Skies (20 page)

Gavin opened the door and stepped into the room. The light from the main room streamed in, falling across Farah’s slumbering form on the bed furthest from the door. Shallee’s bed lay just inside the door and off to the right, a smaller rocking baby cradle lay next to it.

“Gavin?”

He jumped, eyes darting back to Farah’s bed. He’d thought she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open now, looking at him with mild curiosity. The confidence and surety he’d felt at his decision only moments before bled out of him in an instant beneath those deep blue eyes.

“Did you need something or did you just come to stare?” She had the blanket pulled up to her neck, but Gavin still felt himself flush.

“We need to talk, if that is alright with you,” Gavin said, sitting down on the edge of Shallee’s bed. He left the door partially cracked so as not to cast the room into total darkness.

“Alright.” Farah sat up, holding the blanket against her chest as she rose and then tugging it around her shoulders like a cloak. She was still a little bleary-eyed, but her expression was intent and serious. Gavin wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“What is it, Gavin?”

Gavin looked up and met those blue eyes again. He told her everything Tadeo and Samsin had told him, starting with Samsin being alive and leaving nothing out. He told her about his meetings with Brisson and his own fears and insecurities. He told her things he hadn’t meant to talk about. He knew he was rambling a little, but it felt so good to talk, to get it out, to have someone to confide in. Farah listened without comment, though she did nod in a few places. Gavin didn’t know if it was in agreement or simply to acknowledge that she was still listening.

Gavin finally trailed off, unsure of what else to say and not really knowing if he’d just made himself look like a fool.

“Well, you’re right,” Farah said. “We did need to talk. I agree with your decision about seeing the army for yourself. You’re meeting Tadeo at dawn, you said?”

Gavin nodded.

“Good. Now, if you could please leave, I’d like to at least get a little sleep before having to get up in a few hours. Talyshan hates this cold, but I can persuade him to understand if I give him enough time.”

“Talyshan?”

Farah rolled her eyes and blew out a long sigh. “You don’t think I’m going to let you go alone, do you? I’m coming with you.”

“You’re what?”

“Coming with you,” Farah repeated in a firm voice.

“Why? There’s no need for you to come along.”

Farah’s eyes flashed and her lips hardened into a thin line before she spoke. “Because,” she said, glaring at him, “in case you haven’t noticed, I happen to love you. Now go get some sleep or
you’ll
be the one who’s not needed tomorrow.”

With that, Farah leaned back onto the bed and rolled over onto her side, turning her back toward him.

Gavin stared at her for a long moment, stunned. She loved him? He knew they’d had some sort of a relationship before this and he cared for her, but . . . she loved him? He got to his feet, more confused now than when he’d entered, but for a completely different reason, and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

“The appropriate response when a girl says she loves you,” Shallee said softly, pulling Gavin out of his thoughts, “is to say you love her too.”

“What?” Gavin felt himself flush.

“Come now, Gavin, you can’t hide things from me. I’ve seen the way you look at her and how the two of you interact. You’re both young, independent, and stubborn, but you love Farah as sure as I loved my husband.”

“But . . .” Gavin worked his mouth but no sound came out.
Did
he love her? He didn’t really know, in all honesty. He had no experience with women. He knew he wanted her to be happy and being with her always seemed to help him be happy.

“Just answer me one question, little stormcloud,” Shallee said, a small smile on her face. “Why did you decide to talk to her instead of me?”

Why
had
he?

“When I thought about all the times I’d made difficult decisions, or even when I’d made mistakes since my grandmother had died, she was always there for me. I—” Gavin stopped, sudden realization and acceptance flooding through him. “I guess I do love her.”

“I suggest you find a different way to phrase it when you tell her. Leave out the ‘I guess.’”

***

Behind the door, Farah listened, ear pressed up against the wood. The sound of Gavin’s footsteps retreating into his room were a muffled thump through the door. She sucked in a deep breath and leaned back slightly, away from the door. She was furious with herself for losing her temper and telling him that she loved him. The fact that he didn’t know already was as much a part of her frustration as her own mistake had been. Her temper always got the better of her, especially around Gavin. He just made her so
frustrated
sometimes. But he loved her too.

She stepped back from the door, arms hugging her shoulders as she suppressed a shiver. Back under the warm embrace of her blankets, Farah scrubbed the back of her hand across her cheeks, wiping away tears. He loved her too.

He hadn’t said it to her, but he’d said it. That was something, at the very least, more than she’d had before. There were times when she’d felt like a foolish girl mooning after a passing fancy, something she’d promised herself as a young girl she would never do. But he loved her too. And he trusted her.

That thought brought back up everything Gavin had told her. Samsin, the army, Brisson. Each of those were connected, but presented their own challenges as well. The army was the biggest threat, even if Farah shuddered at the thought of Samsin still being alive. She hadn’t liked the brutality of his death, nor the bloodthirsty side of Brisson’s people she’d witnessed at the Storm Ward’s execution, but—for a moment at least—she’d seen it through their eyes. This was vindication and justice on a thousand years of slavery. What had happened was more symbolic than anything, a casting off of their former lives into a new world of freedoms never before experienced. It was like what she’d experienced when learning the mystic powers.

But that army.

The army itself wasn’t the real threat. The people finding out about the army wasn’t the real threat. No, the real threat was that the people themselves weren’t warriors. Even if they were told and reacted well to the knowledge, none of their leaders, Brisson included, were strong enough to hold them through whatever came. Gavin wasn’t yet, either, but he had much more potential for it than Brisson did. And with her help . . .

Despite her exhaustion, Farah didn’t find sleep that night. She lay awake thinking and planning, her thoughts drifting from how to help Gavin, to the man himself, and then around to the army sitting at their door.

“That there was a continuity after this life was a concept stolen from the Sensari people.”

—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 15, Year 1023

Elyana sat within the confines of her small room, leaning against a wall. An oil lantern cast a pale light over the room, illuminating the shelves of scrolls and fighting the deeper, redder glow of the fire crackling in the hearth. Lhaurel participated in the dream, experiencing it as Elyana did. Lhaurel was coming to understand, to realize, that the dreams were not really dreams at all. They were something deeper. Memory.

Part of her.

Elyana flexed her fingers, staring down at her hands. They were wrinkled and stained like those of a sand-spider now. Not using her powers was aging her prematurely, giving her the body of a woman three times her years. Her Sister—no, the Sister of Knowledge—Selhita, had theorized that it might happen that way. Using their powers, drawing in the life force and blood of another, gave them an unnatural grace and beauty, slowing or even reversing the aging process. But, as Selhita was fond of saying, everything comes with a cost. There was no way to throw a stone into a fountain without creating ripples. Lhaurel paused at the use of the word fountain, wondering what it meant, but she was able to get a faint image of it through Elyana’s thoughts, like a small pool of water set in a public place. Like the spring pool back in the Sharani Desert.

Sometimes hearing Elyana’s thoughts was a simple matter in these dreams, while other times Lhaurel simply watched and observed. Even when she could hear Elyana, it was a broken, scattered communication, as if heard from a long distance and only part of the message could be discerned.

Elyana stood up suddenly, a sigh of exasperation and frustration escaping her lips. She strode over to the large glass container on top of the shelves near her small bed. She paused for a brief moment to grab a piece of meat from a wooden plate on the table. Approaching the tank, Lhaurel was able to make out what moved within in it. Half a dozen small, serpentine creatures swam about in the water, darting in and out of rock-like structures submerged in the container. They all darted into hiding as Elyana approached.

Even as just a witness of the memory, Lhaurel recognized the small demons. They looked like sailfins, just on a much smaller scale. They couldn’t be, could they?

Elyana dropped the piece of meat—about the size of her fist—into the water. The creatures in the water darted out of their hiding places and tore off great chunks of the meat before darting back into their caves. They darted in and out in a roiling mass until the meat was gone, only a faint reddish cast to the water showing any sign that the meat had ever been there.

There were more than just sailfins in the water. Other creatures darted out of hiding and returned during the frenzied eating. Marsaisi, karundin, all in miniature form. Why was Elyana keeping them here? And in water? Lhaurel had too many questions, none of which seemed like they had answers.

Elyana watched the tank for several long minutes, seeming to take some small pleasure in their antics, then turned away and leaned one hand against the wall. It was rough against her hand. Even in the dream, Lhaurel felt the sensation of touch as Elyana experienced it and followed her stream of consciousness as she considered it.

The Sisters had commissioned this Arena. It had been sculpted out of sandstone and laced with the elements that drove the Schema and Progressions. A hundred years. A century of work. Tens of thousands of slaves’ lives lost in the constructions. Dozens of Great Ones diligently at work to construct this monolithic testament to the Orinai’s power. And then another century as the descendants of those slaves and the Orinai outcasts who were thrown in to join them fought and struggled together. How ironic that it had become the complete opposite now, a bastion of defense—a veritable fortress—against the very people who had commissioned it. The Sisters had called it a proving ground for the Progressions, a study of the complexity that was the human soul. Elyana wondered if the other Sisters had gotten the answers they were looking for. She certainly hadn’t. Not yet.

Beryl had asked her to tell the Rahuli the paths of the Progressions, the secrets of the Schema. Elyana’s back straightened and she lifted her chin. She may now be counted a traitor to the Orinai, but she had not yet fallen to such a state as that. Not yet, at least. There were some secrets, some knowledge, that needed to be contained. Honor sometimes left what was true bathed in shadow to protect those whom that truth would injure. Sometimes doing what was right was a matter of upholding that which is sacred.

Elyana sighed and walked over to one of the shelves. She pulled down one of the books and retrieved a bottle of ink and a pen, all three of which she placed onto the table. Elyana took a seat at the table and opened the book. The pages inside were blank, though the parchment was thick and almost white, untouched by age. No, she wasn’t so far removed from her calling as a Sister that she was ready to desecrate the sacred secrets of the Progressions, but she could discuss other things. The quill dipped into the ink and Elyana began to write, Lhaurel reading the words through Elyana’s eyes as the woman wrote them.

The enemy has come. Our lush arboreal verdence lays desolate, crumbling from life to dust. Life is dissolution.

The enemy has come.

With tongues of fire and on the back of wind they come, rolling like thunder clouds across our land. Our warriors are outnumbered, our magic users proving to be inferior masters of the elements. The blood of the clans stains the sands red, paints the cliffs in scarlet ribbons, and makes crimson the sky. We are dying.

Elyana looked up from her ledger. Lines of concentration wrinkled her brow and left premature age lines emanating like the web of a sand spider from the corners of her eyes. Her eyes themselves, once a vibrant blue, were now without luster, even in the lamplight. Dead. Sunken. Lifeless. Oddly, Lhaurel was able to observe Elyana as if detached from her for the first time, though it was a fleeting moment of disassociation, then Lhaurel was back inside Elyana’s mind, experiencing the Sister’s life as she lived it. Elyana turned back to her chronicles.

***

Five days after receiving the message from the pseudo-Sister, Lhaurel found herself as irritable as she’d ever been. Dreams plagued and haunted her whenever she slept, nightmares of what happened in the Oasis and what could have happened to the Rahuli after she’d given herself up. Compared to them, the dreams of Elyana, which were infrequent at best, were almost a pleasant relief, though they reminded her of her other worry, the need to regain her abilities before the lack of them killed her. Each day the longing for it grew, becoming something more than a desire, moving into a need. It gnawed at her constantly, though she could still ignore it the majority of the time. A small part of her worried, irrationally perhaps, that she’d never get them back. A part of her longed for that, knowing the raw strength of her abilities and fearing what it would do to her to have them back again. The rest of her hungered for their return.

The wagon in which she sat bounced and jostled along the endless plain of grass. It was pulled by one massive gatheriu the color of the trees in the Oasis, a dull, lifeless brown. The creature lumbered in a strange rolling gait, front legs acting more like forearms than actual legs as it walked. It also smelled like rotten meat which made Lhaurel want to gag. At least this time she was able to ride above the wagon instead of always inside it.

“Beg pardon, Honored Sister,” the man driving the wagon said, pulling a pipe from his mouth with one hand and gesturing at the lumbering beast ahead of them. “Grunt here is me best puller, see. Problem is, he likes to eat them smokeweed plants any chance he gets. That makes him smell right foul most days, see. I wouldn’t have troubled you with him, but, you see, the other Sister, she wanted fast. You understand, don’t you?”

Lhaurel fought down her growing irritation. This had to have been the thousandth time the bald little man had asked the same question. While she didn’t mind the apology itself—the beast
did
smell absolutely horrible after all—the constant repetition was grating at best.

“It’s fine. We must make it to Geithoorn as quickly as possible. The smell is not an issue.”

In all honesty, the smell made her want to vomit, but she reassured him each time he asked. Talha wanted speed and nothing was going to stand in her way. Over the last five days Lhaurel had seen a new side to the woman. The woman she’d come to know as calm, logical, and stern, if a little eccentric, had become harsh and—to Lhaurel at least—distant. And she still hadn’t told Lhaurel what was in the message. In truth, Lhaurel thought Talha was starting to act more and more like Sellia, and that scared her. She still had nightmares of the few minutes she’d spent with the woman.

After a minute, Lhaurel tossed back her hair and straightened, stretching aching muscles. Several of her priestesses behind her looked up and asked if she needed anything, but Lhaurel ignored them. After days of sitting except for when they stopped for the night, she felt the burning desire to move. She
needed
to move.

“I’m going to walk a while,” Lhaurel said in as flat a voice as she could manage. She’d still not mastered Talha’s calm, commanding tone, though she’d managed to replicate Khari’s with a little practice. “Do not slow down or wait for me if I fall behind.”

The driver, Lhaurel hadn’t learned his name, looked like he wanted to protest, even going so far as to take the pipe out of his mouth, but Lhaurel leveled her best ‘Khari’ stare at him and he grunted and looked away with a visible gulp after only fleetingly meeting her eye. Lhaurel took that as assent and so clambered down the side of the wagon and hopped down to the ground, half stumbling as she landed. She caught herself before falling, but it only served to further increase her current frustration to realize that the skill and balance she’d earned as a warrior in the Sharani Desert served her little without the augmented balance and grace her powers had given her. Was she truly so incompetent without them?

“Sister,” one of the priestesses called down as the wagon continued to roll by on its massive wooden wheels though the endless grass. “Shall we accompany you?”

“Stay with the wagon,” Lhaurel ordered, then had a thought. “But fetch me my staff.”

Josi, the young priestess from the time they’d been attacked, pulled the staff free from where it rested beneath the driver’s bench and tossed it down to Lhaurel, then bowed. Lhaurel caught the staff with one hand and took several steps back from the wagon. It lumbered by and the next wagon, gatheriu leading, rumbled forward. Talha and her priestesses looked down at her from atop it.

“Walk with me, Sister?” Lhaurel asked, beginning to walk alongside Talha’s wagon. It wasn’t moving that quickly, but it was fast enough that Lhaurel had to keep a brisk pace to stay alongside.

“You should not be walking,” Talha said, glancing down at Lhaurel over the edge of the book she had open on her lap. “It is both undignified and unnecessary. One of our station does not walk when other means of transport are available.”

“Does one of our station ever get bored and need to stretch their legs?” Lhaurel asked. “Or has age made that impossible for you?”

Lhaurel regretted the words almost as soon as they were out of her mouth, but Talha didn’t get angry. Instead, she closed her book and gave Lhaurel her full attention, looking down at her from the back of the wagon with cold, appraising eyes.

“Age has taught me many things, child,” she said with ice in her voice. “Most notably respect and integrity when it is due. For one who is the avatar of Honor, you do little to respect those who are your betters.”

On the inside, Lhaurel snorted, though she kept her expression suitably flat. She’d received far worse chastisements before. In fact, compared to Marvi’s tirade both before and during her forced marriage, Talha’s statement was almost a compliment. Compared to Khari’s blazing vehemence when trying to break her, it wasn’t even warm.

“We haven’t had a good discussion in days,” Lhaurel said with a pert smile, staff clunking against the hard ground. “I thought we could walk and talk a while.”

“Read the books I gave you.”

Lhaurel continued to walk, not bothering to respond, careful to avoid the dust kicked up by the wagon ahead of her. She’d only offered to walk with Talha to avoid the lecture she knew would come, but, in the end, Lhaurel had decided to take the confrontation head on instead of avoiding it. She knew she was being brash, but it felt good to interact, even in a confrontational sense.

“Oh, very well then,” Talha snapped, handing her book to one of the priestesses and getting to her feet, staff in one hand. “I will walk with you for a time. I could use a little movement.”

Talha’s driver didn’t even try and protest. Talha didn’t bother with the small ladder. Instead, she simply leapt the six feet down to the ground, staff spinning out behind her. She bent at the knee as she landed, white skirt billowing out behind her like a cloak. Lhaurel was so surprised that she stopped dead in her tracks. The wagon rumbled on.

“Now that you have me here,” Talha said, straightening and beginning to walk without waiting for Lhaurel to recover from her shock. “What would you have of me? You are lucky I am the one accompanying you. Few of the other Sisters would tolerate what you just did.”