Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (24 page)

No
. Lhaurel dropped to her knees, ignoring the blood that flowed from a dozen wounds.
Not Fahkiri. Please, no.

The sailfin’s corpse lay a few feet away, lance through its middle, purple spines along its back lay broken and covered in blood, the same deep, red blood that stained Fahkiri’s feathers and painted the sands. Lhaurel ignored the sounds of fighting around her, ignored the geysers of sand that heralded the arrival of even more genesauri.

Fahkiri cried weakly. His legs twitched spasmodically as the sailfin venom worked its way through his veins. Black eyes met Lhaurel’s. There was sadness there.

No, she was not about to give up on him so easily. Hands went over the wound, a meager bandage against the flow. Blood pumped up between her fingers, hot and strong. She could feel it. She could
feel
it.

She gasped and reached out to the other part of herself, the mystical part of her that rushed through her blood. The powers answered. The sense of the blood was much stronger than when she had felt the water. She could feel each pump of Fahkiri’s heart with a sudden clarity that wrapped around her and gave her strength. A thin film of red mist enveloped her. With every bit of strength she could muster, she willed the blood to stop flowing, willed it back into the aevian’s body. A reservoir of untapped power had suddenly opened up to her. Khari’s training provided her the path to channel it downward between her fingers.

The pool of red around her knees shrank. Blood flowed back up into Fahkiri’s body, forced back through the wound. Flesh knit together beneath her fingers, the blood within it obeying her command. She was master of the substance. She ruled it, and it bent to her will. The bloody mist around her dissipated as the wound sealed itself back up and Fahkiri rolled awkwardly to his feet, his screeches sounding as awed and confused as Lhaurel felt.

Lhaurel fell back onto her buttocks, realizing that she was shaking. Her hands trembled and shook, but they were clean of blood. Every last drop of it had been forced back through Fahkiri’s wound.

The aevian stretched his wings experimentally, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to. When he didn’t feel any pain he stretched his wings to their fullest, reared back his head, and screamed into the sky. Behind him, a sailfin dropped to the ground and sent a shower of sand into the air. Chunks of the sand hit the ground near Lhaurel and dusted her with a fine gritty spray.

She blinked and raised a shaky hand to brush the sand from her face. As she did so, the ground beneath her trembled. Something massive burst out of the sand next to her, sending her tumbling down the side of a dune. Fahkiri screeched in anger, rage, and pain as a genesauri as big around as a dozen sailfins together shot up out of the sand and then arched back downward, swallowing Fahkiri whole and plunging back into the depths of the sand.

Something inside Lhaurel broke. She felt it shatter as she watched the marsaisi’s long, stocky body and spotted tail slip back beneath the sand.

She had just saved him. Fahkiri had been dying and she had healed him. She had just saved him.

Her mind felt numb, and yet at the same time, a torrent of swelling power grew within her, and her senses blasted outward like a raging storm. The wind kicked up and shot outward from her as her power grew, the sands radiating outward in a circle and following the path of the whipping wind. The sand rolled outward in waves like ripples upon the surface of water.

Lhaurel felt the genesauri in the sands beneath her feet. She felt the marsaisi turning in the sand, pushing upward against the force beneath the sands that let it pass into the air. She felt it, felt the blood pulsing within it. Felt it and reached out to it.

A red mist formed around her. Power blossomed in her chest, a bittersweet burgeoning of pure strength that made the earlier reservoir seem like a candle beneath the sun. The red cloud grew as she continued to pull on the blood. The marsaisi burst up from the sand, twisting and writhing in a great and terrible pain.

Lhaurel stared at it without pity, ignoring its flailing body and the waves of sand that flew in the air and were blasted away from her by the screaming wind. She reached out to the blood within it. Reached out to and drained it from the creature’s body. And as she did, the power within her grew, grew to a strength that she simply could not contain. The wind screamed around her, whipping up dust. A scream of pure agony and terror and ecstasy ripped from her throat. The red cloud of blood and sand grew and thickened until she was hidden within it, a pool of red that bubbled and hissed as if it were steaming.

The marsaisi seemed to shrink, the skin wrinkling and desiccating until all that remained was skin plastered against bone and a thick, plated skull. It flopped onto the sand and remained there, lifeless. A dozen sailfins burst from the sand, screeching toward her.

Kaiden landed in front of her, shards of metal flying from both his hands in a steely cloud. The metal shards whipped through the air, forming a protective ring around him and Lhaurel. Anything that got close was torn apart by the swirling metal, spraying the air with blood and bits of ragged flesh.

Lhaurel remained in the pool of blood, laughing in the sheer power of it. It raged within her like a tempest contained within a bottle. Her blood boiled and then turned icy in turns, racing through her veins in time to the throbbing, roiling masses of the blood that surrounded her in the air. A horn sounded, calling for a retreat. She sensed them leaving, sensed the hundreds of dead and dying genesauri here. And then she knew no more.

The clans have given me another to assist me. I do not know her name. I fear to ask it. Will the enemy use her against me, too? Perhaps I will send her away before it happens. She shouldn’t be here.

-From the Journals of Elyana

Gavin sat with the greatsword across his lap, reading one of the scrolls in the torchlight. The scrolls were in the ancient script of his people, the Orinai, the language that his grandmother had spent so long teaching him. As a child, he had thought it wonderful to have a secret language that only he and his grandmother knew. As he’d grown older, he had wondered at its use. But now, reading the scroll, he thanked his grandmother for her constant, persistent teachings.

Hope is a solitary flame standing alone against a gale. Will alone cannot keep it alight—it requires fuel. Our hope rests close to me now, a feeble force against the coming storm. But it is all we have. There are some among the elders who would not have me try.

But the people have spoken. They accepted my plan. Me. The one that they call crone. Witch. Outcast. Now their lives rest in my hands.

What is the test of honor? To uphold the flame, or to snuff it out?

The decision has fallen to me.

The enemy has come.

The rest of the page was faded, but Gavin shuddered as he carefully rolled up the scroll and placed it back within the glass. As he did, he pondered the question in the message. What was the test of honor? His grandmother’s dying wish was that he uphold the flame.

The writings here spoke of things that didn’t exist in the Sharani Desert. Green plants and flowers and animals that would never survive the harshness of the desert adorned every page as if they were commonplace. They reminded him of the stories his grandmother had told him, tales of Eldriean and the time before the enemy came.

A noise sounded down the hall, echoing strangely against the surface of the lake. Gavin stilled, listening as it grew steadily louder and louder until the distinctive sound of it became plain. Footsteps. Someone was coming. He stowed the scroll into a pocket and rose into a crouch, greatsword held at the ready. Stepping back into the shadows, he waited in silence.

Voices drifted down to where he hid, different than the first and much less refined.

“You’ll get the work done, or you’ll be the first ones we feed to the genesauri.” A commanding voice, the contempt not even masked in the slightest.

“I don’t answer to you, m’lord. I’ll do as I’m told by me and mine.” The second voice was firm, yet there was a careful edge to it, as if he were not sure how the man he spoke to would respond.

A sickly hiss echoed through the room, the sound of bare steel sliding against leather.

Gavin almost smiled as the first speaker spoke again, his voice now flat. “You can answer to me, or you can answer to my dagger here. The choice is yours.”

The rest of the exchange was lost as the voices faded away and the speakers moved on. Gavin relaxed slightly but decided that it was time to move. He wished that he could have taken more of the scrolls with him, but the one he had would have to suffice. He needed to see more of this place, travel through the halls and see what was going on. He had a growing suspicion that this place had once housed an ancient and forgotten people, the Orinai, or some of their first descendants. His grandmother would have loved to have seen this place. He felt compelled, now, to walk it for her. And a part of him burned with curiosity to discover exactly who it was that now called this place home.

He moved forward cautiously, crossing the narrow walkway in the middle of the vast lake as quickly as he dared without creating too much noise. His wounds slowed him. He paused at the entrance to the lake room, but upon hearing nothing he moved on. He only made it a few steps before he came face-to-face with an unfamiliar, aged face.

The man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, and then they narrowed, and he reached for his sword.

Gavin hesitated for only a moment less. With a sudden burst of strength, he shoved the man aside before he could draw his sword and dashed down the passage behind him. He turned down the first turn he came to.

Behind him, the man shouted for aide, screaming of intruders. Gavin recognized the voice through his panicked flight. It was the dagger-wielder he had overheard before.

Gavin burst into another room, large and spacious in its expanse. It was a dead end. In desperation, he searched for another way out, but there was nothing.

Behind him he heard his pursuer enter the room and slow to a measured walk. A cautious man, one who knew the folly of leaping into a situation blind.

Gavin cursed. He turned and came face-to-face with the older man again.

The man smiled, revealing gaps in his otherwise straight teeth.

“What’s a little whelp like you doing down here?” the man asked.

The only response Gavin offered was to raise his sword.

The old man’s eyes narrowed again. He recognized the surety of Gavin’s movements.

Gavin almost smiled back at him but forced his expression to remain blank and calm. His grandmother’s teachings sounded in his mind, reminding him to remain in the moment where the ripples on a pond faded and stillness began. That was the moment of balance.

The older man shifted into an aggressive stance and waded in without any further preamble. Gavin spun his blade up to block the blow, his arms tingling from the power behind it, and then shoved the blade way. They exchanged a series of quick blows, each one trying to get a gauge on the other. The other man’s smile slowly returned, and Gavin felt a cool chill prickle at the base of his skull.

The man’s blade slipped through his guard and scored a minor cut along his leg. Gavin cursed at the searing pain that raced down his leg and felt the warm, stickiness drip down its length. He slapped the blade aside before it could dart upward and do any more serious damage, but he realized in that moment that he was seriously outclassed. He knew the forms, knew them as well as anyone could without actual combat, but the man before him had weathered a thousand battles against man and beast alike. This man was the embodiment of practical application.

No!
He would not die here at this strange man’s hand. He had survived without a warren or a clan to protect him since he had been a small child.

Gavin steeled himself and attacked, the greatsword in his hand spinning in rapid, arcing cuts that worked his opponent’s blade up and kept the man rocking back on his heels. Gavin stepped forward and forced the man back a step. Wind sounded in Gavin’s ears, and he felt
something
surging through him and up his arms.

Gavin’s blade spun in, seeming to glow with a crackling white light, and scored a small hit on the old man’s arm. It was small and barely drew blood, but the old man spat a curse and screamed in pain, stumbling back.

Gavin had survived the deaths of his parents and grandmother, had done the impossible, had conquered the Oasis walls. Energy crackled along his blade. He let it go.

He blocked a series of rapid thrusts and then deflected the older man’s blade slightly to the right, letting go of the hilt with his left hand and bringing his elbow up to smash into the other man’s nose. It shattered.

He had scaled the walls of the Oasis and discovered the place where legends claimed that the enemy had been driven back. He was not going to die here.

With a shout, Gavin took two quick steps forward and brought his sword spinning down in a great overhead chop, the glow from the sword illuminating the crags in the old man’s face, now running with blood. The old man smiled suddenly and drew his dagger in a lightning-quick motion. He caught Gavin’s blade between his dagger and sword, which he’d crossed before his face. Before Gavin could reset, before he could even react, the old man pulled the dagger out from underneath the sword and slammed it into Gavin’s gut.

*              *              *

Makin Qays sat with his chin in his hands, elbows resting on top of the thick wooden table in the council room. Blood still stained his robes from the morning’s battle. Only Khari was in the room with him, cheeks stained with the tears of grief. There was no one else to fill the empty chairs. This was not a council meeting. This was a meeting where a man and his wife discussed their inevitable deaths.

“Is there any sign of them?”

Khari moved around behind him and placed her arms around his neck, leaning in close. She massaged his shoulders, though her own face was strained and the grey in her hair appeared more white than grey.

“The last anyone saw of the two was when Kaiden picked her up and got her onto Skree-lar’s back. Everyone else was so busy with the regroup they didn’t see if they actually made it into the air.”

“So they’re lost now, too, then?”

“It may be that our time has ended, dear one,” she said, her voice quiet and resigned. “I do not know why the genesauri have come. But much blood has been spilt because of them. We must have killed over a hundred of the beasts, and yet they continued onward as if fleeing the flames of the seven hells. I—” She hesitated, and her hands stilled on his shoulders. “I don’t know what else to do but continue on with honor.”

“You saw them on the way back here, my wife,” Makin said, taking her hand in his own. Both were spotted with blood. “There are thousands of them. They’ll fall on the Oasis like a sandtiger on a lamb. They’ll be slaughtered. I can’t order the Roterralar to die along with them.”

Khari removed her arms from around his neck and rounded to sit on the table in front of him. She took his head in her hands and looked deeply into his eyes.

“When you became Warlord of the Roterralar, you swore an oath to protect the seven clans. You vowed to uphold the flame. You swore that you would protect them until the last breath of life left your body and the last drop of blood dripped from your veins. We must uphold that oath, or all the deaths are meaningless. Sarial died in vain. Tieran died in vain. All of them.”

“You’d have us die, then? Throw away our lives for people that don’t even know we exist?”

“If we are to die,” she replied, her eyes hardening, “then we die together. We die with them, defending the Oasis from the genesauri that would wipe them out.”

“We’d reveal ourselves.” It was not a question.

“We have no choice. The Roterralar barely survived with the numbers that we had before the deaths. Now we number only a few score. We either rejoin our parent clans, or we will cease to exist altogether. Our choice has been made for us. The time for decisions is over. The time for action is upon us.”

Makin Qays slowly lowered his hands onto the table, curling his long, worn fingers inward to form tight fists. He raised his head to look at Khari and his eyes blazed with a sudden fire.

“So be it.”

A few minutes later he stood in the greatroom, the remnants of the Roterralar arrayed below him. Makin Qays looked down at them, studying each face in turn. Wives and mothers clutched children or held their husband’s hands. Yet there was no fear in their faces, only resolve. He smiled.

“The time has come for us to uphold our oaths,” he said, not even needing to raise his voice to be heard by everyone in the room. “I leave for the Oasis as soon as I am done here. The Rahuli will know we are here after today. The Roterralar will cease to exist, one way or another. Anyone who will come with me to uphold the flame is welcome, but know that we go to die.”

He turned and headed for the eyrie. Everyone old enough to hold a lance came with him.

*              *              *

Beryl looked up from his work when Khari entered. Sweat beaded on his brow and dripped down with a sharp hiss onto the hot metal he was working. He could have finished the task using his other abilities a dozen times over in the amount of time it had taken him just to get to this initial heating, but his mind needed the work. He had to keep the
voices
at bay.

“We’re emptying the warren, Beryl,” Khari said, approaching him despite the heat. “Everyone that can hold a lance or ride an aevian is needed.”

Beryl grunted, turning back to his work. He knew what she wanted, but she was going to have to ask. It wouldn’t change his answer. He couldn’t go back out there. He didn’t want to see what had become of his home. He didn’t want to see what Elyana had done so many years ago.

“Beryl, we need you.” Khari stepped closer, near enough for the sparks from the metal when his hammer struck it to come dangerously close to hitting her. “You’re our strongest magnetelorium. You’ve been around for as long as any of us can remember.”

Beryl shook his head. The voices in his head clamored for a chance to speak. Yes, he could fight again. He had the strength, had the power. It swelled within him, strengthening the voices—heightening the madness.

“No!”

“But you must!”

Beryl set down his hammer. The forge furnace flared near them, washing them in a wave of heat. Beryl clenched his teeth, dampening his temper and struggling to keep the voices as bay.

“One crippled old man won’t make any difference,” he said softly.

Khari stepped up to him and put a hand on his arm, gripping it firmly.