by R S Penney
“No, this is much bigger than me,” Desa explained. “I’m only one player in a story that stretches back to the dawn of our civilization. One way or another, we were always going to end up here.”
“That’s very…enlightened of you.”
A frown tightened Desa’s mouth. Dismayed, she shook her head slowly. “It was inevitable,” she said. “Mercy’s people. They started it. They put us on this path. Now, we have to figure out how to change course.”
She hugged herself, rubbing her arms as chills raced through her body. For the first time in a very long while, Desa Kincaid was terrified. “Mercy,” she mumbled. “She was our best chance of getting through this, and now she’s gone.”
Tilting her chin up with two fingers, Kalia kissed Desa’s nose. “You’re wrong,” she whispered. “You were always our best chance of getting through this.”
They just held each other as the sun went down. Even after everything they had been through over the last twenty-four hours, Desa still felt a seed of joy growing within her. She had found Kalia again, and that fact alone made it seem as though she might get through this. Those weeks they had spent apart left Desa feeling as if a piece of her soul had been carved out. Now, she was whole again.
Kalia rested her head in Desa’s lap, and Desa gently stroked her hair. Within moments, the other woman was starting to drift off, falling into a sweet, peaceful sleep. Desa was content to just let her stay like that.
A lanky fellow with dark, brown skin and flecks of gray in his black hair paused to give them a dirty look. He said nothing, but the contempt was hard to ignore.
“Something I can do for you?” Desa asked.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
The man turned his back on her, gazing out on the people who had gathered in the field. “Our city is attacked by a demon,” he said. “And I see sin all around me. It’s hard not to imagine that the two are connected.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Desa groaned in frustration. “I can assure you that what happened to New Beloran had nothing to do with me or my partner.” She looked up at him. “In Ithanar, men marry other men, and women marry other women. They’ve been doing it for centuries without drawing the attention of any demons.”
The angry fellow looked back over his shoulder. “Ithanar,” he said. “A land ruled by savages.”
“If you only knew…”
Kalia sat up with a mumbled curse, brushing the hair out of her face. “If you don’t mind,” she said. “Some of us are trying to get some sleep.”
The idiot stormed off.
“I think that sleep is still a ways off,” Desa lamented. “I need to go find Tommy.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Locating her former protégé wasn’t hard. Desa could feel him communing with the Ether a short distance away, somewhere on the north side of the road. She had to wade through the densely-packed crowd, stepping around clusters of people who had gathered together for their evening meal.
She saw families: children giggling as their parents tickled them, young adults sparing a coat or a warm blanket for one of their elders. So many people, all displaced. Good, honest people. This was what Hanak Tuvar wanted to destroy? Why? Her first instinct was to search for a rational motivation, but that was folly. The creature had told her its motivation. It wanted to destroy humanity for its own amusement. Simply to relieve its boredom. There could be no peace with an entity like that.
Dalen and Miri were lounging by one of the wagons, talking quietly with one another, occasionally sharing a kiss. It warmed her heart to see them. Desa had thought endlessly about Kalia during their time apart, but she had missed the others as well. They weren’t just friends anymore. They were family.
“I’m going to go say hello,” Kalia murmured, slipping away to join Miri and Dalen. They greeted her with bright smiles and warm hugs. Jealousy flared up within Desa. It lasted for only a moment but left a bitter taste in her mouth. Kalia had bonded with the others in ways that Desa never had.
It was her own fault, always holding herself apart, running off alone at every opportunity. Maybe, when this was over – if they survived – she would have a chance to correct some mistakes.
She crossed the road, moving through the field toward a small copse of trees. The soft thrumming of the Ether came from that direction. Ducking under the branches of a tall ash, she found Tommy kneeling in the grove with his back turned. The shadows were lengthening with the onset of evening, a soft breeze promising a chilly night.
Tommy severed contact with the Ether.
Crossing her arms with a sigh, Desa cocked her head. She frowned at him. “You know, not so long ago, it was you sneaking up on me doing that.”
He chuckled, standing up and turning around to face her. Placing a hand over his heart, he offered a shallow bow. “Mrs. Kincaid.”
“Tommy.”
“What’s on your mind?”
She puckered her lips, turning her face up to the darkening sky as she blew out a breath. “Well, I could make some pretense about wanting to discuss plans with you,” she began. “But the truth is I had no specific purpose in coming here. Except to tell you that I am very proud of how far you’ve come.”
He sniffled, a tear sliding down his cheek. “Desa,” he mumbled, wiping that tear away. “You’re going to ruin my brilliant, stoic leader façade.”
“Good!” she teased. “Your earnest streak was always your greatest strength, Tommy. Don’t lose it now.”
He sighed, leaning back against the ash tree. “You don’t need to worry about that,” he muttered. “The truth is I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m making it up as I go along.”
Desa shuffled into the grove with her hands clasped behind her back, smiling at the ground beneath her feet. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “But so am I.”
“What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Mercy was our best bet, but she’s gone. While I was training with her, she showed me how to use the crystal on her pyramid. She said it might give me the strength I need to return Hanak Tuvar to its prison.”
“So, we go back to the abandoned city.”
“It’s not that simple,” Desa said, shaking her head. “I don’t think the crystal has unlimited range. We have to trick Hanak Tuvar into following us.”
Tommy nodded.
Their little tete-a-tete ended when Kalia and the others came to join them in the small grove. Desa felt her heart racing. In the waning, evening light, Kalia was nothing short of breathtaking. Her beautiful eyes, her playful smile.
She listened to them chatting for a moment, unsure of what to offer, and then something caught her eye. The others from Tommy’s war camp on Hebar’s Hill had come as well. She recognized them – a tall, pale man, a shorter man with tanned skin and a young woman with red hair – but she could not put names to them. Perhaps it was time to change that. She chose the tall man first.
Striding toward him, Desa thrust out her hand. “Desa Kincaid,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”
He took her hand and gave it a single pump. This one was younger than she would have expected. Younger than Tommy had been when she took him from that sleepy, little village. But not by much. “Jim,” he said. “We met before, but we never had a chance to get acquainted.”
“So, you’re the famous Desa Kincaid,” the girl interjected. “Tommy talks about you all the time.” She moved as if to offer a curtsy and then realized she was wearing pants. Embarrassed, she averted her eyes. “He says that you taught him everything he knows.”
“But not everything I know!” Desa said.
“Ha!”
The other young man stepped forward, sizing her up with an inquisitive stare. After a moment, he offered a nod of respect. “Victor,” was all he said. And really, what more did you need? After years of listening to the Synod prattle on, Desa had developed an appreciation for brevity.
Shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, Jim directed a glance toward Dalen and the others. “Tommy’s been teaching us how to Field Bind,” he murmured. “With very limited success.”
“Don’t get discouraged,” Desa replied. “For some people, it takes years just to find the Ether. But if you keep practicing, it will come.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t call me ma’am.”
The girl folded her arms, tapping her pale cheek as she studied Desa. “I’m more interested in how she fights,” she said. “Tommy says she could stand up to an entire army if she had to.”
“Tommy exaggerates,” Desa assured her.
The young woman forced a smile, bowing her head and running a hand through her hair. “I’m not so sure,” she said. “I saw you on Hebar’s Hill. You were like a storm made flesh. The name’s Zoe, by the way.”
Desa stood with hands clasped demurely in front of herself, closing her eyes and nodding to the lass. “I would be happy to teach you,” she promised. “All of you. Mercy knows, we’ll need it in the days to come.”
They all agreed.
“Come,” Desa said. “Let’s join the others.”
Desa fell asleep as soon as her head touched the folded-up coat that she used for a pillow, drifting off into a deep, dreamless slumber. Twilight still lingered, but she was too tired to do anything else. And Kalia’s warm body held the night’s chill at bay.
She woke up sometime later, feeling as if she had slept for twelve hours. Except, she couldn’t have. It was still pitch dark. A soft breeze sighed through the nearby tree branches, nearly drowning out the hooting of an owl.
They had chosen a spot near the grove, far from the other refugees. All of the old crew had come together. Even Midnight was lying in the grass, snoozing after a hard day’s work. And a hard night, to boot.
She knew that she should go back to sleep – she needed the rest – but her mind was alert now. There would be no relaxing until she burned off some of that excess energy. And besides, she had work to do.
Making herself one with the Ether, Desa began a series of Infusions. She started with her belt buckle, Reinfusing it with a hunger for gravitational energy. The Sink was all but spent after a night of running from Hanak Tuvar, and she had been too tired to replenish it.
It took the better part of ten minutes to thicken the lattice to a point where she would feel confident leaping from rooftop to rooftop. You wanted a Gravity-Sink to survive at least half an hour of continuous use. That way, if you were smart enough to use it sparingly, you would get several hours out of it.
From there, she moved on to her bracelet. Defensive Infusions first; she would make weapons later. She only had one gun and a couple boxes of ammunition. That irked her. To lose her second pistol after all the money she had spent purchasing it…
Well, there was no getting it back. By now, Hanak Tuvar would have spread its red halo across the entire city. The gun was probably a puddle on the floor of Timothy Delarac’s ballroom. Her mind reeled at the thought of what the people might have endured. She knew that there were many who had refused to flee. With her Force-Sink Reinfused, she moved on to-
Something changed.
Desa felt a disruption, a strange shifting sensation. It wasn’t the wrongness that she felt around Hanak Tuvar. No, this was something very different. As if matter had been spontaneously generated out of nothing. Or transported from somewhere else.
And just like that, she knew what it was.
Tossing the blankets off of herself, Desa crawled out of her bedroll, prompting Kalia to mumbled something incoherent. No time for that. Desa stood up as a flash of light made her eyes smart.
A crystalline figure stumbled out of the grove, bent double with one hand pressed to her side. Almost as if she had been stabbed with a sword. She groaned, nearly losing her balance, and when she pulled that hand away, Desa gasped.
A network of black veins had spread through Mercy’s body like an infection. They had covered half of her stomach and stretched up her side almost to the shoulder. The goddess screamed with a sound like glass shattering, and the infected part of her tore itself free, breaking into a thousand pieces when it hit the ground.
Inky, black tendrils of ooze slinked through the grass, making their way eastward. Back to Hanak Tuvar.
Mercy staggered.
She now had a big hole in her body, like a pastry that someone had taken a bite out of. Moaning, she braced a hand against a tree trunk and tried to stay on her feet. Her legs almost gave out.
Another flash of radiance emanated from her, transforming her into a living star, waking everyone in the nearby field. When it faded away, she was human again: a plump, matronly woman with dark skin and curly hair.
She fell flat on her face.
Desa rushed to her.
With a gentle hand, she turned Mercy over. The goddess was sound asleep in the soft moonlight, almost serene. The hole in her stomach was gone. She had no fever, no obvious signs of illness or injury. She was just unconscious. Unfortunately, Desa had no idea how long she would stay that way.
Kalia sprinted over, gasping, and dropped to one knee in the grass. “What happened?” she breathed.
“I wish I knew.”
19
Stretched out in a wagon with her head propped up on Desa’s coat, Mercy slept. The warm sunlight fell upon her, causing her to sweat – Desa would have never expected such a human reaction – but she didn’t wake no matter how much she was jostled about.
And there was plenty of jostling.
The wagon rumbled along a dirt path that cut through a green field with trees on either side. Elms, poplars, maples: they grew tall and strong, providing sporadic bursts of shade as the caravan of refugees passed beneath them. Desa was grateful for it. It was quite warm for a day in the middle of spring.
She knelt beside her “patient,” smoothing the hair off Mercy’s forehead. She wasn’t sure what else to do. With their food supplies dwindling, Tommy had ordered everything cleared out of this wagon and moved to others that had room to spare. One of their fellow travelers had been a surgeon back in New Beloran; he had spent an hour examining Mercy before they set out this morning, and he swore that he could find nothing wrong with her. She was just asleep.
Kalia rode Midnight as he walked alongside the wagon. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” she said with a devilish grin. “I was right.”
“About what?”
“I told you Mercy wasn’t dead.”
Desa’s first instinct was to point out that it was a poor time to say, “I told you so,” but then she saw the glint in her partner’s eye. A joke. Kalia always found a ray of sunshine in the darkest of times. A reason to keep hoping.
Stifling a yawn with her hand, Desa murmured her agreement. “That you did.” It came out as an incoherent mess, but Kalia seemed to get the gist of it. “Once again, I bow to your superior wisdom.”
Kalia grunted, nodding once as if to say that she was satisfied by that response. “I have to remind you of these things,” she insisted. “Otherwise, you’ll just take all the credit. And we can’t have that.”
“Perish the thought.”
The wagon driver – a portly fellow named Burt who wore a rumpled hat over his gray hair – glanced back over his shoulder. “Boss man’s coming,” he said. “Thinking he’d like a word with you, ma’am.”
Up ahead, Tommy was lumbering along the path with his head down, making his way back to them. He had gone to make sure they wouldn’t find trouble waiting around the next bend. Desa couldn’t help but smile. It almost reminded her of Marcus. “How is she?” Tommy asked, patting the dappled gray horse that pulled the wagon.
Desa scowled, scrubbing sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. “The same,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do.”
“Too bad we don’t have any crystals,” Kalia said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tommy snapped.
Kalia flinched as
if someone had just slapped her. “Nothing,” she said. “Why? Do you happen to have a crystal?”
“I don’t think it would help,” Desa said. With the gentlest touch, she used a wet cloth to dab Mercy’s face. The goddess never even stirred. “The crystals are calcified fragments of the Ether. They accelerate the body’s natural healing process. However, Mercy isn’t sick.”
Tommy spun around, shoving his hands into his pockets and walking beside the wagon. If the young man was blaming himself for all of this, Desa would have to have words with him. It wouldn’t do to let others pick up her bad habits.
“Have we thought about what we’re going to do when we get to Ofalla?” Kalia asked. “I can’t imagine they’ll be willing to take in four thousand refugees.”
Lifting a toothpick between two fingers, Tommy slipped it into his mouth as if it were a cigarette. “Miri says we should put on a demonstration,” he muttered. “I figure, between the three of us, we can come up with something impressive.”
“You want to use Field Binding to intimidate the city officials?” Desa exclaimed. “Tommy, the Great Art is not a bludgeon to coerce people into doing what you want.”
“Desperate times, Desa.”
“He has a point,” Kalia chimed in. “Put aside the issue of finding a safe place for all these refugees. You know that Hanak Tuvar won’t be content to remain in New Beloran. Once it’s finished there, it will move on. We’ll have to rally the people of Ofalla, and we don’t have time to play politics with their city council.”
“Assuming it comes this way,” Desa growled. “For all we know, it could decide to go south, north or east.”
Kalia had a sombre expression as she stared off into the distance. “If I were a hungry squid demon,” she said, “I would head for the closest settlement. I’m afraid, when we arrive at Ofalla, we’ll be bringing a nasty surprise on our heels.”
Well, there was no arguing with that. In a way, this was for the best, though Desa hated to admit it. If Hanak Tuvar came after her, she could at least exercise some measure of control. She could attack it, slow it down. Maybe even find a way to stop it. But if it went anywhere else, she would be helpless. People would die.