The Red Wrath, page 23
part #3 of Storyweaver Series
Jalyn smiled tightly. “Some, but not enough. Not nearly enough.”
Sophie shifted her feet, deciding that she wanted to form the elash pose, one that would allow her to create a band of light, like what Lan often used. His was just uncontrolled power from the Heart of the Grove. Sophie would draw upon something far more refined, but perhaps less powerful because of it.
She shifted. The pose was not difficult, but it did involve her stretching her arms out in a wide circle and then twisting them slowly and steadily as she began to form the pose in its fullest form. As she did, she turned steadily, slowly, beginning to feel… well, she began to feel some aspect of power slowly easing out from her. As it did, she pushed more and more, and then it began to burst with light.
She unleashed it, spreading her hands, breaking the link.
The light streaked outward.
As soon as it did, Sophie saw that they were surrounded.
She had no idea what the creatures were. She needed to form the pose again, but she didn’t know if she had the strength, or the speed, to do it.
“Where did these things come from?” Sophie asked, not really expecting an answer.
“Some things are drawn to darkness,” Parvella said, though she didn’t come around enough to be any further help.
Sophie looked at her brother. “Lan,” she snapped, “we need your help. Light.”
Her brother stirred, and his effort was enough—barely enough—for him to shift his blade, and more light spilled out from it. When it did, he shifted his hand, and then the darkness was pushed back.
Jalyn looked at Sophie. “Well,” she began, “it was nice to know you.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if I can survive this,” Jalyn said. “Don’t let them take the Raven Queen.”
Before she started off, Sophie grabbed her by the arm. “Not like that,” Sophie said.
“What?”
There were other poses that Sophie knew, poses that Parvella had shown her, poses that might be useful now.
Sophie began to concentrate, and rather than forming them in her mind, she thought about how she could contort her body.
But even that wasn’t going to be enough. Instead, she thought about how she could modify them.
Lan’s light was burning and blazing in the night. If she could focus on this power, and if she could form something that would create a band around them…
Modifying the power.
She had already begun to use the elash pose, so modifying that would be the easiest, because she could add an element to it. It didn’t just have to be light, did it? She could add fire to it, using an aspect of one of the poses that she had rarely even attempted.
She formed the elash pose again, and light began to build.
“They are getting closer,” Jalyn said.
“I know,” Sophie said. “Let them get closer. I want to draw them in.”
“Sophie,” Jalyn said.
“Give me a moment,” Sophie said.
And as she held the elash pose, she felt the power all around her and waited for it to build up inside her. That was what she needed. Starting slowly, steadily, she let the energy continue to course through her, until it was the only thing that she felt. She concentrated it, waiting, and as that power reached a peak, and as the light that Lan was holding continued to blaze out and around her, Sophie knew that there was a window of time in which she could use this power. If she waited too long…
If she waited too long, she wouldn’t be able to do anything effective.
And so she hesitated a moment more, and then she felt the energy in her building, almost to the point where she could no longer hold it.
Then Jalyn cried out.
Sophie released it.
The power had built up inside Sophie so much that it was almost painful when she let it go.
It was light. It was heat. It was flame.
Parvella had said that some things were drawn to the dark. Sophie intended to be the light. She intended to be the brightness of the sun. She intended to burn through whatever was out there.
Heat exploded, and a raging fire created a rippling ring of power around them. It radiated away from them, burning brightly, until it struck the creatures. There was a horrifying shrieking that Sophie had to will herself to ignore.
The flames burned for nearly a minute.
They died down as the power that Sophie had been pushing died down. She couldn’t draw on anything more, though she wanted to.
She looked at Lan, and his blade had sagged.
He was still blazing with light, though.
“Jalyn?”
“I think… it worked,” she said, looking over at Sophie. “Good work. I suppose we know what we need to do if creatures like that come again.”
“I suppose we do,” Sophie said.
“Let’s get them to someplace safe to rest,” Jalyn said to Sophie. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Ruins,” Sophie said. “I think that’s where Parvella would take us.”
If they couldn’t make it back to Hester, then they might as well stay near a place of power. Let the gods protect them, if they would.
Chapter 21
LAN
The night was quiet.
The last few nights had been much the same. Lan had kept waiting for another attack, every bit of his body on edge, thinking that there would be a time when they would encounter something dangerous—perhaps creatures, perhaps soldiers, or worse, sorcerers—but there had been nothing. And he had finally allowed himself to start to relax.
In the last few days, the Raven Queen had been motionless. She had been resting, sleeping, and according to Parvella, recovering.
This had given Lan a chance to recover himself. He had needed it far more than he had ever expected to need it. His body had felt off for the better part of a day after the sorcerer attack, and it wasn’t until the following night that he finally began to feel like himself. There certainly seemed to be a limit to the power of the Heart of the Grove, something that he had suspected but had not really known.
When he had first awoken, Jalyn sitting at his side, watching the night but looking down at him worriedly, he had questioned whether he had severed his connection with the Heart of the Grove. Lan hadn’t been able to feel it at first. There had been an emptiness, as if there were a void deep inside him, but gradually—far too gradually for his liking—he had begun to feel something return. It had taken what seemed like an eternity.
The night was quiet.
A shadow moved near him, and he turned to find Jalyn. He had felt her approaching, even though he wasn’t sure what he had felt about her, but he had been aware of her presence before she had stepped closer to him. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.
“You seem jumpy,” she said.
“I don’t like being startled,” he said.
“You didn’t seem startled. Just jumpy.”
He turned his attention back out into the darkness. “We’ve been here a long time,” he said. “If we have to keep watch on the Raven Queen, it would be better to have others to keep guard.”
“Others would draw attention,” she said.
Lan breathed out, and looked around before he settled his gaze back on Jalyn. “It just feels like we are so exposed. This isn’t a good place to defend.”
“We haven’t had to defend it again,” she said.
“They came out here for a reason.” He looked over to where his sister was sitting, talking to Parvella.
Nevarn was sitting next to his mother, as he had taken to doing over the last few days. He had been training with his blade, sparring with either Lan or Jalyn, but when he was done, he would often take a seat next to his mother again and rest his hand on hers.
“I think you are hoping to find something to fight,” Jalyn said.
“I don’t want to fight anything,” he said. “I just want to…”
Lan felt something off in the distance. He wasn’t sure what it was.
He immediately reached for his blade, but he didn’t unsheathe it. He had already seen how it was instantly visible to others, and he didn’t want to run the risk of giving away their location.
Strangely, over the last few days, Lan had begun to see a faint glow from some of the others. Maybe that was tied to the god touch, and perhaps tied to the fact that he had drawn upon so much power. That may somehow have connected him to the god touch in a way that he had not been before.
He looked over at Jalyn. “Do you feel that?”
“I don’t feel anything,” she said. “Like I said, you’re jumpy.”
Sophie looked up at him, seated as she was across from Parvella, her hands clasped in one of her poses. She frowned, then got to her feet, looking out into the darkness. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and he frowned as he looked off into the distance. “I can feel… well, I’m not sure what I can feel.”
As Sophie looked into the distance, a trace of power drifted from her, and he could discern more of it than he had in the past. It was as if he could recognize the structure of it. She had called this pattern the prayer pose, and Lan had never really understood what it was, nor did he understand why he could see it. Yet as he focused on the way that she was forming the pose, he perceived the swirling of energy, the way that it was building, and he noticed that it twisted, almost forming in an image that looked like a person seated with her hands clasped in front of her, praying. Then power flowed outward.
A faint glowing swept away from her, rippling with her sorcery.
“What is it?” Sophie asked.
Lan shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
She frowned at him. “You are looking at me like you have just seen something.”
“I will talk to you about it later,” he said, realizing that Parvella was watching him, as was Nevarn.
“I can feel it,” Sophie said softly.
“I can as well,” Lan said.
“What is it?” Jalyn asked, drawing her blade.
Lan shook his head. “You don’t need that.”
“If there’s something out there—”
“There is something out there, but it’s not what I thought it was.”
He had been concerned about what they were going to encounter, and he was still a little worried, but not nearly as much as he had been before. He strode forward a few steps before pausing. “Keep an eye on things here,” he said to Jalyn. “And you,” he said to his sister, “keep watch.”
“I could come with you,” Sophie said.
“I’m not sure that you can, and I’m not sure that you should.”
She watched him for a moment, and then she formed another pose that began to sweep out from her and loop around him. Lan tried not to think about what she was doing to him, nor how he felt her magic, but there was something considerable about the way the power swept through him.
He focused on it, and then he moved forward.
He didn’t know what she had done, whether she had placed some sort of protective spell over him, but at this point, it didn’t even matter. The only thing that mattered was that he had felt something familiar out there.
He moved forward, carefully, and with each step, he focused on the warmth inside him and allowed that power to bloom. Lan had felt this power before, and there was something about it that called to him.
Something familiar. Something dangerous.
But why was the Hunter out here?
Chapter 22
LAN
Lan reached the edge of the forest before he slowed. It felt as if the Hunter was calling to him. And if the Hunter was there, maybe the Heart of the Grove was as well. He hadn’t seen either of them in the better part of a year. With the attack, he had been hopeful that they could help. And as he made his way into the forest, he could feel something of the Hunter building, some sense of power, but there was something else as well.
It was a deep, faint trembling.
Lan had not felt that in a long time. Long enough that he had forgotten how it felt, the way that it reverberated, and the echoing sense that came from it.
It was the power of the thisten.
They were here?
He had to know why. He hadn’t found the thisten since he’d last seen the Heart of the Grove. If they were here, it raised questions that he didn’t have answers to.
He reached the edge of the trees.
He paused for a moment, and once again heat flared within him. Lan had a measure of control over it that he hadn’t had before. He unsheathed his blade, striding forward.
He didn’t have to go very far before he found the Hunter. He was seated on a boulder, only about a hundred yards inside the edge of the forest, and he looked over at Lan as if watching for him, waiting for him.
Then again, if he was Darish, as Lan had long suspected, he would have known that Lan was there the moment he had entered the forest.
“Are you waiting on me?” Lan asked.
The Hunter shifted, and he swept his gaze around. “You’re getting stronger.”
“That’s the first thing that you have to say to me?” Lan wasn’t sure whether he should be annoyed or pleased. He was getting stronger. Maybe it was a good thing that the Hunter recognized it.
“It is the only thing that matters.”
The Hunter closed his eyes and started to glow, the same way that Lan glowed. Lan had once thought that perhaps the Heart of the Grove had gifted the Hunter power, but if he was Darish, then it didn’t make any sort of sense for him to have been given a gift from the Heart of the Grove. The only thing that would make sense was if all god power glowed in the same way.
“You fought here,” the Hunter said.
“There were five sorcerers and a dozen or more soldiers.”
“There were more than five sorcerers,” the Hunter said, glancing toward Lan and then turning his attention back to the depths of the forest. “I can feel their passing.”
Lan moved forward a few steps, focusing on the warmth inside him. If the Hunter could feel something, then Lan wished that he might learn that technique, because he wanted to know how to detect such things as well.
“How do you feel that?”
“Connections that you do not yet have.” The Hunter turned, and the glowing faded for a moment before surging with brightness once again. If this was Darish, then he would have incredible control. He was a god, after all.
Distantly Lan was aware of a faint rumbling, and he turned his attention toward it, focusing on what he could feel and whether there was anything that he might be able to learn from it. He was convinced that it was the thisten, even if he wasn’t sure where they were or why they would be out here.
“You feel them,” the Hunter said.
Lan nodded.
“You saved them.”
“Was I not supposed to?” Lan had not seen the Hunter ever since the attack in the forest. He had known that the Heart of the Grove had been pleased by the fact that they had not destroyed the thisten, but he didn’t know how the Hunter would feel about it. Given what he had seen of the Hunter, and the fact that he had shown a willingness to destroy the thisten, Lan wasn’t sure if the Hunter agreed with the Heart of the Grove.
“It is not a matter of what I think so much as it is a matter of what you think. They are unharmed.”
“And they are out there, roaming,” Lan said.
“So it seems,” the Hunter said.
“Are you chasing them yourself?”
“I have no reason to chase them. They will not harm anything.”
“You seemed awfully concerned about them before,” Lan said.
He knew that it was a mistake to get into an argument with one of the gods, especially Darish, who he had once followed more faithfully, but at this point, Lan also thought that he needed to have answers.
“I was concerned about what they could be. I did not know that they could be reclaimed.”
“So now you don’t fear them?”
“I fear their potential,” the Hunter said.
Lan thought that sounded overly vague, but from experience, he wasn’t sure that he could get anything more out of the Hunter.
“Why are you here?” Lan asked.
“I am here because I am called.”
Lan snorted. “And who calls you?”
“Someone of great power.”
Could the Raven Queen have called to the Hunter? She’d mentioned knowing Darish, so it was possible that she had summoned the Hunter.
“But you were waiting on me,” Lan said.
“I felt you, and I sent out a call,” he said.
“Why?”
“To speak.”
Lan snorted. “I’ve tried searching for you for the better part of a year, but you’ve avoided me.”
“I have not avoided you so much as I have avoided others,” the Hunter said. “And I knew you were searching. We had time.”
“Did we?”
“We did,” the Hunter said, but there was something in the way that he said this that left Lan thinking that perhaps they no longer had time.
“What has changed?”
“Many things have begun to change,” the Hunter said. “But perhaps the most important is that Odian is awakening.”
There was that name again.
“Who is Odian?”
“Odian is an old god,” he said.
“And you?”
“I am not an old god,” the Hunter said.
“What about the Shavln?”
The Hunter frowned and looked around for a moment, his gaze sweeping all around him. It might have been Lan’s imagination, but it seemed as if everything lightened for a moment. Perhaps the Hunter glowed ever so brightly that he could illuminate the darkness of the forest. Why do that now? Was it because he was somehow nervous?
“The Shavln, as you call it, is not exactly a god. It is a power,” the Hunter said.
“And Odian?”
“I have already told you about Odian.”
“You told me that Odian is an old god. That doesn’t help me understand anything about him. What does that mean?”
