The Mountains Rise (14 page)

He waited, completely baffled and not knowing what to do, or what was expected of
him. A minute later she reappeared briefly, flickering in and out of existence only
ten yards away. His mind never felt her—only his eyes registered her momentary presence
there. Bewildered
,
he turned to face the direction that he had seen her.

She appeared again, but this time she was directly behind him
,
and it was his mind that
perceived
her rather than his eyes. He saw her aura surge
,
and a flash of power shot forth from her, passing through his lower back and emerging
from his stomach. He felt almost nothing, other than a strange stinging sensation.
Glancing down he saw blood running from a small hole in his abdomen.

She stabbed me!
His mind was slow to register
,
but he could feel the pain in his lower back and belly beginning to grow.
He staggered sideways just as she reappeared and sent another pulse of power through
the space where he had just been standing. She vanished before he could react.

“She stabbed me!” he yelled into the air, hoping someone would hear him. He knew
this couldn’t be correct. Daniel wasn’t sure if the word ‘stabbed’ was the proper
one to use, since she hadn’t had a knife, but he didn’t have time to find a better
term.

There was no response from whoever might be watching, but Daniel thought he could
hear the sound of laughter.

The red-
head popped into existence again, this time on his left side. She sent a tiny burst
of power into him again, piercing the thigh of his left leg. He noted that it was
only with his mi
nd that he could see her appear.
S
he remained thoroughly invisible to his eyes. During her first appearance, before
she had stabbed him, it had been the reverse.

She isn’t vanishing, she’s making herself invisible somehow,
he observed.
She can make herself appear either to the eyes or the mind, selectively.

His leg collapsed under him
,
and he felt her next attack pass through the air where his head had been. That would
have been the final blow.

But she can’t tell where
I am
when she’s completely invisible;
otherwise I’d be dead already.
He had a feeling that she reappeared to his mind because in order to use her power
to attack
,
she had to become visible to whatever strange power it was that they used. Her first
appearance had been to gauge the di
stance, to see if he had moved.
The next attack will be right here, since she spotted me when she missed a second
ago.

Rolling madly
,
he felt his body strike something and the girl appeared suddenly. By chance he had
rolled directly into her legs as she approached for her next attack. He was more
than twice her size
,
and his bulk knocked her from her feet. More scared than anything
,
he grabbed her quickly, wrestling himself on top of her as she struggled to get away,
flickering in and out of visibility.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he yelled at her as he got a firm grip on her shoulders.

Abandoning her attempt at invisibility the girl snarled at him, sending another pulse
of power through his chest. Searing pain ripped through him
,
and Daniel found it difficult to breath
e
, it felt as though he
were
drowning.

Desperate
ly
he clutched at her neck
,
while trying to bring his own power to bear on her aura.
He didn’t bother with soothing;
he alr
eady suspected he might be dying.
I
nstead
,
he clawed at her mentally as if he was trying to tear her mind apart.

She fought his efforts, tightening her inner-self into a tight ball, deflecting his
clumsy attacks. The only good thing about it was that she
was no longer able to send any more piercing bursts of power through him.

Tearing
wildly at her aura to force her to keep her defenses up he fought her physically
at the same time. She was tiny compared to him
,
and he had her completely pinned under his body. She bit and raked at his skin with
her nails
,
but she had no hope
of
getting free. Squeezing his hands tightly around her throat
,
he fought mentally to keep her occupied until lack of air could do its work upon
her.

The girl’s face turned a shocking shade of purple and her eyes bulged, shedding tears
of pain and fear. They were a hazel-green, more subdued than Kate’s had been, but
similar enough that Daniel couldn’t help but be reminded of her.

At last she stopped struggling, her arms going weak
,
and her tongue hanging grotesquely from her mouth. Daniel released her then, thinking
to let her have air before she died, but once he withdrew his hand
s
he could see that it was too late. Her windpipe had collapsed under the force of
his grip. His mind watched helplessly while she turned from blue to purple
,
and her heart faltered, stuttering to a slow halt in her chest.

Kneeling beside her
,
he began retching
,
but his stomach wasn’t full enough to bring anything up. Tears ran from his eyes
,
but he didn’t sob. His body was too tired for that. A numbness had stolen over
him
,
and examining the ground nearby
,
he realized that it was covered in blood—his blood.
He was bleeding slowly from his stomach, more rapidly from his leg, and—he couldn’t
tell about his chest. One lung was full of blood already
,
and he gurgled when he tried to fill the other lung with air.

He collapsed onto the dry
,
sandy ground.

“He killed her?” asked Moira, shocked.

“Yes,” I replied sadly. “If he hadn’t
,
she would have killed him.”

“But why? It doesn’t make sense, she didn’t even know him.”

“It didn’t make sense from his perspective,” I agreed, “and it took a long while before
he began to understand what was really going on.” From the corner of my eye I could
see Lynarralla watching my response carefully.

Matthew broke in, “I’d rather know now, so we don’t have to be confused while you
tell us all this stuff.”

I addressed Lynarralla, “Do you know much about that time period?”

“A little,” the She’Har girl admitted. “From my creation
,
I was given knowledge of language and
spellweaving, but a rough outline of our history is in my mind as well.”

“I’ll color it in for you,” I told her. “They were keeping the humans as slaves,
making them fight
for
the She’Har’s
entertainment. The circle he was standing in was a training arena.”

“But you said they were all wizards,” noted Matthew.

I nodded.

“Couldn’t they do something? Break free, fight back, escape—anything but go along
with it! That girl sounded like she was a Prathion. She could have escaped no matter
what,” observed Matthew.

“
Remember
the necklace around Daniel’s neck
?
” I
reminded
. “They all wore one, and there was no escape while that thing was on them.”

“What was it?” asked Moira.

“Essentially a slave collar, but it kept them from running. It had other functions
as well, which I’ll explain as we get to them. More importantly,” I said
,
focusing on Matthew, “You’re right, the girl was a Prathion, but they weren’t as
we know them now. She was little more than an animal.”

“You said she was human,” noted Lynarralla.

The irony made me laugh. “That
you
should point that out is perfectly natural now, but your mother was educated differently
,
and everything
she
saw of humans then
,
did nothing to make them appear as much more than animals
to her
. The humans were raised in captivity,
without parents to care for them. They received no love, no education, almost no
contact with each other. By the time they reached the age of twelve, when they began
to fight, their minds were stunted. Isolation made them violent, aggressive, and
ultimately
,
stupid.”

“That’s horrible,” declared Moira.

“It was,” I said slowly. “Let me get back to the story
,
and you’ll start to see just how awful it could be…

***

Kate stared at him with sad eyes, “Why Daniel? I loved you!”

He tried to explain to her, but his mouth wouldn’t work. Instead he tried to hold
her
,
but
rather than an
embrace
,
he found himself throttling her. She died beneath him, her face locked into a stare
of accusation.

Daniel awoke in the same small room that he had been in before. There was a bowl
of soup on the table. It appeared that the sound of the woman leaving after delivering
it was what had awoken him. Sitting up, he looked around.

I should be dead.

He quickly examined his body, looking for the holes that the girl had created.
They were gone, with only silver scars left behind as a reminder. Taking a deep
breath
,
he could feel that his lungs were clear. Curious
,
he turned his special vision inward, examining himself from the inside. It was something
that he had never thought to do before.

The confusion of organs and tissues he discovered within were a mystery to him, although
he was able to identify and name many of them, because of his occasional experience
butchering animals for meat. He found numerous places within where his body had been
pierced, his lungs, liver, one kidney, the intestines, they all bore signs much like
his outer skin. The girl’s attack had damaged them, and somehow they had been fixed.

He
had
pondered that mystery for a while when the door opened again.

A warden stood in the doorway. “Come,” he motioned without any further explanation.

Having learned his lesson before, Daniel came quickly, without question or hesitation.
He followed the man to the edge of the ‘city’ and then into the forest. They walked
for almost an hour before arriving at the base of what apparently was the correct
tree. The warden walked easily up the side of it.

“Climb,” commanded the other man.

Daniel watched him carefully as he walked. Trying to figure out how he managed it
the way that he did. He could see that the man was using his power to adhere to the
surface with his feet, but he didn’t seem to be straining to maintain his horizontal
posture. It was as if he had somehow lightened his body, so that it was easy to maintain
his strange position without injuring his feet.

Moving as quickly as he could
,
he followed the man on all fours, crawling up the side of the tree.

When they stopped
, it was at a platform
similar to the one he had been on before. He couldn’t be certain how long ago that
had been. Keeping track of the days was becoming difficult, especially considering
his bouts of unconsciousness.

Two forest gods stood upon it, and he knew both of them. One was the silver-haired
woman
whom
he had first met, and the other was the black-skinned man who had taken him to the
strange city.

The man said something in their strange language and then turned to Daniel, speaking
to him in Barion
, “There you are. Come closer and Lyralliantha will give you your name.”

“Lyrallialla-lolly what?” asked Daniel.
Did he mean the other god?

The man smiled, “Our names are difficult for you, but I didn’t realize that you didn’t
know the name of your master. This is Lyralliantha
,
and she is, in your tongue, your sponsor, or perhaps owner is a better term.”

Daniel already knew that he was a slave, so the explanation didn’t shock him, but
it still burned. “Lyral-ianth-a,” he said slowly, practicing the syllables.

“That is correct,” said the man. “You must always kneel when
you are
before your master.”

Daniel did so.

“My name, is Thillmarius, of the Prathion Grove,” continued the male god.

Daniel filed the name away carefully. “What is a ‘grove’?” He knew the term
,
but it made little sense the way the man had used it.

Annoyed with the questions
,
Thillmarius waved his hands, “Enough for now, wildling. You are here for a name,
since you won your first battle.”

Battle? Is he referring to the little girl I killed?

To
describe
to what had happened to him, as a ‘battle’, brought his anger to the foreground.
“I already have a name,”
he told them.

“Nonsense, wildling,” declared Thillmarius. “Humans get their first name once they’ve
survived a trial.” He spoke to Lyralliantha then, using their language.

After a moment she replied, saying only one word, “Tyrion.”

“What?” asked Daniel, uncertain.

“She has given you your name,” said Thillmarius. “You are Tyrion from this point
forward.”

“My name is Daniel. Tell her th
at,” he replied. “If you want
to know my name
,
you should ask—it’s Daniel!”

Lyralliantha watched him with curi
ous eyes. She couldn’t understa
nd anything he said, but she knew that the human was upset about something.

Thillmarius glanced at the warden, “Take him back. Educate him until he remembers
his name properly.”

“Yes, master,” said the other man.

The warden led him back
,
but as soon as they reached the edge of the forest
,
Daniel took the initiative. Without giving any warning
,
he lashed out at the other man, sending a powerful burst of energy in his direction.
He tried to mimic what the girl he had killed had done, creating an ultra-slim, highly
focused lance of power, but not having tried it before
,
his results were much sloppier. Instead
,
his attack wound up being more like a battering ram and though it was still somewhat
effective
,
it failed to pierce the warden’s shield.

The man was thrown bodily into the air, rocketing backward to strike the base of one
of the god-trees.
He was mostly unharmed though, except for his dignity. Standing back up
,
he glared angrily at Daniel, “You’re going to regr…”

Daniel didn’t give him a chance to finish his threat, lashing out at him again with
a bludgeoning wave of force. The warden vanished before it struck.

Can all of them become invisible like that?
he wondered, but then his senses registered the other’s presence behind him.

A line of burning pain raced across his back as the warden’s whip struck, erasing
his thoughts. Screaming in frustration
, Daniel leapt forward
trying to escape the man’s reach but he was beside him again, and another line of
fire burned across his legs. Collapsing to the ground
,
Daniel struggled to focus long enough to target his tormentor, but the whip destroyed
his concentration. Soon he was reduced to a gibbering mass of pain, huddling on the
ground, unable to escape the warden’s ceaseless wrath.