by R S Penney
Tommy looked up, bleary-eyed and exhausted. Without warning, a playful grin spread across the other man’s face. “You kissed Jim again.”
Dalen froze.
Miri snorted and limped past him, lightly patting him on the shoulder. “About time,” she muttered.
A sudden blush set Dalen’s face on fire. He just stood there, dumbfounded, unsure of what to say. “You…You know?” he managed at last.
Tommy reached up to remove his hat, exhaling slowly through his nose. “I was communing with the Ether at the time,” he explained. “It was kind of hard to miss. Like a great, big bonfire.”
Dalen licked his lips, working up the courage to ask the question that he had been dreading. “So,” he began, turning to Miri. “How does this affect us?”
She stood in the light that spilled out from the barrack’s windows, scrutinizing him as if he had just asked why water was wet. “Do you still love me and Lommy?”
“Of course.”
“Then I don’t see why it should affect us at all,” she said. “Go tell Jim how you feel.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Tommy slapped him on the back and then followed Miri to the barrack. “Have fun.”
“Wait, wait!” Dalen stammered. “Is Jim part of our relationship now? Are we a quartet?”
Tommy shrugged as he pushed open the door. “Don’t think I really feel that way about him,” he said. “No, I think you have Jim all to yourself.”
Dalen wandered off into the night. He was bone-tired, but there was no way that he could sleep. Not with all these thoughts racing through his head. Damn it all! The end of the world was no time to be starting a new relationship. And he had no idea if Jim would want to be with a man who had not one but two other lovers. One thing was damn sure. There was no way that Dalen was giving up Tommy and Miri.
He followed the wall around the compound. Not for any specific reason. He just needed to walk, and that was as good a path as any. Sometimes Dalen wished that he had learned the art of Field Binding. A Light-Source would be quite useful on a moonless night. Each of the barracks had a lamp next to its front door, but their range was limited. What he wouldn’t give for one of Desa’s glowing rings.
It wasn’t too late – Tommy had indicated more than once that he would be willing to share what he had learned – but all that time spent sitting still, meditating for hours on end? How could anyone stand it?
Dalen’s mother had taken him to the Academy when he was just nine years old. The instructors there had tried to teach him the basic lessons about clearing his mind and putting himself in a relaxed state. They said it was the only way to sense the Ether. Sadly, it didn’t work out for him.
Dalen’s mind was always full of thoughts, always chugging along with the momentum of a freight train. He needed that noise, that constant buzz of questions and ideas. Meditation was just too damn boring.
The sound of whimpering drew him out of his reverie.
He found Victor crouching in the corner where the south wall met the west wall. The man had his face in his hands, his body shaking as sobs racked him.
“Victor?” Dalen mumbled.
The other man looked up. It was too dark to see Victor’s expression, but Dalen could feel the hostility radiating from him. “Go away.”
“I cared about her too,” Dalen said. “She was-”
“I don’t want to talk.”
Dalen opened his mouth to protest, but what could he say? Sometimes, the best thing you could do was leave a man alone to sort out his own problems. He turned away, stalking off through the grass.
“Hey!” Victor called out behind him.
Dalen paused.
“It’s not fair, you know.”
Shoving his hands into his pockets, Dalen shut his eyes turned back to the other man. “No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “It’s never fair when someone so young dies.”
Victor stormed out of the shadows, the light of the distant lamps falling on his face. He looked haggard, his cheeks flushed, his eyes puffy and red. “That’s not what I mean,” he snapped. “You freaks go about flaunting your sins in front of the whole world. But Zoe is the one who dies?”
“You don’t mean that.”
Stepping forward with teeth bared, Victor growled like a chained dog. “Oh, don’t I?” he spat. “Maybe you don’t know me that well.”
“Look, just try to get some sleep.”
“I don’t want sleep!” Victor bellowed. He started laughing…or crying. Dalen couldn’t tell which. Maybe it was both at the same time. “They carted her off. Wrapped her in a sack and just threw her away with all the others!”
“Victor, they had to take the bodies.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and Dalen knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. The other man grabbed his shirt with both hands and shoved him backward. Dalen landed on his backside, damp grass squishing beneath him.
He should have been terrified, but his fear evaporated when a shadowy figure fell out of the sky and landed atop the wall. “That’s enough!” Desa’s voice cracked like a whip. “Leave him alone!”
Victor hesitated.
He twisted around, staring at her, and then the fight just drained out of him. Deflated, he shuffled away, muttering under his breath.
Desa hopped down from the wall, landing with a grunt, and then strode out of the shadows. At first glance, she didn’t seem all that menacing – just an ordinary woman in well-worn clothing – but Dalen saw a glint in her eye when she looked at Victor.
She came back to herself, shaking her head to dispel whatever thoughts had been troubling her, and then offered Dalen her hand. “Are you all right?”
He let Desa pull him to his feet.
Dusting himself off, Dalen looked around for the crowd of gawkers that always seemed to gather in moments like this. Of course, there was no one, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if a hundred people started laughing at him. His luck was just that rotten. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “He’s just…He’s angry, and he doesn’t know what to do with all that rage.”
“Well, there’s no reason he should direct it at you.”
“Agreed.”
“Get some rest,” Desa said. “I’ll sort this out.”
“Why you?”
Desa was ten steps away when she froze and answered him with a shrug. “Who else is going to do it?”
The ring on Desa’s finger was far brighter than any oil lamp, casting a soft, white glow over the grass. She found Victor standing with his back turned, staring at the wall. He sensed her coming by the light reflecting off the stone. “What do you want?”
Desa tossed a wad of bills at him.
The man crouched down, retrieving them, and then stiffened when he saw what she had given him. “There must be fifty dollars here.” He spun around to face her. “Why?”
Sauntering toward him with lips pursed, Desa held his gaze for a very long time. “To help you start a new life,” she said at last. “You’re going to take that and be gone by the time I wake up tomorrow.”
“Look, I’m sorry for what I said to-”
“Oh no,” Desa cut in. “It goes far beyond a little misplaced anger, and we both know it. I saw Jim on my way back from the mayor’s house. He told me about how you almost got Dalen killed.”
Victor shuddered, turning his face away from her. He backed up and grunted when he hit the wall. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I was only trying to help.”
“I know you, Victor.”
“Is that a fact?”
Rolling her eyes, Desa heaved out a breath. “By the Eyes of Vengeance,” she said. “I was you. About a year ago, I met an angry young man who had been mistreated by the people of his village. He betrayed me to my most bitter enemy. And I shot him for it.”
“Sounds like he had it coming.”
Desa answered that with bitter laughter, shaking her head as she strode toward him. “Be glad that
I am no longer that person,” she said. “Because if she were here, she might just shoot you.”
Victor went pale.
“I promised myself,” Desa went on, “that I would never make that mistake again. That if I found a young person who was going down the wrong path, I would offer them guidance instead of condemnation. I wish I could do that for you, Victor. But the stakes are just too high.
“The things you believe make you a threat to my friends. And the way you behave makes you an even bigger threat to my friends. I can’t fight Hanak Tuvar if I have to worry about you starting a brawl with Tommy or shooting someone because you’re too stupid to look before you pull the trigger. So, I do the only thing I can. Take the money and leave, Victor. Try to find a little spec of happiness.”
She turned to go, stomping through the grass toward the barracks, sighing softly. Hopefully, Victor would avoid getting into any more trouble. Maybe things would turn out differently for him than they had for so many others.
“I don’t really believe it!” he called out to her.
She spun around.
Victor was leaning against the wall, his eyes downcast as he drew in a rasping breath. “What I said to Dalen,” he clarified. “I don’t really believe it. That’s not me. That’s not who I am.”
“Perhaps,” Desa replied. “But that didn’t stop you from using it as a bludgeon when you needed a target for your anger. Casual bigotry or outright hatred: does it make a difference when the result is the same? Take your money, Victor. Find some happiness. Maybe if we survive this, we’ll meet again.”
“The plan is simple,” Rojan said.
He paced a line in front of the narrow, rectangular windows in the sidewall of the barrack, shaking a finger at his audience. “It’s not enough to simply get to the desert,” he said. “We need to provoke Hanak Tuvar into following us.”
Desa agreed.
She had discussed this with him before turning in last night. Things would be much easier with Rojan and his forces backing her up. Which only meant that the plan had gone from impossible to not quite impossible, but she would take any advantage she could get.
Tommy sat on the edge of his mattress frowning at the other man. “So, how exactly do we do that?”
The barrack was filled with Al a Nari Field Binders, all wrapped in gray cloaks. Andriel had come as well. The former Guardian seemed to have benefitted from her time with Rojan and his people. At the very least, she was less hostile.
Miri had her shoulder pressed against the wall, her long, brown coat showing signs of wear and tear. “It’s a good question,” she said. “You got any ideas about how we’re supposed to herd that monster toward one of the most desolate regions on this continent?”
Kalia stood in the aisle between the beds, shaking her head in exasperation. “Desolate,” she muttered. “You know, my people have been living there for centuries, and we get along just fine, thank you very much.”
“Me,” Desa said.
Tommy twisted around to stare at her. “What?”
With a great deal of reluctance, Desa marched down the aisle and joined Rojan on his improvised stage. “Me,” she said again, turning to face the lot of them. Sweet Mercy, she hated speaking in front of a crowd. “I’m the bait.”
“You want to use yourself as bait,” Miri grumbled.
“We know that it will chase me,” Desa insisted. “We know that when it sees me, it flies into a rage. So, let’s use that.”
Rojan stepped up beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. His stern expression reminded everyone that this mission was going forward whether they liked it or not. “It won’t be just Desa,” he assured the others. “Some of us will be going with her.”
Tommy stood up, opening his mouth to say something. He thought better of it and forcefully shook his head. “There is one small flaw with this plan,” he began. “It’ll take the better part of two weeks to reach the desert. How do we make sure the monster doesn’t lose interest and go somewhere else?”
“We’ll have to keep provoking it,” Desa said.
“And the pace?” Tommy asked. “We don’t know how much ground that thing can cover in a day. We may have to run our horses to exhaustion. How do you expect to deal with that?”
“Hanak Tuvar seems to be limited by its ability to spread the strange distortion field it lives in,” Rojan said. “We won’t be following the route you took last year, the slight northward curve of the river. Instead, we will go directly south-west, cross the plains and then Ander’s Woods. That should shave a few days off the journey, but it will be a long, difficult ride.”
Stepping forward, Desa let out a breath. Her head sank as she contemplated the enormity of what she was proposing. “We may be able to slow it down,” she said. “We’ve seen that our crystals can make its distortion field recede. If it has to waste energy covering the same area twice, we’ll gain some ground.”
Rojan was at her side, stroking his chin with the tips of his fingers. “We’re going to need a lot of crystals,” he cautioned. “Which is why our Field Binders will be producing more as they ride.”
Tommy barked a laugh. “Forgive me,” he said. “But communing with the Ether in the saddle? That’s no easy task.”
“We don’t have good options, Tommy,” Desa replied. “It’s this or let the demon rampage across the land. One last adventure. What do you say?”
“I’m in.”
“Excellent!” Rojan exclaimed. “I want all of our Field Binders to spend the day making crystals and Infusions. We leave tomorrow morning.”
25
The redness was like a wall that stood a hundred feet high, a curved wall that flowed in an almost wave-like pattern, expanding here, contracting there. Blue sky above, green grass below, and in front of her? Nothing but red.
Desa stood on the field in tan pants and her long, brown duster, a wide-brimmed hat sitting squarely on her head. Midnight was next to her, saddled and bridled and ready to run at a moment’s notice.
They were a mile out from the city, far enough that there was little chance of any innocent bystander getting hurt. Unless, of course, Hanak Tuvar decided to ignore her and go for a more tempting target. But that would be a break in its pattern of behaviour.
Rojan stepped up to her, leading his brown gelding by the bridle. The animal nickered, unwilling to get too close to that red haze. Desa couldn’t blame him. Only an idiot would walk willingly into that.
So, what did that make her?
Pressing his lips together, Rojan examined the distortion for a moment. “You’re sure about this,” he said, shooting her a sidelong glance. “We could try something else. I think we might have luck just breaking a crystal.
Craning her neck, Desa took in the sight of the crimson wall. “We have to get its attention,” she said, stepping closer. “And I’m the one it hates.”
“You’ll be on your own.”
“I’m used to it.” She heaved out a breath, then checked her pockets once again. She had five crystals, exactly the same amount as the last time she had checked. But she was nervous. Everything had to go just right, or…Well, that didn’t bear thinking about. “You shouldn’t be here. I want you at least a mile away before we start.”
“The others have begun their journey westward,” he said. “Are you certain that you can catch up? You’ll be pushing your horse hard.”
“Midnight isn’t like other horses.”
Rojan nodded. “Very well.” He turned his gelding around and led it away from the redness. The animal was more than happy to go. “I wish you luck, Desa Nin Leean. I will see you when you rendezvous with the group.”
She waited a good, long while, giving Rojan time to get away. Most horses couldn’t run like Midnight. Yet another reason why Desa should be the one to do this. When she was sure that he was gone, she retrieved a crystal from her pocket.
It was time to begin.
Desa poked the tip of her finger into the redness. It felt like touching
a teapot that was seconds away from boiling. When she pulled her hand away, her finger was gray.
A monstrous creature appeared before her, just inside the distortion field. It rose up on slimy tentacles and let out a soul-splitting cry.
Desa shattered the crystal.
The rainbow engulfed her, taking the pain from her hand, and then expanded into the distortion field, nearly capturing Hanak Tuvar. The demon vanished just before it was consumed by the Ether’s power.
Desa lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers, pleased to find that the colour had returned to her skin. She rather liked her olive complexion. “Almost caught the damn thing.” She climbed into Midnight’s saddle, spun the horse around and set him running westward.
It wasn’t long before she heard another menacing screech, distant but no less threatening. A quick glance revealed the massive body of Hanak Tuvar standing three-stories high, about a mile into the distortion field. The creature started slinking toward her, moving like a predator.
Desa bent low in the saddle.
Baring her teeth with a hiss, she whispered in Midnight’s ear. “Keep running. That bastard isn’t going to catch us.”
Her horse galloped over lush, green fields where the land was almost perfectly flat. The sky was clear, the air fresh with the scents of spring. It was a beautiful morning if you ignored what was happening behind her.
Half a dozen villages were clustered around Ofalla in a haphazard semicircle, concentrated mostly on the southern and western sides of the city. She turned Midnight southward, following a course that would take her between two of them, guided by one of her Force-Sources. Tommy had placed it in the grass several hours ago when he and the others had passed through this area.
They had planned this out ahead of time. Members of the Watch had visited the neighbouring towns last night, urging the citizens to evacuate. Mercy send those people were wise enough to take the suggestion. If not, Hanak Tuvar might turn aside and gobble them up.
The demon was still coming. Its distortion field crept ahead of it, sweeping over the grass, killing everything it touched. It managed to keep pace with Midnight, but it wasn’t gaining ground on him.