Song of the Sea Spirit: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles) (38 page)

No, she realized, the blood draining from her face. This was what the Legion had been afraid of. This was the secret they’d wanted to kill Jora to protect, and now, they were going to kill the people of Kaild to keep the information from reaching them.

There were only five assassins. The men of Kaild, those retired soldiers who guarded the town from raiding pirates and brigands, were more than a match for a handful of soldiers.

If she could get there in time to warn them.

Chapter 21

Jora awoke to find herself face down in the bottom of the boat with no memory of how she got there. The boat was kissing a sandy beach with each push of the waves, then pulling back with the undercurrent before being pushed forward again. The sun was down, though the sky wasn’t yet dark. She climbed out of the boat and tried pulling it farther onto the beach so it wouldn’t be taken from her at flow tide. It took all her strength to pull it close to soft sand, and when she had, her legs gave out from under her. She fell to the ground with a grunt and lay there, panting, her eyes barely open. Sand got into her mouth, but she scarcely noticed. She was too hungry to care. Too tired.

She awoke to the feeling of something crawling on her cheek. She wiped her hand down the side of her face, dislodging a fly, but the persistent insect returned, and Jora surrendered to it.

The next time she awoke, the sun was up, though not high. Roughly nine o’clock, she figured. Pushing herself up, she thought about missing another sunrise. The memory of the Spirit Stone tone changing beneath her hand, its resonance humming through her body, made her feel sad. She already missed it, and it was unlikely she would ever experience the miracle of those wondrous singing statues again in her lifetime.

She climbed to her feet, though every movement hurt, from hips to fingertips. Perhaps she was close enough now that she could make it the rest of the way to Kaild on foot and still reach it before the assassins did. Rowing across the water was quicker than riding on land, even at her pace, for the route was more direct.

Then again, a longer journey meant more time before her next meal. And there was the Point to consider, a long stretch of land that she would have to either row around or walk across, but there was a village on that point, people who’d done enough trading with Kaild that she might recognize one or two. She could trade the dinghy for a meal and perhaps borrow a fleet-footed horse.

Rowing it was, then.

Summoning all her strength and will, she rowed out past the waves, groaning through gritted teeth with the effort burning in her back and shoulders. If she got far enough out into the sea, the rowing would become easier, and the promise of a rest spurred her on.

At last, she tilted the oars up out of the water. They were so heavy, she had to lean on them with the weight of her upper body to get them over the sides of the dinghy. God’s Challenger, she was tired. If she made it to Kaild in time, she would sleep for three days.

When. She would make it in time.

The sound of blowing water caught her attention. To her left, a dorsal fin glided in an arc under the surface. Sundancer? She fumbled for the bag, hooking it with her foot and dragging it closer, and dug inside for the flute. She could barely summon the strength to lift it to her mouth, let alone blow into it with dry and sunburned lips.

Sun Dancer friend
, was all she had the strength to play.

Please, hear me. She bent her head over the flute, held up only by her weak arms resting on her knees.
Sun Dancer friend.

From a distance she heard a reply:
“Autumn Rain is Sun Dancer friend
.
”

The dorsal fin broke the surface and approached the dinghy slowly.

“Sundancer,” Jora said weakly. She could do little more than weep with joy and relief. “Please help me.”

The dolphin’s smiling face rose up out of the water, and she twittered enthusiastically.

“I’m so glad to see you, friend,” Jora croaked, her throat as dry as her burned skin. “I need help.”

She stumbled to the boat’s pointed bow and tossed the rope over the side. After collapsing back onto the seat, she played,
“Pull?”

“You are not well?”

“Hungry,”
she played back.
“Tired.”

“I bring fish.”

Jora didn’t think she would ever be hungry enough to bite into a live fish, but she appreciate the thought.
“I not eat fish,”
she answered. It was easier than explaining that she didn’t have a knife to scale and gut a fish, let alone the strength to gather wood, build a fire, and cook it.

“I pull. You want go home?”

“Yes.”

The boat sailed through the water at such a remarkable speed, her hat flew off her head before she could lift her hand to stop it. Though she regretted the loss of her sister’s gift, the wind felt good against Jora’s sunburned skin. She closed her eyes, grateful for Sundancer’s help.

“Not take long
,
”
Sundancer whistled. She sped along inches below the surface, breaking now and then to get a breath.
“You return to big city after?”

“No.”
As much as she wanted to converse with her dolphin friend, she didn’t have the strength in her arms to lift the flute to her mouth.

“You saw singing stones?”

Jora sat up. Sundancer knew about the Spirit Stone? Was the fact that it was shaped like a dolphin more than a coincidence?
“Saw
,
”
she replied.
“Felt. Heard. Beautiful.”

“Good,”
Sundancer replied. And that was all she said until early afternoon, when she released the rope in the shallow water near the shoal where she and Jora had first met.

But there was something disturbing about the unusual quiet.

“Caution, Autumn Rain.”

A shiver ran down her spine. Whatever it was Sundancer felt, Jora felt it, too.

He felt himself screaming. Felt it in his throat, in his chest, in the muscles of his arms and legs. It was a raw scream that bled from the inside as it stretched and grew like a pitch-black blanket over his vision. He tried reaching for the trees, hoping that if he held on tightly enough to that final image of the world, it wouldn’t fade away completely. But eventually, darkness engulfed everything.

It went on for what seemed like hours, that blackness, that sense of being nowhere. He didn’t know when he stopped screaming, or if he ever did, but he couldn’t hear it anymore. Couldn’t feel the ground beneath his body or his fingers rubbing together or whether his mouth was open or closed. All he had were his thoughts. All he knew was that this was death.

Remember
, he thought. If he could remember his life, it wouldn’t be over. He thought of Jora and Micah, his mother and father, his friends Korlan and Rasmus and Voster and Joh. He even remembered Turounce, the man who’d been his worst nightmare.

Eventually, a glow appeared in the blackness. He turned toward it, hoping it would rescue him from this lonely existence. As it grew brighter, he felt himself being drawn toward it like being sucked into a tornado.

He saw a sky form above, not the pretty blue under which he’d died but gray and speckled. Feeling returned to his fingers, his mouth, but it was different now. He was becoming... something else. His body was changing. His thoughts were changing.

Remember
, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut.
Remember
.

There were three of them. Three men. Three blades. Three sharp pains.

He remembered thinking he had to save someone. Who? Who did he have to save?

Her. He had to save her.

Jora.

He had to save Jora.

He opened his eyes and struggled to his feet, certain he’d been here before. If only he could remember. He had to get back to save her. Back... where? He looked around. This place was different. This wasn’t where he’d been... killed.

Killed. Yes, that was right. He’d died once.

That man had killed him. That man with the goatee and the foul, foul breath and the sharp pain in his chest. No. That wasn’t right. It was so long ago. Another lifetime ago.

Remember
. He looked around again.

He was back in that place, the place where he’d gone before. Where there’d once been misshapen monsters reaching for him, pulling him under, drowning him in their vileness, now were just... others, both familiar and strange. He knew them and yet he couldn’t remember where or when they’d met. These weren’t those nightmare beings that had tried to keep him in the dead place.

And yet, they were.

Except now, he was no longer afraid. Now, he was among friends. Now, he was one of them.

He looked down at his body, at the tree limbs he had for arms, the trunks for legs, the branches for fingers, and he was pleased. He tried to take in the warm, soft air and found he no longer needed to breathe. The air seeped into his bark-like skin.

The first thing Jora noticed as she headed through the trees to Kaild was the silence. It crept across the back of her neck and down her spine, and she stopped, listening harder. No children were laughing, no people were talking. The smell of meat roasting had been replaced by something foul, like... death.

She wanted to run into the center of Kaild, to call for her mother and father, for Briana and Tearna and Cacie, but her body stiffened like a cold corpse, refusing to move. Something was horribly wrong.

With one hand on a tree trunk to steady herself, she opened the Mindstream and searched for her mother... and found nothing.

No.

She searched for her father, sister Cacie, and brother Loel—all of them gone.

Gunnar, too, and Briana and Tearna and Nuri and Anika. All gone. She was too late.

She stumbled, her legs giving out from under her, and she fell to her knees onto the forest floor. Despair filled her heart, her thoughts. How could they all be gone?

Using her own thread to go backward in time, to observe events of the previous night, she found her mother’s thread first, saw her dress for bed, crawl under the covers, and settle quietly into sleep. In the deepest part of the night, someone moved. Then, someone was choking, gurgling. Jora’s stomach lurched.
No, please let this not be real.

Jora glimpsed movement and jumped to that person—a man. A stranger. He moved silently into another room, but all Jora could sense were darker shadows among lighter ones.

And a glint of wet steel.

No.

Her stomach convulsed, but she hadn’t eaten anything for it to purge.

He entered another home where a lamp was burning. A woman was asleep in a rocker, an infant in her arms. Jora watched him, a shaven-headed soldier covered in blood, creep toward them.

No
, Jora thought.
Please don’t.

She couldn’t bear to watch what he did to them, but she saw his face as he did it. It was filled with madness and rage, and a perverse pleasure gleamed in his eyes.