Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1) (33 page)

Walking out to see the shocked faces of Mat,
Sarah and Mr. Blair made the last few months of research worth
every second. “Untraceable wormhole,” he said nonchalantly, like it
was no big deal, cutting the connection to let whatever portal he
had hijacked resume its function. “Where's the fire?”

Mr. Blair continued to stare at him for a
few moments. “How did you...” he shook his head. “Oh, just a turn
of phrase. As it happens, however, the fire is where you will all
be going.”

Mat let out a triumphant
crow as Sarah glared at Ezra and Mr. Blair each in turn. “I thought
we were off active duty,
sir
.”

Blair ignored the sarcasm in her tone.
“Desperate times, I'm afraid,” he said apologetically. His tone
turned serious. “What you three may not realize is that the Guild
of Sundry has been under attack. Over the past two years, the
incidents of violent rogue wind-scarred have grown at an alarming
rate, faster than ever before observed. In addition, we have seen
an increase in thunder-struck activity. There has also been an
alarming trend in the thunder-struck conversion campaigns. Contacts
are being found and tortured to death. Traps are being set for the
responding Guild teams.” Ezra felt Sarah stiffen beside him. “Our
field teams are stretched to the limit. The fact of the matter is,
yours is currently the only combat capable team in Sanctuary, and
the situation is dire.” Mr. Blair gestured with his left hand, and
a video screen materialized. At first it looked like a thick fog
covering a a small valley. Then the image switched to a thermal
view.

“
Blight and thunder,” Mat whispered. The entire valley was
practically glowing an angry red. The fire must have been enormous,
and hot enough to blacken the earth.

“
This footage is less than an hour old,” Blair said quietly.
“There's a small town, Helena, near the center of the
conflagration. No flag has gone up, but under the
circumstances...”

“
That hardly seems necessary,” Sarah finished for him, still
staring at the image.

“
We were founded to protect people from... this,” Mr. Blair
gestured angrily at the screen. “If the fire-kissed are going to
war again, we need to know about it. We need to be able to stop it.
Can I count on you all to use your best judgment, assess the
situation, and bring back word of what is happening down
there?”

“
Yes sir,” the team spoke as one.

“
Take a skiff, the nearest wormhole is some two hundred klicks
to the northeast of Helena.” Blair gave Ezra a hard look. “No
heroics, Mr. Hawkins.”

Ezra flushed and nodded, then followed Mat
and Sarah to the hangar. They geared up like for any other mission.
Instead of guns, however, Mat and Sarah each picked up several
sleek looking contraptions and bandoliers of bolts, each as long as
Ezra's hand and as thick around as his index finger. “Crossbows,”
Mat explained. “No firearms around a fire-kissed. You're more
likely to blow your own arm off than hit anything.” He nodded to
bulky weapon Sarah had fitted with a scope and was loading into the
back of the skiff. “That one's a railgun. You can't fire it often,
or it'll melt straight through the conductive rails. Wouldn't dream
of using it within a thousand klicks of a thunder-struck, but you
get a bead on a fire-kissed with that, and he'll be dead before he
knows what's happening.”

“
Hawkins, open your mouth for a second.” Sarah was fiddling
with something small. Ezra gave her a confused look, then shrugged
and opened his mouth.

Sarah quickly clamped one hand around his
jaw, holding it open. Her other hand snaked in and firmly affixed
something to his rear molar. “Ahh,” he tried to yell, pulling away.
She smirked at him for a moment, then released her grip on his
mouth, letting him stumble backwards. “What was that for?” he
demanded hotly, rubbing at his jaw.

“
Special considerations,” Mat said, reaching into his own mouth
to affix something there as well.

“
Bite down on it, hard, and it releases a pulse of energy
similar to the Sanctuary shield.” Sarah checked the firing
mechanism of a small, hand crossbow critically. “Should shut down
any elementalist working in your area for about two
seconds.”

“
Wait,” Ezra said, massaging the area around his molar lightly.
“The Sanctuary shield negates their powers?”

“
It was meant to keep us safe, Ezra,” Mat slapped him on the
back good naturedly. “What did you think it was keeping us
safe
from
,
huh?”

“
Then... why don't we always go out with these things? Or
better yet, come up with a way to project the field.”

“
No can do,” Sarah said as she holstered the little crossbow.
“Design plans are all locked away in the Chancellor's family data
banks, as far as we can tell. Also, there's some naturally
occurring crystal structure here that's required for long-term use.
With it, you can maintain the field practically forever, but
without it, you get about two seconds. The crystal's also under the
Chancellor's direct supervision; we can't touch it.”

“
These little things are the best we've been able to come up
with,” Mat said, hopping onto the skiff and checking the fuel
levels. “Gotta figure, the only people who want the tech are
Guildsmen. Most of the people who end up in the Guild aren't
scientists. Little to no research capabilities plus too much work
to go around means they just don't get made.” Mat scratched his
chin, thinking. “Also, they're blighted expensive to produce. We're
going out with half the Guild's stockpile.”

“
Oh.” Ezra felt a little humbled. “Then... why do
we-”

Sarah interrupted him with a harsh laugh.
“Because no-one else was stupid enough to piss off a psychotic,
murderous water-seer assassin.”

“
I
thought the way she swore bloody vengeance was actually kinda
sweet,” Mat said with a grin.

Ezra scowled as he keyed in the wormhole
coordinates. “Could've happened to anyone,” he mumbled, climbing on
to the skiff.

“
Not to anyone with a brain,” Sarah taunted. The wormhole
engaged, and they immediately caught the faint scent of smoke. “Now
come on, let's go mess with a guy who can burn down a
valley.”

“
So what are we up against out here?” Ezra asked his teammates
as they skimmed across the countryside. He'd read up on what
fire-kissed were capable of: heat manipulation in their immediate
area. Their levels of power seemed to vary radically from one
fire-kissed to another, and even from one moment to the next. “I
got the impression that fire-kissed powers were a little...
temperamental.”

Sarah snorted. “Yeah, they can burn things
hot, or hotter.” She shook her head. “It seems to have something to
do with their passions. You can tell when one is really 'fired up',
and you don't mess with them like that. They have less control,
sure, but they'll also have more power going for them. I've seen a
fire-kissed incinerate a building when he thought his wife was in
danger. Strike from an ambush, don't let them get worked up.”

Ezra mulled this over for a
while. “There's also... I've seen a number of references to
'Beloved' and 'Besmirched'. Even the last two times we were out
here, people seemed to think that
we
were these Besmirched, and talked
about territories. Are they like... some kind of faction within the
fire-kissed, or something?”

“
Got it in one,” Mat chuckled. “As far as we can tell, all
fire-kissed were once Beloved. Some of them disagreed with the
people in charge, and their little argument turned messy. When the
smoke cleared, there were two factions and some kind of truce that
practically divided the world in half. For the most part, it
follows the blight line. Beloved rule in the north, Besmirched in
the south.” Mat paused as he maneuvered the skiff through a grove
of trees. “Another thing you should know: fire-kissed don't fight
each other. Not directly, at least. You might see other
elementalists out here lay into one another, but never the
fire-kissed. We think it's part of their truce.”

“
What did they fight over?” Ezra asked. Division in the ranks
of the enemy was always a good thing to understand, especially if
that enemy was the outside world's only real political
power.

Mat laughed quietly, as Sarah said, “Gun
control.”

“
Guns? But I thought that out here...”

“
Yeah, no technology... except some of them don't agree with
that.” Sarah shook her head. “The Beloved would do things like give
their retainers flaming swords or crystals that would shoot out a
gout of flame when they were broken. But they would only work near
the fire-kissed who created them. The Besmirched wanted more. They
found ancient weapons, firearms and the like, started manufacturing
ways to give their people more effective means of keeping order.”
She shrugged. “The Beloved told them to stop, they fought, and
everything burned.”

“
Some of their inventions have stuck, though,” Mat chimed in.
“There are these crazy air currents, like all the turbulent wind in
the world gathered in one place, called the sky streams. From what
we've been able to figure out, for a long time the wind-scarred had
a monopoly on the market of flying ships. They built up the sky
ports and would ship anything to just about anywhere in the world,
for a price. The Besmirched came along with ships that could ride
the sky streams, no wind-scarred required, and everyone – Beloved
included – jumped on board.”

“
So, what do we know about this fire-kissed we're after?” Ezra
asked, warming to the subject. “Beloved? Besmirched? History of
burning things to ground?”

“
Never been here. Technically it's Besmirched territory, but
the border's close enough that the Beloved must have a thing or two
to say about that.” Sarah began rooting through her pack. “Aw,
thunder. Mat, did you pack any portal rods? I forgot them, and we
should probably get something a little closer in case this place
becomes important.”

“
Wait, you mean... no-one's been out here?”

“
You're surprised?” Mat asked. “There are billions of people in
the world, Ezra, hundreds of thousands of villages and towns. And
yeah Sarah, I have a set in my pack. In fact...” he glanced at the
onboard console, “...we should probably start looking for a likely
place to set up. We get too much closer and I'm afraid someone
might wander over it.”

Sarah nodded, and she and Ezra began
scanning for anywhere that looked sufficiently out of the way to
hide a wormhole.

==

They found a location about five minutes
later. “I really don't see why this is necessary,” Ezra grumbled as
he waded through knee-deep muck toward the back of the cave. “It's
not like anyone's going to realize there's a cave back here.”

“
But what if someone stops to get a drink?” Ezra could hear
Mat's grin.

“
Then they slip on this flat granite shelf, because an
earth-crowned is messing with them, or something,” Sarah continued
reasonably.

“
Right, right, and supposing they're actually some kind of
swimming prodigy, they turn that fall into a dive,” Mat was nearly
laughing by this point.

“
And supposing that this entire forest was gone, so that the
sun could shine down and blind this aquatic wonder. Why, they might
think that the muck back there was just really thick water and swim
right through it,” Sarah snickered.

“
It's pitch black back here,” Ezra growled as he felt around
for something solid to affix the portal stick to. “What exactly
would you expect them to see?”

“
Well, they wouldn't need to see anything, right? Just bump
their head into it and feel around, maybe grab onto it for support
and press the button for about thirty seconds, opening up a
wormhole back to Sanctuary. Think of what Mr. Blair would say,
Ezra. We're just looking out for you, man.” Ezra found a place to
to secure his portal rod and pulled his arm out of the goop. It
popped free with an audible slurp. Mat made a choking sound that
might have been a cough.

“
There, done,” Ezra began to make his way back toward the
entrance. “And you both suck, I hope you know. I'm bringing you
each a pocketful of this gunk to demonstrate.”

“
Valuable lesson, Hawkins,” Sarah intoned imperiously as Ezra
dove through the slime and mud, desperate for the clear water on
the other side. “Never be the last person with a rod.”

He resurfaced in time to see the wormhole
back to Sanctuary form. Mat checked the readings on the portal
stick he had used to call home, nodded once, and cut the
connection.

“
We going to need any more of those?” Ezra hopped on one foot,
trying free his ear of whatever grime had taken up residence there.
“I certainly don't have any.”

“
Shouldn't need them,” Mat shrugged. “Plus taking them out to
begin with is a little risky, which is why only us research teams
have access.”