Preda's Voice (Guardians of Vaka Book 1) (24 page)

58

P
reda felt slightly dizzy but was otherwise fine. Laney joked that it must be all that oxygen they weren’t used to. Preda knew it was that ridiculous singing display she had performed outside of Heart Stone. She had never sung anything before in her life—not even in the shower. It must have sounded awful. She was pretty sure no one would be honest with her if it had been, though. Will only laughed when she asked him about it.

He brought her to yet another set of opulent rooms and had told her this was going to be her new permanent home. Fiver didn’t seem to mind. He had settled in comfortably on a fancy divan across from her. The most amazing thing about the rooms was the balcony next to her bed. She was at least three stories high in one branch of the stone tentacles. The balcony opened up before the green ocean. It was breathtaking.

Preda looked around at her friends in her sitting room and noticed Ukra standing in the corner. She was looking at her feet as usual. The girl was just as nervous as she had been the day Preda took her in under her protection. No amount of gentle coaxing seemed to calm her. Preda started to stand to walk over to her, and both Jim and Will moved to help her. She scoffed and waved them off. “I won’t fall,” she said and then paused. “Again.”

There would be a large bruise on her knee from where she had walked into the table in her room earlier. The bruise on her ego was slightly bigger.

“Ukra,” Preda said and walked toward her. “Do you have family you would like to stay with while on Vaka? You are more than welcome to stay with me if you like.”

Talking to Ukra was like talking to a wounded animal sometimes.

“I think I would like to stay here,” Ukra said. “If that’s OK with you, of course,” she quickly added.

Preda smiled. “Of course it’s OK with me.”

Preda reached out her hand to take Ukra’s and lead her over to where the others were sitting. Ukra shook her head at Preda’s proffered hand and stammered, “I feel tired. May I go find a room?”

Preda nodded, and Will got up and asked one of the guards standing in the hall to take Ukra to her room. Shortly after Preda sat down again, a knock at the door came. Foxy and Al came in and sat down in uniforms that looked as if they had shiny metal overlays.

Jim noticed and asked, “Is that licre?”

Al nodded. “It’s just as light as the old uniform.”

Jim whistled in appreciation and looked at Will. “We have to go get some of those uniforms, Will.”

He nodded and said to Preda, “I’m going to go visit the barracks and get outfitted. You’ll be all right here with Tamron and Al?”

Preda laughed a little. “I think we can lengthen the leash. I’ve been training anyway. Remember?” She winked at Jim.

The two left, and Preda was stuck with the others, going over exactly what she should say at the ceremony the next day. Apparently she had already ruined it by singing the song early, and Foxy was not going to tolerate off-script antics tomorrow. Preda had no idea where she got the words, but strangely she knew exactly what they meant.

As the lecture from Tamron continued, Laney and Al interjected occasionally with tidbits here and there. They spoke and rehearsed well into the evening and had dinner in Preda’s rooms. She had not been surprised to find that one of her rooms was a dining room. When Jim and Will returned, Preda was exhausted and asked if she could go to bed.

Jim laughed at her. “The Vozia is asking us if she can go to bed!”

He shook his head and left. Will was the last to leave. “I’ll be right next door if you need me—just like on the
Feria
.”

Preda nodded. “I’ll be all right.”

As he was shutting the door behind him, Will turned. “Preda?”

“Yes?”

“What you did today…the singing. That was the most amazing thing I have ever heard in my entire life.”

He shut the door before she could reply.

That night Preda didn’t dream of floating in space. She dreamed she was a black featherless bird flying in the middle of white birds over a green glistening ocean. She could feel the cool, sweet air lift and carry her effortlessly through the clouds. Suddenly the air felt hot, and she looked down to see the ocean was on fire.

The people burning below were no longer strangers as they had been in her previous dreams. They had faces. They were the Vakans she knew. This time when Preda hit the water, it was because she intentionally dived straight into the fire. She left the white birds behind.

Preda bolted upright in bed and gasped for air. Fiver was hissing and growling on the bed next to her. As she caught her breath, she coughed involuntarily and realized the smell of smoke was not coming from her dream. The room was full of smoke, and the air felt hot.

Preda threw the covers off and grabbed Fiver. She ran to the door leading out into the hallway, and the handle felt hot to the touch. Smoke was curling under the doorway, and she knew that way was not an option. The only other way out was the balcony.

59

W
ill woke up to the feeling of panic and then relief. Preda was having nightmares again. He considered going over to make sure she didn’t need anything, but dismissed the idea as he always did. That would be an invasion of her privacy.

He tossed the blanket off himself. His room felt particularly warm, and he decided to get up and open the window next to his bed. The ocean breeze instantly made him feel cooler. Just as he was about to get back in bed, a noise off to his left made him look toward Preda’s balcony. It was approximately fifty feet away from his own window. Preda was standing on her balcony in her robe with the cat in her arms.

Something was wrong. He was instantly awake and felt her rising panic. Before he could yell for her, she did something incredibly uncharacteristic. She leaned over the railing and lowered the cat as far as she could before letting him drop into the bushes below. The cat appeared unharmed after his fall. Then Preda hiked up her robe to make the jump herself. Will yelled for her at the top of his lungs, and she stopped. She looked at him. “Will! There’s a fire!”

He told her to stay still, and then ducked back into his own room. He noticed the smoke and rising temperature. It was coming from the hallway. He couldn’t get to her except from the outside. He ducked his head back outside and yelled, “Preda, don’t move!”

Will cursed while he furiously grabbed the bedcovers and tied them to a table anchored underneath the large windowsill. He had no time to test it. He just swung out of the window. He belatedly realized a shirt would have been nice as his body slammed into the rough stone from the momentum of his jump. Will had no time to feel the scrapes, and he dropped down to the end of the blanket. He dropped down the rest of the way, landing hard and rolled quickly to his feet. He ran over to stand underneath Preda’s balcony. The cat was frantically pacing in circles on the ground underneath. Will held his arms out and yelled to her. “Preda, jump with your feet out.”

Will later considered what kind of bravery and trust that must have required on her part, because Preda didn’t hesitate. She jumped with her feet pointing outward, and Will caught her, falling backwards with her momentum. Preda stumbled to her feet and scooped Fiver up in her arms, with Will not far behind.

They looked back up at the Heart Stone and saw that the flames were now visible from the balcony itself. The fire had quickly spread into her room.

“We have to get everyone out,” she yelled. “Isn’t there a fire alarm?”

Will shook his head. Because of Vaka’s inherent humidity and the predominance of metal structures with very little electricity used within buildings, fires were rare and never spontaneous.

Preda growled something under her breath about changing that policy and ran toward the ocean. She put the cat down along the way, but Fiver followed on her heels. Will wanted to run inside to help, but he had to stay with Preda. This was intentional, and whoever had done it had likely planned to smoke the Vozia out.

When he caught up to her, Preda was standing at the edge of the island overlooking the ocean. Her eyes were practically glowing green in the moonlight, and the wind was blowing her hair in every direction. She was staring intently at a spot in the water. She looked insane.

Will was anxiously looking back at Hakkan and could see some people making their way out of the building, but screams could still be heard from inside. The soldiers in the barracks were waking up now and running toward the flames with buckets in hands. Suddenly from behind Will, Preda lifted her arms and started screaming.

60

L
aney woke up to screaming. She shot upright and immediately worried that the palace was under attack. Before she could even get out of bed, Jim slammed open her door.

“Laney, let’s go. There’s a fire,” he yelled, grabbing her.

The smoke was billowing up in the hallways as they ran, and Jim knocked on every door they passed and yelled for people to wake up. Laney also started knocking on doors on her side, and together they woke up their entire branch of the palace.

Laney hoped it was enough, but she could hardly see from the smoke. They ran down one of the narrow stone stairwells just in time for yellow flames crawling along the ceiling to greet them from behind. Jim and Laney ducked out of the building before becoming engulfed.

Once outside in the cool night air, Laney started to gather people into a large group so they could keep track of everyone. She couldn’t see any sign of Preda or Will anywhere. Once he was sure Laney would be fine, Jim left her to join the efforts at the barracks and carry water buckets into the palace.

At one point Laney saw Tamron carry two people out of Hakkan on his shoulders. Soot covered his face, and half his clothes had been singed off. He laid the Vakans down at Laney’s feet to take care of, and then turned to run back inside. She wondered who could have done this. The security on the outside was airtight.

Suddenly the ground beneath Laney’s feet started to shake. She heard a faint yelling coming from the edge of the grounds toward the ocean, and turned just in time to see Will running toward her and waving his arms. She couldn’t make out what he was saying until it was too late.

Vaka had three moons, and all shone brightly that night. They lit up the wall of water behind Will well enough that Laney could see the whitecaps on top of the wave. It was bigger than the entire city’s diameter and taller than the watchtowers on the perimeter. At its peak the wave blocked out an entire moon’s light.

Laney stood and watched in horror as it moved inexorably forward. It was going to demolish them.

61

T
his feeling felt familiar. Preda had become so angry that she had directed all the force of her rage into the very ground beneath her. On Earth it had been a partially active volcano. In this case it was an entire ocean.

Everything grew quiet, including the screams from the fire behind her. Then suddenly the ground shook as if she had released a drill underneath the water. The resultant shift underneath caused a massive wave to form in front of them.

She felt Will leave her and run toward Hakkan. It didn’t matter. No one could outrun this wall of water. Preda was unafraid, though. She felt she had control of it. She stood with her arms up. She was alone in front of the tsunami, and since she had no other way to channel her power, she yelled at it.

Deep down Preda realized then that it wasn’t her voice. It was her. Her voice was simply the trigger on a loaded gun. She was a weapon that had been brought home, and now her home was under attack.

That fire had been set as surely as she had summoned this wave. Hakkan was her parents’ home. The Heart Stone held the only people she had ever truly known and cared for. It held her future. She concentrated on this feeling of white-hot anger as she yelled at the wall of ocean in front of her. It stopped its forward advance. She held the ocean suspended in front of her.

Preda considered her next move carefully. She had never imagined doing anything like this—even in her wildest dreams. She carefully swung her arms up and back so the water formed a thin arc above her head and flowed toward the burning Heart Stone. She didn’t let it crash. She slowed its momentum and caught it just before releasing it on top of the palace.

The rest of the arc above her head was also released, and it temporarily flooded the area below. Preda was able to grab a nearby branch and did not get swept away in the current back out to the ocean.

62

L
aney and Will watched in horror as the wave suddenly transformed into an arc over their heads before it was released on top of them like a monsoon. It flooded the corridors of the Heart Stone, but the water reached only as high as Laney’s waist as it gently moved back to the ocean.

In its wake it left some people coughing up water on the ground next to flopping, oddly shaped fish. Laney quickly took a head count and found they had lost no one in the wave. The fire, however, was a different story. A soaking Tamron carried out two bodies that had been badly burned shortly after the wave receded. One of them was a soldier.

Tamron stood over him and fell to his knees. Laney ran over to them. She feared it was Jim. She felt her fingers and toes go numb as she approached. The man was the same size and build as her friend. Tears came unbidden to her eyes, and she feared to look.

As she came closer to the burned remains, a sudden, fierce embrace caught her. The arms around her belonged to Jim. Racking sobs overcame Laney, and she nearly took Jim down with her. He tightened his hold on her and held her up until she calmed.

They finally made their way over to Tamron. Tamron spoke without looking away from the remains next to him. “He was a Landi soldier. I didn’t tell him this morning how far he had come since I had last seen him. He didn’t know how proud I was.”

Laney knelt down next to Tamron. “You are not as hard to read as you think. He knew.”

Tamron looked at her as though he was seeing Laney for the first time. “Where’s Will?” he asked suddenly.

Laney said, “He’s fine. He was just with me.”

Tamron looked around. “He went to find her. She stopped the fire.”

There was no need to say whom he was talking about. They had all seen what Preda had done with the ocean. No Vozia had ever done anything close to that. Generations ago there had been one who could calm the ocean during a storm, but that was nothing like Preda could accomplish. Tamron got up and left them in search of Preda and his son.

Jim helped Laney to stand, and they set about finding and helping the injured. Al was among the survivors, and Laney found him waving off the assistance of some well-meaning soldiers.

“I don’t need your help, young one. Go find someone who does!” he yelled, waving his one arm in the air.

He looked as if he had sustained some burns on his legs but would be all right. Laney thought maybe nothing could kill the old Kait.

Soon Laney saw Will and his father walking back toward Hakkan. Will was carrying an unconscious Preda in his arms. Tamron was carrying a very wet black cat in his arms.

She ran to them, and they both said in unison, “They’re fine.”

“The cat was in a tree,” Tamron added. “I had to get it.”

Laney almost collapsed in relief and laughed. If someone had told her a year earlier that the leader of the Kait would be climbing a tree to rescue a drenched cat, she would have called that person insane. Will laid Preda down next to the injured Vakans on the ground.

Tamron asked Laney and Jim for an assessment of the survivors and casualties. Overall they had located twenty bodies. All had died in the fire. There were an additional sixty-four injured.

There was only person unaccounted for—Ukra. They had not finished their search yet, but it appeared as though the Ceren servant had vanished.