The Way of the Soul (5 page)

Fawbry glanced at the chipped paint. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it’s dumping, though. So maybe it’s bringing something in.”

“To where?”

“I’m guessing that’s what Harskill wants us to see. Why else tie a groyle to a post for us to find?”

Malja grimaced. “What if we hadn’t found that groyle? Harskill plans more carefully than that.”

Fawbry leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Maybe there were groyles tied to posts all over that world. We couldn’t have missed them if we tried. Or maybe he was there, watching us, and if we didn’t find the groyle, he would have done something else. And maybe we shouldn’t be questioning the best lead we’ve had in months.”

Four of the widest leaves that surrounded the pipe rotated to show their undersides. Bulbous jelly spheres covered the leaves. Each sphere gave off a yellow glow.

Jumping to his feet, Fawbry said, “Are those eggs?”

Malja brandished Viper. “I hope not.”

The voice of a young woman echoed in the distance. “I see your call, Lord. I’m coming.”

In response, the leaves rotated back, covering the egg-like spheres and hiding their light. Malja spied the young woman running up the path. She hustled into the open area around the pipe and halted. Though breathing hard from her run, the woman showed little sign of exhaustion. In fact, Malja noted, this woman appeared to be in prime condition.

She also wore a do-kha.

“Gate!” Fawbry said.

“My name is Reon,” the woman said. “Not Gate.” To Malja, the woman bowed her head. “What are you here to teach me?”

Malja raised an eyebrow. She sheathed Viper. “Teach you?”

“The Lord sent me along this path. Are you not here by his command to teach me?”

“I’m Malja, and nobody sent me here for you. What Lord do you follow?”

Reon brightened. “Of course. I only recently learned that there are many other gods like the Lord Harskill.”

“Harskill? You know where that bastard is?”

Malja had not meant to speak with such aggression, but the words tumbled out. Reon jumped back, her feet in a fighting stance different from any Malja had ever seen. The front foot pointed forward — nothing strange in that — but the back foot was raised on the toes and also pointed forward. This forced the woman to bend low and be taut, ready to strike.

“Don’t talk of the Lord Harskill that way, you blasphemer.”

With a placating hand, Malja said, “I don’t know what you’ve been taught, but Harskill is no Lord, no god, nothing but a power-hungry —”

“Enough! I see that you are not here to help me. You must be one of my challenges.” Reon slid to the left.

Malja understood at once. The girl attempted to put Malja between her and Fawbry so she would only have to fight in one direction. “You’ve had some experience fighting.”

“Maybe I’m here to teach you something.”

The corner of Malja’s mouth twitched. “I highly doubt that.”

“Then perhaps you’re one of the Lord’s other chosen. Perhaps this test is to see which of us is truly worthy.”

This odd girl appeared to be talking to herself. Malja tried to better her position with a casual step to the side, but Reon matched her movement. She leveled a fierce glare at Malja and shook her head.

“This girl’s crazy,” Fawbry said.

“Tell me now,” Reon said. “Are you my next test?”

Any other time, Malja would have dispatched with Reon already. But she wore a do-kha and she revered Harskill. Stranger still, she did not act like Gate — not that Malja had known many, but between Harskill and Abrazkia, Malja had encountered enough Gate to know the high level of arrogance they held. Reon had too much doubt to be Gate.

“Where did you get that do-kha?” she finally asked.

“I earned it, of course,” Reon said.

To Fawbry, Malja said, “She’s not Gate. They get their do-kha at birth.”

Reon’s eyes widened. “Is that what you call the gods? Gate?”

“They are no gods. And Harskill is no —”

Reon stepped back, lowering deeper in her stance, and held her arm out to the side. Her do-kha stretched off her forearm and reformed into an impressive blade. She paused to stare at the blade before settling back into her stance. “I told you not to speak about Lord Harskill.”

Malja swung out Viper. “I’ve known him for years, and I swear that he —”

“Years? That’s it? I’ve known him my whole life. I’ve waited and watched for him, and I won’t lose my chance to some old lady who barely knows the Lord let alone disrespects him.”

Reon lunged forward, leading with her blade. Malja danced to the side, not even bothering to block with Viper. The lunge had been slow and sloppy. But her opponent made up for it with effort. Reon did not stumble forward like most novices who found their target had moved. Instead, she pivoted and swung wildly for Malja’s head.

Ducking the blade and turning the motion into a sideways roll, Malja evaded the attack. Reon swiped through the air and cut across a wide leaf. Several glowing pods dropped and burst open. Seeds popped against the ground, releasing a wretched stench.

Reon’s do-kha rippled. She gave it a quick shake but the blade collapsed back, forming into a sleeve once more. Malja eased back. She wanted to attack, to take out another Gate, especially one that aligned with Harskill, but this woman had no skill with a blade and couldn’t even control her do-kha. If she was Gate, she would have to be the most sheltered, pampered Gate.

Maintaining her odd fighting stance, Reon raised two fists. Malja wanted to give another warning — she had no desire to fight sword-to-hand. But she also wanted to smack her opponent for the
old lady
jibe. Then Reon’s skin changed.

It happened fast and without any visible effort on Reon’s part. Her skin simply turned green and black in a pattern that blended in with the swamp foliage. If not for the distinctly black do-kha, Malja would never have been able to see her. As if to insult Malja’s thoughts, the do-kha shifted its color to match Reon’s skin. The woman had disappeared.

“Um, Malja?” Fawbry said.

“Shh,” she said as she put Viper away. Swinging blindly would do no good and might even cause her harm. Better to have her hands free, able to grapple when Reon attacked.

Malja pressed her back against the pipe, cutting out the most dangerous attack Reon could attempt — from behind. She might try to drop in from above, but Malja guessed she would hear Reon’s footfalls on the pipe. No, the attack would come from the front or side now.

She looked for any incongruities in the foliage, any hint of where Reon hid. Nothing. Though she loathed the idea of lowering her eyes in a fight, she had no opponent to keep her eyes upon. Malja took quick glances at the ground, searching for footprints. There were too many — Fawbry’s, Reon’s, the groyles’, and her own.

She glanced down again and caught the movement of some mud. Right before she felt the blow, she realized the movement was Reon pushing off into an attack. Reon landed a firm sidekick into Malja’s gut. Malja grabbed for the leg, but Reon snapped it back with expert speed and shoved out again with a kick to the head.

Malja clanged back against the pipe. She saw Fawbry move and put out her hand. “Stay where you are.”

Reon had some training, that was clear, but Malja had far more experience. She raised her fists to protect her head and waited. She turned left and right, exposing her side. The attack had to come. Her opponent was too cocky to back away.

Now that she anticipated it, Malja heard the attack before it landed. As expected, Reon kicked at Malja’s exposed flank. This time, however, Malja had her do-kha become hard as metal.

“Ow!” Reon said and tumbled to the ground.

Before she could stop, she groaned. Malja leaped on the spot she heard the sound come from and straddled the woman. Without pause, she punched four times to where she expected Reon’s head to be. On the fourth hit, Reon became visible. Malja had knocked her unconscious.

Fawbry walked over. “You know I could’ve helped.”

To hide the tremors in her hands, she laughed. “Did you really want to?”

Fawbry shrugged. “Not really. I don’t like invisible enemies.”

“She wasn’t invisible. Just camouflaged.”

“She looks young.”

Malja checked over Reon’s still body. Fawbry was right. The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty. And the do-kha — why had it let her become visible? Malja’s do-kha would have done everything it could to protect her. It was as if Reon’s do-kha didn’t know what to do for her. But Malja could not consider herself anything close to an expert on do-khas. She barely knew her own. For that matter, she hadn’t known until now that they could become camouflaged.

“She might be like me — another lost Gate that doesn’t know about Gate,” Malja said. “But she’s certainly Gate. The do-kha is the evidence.”

“I agree,” Fawbry said. “And no matter what else she said, she knows Harskill.”

“That’s the worst of it. Because she seemed to think he was a god, and she thought I would think like she does — consider myself a chosen one of Harskill.”

“What’s he doing?”

A horrible sensation crawled over Malja. “I don’t know exactly. But if he’s getting people like this to follow him, not just rule over them but really follow him, then maybe he’s building an army.” She looked at Fawbry. “That means we’ll need an army too.”

“Unless you suddenly have the power of the Brother Gods, how are you going to build an army that can fight Gate?”

She kicked a glop of mud at the pipe. “We have to go get Tommy and the Artisoll.”

Chapter 6

Reon

Reon’s eyes fluttered open.
At first, she thought she lay in her bed and had awoken from a long dream, but then the muddy ground wetting the back of her head and the noxious odor of the broken seed pods brought her back to the real world. She had failed in her fight. She had failed.

She did not move. She stared at the drifting sky, listened to the buzzing insects, and wondered what would become of her now. Only her second test and she already had failed. The throbbing bruise on her face underscored the pain in her heart. All those years of training. For what?

She punched the ground and sat up.
Look at where I am,
she thought.
The Lord Harskill dropped me here, in this nothing. No way out except through my success or failure — and I have failed.

She thought of the Middleland — the Dulmul afterlife waiting ground between the infinite joys of Dulmul’s Higher Kingdom or the darkest suffering of the Demon’s Den. Her mother had often said that when she died, she prayed she would never end up in the Middleland. To be stuck there would be worse than the Demon’s Den because there would always be that hope of somehow pleasing Dulmul and gaining access to the Higher Kingdom. And hope would bring pain.

But Reon did not even see hope. She had failed, and that word burned in her mind. She could not escape it.

“It’s not fair.” She jumped to her feet, took two long strides over to a nearby leaf, and grabbed a couple of its seed pods. Grunting, she hurled them at the pipe. They splat with a satisfyingly wet noise. She threw three more before the strong stench hit her. It smelled like vomit baking under the summer sun.

She whirled around and her do-kha shot out its blade once more. It sliced through what remained of the leaf and seed pods in one swift stroke. Reon froze. She stared at the long blade as it receded back into the shape of her sleeve.

During her fight, she had been unable to control the do-kha as if it had a will of its own. Yet, when she had camouflaged her skin, it helped by following suit.

Perhaps she had not failed. Perhaps she had simply learned that her do-kha needed training. She needed training.

After all, when she had first started learning to fight, she was no good. It took years to become proficient. Years of hard work, of repetition. Years of struggle, of failure. Why shouldn’t it take some effort to learn how to work with her do-kha?

Some creature far off in the swamp let loose a high-pitched, mournful howl. The nasty odor of the broken seed pods surrounded Reon. She looked down at the mud covering her body. How long would she have to spend training?

Would she be stuck here for years? Would it take her that long to gain control of the do-kha? To create a portal and return to her Lord Harskill — that was the task set out before her. But even that — how long? Years upon years?

“No,” she said. She learned faster now. Her years of martial arts training had gained her knowledge of body control that would speed the process. Plus, through her lifetime of training, she had learned how to learn. So, not years. Months at the worst. Perhaps only a few days. Certainly she wouldn’t become a master of the do-kha, but in a few days of solid training, she could possibly learn enough to form a portal.

“Okay,” she said, listening as her voice died against the thick foliage. First thing was to get away from the disgusting stench. She decided to follow the pipe which led straight off into the swamp. If nothing else, the pipe had to lead somewhere, and that seemed a better route than to wander aimlessly through the swamp. After about five minutes, she discovered a clearing that would be suitable for a few hours training.