Affinity for War

by Frank Morin

  So for the moment, Connor tapped soapstone. He allowed his water senses to slip through his chair and explore the rest of the open space above the deck, then the craft that supported their chairs. He tried to gain a sense of how Kilian was keeping it intact and rushing upriver so easily.

  Verena noticed him glancing down at their craft and said, "What are you looking at?"

  "Just studying this water boat."

  She grimaced. "The right word's important, and that's not it."

  Hamish broke off from a discussion with Erich about how to rate the best sweetbreads. "Let's call it the swim-dunk!"

  Erich grunted, "Better call it Swim-no-swim."

  "We could just call it the underwater Slide," Jean suggested.

  "That's still not right, but it'll do for now," Verena said.

  They'd have plenty of time to think about it. Travel by river underwater was a brilliant idea. Flying was faster, although not everyone could fit on the Swift. Some of Dougal's forces had learned to start scanning the skies for windriders, and only a Spitter might notice their fast, clandestine progress underwater. With Kilian's shielding ability, Connor doubted anyone would sense them.

  "I want to try running the Slide," Connor announced.

  "Do you feel you're ready?" Kilian asked.

  "Let's find out."

  "Very well. Give it a try."

  Captain Ilse, who did not look comfortable so long separated from the earth, gave him a concerned look. "I don't feel like getting wet, boy."

  Connor gave her a confident smile. "Trust me."

  "I don't really feel like getting wet either," Verena said uneasily.

  "I know water," Connor assured her.

  Eager to do something besides counting the seconds until they stopped for the night, he again tapped soapstone. His senses connected with the water, expanded across the length of the Slide's hull, then into the river.

  For a second he felt one with the waters, could feel the power of the Wick as hundreds of thousands of gallons of water pushed ever downward toward Merkland and the Macantact. That power, that unrelenting strength of the river was his strength. The fish darting through the waters tickled at his mind, and he could have pointed to every single one of them.

  He gasped and Verena started, her expression worried as she glanced at the roof of the bubble. "What?"

  "Some of the fish in here are so much bigger than anything we've ever caught."

  Hamish said, "Like that one that got away from me a couple summers back."

  Jean rolled her eyes. "The big fish always get away, Hamish."

  Connor focused on their craft. It slid through the water with remarkable ease. He sensed Kilian's presence in the waters, although only at the very front of the bubble and along the hull. That was a little strange, but Connor was too excited to prove himself to the mighty Dawnus and to his friends to worry about it.

  So he thrust fingers of thought around the Slide and seized control of it. Kilian let him take it, his influence fading, as if through an invisible sieve.

  Connor grinned, and for a second he was master of the Slide.

  Then the roof collapsed.

  Chapter Four

  "Experience ever graces the world with the dawn of a new day, and one with eyes to see may appreciate each precious gift."

  ~Sentry class teacher

  Connor's moment of victory didn't exactly get rained on. More like swept away in a flood.

  As the roof collapsed and water poured into the bubble, Verena managed to punch him in the ribs before getting tumbled off her seat. It only took a few seconds to seize the waters, form a new bubble over the hull of the Slide, drag his friends back to their seats, and drain the water out of everyone's clothing. Ilse still glared at him like she was seriously contemplating violence.

  Connor glanced at Kilian, who had allowed him to fix the mess. Kilian only raised a single eyebrow in question, but Connor couldn't explain what had gone wrong, and that only embarrassed him further.

  Since his ascension, his control with soapstone had improved dramatically. When he had taken control of the water, the hull of the Slide had responded immediately to his will, but he didn't understand why the roof of the bubble had slipped through his watery fingers.

  "That could have gone better," Hamish laughed. He fished a sweetbread out of a pouch at his belt and looked delighted that it wasn't soggy. "You sure you don't want me to help?"

  Verena laughed, and the sound was like music to Connor's ears. "Oh, Hamish, you'd drown us if you activated soapstone in the middle of this river."

  "I'm not that bad," he grumbled, then took an enormous bite.

  Jean patted his hand. "It was nice of you to offer, Hamish, but I think Connor has it under control." She hesitated. "You do, don't you?"

  Connor glanced again at Kilian. "What did I miss?"

  "What does it feel like you missed?" Little waves began crashing inside of Kilian's eyes, the foaming movement changing them from deep blue to frothy white, then back again.

  Connor thought about it as he fine-tuned the angles of their chairs. Their speed had slowed to a crawl, so he increased it again, driving the Slide through the Lower Wick. It seemed a lot more difficult than when Kilian had done it, and the protective bubble over the deck began to vibrate as they accelerated. Verena and Ilse weren't the only two who cast uneasy glances around.

  "You're going to exhaust yourself trying to move all this water all the miles up to Alasdair," Kilian said.

  "If I don't move it, we'll never get there."

  Kilian shook his head. "You've got great talent with water, but you don't really understand it yet. We're moving upriver. The idea isn't to hold the Slide and this bubble of air like a ball underwater. All you need to do is push the hull and split the waters in front of us. The rest takes care of itself."

  "How? The ceiling will collapse again if I let it go."

  "Don't!" Ilse growled, and Verena covered her nose.

  "Watch me again and pay more attention," Kilian directed.

  His will slipped into the waters and smoothly plucked them away from Connor. As much as Connor had progressed with soapstone, he still had a lot to learn. The Slide accelerated upriver, the vibrations in the roof bubble faded away, and the ride smoothed out.

  Connor let his water senses flow around the Slide and the bubble, studying what Kilian was doing. It took a moment before he understood. "That's amazing."

  "Then you do it," Kilian said.

  "Here we go," Hamish said, pulling on his helmet.

  Verena lifted a piece of quartzite, probably planning to create a shield of air to protect herself when the roof collapsed. Jean scuttled to her side to share it. Dietmar looked like he was considering fracking and making a break for the surface. Erich just took a deep breath and held it.

  Their lack of confidence might be justified, but it wasn't helpful. Connor was tempted to drench them. As fun as that might be, it would only reinforce their doubt. So he took control of the Slide again, and this time the ceiling only rippled a little.

  He was tempted to open a drip over Ilse's head, but she'd probably order Erich and Anika to throw him right out of the river. Verena gave him an encouraging smile, but did not put away her quartzite.

  This time Connor gripped the hull of the slide and imagined an invisible knife rising from the bow. The blade split the waters of the Wick, allowing their craft to slide through the opening it tore through the moving waters. He extended the blade at an angle above the prow of the Slide and experimented with its width until the waters split far enough for them to slip through the gap before closing again behind.

  Kilian was right. He didn't have to control the ceiling. There wasn't a ceiling at all, just a temporary gap in the waters that they slipped through. He grinned as the process became smooth and stable, and took far less effort to maintain.

  Once he settle the Slide into a constant pace, keeping it in the center of the river, ten feet below the surface, his thoughts returne
d to their upcoming visit home. His excitement grew, and he was tempted to accelerate.

  It would feel so good to talk things over with his parents, but he worried they wouldn't be ready to accept the danger that faced them. For generations, nothing ever changed in Alasdair, but he feared a storm was coming that threatened to sweep away everyone he loved.

  He had no idea how to stop it.

  Chapter Five

  "The moth who draws close usually comprehends the danger of the flame only in the act of being consumed."

  ~Evander

  As much as Connor wanted to push through the night to reach Alasdair, bursting into the sleeping town in company with Grandurians might not be the best way to kick off his homecoming. So when he reached a section of river that he recognized shortly before nightfall, he drew the Slide to the shore.

  "How close are we?" Hamish asked as Connor pulled the craft to the surface and slid their chairs off the deck and over to the bank.

  "Maybe an hour at the speed we've been going."

  Ilse seemed thrilled to get off the water, and she immediately raised a Sapper tower and looked determined to remain there for the evening. Steep, forested hills rose on both sides of the river, and a well-marked trail cut through the trees not far from the bank, heading north toward Alasdair.

  Verena said, "Hey, I know this place. Connor, this is where we first met."

  "Yeah, that night you kidnapped me."

  Verena slipped an arm around his waist, snuggling under the crook of his arm the way he loved. "So many things would've been different if we hadn't stopped that barge."

  "Praise Tallan's memory you did," Kilian said.

  Connor shuddered to consider how different his life might have been, but for that meeting. "I would have pledged service to High Lord Dougal."

  Verena grimaced. "Shona would have owned you."

  No doubt he would have eagerly accepted Shona's manipulations if not for the truths he'd learned during that conflict around Alasdair. After dinner, as he rolled into his blanket near the fire, Connor thought about that. The last few months had been very difficult. He and his friends had risked their lives multiple times. And yet, the alternative would've been so much worse.

  He slept deeply, and it seemed only a moment later when he felt roughly shaken awake. He groaned, "Let me sleep another minute."

  The shaking intensified, and he realized with a start that the entire ground was moving.

  Connor sat bolt upright and glanced around. In the soft light of early morning, the ground was bucking and rolling like a wave on the Wick. The air vibrated with a low-pitched groaning that emanated from the ground. Trees began to shake, shedding leaves like rain, and the air smelled sharp, as if a bag of spices had been opened nearby.

  "What's going on?" Verena cried. She tried to stand, but fell back to her knees.

  Hamish awoke with a start, shouting, "Two donuts aren't enough!" Then he looked around in confusion. "Aw, that was such a good dream."

  "Earthquake," Jean said, still lying prone, her voice completely calm. "This one feels stronger than the others."

  "I'm not waiting for a tree to fall on me." Verena scurried on hands and knees to the Swift. She threw herself into the pilot seat, and the quartzite thrusters roared to life. The nimble little craft shot into the air, then banked around to hover about twenty feet above them.

  "You don't care if I get crushed by a tree?" Connor called.

  "As if a tree could hurt you," Verena shouted above the groaning of the earth and the snapping of branches in the forest. "You've probably already absorbed granite."

  "Uh. Of course."

  That was a good idea. Connor shoved a finger into the pouch of granite powder at his belt. He didn't have a large supply, so he only absorbed a little through his skin. The itch of granite flowed up his arm, like a dozen insects crawling under the skin.

  He ignored the urge to scratch. He had established affinity to granite as a child, without even knowing what that meant, and the curse was as familiar to him as breathing.

  Ilse's ten-foot earthen tower slid closer to the group. The shaking of the ground subsided directly under them as she exerted her earth affinity and created a small oasis of calm. Earth vibrated all around, rattling pebbles and sticks.

  Ilse said, "Jean is right. The heart of the quake lies somewhere near Alasdair."

  Connor snatched a piece of slate from his belt pouch, pressed his hand to the ground, and envisioned the gateway to earth in his mind. He liked to imagine it as a shallow, sunken pit, lined with slate stones, engraved with silver script of some of his favorite obscure Sentry speak.

  The doorway opened to his mind and his earth senses radiated into the ground. The earth tasted like a sore tooth, and the groaning that shook the clearing was bubbling up from the depths. He couldn't pinpoint the source like Ilse had, though.

  The earthquake subsided a few seconds later, and Connor withdrew his connection, pondering what he had felt. The earth was not alive like people, but why then did it feel like it was in agony? What was the source of his earth powers? How did slate link him to that vast strength? He hadn't wondered about that before, but the earthquake had shaken the ground to its roots, and for the first time he realized the top layer was perhaps more like a thick skin over the planet.

  He wasn't sure he wanted to know what was underneath.

  "We need to get to Alasdair," Hamish said. He jumped up and began to pull on boots, hopping from one foot to the other and nearly tripping himself. "What if people are hurt?"

  "You said there were earthquakes before, right?" Connor asked as the rest of the group quickly packed their meager supplies.

  Jean said, "They started shortly after you left, but they weren't this severe."

  Ilse said, "We're several miles south of Alasdair, so the shaking was most likely worse for them."

  "I hope Gran is okay," Jean said with a worried frown. Then she moved to help Hamish with the buckles of his flying suit.

  Verena settled the Swift to the ground nearby as gently as a hummingbird landing on a flower.

  Hamish took Jean's hand. "Let's go. We can get to Alasdair faster by air."

  Of course he was right. They crammed their blankets into the supply box at the back of the Swift, then Connor climbed aboard.

  "Ready?" Verena asked, pulling on her helmet and snapping down the visor.

  "Ready."

  The thrusters came to life again, creating a rushing gale of fresh wind that smelled like the high country, and the Swift eased off the ground.

  "We'll meet you in the village," Kilian said. "Perhaps it's good for you to arrive first and warn them we mean no harm."

  Connor waved, and Verena rose above the trees. Hamish and Jean were already soaring out over the river. Connor crouched on the supply box, one hand resting on Verena's shoulder. He loved flying with her. Verena seemed more bird than human in the air, and they both smiled as they rose over a hundred feet into the cool morning sky and soared upriver.

  Connor glanced back as they banked around the first turn. The elegant hull of the Slide had already formed, and it was gliding on the surface of the river, leaving no trace of its passing.

  Verena accelerated to catch up with Hamish. At their pace, they'd reach the town before the cutters headed for the quarry. Most of the townsfolk would have already been awake before the earthquake struck, although Connor doubted Lord Gavin and his shrewish wife, Lady Isobel, would bother to rise and check on their people.

  His excitement grew and overshadowed his worry, but then they rounded a long, gentle bend and the forest simply ended. Trees, broken and stripped of branches, lay in enormous piles flanking the river. Some of the piles of tangled wood reared over fifty feet and stretched for hundreds more, rivaling the hills that hemmed them in along the banks. The mass of bleached, dead trees seemed to watch in silent accusation as Connor passed.

  He had killed them. The flood he'd unleashed from Loch Sholto when he broke the mountain had thundere
d down the valley along the river. The back wave had swept away most of the buildings in Alasdair. Luckily, everyone had already fled. He'd been driven to make the desperate choice, but seeing the destruction again was a stark reminder that consequences were often ugly when Petralists clashed.

  As they continued farther north, the piles of timber began to shrink. It looked like villagers were harvesting the wood.

  Then they soared over a tight bend in the river, and the steep hills on their left fell away, revealing the fertile expanse of the wide Alasdair valley. Connor's mood lifted with the sight of the green, well-tended fields stretching away toward the western mountains.

  He wedged a tiny piece of quartzite into his cheek and sucked on it. The liquid warmth of quartzite pooled in the center of his head, and he applied some of it to his eyes. They transformed and the beautiful Alasdair valley glittered in his enhanced vision.

  Wherever he looked, his gaze swooped closer, picking out fantastic details of objects over a mile distant, as if he was bending close over them. Colors intensified, and the air shone with hues not visible to unenhanced sight.

  Memories flooded in with each sight. He and Hamish had explored every inch of this area as kids. Looking out over the valley, he felt a deep contentment. He was home.

  His memory did not match the scarred landscape to their right, though. In the past, a long slope paralleling the river had led up to Lord Gavin's plateau, which lorded over the last half mile of river before the final turn revealed Loch Wich and the town itself.

  Now the slope was stripped away, and all that remained of the plateau was steep-sided rock, over a hundred feet high, scraped raw by the floods. It clung to the bank of the river like an open wound at the base of Alasdair Mountain. Nothing green grew on the scarred, rocky hillside, and Connor was not surprised that Lord Gavin had not tried to rebuild there.

  From a height of a couple hundred feet above the river, Connor enjoyed a clear view of the barren top of that rocky hill. He was surprised to note that all signs of Lord Gavin's manor were gone.

  That was weird. He saw no sign of the basements of the ruined manor house. An enormous hole should be there, or maybe a small pond if it had filled with water, but it was simply gone.