Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (31 page)

Gavin.

Lhaurel breathed out a long sigh of relief. He was alright. But what about the Orinai? What about Kaiden?

Khari and the other aevians landed in the sand amid a flurry of dust. Khari leapt from the saddle, as did Gavin and a man so large he looked like he would break the aevian beneath him. Memories assaulted Lhaurel’s mind, passing in a flurry that faded before she could fully grasp onto any single image. He wasn’t a man at all. He was an Orinai. Lhaurel took a step toward him and the motion drew his attention. His eyes widened and then he suddenly bowed.

“‘Magic’ is not a breaking of the laws of nature, rather it is the harnessing and manipulation of elements already extant in nature by connection of that matter to the human body. This is accomplished through varying means specific to each Iteration, but all include a consumption of a fuel by the human body and a mental manipulation of the occurring output. If any part of this experience could be thought of as “unnatural,” it would be this mental manipulation.”

—From
Commentary on the
Schema, Volume I

“Get up,” Khari snapped. “What are you doing? You two, keep an eye on him.”

Two of the other aevian riders, including the man Lhaurel had broken, fell in on either side of the man. They looked minuscule next to the Orinai’s massive frame.

“His name is Samsin.” Gavin said with the tone of someone who had said the same thing several times before. “There’s no need for all that.”

The Orinai, Samsin, still hadn’t risen from the bow.

“I’ll decide that. Lhaurel, I need your help over here.” Khari snapped. She seemed even shorter tempered than usual.

As soon as Lhaurel moved, Samsin rose, though he kept his eyes downcast. “Your pardon, Revered Sister,” he said, still not meeting Lhaurel’s eye. “I had no idea you had already arrived. I beg your forgiveness for not informing you earlier. My family—”

Khari cut him off. “Shut up, you. Lhaurel, help me with this other one. He is badly wounded.”

Lhaurel kept her eyes on Samsin until she’d passed him, following Khari over to where the other aevian riders were busy untying the man who had been slung across the aevian’s back. It took all three of them to hold the other Orinai up while he was being untied and then Gavin had to come over to help them lower him to the ground. Even without reaching out for her powers, Lhaurel could tell he was in bad shape. Improvised bandages were tied around his chest, but they were stained with sweat, dirt, and blood. Gavin and the other men eased him onto his back. Unlike Samsin, this Orinai was broad of shoulder, thick chested, and his face was square-jawed. The sallowness to the skin and pale complexion Lhaurel was sure came from loss of blood rather than as a part of his regular appearance.

“Can you help him?” Gavin asked softly, looking down at the man.

“Should she?” Khari asked. “He’s an Orinai after all. We know nothing about them. For all we know, he could be here to kill us.”

“How do you know he’s an Orinai?” Gavin’s expression was an image of pinched confusion.

“How could she not?” Samsin asked from behind them. “You have one of the Seven Sisters standing with you, slave. Of course she knows her own people.”

Khari looked from Samsin to Lhaurel and back again. Lhaurel shrugged and then turned back to the wounded Orinai. Could she save him?
Should
she? Beryl spoke of the Orinai as a great scourge, like a sandstorm that would cleanse everything living from its path. These two were a part of that people.

“Can you help him?” Gavin asked again.

Lhaurel turned to Khari, who was regarding her with a frown. “Can you do anything?” Lhaurel asked.

Khari pursed her lips. “Nothing that would keep him from dying anyway. Anything I would do would simply postpone it a little. Why put him through the pain?”

Lhaurel felt her pulse quicken. She’d healed Shallee’s child and kept both her and the baby alive. But this was something different. There was skin missing, bones broken.

Lhaurel looked away from the wounded Orinai and out over the sand. Fahkiri’s half-sister danced back and forth on the sand a few feet away, darting back and forth with one of the other aevians. Lhaurel watched the creature and clenched her jaw.

“Remove the bandage,” Lhaurel said, turning back to Khari.

“Lhaurel, wait,” Khari protested, holding up a hand to stop Gavin from undoing the ties on the makeshift bandage across the Orinai’s chest. “Think. What if Beryl is right about them? We don’t even know where they came from or what they’re doing here. Maybe we should question that one,” she pointed her head toward Samsin, "first.”

“You’re the one who said Beryl was going mad, and this . . . Orinai . . . won’t last much longer. I won’t let another person die that I could have saved.”

Khari reached out and took one of Lhaurel’s hands, gripping it hard. “You don’t have to make up for what you did with the genesauri, Lhaurel. You did what you had to do then and you saved us all.”

“I didn’t save Makin Qays. I couldn’t save Saralhn. I
can
save him now. I have to save him now.”

The resolve in Lhaurel’s voice stilled the argument clearly waiting on Khari’s lips. Lhaurel met her gaze and held it until Khari looked away.

“Remove the bandages, Gavin,” Lhaurel said.

Gavin undid the ties, though he eyed Lhaurel and Khari more than once with open curiosity. Lhaurel let go of Khari’s hand and almost recoiled from the smell of rot and putrefaction that assaulted her nose.

“Someone get me a waterskin,” Lhaurel said, then looked over at Khari. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage this. Things haven’t been the same since the Oasis. I’m not sure if I’ll end up unconscious again, like last time, or what.”

“Revered Sister,” Samsin said, his voice catching slightly.

Lhaurel looked over Khari’s shoulder toward the massive Orinai. Samsin licked his lips, but kept his eyes downcast in deference. No, Lhaurel amended, in fear.

“What do you want?” It was Khari who answered, though Lhaurel knew Samsin had been addressing her and not the Roterralar Matron.

“Sister,” Samsin continued, ignoring Khari, “Nikanor is an Earth Ward, as you know. Surely one of these here could act as a vessel for your powers, should you deign to heal him. He would make an excellent Bondsman, if you do not already have one.”

“A vessel?” The question slipped from Lhaurel’s lips before Khari could ask.

Samsin flinched. “A bleeder then, if you prefer.”

Bleeder?

One of the men walked over with a waterskin and handed it to Lhaurel. It was the man she had broken. She took it with a slight nod of thanks which he didn’t return. With a small sigh, Lhaurel unstopped the skin and took a long drink, feeling her body respond to the additional fuel. Khari reached out and took the waterskin from her and also took a drink.

“I’ll help you, if I can,” Khari said softly. Lhaurel nodded her thanks and reached for her powers.

Gavin watched Lhaurel steel herself as she looked over Nikanor, studying the massive, infected wounds in his chest. He’d felt a brief moment of panic when Khari had argued against healing him, but that had passed when the Roterralar Matron had finally relented. Though the woman was, at times, harsh and devoid of anything that looked like mercy, she was an honorable woman at heart. All the Roterralar were, even if the average Rahuli refused to see it.

When Gavin had broken the surface of the sand earlier and realized they were not at the Oasis, it had taken him a few minutes of careful study to realize where they had ended up. Samsin had cursed him for making him wait down in the tunnel, but once Gavin had figured out that they were in one of the older plateaus the Aeril had once used as their warren, he’d bent back down and widened the opening in the sand for Samsin and Nikanor to get through. They’d pulled Nikanor through together. Gavin was surprised at how much the Orinai had weighed. There was something so vastly
solid
about the man.

Anyway, once Gavin had gotten his bearings and figured out which way they’d needed to travel they’d set off across the sands toward the stoneway pillar they’d left behind. Gavin had no way of really knowing how long they’d been in Kaiden’s grasp or if Farah had already come back to find them missing or not, but he figured that returning to the place he’d last seen her was the wisest thing to do. As they’d walked, Gavin had tried to puzzle out the mystery of the scrolls and similarities to the Aeril Warren and the Oasis caverns to the accompaniment of Samsin’s grumbling complaints.

Khari and the others had found them before Gavin had come to any sort of a conclusion. Now, watching as Lhaurel prepared to try and heal Nikanor, his only thoughts rested on Samsin’s strange reaction to Lhaurel and whether or not Lhaurel could actually heal the stout Orinai.

Some of the others who had come with Khari shifted uncomfortably as Lhaurel placed her hands on Nikanor’s chest and the red of her hair and nails seemed to darken. Gavin recognized some of them as members of the various clans. Why had Khari chosen to bring them along? Hadn’t she been the one most vehemently opposed to non-Roterralar riding
her
aevians?

Lhaurel suddenly gasped and her eyes went wide. Samsin took a step forward, head coming up slightly, then dropped back toward his toes again as the two men on either side of him grabbed his arms. Lhaurel’s head arched backward and the color drained from her face, leaving it pale and white. Gavin looked down at Nikanor’s chest. Skin crawled there and the blood seemed to be seeping out of the open wounds. No. It was seeping
back
into the wounds, taking with it the scabs, crusted, dried bits of blood, and torn flesh with it. New skin, pink and fresh, formed at the edges of each wound, growing toward the center.

Lhaurel shuddered. Khari hissed something that sounded like a curse, then put her hands on Lhaurel’s bare arm and closed her eyes in concentration. Lhaurel’s shudders stopped, but the paleness of her skin didn’t fade. Nikanor gasped and his eyes snapped open. Before he could move, Gavin was there, holding him down.

“You there,” Gavin ordered at the two nearest men. “Help me here. Keep him still.”

They hesitated for a moment, awe and confusion at what was happening rooting them in place, then they snapped into motion. They grabbed onto Nikanor and tried to hold him down as he struggled to rise.

“Get over here, Samsin!” Gavin growled as Nikanor continued to rise despite the four men trying to hold him down.

The massive Orinai didn’t hesitate, though he kept his eyes downcast as he sidestepped around Lhaurel and shoved one of the other men aside. He grabbed Nikanor by the shoulders and easily pushed him back down into the sand. Gavin felt the slight tug of energy Samsin drew upon for the added strength and did the same, feeling the odd tingling spread through his limbs.

Lhaurel gasped and moaned and then fell back, hands coming off Nikanor as she fell. Khari caught her before she hit the sand. Gavin looked down at Nikanor. The wounds were still there, but they were minor now, looking like little more than shallow scratches from rocks or thick thorns. Nikanor’s lungs heaved and the muscles across his chest worked up and down as he struggled to sit up again. This time Gavin and the others let him rise to a sitting position.

“Nikanor?” Samsin said, voice quiet. “Are you alright?”

Nikanor replied in the other language, though Gavin wasn’t listening close enough to translate it. He looked beyond them to Lhaurel and Khari.

One of the men rushed over as well. “Is she going to be alright?” the man asked before Gavin could ask the question himself.

“I’m fine,” Lhaurel replied thickly. Gavin hadn’t realized that she was still conscious. “I just need some rest. Can you fetch me the waterskin, please?” Her voice was weak, but her breathing seemed steady, if somewhat shallow.

Khari sat back as well, licking her lips as if they were dry.

Gavin stood up and retrieved the waterskin from where it had fallen in the sand. Part of the precious liquid had spilled into the sand, but no one had noticed in time. He walked over to Lhaurel and handed it to her. Her hands shook, but she was able to lift the skin to her lips and take a deep drink. Some color returned to her skin, though her hair and nails retained the deeper red shade. She took another drink before passing the skin over to Khari.

“Are you ok?” Gavin asked. Though he’d been the recipient of her healing once before, he still marveled at her power. According to what he knew of the mystic abilities, healing powers were typically limited. Khari herself had said that Nikanor’s wounds were beyond her abilities when she’d found them, but Lhaurel had healed him
and
had saved Shallee a few days earlier. Her powers were beyond what a normal wetta was supposed to be able to do. Sort of like how Samsin’s powers were similar to Gavin’s, but greater. Gavin blinked, coming to a sudden realization, and completely missed Samsin calling his name.