reylor, whom the Thread had caught in mid-plummet and saved from death. The man looked terrified, but otherwise unharmed.
“Are you all right?” she called down to the Dragon.
If the Dragon were hurt, the whole mission would be in jeopardy. She looked up at the craggy peak of Ish Kalum, the tall, isolated mountain covered with deep fields of treacherous-looking snow. Far up the peak lay the Vault of the Voice, but she and Reylor were unlikely to be able to climb to it.
Yet, if she had to, she would.
“My injuries are not mortal,” the Thread said. He sounded more embarrassed and frustrated than wounded to Tanira. “Though I have landed with more skill than that in the past.”
“I am also uninjured,” Reylor cried from his position inside the Thread’s claws. He was eying them nervously, each claw as long as the long knives Tanira once wielded.
“What in Founder’s name happened up there?”
They had been pulling into a smooth descent toward Ish Kalum, the large, red door blocking the Vault in sight. Then the Thread had coasted for a moment or two, ignoring Tanira’s questions before simply plummeting out of the sky. At the time, Tanira had thought the beast might be dead, the Line’s hopes dying with it.
While falling she had felt panic, but also relief. Now, both were gone, and only her task remained.
“I felt another’s touch in my mind,” the Thread said. Tanira listened closely to the Dragon’s voice, listening to detect both injury and deception. She knew her alliance with the Dragon was only until one of them could gain an upper hand on the other. That the Thread’s mind had been touched put all plans into question. If it was even telling the truth.
“Another’s touch? One of the other Dragons?”
There should not be any, her mind cried. Not awake, anyway. The Line’s whole plan threatened to turn to vapor as she awaited his answer.
“No,” he said, another wave of relief washed over her. “No Dragon save I can touch another’s mind. This touch was close, it was on this world but it was no Dragon. It was familiar in a sense, but unskilled. Clumsy. Whoever it was they barely understood the craft they were wielding.”
“Could I be put down now? Please?” Reylor asked, his head swiveling back and forth between Tanira and the Thread.
The Thread lightly placed the man onto the snow outside the crater, twisting its long snake-like form and bringing its head close to Tanira. She looked in the creature’s deep azure eyes, searching for dishonesty or fear. She saw only conviction, which may have been all the Thread wanted her to see. It waited for her, right now she still had the strongest leverage.
She knew where the machine was.
“This touch,” she said. “You said the source of it was close by. Do you think you could find it without it knowing you were looking for it?”
“Perhaps, after a short rest. Yet, we are here on the doorstep of the Voice,” the Thread said, twisting its neck to crane up at the snowy reaches of the mountain. “You now wish to delay entering the Vault?”
He looked back at her, probing her intentions just as she probed his. Nothing she didn’t expect, and the Thread did not fool her. He was in no rush to see the Voice, that much was clear.
Someone had reached out and made contact with the Thread’s mind. Someone on Aroha Darad. As far as she knew, the only beings who might be capable of that were trapped on Sirapothi.
Yet if they were not trapped, if Upala had found a way to return, all ahead of her was in question.
“I wish to ensure the success of my mission,” Tanira said. She looked over at Reylor, who now had his pack off and was pacing around the flat snowfield next to the Thread’s crater.
“Reylor, I need you to make camp.”
The man shrugged his acknowledgement and began pulling open his pack and unraveling a canvas tent. She supposed he was in no hurry to meet the Voice either.
Reylor still carried in his mind knowledge Tanira needed to have. Without an understanding of how Kater’s Helm worked, she had little chance of going forward.
Tanira turned away, putting Reylor, and Ish Kalum, and the Voice behind her, if only for a moment. She was the End of the Line, it was her charge to see the Line’s completion. If Upala had found a way to not only reenter this world, but access the mind of the Thread, that was a problem that needed to be solved.
She looked back toward her homeland, the Umbuk plains far in the distance. She had planned to return with a flight of Dragons at her side, but for now, one would have to do.
“Reylor, keep yourself safe and wait here for us. The Thread and I have something we need to deal with.”
12
“Kater, chasing after you is exhausting!” Upala yelled at her brother, the old man having collapsed and now sat wheezing on a rocky outcropping about twenty paces ahead of her.
She had been running to catch up with him for the past hour, the empty digcart tracks on her right and the lesser mountains and foothills of the region on her left.
Three times now she had nearly reached him, only for him to regain enough breath to use his blink tube again. Through this method he had led her north up the side of the Umbuk Valley, now closer to his fortress than either Rogek Shad or the cave of the Yeti.
He looked up at the sound of her voice, his hands on his chest as he struggled to his feet. All her life she had considered herself and her brother to be immortal, unable to be harmed by anything short of a Dragon. Now that her brother looked ready to collapse from the strain of his flight, she wondered if it were really true.
> “Kater!” She had nearly reached him. “I just want to talk! Do not use that device again!” She could see the silver tube in his hand, he was bringing it up to his eyes to aim farther up the valley. With a grunt, Upala sprinted the rest of the distance, swatting the tube out of her brother’s hand before he could use it.
He whirled on her, rage in his face and small licks of flame coming from his fingers. In his state of exhaustion, it was all he could manage. She silenced her instincts to call up a shield. Instead she walked right up to him and stared in his face, her arms open wide.
“Do it! Burn me!” she said, her voice mixing with anger and frustration. “You know it will not matter. You cannot hurt me any more than I can hurt you. This whole conflict between us has always been pointless!”
“You sound like Adley.” Kater laughed, dropping the flame. His voice was as tired as it was dismissive.
“He is a good man,” Upala said, feeling a swell of pride as she thought of who Drew had become, and how he had helped her embrace herself.
“He is disgusting,” Kater sneered. “As is your dalliance with him. A perversion, he has infected you. Though in truth he has only magnified what you already were - weak.”
She sighed. This chase of ideas between her and her brother was as exhausting as the foot race he had just led her on.
“Fine, Kater. You do not like Drew, you do not like me. Nothing about that is new. What is new is the threat that faces us both, something you and I have been focused on all our long lives. Now, what are you doing walking away from the people who could help us?”
“Help us? Adley? The Rakhum? Two girls? It is we who could help them, not that I care to. The power to end this crisis is up there, not with them.” He pointed at his fortress with his bony finger, the appendage of an old man who was somehow still her brother. “Up there is what I have been doing to prepare for the Dragons. Up there is a weapon. All you ever did was look for a way to run.”
The shame welled up inside Upala. He was right, damn him. He always knew where to hit. While Kater had driven the Rakhum under his control deeper and deeper into the Manad Vhan ruins searching for weapons and battle lore, she had sought safety. For herself. Kater had planned to fight the Dragons here, defeat them on Aroha Darad.
Perhaps saving the Rakhum would not be his intention, but Kater’s plan would have saved them all the same. Upala’s plan had been only to flee, to save herself. She would have abandoned the very people who had helped her find a path to safety.
“Fine,” she said. “You are right. I did not see the correct response to this, in all these years I misused the opportunity time gave me to prepare. You did not, so let us benefit from it. I will come with you, together we can retrieve your weapon-”
“I do not need your useless help, I can certainly retrieve something from my own fortress, Sister.”
Upala shoved him, nearly knocking him over. It was no magical attack, no fire or mystic shield. It was simple anger, base frustration. You are my brother! Could you not once in thousands of years act like it?
“Must you always be so awful, Kater? Is there nothing inside you that is not fear or hate?” She turned away from him, looking out over the mist-covered valley, the clouds of vapor obscuring both Nalam Wast and Rogek Shad. The people she had grown to care about were out there, and she was here, trying to recover her monster of a brother.
They were depending on her. She spoke again, keeping her back to him.
“Besides, you are practically falling over now that you are an old man. You do not have to like me, and you do not have to talk to me. Let us just go and retrieve this item of yours.”
She waited, chewing the bottom of her lip and preparing for the comeback, the retort. The latest step of the endless march that was their argument.
When only silence greeted her, she turned around to see Kater had left. One hand on his back, he hobbled across the stone and snow toward the entrance to his fortress, neither inviting Upala to join him nor preventing her.
Kicking a rock with her foot and pretending it was her brother, she took a deep breath and started off after him.
Drew looked back into the darkness, the moon reflecting against the onrushing waters of the Umbuk River. Merin and Trillip should have been back hours ago. He looked down into the gulley Trillip had been using to sneak into Nalam Wast, as if just his glance would make the pair appear.
“If they are not back soon, I’m going to go look for them.”
“I’ll look for them too!” Lhamu announced from her position between Drew and Nima. The three of them sat on the grassy hill overlooking the water, the Speaker a silent presence standing off to Drew’s left.
“You will not,” Nima said, Drew nearly laughing at how maternal she sounded. “You are still recovering from. . . from whatever that was that happened.”
“I am fine,” Lhamu said with an exaggerated sigh. Suddenly she sounded every bit like the teenager she resembled. “And what I did helped, right? Drew said it helped. If your friends are lost, Nima, shouldn’t we go look for them? Good people help, that’s what you said.”
Again, Drew repressed an urge to laugh. He was sure Nima would not appreciate it.
“I think Nima is right, Lhamu. You were a big help, and we need you safe. We can’t afford to risk you out there in the darkness.”
“Aren’t you important too, Drew? Why can we risk you?”
“We’re all important, Lhamu,” Nima said, “But Drew has a few . . . advantages we don’t.”
Drew smiled. To Nima it was that simple, so maybe that was the key. Just let it be simple. Like the Yeti said, why was he questioning what was? If he was Manad Vhan, maybe it was time to make his peace with it.
“Here they come!” Nima said, pointing to two shadows running up to them from the gully. The moonlight soon revealed them to be Trillip and Merin, both out of breath but thankfully unhurt. Drew released a sigh of relief he had been holding for hours.
“Thank God,” he said, standing just in time to have them both collapse at his feet.
Nima vanished into the dark, returning only seconds later with water canteens for each of them. Both accepted the drinks without speaking, Merin draining hers in what seemed like one gulp.
“Nalam Wast?” Drew asked, not caring which one of them answered. From his vantage, the city had seemed empty.
“Abandoned,” Trillip replied between sips. “Not a soul in sight, nor any sign of where they went.”
“No struggle? No signs of an army?” Nima asked. Beside her, Lhamu watched the exchange with her eyes wide, her gaze shifting to whomever spoke.
“None,” Merin said. “So, we decided. . ..” She paused, taking another deep breath. “We decided to see if we could see the bridge - the bridge to Rogek Shad. It is always manned.”
“There is a grain silo toward the west side of the city,” Trillip explained. “It took some doing, but Merin and I were able to climb to the top and get a far-off view of the bridge and Rogek Shad. That is when we saw it.”
“Saw what?” Drew asked.
“We have a problem, Drew. We saw people - too many people,” Merin replied. “All of them are in Rogek Shad, the people of both cities. The bridge, the outskirts, all the entry points we could see, they were all guarded.”
“The Line has seized control of the city,” Trillip said. “We could see their insignia, as well as their weapons.”
“Garantika wanted reunification.” Drew felt adrenaline already building inside him. “I guess he decided to force it.”
Merin tossed the canteen aside, standing. “Drew, my family. Trillip’s family. Everyone we care about is there, under control of that monster. I know this isn’t the Dragons but-”
“Then we can’t afford to wait for Upala and Kater. We have a job to do, so let’s start thinking about how the six of us can take back Rogek Shad.
13
Upala trudged up the last snow hill leading to the entrance to Kater’s fortress. Off to her right she
could see the mangled wreckage of the digcart she and the others had crashed at this very site just a few days earlier. It seemed much longer ago than that.
She felt the thinner air of the higher altitudes of Ish Pumori where her brother had chosen to make his fortress so many years ago. Farther from the dampening effect of the world’s crust, her abilities grew stronger even as the thin air sapped her strength. She hoped that was not why her brother had retreated here, just for another pointless attack against her.
There were bigger things at stake here than their personal rivalry. She needed to find a way to make Kater see that. Taking the last few steps toward the carved-stone entrance, she prepared herself for anything.
The entry opened into the circular chamber she recalled from the previous visit, the walls adorned with tapestries, minus the one Merin had ripped and left on the floor. Kater stood in the center of the room, but rather than being ready to battle, he smiled, arms open wide.
“It is about time you got here,” he said. “I thought maybe you had given up and returned back to Adley. Now that we are together, I can show you how I have the answer to all our problems. All around you, you can see the progress of my research, the path I took that will lead us to victory.”
She sighed. At least he was not fighting her. He gestured to the tapestry closest to the door, made of fading, red cloth. It showed a man who was clearly Kater, doing battle with a Dragon while wielding a magical, glowing sword. The edges were frayed, and several holes had developed in the material.
“Here, this is the first artwork I had created, to inspire me. I was, I admit, more foolish in my thoughts. By depicting myself against the Weight, I thought I could emulate the Hero. But as I learned, the Hero did not defeat the Dragons but rather negotiated them into the Vaults.”
“Yes,” Upala said, ”I discovered this as well, though I never knew how they accomplished it.” She walked along the curve of the wall and examined Kater’s tapestries. As he’d stated, the images displayed began to move away from Kater defeating Dragons, shifting to Dragons bowing down to him.