Amenozume, Heights and Depths, page 29
“Thank you for telling me,” Silas unconsciously raised his chin as he spoke into the air. “Jimes, listen; I just was told by Kai to go to the Speaker’s tower in the palace. Is there something there I need to know about?
“Kai?” Jimes’s voice was puzzled.
“The goddess of the air and winds,” Silas explained curtly. “What’s in the tower that I need to know?”
“It’s got a great view,” Jimes answered. “That’s all. You were there once with me. Nothing fancy has happened there since you saw it.”
“Okay. Let me know if anything else is reported,” Silas advised.
“Let’s go,” he nodded his head, and led Forna with him across an empty yard to a small side door that allowed them to enter the palace.
“I don’t need this anymore,” he muttered as he realized that he still wore his blind man’s disguise across his eyes. He stuffed the gauze in his pocket and began to climb a familiar set of stairs, then went past the princess’s suite where he had been just a few nights before. He passed it without comment, thinking of having awakened in bed with Lumene, then silently veered through the doorway that Jimes had shown him, a discreet passage that led to the tower.
No one had seen them; no one had bothered them in the palace, Silas realized as he led the way up the winding steps to the top of the Speaker’s tower. The palace was empty – people were leaving it for whatever reasons they chose, but none of them were likely to be good, he reflected. Dissatisfaction with the Ivaric leaders, fear of the invasion, a lack of confidence with the disappearance of the Princess.
He wondered for a moment where the Queen was, and if there was some way he could protect Lumene’s aging mother, but then realized that he was commanded to go to the top of the tower, and that had to be his only concern.
“Here we are,” he informed Forna as he opened the last door and stepped into the round chamber at the top of the tower. The view was just as widespread as he remembered, yet much more memorable and noteworthy on this occasion.
Ivaric’s great armada, a collection of dozens of ships, all of them uniformly black, some of them small, but most of them formidably large, was clearly in sight, not many miles off the coast to the east. Forma swore softly as she saw the approaching invasion force.
On the other side, the landward side of the tower, noise and activity revealed the location of the invading front of the rebel forces. They were storming through the streets of the city, men and women who were coming into the capital city of Amenozume to take back their nation from the Ivaric occupation, though they had no idea of how close the deadly new influx of Ivaric fighters were.
“Silas,” Kai was suddenly standing in the room at the top of the tower. Forna saw the figure who had not been there a second before, a tall and slender light-haired woman of exquisite beauty, wearing a sky-blue gown, and she shrieked, then collapsed into a chair as she fainted momentarily.
“Silas,” Kai repeated, and Silas went down on one knee in a gesture of obeisance.
“This isn’t the time for that, Silas. Get up,” Kai urged. “And awaken that cousin of yours – you need her.
“You must save the island. You must use your own powers to create the conditions to drive the invasion fleet away, and if you do, I will add the touch of wind you need to make the task successful,” the goddess instructed.
Silas looked out at the size of the armada, the great number of ships that were majestically spread over a wide arc of space, crowding the ocean with their numbers.
“It is a great challenge, your ladyship,” Silas began to protest. He thought of the concerns he had just mentally considered, the fact that his ability and strength to manipulate with his Mover energies seemed to have diminished.
Hold your cousin’s hand. She is of your family. Some of your blood flows in her; she will be good for you, and so will I,” the goddess understood his hesitation. “You are troubled, your soul is torn by a conflict, and until you settle the turmoil within yourself, you will not have the smooth and reliable access to the power you need. For now, use Forna; for the future, look into your heart and cease the battle and the confusion that is disrupting your own strength,” the goddess summarily informed him.
“Now, awaken the girl and proceed; time is growing short.”
Silas sped over to Forna’s side. “Forna! We need to fight them, wake up!” he urged as he knelt by the chair she was in.
Her eyes opened, a glazed distance in them. “What is it?” she asked.
“I need you. Stand up and come here,” Silas stood and pulled on her arm, rousting her from her chair.
“Kai said that you can help me blow the fleet away from the island,” Silas tried to explain quickly. “If I hold your hand, you can give me more power.”
“Me? Power?” Forna asked in astonishment as she looked around.
Silas looked over at Kai to ask her to explain, but found that she was no longer physically present in the room.
“Because we’re cousins, your flesh is like mine. You can help me use my power. Just hold my hand,” he pleaded.
“Now Silas! Begin now. The ships are drawing too near. Here, this will help,” Kai’s voice spoke to both of them, and a sudden wind blew the roof and glass windows off the tower in a precise stroke that inflicted no injury to those within, suddenly exposing Silas and Kai to all the world around them without obstruction.
“Silas!” Forna stepped towards him, terrified by the precise violence that came and went. She held out her hand and he took it, then he walked to the edge of the tower top and looked out at the ships in the water.
Forna was suddenly against him, the length of her body pressed against his. “If holding hands helps, maybe this will be even better!” she proposed with a tight laugh, and kissed him on the cheek. “Do what the goddess commands, cousin!” she urged.
Silas turned his head from left to right one more time, observing all the ships that were in the water. They were the Ivaric invasion force, and he had to stop them. He thought once again about the cloud he had moved back in Faralag so far in the past, then he raised his hands in the sky, and he reached down within himself to find his powers and to begin the imposing task of trying to save a nation from invasion.
He reached for his power, and he found it. It was as it had been for some time, no greater, no lesser. Yet he felt something else too. His eyes were closed, and his soul tried to find the other energy, energy which he realized was within Forna, power that was available because she was his own flesh and blood, and because she was so close.
He grasped that power too, and he heard Forna give a soft grunt, then tighten her grip on him, and he pulled the power over to himself and began to shape his command.
“Winds, strike these ships! Blow them ferociously! Send them far, far away, away beyond anywhere I might know or hear of,” Silas commanded, as he released his burst of power. He was releasing all the power he could command, aware that he would drain Forna of energy just as he drained himself, but hoping that she would be less impacted than he would be.
The power left him and rose up into the sky. He felt as though a portion of his own consciousness was attached to the energy, and he could look down upon the besieged city from on high. He saw the waves of combat taking place along a front as the rebel forces swept through the city, their front lines already close to the palace itself, with more than half the city under control. And he saw the Ivaric forces, penned in together down by the harbor, still facing toward the waterfront and the fleet’s arrival that they expected, perhaps not aware of the impending conquest of the city that was already underway around them. And out in the water of the sea he saw the fleet, and he recognized the flag ship of the admiral in command, the ship and the man who was leading the new invasion. Every ship had a deck that was covered with soldiers, men who were ordered to plunder and kill the island’s inhabitants.
His thrust of energy climbed higher, up to a vast altitude far above the surface of the earth, and it began to gather together a mass of the fearfully cold air in the vicinity. He felt his consciousness depart from the energy and come rebounding back into his body, whipsawing him so that he swayed in place, Forna holding on to him tightly.
“Stay here, Silas. Stay here. I know I feel you doing something tremendous,” His cousin whispered in his ear.
“I will lend you my aid now, though you hardly need it, my young friend,” Kai’s voice also called.
And then the air over the city suddenly darkened, and Silas’s power seemed alive. It was a long moving trail of air, darker than the rest of the atmosphere around it. It was clearly visible to the eyes that were looking up into the sky, nearly every pair of eyes on the island, Silas was sure. It was wide and massive and tall as it came plummeting down towards the island from far, far above.
And as it traveled, Silas could feel the energy he had released, taking advantage of the energy of the goddess, not just accepting the power, but manipulating it to multiply the impact that the approaching wind storm would have.
As the river of air crashed down towards the surface of the earth, it suddenly veered to the east, and angled down to strike the ocean waters just outside the harbor, so close to the city that everyone could feel the nearby air being displaced, pushed aside by the arrival of the great new mass. Trees in the city thrashed, flags and pennants whipped wildly, and Silas and Forna felt the air trying to push them off their feet, though nothing seemed able to move them.
The cold air struck the ocean water and moved outward toward the fleet. Massive waves rose up as the air pushed and churned, creating a front of enormous destructive power that visibly raced toward the clearly-doomed fleet of ships at sea.
The admiral’s flagship in the lead of the fleet sent a number of flags up into its masts, trying to send signals and instructions to the threatened flock of ships around it, while the flagship itself began to try to execute some maneuvers that were a futile attempt to avoid the path of the oncoming devastation.
And then the first waves and air struck the fleet. The flagship took the very first contact, and Silas watched in horrified fascination as the mighty ship was rolled onto its side as simply as a child’s toy boat on a pond might have been sunk. Boat after boat was suddenly swamped or rolled or pressed against a neighbor as the unprecedented power struck the fleet and began to wreak mayhem throughout the collection of wood and canvas and flesh.
It wasn’t what Silas had intended, not consciously. He had only wanted to press the fleet back out into the open waters far off shore. But the power had enhanced itself, and had acted upon darker impulses, perhaps impulses that were buried deep below Silas’s consciousness, but that had been released to come to the fore in the inchoate eruption of energy he had released.
He wondered if his hatred of Ivaric, his memory of the pain he had suffered, his thirst for revenge had driven the wind storm to carry out destruction, not disruption. But it didn’t matter any longer, for destruction was rapidly spreading at sea, as thousands of lives were being drowned in the violent waves of the wind storm.
Silas dropped to his knees, an act that was partially weakness, and partially a request for forgiveness. Forna dropped down with him, her soul and body still attached firmly to his. “This isn’t your fault! You’re not the cause of this!” she shouted to be heard over the whistling of the wind around them.
“This is the Speaker Sloeleen, aboard a ship in the Ivaric armada,” Silas faintly heard a voice call out with the ability of the Speakers. It was faint, and crackled with gaps and static; the Speaker was not facing towards him, not trying to send a message towards Amenozume. She was sending a message back to the mainland.
“A mighty wind has struck the Armada just short of landfall,” Sloeleen reported. “The ships are sinking rapidly. There is no hope for survivors,” her voice choked as she gave the chilling report. “This fleet and army are lost.
“Tell my parents I love them,” her last words came after a pause. “Sloeleen, a Speaker aboard a ship at sea, reporting to Ivaric for the last time.”
“Save her; spare her,” Silas croaked out the words, wishing there was some way for him to regain control of the wind storm and spare the life of his former classmate.
The whistling wind around them dramatically diminished, and the sky grew brighter. The tail of the mighty mass of dark air passed out over the sea, and the apocalyptic conditions that Silas had created came to an end just as rapidly as they had begun.
The water that was whipped up by the storm acted as a curtain, low-flying rain as a by-product of the waves and hard-blowing winds. The rain obscured the view of the fleet at first, even as the tail of the wind storm passed beyond sight.
Silas felt himself growing weaker. His eyes began to close despite his efforts.
“Silas, are you okay?” Forna asked urgently. He felt her hand on his forehead. “Stay with me Silas,” she urged.
From his knees he slumped down to a sitting position, and his contact with Forna dissolved.
“I see one ship still out there Silas. All the others are,” she paused in her description, “gone.”
“I have to rest,” Silas replied, and he passed out.
“Let him sleep child, he has earned it, and he needs it – this and more,” Kai’s voice spoke to Forna, who looked up into the blue sky, but didn’t see the goddess. “He has further adventures to pursue when he recovers. Ivaric and L’Anvien are not defeated yet.”
Chapter 28
Silas slept in a bedroom inside the palace, his third day of lying unconscious after calling the great storm that saved Amenozume.
Forna sat by his bed, quietly reading a book until there was a soft knock at the door, making her look up.
“It’s us,” Jimes spoke as he entered the room, accompanied by Sloeleen. “We’ve spoken to the princess, and Sloeleen is going to remain here as the Speaker for the palace. The leaders of the Guild in Heathrim don’t know that I’m still alive, so she’s going to tell them I’ve gone missing and that she’ll remain. They’ll definitely want someone here to report on everything that happens here now.”
“And what are you going to do?” Forna asked Jimes.
“I’m going to return to the mainland and try to lead a coup to set Heathrim free from Ivaric. I’ve heard a few cryptic messages in recent months that make me think there’s a movement I can join.
“Is there anything new in his condition?” Jimes abruptly asked as he looked down at Silas.
Forna shook her head. “His breathing is strong and so is his heartbeat. He’s just not awake yet.”
“I wish he was,” Sloeleen chimed in. “I want to thank him for saving my life. We were the only ship to survive.”
“Bodies are still washing up on shore,” Jimes confirmed. “But more of the Ivaric occupying forces are being shipped out this afternoon on the late tide, and the whole land will be back under the control of the Queen again.
“Well, really the Princess,” he added in a lower voice.
“I don’t think too many people would mind if another storm swept over the ocean and wiped out these other ships taking the Ivaric soldiers away the way Silas’s storm destroyed the invasion fleet,” Forna responded, “from all I’ve heard.”
She’d heard a great deal about the occupying force from Ivaric in her three days at the palace. She’d stayed with Silas on the top of the Speaker’s tower after he’s fallen unconscious, and they’d remained there alone for over an hour until a clatter of boots on the staircase had preceded the arrival of Princess Lumene and Gwen, along with Carlton and a squad of rebel guards.
“What happened to him? Who are you? We saw him and you from the ground – the whole city was watching him control the storm,” Carlton spoke first as he reached the floor of the decapitated tower.
Forna started to try to explain as the rest of the group flowed up behind him, but stopped in surprise as Lumene immediately knelt beside him and kissed him tenderly on the lips.
“Is he going to live?” she asked only the one question.
“Kai just told me he needs to rest. She said he has more work to do. She said Ivaric and L’Anvien are not defeated yet,” Forna answered. She recognized the princess, though she’s never met her before, as she remembered the striking portrait of Lumene that had hung in a palace hallway she’d walked through.
“Kai, the goddess?” Carlton asked in astonishment.
“She was with us momentarily,” Forna tried to explain. “She gave some power to Silas to help him, but it felt to me like most of the storm really came from him.”
“Who are you? Another wizard like him? Your eyes aren’t any different?” Gwen asked gruffly.
“I’m Forna, from Brigamme. I’m a Tracker,” she told them. “I came to find Prince Jarvis, but Silas kidnapped me away from the Ivaric guards.
“Jarvis is here, close by?” she asked. “I can feel him in the city, over,” she paused, then pointed, “that way.”
The patriot leaders are holding him over there,” Lumene agreed.
“Can I meet him?” Forna asked impulsively. “It’ll help me wipe the chase from my Tracker senses.”
“We can arrange something, I’m sure,” Lumene grinned. “We’ve already got the surrender of all the remaining Ivaric soldiers in hand. They’re scared to death after watching that storm destroy the fleet.”
“That and the fact we brought an army of three thousand rebels into the city,” Gwen added.
“Patriots,” one of the new guards corrected her, causing her to shrug.
After that conversation, the Princess had directed her guards to carry Silas down to the hallway where the royal family’s suites were, and he’d been placed in the bed where he’d spent the next three days, Forna always at his side, as visitors had come and gone with great frequency. She’d answered a great many questions, repeatedly, and learned a great deal in return. And she’d been taken on a trip to a ruined prison, where she’d met the captive Prince of Ivaric, a sullen young man who’d glared at her while he sat in his cell in the remnant of Koch Prison. She’d felt the satisfaction of ending her Tracker assignment, though it had come in a form that no one had ever anticipated.
