Unfinished, page 12
Jorend shook his head. “I think I might prefer to take your journey.”
“Mine might lead to even more danger,” she said softly.
“I know. It’s just that I really don’t want to be attacked by another one of those. The last time was more than enough.”
“This time you will have your own flock of renral.”
“I’m not sure that’s better.”
Imogen looked up, staring at the massive renral she intended to call to her. “I’m not sure, either.”
Chapter Thirteen
Imogen stood on a rock ledge above the gathered Leier and Koral, keeping a bit of distance from them. She had announced her intention to leave and had reminded them that Jorend would lead in her absence, something that she had thought was unnecessary, but she had seen a bit of relief in many of her people’s eyes as she had said it, so she wondered if perhaps it hadn’t been nearly as unnecessary as she may have believed. And she had informed them of what they would need to do, much like she had shared with them what she had to do.
Imogen had her own role to play.
She wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to go about this. She had to be the leader but was becoming increasingly certain that involved her being something more than the general had been. He had led the army, but he hadn’t taught the same way that the master swordsmen had, and he hadn’t guided her people in the way that Master Liu and the others would have. He hadn’t understood the sacred patterns in the same way. Derashen had had a passing knowledge, but it had not been as deep, or as impressive, as what Imogen had proven that she had. And she had proven it.
She stared up at the sky, trying to figure out how to call the renral to her. When she had interacted with the renral before, it had responded without her needing to do anything. In this case, Imogen was going to need to summon the renral in some way. She thought she might be able to do so by using one of the sacred patterns, or perhaps by simply waiting for the renral to descend, but once she did summon it, the real question was how she would communicate with the renral what she intended and needed. There had to be something.
She focused on the massive renral, trying to use the Porapeth magic, wanting to see the different possibilities that existed out in front of her, but she came up with nothing. It wasn’t that the magic failed her, but that she simply could not interpret it. Merely shimmers of pale white light, but nothing that solidified to show her anything with any certainty. It was almost as if she were not going to be able to see anything.
She had to focus on how she was going to reach the renral. Imogen decided upon Tree Stands in the Forest, anchoring deeply. From here, the valley stretched behind her, and she was distantly aware of Jorend and the others trying to get the rest of her people gathered together, preparing for the journey. Eleanor had agreed to keep working with the rest of the shamans. Imogen could have asked Orend, who essentially served as the leader of the shamans, but she had better rapport with Eleanor, and she suspected that Eleanor had her own way of influencing the shamans that Orend didn’t possess.
Imogen had spoken to Rebecca separately.
“I’m going to need you to create as many of your particular enchantments as possible,” she had said. Rebecca had been sitting apart from the rest of the shamans, and Imogen had approached and dropped to the ground next to her. Rebecca was working on a small stone enchantment that was different from the renral ones she had been creating. “I don’t know what we might need, or whether there will be anything that we can do to get our people to safety if it comes down to it, but it might come down to what you can create.” She held Rebecca’s gaze. “Do you think that you can do that?”
Rebecca looked at her, and she nodded slowly. “It’s difficult for me when I make them.” She fidgeted with the stone, twisting the one she held in her hand. “I can feel something every time I do. It’s almost as if I am leaving a part of myself within the enchantment.”
Imogen fell silent at that. Having fought with some of these enchantments, and having used them as freely as she had, she had not given much thought to what would happen to the one who made them. Perhaps nothing, but she also didn’t know if there was any real danger in them.
“Does it hurt?” Imogen asked.
Rebecca frowned, and Imogen pushed on. “I’ve known others who can make enchantments, and we speculated it hurt when they used their enchantments like this, but we didn’t know. And they kept it from us.”
“It’s strange,” Rebecca said. “When I make these enchantments, I feel as if I’m pushing some part of myself out into them. It lingers there, leaving a bit of power.” She looked up from the rock and met Imogen’s gaze. “When I first started doing it, it wasn’t that bad. When the power faded, it returned to me, or so it seemed. But when you were using them recently, and they were destroyed, I felt it differently.”
Imogen breathed out slowly. “What did you feel?”
“I don’t quite know how to describe it. It hurt, but only slightly.” She looked down at her hands, out at the stone she was forming into another enchantment. “I wondered what would happen if I lost more than one, though. If I make many of them—hundreds—there’s a real possibility I’m going to hurt when this happens.”
“That is a possibility.”
They were fighting for their lives, and unfortunately, in war there was pain. Still, Imogen knew what Rebecca would do. She knew how she would react. She was strong, like most of the Koral that Imogen had come to know. They were proud people, and far stronger than the Leier had ever known.
“I need to do this for my people. I could help. You could use someone like me, like other shamans, to find more of our people. We would help.”
“I know that you would, but I don’t know that you can travel as quickly as I can.”
“Then you need to take this.” She held out an enchantment.
Imogen took it, frowning at it. It didn’t look at all like the renral sculptures that she had made, using those enchantments to bind power to the stone. This one was irregular and looked as if it had been carved by somebody else, not Rebecca, who normally created incredibly exquisite enchantments.
“What is it?”
“It’s a way of creating power.” She glanced down at her hands. “At least, I think it is. We won’t know it unless you have to use it. You don’t have to bring it with you—”
“No,” Imogen said. “I will take it. Thank you. If I need it, it will be good to have some protection with me.”
Imogen had no interest in needing to have any additional protection, and if it came down to having to use an enchantment that would offer her a chance of escape, she might be in far more trouble than she had ever anticipated.
“Keep working to help the others,” Imogen said. “They’re going to need you. Your skill. Work with others to help them understand how you make your enchantments. Those are going to be valuable over time. And probably much sooner than you realize. Think about what you can do to help evacuate as many people from here as possible. More than what you see here, though. Because if I succeed, we are going to need many people to be able to leave quickly.”
As Rebecca turned back to her work, Imogen twisted the enchantment that Rebecca had given her in her hand, running her finger along the surface of it, feeling the smooth stone, the energy that was within it, and feeling something else about it. Power, perhaps. Or maybe there was something else that she could not quite place. Maybe it was just that it was some essence of Rebecca that was stored within it. Whatever it was, Imogen knew that she would not use it unless absolutely necessary.
Now, Imogen focused on Tree Stands in the Forest, trying to call to the renral. It didn’t respond to her. That wasn’t the kind of sacred pattern that would reach for a creature of the sky and air.
Every so often, one of the other renral would dive, disappearing, only to reappear once again. They stayed within the valley, and Imogen didn’t know whether they had flown over the valley or whether they had flown ahead of the Leier and Koral, getting into the valley before she had shattered the stone on either side of the entrance to it, giving them that freedom to fly here. She had no idea what they hunted, either. She hadn’t seen any other life within this space. But perhaps she didn’t see it because the renral were hunting.
She looked back. Her people were already starting to mobilize.
The renral wasn’t responding to Tree Stands in the Forest. She had to find a way to connect to the wind and the energy of the creature, using a sacred pattern that might make a difference.
She focused on her connection and began to concentrate power through her, and with a surge of energy, she blasted upward. Lightning Strikes in the Storm. It carried her high into the air, faster and faster, and then she floated, twirling on Petals on the Wind, the wind carrying her, guiding her ever closer to the renral.
As she neared, her pattern started to falter.
The renral magic.
It impeded her own sacred patterns. She had seen that before and had felt how the renral power tended to weaken her sacred patterns, though they did not keep them from working altogether. She wasn’t sure that she would have survived the renral attack if they had. But then, she had not dealt with a renral attack since she had come to a greater understanding of her sacred patterns.
She used Petals on the Wind and then immediately shifted, Lightning Strikes in the Storm, and shot even higher into the sky. Imogen had tried this technique before and had not known whether this combination would even be effective, but she was reassured that it seemed to work. As she floated downward, she angled herself toward the renral.
If the renral impeded her with its magic, then perhaps she would have to use some other technique. Perhaps she would have to use no magic, no sacred patterns, simply brute force.
Imogen wasn’t built for brute force. She was strong, but only from years of hardening her body as she had trained with the sword. She was quick, something that she had also trained to be. But she was determined and stubborn. Those traits were what would serve her best now.
Imogen angled toward the renral.
If she missed, she would have to use Lightning Strikes in the Storm to carry her back up. But if she made it, she could land atop the renral.
She dropped, and as she did, she came toward the renral. She angled herself, streaking slowly downward. Petals on the Wind guided her, but even that started to falter, and Imogen had to focus.
And then she came to land atop its back.
She hurriedly tried to find a way to hold on to the renral. Its feathers were thick, oily, and there was a strange, musky sort of odor that came from it. It didn’t fight, though. She sat up slowly, and wind began to whip around her. It was similar to riding atop an enchantment, though there was something about this that felt foreign. She was distinctly aware that she was sitting atop a massive creature of the kind that had tried to kill her before. She was distinctly aware that if she were to play this wrong, the renral could end up trying to shred her.
She focused on whether she needed to use any of her sacred patterns, but she did not.
“We need to go and find other Leier,” Imogen said. “I don’t know if you can understand me, or if you know what I’m asking, but I will need your help.”
The renral continued circling. It ignored her.
Why had she thought that it would not?
This was a creature of power unlike anything that she had experienced before, though it was not the first time she’d flown atop one of the renral. What she wanted to do now felt different from when she had gone with the renral before. She had made a more determined plan.
“We need to stop this attack,” Imogen said, still holding on to the renral, leaning forward so that she could feel the power of the creature as it beat its wings against the wind. Heat came up through the renral’s body, and she was distantly aware of some power from it.
Imogen didn’t know if any of the sacred patterns that she knew would make a difference in connecting to the renral. And it didn’t seem as if any of them would. The renral had not responded when she had tried Tree Stands in the Forest from below, but would it make a difference while she was sitting on its back?
Perhaps it was different from just connecting to it. Maybe she needed something to stay atop it.
She focused on Tree Stands in the Forest, trying to keep track of the energy that was within her, trying to make sense of what it would take for her to utilize that, to harness that power. Imogen thought that she was going to need to maintain her focus, and she was going to need to find some way to hold her concentration so that she didn’t sway too far off the creature. She gripped it with her thighs and realized that she was trying to hold on too tightly.
Flow.
That was something that Master Liu had always taught her. It wasn’t about strength or precision, and it wasn’t even about speed. It was about flow. In this case, it wasn’t her flow that mattered.
Tree Stands in the Forest was a relatively easy pattern for her to hold when she was on the ground, but up in the air, holding on to this creature, it was not the same. What she needed was to find something different.
She sat motionless, concentrating, meditating.
Tree Stands in the Forest.
But it wasn’t a tree, was it?
That wasn’t going to work. The renral was a creature of air and wind.
Petals on the Wind might work, but the renral wouldn’t be petals, would it?
The renral was something else.
And as she focused, trying to feel for that power, she started to notice something.
The renral was taking a particular pattern as it flew, circling. She followed the pattern with her mind and began to recognize something about it. Surprisingly, it was a pattern that Benji had shown her during her meditations. The renral used a pattern—possibly even a sacred one. More than that, she suspected the renral showed her this pattern intentionally.
Wind whipped at her. It pushed at her. There was pressure, and there was a strange sense of freedom. She gradually began to feel something near her, some sense of power that was different from what she had felt from the other creatures. It was pushing upon her, squeezing inward, and she realized that it was the renral around her. They were all there, all of them pushing on her, all of them using the same sort of pattern. And as she meditated on that pattern, and what it meant, she began to see something more. Understanding began to bloom within her.
And then she saw it. She leaned forward, tracing the pattern on the renral.
With a burst of power, she felt a connection form.
Chapter Fourteen
INTERLUDE
Imogen focused on her blade, as she had been trained to do. It rested on the ground, ever so slightly, while she concentrated, her mind already starting to work through various patterns as she attempted to prepare for what she would need to do next. She did not want to rush into anything, and she needed to clear her head.
It was a tactic that she had adopted in the time that she had been in Loruv. It was something that she had never done when she had been in the Leier homeland, sitting and contemplating her patterns rather than working through them, but she had begun to find that contemplative time, something that one of the others she’d been training referred to as a meditation, to be relaxing, but it was even more than that. If it had only been relaxing, Imogen may not have done it quite as often. There were other ways for her to relax. Sparring was relaxing to Imogen, so she could have simply picked up her blade, worked through various movements, and challenged a training partner in order to find her way to that sense of peace. With meditation, though, it was more about how her mind began to puzzle through things. She wanted to find answers, and there were answers, she knew. She just had to uncover them.
“Imogen?”
She didn’t open her eyes. She barely reacted. She held on to her blade, and she focused on the first ten traditional patterns before moving on to the next ten, and then the next ten after that. They raced through her mind quickly, and as she visualized them, she could see how she could move through these patterns cleanly and easily and use them against almost any opponent.
“The others are waiting for you.” The voice spoke again, interrupting her.
She ignored it again and continued working through the traditional patterns until she had finished them. When she had reached a point where she had gone through all the traditional patterns, only then did she permit herself an opportunity to think about the sacred patterns. Imogen may not have come to master them while training in the sacred temple, but that didn’t mean that she did not think there were answers for her. All she had to do was find some key to the sacred patterns. She hoped that by meditating, the answers might come to her. So far, they had not. She imagined Master Liu and his amusement at her failings, but she pushed those thoughts away as well. She didn’t think that Master Liu wanted her to fail. Quite the opposite, she suspected. He wanted her to find some way to master the sacred patterns, and it had only been when she had failed that he had sent her away to take this bond quest.
Imogen focused on each of them before ending with Tree Stands in the Forest, the pattern that Master Liu had always claimed was pivotal, but it seemed to her as if it were nothing more than just standing still. She had demonstrated that pattern to him countless times, and each time that she had attempted to do so, she had been summarily informed that she had failed. And not only that she had failed, but that she would always fail unless she managed to see the truth in the pattern.
But how could she see any truth if Master Liu refused to train her? How could others have seen the truth in those patterns?
That was the answer that Imogen still did not know. Perhaps she could not know.
She snapped her eyes open and looked over to see Sochal standing across from her. He was five years older than her and had proven a quick study. He had reached the level of a Second and was already pushing to be a First. She was the First, but some of those she trained had started to show potential to the point where she now wondered whether she may have to create a different rank. At what point would she need to consider the others as skilled as some of the Leier that she had trained with?
