Unfinished, page 20
“My people name the hawks we hunt with,” Lilah said.
Imogen glanced over. “What kind of names do your hawks have?”
“Regal names,” she said. “The kind of names that kings should have. Names like Herkan and Firen and Tolajsin and—”
“Those are terrible names. But I do like the idea of naming them.” She held her hand out, and she traced his feathers. They were oily, slick, and she remembered how he had come in the night, how dark he seemed, how dangerous he had always been to her.
And she felt the electrical energy that came through him.
He was death, if she were to permit it.
She could go with something simple. Lightning, perhaps. She could go with something more traditional, giving him a name that was common to her people, but she wanted something that fit him. He was massive, and he was powerful, but perhaps she was overthinking it.
“You could call him Reaper,” Lilah said. “Death, to my people.”
“He’s not death to us,” Imogen said.
“Fine. Talon.”
Imogen snorted. “I think your names are getting worse.”
“What would you name him?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking.”
“How long are you going to do that? I’m just asking because we’ve been standing here atop this mountain now for the better part of the early morning, and the wind is starting to get cold. I don’t care for it.”
“You had better get used to it,” Imogen said. “As we will feel the wind atop his back.”
“Fine, then call him Wind.”
“That’s no good,” she said.
“You’re impossible,” Lilah said. “I’ve been trying to help you, and all you want to do is try to find some fitting name for a bird.” She frowned, and she took a step back from the renral. “A killer bird at that.”
“Exactly,” Imogen said. “Which means he needs to have the right name. He has to have something that fits him.” She turned back to him, and she thought about what she could use for a name. It didn’t even have to be a classic type of name. She thought about Shadow, as he was as black as night and soared silently, but that didn’t fit him, either. Perhaps she should go with something powerful.
As she thought about the people she had known in her life, the people who had worked with her, lived with her, she started to think about what she might be able to use. She didn’t like any of those names.
“There’s a story my people have,” Lilah said. “It is ancient, but it speaks about one who has always watched over us. One who guides us.”
Imogen looked over at her. She wasn’t sure where Lilah was going with this, or how this would relate to the renral, but she was curious.
“I don’t know that it makes any sense to name a renral this, but perhaps you will like the name. We were told stories about him. He is supposedly a god, at least in the story, and he rides on lightning. He is powerful, more powerful than most, and comes with the storm.”
“If you’re going to say that I should name him after you—”
“I don’t come on a storm,” Lilah said. “I only call the storm the way Abigail taught me. But we call him Zealar. Powerful. Invisible. And deadly.”
Imogen turned to the renral. “I like it. Powerful, and deadly. Not invisible, though. I don’t want him to be.” She tapped him on the side. “What do you think? Zealar?”
The renral perked up and locked eyes with her. In that moment, something passed between them, some sense of understanding, as if the renral understood what she was getting at, and her suggestion that he have a name. There came a surge, and a crackling of energy poured between them.
“Zealar it is,” she said. “It seems he approves.”
Lilah shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re having a conversation with a renral.”
“And I can’t believe that you don’t want to share in this conversation.”
“What’s there to share?” She sighed and turned away, looking out over the mountainside. “What now? Obviously, you have some plan in mind.”
“We need to call Abigail.”
“You realize if we call Abigail, the other Sul’toral are going to come. They were following my storm. That’s what Abigail wanted, after all, but she thought that she could draw them out one at a time to pick them off as a threat.”
“Then we do that. If we do it one by one, we should be able to destroy them.”
There couldn’t be that many of the Sul’toral remaining. Imogen had killed several of them herself, or had seen them die. So how many were left?
Then there was the possibility that others had joined their ranks the way that Timo had.
“It’s not going to work,” Lilah said. “They are too powerful for us. We’ve tried—and we’ve failed.”
Imogen looked over at Zealar. The renral was waiting, sitting upright, as if he was anticipating that she would tell him something.
And as she watched, as she was waiting, she could feel something. It was the energy that came from him, and it seemed to emanate outward. She could feel that energy coming off him, the energy that was pouring through her, the connection made by the strange power that they possessed.
She could feel something more, though. And as she did, she began to question what it was. Perhaps Zealar had some way of detecting Abigail.
She was Porapeth, wasn’t she?
“Can you find her?”
He looked up, and then he shrieked softly, but it was still a painful sound.
Lilah took a step back, moving away from him, staggering toward the edge of the mountain. Imogen had to grab for her, keep her from toppling off the side.
“I’d be careful there,” Imogen said.
“What are you doing with him?”
“I told you what I was doing. We’re talking. And we might end up talking about you.”
She looked over at the renral. “Do you think Zealar could find her?”
“He has a different kind of magic than we do. Different from mine, different from yours. And different from Abigail’s. And I suspect that most don’t understand it. But that’s part of the beauty of it. They don’t understand it, so they won’t anticipate it. And because of that, we can use it to our advantage.”
“What if it doesn’t work? Even if we reach her, there’s no guarantee she will answer—or do anything to help.”
Imogen couldn’t shake the feeling that they needed a Porapeth to help their people. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have to try.”
“She’s Abigail the Lost, and I don’t think she’s going to do anything that she doesn’t want to, anyway.”
“If I’m right, as I said, I think she’s Abigail the Last,” Imogen said.
She climbed onto Zealar’s back.
He spread his wings, and immediately Imogen could feel something changing, some aspect of the power that flowed through him beginning to build. A surge of what felt like lightning coursed through him, as if he called upon the storms.
Lilah approached carefully, and she climbed up on him. Zealar did not even move while she did so.
“Just relax,” Imogen said. “You don’t have to fear him. You only have to fear where we’re going.”
With that, Zealar lurched into the air. The wind caught his wings, and Imogen noticed the way that his feathers tilted upward, as if he was in control of each individual feather. The wind itself was swirling among those feathers, and it created a crackling sort of energy that flowed through Zealar. It flowed up through that strange pattern Imogen had placed on him, and into her.
“You’re doing it again,” Lilah said from behind her.
The wind was whipping around them, cold, but not nearly as cold as it had been on top of the mountain when she had been at the sacred temple.
Imogen glanced back to see Lilah sitting upright, leaning forward and clutching the renral’s back tightly. He was large enough that they both fit well, and certainly larger than any of the renral enchantments Rebecca had ever made.
“I feel something from Zealar,” Imogen said. “Some connection formed because of a sacred pattern I used.”
“You used a sacred pattern on this?”
“I’m not sure what it was.”
But there was energy that she felt deep within her. Increasingly, she wondered if there was something intentional that Zealar provided. Lightning coursing through him, possibly, but regardless, it was power that flowed.
She leaned toward Zealar. “Find her,” she said.
The renral circled, and Imogen kept waiting for him to choose a path, for him to try to find some way of flying, but she didn’t find anything in the way that he was traveling. The only thing that she could tell was that there was some energy coming off him, something that seemed to connect her to the distant power around her.
Behind her, she could feel Lilah tensing, and every so often, Imogen began to feel a buildup of pressure and power, something that suggested Lilah was using her own magic. She was searching for Abigail.
“How did you call to her?” Imogen said.
“She wanted me to use the storm. And if she didn’t answer, I was to wait.”
“How long would she leave you alone?”
“Not long these days. Ever since I…” She trailed off as she leaned away from Imogen.
“Since you left our people.”
Lilah nodded as she looked away.
If storms called Abigail, could the renral help? There was a power within the renral that suggested the storm.
Even without Imogen saying anything, Zealar seemed to know what she wanted, and he turned, banking east, and he headed between mountains, toward a wide grassy valley. Even from above, it looked peaceful to Imogen. She couldn’t tell if there was anything here that might call to Abigail, but it did remind her of where she had first seen her.
Imogen focused on Tree Stands in the Forest and realized it wasn’t going to work when seated atop Zealar. It was much like when she had first tried to connect to him. She had known he wasn’t going to be stationary, and with his connection to the wind, there was never going to be Tree Stands in the Forest upon him. She could anchor to him, but that didn’t seem quite right.
But his pattern, though, seemed more appropriate.
Imogen concentrated on the pattern, meditating upon it. A connection formed in her mind, and it seemed as if some power flowed from the renral and into her. She opened herself to that magic.
That connection wormed somewhere deep inside her, and it allowed her to call that storm through her, the storm that she could feel coming from Zealar, from his wings, from the wind that he swept through, and then she opened the connection, and it poured outward.
He was the storm.
Lightning streaked downward. She did it again. Then again. And each time that she did, the lightning bolt was followed by a rumble of thunder. It was a cloudless sky, the sun shining down, and yet she was calling the storm. It was almost as if she truly was a lightning storm.
“How are you doing that?” Lilah asked, leaning closer to her.
“A connection to the renral.”
“I’ve never even heard of anybody being able to do that before,” Lilah said. “The renral hunted our people.”
“We’ve probably made a mistake in not trying to connect to them sooner. There are other renral. If you’d like to connect to one, Zealar might be able to help.”
Lilah said nothing.
Imogen focused on the renral power, feeling the energy of the storm, the mixing of thunder, and then it faded. That energy exploded from her and from Zealar.
She looked back at Lilah. “Abigail only responds when she knows that it’s safe.”
They waited, but nothing changed for a long time.
Then everything did.
There was a stream of movement.
It happened quickly, as if some part of the landscape had suddenly shifted, creatures and nightmares beginning to blur. An army. It was much like the army that chased her people, but this one had simply appeared.
Was it even real?
But there had to be somebody here controlling it.
Imogen had to find that person, find a way to overpower them, and then she could end it.
She leaned forward, focusing on what she could see down below, and though it was difficult, she caught sight of one figure that drew her attention. One figure loomed more than the others, and she looked down, watching and wondering if perhaps it was more than just the Toral she assumed it to be. It wouldn’t be that easy to find one of the Sul’toral, though. They would hide.
Zealar shrieked.
“You’re right,” Imogen agreed. “We are going to have to get down there. We are going to have to fight him.”
She hoped that she was ready for it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Zealar shrieked again as he circled, and power built within him. He tipped up his feathers, and Imogen could actually see them beginning to form power along them, as if the oily surface of his inky feathers began to absorb that energy and call it inward. Imogen could feel all of that working through him, building up, and coursing through the entirety of the creature.
And because she had remained open to that power, it filled her, coming through and rising up within her. Imogen recognized that power, and she had to brace for it. As it built, she focused, thinking about what she might be able to do, and how to make a call on that argument of whether there was anything that she might be able to use it for.
Lightning Strikes in the Storm.
What if she was truly lightning?
She looked back at Lilah. “Stay with Zealar.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Surprise him.”
Imogen stood, and as she did, she focused, calling upon the power within her. She could feel that energy, and she could feel that power rising up within her, and she knew there had to be something there, some connection to that power, and she knew that she could feel it, but she wasn’t exactly sure how, or why.
She focused that power again, and then she became the lightning storm.
She shot toward the ground.
Using the energy of the renral combined with her own sacred pattern, she shot down faster than she could have imagined. Imogen wondered if she might crash into the ground, but when she struck, it seemed as if the ground absorbed her and the energy of her magical attack.
She faced a sorcerer. They spun, beginning to move their hands in a pattern, and her gaze flicked to the ring on one hand. Imogen darted forward, driving her flexible blade into the Toral’s chest, and then spun, carving off their hand.
She turned. There were two more.
So many Toral?
The only reason that there would be this many Toral here would be their master’s presence.
Imogen flowed. She used Stream through the Mountains, twisting and bringing her blade up and around, carving through one of the Toral, then the other, until they were down.
Another figure loomed behind their fallen bodies.
And then she stood before the Sul’toral. He was an older man. Gray-haired, lean, and carrying the same strange staff she had seen before. The others had carried them as well. Imogen wondered if there was some power to these staffs.
Imogen unsheathed her blade.
The man spun his staff toward her.
There was a crackle of energy along it, and as he turned it, it was as if he was using the sacred patterns, but the way that he used the staff was unlike any technique Imogen had ever faced before. She tried to block but found that his movements were far too fluid and fast for her to follow.
She was forced to use Tree Stands in the Forest.
He regarded her, his eyes flashing with a pale gray.
Not gray. Silver.
“You have been more trouble than we anticipated.”
“And you have been trying to remove the Porapeth,” she said.
He arched a brow. He spun the staff again, and he swung it toward her, but she didn’t move. Imogen had come to trust Tree Stands in the Forest, and she had come to trust the sacred patterns, so she understood that she was protected.
She had not expected his staff to whistle straight through Tree Stands in the Forest as if it were little more than water. She had to bring her blade up in a flick and catch the staff.
He grinned at her. “Better trained than some of the others,” he said. “Much better. I’m surprised.”
“Because I blocked you?”
“Did you?” He flicked his staff again, and it went down toward her feet before whipping toward her head. Imogen watched his arms and his shoulders, not the staff, and she twisted, sliding out of the way. It was a flow, a mixture of Petals on the Wind and traditional patterns. The combination seemed to fix in her mind, as if it had suddenly appeared to guide her.
And then she drove her blade toward him.
She caught him in the flank and then withdrew.
He didn’t even wince. He made no sign that her sword had harmed him.
He spun toward her, whipping his staff around again.
She focused on Tree Stands in the Forest, though he had already proven that it would not be much of a hindrance for him.
“What do you intend to do when you remove all the Porapeth?”
“Oh, it’s not so much that we intend to remove them as that we intend to replace them.”
“Then what do you intend to do once you replace them?”
“You have your own unique insight,” he said. “I can see it. I can see the way you’ve recognized the truth. You could be useful. We could have you serving us.” He whipped his staff around, and Imogen had to bring her blade up, a mixture of Axe Falling and pattern sixty-one, eighty-three, and then ninety-eight. The mixture allowed her to duck out of the way of the blow, and she stayed just ahead of the attack.
He smiled at her. “Much better trained than the others.”
“I don’t have any interest in becoming a Toral, or a Sul’toral, for that matter.”
Not like Timo had. She couldn’t imagine his thinking, and she couldn’t imagine why he would want to be like this and claim this kind of power. What reason would he have?
“Do you understand what you have so quickly abandoned?”
