by D. H. Dunn
“Unusual? Yes, I suppose you are unusual, Nima. You say things others will not. You have an odd desire to help people, one that fool Adley shares with you. You are still but an eye blink, a wisp of passing cloud. Tomorrow you will be gone, unusual or no.”
Ama used to say things like that to her, criticizing her and telling her all the things she did wrong and how she didn’t matter. But she had been a child then, so it hurt. It didn’t hurt now, it just made Kater seem small.
“So many words,” she said, smiling back up at him. “So much work. Listen, if you can’t do your blink thing, I think we should start up the mountain. I can see a pretty good path, and you’re starting to slow things down.”
She turned away from him, catching just enough of a glimpse in the corner of her eye to see him sputtering inside his fancy cloak, no doubt thinking of some big, mean comeback. She thought about laughing, and decided it was a good idea.
“I can see them,” Reylor said, peering over the edge of the snowy landing where he, Tanira, and the Voice sat. Behind them was the great crimson door of the Voice’s Vault, towering over Tanira like a red mountain of its own.
“How many? Who?” Tanira lay on the ground, exhausted beyond anything she had experienced before. The plan had been to fly to the Vault door here on Ish Kalum, to be here and gone long before anyone might try to interfere. As usual, nothing had gone according to plan.
She looked back at the Thread, the beast curled near the door with its head slumped on the ground. Its massive chest heaving, its body surely as tired as Tanira’s. Tired from a climb she guessed no Dragon would ever expect to need to make, yet halfway up the mountain the Thread’s wings had simply refused to lift the creature any farther.
Whether the Thread had been impeded by exhaustion or injury, the Dragon had not been able to say.
Thus, they were forced to crawl and scrape the rest of the way up the mountain, Tanira noticing the magical approach of someone just as they reached the Vault door. Reylor had volunteered to keep an eye on the newcomers, Tanira collapsing on the snow without debate.
She lay face down in the white powder to keep from putting pressure on the crystal embedded in her back, waiting for Reylor to tell her how much worse things were about to get. The icy temperature of the snow quickly seeped through her clothes, but she had become so accustomed to feeling cold it hardly seemed noticeable.
“I can see. . . at least one person down there. . . let me look again. . ..” the man’s voice trailed off, the time between Reylor’s pauses seeming like lifetimes. If it had not required moving, she would have gone over and thrown him off the mountain.
“Two,” he finally said with a confident tone. Two was good, it was better than an army. “One of them is Manad Vhan, I saw him transport before. The other I am not sure. Looks like a woman, a small woman.”
Nima. Of course it would be Nima. The thought of her frowning, judging face brought a fresh wave of anger and guilt flooding into her. Tanira used the emotion to pull herself to her feet. Adding to her frustration, the Manad Vhan man from the bridge must have lived. The Thread’s actions prevented her from finishing the kill.
“Come on,” she said, trudging through the snow toward the great red door. It felt like she was walking through mud, there was something more than the snow affecting her, affecting them all. It was an effort just to keep her head up. She looked over at the Thread, the beast still nearly flat on the ground.
“You too, we need to get moving. The Manad Vhan will be up here soon, we need to be ready.” She faced the crimson metal of the massive door. Reylor slumped up beside her, his breathing labored. Behind her, she could feel the warm breath of the Thread on her back.
There was still a chance, she reminded herself. They could still free the Voice and activate the Helm before the Manad Vhan and Nima got there. As long as nothing else went wrong.
She touched the sword to the door, a seam splitting the structure as it opened inward. Beyond the door was much as she expected. Little light, a dark hallway, just as before.
The massive form of a second Dragon suddenly loomed out of the darkness.
Tanira gasped as its broad form moved closer, this beast wide and squat. Its eyes glowed with a golden magical light, and then Tanira found herself violently thrown to the ground, as if an invisible wall of force had landed atop her.
“Hello, Thread,” it said, Tanira struggling to focus over the crushing pressure that seemed to come from everywhere. “I have been waiting a very long time.”
The route up Ish Kalum had been easier than Nima had expected, but it was also slower. Kater trudged along behind her, forcing her to stop and wait for him to catch up every time she got too far ahead. The snow was almost up to her knees, but it was light and fluffy. Kater was so much taller, even for an old man she didn’t think the climb would be this hard.
Ahead of them was a long snow plain before one last minor climb to reach the red door. The angle of the mountain had obscured the door from sight, a huge outcropping of ice was planted right in front of it.
Kater had refused to answer her questions after a while, forcing her to be alone with her thoughts. She worried about Drew and Upala, and what they might find trying to access the vault of Terminus. She was pretty tired by the time discussing the Dragons had come up, but Upala’s stories of Terminus sounded very scary. She hoped neither of them would have to see it.
Mostly she thought about Lhamu. She might be angry than Nima had left without her, or she might understand. It was best to keep her out of danger. Hopefully she agreed to stay with Merin.
Looking above her at their route up the mountain, she could see broad sloping plains of freshly fallen snow, deceptively beautiful expanses that might avalanche at any moment, or hide deadly crevasses beneath them.
“You sure we can’t use more of your blinks to get across this? I don’t like the look of this snow field.”
“I have only a few crystals left,” Kater said, holding the long, thin metal tube up and shaking it. Nima could hear the clinking of a few small objects inside it before he returned it to his pocket. “We must save those for the return, for bringing the Helm back to Nalam Wast after dealing with this woman.”
He pushed past her, beginning to walk through the snow with some confidence and speed, his red cloak dragging in the snow.
She knew they were here to stop Tanira, but she had not considered she and Kater might not have the same ideas on how to do that. She did not have much hope that she could convince Tanira not to go through with her plan, but maybe they could steal the Helm back. Or find a way to keep her from reaching the Voice.
Kater’s eyes suggested he had a different plan.
“We just need your hat. We don’t need to kill her.”
He stopped in the snow, looking back at Nima with an expression her Ama’s face had often worn.
“Are you that naive? That dense? Dear girl, do you think she is going to hand us the Helm?”
Nima felt a bit of fire light inside her. She didn’t like it when Ama talked to her like she was stupid. Nima knew she asked a lot of questions, and she sometimes acted too quickly, but she wasn’t stupid.
“Maybe she will just leave it lying around where it can be stolen,” she shot back. “But a person would have to be pretty dumb to let that happen.”
It was a mistake, and she knew it. It was one thing to annoy Kater, but she openly mocked him now. This was, after all, all his fault and most people didn’t like having that pointed out. She waited for the explosion of his anger, realizing there was nowhere to run.
To her shock, he began to laugh.
“Were you my sister or Adley, I think we would be fighting now.” He gazed around at the mountains, Nima wondering what he looked for. “Yet you are right, you tiny blink-of-an-eye. My anger will not change that fact.”
He turned away from her, walking back toward the far-off wall of ice that lay in front of them. Nima allowed herself to breathe again, her heart slowing down
a bit but still pounding. Crunching one boot into the snow, she began to follow him again.
“I thought she killed your friend,” he called back to her. “That is what I heard. Do you not wish her death in revenge?”
Nima thought of Val, remembering the awful moment she had worked so hard not to see in her mind. Val lying there, his crystal’s light slowly fading away. The anger was easy to tap, it was right there waiting for her. Yet though she did not know what she wanted from Tanira, she did not want her death.
“No,” Nima said. “There has been too much killing. If there is no other way to save people from her, then I understand it. I would do it myself. But I won’t kill her for me. Or for him.”
“How heroic,” Kater sneered.
“Heroic?” Nima stared at the back of Kater’s cloak as he trudged forward. “Upala says you want to be a hero, Kater. Yet you don’t act like one. You don’t help people, you tried to kill us all in the Under. You lied to us! At least what Tanira is doing she does because she thinks it will help someone. You act like a villain.”
Kater’s laugh reminded her of her mother yet again. Nima grit her teeth as she closed the distance between them.
“Hero? Villain?” Kater asked. “It just depends on who is telling the story. When this is over, I will surely be remembered for-”
The snow suddenly opened up underneath him, the dark abyss of a crevasse forming right under his feet. Kater let out a surprised cry as he began to drop into the darkness.
Nima lunged forward, just getting a handful of the ornate red cloak. With her belly into the snow, she pushed down with all her weight while Kater’s arms flailed around, grasping at the opening.
“Hurry and climb up!” she cried. “I can’t hold you much longer!” He was old and light, but his motions were adding to his weight. Nima got her other hand onto the cloth of Kater’s garment, her body starting to slide forward towards the yawning opening.
Kater’s bare hands pounded into the snow, finally gaining some purchase and reducing the drag on Nima. Still holding onto the cloak, she got her feet underneath her, her boots digging in. She pulled with a grunt, Kater finally crossing the threshold of the opening and scrambling up and out of the hole.
The pair of them lay on the snow, facing the sky while their chests heaved with their breathing. Nima would have laughed if she had more air in her lungs. First Tanira and now Kater.
She looked at the clouds passing by overhead, and beyond them she could see the side of the mountain. The red door was there, much closer now. That was a problem, but it was the next problem. She waited for Kater to remind her that he would have been all right, that he would have healed or somehow transported out of the crevasse.
Instead he was silent for a long time, and when he spoke he only said one word.
“Why?”
She didn’t think when it happened, any more then she had with Tanira. Any more than Drew had when Kater had fallen on Everest. Likely any more then Kad had before allowing the worms to crush him, or Val when he thought Tanira was going to hurt her.
The answer was simple, yet the fact Kater could not see it only made her sad.
“Because I tell myself my own story.”
19
Upala looked up at the massive, red door in front of her, one more puzzle Orami and Feram had left for her. One more problem to solve in a series that seemed endless.
On most occasions the vault of Terminus would be the last place Upala would ever want to go. The secrets and mysteries of the Dragons had always fascinated Kater more than her. To her, the Dragons were a fire, an inferno to avoid not study, and Terminus was the scariest flame of them all.
“I guess we should’ve had a plan for getting the door open, huh?”
Drew stood a bit farther back from the metal obstruction and seemed to be studying it for cracks or seams. He leaned a bit to his right to avoid exacerbating his injury. The Yeti poultice kept the pain lower, but according to Drew it still hurt and itched ‘like hell’.
Not far behind him, Lhamu echoed his actions. The Speaker, as always, stood a few steps away from his charge, saying nothing.
“I did not have much time to prepare for this!” Upala said, knowing she allowed more irritation then she intended into her voice. The pressure she felt was unlike anything she had ever known. People were counting on her. Everyone depended on her to find the solutions, to have the answers.
She had hoped she would have an epiphany during their travel to Ish Rav Partha, but no such moment had come. Lhamu’s insistence on coming had brought the Speaker, and with the Speaker came his ability to teleport them to the mountain faster than they could have travelled normally. The additional time was a gift, or it would be if they could get inside.
She felt a steady hand on her shoulder, a warm voice in her ear.
“Hey, it was a joke,” Drew said. “And a dumb one at that. We’ll figure this out.”
She clasped his hand with her own, wishing they were still back under his blanket where she woke this morning. For one blissful night all their problems had been gone, but they returned with the morning sun, along with her responsibilities.
“I am not sure what there is to figure out,” she said. “The door is designed to open for the Hero, or someone wearing the Hero’s armor. We do not have that.”
Drew paced in front of the door, running his hand up and down the surface of the red metal, just as Upala had already done. He knocked his gloved knuckles against it, also as Upala had already done.
“I’ve seen some air-tight doors during my time in the Navy, and this looks pretty air tight. Yet there’s a Dragon in there, right? So, it needs air to breathe. Wait, they do need to breathe, don’t they?” He looked over at Upala, his eyes a mixture of concern and earnestness. She knew he felt the same pressure she did, even if he did not share her responsibility.
“Yes, they need to breathe,” she replied. “They can be cut, they can be burned, they can be hurt. They could be killed. The problem is their size, strength, and endurance. Still they are, in some ways, more vulnerable than we are. That, I think was part of their issue with the Manad Vhan. They made us too well.”
“Sure, but if Orami and Feram wanted to keep them alive, and for whatever reason, it seems they did, then they need air and they are not getting it through this door.” He knocked again on the metal, his glove making a dull thump.
Upala frowned, looking up at the vast reaches of the mountain.
“I am sure you are right, Drew. There must be small air channels that have been created in the mountain somehow. Even if they were large enough for us to travel through, and there is no reason they would need to be, we could search for days or weeks without finding them.”
“Fair enough,” Drew said, turning back toward the door and rubbing the back of his neck. “Maybe there’s a second-”
“Altered, Sentenced, if I may interrupt.”
The Speaker’s deep voice came so suddenly Upala jumped a bit in surprise. She turned, to find the Yeti and Lhamu standing next to them.
“Hey!” Drew said, snapping his fingers. “The Speaker! He could transport himself to the other side of this door, maybe see a way to open it!”
“Too uncertain,” the Speaker said. “There is no telling how far into the mountain this barrier extends. If I were to arrive inside it, my death would prevent me from further protecting the Foretold.”
Upala shook her head, her spirits being raised for a moment by Drew’s idea, only to be dashed again. She was surprised when the Yeti continued to stare at her, the expression on his face resembling curiosity, or inspiration.
“Sentenced, please explain. By what method does the obstruction here determine the Hero’s armor is present? What is it detecting a wearer’s permissible status?”
She paused. “If you mean what is the door looking for, the wearer has to have the Hero’s armor.”
“That was implicit in my question,” the Speaker said, making Upala want to pick the beast up
and toss him back down to Rogek Shad.
Drew shook his head, turning away to study the door more.
“Please describe the armor.”
Upala thought back to her time in Orami and Feram’s temple, the Rakhum Tanira wearing the armor and wielding the Hero’s sword. It had been all she and Drew could do to hold off the woman’s attack. Their plan was to face not only her in combat, but multiple Dragons as well?
“It is an energy field,” she said. The enormity of their task did not change it. “Blue in color and it stays close to the wearer’s body, but otherwise similar to the fields Kater and I can produce. Drew as well,” she gave Drew a quick smile at this addition.
Where she would expect most people to nod, the Speaker just continued staring at her. “Yet the shield you produce is powered by elements inherently internal to you. The armor is simply a device. Is it powered by a crystal?”
She looked back at the Yeti as if it had lost its mind. Of course it was powered by a crystal, just as the portals were. Just as most magical things were, including the Yeti themselves. The thought suddenly wrapped around her mind as she realized what the Speaker was thinking.
“Yes. Yes!” She shouted back. The Yeti had crystals growing on them naturally and she had seen them modify their color.
“I see you understand my thinking,” the Speaker said. “You may suspect I suggest I attempt this myself. If only this need had been known, a more lore-wise Yeti could have accompanied us. I have been bred for decisiveness, not lore. I do, however, suspect that with my assistance the Foretold may be capable of this. Indeed, it may be what she was Foretold to do.”
Upala looked over at Lhamu, who watched the exchange with her deep, dark eyes shifting back and forth. Her clear crystal in the center of her head glowed with a steady light.
“I can . . . help?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Upala said. She walked over to kneel down next to the girl, putting her hand on Lhamu’s shoulders. “Do you understand what the Speaker is asking?”