Loral

by Richard Young

  ***

  My sight was first to return. The fuzzy image slowly resolved to a mass of black flickering with light. Hearing was next, and it brought to me the sound of talking and some kind of crackling. It took my mind a moment to catch up and process the sounds.

  "This part’s the worst. Let’s get out of here."

  The light was growing stronger, and as my sense of smell returned I noticed the smell of smoke. A campfire? The crackling of flames licking at wood confirmed my suspicion, and I relaxed while I waited for the men to leave. It was so warm.

  A moment later my mind caught up and I shot up off the sacrificial table and away from the flames that were inching their way up the sides. The feeling in my body hadn’t fully returned yet, and the difficulty I had breathing told me my injury was still serious. I’d have to move quickly before the feeling returned, bringing the pain with it.

  The room, illuminated by the light of the fire, was small. The blackness I had seen as I woke was the ceiling, covered in soot from previous sacrifices. I swallowed hard and tried not to think about that. At least now I knew why people were so suspicious of the Minders. I wondered how many other Madmen had gone missing under suspicious circumstances.

  A small door stood open at one end of the room, and it appeared to be the only way out. There was no way I would fit through the small smoke hole at the top of the room. I took a couple ragged breaths. Voices from beyond the door told me the men hadn’t gone far. This would need to be done carefully.

  I reached out for the Madness, and found it without too much difficulty. My mind was surprisingly clear now that I had fully woken up. On impulse, I grabbed a stick from the fire that wasn’t yet consumed. My right arm arm didn’t seem to work quite right, so I hefted it in my left.

  Moving as quietly as I could, I made my way to the wall next to the door. From there, I could see one of the men, talking with another I couldn’t see. I had no time to wait for them to leave. Hooking the power into the man I could see, I drained his strength from throughout his body, giving myself a much needed boost. Against one man, the drain was much more effective than when I had tried it against three.

  He collapsed to the ground like a sack of rancid potatoes.

  It didn’t take the other man long to figure out what had happened. Like an idiot, he rushed into the room, where I promptly smashed him in the face with all of my borrowed strength. Twitching, he fell to the ground. The effort was nearly too much for me. I tried to breathe, but ended up coughing, flecking my hand with blood. I dropped the stick on the unconscious man and lurched into the hallway.

  Trying my best to breathe slowly and not succumb to another fit of coughing, I worked my way down the dimly lit hallway, listening carefully for any movement. I had no idea where I was, so I just looked desperately for stairs leading up. Fortunately, this part of the temple was laid out as orderly as the rest seemed to be, and the stairs were at the end of the hall.

  I ascended with difficulty, wheezing by the time I reached the top. Feeling was beginning to return to my body, making me tingle all over. My breaths were getting shallower with every passing moment, and every time I exhaled, more blood sprayed in front of me.

  The stairs exited in the main temple room. As much as I had wanted it to be empty, it was not. The place was never particularly busy, but there were always small groups of Minders standing around talking quietly, or passing through to the rooms at the sides, or just sitting and staring at their representation of Rist that sat at the front of the room.

  But I was out of time. The pain shot through me, and I gritted my teeth against it. I couldn’t drain the pain away again, not without collapsing. I was so close. I f I could just make it to the front door. I could see it, closed as usual. Beyond that would be the entrance way where I could make it into the street and find a Healer. No more than a hundred feet away. So close.

  I didn’t have a choice. I had to try. In preparation, I joined my mind with the Madness. Another ragged breath, then I took off across the stone floor toward the door.

  I was noticed before I took three steps. My breath wasn’t coming at all now, but I pulled strength from the man closest to me. He fell to the ground, and I kept moving. Another man was trying to cut me off. I pulled his sight away from him to augment my own, and he crashed to the floor, blind.

  I was running on pure momentum now, my legs moving of their own accord. At any other time, I probably would have panicked about the growing pressure in my chest, or the fact that I was growing light-headed, or the blazing pain in my ribs. But I was focused on those doors.

  Only one woman was left who could stop me, racing me to the doors. I couldn’t drain all her strength. I didn’t have the focus. Instead, my enhanced vision told me the precise point when her left foot touched the ground, and I drained the strength out of her leg at that moment. She stumbled, but didn’t fall. Fortunately, she dropped far enough behind that I’d reach the doors before she did.

  I caught the door with my shoulder and it flew open, hitting the wall with a crash. The impact knocked me off balance, and I stumbled into the entrance way, the momentum of my run still carrying me forward. As I half fell, half ran through the door and tumbled down the stairs, I struggled to pull one last breath to keep from passing out. I failed, and consciousness left me before I hit the street.

  ***

  The first thing I did when I woke was take a deep breath. No pain. I let it out in a sigh and opened my eyes. A sheer white stone ceiling caused me a moment of panic before I realized that the Minders wouldn’t have left me alive, much less had me Healed.

  "Loral?" I recognized my mother’s voice and turned my head toward it. "How are you feeling?" She was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes as well.

  "I’m-" I coughed, hacking up a bit of half-congealed blood. "Disgusting," I finished. "But other than that, I’m fine. Where are we?"

  "Healer’s, obviously." My mother waved a hand dismissively. "Listen, we only have a few minutes. They know about you. I couldn’t hide it. You’re going to the Asylum."

  I felt a small pang of shock. I suppose it shouldn’t have been unexpected, but I hadn’t had the chance to process the possibility. I fell back on the pillow and closed my eyes.

  "Did you know, then?" I asked.

  "Of course I knew. You couldn’t hide your nervous twitch whenever you weren’t reading. Speaking of which -" She drew a thick book from a bag on the floor. "I brought this for you. I don’t know when they’ll want to bring you to the Asylum, and I thought you might need it."

  Grateful, I picked it up and read a few lines. Tension that I didn’t even now was there disappeared.

  "Thanks," I said. The Asylum. Well, at least I’d finally have access to their library. Couldn’t say I’d never considered going there myself just for that, but it had never seemed worth it. "Are you going to be all right?"

  "We’ll be fine. We might have to sell some of your books though."

  "Of course! Don’t worry about it. One less mouth to feed, right?" I smiled briefly, and my mother smiled back.

  "Right," she said. "Be careful in there, okay?" I sat up and she put her arms around me.

  "I will. You take care too."

  A moment later, the door opened and a man in a full suit of plate armor came through. "Awake, are you?" he said. "Well, come on then. Let’s get you up to the Asylum."

  "Now?"

  "Yes, now. Girl, you have no idea how close you came to being a Ratan. Another minute’s contact with the Madness and you may have never woken up. At least, not with your mind intact."

  My mother pulled away from the bed and allowed me to stand. I slipped out from between the covers - making a face at the plain white dress that covered me - and stood unsteadily.

  "What are you going to do about the Minders?" I asked. "They tried to kill me."

  "Yes," the Qui said, "and we'd like to thank you for that. We've been watching them for some time, but we never had any proof of what they were doing. No
w that we know – well, don't worry. They'll be taken care of." The chill in his voice made me shiver.

  I hugged my mother again and whispered goodbye before the Qui led me out the door to start my new life at the Asylum. In my hand I clutched the book my mother had brought: The Life of Jarem Nebriah.

  ***