Face Of The Void (Desa Kincaid Book 3)

by R S Penney

  The villagers took his warning about the squid demon very seriously. Tommy had expected skepticism but when Rojan finished his story, the crowd began making plans to evacuate the instant they saw a creeping line of redness on the eastern horizon. Tommy’s heart broke for them.

  Though he knew it was irrational, he felt responsible for their plight. Here he was, leading Hanak Tuvar right to them. If he had tried harder, if he had stopped Adele before the demon had escaped, maybe none of this would have happened. He talked to Desa about it when he found her with Midnight in the stable.

  She stood there with her back turned, chuckling softly as she ran a brush over the stallion’s black body. “You sound like me.”

  Tommy blinked.

  Crossing his arms, he leaned one shoulder against a wooden pole that supported the ceiling. “Is that such a bad thing?” he asked, grinning.

  Desa spun to face him. Something in the way she scrutinized him made him feel like this had all been a dream and he was still the naïve boy she had rescued from a village that wouldn’t be labeled on most maps. “No,” she said. “But blaming yourself for failing accomplishes nothing. What matters is that you tried.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Tommy, take it from someone who knows,” she said. “If you sit here and wallow in your regrets, the only thing you’ll get for your trouble is an unhealthy obsession with your own shortcomings.”

  They stayed just long enough to purchase what they needed and set out again while there was still plenty of daylight in the sky, moving slowly westward. Long days and hard nights: that was what this journey offered.

  The next day, he began to notice a change in the landscape. Patches of yellow grass crept in among the green. Just a few here and there, at first, but it very wasn’t long before those patches grew larger. He saw fewer trees and more thorny bushes.

  Two days after that, the grass was gone entirely. They had entered the scrubland that surrounded the desert, an endless stretch of dirt baking under a sun that beat down from a cloudless sky.

  Summer was at least two months away, but that harsh glare made him feel as if he were roasting in an oven. And to think he had been complaining about the cold! Right then, he would give anything for a cool drizzle.

  If making crystals in the rain was hard, then doing it in the scorching heat was…roughly equal in terms of difficulty, now that he thought about it. There was no such thing as good weather when you were bouncing on a horse’s back, manipulating the Ether while simultaneously trying not to fall out of the saddle.

  At one point, he found himself walking beside Kalia. The former sheriff was happy for some reason that he couldn’t comprehend. When he inquired, she looked at him as if he had just asked why dogs bark. “This is my home,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade this last year for anything, but it’s good to be back.”

  He kept looking to the east, expecting to see a line of redness on the horizon, but it never came. They set a watch every night, but they never saw any signs of trouble. Where was Hanak Tuvar? Had the demon given up its chase? Tommy wasn’t sure if he liked the implications of that.

  The next morning, Desa stood in the stirrups and stared off to the horizon. Tommy saw nothing but a field of red clay under the blue sky, but Desa pointed at a spot slightly to the north. “That way!”

  “You’re sure?” Rojan asked.

  “Reach for the Ether,” she replied. “Sense the pulses.”

  Tommy did as she suggested, the world changing all around him. He strained for the pulses and felt nothing.

  The people all around him began to glow as they found the Ether. He reached out for them with his thoughts, and together, they searched for the pulses. There! He felt them like the softest whisper of wind on his skin. Desa was right. She knew the way to the abandoned city.

  Those pulses became stronger as they pressed on. Soon, Tommy didn’t need the Ether to feel them. They were insistent, drawing him in. Like a song in his mind that he could not resist.

  The final leg of their journey was the hardest.

  Tommy saw very little in the way of plant life. A cactus here or there, but not much beyond that. The horses were exhausted, and their riders weren’t doing much better. Most of the Field Binders had given up on making new crystals. They already had several dozen of them. That would have to do for now.

  Miri and Dalen muttered their misgivings about whether they were going in the right direction. Neither one of them could feel the pulses. If they had, they would know. Luckily, the city wasn’t too far from the desert’s eastern border.

  It came into view when the sun was an orange ball on the distant horizon, but it wasn’t at all what Tommy had been expecting. He had heard stories about dilapidated buildings, structures that had collapsed to rubble centuries ago. There was none of that. Instead, he saw cute, little homes that looked as if they had been finished less than a year ago, homes that were surrounded by blooming gardens and tall trees.

  The pyramid towered over the surrounding buildings. But instead of rising to a point, its top half had been hacked off, leaving a flat roof that supported an enormous crystal in the shape of a teardrop. Sunlight glinted off its smooth surface in a rainbow of colours.

  Nari smiled as she looked upon the place that she had called home for the last ten thousand years. Much of that time had been spent in isolation, trapped in a ghostly form that haunted the ruins. But the pride in her eyes…You could tell with one look that she was responsible for the improvements.

  “We’re here,” Tommy mumbled.

  Desa nodded. “We’re here.”

  Rojan called a halt just outside the city. “All right,” he said, turning to look upon his troops. “First, we stable the horses, and then we all find a place to sleep. Eat a quick meal, and get some rest. I want everyone up by dawn.”

  “And why is that?” Andriel asked.

  “Because,” he replied. “We’re going to ready this place for battle.”

  27

  Desa found her bedroom much as she had left it. Four stone walls with a window that looked out on a small garden in the backyard. Her bed had a wooden frame and a fluffy pillow. Other than that, there were no furnishings except for a small table and one chair in the corner.

  Kalia stood with the strap of her bag slung over one shoulder, pursing her lips as she examined the room. “So, this is where you would sleep?” she asked. “I guess I hadn’t pictured anything quite so homey.”

  Desa leaned against the wall with her arms folded, nodding slowly in response to the other woman’s question. “This is it,” she said. “Nari rebuilt this house and remade the furniture with her powers.”

  “I see,” Kalia said. “And what would she do while you were sleeping?”

  “She would fly around the city, rebuilding houses with her powers.”

  Kalia heaved out a breath, sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands gripping the edge of the mattress. “Your time here changed you,” she muttered under her breath.

  Pacing across the room, Desa stopped in front of the other woman. “Please tell me that you’re not still feeling jealous of Nari,” she said. “Darling, you are the only one I want.”

  When Kalia looked up, her brown eyes reflected the light of a glowing metal plate in the ceiling. The residents of this ancient city had built their homes with the intention of making Field Binding a part of their lives, using it for the most mundane tasks. Aladar had been much the same before the advent of electricity. “It’s not that I’m jealous,” Kalia said. “But you became a new person. And I wasn’t here to see it.”

  Desa bent low, pressing her lips to the other woman’s forehead. She offered the softest kiss and then pulled away. “We are always becoming new people,” she said. “You will be with me as I become a hundred new versions of Desa Kincaid.”

  “You see?” Kalia protested. “Now, you spout off wisdom like that without even thinking about it.” Desa was about to insist that nothing had changed between them
, but Kalia started laughing and poking her in the belly.

  “Stop it!” Desa squealed, flinching and scooting away. “I wish you had never found out that I’m ticklish.”

  “Well, everyone needs a weakness.”

  “Bah! Heresy!”

  Kalia was on her feet in an instant, surging forward to throw her arms around Desa’s neck, offering a kiss that silenced any further arguments.

  A gibbous moon hung low in the starry sky, casting silver light over the ancient city. For all the sun’s fury, nights in the desert were chilly. Tommy barely noticed. He was fascinated by the houses on either side of this circular street.

  They weren’t anything fancy – just little, blocky homes with flat rooftops – but there was something about them. About the little gardens, the large windows. This place had been built by the hand of someone who wanted to care for her people. It made him feel at home. Safe.

  Miri walked beside him, frowning as she inspected her surroundings with the eye of a tactician. “Defending the city will be difficult,” she grumbled. “We don’t know which direction they will come from. Rojan is thinking that we could set up watchers on the outermost buildings.”

  He nodded absently.

  What would it have been like to live here all those centuries ago? To learn Field Binding under the tutelage of a goddess? Well, Nari wasn’t really a goddess – he was beginning to wonder whether there was any such thing – but she was as close to one as anybody would ever get. At least, that was how he saw it.

  How could there be a God or an Almighty? What sort of being would create something like Hanak Tuvar? It just didn’t make any sense. Tommy had never been the sort of person who found much comfort in religion, but he was unnerved by the prospect of living in a godless universe. What did that mean for morality? For a man’s purpose in this world?

  Miri swatted his shoulder. “You listening to me, Lommy?”

  He blushed, shutting his eyes as he shuffled along beside her. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I guess I’ve had a lot of thoughts on my mind.”

  She linked arms with him and then leaned her head against his shoulder. “So, about the same as usual then,” she murmured. “What are you thinking about now?”

  “Our place in the universe.”

  “No. See, that’s entirely wrong,” Miri teased. “You’re supposed to say that you’re thinking about my beautiful eyes.”

  Tommy spun to face her, taking her hands in his, and then he bent to kiss her lips. “Yes,” he said. “You’ve figured it out. I am helpless under your spell.”

  “Much better.”

  “Though I do have a question. Why, of all the nicknames you could have chosen for me, did you settle on ‘Lommy?’”

  His heart raced when she smiled at him. Her face was so beautiful in the moonlight. “Because it makes you squirm,” she said. “And you’re so cute when you squirm.”

  “Do you think we’re going to survive this?”

  “I think so.”

  They walked in silence for a time, continuing their circuit of the city. It wasn’t very big. You could walk around the outermost street in about an hour. More of a village, really. Or a small town. But as he thought about it, those words didn’t seem to fit either. They were just too quaint.

  Now and then, he would venture a glance toward the crystal. You could see it rising over the top of every structure, glittering even in the starlight. How many lives could they save with that thing? How many people could they heal?

  From what Nari had told him, this place had once been a school. She had reminded him several times that he would find a place here if he wanted one. She needed people who could teach the Great Art to her next crop of students. The prospect was tempting, but something within him resisted the thought of settling down. Almighty help him, he wasn’t even twenty years old yet. There was still so much of the world to see.

  And so much good to do.

  Much of what he had seen in the past year painted the picture of a world in need of fixing. Injustice, cruelty, oppression: they dominated his continent from one end to the other. But he had also seen the opposite. He knew that a better way was possible. “Have you given any thought to after?” he asked Miri.

  “After?” she replied.

  “What we’ll do when this is all over.”

  She halted in mid-step, eying him suspiciously. Finally, she shrugged. “Honestly, I haven’t,” she said. “It’s always been about surviving from one day to the next.”

  “Our work in Hedrovan isn’t done.”

  “Yes, because that went so very well.”

  Tommy pulled away from her. “Just because the first attempt fails,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you give up. Those people down there need us.”

  Miri was watching him from the corner of her eye. He had learned to recognize that dangerous look, the one that said they might be headed for an argument. “You’re not going to let that one go, are you?”

  “Should I?”

  She heaved out a sigh, deflating. “No, I suppose not,” she mumbled. “I was just hoping we might get a break from the ever-present danger. Silly me.”

  Gravity-Sinks allowed Desa and Kalia to jump to the roof of a small house where they found Rojan waiting for them. The sun was less than halfway to its zenith, shining down from a clear sky, but it was already quite warm.

  Rojan stood at the southern edge of the rooftop, gazing out on the field of red clay that surrounded the city. As Desa approached him from behind, she noticed several of his Field Binders at work down below. She could feel the Ether stirring around them, which meant they must have been creating Infusions.

  “A difficult position to hold,” Rojan said.

  “With any luck, you won’t have to hold it long.”

  “You’ve spoken with Nari.”

  Desa stood with her hands behind her back, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. She nodded slowly. “She still thinks returning the demon to its prison is our best bet.”

  Rubbing his chin with the back of his hand, Rojan squinted against the glare of the sun. “She’s probably right,” he muttered. “Does she know how long that will take?”

  “Minutes,” Desa said. “Hours. It’s hard to say.”

  “Great.”

  Kalia sauntered up to stand beside Rojan, sparing him a glance before directing her attention to the people working below. “Desa will be working with Nari to reform Hanak Tuvar’s prison,” she said. “That means we’ll be without our best fighter. The rest of us will have to prevent the creature from getting anywhere near her.”

  “My people are Infusing every rock they find,” Rojan said. “If an army of grays descends upon this city, we’ll have a few nasty surprises waiting for them. As for Hanak Tuvar, I’ve got a few others making crystals.”

  “Don’t we have plenty of those?” Kalia asked.

  Rojan nodded. “Several dozen, at least. But you can never have too many. So far, they’re the only weapon that has proven effective against the demon.”

  He turned to Kalia, lightly patting her on the shoulder. “When the fight begins, you and Thomas Von Gerald will protect Desa and Nari,” he said. “No matter what else might happen, you don’t let anything get near them.”

  “You have my word.”

  “So, that’s it then?” Desa asked. “We just make our preparations and wait?”

  “That’s it.”

  The next few days passed without incident. The Field Binders made Infusions in a ring around the city. Desa, Kalia, Nari and Tommy made crystals. As many crystals as they could manage, working from sunup to sundown and only stopping for meals. By the time they were finished, they had over a hundred.

  Rojan began passing them out among his people. If anyone was seriously injured in the fight to come, they would have a way to heal. And if all else failed, they might use the crystals in a last-ditch attack against Hanak Tuvar.

  Before turning in each night, Desa spent some time with her friends. They laughed together
, shared memories of old times and hopes for the future. In the quiet moments, she almost forgot about the impending doom that waited for them.

  Sometimes, she wondered if Hanak Tuvar had simply lost interest in them. If so, that might prove to be a problem. Their food supplies would not last forever. If the beast didn’t come within the next few days, someone might have to make a run to Fool’s Edge. The town was less than a day’s ride from here.

  Desa was growing restless. At first, she had been grateful for the extra time to set up their defenses. But there were only so many Heat-Sinks and Electric-Sources they could make. They were as ready as they would ever be.

  Kalia started talking about the possibility of staying here, of teaching at Nari’s new school. It sounded like a brilliant idea. Sharing the wonder of Field Binding with the world: it was what she had always wanted. And Desa was tired of the vagabond’s life. Eleven damn years running from place to place to place. She was ready to settle down.

  The thought gave her a little peace when she felt the dread creeping up on her. She was just starting to relax when one of Tommy’s Sonic-Sources sounded an alarm.

  Desa ran out of her small house, slinging her coat over her shoulders. She skidded to a stop in the road, letting out a breath.

  When she turned, Kalia was right behind her, charging out of the house and hastily checking the guns that she wore on her hips.

  “In the middle of the afternoon?” she asked, noting the sun’s position in the sky. “I thought it would wait until nightfall.”

  “I don’t think it cares to wait,” Desa muttered. “It wants this whole thing over with. And so do I.”

  She bent her knees, then triggered her Gravity-Sink and jumped. Weightless, she flew up to the roof of the house before killing her Sink and running across the hard stone. Kalia uttered a string of curses as she followed. Manipulating gravity had never been easy for her.