On the Meldon Plain (The Fourline Trilogy Book 2) (11 page)

“Neas!” she called out. The boy popped out from his hiding place. “Get them moving. Now!” Nat gestured to the children. Neas nodded, then waved his arms wildly in the air and yelled at the other children. They dropped the basins and ran toward him. A few stood frozen in place, looking at the pool. The water churned with flashes of blue light. Nat turned her attention back to the narrow walkway, hoping Neas would convince the rest of the children to follow him out.

“In here,” Nat directed. Her orb disappeared into a slit in the rock a few paces in front of them. She took a deep breath and stepped through the opening.

The orb emitted a dim light, and it took a moment for Nat to see the dead Nala. The rigid corpse was draped over a rocky bed cut into a wall of the tomb. The pulling sensation in her shoulder intensified until it felt like sharp claws were digging into her flesh, tugging her toward the creature she thought she’d killed months ago.

Nat heard coughing behind her. Annin bent over and vomited from the stench. Soris lurched past Nat toward the Nala, his eyes completely glazed over. She reached out to stop him, but he wrestled free of her grip, dropping to his knee before the dead creature. His movements were stilted, as if he were a puppet. He dipped his fingers into a basin lying on the floor and brought them to the rubbery lips of the corpse. Drops of water fell from his fingers and trickled down its chin. He bent to repeat the movement, but Nat wrapped her arms around his torso and pulled him to the side. Her orb spun frantically above them, sending pieces of stone showering onto her head when it struck the ceiling.

“Finish it, Natalie!” Annin called out, struggling to hold herself up against the wall. Nat’s arms felt like lead, and Soris broke free. The room grew dim and her orb flickered. Water spilled again from Soris’ hands, falling haphazardly over the seeping tissue of the Nala’s wound. “Natalie, sever it!” Annin cried.

Her sword felt so heavy. Its tip scraped across the floor as she lifted it in what felt like slow motion before dropping the blade across the creature’s neck. The pain in her shoulder exploded when the blade sliced through the Nala’s neck. She fell to her knees next to the beheaded corpse and sucked in a deep breath.

The pain subsided, and she sighed in relief. She swallowed and leaned against the damp wall to steady herself. Soris’ eyes flickered toward her. His glazed look faded into a look of confusion when he glanced at his damp hands.

A tremor ran through the wall. The ground quaked and a dark crack opened near the Nala’s head.

“Annin, Soris, out—now!” Nat yelled in fright as the rock split apart. She grabbed her sword and pushed them to the opening. When Nat exited the tomb, the shaking intensified. Tremors shook the cavern, sending showers of dust and rock into the pool in the center of the amphitheater.

“Help me! I can’t carry him,” Annin called out. She knelt next to Soris at the edge of the path. Nat lifted his arm and draped it over Annin’s shoulder while Soris muttered a string of incoherent words. The women carried him to the base of the walkway.

“I’ll find Neas and the other children. You get Soris out,” Nat ordered.

Annin hesitated, clinging to Soris’ arm.

“Go!” Nat yelled.

Soris lifted his head and pushed his feet erratically against the stone floor. Annin dragged him to the path leading to the entrance. They disappeared behind the rocks, and Nat turned her attention to the quaking amphitheater. She scanned the deserted space as rocks tumbled from the ceiling high above her head. A few small faces peered over the rocks that encircled the open room.

Nat sprinted toward the children hiding among the rocks. The floor shook and water splashed out of the pool. She yelled and motioned wildly for the children to come toward her. Half a dozen ragged duozi jumped from their hiding spots. They ran in her direction, giving the pool a wide berth. Nat jogged behind them and noticed Neas standing near the edge of the amphitheater.

“Annin told me to wait for you!” he yelled over the rumbling. A stalactite crashed to the ground behind him, shattering into hundreds of pieces.

“Lead them out,” Nat ordered. Neas grabbed a child’s hand and pulled her up the path. The others ran behind like lemmings. Nat sent her orb out into the cavern. It flashed around the space, looking for any more children. The ball narrowly missed a falling spray of rock and returned to her hands.

She was swaying on the quaking ground and had rotated toward the path when a flash caught her attention. The water in the pool bubbled. A white curve breached the surface, and the room filled with a deafening hiss. Two blue Nala shot out of the pool and scrambled toward her on all fours. Their mouths hung open and venom trailed behind them. Nat steadied her sword.

A Nala landed with a thud in front of her. She twisted her hips and kicked the creature, sending it sprawling into the center of the amphitheater, where it hit its head on the floor. Nat edged away as the second Nala approached. The quaking dislodged a huge rock from the ceiling that crashed onto it, knocking it out. Nat exhaled in relief and turned to follow the children, but a sudden gushing noise caused her to whip around.

A stream of water spurted from the pool, and a long white arm slammed against the rocky rim. An enormous gleaming white head with silvery-black eyes broke the surface and locked its hateful glare on Nat. She slashed her sword in the air in warning. Her sleeve rolled down, revealing her markings.

The monstrous creature froze. Its eyes locked onto Nat’s markings. Nat watched in horrified fascination as a look of disbelief seemed to cross the creature’s face. “Noooo Sisssssssster,” it hissed then slithered out of the pool to reveal a huge white body.

Fear gripped Nat and she fled up the path. The creature’s hissing echoed around her as she sprinted up the passage, dodging falling rocks. She spotted the light coming in through the cavern entrance and ran even faster. She burst out of the darkness into the blinding daylight and nearly toppled off the ledge into the sea.

Cries sounded above her. Children scrambled up the stairs onto the narrow ledge. Nat jumped onto the steps and lifted the remaining children to the rocky shelf above, yelling for them to move quickly. The cliff face trembled. Nat grabbed the blue arm of a girl stumbling toward the edge. She glanced over her shoulder and watched rocks pour down below them, filling the entrance of the cavern.

“Run!” she cried, knowing rocks would not stop the nightmarish monster she’d seen inside. The dozens of children scurried up the path toward the forest, little hands helping each other. Nat glimpsed Annin’s wild hair at the front of the group and looked frantically for Soris.

“Nat!” Soris stood at the tree line, beckoning to her. Relief pushed away her fear and she ran toward him. He grabbed her hand, and they crashed through the woods behind the children.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nat shivered against the chill of the night. She surveyed the field covered with meldon flowers and the little bodies curled against each other for warmth. She wrapped her cloak around the girl standing in front of her. Hair as black as a starless night hung in dirty clumps around her soft face. Nat took her to be older than the other children. The girl had been in the cavern so long, she barely remembered that her name was Tally and had forgotten her age.

“The children disappeared when the sleeping ones woke?” Nat asked. She hated to ask, but she needed to understand what the Nala were doing to the duozi.

Tally nodded and clutched the cloak to her chest. “It happened to my brother,” she said. “After his sleeping Nala woke, I didn’t see him again.”

“What do you mean by his Nala?” she asked gently.

“The one he washed, the one he took care of.” Her voice trembled. “My brother was my only family after the guards killed our parents. Now they’re all gone.”

Nat wrapped her arms around the girl’s reedlike body and pressed her close until she could feel the child’s heart thudding against hers. “We’re taking you someplace safe now.” It was all she could think to say, all she had to offer the child who’d been through so much. She settled Tally on the meadow next to Neas and a flaxen-haired girl with a malformed arm. She arranged her cloak over them and choked back her fury as she took in their blue skin and misshapen eyes. “Sleep.” She leaned down and brushed a lock of black hair from Tally’s face. The memory of the other child, motionless in the Nala’s cavern, flooded her mind. She closed her eyes, feeling only the warmth of Tally’s face under her fingertips, a reminder of all the beating hearts sleeping safely in the field.

Clouds passed across the moon. Nat looked over the slumbering children.
Normal children would never have survived that run through the forest,
she thought. But these were not normal children. Someone, something, had taken everything normal in their lives away.

“How are you holding up?” The moon reappeared and its light reflected off Annin’s pale skin and faceted eye.

Nat laughed, unable to help herself. “That’s the first time you’ve ever asked me that,” she said, thinking of all their encounters. “Maybe I need to raid a Nala den more often.”

Annin’s stony expression vanished and she smiled.

“Annin.” Nat’s eyes settled again on the children. “Do you have any idea how all these children ended up in the cavern?”

She nodded and looked out over the field, too. “I spoke with a few of them. Some the Nala took after their transformation, and some were taken to the Nala by Mudug’s guards even before they were bitten. Just like Neas said.”

The deep, burning sense of outrage flared within Nat. “Why would Mudug do that?”

“I have ideas, and none of them are pleasant.”

“What do you think happened to the dead girl we found in the tomb?” Nat asked, wanting to hear Annin’s thoughts before she expressed her own.

Annin’s eyes narrowed. “Based on what we saw, the Nala are using them somehow to regenerate, I think.”

Nat nodded in agreement, shuddering at the thought. The two women continued to look out over the sleeping children with somber expressions. Nat’s orb swooped into her hands as Annin touched Nat’s shoulder.

“You’re different, Natalie Barns. I never met anyone from your world who would’ve, or could’ve, done what you did today, even if your motivation was to save your own skin.” She stooped to pick a meldon flower. The petals twirled as she rolled the stem between her fingers. “You risked your life to save duozi, not to mention Soris. I guess you really are a Warrior Sister.”

Nat fiddled with her orb, uncertain how to respond to the compliment. The sphere circled her hand and then shot into the middle of the field. Nat followed its path and saw Soris pacing back and forth on the other side of the circle of children. She watched with interest when he knelt down to speak to a sleepy child.

“What happened to him in the cavern?” she asked. Soris moved from child to child reassuringly, touching and talking to each one.

Annin frowned. She fixed her eyes on Soris. “There was a presence in that cavern. It’s hard to describe, but it felt like hundreds of Nala bundled into one source, pushing into my brain. I had difficulty focusing, and I don’t even have remnant. Soris didn’t stand a chance.”

“But I had remnant, and I didn’t lose control like he did.” A thought tickled the back of her mind.

“Your senses are different when you’re a duozi, Natalie.”

“It’s good he has you to understand him.” Nat picked at her fingernail. “I’ll take watch. I’m not tired,” she said abruptly. Her orb returned, skimmed up her leg, and hovered near her old wound. She rolled her shoulder, feeling only the memory of an ache now.

“You’re exhausted—and a lousy liar.” Annin’s empathy vanished, and her familiar caustic tone emerged. “But I do need to reach Estos again to let him know what’s happened and what we found. He planned to send someone to meet us at the Healing House. Probably wouldn’t hurt to let them know there may be some angry Nala in the vicinity. We can rouse the children once I’ve gotten through to him and whatever lackey he’s sent for us.” Her voice softened as she glanced down at the children near them. “They need the Sisters.”

“They do,” Nat agreed. The flowers bent under her soft boots as she stepped back.

“Natalie,” Annin called softly, “Soris needs something, too. And it’s not me.” She turned away, leaving Nat to wonder what she meant.

Nat knelt with one knee up and the other pressed into the ground. Her legs trembled with exhaustion, but the discomfort kept her awake.

Telling Annin she wasn’t tired had been a lie. She was completely drained. The dark field blurred in front of her eyes. “Stay awake,” she mumbled to herself. Her head drooped again. Images of Soris’ hands flashed through her mind. His hands cupped over the Nala, his hand reaching for hers when they fled into the forest, his hand pulling her through the crowd on execution day in Rustbrook.

She stood abruptly, needing to move to stay awake. She could sleep when she returned home.
Home.
The idea that she could return home didn’t provide the comfort she expected. Her mind flipped through images of the cavern and the children shuffling around like drones. She stifled a yawn and adjusted a sleeping girl’s torn sleeve so it covered her bare blue arm. When she looked at her profile, she saw the face of the dead girl.

Pull yourself together,
she thought. She took a deep breath. The cool night air flooded her lungs. But the dead girl’s face and her deathly wound stuck in her mind. She thought of Tally’s description of how her brother had vanished after his sleeping Nala woke and Annin’s belief the Nala were using the duozi to regenerate.
Could the Nala be transferring their wounds, their deaths, to the children?
Nat wondered. Her skin crawled at the thought.
And Mudug’s men are bringing duozi and unbitten children to the Nala.

“I owe you an apology.”

Nat swung her crossbow around. The tip of the arrow was inches from Soris’ face. His hands shot into the air and he jumped back.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that. I could have . . .” She dropped her bow abruptly and it smacked against her thigh.

“I wasn’t sneaking,” he said defensively. Her orb arced over his head, casting a ray of light onto his blond hair. He dropped his chin.

“I . . . ,” they both said at the same time.

“You first.” Soris lifted his head and his eyes met hers. She couldn’t read his expression but sensed his weariness.

“You, um . . . You kind of lost it in the tomb. Are you okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know what happened. My mind went all foggy. I don’t remember what I did, what you did.” He met her gaze. “But I know you finished the Nala. My head’s clearer now than it’s been since . . .”

“Since it bit you.” She completed his thought. “I feel different, too. My shoulder doesn’t hurt. What about your bite?”

“It never ached much, but I always had a feeling, like something pulling on me. That’s gone.” He tilted his head to the side, and the light of her orb fell over his face. “I guess Sister Ethet was right about me being a liability. I couldn’t have done what you did. Thank you.” Soris awkwardly extended his hand. The fused pointed fingers trembled slightly. She grasped his hand immediately.

“You were not a liability. You got Neas to trust us. He wasn’t about to listen to me until you told him to.” She gestured to the field of children. “Do you think any of them would’ve followed us without Neas urging them on?”

“And what about you?” Soris squeezed her hand. “I wasn’t the one rounding up the ones too frightened to leave. You risked your life to get them out of there.”

“Bastle herders and invaders of Nala dens. We make a decent team,” she said. He laughed, and her heart warmed at the sound. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh since I’ve been back.”

“Not much to laugh about these days, Natalie.” He let go of her hand and held up his fused fingers, reminding her of her earlier gaffe.

“Soris, when I saw you for the first time at the Healing House, the way I acted wasn’t because of the way you looked. Well, I guess it was.” She sighed and averted her eyes. “Seeing you for the first time again made me realize how much you were paying for my mistakes and dishonesty. You had no idea I wasn’t a Sister on our quest together, and I should have trusted you enough to tell you. I didn’t, and you got bitten. I can’t make any of that go away for you.” She focused on the flowers clustered near her feet, afraid to look at him but relieved she finally had a chance to say what she’d needed to say to him for months. “I am so sorry.”

“Apology accepted, Natalie, but I never needed an apology. What’s done is done, and you’ve risked yourself more than you should have for me and others. Now it’s time for you to go home and be safe.”

“I guess,” she said, feeling unsettled that he’d forgiven her and told her to go home in the same breath.

Something poked her in the back. She looked over her shoulder to find Neas with her cloak draped over his arm. “Annin says it’s time to go,” he said. He yawned and scratched his head. Around them, small bodies rose, stretched, and stood in the field. Annin ran through the circle, tapping children on the shoulder and rousing them into motion.

Nat accepted her cloak from Neas. When she turned, Soris was walking around the circle, too, gently shaking the remaining sleeping children. He lifted a little boy no older than four onto his back and held the hand of another child. He murmured comforting words. She fastened the clasp on her cloak, wondering why, after finally apologizing to Soris, she felt so empty.

The last of the children clambered down the stairs of the inner stone ring surrounding the Healing House. Sister Ethes briefly examined each child before shrilly triaging them and sending them off with a Sister or older duozi into one of the many infirmary rooms. Nat steered Neas toward Ethes, her hand firmly on his shoulder.

“Open your mouth,” Ethes ordered. Her white hair was drawn tightly back from her face, giving her little black eyes a menacing appearance.

“It’s okay,” Nat whispered to Neas when she felt him flinch away from Ethes.

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course it’s okay. Strapping boy like you afraid of a little mouse like me, ha!” As she said those words, Ethes checked his pulse and reflexes and removed a ball of wax from his ear.

“Sister Tamara!” Ethes called out. A stout woman with bluish-black hair limped toward them. The limp reminded Nat of Benedict, and she placed a protective hand on Neas’ shoulder. But Sister Tamara beamed at him. He gave her a goofy smile in return.

“Aren’t you a dear?” Tamara placed a gentle hand on his other shoulder, and Nat relaxed.

“Focus on facilitating healing, not friendliness.” Ethes directed her sharp stare at Sister Tamara.

“But Head Sister, he is—what’s your name, dear?” She leaned toward him as if expecting the answer to be a great secret.

“Neas.” His smile grew wider, exposing an upper row of crooked teeth.

“Neas,” she said with a lightness in her voice. “You remind me of my younger brother when he was your age.” She clasped her hand over his.