Sands of Aggar: Amazons of Aggar Book 3 (20 page)
Read Sands of Aggar: Amazons of Aggar Book 3 Online
Authors: Chris Anne Wolfe
The lifestones in her wrists buzzed lightly, recognizing the deep veins of more lifestone threaded through the caverns. Her senses were heightened, her Blue Sight reading memory and emotion embedded in every stone. It was no wonder the changlings had evolved so quickly here. It would be impossible to live here for long without being somehow changed.
The shaman turned and beckoned to the Triad. “We’re almost there,” Rox translated. They reached the end of the walkway and the shaman paused, handing her torch to Rox. “She says she can’t take us any further. The core has poisoned her too much already. If she goes any further while it’s still active, she’ll die.”
Jacquin clasped the changling’s hands. “Thank you. We’ll take care of it from here.”
The changling bowed low, her eyes never leaving Adrian, Rox, and Jacquin. Rox blushed slightly. “She called us her saviors.”
Jacquin smiled gently and Adrian recognized the stillness in her, the peace in her eyes. She’d had a vision, probably about this journey. “We’re all doing our part to make a better world.”
They left the shaman behind and journeyed deeper into the caves. Jacquin stepped with surety and Adrian took her hand. “You’ve walked these steps before?”
Jacquin nodded gently, her eyes soft. “I know this place, yes. I know what we have to do.”
It didn’t take long to reach the core. Adrian immediately recognized it from her visions from the shaman. It pulsed red like a beacon through the middle of the massive stalactite, the air around it warm and heavy. The puzzle box in Adrian’s hand tugged gently, like attracting magnets calling to each other. Adrian coughed hard, the toxic taste of the core coating her mouth.
Jacquin reached back and took Adrian’s sword from her belt. In three swift chops the magical blade severed the core from the stone and the core leapt into the open box in Adrian’s hands. Adrian instantly closed it, the lines of the box sealing and the artifact glowing a pale, white light. The air in the room instantly changed, not yet humming like the rest of the caves, but the fallout of the core dissipating.
“What do we do with it now?” Serena questioned, her young voice asking what everyone was wondering.
Jacquin took the box and smiled. “We call the Blue Sights.”
Adrian did a double take in shock, her heart speeding in her chest. “What?”
Jacquin laughed. “Adrian, think about it. The Blue Sights are spread across Aggar, most hiding their gifts or tormented into suppressing it. People don’t understand the power of the Sight. The Blue Sights don’t even understand what they can do. They deserve to be safe and, more than anything, they deserve to be taught about bonding, about their abilities.”
“How would we do that?” Rox questioned.
“Long ago there was a place to train seers and Blue Sights alike, to keep magical peace in Aggar. These caves are a veritable wellspring of energy for the mages of Aggar.” Jacquin looked at Adrian and grinned wider. “I think it’s time we re-establish the Council’s Keep.”
Jacquin walked slowly through the hall of seers, her pupils sitting behind her on silken pillows, the incense and deep thrum of harps lulling them deeper into their visions. Jacquin leaned forward on the railing of her balcony and looked out over the new Council’s Keep, the stony honeycomb once so barren and unwelcoming now a bustling city thriving in the roots of the northern mountains.
Below her changlings and humans mingled, trading and studying. The changlings had proven to be masterful teachers for many of the seers and Blue Sights who were particularly drawn to their telepathic form of communication and connection with the earth. Already Jacquin could see the first changes among the students, the melding of human and changling in the psychic bonds of the lifestone caves. She didn’t doubt the merge would one day create something new and wonderful. The magical children of Aggar.
Since the rise of the Triad, the icy north of Aggar had settled into a rare time of peace. Blue Sights and seers had flooded the new town, enough to allow Jacquin, Adrian and Rox to open a school and sanctuary that eventually attracted mages of every field. With Rox to oversee changling and human relations and Adrian to protect and train the Blue Sights, the mages of Aggar had never been better prepared to establish an era of peace.
Jacquin smiled lightly, rubbing her swollen belly absent-mindedly. The child would be her third; her Amazon genetics growing children out of the power of her bond with both Rox and Adrian, the children truly born of all three women and loved by their mothers and older sister, Serena, herself a mighty warrior for the Keep. She’d discovered the power in the changlings’ archives, the records full of their dealings with the Amazons of Dey Sorormin.
Four tenmoons ago, Jacquin had finally made contact with the home planet of the Amazons. The sisters had been rejoiced to hear that the ancestors of their lost kin had survived. The first ships started appearing a tenmoon later.
The clash of swords and swell of music in the lower stories of the Keep echoed the presence of the first Amazon colony on Aggar in a millennia. The pound of dancing feet keeping rhythm to the music was a soothing bit of home, Khalisa’s classes in full swing as her sister, the representative from Oasis, visited.
Jacquin turned to look on her pupils and let out a contented sigh. She had never imagined a peace so profound, had never hoped she would be part of making such a change to the world. Even far from her beloved desert, nestled in the snowy tundras she swore she could never love, she had found home.
“Continue to breathe. Find your guides. You don’t have to rush. You don’t have to see anything. Just be.” Jacquin directed her pupils, her voice soft, growing deeper with age.
She could feel it in the heartbeats of her students, the song of the Keep, the smell of lifestones and incense and the taste of hope and magic in the air. The effects of the new Keep would expand and multiply, changing the landscape of Aggar forever. For a time, if even a short time, there would be true peace in Aggar.
Jacquin felt the child in her womb toss and kick beneath her arm and she laughed aloud at the sensation. Even a temporary peace was worth fighting for. Every change was new life and she couldn’t wait to see what the future would hold.
• black glass: a ceramic-glass compound of especially durable strength that hones to a sharp edge; commonly used in making knife blades
• blackpine: a valuable hardwood conifer with a black, barkless trunk and green-black needles; common to Maltar’s lands
• Blue Sight: the Sight or Blue Gift, a sixth sense genetically linked to blue eyes; an awareness of and ability to manipulate life auras and amarin; a person possessing the Blue Sight
• boko: a food native to the Ramains, a vegetable-meat paste wrapped in boiled leaves
• Changlings: sentient half-human, half-feline beasts native to the Northern Continent; a race of people once known for their amoral selling and reselling of information; miners of lifestones; long thought extinct.
• Circle, The: The elite soldiers of the Core, bands of bandits and warriors who do the Twins’ bidding
• Core, The: The nation risen from the ruins of the Clan’s settlement, once the Maltar’s realm.
• Desert Peoples: (the Southerners) loosely organized nomadic tribes, native to the Southern Continent; renowned for their distilled liquors and merchant ventures
• Eitteh: sentient feline, native to the Northern Continent (see winged-cats; men-cats)
• Fates, the: the male deities of evil mischief; mythical rulers of the dark underworld; primary figures refer to Malice and Ambition with numerous secondary figures such as War, Ire, Greed, and others
• Fates’ Cellar: home of the Fates; the mythical world of a punishing afterlife; place of evil souls; hell
• “Fates’ Jest”: a malicious turn of events attributed to deities, the Fates (an idiom)
• harmon: a soul-spirit; self-image projected by a Blue Sight to another
• lifestone: an opal-like energy stone often found amidst limestone deposits in the Northern Continent; originally used by the Council in lifebonding shadowmates. The only Blue Sights to survive the Purge with lifebonded shadows. Eventually all Blue Sights evolved to carry lifestones beneath their skin, which are awakened after physical, skin-to-skin contact or extremely emotional contact with their intended bondmate.
• mala´: a female slave or bond-servant of the Ramains whose duties are reserved for the household and bedroom
• men-cats: male eitteh; cat-like savages of impaired intelligence; isolated inhabitants of mountain ranges on the Northern Continent
• midnight moon: the second of the Twin Moons to rise on any given night
• Min: a generic title for women in the Ramains; conceptually similar to “ma’am”
• monarc: a standard division of four ten-days; conceptually equivalent to ‘a month’
• Mother, the: Goddess; omnipotent, nurturing Female Deity; Birthmother of the Universe
• Purge, The: The last attack on Aggar by Terran forces that culminated in the use of biochemical warfare that massacred nearly every Blue Sight. The battle also destroyed the Council’s Keep and Valley Bay, scattered the seers and Amazons.
• sandwolf: sentient canine, originally native to the Southern Continent, which instinctively imprints at birth to one or more sentient others to provide an emotional, empathic bond in developing protective behaviors and communication skills
• Seers: originally those gifted with the Blue Sight who are bound to Aggar’s lifecycles and no longer capable of individual thoughts or actions; directed by the Council of Ten, crafters of Aggar’s landscapes; mystics. Currently the term is used to denote one who sees visions and can predict the future.
• silverwood: (silverpine) a hardwood conifer with smooth, silver-green bark and grey-green needles; common to the Ramains foothills and mountain regions
• single moon: synonymous with monarc; the close of each monarc is marked by a night in which only one of the Twin Moons is visible — this night is referred to as “the single moon”
• Ramains: a liberal monarchy uniting most of the Northern Continent.
• Tad: generic title for men in the Ramains; conceptually similar to “sir”
• tenmoon season: (a season or a tenmoon) a standard division of monarcs; roughly equivalent to two Terran years; name arises from the ten single-moon nights experienced within the planet’s completion of one orbit around its sun
• Twin Moons: the two planetoids orbiting Aggar’s globe; associated with the Mother’s watchful care
• Twins: The tyrannical, magical rulers of the Core
• Valley Bay: the ancient settlement of the Sisterhood; located near the White Isles, isolated from the Northern Continent by the Firecaps; governed by the Ring of Valley Bay and bound to the home world through the Blue Sighted gifts of the Ring’s Binder. This settlement was destroyed and the Amazons scattered after the Purge.
• waterferret: amphibious ferret with both scales and fur; often used to aide fisherman and common along coastal towns; very intelligent, but often sneaky and prone to theft
• winged-cats: female eitteh; highly intelligent, cat-like flyers; advocates of Ramains’ rule, the Council, and Valley Bay cultures
• Founding, the: the original planetary colonization of
Dey Sorormin
under the Galactic Terran Empire; settlement of the home world
• Helen: red star of
Dey Sorormin’s
home solar system; firstborn of the Founding on the home world, leader of n’Sappho during early negotiations to retain independence (see Founding, the)
• Houses of
Dey Sorormin
: surnames of Sisters, designating family and/or skills; six of Seven Houses recall ancient goddesses of Terran lore (n’Athena: guardians(Greek), n’Awehai: crafters (Iroquois), n’Hina: agricultural providers (Polynesian), n’Huitaca: artists (Chibcha), n’Minona historians/teachers (Dahomey), n’Shea: healers (Irish); First House of
Dey Sorormin
(n’Sappho: legislative leaders) recalls a Terran stateswoman of Greece
•
Sak
: intelligence; cleverness
•
shea
: a healer of the House n’Shea; a witch, frequently one closely bound to Nature; a mistress of love potions; possessor of the evil eye;
•
Sor
: woman
•
Soroe
: friend, dear companion
•
Soroi
: loved one; lover; beloved
•
Sorormin, Dey
: proper name of The Sisterhood; colonizers of Aggar’s Valley Bay; an off-worlder culture of women (see Helen)
• “
Z’ki Sak, Diana!
”: ‘by your wits, goddess!’ (an idiom); expression of regret or disbelief
