Oathen (40 page)

She lit herself up, hoping Geret could see her
better, then squeezed her eyes shut and lunged away from the rungs,
unable to keep a small cry of fear from escaping her mouth. Geret’s
arms closed around her in a warm vise, and his free leg wrapped
behind her knees. Her cheek slammed into his chest, and she cried
out in pain as he jostled her shoulder.

“Sorry; can’t seem to keep from hurting you,
can I?” he murmured above her ear.

“Everyone all right?” Salvor
called.

“Yes, I have her,” Geret responded. The rope
began to pull them up.

“I’m sorry too,” Sanych whispered.

“For what, falling over a cliff?”

“No; for blinding you. Oolat has some kind of
shadow shield. I didn’t realize it until too late. I’m so sorry,”
she repeated.

Geret was silent so long, she feared he was
angry at her. “Well,” he finally said as they neared the cliff’s
edge, “I know you didn’t blind me on purpose.”

Her head snapped up, and she was stricken with
the guilty realization that she’d fantasized several times about
doing just that. Now that she’d truly injured him, however, she
realized how abhorrent the idea was. “I’d never do
that!”

“Do what?” Salvor asked, kneeling and reaching
a hand out to them.

“Leap off a cliff again because I forgot to
look where I was going,” she muttered, and Geret barked a
laugh.

The men eased Sanych onto the cliff’s edge,
and Salvor helped Geret scramble up. While Geret held her shoulders
firmly on the ground, Salvor gently straightened her arm out to the
side.

“Just do it,” she muttered, wincing in
anticipation.

Almost before she’d finished speaking, Salvor
jerked on her arm. There was an audible click as her shoulder slid
into its socket, prompting her to give a yell that subsided into a
relieved sigh. As Salvor used a strip from his cloak to fashion a
sling for her, she told them what Oolat had done with
Meena.

Salvor looked at the river below. “She could
be miles downstream by now,” he said.

“Then we’d better hurry,” Geret
replied.

As Salvor brought the horse over, Sanych
scooped up a small pebble and held it on one palm. Wrinkling her
brow in concentration, she wrapped it in a layer of
light.

It winked out of existence, appearing
instantaneously on her other palm. She gasped, a broad grin
plastering itself across her dirty, blood-streaked face. She
clenched the pebble tightly: her secret weapon. As soon as she had
a few moments to herself, she knew what she’d be practicing
next.

~~~

Sanych rode in front of Geret on Salvor’s
horse while the nobleman walked beside them back toward the camp
area. Sanych kept her magic glowing in the palm of her uninjured
arm. The snow kept falling.

Voices hailed them from ahead. Sanych raised
her good hand and Salvor readied his sword. Then Ruel, Rhona, Ahm
and several of his Scions rode into view among the fir
trees.

“Bloody scales,” Ahm called, “we thought we’d
lost all of you!”

Rhona, attempting to ride a horse by herself,
reined in next to Geret and Sanych. “Are you two all right? What
happened?” she murmured, seeing Sanych’s numerous
injuries.

Geret looked unseeingly ahead. “We’ll make
it.”

Rhona frowned and reached out to caress his
cheek, but he flinched away from the unexpected contact. Sanych
jerked her gaze away from the couple, and it fell on Ruel. His flat
stare mirrored her own.

Ahm’s glad smile lessened as he realized Meena
wasn’t with them. “Where—where is Meena? Has Oolat—”

“He didn’t kill her; that’s impossible,”
Sanych replied, looking back to Ahm. “He just ripped the key out of
her chest and threw her off the cliff.”

The Scions exclaimed in fear and
horror.

“Then it has all been for naught,” said Ahm,
shaken. “He will retrieve the
Dire Tome
. We must begin to
warn the Shanallese; the realm isn’t safe for anyone any longer.
Quickly—” he began, turning to his Scions.

“Wait!” Sanych exclaimed. “Meena had a plan;
she said ‘Oolat will take’ something. She didn’t get to finish, but
I think she meant the key!”

“What?” Ahm said, turning back to her. “Why
would she want the cult to have the key?”

“I don’t know. I suggest we ask Meena herself.
If I know Meena at all, and I do,” Sanych insisted, “this war’s not
over yet.”

Ahm looked at the worried faces of his cell
members. Then he nodded. “All right,” he said, “we’ll see what
Meena’s plan is. The trail to the village is clear; Oolat collected
his Dzur i'Oth and vanished a while ago.”

Sanych nodded, unsurprised. “We need to find
her as soon as possible,” she said. “She’ll take a while to recover
from the cold.”

Ahm turned, murmuring to one of the riders.
The man raised his hands to his mouth and spoke a few words, then
let fly a pure white dove that wasn’t fully opaque. It arrowed up
through the trees and vanished from sight.

“The Scions that survived the battle at the
village will begin searching the river as soon as they get that
message,” Ahm replied. “Let’s get you mounted, Salvor, and we’ll go
help them look.”

But by the time they’d ridden back through the
upper Scion camp, down the steep rocky pass and through Shadewater
to the banks of the Emerald, Meena had already been
found.

“They’re bringing her back now,” someone
hailed, pointing through the obscuring snowflakes.

A Scion flew over the river’s choppy surface,
his broad turquoise wings glowing through the falling snow. His
arms carried a limp figure.

Geret dismounted and gently lifted Sanych from
the saddle. With her arm still in its sling, she made her way to
the front of the gathering crowd, wincing at every jostle, her body
afire with dozens of scrapes and bruises.

She didn’t care if anyone came with her. Only
Meena mattered right now.

The winged Scion reached the shore and landed
near a copse of trees, carrying Meena toward a blanket other Scions
had spread beneath one of them. As he let his wings dissipate, Ahm
and several other Scions approached, carrying more blankets. A
different Scion began to shape the trees’ branches into a
sheltering roof.

“No!” Sanych burst forward. “Stop! Don’t cover
her!”

The Scion who held Meena stopped in surprise.
“Why not?”

“Her magic doesn’t work that way,” Sanych
said. “She needs cold air to trigger her awakening after she’s been
affected by cold water.”

“What an odd magical effect,” a female Scion
commented.

“Just clear the snow and put her down. Back
away. And let her be.”

“Surely one blanket won’t hurt her,” Ahm
suggested, his hands placating.

She turned to him, forging her pain into
anger. “Meena needs that key back; we all do. There’s no way she’s
not going after the man who took it. But I guarantee you this: if
you delay her any more than absolutely necessary before the key’s
recovery,” Sanych pointed to the blanket in Ahm’s hands, “she’ll
rip your head off and stuff it up your arse at her
earliest
convenience!”

Ahm blinked, taken aback. A small silence
ensued.

“Now please,” Sanych added in a milder tone,
“put her down.”

Ahm nodded. A few Scions melted a patch of
snow, revealing bent green shoots, and the winged Scion laid her
down. Ahm waved the blanket-bearers away. Sanych stepped to Meena’s
side, and her face crumpled at the sight of the damage done to her
friend’s body. Meena’s chest had been shattered; her shredded shirt
was streaked pink with blood.

Sanych knelt by Meena’s side, brushing short
red locks off Meena’s forehead. “I know you’d want me to be strong
right now,” she whispered to the still body, tears beginning to
course down her cheeks. “But I can’t. Oolat’s taken the key, and
you’re lying here with a h-hole…” She paused, overcome, and closed
her eyes tightly, blocking out the grisly damage before
her.

“It’s all my fault,” she murmured. “This
magic, it’s too much for me. I made a fool of myself with Geret. I
don’t know if I can fight my own darkness and still do what needs
to be done. I need your help, please. I don’t want to lose
myself.”

Sanych bowed her head and wept. Her
exhaustion, self-pity, guilt and pain overwhelmed her. The waiting
Scions didn’t interfere.

A while later, Sanych felt a hand on her
ankle, and a burst of healing shot through her. The sudden absence
of pain left her euphoric, even dizzy, and she fell forward onto
her hands and knees, her arm sliding out of its makeshift
sling.

“Stars and darkness,” Meena groused, sitting
up. The Scions began murmuring happily and approaching the two of
them.

“Meena,” Ahm said, kneeling by her side and
offering her a water skin, “Sanych said you had a plan.”

“I
used
to have one,” Meena
clarified.

Sanych’s stomach turned over.

The Shanallar took a swig, then passed the
skin to Sanych, who also drank. “I knew Oolat had come for the key.
I wanted to make him take me to the Dragon Temple. My best chance
was taking him in his own lair, before he could use the key. Now,”
she shook her head in frustration, “he’s got the key, but I’m stuck
out here.”

Sanych took a step back, her stomach sinking.
“He was showing me his power,” she murmured, eyes wide. “If I
hadn’t been there, he would have taken you.”

“What’s done is done,” Meena said, as Ahm
helped her stand. “Our time is short, though. I need to get that
book, and I need Sanych to help me destroy it. But,” she sighed,
“attacking against the full power of the
Tome
…” she trailed
off, gritting her teeth in frustration.

“I have an idea.”

Everyone looked at Ahm.

He hesitated, looking at Sanych. “But,” he
added, “it’s extreme.”

“Extreme?” Meena rounded on him, hands on her
hips, fire in her eyes. “Extreme? What
isn’t
extreme right
now? Dzur i’Oth has taken the key, and they’re about to retrieve
the
Dire Tome
and unleash it on Shanal, and then the world,
in every way they see fit! I need to steal back the book and sing
its destruction at the Green Dragon, and I can’t do that without
Sanych’s magic, so you tell me, Ahm, how extreme can it
be?”

Sanych looked at Meena, then at Ahm. “Whatever
it is,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

Ahm met her eyes and nodded. “Then we must go
to Sosta’s castle. We have some magic to do.”

In the cloudy dimness of night, horses bearing
members of Ahm’s and Sosta’s cells thundered into the outer yard of
Sosta’s castle, which blended into the sheer, fern-covered slope as
if it had grown there naturally. The protective spells that hid the
castle from the world rippled to allow the riders and their mounts
access. The snow had stopped, and the air was bitterly
cold.

Sosta dismounted, handing her reins to a
stable boy. “Sanych, I’ll help Ahm prepare the chamber for the
ritual. You and your companions are welcome to wait in the main
hall within. Eat, rest, relax. We’ll come get you when we’re
ready.”

As the group gathered around platters of food
fetched by members of Sosta’s cell, Sanych grabbed a roll of bread,
shooting Geret a look of relief edged with guilt. She knew she
should be focused on the ritual that Ahm was preparing to perform
on her, but she had something else on her mind. She stepped back
out into the yard with a glint of determination in her
eyes.

~~~

“I don’t care how quietly you accuse me,”
Rhona whispered, glaring. “Don’t do it in front of
them.”

Ruel jerked his head toward the outer door.
Rhona grimaced and led the way out to the empty yard, where she
whirled on her cousin.

“How dare you!” she hissed.

He raised his chin. “I made my point and you
know it.”

“You scuttled your point by bringing it up!”
she said, stepping so close that their noses nearly brushed. “You
respect your captain, on land or sea.”

He snorted. “The Rules of Order don’t apply on
land, Rhona.”

“Don’t you cite the Rules to me.” Rhona
clipped, turning away.

“Forgetting your own limitations? All that
steamy trysting must have addled your mind,” he sneered. “I bet you
let him do it dirtwalker style, too.”

Rhona’s spine went stiff, and she turned to
him, eyes wide with fiery anger. “Ruel Menihuna, mark my words.
When we get back to the Southern Sea, I will find the most
rat-infested, leaky, rotting hulk of a garbage scow, and I’ll make
you its captain’s whipping boy.”

Far from being intimidated, Ruel barked a
laugh. “That captain will be you, Rhona, if I ever open my mouth to
the Prime.”

Rhona’s shoulders slumped, and she was quiet
for a moment. “At least I’ll get to beat you.”