Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (23 page)

“Kaiden and the others are back,” she said, fixing on his presence. “They—” She hesitated. There was something wrong about the way he felt. He felt somehow lessened, weaker, like—like Honric did before he died. Without pausing to give an explanation outside of the color draining from her face, Lhaurel turned and dashed down the passageway toward the eyrie.

Her breath came in long, labored gasps, but she pushed herself onward, bursting into the eyrie only a few minutes after leaving the council room. To Lhaurel, it had felt like an eternity. A throng of people and aevians bustled about at the opposite side of the room, a cacophonous wave of indistinguishable sound rolling from them. She caught pieces of conversation and whispers between them among wails of grief and despair.

Lhaurel didn’t slow her run as she raced toward the group. Pushing through the birds and people there, not caring if she offended anyone, Lhaurel forced her way to the center of the group. Kaiden and another cast leader were there, stretched out in the sand and being attended to by a swarm of women.

“Tieran, the others?” she wondered aloud.

At the sound of her voice, Kaiden looked up. There were cuts and scrapes all over his face, and his clothes were torn and bloody. Lhaurel hoped the blood wasn’t his.

He met her eyes with tears in his own. He shook his head. “The karundin hit us.”

*              *              *

Later that day, after Kaiden and those who’d survived had had their wounds bound and had given their reports to Makin Qays and the others, Lhaurel found herself wandering down toward the underground lake. The news of the deaths had spread through the warren like the sands from a storm. Lhaurel herself felt numb. Nearly a score of people were dead. Most of them were people that Lhaurel knew at least by sight. And Tieran. Dear, sweet, lovable Tieran. She still half expected him to appear from behind a corner and wink at her roguishly, explaining that it was all part of some elaborate scheme.

But she knew he wouldn’t. The look in Kaiden’s eyes when he’d shaken his head had told her everything she needed to know. She hadn’t seen Tieran’s wife since, but she had searched for her with her powers. The woman was locked in her rooms, and Lhaurel was not about to disturb her. Instead, she searched out the one person that she did want to comfort. The story of what had happened had spread with the rumors as well—the story of the desperate battle that had ended the lives of so many. Too many. The party had come upon the location that the first patrols had found, a patch of sand that shone like glass and was ringed by dozens of thin metal poles that stuck up into the air. When they had landed, they hadn’t discovered anything of interest other than a confirmation of what they had already assumed. Something had turned the sand to glass.

They had been just about to leave when disaster had struck. Genesauri had burst up out of the sands around them, but not sailfins. Worse. Marsaisi. Lhaurel shuddered. She’d never seen one of the colossal beasts, but stories said that they were almost thirty spans long and could swallow a dozen men with room to spare within their gullets. They were also nearly impossible to kill.

And then the karundin had appeared. No one would speak of it, but the despair and terror were like a wildfire, burning away hope.

Lhaurel stepped into the misty air of the lake chamber and felt an overwhelming sense of calm and peace wash over her. Torchlight glinted from the far wall, flickering in a silent war against the shadows. Lhaurel walked along the path toward where Kaiden rested, his back against the wall. His head didn’t turn as she approached, but his eyes followed her. Lifeless eyes, sunken and hollow. She took a seat next to him and hugged her legs to her.

“Hi,” she said. Kaiden didn’t look at her, but when he spoke, his voice was cold.

“You don’t see it, do you? You’re just like Makin Qays and the rest.” The contempt in Kaiden’s voice was palpable. “Look at this place. There are enough rooms to support thousands of people here. We have running water, walls high enough to keep the genesauri at bay, and the aevians to take us wherever we wish to go. And yet we keep it to ourselves. We hoard what we have instead of sharing it. We let others die because we are too possessive of our power to take them in. And we justify our role as deity by remembering those we’ve lost with bands on our arms.”

He sighed in disgust and turned away from her, waving a dismissive, bandaged hand. A thin red mist seemed to envelope him, and some small bits of metal on the floor rose up and started spinning in intricate patterns in front of him. Lhaurel shifted closer and placed a hand on his sleeve, pulling it upward to reveal the strange banded tattoos that ran up his arm where bandages did not cover them.

“Tell me.”

His head shifted as if he were going to look at her, but then he stopped, tugging at his sleeve until it slipped from her grip and slid down over his arm to cover the tattoos.

“Not all of us are as lucky as you, Lhaurel,” he said softly. “Not all of us were saved when our families were taken by the genesauri. My clan didn’t know that I’d fallen. They didn’t stop when my father fell or when my sister suddenly vanished in a shower of sand and gnashing teeth. They didn’t know. They had to run.”

Lhaurel waited expectantly, similar memories washing through her mind. She had thought that he would start talking about the battle now, about how he had managed to escape. But this was something else. Something much more personal.

“I fell back to help my father. He’d stumbled on a rock and rolled down the side of a dune not far from where the Stoneways were. I leapt down after him, but before I had even made it down the side of the dune, before my father could even draw his sword, a sailfin shot up out of the sand and tore off his head.”

Lhaurel gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

“I still remember the hot, salty smell of his blood. I still see the genesauri’s fangs tear into his flesh. And that is when I broke. As my clan ran off down the stoneways, I felt the power swell within me. Felt it burn. My father’s sword came alive, killing the sailfin before it could return to the sands. I watched it die.

“And then Makin Qays showed up. Plunged out of the sky on the back of his aevian. They had waited until my clan was out of sight. They had waited. A few moments earlier they could have saved him. They could have saved him. I should have saved them.” His voice caught.

“Them?” Lhaurel asked, placing a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it away, still not looking at her.

“When they brought me here, I fought them. I fought them every single minute of every day. I hated them all. Hated that they could just sit there and let my father die. Hated that they could just sit here and make these grand claims that they’ve given up allegiance to their clans, but they still find ways of protecting those they care most about. They only saved me because one of their wetta sensed me break. They usually wait until they’re older, like you, but I broke young.

“I hated the Roterralar. I vowed that one day I would make each one of them pay the price for the blood on their hands. They would pay for their selfishness.” A sound broke through his words, a ragged, broken sob that only intensified with the echo. “Now I’m one of them. I let them die. I should have saved Sarial. I should have saved Tieran. I should have been able to save them all.”

His sobs grew hard and Lhaurel wrapped her arms around him, letting his tears drip onto her arms and roll into the lake.

Sleep eludes me. The dreams haunt me in that realm of eternal blackness and illusion. Dreams that I cannot escape. The work holds me now. Only the work. The creatures doubled in size in the first week. They seem to have slowed now. I had hopes that perhaps they would double again, but it appears that they will not reach that size. But there are others that I could try. Now that we have had success, we can try again with others.

-From the Journals of Elyana

Makin Qays drummed his fingers against the thick wood of the table. The staccato sound echoed only lightly against the walls, but even if it had sounded like a drum, he would not have heard it.

The world was quickly devolving into chaos around him. The stability he had worked so hard for during the last several decades was gone in the space of only a few fortnights. Half the Roterralar were dead, and the genesauri were descending upon the Oasis. For some reason, a part of him doubted that the walls would hold them at bay.

He swallowed and cursed his foul mood. Then he swallowed again and cursed his cursing. He had every right to be in a foul mood. The leader of the mystics was dead, Tieran was dead, and the responsibility of all the lives in the desert were suddenly resting upon his shoulders in a very real sense for the first time since he had gotten his first patch of grey hairs. He had always been the Warlord of the Roterralar, but the clans had needed little in the way of protection of late. Simple raids, diversionary measures, and the occasional assistance in finding a new warren where the water supply would more readily be found.

And now this.

He grunted and began to pace. His choices were limited. He could let the genesauri roam rampant and unchecked, or he could kill what he could before they reached the Oasis. The nagging, cautious part of him argued that the clans in the Oasis, united or not, would need the smaller numbers. He simply could not rely on the walls to keep them at bay. Maybe they could get the sailfin packs to turn back if they harried them enough. They’d only tried a few smaller raids. Maybe it was time to try something larger.

He grimaced and called one of the younger aevian riders to him. He gave the order.

*              *              *

Lhaurel fought down a wave of emotion as she tightened the girth strap on Fahkiri’s saddle and then checked the straps on her own harness. Four full casts were there, almost a score of aevian riders and a handful of mystics. Kaiden worked near her, his hands methodical but quick on the straps. He noticed her looking at him and smiled. She smiled back. He was recovering well.

She had not expected him to come on this raid, but he appeared along with the rest of those who had survived the disaster of the day before. There were still bandages on his arms, though he had removed the ones from his hands. She had held him long into the night while he let his emotions run. The intimacy had been overwhelming. Part of her had longed for him to reach up and kiss her, or hold her in return, his strong arms wrapping around her body and holding her tight. She blushed slightly as she remembered the dreams that had come that night after she had drifted off to sleep. They had involved far more than kissing.

Kaiden moved closer to her and whispered, “Stay close to me. Just do what I do, and you’ll be fine.” What was he doing comforting
her
? He was the one who should have been nervous. And yet her hand shook as she leapt up into the saddle and set about attaching the support leads.

Kaiden put a hand on her leg and opened his mouth to say something, but Fahkiri hissed at him. He shrugged, walked over to Skree-lar, and climbed into the saddle.

Lhaurel continued to feel the warmth of his touch on her leg long after he let go.

Near the mouth of the cavern, Khari leapt atop Gwyanth’s back and shouted for quiet. Tieran’s wife sat astride a small aevian behind her, her face dark and brooding. Lhaurel felt a pang of sadness that she’d never learned the woman’s name.

Makin Qays appeared through one of the side caverns, outfitted in fine robes of deep blue and with a sword belted at his waist. A large axe poked over one shoulder.

The few remaining whispers broke off.

“This is not a normal raid,” Makin Qays shouted, his voice carrying a weight and solemnity Lhaurel had not heard before. “We’re not there to just kill a few and run. We’re not fighting to delay. We are fighting to destroy.”

The stillness and silence that fell over the assembled warriors was deafening.

“Scores of our brethren have fallen. Let us repay them in kind!” Makin Qays whistled sharply and a massive aevian dropped from its roost high along the wall and landed in the sand in front of him. The majestic creature stood well above any of the other aevians, white plumage spotted with black and gold. Makin leapt up onto the creature’s back, not bothering to clip in, and the aevian lunged into the air.

“Follow me,” Kaiden shouted to Lhaurel over the din of flapping wings and shouts from the riders. “Bank left once you’re away and follow me down.”

“Down where?” Lhaurel tried to shout back, but her voice was lost in the rush of wind as Fahkiri launched into the air.

Lhaurel was buffeted by swirling wind from the aevians ahead of her. Her hair flapped and tugged at the base of her scalp as Fahkiri banked and followed the other aevians, turning in a great arc that took them back toward the face of the red sandstone cliff that hid the Roterralar Warren. She wished that she had tied it back or at least tucked it into her clothes. For a moment, she considered doing it as they flew, but just then Fahkiri banked again to avoid a group of aevians and their riders winging back up from beneath them. Light glinted off the sharp steel of the long spears they now clutched.

Skree-lar winged around to get in front of them. Kaiden gestured sharply to the left and Lhaurel glanced in the direction he was pointing. There was an opening in the sandstone wall, almost as large as the entrance to the eyrie, through which the aevians were entering and exiting again almost as quickly as they had landed. Beryl’s smithy.

Fahkiri landed a moment behind Skree-lar. As soon as they had, a pair of the long spears flew toward them through the air of their own accord. Kaiden snatched his out of the air and tucked it under one arm, the long haft extending a few spans upward and behind him. It was so long, in fact, that it would have dragged along the ground if he had been holding it anywhere close to the middle of the haft.

“Hold the lance like this,” Kaiden said. “Watch me when the fighting begins. Fly high. The smaller aevians are the bait. We are the real fighters.”

Lhaurel grabbed the lance from the air and mimicked Kaiden’s movements, holding it beneath one arm. Someone shouted at them to get out of the way, and with a sharp whistle from their riders, Fahkiri and Skree-lar wheeled about and launched themselves into the air as several other aevians landed in the forge. Lhaurel felt a thrill as they flew back along with the group. Part of the group climbed higher while a much larger portion dove toward the ground and remained a few spans above the dune tops. The young aevians, small and quick. They and their riders flew in intricate patterns over the sand.

Lhaurel fell into the joy of the flight. Wind tugged at the long lance in her hand. The haft was of pure, solid metal, though it was far lighter than she would have expected. The length was unwieldy and that added a sense of weight without having any real effect. The blade itself, almost a span above her head, was almost two feet in length and had a thick crosspiece at its base. She wondered what that was for.

They flew for what seemed like an hour. The walls of the Oasis appeared on the horizon, growing larger as they flew. There came a sudden shout from below and suddenly a high-pitched screeching filled the air. The scream of a sailfin.

Lhaurel looked down over Fahkiri’s wing.

Long, lithe bodies burst from the sands by the score, wind making the flesh on their long yellow fins vibrate and produce the irritating keening. And flying among them, swords, lances, and talons flashing, were the young aevians. They darted in between the masses of sinuous sailfin bodies, almost as agile as the genesauri themselves. Talons flashed, ripping gaping holes in genesauri flesh. Lances drove in behind the heads, piercing through the other side and getting stopped by the crosspiece. The riders left the lances embedded in the corpses, letting them fall back into the sand and getting in the way of the sailfins that continued to burst upward. Those who had already dropped their lances drew swords and lashed out, cutting sailfins out of the air, some falling back to the earth in more than one piece.

High above, Lhaurel reached out with her senses. She felt the blood coursing through the Roterralar veins. Felt the thrill of adrenaline and fear that drove them onward. The aevians felt of pride and anger, lashing out against these perversions of nature with all of their might and strength. There was an abiding hatred there, a sense of generations of enduring, pervasive animosity that manifested itself in their unabated desire to kill these creatures that plagued the sands.

Makin Qays lead a group down. Lances pierced sailfin flesh, pinning corpses to the ground to be devoured by their companions. Makin Qays rolled out of his saddle, landing in the sand and throwing up dust. Above him, Lhaurel watched with a panic-stricken grip on her lance as Makin Qays pulled his axe free and dashed across the sand, dodging the sinkholes left by earlier sailfins. The man was crazy. He was going to die.

He dashed toward the nearest group of sailfins, a roiling mass of spines and flesh tearing into one of their fallen companions. His axe spun in a dizzying arc. Blood spurted and sailfin bodies joined those pierced by the lances. Makin Qays seemed to disappear among the contorting forms, and then he appeared on the other side, axe dripping blood. His aevian dropped to the sand a moment later and Makin Qays leapt into the saddle, a cry of victory springing from his lips. The Roterralar rallied around him.

Stunning pain ripped through Lhaurel’s body, pain so intense that it made her muscles seize and she almost lost her grip on the lance. Only the safety tethers on her harness kept her in the saddle. Below her, a young woman on her aevian screamed in the jaws of a sailfin. Then the scream cut off. Her aevian sent a ragged screech into the air and dove into the pack of sailfins that swarmed over the fallen Roterralar like ants on a drop of honey. Talons flashed, blood flowed, and shrieks rent the air from both genesauri and aevian alike. And then all was silent.

Lhaurel gasped and tore herself away from the scene, pulling her senses back, bruised and bloodied. Before she had pulled back, she had sensed the genesauri below the sands. Sensed all of them. They extended outward for hundreds of spans. Thousands of them. Only one small group fought them here. One small group of many. Fear and despair clutched at her heart and stilled her pounding blood. Below her, more shrieks and screams made a jarring symphony of death and pain. Lhaurel refused to look down, but some part of her couldn’t resist the pull. She looked just as the larger aevians and their riders dove in a glorious wave of steel.

They shot through the air with speed unmatched by any other creature upon the sands. Lances held out before them, Makin Qays and Khari at their head, a wave of aevians crashed into the sailfins below with devastating accuracy. Blades pierced sailfin bodies and drove them into the ground. The lances remained buried in the sand as the aevians pulled out of the dives in a swirl of wind, sand, and feathers, swords hissing out of sheaths. War cries filled the air as wave after wave of the larger aevians plunged toward the earth and killed genesauri by the dozen. Makin Qays raised his bloody axe in the air, signaling another attack. Until that moment, Lhaurel had never understood why he garnered the respect he received from the Roterralar. Now she saw. He was a warrior at heart, not a leader of a peaceful people. This was a man who fought battles with his own hands, who rallied people to him when hope seemed lost.

Kaiden and Skree-lar appeared in the chaos and press of bodies. From so high up, Lhaurel couldn’t make out many details, but she could see that he didn’t have a sword, and his lance was no longer in his hand. For a moment she felt a hint of panic as a sailfin burst out of the sand and surged through the air straight toward him. Without even pausing to think about it, Lhaurel whistled sharply and urged Fahkiri into a dive. He screeched a war cry and plunged toward the earth, aimed at Kaiden. The wind bit at her eyes, but Lhaurel refused to close them. They remained locked on Kaiden and the approaching jaws of the sailfin. She willed Fahkiri to go faster, urged him downward. She readied the lance.

The sudden impact nearly tore her arm from its socket. The lance pierced genesauri flesh as easily as if it had been passing through butter, but then it struck something solid and was wrenched free from her grasp. She let it fall and readied herself against the sudden lurching, gut-wrenching change of direction that she knew was coming.

A single clarion note cut through it all, a solitary thought that gave her both peace and stability against the chaos and noise and death that filled her eyes and ears and nose around her. Kaiden was safe. She had saved him.

And then she and Fahkiri slammed into the ground. Her head struck something hard and the leather leads in her harness snapped. Momentum carried her off Fahkiri’s back. Sand filled her mouth and ground into her flesh, tearing the skin. As quickly as she could, Lhaurel scrambled to her feet, spitting. Dazed confusion clouded her mind for a moment, but then her gaze fell upon her brave aevian. Dark blood pumped from the hole through his chest.