Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (22 page)

“How dare you lift a weapon against me, slave,” the man boomed in an accented voice that rolled like thunder. “Drop that thing and go fetch your healers, if you have any.”

Slave?
Gavin didn’t drop his blade. He was outweighed by almost a hundred pounds, he guessed, and the man had at least a foot and half of reach on him, not to mention the crackling bolts of energy dancing up the giant’s arms. How was he doing that anyway?

“Did you hear me?” the giant shouted. He reached down for a massive war hammer that Gavin hadn’t noticed before.

Gavin didn’t back down. He took a step forward as the man raised the hammer, the crackling energy on his arms a brilliant white light that danced off the metal hammerhead and crackled intoxicatingly.

“I don’t know who you are,” Gavin said, keeping his voice calm and flat. “But I am not a slave. If you and your friend are sick, we have healers back at the Roterralar Warren.”

The giant didn’t release the magic or put down the hammer. “Go and fetch them from the place of the earthen home.”

Gavin’s brows came to together slightly before he corrected his expression. “The warren is several day’s walk from here. But we can take you there.”

“We?”

Gavin realized his mistake even as the words slipped from his lips. The giant man’s eyes searched the desert and he shifted slightly in his stance. No, he swayed. The giant blinked a few times and Gavin noticed the slight tremble of the hammer. He’d thought it was an effect of the crackling energy, but could it possibly be that he was injured too?

“Are you alright?” Gavin asked, stepping forward.

“Get back!”

The giant steadied himself and whipped his free hand in front of him. Energy sprayed out in a wide arc, crackling and zipping into the stoneway pillar, branching down into the ground, up into the air, toward Gavin, and some even back toward the giant. Gavin didn’t know what to do. He stood there, frozen, unable to move as time seemed to slow. Then Farah was suddenly there. The small woman snatched the energy out of the air and sent it downwards in a cascade of molten sand and shards of glass. Gavin was up beside her in an instant. He reached toward the energy as well and drew it in. Energy crackled in his own hands and he looked up at the blond-haired giant.

The man blinked at them a few times and swayed on his feet. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. The energy running up and down his arms died a moment before the man’s knees gave out and he toppled forward toward the sand. Without pausing to think and acting purely on instinct, Gavin dismissed the energy he’d gathered and darted forward, catching the giant before he landed on top of his companion. He grunted with the massive effort, struggling with the man’s weight, and then Farah was there beside him to help ease the man to the ground.

Gavin turned to thank her, but instead of a smile on her face, he saw a thundercloud. Farah balled up a fist, her right one—the left held the red glass cleaver—and, before Gavin could react, punched him square on one shoulder. He grunted from the surprising force and odd little sting and backed up defensively, throwing up his hands.

“What was that for?” he demanded.

Farah scowled at him and placed her hands on her hips. For a moment, Gavin saw a striking resemblance to his grandmother in that pose, then the tirade began.

“What were you thinking, jumping in all alone like that! You were supposed to wait for me. You could have gotten yourself killed. And then what did you do? You go and have to be all noble and offer aid instead of just sticking them with a knife and being done with it. You sun-blinded, goat-brained idiot! You . . .”

Suddenly she darted forward and Gavin tried to dodge out of the way, but Farah caught him in a rough embrace and squeezed him tight, burying her face into his chest.

Gavin blinked in confusion for a moment, but then returned the hug. It felt good to have her in his arms, even if he didn’t really follow what had just happened. He was starting to think it may be a constant state of confusion for him where Farah was concerned. Part of him was mildly annoyed, but the larger part of him enjoyed feeling needed and wanted.

“You fool,” she whispered into his chest, voice catching. “You can’t do things like that and survive very long. Sands, how did you ever make it as an outcast?”

Gavin chuckled and kissed the top of her head, breathing in her sweet scent. “With a lot of help from a very patient, very opinionated grandmother.”

“You’re a blustering, naïve, sands-cursed idiot. You’re lucky I was there to save you.”

“I know.”

Farah released him and stepped back, scrubbing under her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. She sniffed and then turned to look at the two massive men sprawled on the ground.

“What do we do with them? Who
are
they?” Her tone held just a hint of awe in it, and fear.

Gavin didn’t answer at first, instead dropping to a knee next to the larger, stouter man who had been prone since they’d first seen him. He had a wan, sallow complexion to his otherwise pale-skinned face, but there was a solidness to it as well, like weather-worn rock. The man’s eyes were closed, but Gavin peeled one back to peer down into the eye itself. The dark parts in the middle were small and contracted and the eyes flitted back and forth without seeing. He moved from there to the crude bandage, wrinkling his nose against the smell. He lifted one corner of the blanket-bandage and was nearly overwhelmed by the stench. Farah made a small noise of disgust and stepped backward. Beneath the tattered shirt and gangrenous pus, the man’s chest was covered in long, deep gashes. The skin around them was wet with blood and fluid, but red and hot to the touch. He was boiling up with infection and fever. Gavin hurried over to the other man and more carefully checked the bandages he found on the man’s back and shoulders. The same long gashes, like the marks a sandtiger’s claws would make.

“Call the aevians,” Gavin ordered. “Bring me the waterskins and the food, then fly straight back to the eyrie. Find Khari or Lhaurel and bring them here.”

Farah opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. She looked at him, a question clear in her expression. He returned the gaze flatly, then nodded toward her and made an impatient gesture. She did as he asked. Gavin checked the wounds again, trying to decide how best to approach cleaning and dressing them. Nabil and Talyshan plunged from the sky a moment later, the larger aevian in the lead and giving out a fearsome shriek as he came to land near the stoneway pillar. Farah grabbed the supplies from both of them, though Nabil hissed at her and hopped closer to Gavin. He seemed unusually agitated, though Gavin was more concerned with washing the wounds of the taller man with some of the water Farah had passed to him.

“Fly fast. You’ll be back before anything can go wrong,” Gavin said.

“Why don’t you go? I can stay and watch these two. I’ve been a mystic far longer than you. If that one wakes up and tried to attack you again, how will you defend yourself?”

“Do you know anything about healing?”

“No.”

Gavin turned and looked Farah in the eye. “I do. I’ll see what I can do to keep them alive until you get back. Don’t worry about me. Now go on.”

Farah sniffed, opened her mouth again and then snapped it shut. She nodded and, without any further preamble, leapt up into Talyshan’s saddle and hooked the leads in their proper place. Gavin hadn’t noticed her putting the flight harness back on. She gave him another look, one that Gavin thought was either one of worry or anger, then whistled sharply and Talyshan launched into the air. Nabil shrieked after them as they climbed higher and higher into the air. Gavin watched them go until they disappeared from his sight, then he turned back to the two men.

Kaiden leaned against the stoneway pillar between them.

“The second Iteration of water is the blood mage, though they are never called such. Of these, there are only seven. The Seven Sisters, to be precise. They overlap in abilities with their prior Iteration, but also hold common portions of each of the other eight.”

—From
Commentary on the
Schema, Volume I

Brisson ignored the guilt of slipping down into the bath water. He was the master’s new steward now, after all, wasn’t he? It was cold but the lingering perfumes the petty Storm Ward poured into it like they weren’t more expensive than a dozen slaves wafted over him. The Great One had left it filled after speaking with the master, assuming the slaves would take care of it. Brisson had conveniently forgotten to mention it to the other slaves.

He sighed and tried to float. He’d seen some of the younger Orinai children doing it when he’d been a slave on another plantation further to the east, but couldn’t figure it out. Instead he bobbed up and down in the shallow end of the pool, years of grime, dirt, and sweat finally loosening their hold. Even his matted, brown hair loosened and flecks of dirt floated away, revealing a lighter colored brown to his hair and lighter olive skin tone than had previously been present. He could almost see why the Great One enjoyed baths so much.

Almost.

The amount of work it required of the house slaves, the amount of water dragged up from the well, the time required to get the temperature just right—that was just plain stupid. Why would anyone want to waste that much water? This though, this wasn’t waste. The water had already been used once, hadn’t it? This was an experiment. Yeah, that was it. This was an experiment to see if they’d been able to get the baths to the Great One’s liking.

Brisson grinned and scrubbed at his well-muscled arms to take away the dirt and grime. His fingers ran over the bumps and ridges of countless scars, though he paid them little heed. In the twenty-six years of his life, he’d lost count of the times he’d been beaten, whipped, or tossed about by one Orinai or another. They didn’t even have to be Great Ones. It was something in their blood. They were meant to be damned nuisances. It was simply what they were.

A door creaked, announcing someone entering the room. Brisson started guiltily and almost sucked in half the bath water. He spluttered and coughed, spraying water onto the tiled floor as Ellia walked into the room. Brisson was about to scold her for walking in on him like this—a fifteen-year old child walking in on a man in his nakedness, what was the world coming to—when he noticed the stumbling way she was walking, the paleness of her normally olive skin, and the sunken, hollowness around her eyes.

“Ellia!” Brisson cried, struggling through the water and up the steps. “What happened, girl?” He bounded up the steps and over to the young woman, any thoughts of propriety and modesty falling away. The girl staggered and stumbled into his arms. He was just quick enough to catch her before she fell.

“Ellia!” Brisson shook her roughly. She stared up at him, eyes unfocused. “Curse the Sisters, girl, what is it?”

Ellia reacted to the curse as if slapped, shuddering in his hands. “The Sisters,” she hissed. “The Sisters . . .”

“Dammit, girl.” Brisson held her up with one hand as she continued to mutter incoherently and used his other hand to feel for cuts or breaks on her body. He almost missed it. A large cut lay across one wrist, deep and deadly. But there was something wrong. Where was all the blood? A cut this deep should have . . .

His thoughts trailed off as his subconscious came to a horrid realization. Color drained from him and he found himself pulling Ellia into his arms, hugging her close. He wasn’t sure which one of them it was who was trembling. After a moment, he pulled away from the girl, tears in his eyes. She mumbled and muttered under her breath, but it was weak and completely incoherent. What strength she must have had, to move at all after being drained by one of the Sisters. There was nothing he could do for her now. She was as good as dead.

“They’re here, aren’t they?” he asked, though he knew she couldn’t answer. She blinked up at him, then went limp in his arms. Her chest continued to rise and fall for a few more moments, noises and commotion beginning to drift into the room from outside, then her chest fell for the last time and became still.

Brisson laid her gently on the floor. There was nothing else to be done. He hurried over to where he’d left his clothes and pulled them hurridly on as the noises swelled and the sounds of screams and pain rose in pointed accompaniment. He smelled smoke, like acrid fog, begin to seep into the room. Part of him wondered what the Sisters were doing here, what they wanted, but he’d learned long ago that the ways of the Sisters, the ways of the Orinai, didn’t make sense. The master had warned him this may happen, though Brisson hadn’t given the warning much heed.

To question, even to indulge in the simple things like taking a bath, was pointless when it could all be taken away from you on a whim. The Sisters were at the head of the Orinai’s religion, they were Gods as far as the slaves were concerned. Part of him wondered if the arrival of the Sisters was a punishment for his lack of propriety in taking a bath in the Great One’s bathing chamber.

He walked to the door and poked his head out into the night. Several of the outbuildings were ablaze, the orange light highlighting hundreds of silhouettes dashing across the fields. In the distance, torches and smaller lights gleamed, hundreds of them, thousands of them. An army.

Someone ran past and Brisson grabbed them, his arm nearly getting ripped from its socket in the process. The man, Brisson didn’t know his name, turned on him, fear coloring all his features.

“What’s going on?” Brisson demanded.

The man wrenched his arm free. “The Sisters are here. They got the message the master tried to hide.”

Brisson swallowed hard and let the man run away. The master, Nikanor, had been worried about the Sisters coming to the Plantation. The message Nikanor had received hadn’t stopped with the master, though he’d implied to the Great One called Samsin that it had. Brisson hoped Nikanor had at least gotten the time to warn them. The master had left instructions, in the event the Sisters came before he returned. Brisson struggled to remember them.

He grabbed the next person he saw, taking strength in having orders, having something to do. He was not a man of action, no slave was really, but he did follow orders well. It had been ingrained in him since birth, since his grandfather’s grandfather’s birth.

“Gather whoever you can,” Brisson ordered. “Make for the mountains north of the gap, the master’s orders.”

The man Brisson had grabbed hesitated for a moment, the fear slowing his reasoning and response to the words. Then the order registered and, like any good slave, he galvanized to action around the order.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and scurried away into the night.

Good
. Brisson steeled himself for the next part of his orders. He hurried through the night, stopping those he came across and issuing the same orders. Soon there was a steady stream of figures vanishing into the night opposite the fires. Brisson hoped some of them would make it out. Odds were that a portion of the ten thousand slaves on this plantation would make it there. Maybe.

Brisson broke into a jog, hugging the shadows, though that grew difficult as he approached the bonfires which consumed several outbuildings. The torches resolved from small pinpricks of light into flaming brands. The amorphous shadows grew into the figures of men, both slave and Orinai, standing in long, neat rows. At their front, surrounded by a ring of guards in glittering armor and resting upon palanquins borne on the shoulders of a dozen slaves, three of the Sisters sat, regarding the chaos with imperious looks.

A score of archers with short, blood-red bows stood just in front of the three Sisters. One of the slaves ran through the light. Quick as lightning, one of the archers drew an arrow, knocked, drew, sighted and fired in one blurring motion. The arrow hissed through the air—Brisson could hear it even from where he hid over a hundred spans away—and caught the running slave squarely in one shoulder.

The slave screamed and seemed to convulse. For a moment Brisson thought that perhaps the arrow was poisoned, but then he realized it was something far more sinister and the slave flopped, lifeless, to the ground. The Sisters had drained him. Brisson shuddered and thought about turning back for perhaps the hundredth time. He even turned away this time, moving to vanish into the night, but his eyes fell on the field of smokeweed and he noticed the still mounds there for the first time, mounds with but a single arrow sticking from them. All the Sisters needed to kill you was for you to bleed. That stopped him and, despite the fear which froze his veins, turned him back to his goal. He crept forward through the shadows, careful to keep to the paths he knew so well.

Brisson dropped to his knees and crawled along behind a stand of bushes which grew at the edge of a small irrigation ditch. He slipped down into the thin film of muck and water, feeling the fetid liquid seep into his clothes. That didn’t bother him so much, despite the bath. If anything, he preferred the dirt. It was surprisingly comforting.

At the edge of the small copse of bushes, Brisson stopped and crept as close to the Sisters as he could. He was still fifty or so feet away, but from this distance, hidden in the shadows, he could make out their pale, stick-thin bodies, and the almost glowing red hair. He knew that in the confusion of the battle, with the dead and dying around him, the Sisters would miss sensing him hiding there. He cupped a hand behind one ear, hoping that someone would say something to give him an indication of why they had come. That was his mission, the one Nikanor had given him. He had to know the Sisters’ plans.

An hour passed without anyone saying a word. Small parties of soldiers broke off from the main group, rushing through the plantation and setting fire to each building through which they passed. By then, most of the other slaves had disappeared, though it was all Brisson could do to contain himself when the few who stumbled within the range of the archers were stuck with a single arrow and then drained of their life blood. Brisson had no idea what the Sisters needed it for—they didn’t appear to care at all. It was as if they had no real emotion about it, not fear, retribution, not even anger. They simply killed anyone who came within their range. Brisson managed to remain hidden through it all.

He was just about to give up hope when the center Sister raised a hand. It was the first motion any of them had made outside the rise and fall of their lungs.

“I tire of this,” she hissed, her voice the rasp of steel against leather. “They are not here. Take the troops north. Let us return, once again, to the land where my Sister was slain.”