Storms of Destiny (11 page)

“That is my … what is the word? My duty here. I am Pen Jav Dal … or was.”

She haltingly repeated the unfamiliar phrase. “What is that?”

“The Silent Ones.”

“Silent Ones?”

He looked away, and she sensed that he regretted having revealed anything. He did not talk much, not to anyone.

Silent One. It is an apt name for him.

Thia studied him for a moment, then said, softly, “I do not mean to pry. I am not one who asks for truth while withhold-ing it.” She drew a deep breath. “My name is Thia. I was raised in Amaran. Until a few months ago I was in holy orders.” She looked up at him in the lamplight, and his face held strange shadows, seeming almost a mask.

After a moment she continued, “I wore a habit and went unveiled, because I am not a marriageable woman. If you are skilled at reading faces, you will see that I speak the truth.”

Greatly daring, she bent over and picked up the lamp, holding it high, then dropped her modesty veil.

The guard held her gaze for a long moment, then spoke in a low tone. “I am Jezzil. From Ktavao.”

Her eyes widened. “You are a long way from home, Jezzil.”

He nodded. “So are you.”

Thia smiled faintly. “Yes, I am farther from where I was raised than I ever dreamed I might be.”

“Where were you raised?”

She hesitated for a long moment. Jezzil reached out, his movement uncertain, unlike his movements when handling his weapons or his mount. His fingers brushed the fabric of her shawl where it lay over her shoulder. “I am a Silent One,” he reminded her. “You can trust me to repeat nothing.”

Thia looked up at him, knowing he spoke the truth. “I was raised in Verang, in the temples. I was a priestess until a few months ago. Then I ran away.”

Jezzil’s eyes widened. “One of Boq’urak’s priestesses?

And you dared to run away?”

She nodded, and suddenly found herself fighting back tears. Hastily, she raised her veil and fastened it again, using that moment to try and regain her composure. “I lost everything when I learned the truth,” she said finally. “Boq’urak is a vicious, cruel god, not worthy of reverence. I ran away when I realized what I had been serving all those years. If they find me, they will kill me.”

This time he reached out and touched her hands as they held her shawl clutched about her. His fingers were rough, callused from rein and weapons. “Sister Thia,” he said. “I understand, more than you dream I can. When I was Chonao, I was …” He searched for the words. “I was a priest who fights. Warrior priest. Then I ran away too. Now I am no better than a dead man to my brothers, my order. If they find me, they will kill me.”

Thia caught her breath and stared at him in the lamplight.

“I see,” she said finally. “We have much in common, then.”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, and unable to think of anything more to say, stooped and grabbed her basket. Jezzil stepped in front of her as she turned to leave. “You will come back, Sister Thia? You are … I could not speak of this to anyone but Falar … but you, you understand. It was good to speak, after so long as a Silent One.”

She nodded. “Yes. I’ll be back tomorrow. Fare you well tonight, Brother Jezzil.”

He stepped back, raising a hand to her in half salute as she hastened away with her lamp, leaving him alone in the darkness, save for Falar.

Khith had traveled steadily for a month now, and still was not free of the forest giants and the warm embrace of the Sarsithe. It knew that in the North it was late winter, and the Hthras was not in a hurry to experience snow and ice again.

It remembered winter, from when it had traveled the world with its merchant father.

Khith could barely remember its mother. She was only a soft blur of warm, reddish-brown fur and a lilting voice that had trilled lullabies to her only child. She had died after being attacked by a wild jagowa while gathering river reeds for basket weaving.

Khith had been doing some weaving itself. Knowing that it would face much harder ground soon, it had been gathering reeds and vines, so it could make sandals to shield its long-toed, narrow feet from roads and streets. When Khith and its father had traveled in the lands inhabited by the humans, it had worn protection on its feet, just as it had worn a robe to cover its slender, furred body, and a hood to shield its eyes from the sun.

With the half-finished sandals tied to its pack, the Hthras trudged on, its ears alert for any sound, its large, round eyes constantly scanning the animal trail before it. Khith’s people loved the jungle, but were ever mindful of its myriad dangers.

It kept the sun always to its left after noon, and each morning it shed its pack and climbed to the top of a forest giant to check the position of its rising, in order to make sure it was still on track. Khith was trying to gauge its travel so that it missed the arrival of the rainy season, while still not having to travel during the worst of the northern winter.

Its goal was a human port town. Q’Kal had been one of its father’s favored places for trade, with ships tying up daily to the quays, vessels containing goods from Pela and other countries lying across the Narrow Sea. Khith remembered Q’Kal as a bustling place, the busiest port in the Pelanese colony of Kata.
It has undoubtedly changed in twenty-five
years,
the Hthras thought with a sigh, shifting the pack on its back.
Everything changes.

A port city, it had learned early on, tended to be more open-minded to newcomers. And where there were ships and sailors and merchants and those who served them, there was bound to be the need for a good physician.

Khith’s constantly roving gaze caught a tiny flash of ver-milion on a vine weaving across the animal trail it was following, and it froze in mid-step.

A brekiss!

The snake was long and narrow, scarcely bigger around than Khith’s finger. But to touch its skin could result in severe shock, convulsions, even death. Khith’s people used the

brekiss’s skin-venom in minute quantities to induce healing visions.

Carefully, Khith stepped back, away from the creature, and took stock. Two faint animal trails led off the main one, one on either side. Khith chose the one leading off to its right, since it appeared to roughly parallel the trail it had been following.

It hadn’t gone more than another twenty paces before it saw the shimmer of shattered, opalescent material and the half-melted spire that marked one of the Ancient Ones’ ruins.

Khith’s eyes widened with joy at the chance to add to its store of knowledge on that long forgotten civilization. The scholar knew that exploring ruins was dangerous, but it could not pass this opportunity by.

It circled the remains, eyeing them carefully. This had not been a large structure, as these things went. Perhaps it had been some kind of remote outpost, or way station.

The Ancients always stored their records belowground.

Khith picked its way carefully into the heart of the ruined structure, stepping high over the vines wreathing the ruin, searching for an opening that would lead below. When it spotted a sunken place, it nodded in satisfaction, then waded out of the ruin to locate a suitable fallen branch to use as an improvised excavation tool. After half an hour of digging and scraping the undergrowth away, Khith broke through the overlay of soil and roots into emptiness. Its heart hammering with the thrill of the quest for knowledge, Khith dropped to its knees and cleared away soil, revealing a crumbling stairway leading down into damp darkness.

Khith had explored many of the ancient ruins before, so it knew there was a good chance that the lighting systems had failed. Hastily, it improvised a torch from its trusty branch and some moss, then set it afire with a mumbled word and a hard stare.

The Hthras descended the stairway, torch held high. There was water underfoot, but the Ancients had been marvelous engineers, and the walls and ceilings were mostly intact.

Quickly, Khith surveyed the rooms, many of them still containing moldy lumps it knew must have been furniture: kitchen, sleeping rooms, offices, storage rooms … and, yes!

One of the storage rooms held, not unused furnishings, but record books! Khith was aware that the Ancients had used methods other than printed paper to store information, but since there was no power for the readers, it could not read them. Still, most of the Ancients had also produced some paper records, perhaps for quick reference.

An hour later it fought its way up the stairs, back into the light above, three crumbling record books held tightly beneath its arm.
What a discovery! Hand-scribed records, the
first such ones that I have located! A true treasure!

The Hthras knew it should push on, make at least some progress toward its daily travel goal, but curiosity and the desire to learn won out. Khith made camp a short distance from the ruin, then sat down after a quickly swallowed dinner to peruse its find.

Translating the handwritten records was much more difficult, it found, than the printed ones it had discovered in the Lost City. The books were actually written by several individuals, it discovered, over a period of years. They were journals of the sentinels who had been posted to this remote outpost, far from the cities that lay to the east.

The last journal was in the worst shape, but it had the latest date, so Khith examined it first. As darkness gathered over the jungle, Khith sat, totally absorbed, attempting to puzzle out the ancient words on the filthy, crumbled, and pest-nibbled pages. Fragments and snippets of meaning surfaced as it struggled to translate:
(Name) was here tonight for scheduled inspection, told me
of new (untranslatable) device. I was fascinated, asked
many questions … (indecipherable smudge) … told me it
can open (doorways? gates? or was it corridors? hallways?

entrances?) …
Khith puzzled over the word, then resolved to come back to it later.
… to allow passage to another
(place? plane? world?) … experiments commencing …

That cannot be right,
Khith thought, perplexed.
I must
have translated that wrong. I should cross-check that word
with my notes. A passageway to another world?

For a moment it considered digging out its notes, but decided to read on instead. Perhaps the term would become clear in context. Khith waved the flame of its little torch higher, shedding more light on the damaged pages. The next few were stuck together. With painstaking care it separated them, only to find that they were damaged beyond reading, only a few words visible per page.
This section must have
gotten wet at some point, and mildew set in.
Finally it discovered another semireadable passage.

Another message today from (name) in the east. Experiments have been shut down, but now there is trouble. We are
not alone, it appears.

The next page was vermin nibbled. Khith clicked its tongue in frustration and turned the page.

… damage has been done … government crumbling …

plague in (untranslatable) … war in (untranslatable).

(Name) says there is a rumor that the (gateway? door? portal?) brought this upon us. Caused us to be noticed. Makes no sense to me, but every day the reports grow worse. I used to curse the day I was sent here to this remote outpost, but now I am glad to be far away from the chaos. What of (name) and (name) … fear for them fills me. Will I ever see them again? All is crumbling around us …

Khith shivered, despite the warmth of the jungle night.

Even in such a battered, mostly indecipherable text, the desperation of the writer came through in those scrawling, hastily written words. The Hthras realized that it might be the first person ever to read about the final days of the Ancient Ones, and shivered again. Turning the page, it saw that only a scant half page of text remained.

More refugees today. I gave them what provisions I could,
then sent them on their way north. Mothers holding children.

I will never forget their eyes. The world is (coming loose? unraveling? fraying?) more with every hour that passes.

(Name) says that they sent a mission through the (portal?

gateway? door?) to try and stop it, but they have not been
heard of since departing. He calls it the Player, or, sometimes, the Meddler. How could such a thing be? But (name)
would not lie to me … Two days now since I last heard from
(name). The refugees say there was a terrible blast far to the
east. The ones who were the closest to it are sick. Several
died on the way. What should I—
The text stopped.

Khith turned the page, then forcing its hand to near steadiness, slowly turned the remaining pages in the journal.

Empty.

What did it all mean?

Khith shook its head, hugging itself against the trembling that assailed it in growing waves. It was frightened, frightened the way it had been when it ran from the searchers and the jagowas.
Ridiculous!
it thought.
They are the words of a
person who has been dead for thousands of years. How
could they have the power to frighten you?

Still shivering, Khith carefully placed the three journals into its pack. Then it drew out its physician’s robe, to use for a blanket. Despite the warmth of the night, it could not stop trembling, and it took a major effort of will to stare at the torchlight and quench the flame.

The warm, muffling darkness of the Sarsithe enclosed the Hthras like a comforting caress, but Khith lay curled around its pack, eyes wide open, unable to relax, knowing that tired as it was, it would not sleep. Somehow, in some way the scholar could not yet comprehend, what it had read held some personal meaning for it. The realization was becoming inescapable, no matter how preposterous it seemed. The words of that Ancient One had brought a premonition of trouble to come—trouble, and pain, and death. And, most of all, fear.

Khith tried to dismiss the notion that it was experiencing a true foretelling.
I cast no spell! I did not scry!
But try as it would to dismiss the fear, it could not.