Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (15 page)

Lhaurel sniffed, unsure of how to respond. Tieran had let her panic, let her think something was deathly wrong with the matron of the Roterralar. She must have seemed the fool. Instead of feeling angry, she simply shook her head and smiled. She was too tired to be angry, and it was just like Tieran to pull something like this.

“I had it coming, I think. He did tell me you’d be fine. That’s what I get for not trusting him in the first place.”

Tieran grinned impudently and winked at her.

She smiled back. There was something endearing about the man. He treated her the same way he treated everyone else: like an equal.

Khari looked from her to him and back again and then let out a small sigh. “Leave us, Tieran.”

He gave her a quizzical look.

“Please,” she added.

He shrugged and got to his feet, leaving the waterskin laying on the sand next to where he had been sitting. He smiled to Lhaurel, gave Khari an exaggerated wink, and then left, closing the door behind him. The room was cast into semidarkness, the only light the orange glow of torchlight sprinkled with a wan light filtering down through the craggy sandstone.

Lhaurel shifted in the sand and toyed with a stray lock of her hair that had fallen into her eyes.

Khari regarded her coolly, the same stolid appraisal she had given Lhaurel earlier when she had invited her to enter the training circle. Lhaurel’s skin crawled, and she shivered under the scrutiny.

“I know what you’re feeling right now, Lhaurel,” Khari said softly. “Fear, anger, confusion, pain. So many things are happening all at once. Your whole understanding of life has been upended. You’re at the bottom of a lightning sand pit and there is no up. You’ve heard about the Roterralar vagabonds your whole life. Heard about the evil magic they do. Heard how they sacrifice small children. And yet here you are, experiencing the wonder of flight and a place where women are afforded a station equal to men, contrasted with the stunning supposed cruelty of keeping you locked up and imprisoned in the darkness of servitude. You catch glimpses of the light only to be shoved further into the confusing black.

“I’ve been there. I joined the Roterralar when I was close to your age, and the matron at the time broke me just as I was forced to break you. Well, as Kaiden and I were forced to break you. The nature of our abilities requires a shattering of barriers that would otherwise block their use. I—” The woman hesitated, the first time Lhaurel had ever seen her do so. She sensed a loosening of barriers that let Lhaurel catch a glimpse of the woman behind the matron. “I’m sorry for the way you were treated, Lhaurel. For the way
I
treated you. It was necessary. Please don’t hold it against Kaiden. He was only acting under my direction. I noticed how he seemed to get under your skin the first time you used your powers.”

Lhaurel pursed her lips but didn’t disagree.

“I will train you in the ways of the wetta and with the sword if you want to learn. You have but to ask, and I will respond to any question that it is in my power to answer.”

Lhaurel sniffed and released a breath that she had not realized she had been holding in. It escaped her in a sigh that blew dust through the air. She brushed a lock of hair back into place as she contemplated what to say. She had gotten so used to simply being told what to do that she found it hard to find one single question to ask. Dozens flitted through her mind, but she finally settled one.

“So what do I have to do to get out of this place?”

Of all the questions that she could have asked, Khari’s reaction told her that it was the one that had been the least expected. The woman recovered quickly, though.

“At this point, if you leave, you’re dead.”

“Why?”

“Because you know too much about us now. We function because we are not known outside these walls. No one who leaves knowing what you do could be allowed to live.” Khari’s tone was slow, guarded.

“What is so bad about the clans knowing about all this?” Lhaurel asked, gesturing vaguely around the room to encompass the entire warren. “Why is the only thing I’ve ever heard rumor and stories about Roterralar? You don’t even wear red robes here.”

Khari’s eyes narrowed, and she sat up straighter, knuckling her back. “Have you ever seen a parent raise a child and do absolutely everything for them? Protect them from every little danger so that they never learn how to do anything for themselves?”

Lhaurel grimaced, recalling a few such children among the Sidena. A young man from one of the families she had spent time with as a child had had a completely overprotective mother. She even went so far as to lay out his clothes for him and help him lace his boots. There had been a time when his mother had not been around to lace up his boots for him. He had turned to Lhaurel, who had been salting some dried meat for the morning meal, and demanded that she do it for him. She’d been astounded to realize that, at fifteen years old, he still did not know how to lace up his own boots.

She’d refused. The beating that came later was one of the worst she had ever received.

“The clans are very much like children, Lhaurel,” Khari said, scratching the back of her head. “And the genesauri are the dangers that they must learn to face. We protect them as best we can, but if they knew that we were out there, fighting the genesauri, riding the backs of the aevians with the mystics’ magic alive within us, they’d expect us to save them every time. They would never learn how to function on their own. And, more importantly, they would destroy us even as we protected them.”

Lhaurel paused a moment to consider what Khari was saying. It seemed so cruel, so heartless.

“What do you mean, ‘it would destroy us?’”

“How many Roterralar have you seen within the warren?”

“Less than a score.”

“Well, you’ve seen about a fifth of the entire population,” Khari said. “And only two score of them are warriors. Even fewer are mystics. We don’t have enough people to defend everyone everywhere. If we revealed ourselves to the clans, all of them would demand that we protect them from every genesauri attack. There aren’t enough of us to be effective in any more than two groups. But what if three clans were attacked at once? What if there were four attacked at once? We’d be forced to try and protect them all, and we’d be too few in number to do any good. We would fall faster than we could help anyone out. We would be dead before the Migration ended.”

“Which is why you recruited me and made me figure things out on my own,” Lhaurel reasoned. “Because I was already dead and because you needed more people.”

“More or less.”

“It seems to me that you could do both. You could reveal yourselves to the clans, and then all of you could fight the genesauri together. There are more than enough aevians, and all the clans together could make a strong front.”

Khari smiled and gave a soft laugh. “You’ve hit on one of the major debates among us. What is the test of honor, to uphold the flame or snuff it out? Do we remain hidden and fight the battles that we can with the resources that we have? A delaying action at best? Or do we reveal ourselves and rally the clans into one people to stand against the genesauri and, eventually, wipe them off the face of this land?”

Lhaurel nodded her agreement, shifting into a kneeling position. “Yes, why don’t you simply do that?”

“The clans are not so easily mixed,” Khari said with a tired shrug. “Even among us. If you watch, you’ll see that those of us from rival clans originally have a hard time not following the same prejudices, even though we’ve all renounced our ties to the old clans and sworn our lives to the Roterralar. A change of name does not really change what many feel is in our blood.”

Lhaurel’s shoulders slumped, and she looked down at her hands, one thumb idly tracing out a thin scar on the back of her other hand. “And if you revealed yourselves and the clans were still divided, suddenly all you’d have would be a bunch of children trying to use the adult’s tools.”

Khari nodded. “An astute observation. And then there is a question of the magic.”

Lhaurel looked up.

“I believe that it is time we confronted that particular subject.”

The joy of success and conquest makes the quill in my fingertips shake and tremble. The child, Briane, held the key. That beautiful, wonderful, blessed child. Her ideas. Her efforts. Her heart. They made this possible. The cause was worthy of our sacrifice.

-From the Journals of Elyana

Gavin continued to climb even though the pain in his arms was beyond the point of continued bearing. His hands were cut and bloodied, though still useable. His booted feet were still somewhat protected, but the goat hide leather was split in a dozen places and coming apart at the seams His shirt had been torn into strips to cover his hands when he’d found a small ledge to rest on partway up the cliff.

And still he climbed upward. Hunger gnawed at his stomach and exhaustion clouded his mind, but in the midst of the fog, a voice recounted ancient words, words that he had come to believe somewhere between the ground and where now climbed on the wall. His grandmother’s words.

It was the final words of a long tale, his grandmother’s favorite. It detailed the might and power of the greatest Warlord in legend and history. The one who had defeated the enemy. Questions had assailed him for many years after this story. Gavin remembered one night, camping out on the sands during the Dormancy, the light of the fire casting odd shadow against the dunes, asking his grandmother what had gone wrong. If Eldriean had defeated the enemy, then why were the genesauri still there? Had they come back? She’d smiled at him, a warm, special smile that so infrequently brightened her wrinkled face, and said, “Enemies come in all shapes and sizes, Gavin. Some from without and some from within. We must confront them both.” Though he hadn’t understood, he still remembered her words.

Enemies from without and from within. Had Eldriean had more enemies than just the genesauri? Had someone betrayed him? What answers lay atop the cliffs? These questions drove him, guided him onward as his grandmother’s voice swelled once more within his mind. Someone had to find out the truth. Someone had to complete what had been started so long ago. The clans had to be united and the genesauri driven from the sands.

The sun set and rose again before Gavin made it to the top of the cliffs. Rest had come in the form of a small crevice discovered just as the sun had set. A pair of rashelta had been hiding there. Their shells had proven to be poor pillows. They had scuttled away when he’d forced himself into the space, finally relieving his aching muscles and broken skin.

He ate some food he’d carried with him. His body was too tired to eat much of it, but sleep had not come easily. Nightmares haunted him.

In the morning, he drank some brackish, dirty water he found pooling in the crevice and forced down the last of his food. He wished he’d brought more. As long as he was wishing, he might as well have wished for wings. But he resumed his climb anyway.

When his arm finally crested the top of the cliff and the ground felt flat beneath his broken, bloody skin, he was so wearied and tired that he didn’t even realize it until he’d pulled half of his body up over the edge. He gasped his relief, his breath ragged and weak, and pulled himself all the way over the edge, scraping his chest without registering the pain. He lay there for what seemed like an eternity, staring into the sky and letting the sun bake the blood onto his skin. At some point, he slipped into blackness.

*              *              *

“Wait!” Lhaurel said, leaning back. “What about the genesauri? Do we know why they’re awake early this year? What are we doing to stop them?”

“We?”

Lhaurel bit her lip, realizing that she had included herself as a member of the Roterralar. Well, she was now. At least, she thought she was.

“Yes, we.”

Khari smiled. “We are conducting raids, killing those we can. We have patrols out trying to figure out the change in pattern and direction. We have not been idle.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What do we know?” Lhaurel’s voice had a bite of impatience to it.

Khari raised an eyebrow at the tone but replied anyway. “What we know is that we don’t know much. Now we must move on to your wetta training.”

Lhaurel ground her teeth in frustration. It was obvious that Khari knew more than she was saying. So much for truly being a part of the Roterralar. What were the clans doing in the Oasis? Had the last two clans made it there safely? Makin Qays had said that they had been lost. Where were they? She opened her mouth, but Khari held up a hand.

“Enough, Lhaurel,” she said. “Don’t press me more right now. I know I told you that I would speak freely, but on this one area I am forbidden. Let us proceed with your lesson. Don’t make me repeat myself again.” The stern edge crept back into her voice, hardening along with her features.

Lhaurel huffed, but swallowed the question she had been about to ask. She wasn’t giving up, but Khari’s expression made it clear that she would get no further satisfaction if she pursued that line of questions. Lhaurel would simply have to figure out some other way of getting the information she needed.

“You are a wetta,” Khari began. She slipped to the ground and knelt in the sand in front of Lhaurel. All signs of her previous weakness had vanished completely. “The clans say that we mystics consort with demons and have magical powers that can change the world around us. Well, it is true. At least in so much as having gifts that can manipulate the world around us. Our demons are no more or less real than those of any others within the seven clans, though no less powerful or personal as the denizens of the seven hells. Those who can use these gifts are called mystics.”

“Wetta.” Lhaurel rolled the foreign word over on her tongue. The power didn’t seem as frightening now.

“Don’t interrupt me. A wetta is a specific type of mystic. Your gifts lie in the understanding and manipulation of water. Though the other two types of mystic have gifts that are more situated for military prowess, ours is by far the most important. For without water in the desert there can be no life.”

Lhaurel silently agreed.

“Though they do not know it,” Khari continued, “they could not survive without our wettas. It was wettas that found the warrens and their hidden springs and wells. Wettas that found this place, with its rich underground reservoir. And it was wettas that discovered the ocean on the other side of the sands far to the north of here.”

Khari suddenly paused as if she had said too much. It was that, more than anything, which made Lhaurel suddenly realize what had been said.

“Wait,” Lhaurel said. “The Sidena only moved to their new warren two years ago when their last spring dried up. Are you saying that—”

Khari cut her off. “Forget that I said that. We must focus on the lesson.”

“But . . .”

“No,” Khari said. “Suffice it to say that the wetta are more important than what the other mystics sometimes make us out to be. That’s probably why there are so few of us. Regardless, you are a wetta. You’ve already shown your power twice before that we know about, both involving a broken waterskin and a rather annoying magnetelorium.”

Lhaurel scowled, and Khari, upon noticing the expression, smiled.

“Yes, Kaiden can have that effect on people.”

Lhaurel nodded grudgingly and tossed her head, her red locks cascading around her face.

“That’s what we call a ‘breaking.’ When someone born with the ability to use the mystics’ powers gets so mad or scared or elated that the barriers which hold the magic back are broken, those powers burst free in random, wild ways. In your case, the magic seized upon the closest water source, which was inside Kaiden’s waterskin.”

Lhaurel remembered the feeling of dread and nausea too well to refute what Khari was saying. She hadn’t believed it when Kaiden had confronted her during the sandstorm, had refused to acknowledge the evidence that was, even at that moment, coursing through her veins. But she couldn’t deny it any longer. She could feel the powers within her, just as she could feel the water reservoir deep beneath her and the presence of Khari and the other four score people that wandered through the massive labyrinthine warren.

“Our first lesson will be similar to our lesson with the sword. Practicing the basics. And the most basic place to begin with these gifts is becoming familiar enough with them to access them without having to be in an extreme emotional state.”

Lhaurel sighed. She wasn’t sure that she was going to enjoy having Khari as her trainer for both the sword and this.

Khari crossed her legs beneath her and then arranged her arms so that her forearms rested across her knees. She formed circles with her thumbs and forefingers and let her hands touch over her crossed feet. She nodded for Lhaurel to do the same.

Lhaurel shifted, copying the position.

“Close your eyes. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. In and out. In and out. Good. Now, picture in your mind a puddle of water. Its surface is calm. Unbroken. Perfect. A drop of water falls onto the surface. It merges with the water, forming ripples. Travel with the ripples. Find the moment that they fade into the water’s surface once more. That is the place where the power dwells.”

Lhaurel gasped from the sudden shock as dread spread through her, clutched at her heart, and froze in her veins. No, not dread. She recognized it now. It was a cool, icy power that coursed through her blood, that pumped through her being with every beat of her frantic heart. She felt it there, burning, hungry, eager to explode from her in one enormous burst of fantastic might. And at the same time, she felt a calm hinting of endless patience and a careful storage of strength.

She opened her eyes.

The power vanished.

Khari stared at her with an expression of bewilderment on her face. “Well, that was . . . interesting,” Khari said. She held a broken waterskin in her hand, the very waterskin that Lhaurel had taken from the worker women earlier.

Lhaurel breathed out, feeling suddenly drained. “How so?”

Khari held up the broken skin. “I was expecting something else. Most wetta, on their first true sojourn into their powers, pull the water from a skin and dissipate it to mist or else simply hold it in the air. When you reached out to the water, it simply exploded outward, as if it could no longer remain where it was.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there’s no control,” Khari said bluntly. “There’s only an ability to touch the water, but not to hold onto it.”

Lhaurel sniffed again and pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. She felt suddenly cold.

“Don’t despair,” Khari said, surprisingly tender. “You’re new. Control comes to everyone with time.”

Khari got to her feet and then helped Lhaurel up.

She felt weaker than she had expected, as if she had just done an exorbitant amount of work rather than explode a waterskin. And her powers seemed to have been dulled. Her sense of the warren was diminished, much less expansive than it had been before. She could only sense herself and Khari, whose presence had grown steadily stronger throughout the ordeal. Lhaurel could sense nothing within the eyrie. She found this discrepancy troubling.

A hesitant knock sounded at the door. Khari opened it, casting sunlight into the room.

Tieran stood highlighted in the doorway. He peered inside the room with a grin plastered on his face. “Lessons a little frustrating?” He winked at Lhaurel as if to say that Khari often got mad.

“Whatever do you mean, Tieran?” Khari asked. Her flat tone made his smile falter slightly, but he hitched it back up in an instant.

“Well, a moment ago all the water gourds shook so bad that we feared they would topple over. The aevians all flitted about as if they thought another sandstorm was coming. Kaiden and some of the others wanted to storm in here and find out what happened, but I just laughed and told them that you’d probably gotten mad at your ward. That was you just now, wasn’t it?”

Khari’s expression was all the answer he needed.

She turned to Lhaurel with a troubled expression on her face. “We really must focus on teaching you control. You will need to meditate each night. I will show you what to do.”

Tieran interrupted her then. “That will need to wait. The reason that Kaiden and the others were in the eyrie just now is that they were looking for you and I. They have called a meeting of the senior warriors, and since Sarial is off on a patrol, Kaiden is to fill in for her. Makin Qays thought you’d want to be there, too.”

“And we’re already late,” a cool voice said, bringing a sudden chill to the back of Lhaurel’s neck. “We should be going.”

Kaiden stepped up behind Tieran, looming over the shorter man. He wore a black leather vest and loose leggings. His eyes darted to the broken waterskin in Khari’s hand and then to Lhaurel. He grinned at her, though the humor didn’t reach his eyes. “Well, at least it’s not my waterskin this time,” he said. “Come along now, Khari, Tieran.” Lhaurel wasn’t invited. “We don’t want to be late to this meeting. I think we’ve gotten word from contacts in the Oasis. There’s news to report.” He was taunting her.

“And what exactly should I be doing while you’re all off chatting about the clans in the Oasis?” Lhaurel asked, trying to keep the biting edge out of her voice.