The Black God's War (13 page)

She heard the woman’s voice again in her ear:
Surrender to the ancient implements to control the storm.

Some buried instinct took over as Lucia began to let go of control. Her musculature softened and her heart warmed. Every hair on her body stood straight up as an awesome power coursed through her. She began to
feel
the storm so profoundly that the boundary between her spirit and the sky dissolved. Was she directing the weather, or was it directing her?

She felt the tempest responding to her, and the more she allowed herself to welcome it, the more aggressively it pounded the Pawelon forces with deluges of ice. Her instincts led her inward to even greater exultation. As she went deeper all capacity for rational thought disappeared.

A column of lightning erupted. It streaked down and startled her with its thickness, as it pulsed and rolled all around Pawelon’s forces. Moving by sheer instinct, Lucia squeezed Ysa's sword and her body tingled with divine power from head to toe. She felt flushed with heat, feeling the storm ravaging the Pawelon men with savage power.

Another column of electricity came down. Another. And another.

And then, without warning, the sensations subsided. The lightning columns shrank and then disappeared. Her mind returned to a normal state of awareness, and her profound connection with the natural elements dried up. The clouds turned from black to grey, then chestnut to white, rising into the heavens. She felt a sense of loss, of abandonment, as the sky no longer embraced her.

Looking down at the blood coating Ysa’s white blade, she remembered what she had done.

Lucia sensed an evil presence, and nausea overcame her.

Chapter 13: A Burial Truce Offering

THE CLOUDS SWIRLED faster above Pawelon’s forces and turned pitch-black. A vicious, freezing wind blew down on them. The deafening thunder drubbed Rao’s ears and seized his heart. He cowered as the boom froze his mind.

The storm goddess’s rage weakened his muscles, his concentration, his resolve.
Did Briraji kill the royal daughter?

It doesn’t matter.

With those words, Rao withdrew his attention from his body and physical senses, resting for a moment in the spacious emptiness underlying existence.

He returned his awareness to his body: muscles relaxing, blood flowing, breath arising and falling.

He adopted a wide, solid stance and detached again from his thoughts, body, and senses. A single point of light appeared in the black emptiness and it became the focus of his meditation. His attention remained on the tiny light for seven long breaths, until the light expanded and washed over him, giving him glimpses of nonmaterial realities intersecting his world.

Focus on the battlefield.

The chaotic flood of information fell away from his awareness, like light retreating into a tunnel. His physical being transformed into a lighter, subtler body, and he saw the battlefield anew.

The storming sky appeared as a complex mass of blinding light and shadow, unified as a single field by some greater intelligence. The sky breathed with wild contractions, moving lower and lower to the ground, until it hovered just above Pawelon’s troops.

Rao steeled himself with conviction:
You will not engulf my people
.

He pushed his awareness into the body of a random Pawelon soldier to witness his experience, finding panic amid the darkness, bitter cold, and biting hail. A moment later, a pillar of electrical force ripped through the man, slamming him like a thousand bricks.

Rao drew his consciousness away and observed the scene. More columns of lightning arose between the ground and sky, moving around like puppets under strings. The deadly clouds sank lower and the Rezzians began racing toward the Pawelons and throwing their spears. If they kept coming, close combat would favor the invaders.

He meditated:
How can I stop their goddess?

He noticed then, despite all the dazzling flashes of light, the glowing of a single human soul where the two armies were colliding. The subtle bodies of most men appeared a dull red, but here was a gigantic, swirling field of yellow and white surrounding an intense red and black pulse. Trails of light stretched up from this being to the sky.

The royal daughter is alive!

Each vibrant line between her and the sky was a gossamer trace of psychic influence. Rao poured his awareness into one of the trails of light.

Such a glorious sensation! Expanding light and power, ecstasy and interconnection.

He tried to focus his attention, to sever this connection between the royal daughter and the storm. The light swung around wildly, battling his will, shocking his mind. He recognized the royal daughter’s talent for defense and control.

Rao settled deeper within himself, calling on deep reservoirs of spiritual energy, and visualized the stream of psychic energy vanishing to nothing.

It exploded outward with an electrical burst and scattered his consciousness with it. An unknown length of time passed before his awareness coalesced again on the ground near the royal daughter. Her unique aura revealed a strange blend of spiritual light, potent aggression, and fear.

Rao focused his attention to stop her before she could conjure another miracle. He could attack her subtle body directly, leaving her spirit fragmented. Or, he could take a very different approach, one full of risk and hope.

Rao studied the shimmering light and pulsing darkness around her aura. He decided to address the light. He sent toward her a great thought form, an idea that would go deeply into her subconscious mind.

Peace …

He watched her aura ripple.

Her consciousness became still, then inactive like someone beginning to sleep.

A flash of light washed over him.

Rao opened his eyes to a blue sky, lying on his back on an empty patch of land not far from General Indrajit.

My spiritual energy is gone
.

Indrajit was in the midst of an intense discussion with Briraji and four other high-ranking sages. Rao formulated his argument, stood, and ran toward them.

He tried to appear full of breath and vitality as he approached them. “General Indrajit, Briraji, I’ve stopped the royal daughter from connecting with the elements. She controlled the storm. Her power could return, and I may not be able to stop her next time. We should leave now, before she acts again.”

Briraji only scowled, while Indrajit’s gaze seemed to be searching Rao’s soul. Indrajit turned to Briraji, but the sage had no words.

What other choice do you have now, general?

The general yelled to his messengers, “Call for our full retreat.”

His instructions commanded the archers and sages to work together to create enough arrow fire to deter the Rezzians from following them. Pawelon could not engage Rezzia’s forces directly without risking being overrun, nor could they afford to wait for the rest of their forces with the desperate Rezzian army so close and the royal daughter still among them.

The Rezzians apparently did not wish to see the multiplying of Pawelon’s arrows again. They stood their ground and yelled insults as the Pawelons backed away and retreated toward their citadel.

And so the armies returned, Rezzia to their camp and Pawelon to their fortress, dragging their dead and supporting their wounded.

Chapter 14: The Unseen One in Prophecy

Lucia dreamed …

CAIO SLIPPED OUT OF BED after midnight wearing a plain white robe. He quietly removed Lucia’s letter from under his pillow and tiptoed out of the yurt, relieved that Ilario remained asleep. Once outside, he quickly covered his mouth to ask the guards to remain quiet. As Caio walked away, ten soldiers silently followed.

He turned away from the winding road packed with sleeping reinforcements and walked into the desert, heading for a distant hill. The night was nurtured by soft moonlight, smelling of sage, filled with the chirping of insects. The soldiers followed at a respectful distance.

Caio asked them to remain at the base of the slope, and began to climb. Lucia’s curling parchment crinkled as he pressed it into his palm. After reaching the peak, he gathered ten large stones and set them in a circle as an altar to the gods of Lux Lucis.

He prayed out with passion, “Lord Oderigo, God of Prophecy,” and then placed the letter at the heart of the makeshift shrine. “I seek your light and beg you for rays of truth. Why does Lord Danato stalk my sister in the quiet of night?” Caio prostrated, lowering the crown of his skull to the earth.

Many heartbeats passed as no response came …

Rocks stirred in the distance.

Heavy footsteps walked toward him.

A loud pop shattered the quiet—the sudden closing of a heavy book.

The figure approached, kicking dusty stones at Caio.

“Look to your Lord.”

Caio lifted his head to see majestic Lord Oderigo covered in vines and lowering the heavy Book of Time to him. The god’s luminous skin smelled of holy
myrrha
, so much that it transported Caio to boyhood memories of ecstatic worship at the Reveria. Oderigo’s eyes were vacant black portals stretching into the future and past, into all that had been and all that would come to be.

“Stand and read.”

The Book of Time rested on Oderigo’s enormous hands, its pages edged with gold. Caio bowed his head, held out two fingers on each hand to thank his lord, and opened The Book. He read accounts of Lucia’s long suffering, of the fervent interest The Black One held for her since the death of their mother.
Caio grimaced as he read on under the radiant light of the moon, all the way through to a prophecy of the present day:

And so a choice lay before the daughter and son of King Vieri. Lord Danato’s terrible vision was certain: the war with Pawelon would not end for another ten years. That is, unless the pair journeyed to Lord Danato’s fabled underworld, that harrowed place which confronts men with their shadows and promises tragedy in compensation for His mercy.

Caio closed the book, looked down, and shut his eyes.

The wind howled a deep, echoing tone.

He looked up and found Oderigo gone. Lord Danato towered over Caio, his black skin reflecting the bright moonlight.

Caio fell to his knees and spread his arms forward in prostration to The Black One.

Lord Danato picked up Caio with both hands, his pointed nails cutting into the Haizzem’s chest.

He wrapped his pitch-black fingers around Caio’s neck and squeezed so tightly thatCaio’s choking failed to produce a sound.

Caio’s eyes trembled with sorrow as they closed. Danato released his corpse onto the stony altar.

Peace to you …
Caio prayed for Lucia and looked down on her distressed, sleeping face.

Lucia woke with a gasp.

Caio sat in a chair beside her bed, feeling all the love he possessed for her. He had lit the candles on her dresser after he entered her yurt. Shadows danced around the room.

I was so afraid I’d never see you again
, he thought.
Father was right. Ysa kept you safe.

“Caio!” She left her mouth open and blinked repeatedly, as if she thought her eyes were deceiving her. Only her face peeked out from beneath the cream wool blanket.

“I had to see you as soon as I arrived. We were too close to stop again overnight.”

“Is it really you?”

He leaned down to hug her through the blanket, and she squeezed his chest so hard he stopped breathing.

“Are you well?” she asked. Lucia let go and let Caio sit up again.

“Yes. I am only tired. I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you.”

She frowned, seeming at a loss for words.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve never been able to know what you are feeling—I don’t know why. I wish you had told me before now.”