Sands (Sharani Series Book 1) (10 page)

“Get out!”

Lhaurel left, but when she reached the door she came face to face with Kaiden.

“Could you move out of my way?” she said.

“Not even a ‘please’? I brought you here to become part of something greater, be part of the protectors and not the protected. Here you can hold a sword in your hands and not be worried about being killed. Here you can learn to fight and kill genesauri. Here you can learn what equality means and the true price of freedom.”

“Could you get out of my way, please?” Lhaurel said with a thin smile.

Kaiden snorted loudly and folded his arms. “You’re as stubborn as an old goat, aren’t you?”

Lhaurel opened her mouth to respond, her back stiff and her face twisted with anger and guilt, but a long brazen sound rolled through the passageway and echoed off the walls. Kaiden cursed and grabbed her by her barely healed left wrist, his grip strong enough to bring a squawk of protest to her lips.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, trying to pull free, though the sword in her hand got in the way.

Kaiden spun toward her, jaw forming a hard line and brow furrowing in concentration. There was such intensity in the gaze it made Lhaurel pause.

“There’s a sandstorm coming, you idiot,” he said. “We’ve got to find cover. Come on.” His words slurred together in his rush. “Sands blow through these passages with enough force to rip the hide from your bones.”

A few quick steps took him further down the passage, where he stopped and turned back, dancing on the balls of his feet. His eyes flashed with irritation, but he simply gestured for her to follow.

Lhaurel hesitated, though the mention of a sandstorm sent ripples of fear down the base of her neck. Someone appeared at the end of the hall, belabored breathing seeming to echo in the narrow confines. It was Tieran.

“Lhaurel. Kaiden,” he gasped. “Get out of the halls. Get somewhere with a door.”

The intensity cut through Lhaurel’s distrust. The panic in his voice was real.

She dashed toward Kaiden as Tieran continued down the intersecting hall. The sword Beryl had given her weighed heavily in her left hand. When Kaiden reached out and grasped her by the wrist, Lhaurel didn’t fight the grip, though her skin crawled at the feel of his rough hands. Images of leather, blood, and a flashing knife darted across her memory. Dread spread through her. Her vision swam and Kaiden swore, giving her arm an unusually hard tug that sent her stumbling.

Anger welled up within her. Before she realized what she was doing, she lashed out with the sheathed sword, catching Kaiden in the gut. He doubled over, clutching at his stomach, but Lhaurel followed up with a swift kick to the side of his legs, bringing him to the ground. Leaping to her feet, Lhaurel half drew her sword before she came to her senses in a wash of cold realization.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I—I didn’t mean to. I—”

Kaiden waived her to silence. His eyes burned with a mixture of anger and pain. A dark stain spread across the lower half of his robes. Lhaurel couldn’t tell if it was water or urine, but she wasn’t about to ask.

The wind picked up, screeching down the passage like the sound of a sailfin pack. Lhaurel’s robes fluttered in the wind, dancing up around her knees and revealing an indecent amount of leg. The smell of dust hung heavy in the air, filling her nose.

Kaiden cursed and struggled to his feet, the anger fading into a wary expression. He gestured for Lhaurel to follow him again, though it was a perfunctory motion, no heart in it. She followed him, not meeting his eye.

Kaiden threw open a nearby door and stepped inside. Lhaurel entered after him, and Kaiden shut the door.

Not even a single crack of sunlight drifted down through the sandstone. Torchlight cast a strange orange and grey pallor over the barrels and sacks that lined the walls of the small room. Kaiden grunted as he pushed around her, shoulders bumping with no small amount of force, and sat down on some of the sacks. A pair of rashelta scurried out from under the sacks and disappeared into the shadows, light glinting off the small spines that stuck up from their shells.

“What was that for?” Lhaurel said, rounding on him.

Kaiden dug around in the pocket of his robes and fished out a soggy piece of leather. It took Lhaurel a moment to recognize it as a small waterskin, one side split along the seam.

“That’s two of these you’ve ruined now.” He tossed the soggy leather at her.

“
I’ve
ruined?”

“Yes, you,” he said, a biting edge creeping into his voice. “You’re a wetta. Khari asked me to break you. I guess I succeeded. Fat lot of good that did me.”

Lhaurel blinked. “I’m a what?”

Kaiden threw up his hands in exasperation, the flickering torchlight seeming to outline him in a thin reddish aura. Or at least Lhaurel thought it was exasperation. When she took a moment to comprehend what she was seeing, she realized Kaiden had tossed several small squares of metal into the air. She waited for them to fall to the ground, but they hung suspended in the air a few inches above Kaiden’s head.

A wash of emotions crossed over Lhaurel’s face. Fear, confusion, incredulity—all giving way to stunned disbelief as Kaiden flicked a finger and the metal squares threw themselves through the air with a whistle, piercing the shell of a scrabbling rashelta that had just wandered back into the torchlight. The shell gave way with a sickening crunch. The metal weaponry burst through the rashelta’s belly and clinked against the rocks. Purple blood dripped into the sand.

Lhaurel backed slowly toward the door, her eyes wide.

Kaiden turned to her with a grin.

Her back hit wood. Her left hand scrabbled at the door’s latch.

“You’re a mystic,” Kaiden said, his tone quiet yet fervent. “A magic user. One of three kinds. I am a magnetelorium. You are a wetta.”

The stories were true. The tales tired mothers told their wayward children at night to keep them in bed, stories about the magic of the Roterralar and how they could kill you without ever raising a hand. They were all true. She’d never been one to believe the stories, especially not as she’d gotten older, but she had proof before her now. She’d thought Tieran had been joking when he’d called Khari a mystic but—

“What are you?”

Her hands twisted on the latch behind her back, but it wouldn’t budge. She could hear the wind whistling behind her, could feel the sand beat against the outside of the frame. She knew the dangers of being exposed to such a blast. She’d seen flesh torn off a man caught outside the safety of the warren. Right now, though, looking at the twitching rashelta, she almost wished for the sands.

Blood dripped onto the ground.

Kaiden blinked and seemed to notice her fear for the first time. He sighed and rolled his eyes but got to his feet, holding his hands wide.

“Alright,” he said, “let’s start this over again. You can draw your sword if you wish, whatever will make you feel better.”

Lhaurel felt a small flush of embarrassment. She’d dropped her sword as soon as the metal squares shot across the room. It lay discarded at her feet. She picked it up hastily and drew it, metal gleaming in the torchlight.

“What did you just do, demon,” she asked, her voice harsh.

“Why is it always demons? The next time I visit the clans I’m going to have a word with all those mothers about the stories they tell their children. I’m tired of being called a demon by those I try to protect.”

“What did you just do?” she repeated, bringing the point of her sword up to hover an inch from his face.

Kaiden focused on the blade. His expression was hard, tempered with the barest trace of contempt. “Metal. I manipulated the forces that pull metals together or push them apart. Anything made of metal I can control. For example—” He shifted and the sword wrenched from her fingers of its own volition, twisting in the air to turn back around and point toward her. It hovered in the air an inch from her left eye. “Useful, wouldn’t you say?”

Lhaurel unclenched her fists with an effort. Who was he? Just when she’d started to understand one thing, something new had completely upended her world. “You are a wetta.” The sword dropped into the sand, point first. “Which means that you don’t manipulate metal. You manipulate water. You can find it, sense it. In the same way, you can sense and detect other mystics. Both useful in the desert climate.”

“No, I can’t.” The denial came readily, the words leaping from her lips almost before conscious thought formed them.

“Pretending you can’t feel the sandstorm’s effects on your skin doesn’t mean it’s not raging just behind the door,” Kaiden said, the lines on his face sharpening. “I tell you that you are a wetta. Whether or not you accept that is irrelevant. It doesn’t change the truth. We’ve watched you for years. The mystics who’ve come through your warren have been there to keep an eye on you. Since one of our wetta sensed you, we’ve just been waiting for the right moment to bring you into the fold. Tradition dictates it be close to your seventeenth year for women, though it can be earlier if something triggers a breaking before then.”

The sword flipped up out of the ground and spun around so that the hilt was facing her at around arm height. The metal squares flickered in the torchlight, dripping purple flecks of blood as they returned to Kaiden’s hands. He wiped them on the sides of his pants and deposited them in a pocket. He did it so casually. As if something so wondrously terrifying were commonplace and mundane. The sword bobbed in the air, gently prodding her arm. Lhaurel did her best to ignore it.

Fear tugged at her, giving her clarity of thought. She remembered Kaiden throwing her the sword when the sailfins had attacked the Sidena. He’d set her up—she was sure of it—set her up to be genesauri bait and—ultimately—bring her here.

Her hands reached behind her and struggled with the latch. It rattled loudly, and Kaiden arched an eyebrow at her, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t think she could even if she’d wanted to. Shrieks of anger assaulted the door behind her—the anger of wind denied passage at the end of a long journey.

“You’re still in denial, aren’t you?” Kaiden sighed and grabbed a fistful of his hair in frustration, “Lhaurel, we want you to join us. In fact, you’ve already sworn fealty to the Roterralar, so it’s just a matter of acting the part.”

“And what if I don’t want to anymore?”

The lock clicked in the door behind her, the latch suddenly lifting in her hands.

“Then leave.” His voice was cold, his eyes ice.

Would he really just let her leave? Lhaurel snatched her sword out of the air, opened the door, and hurled herself into the maelstrom.

Sand assailed her, cut into her skin, tore at her flesh. The force of it blinded her, filled her mouth and left her struggling to breathe. She stumbled onward blindly, one arm extended in front of her and the other futilely covering her mouth and nose. She stumbled into a wall, cutting open her hand. Sand filled the cut in moments, stopping the blood flow. With a muffled scream, she fell to her knees, which tore her robes and opened new wounds. Her mind screamed with the pain.

What was this place? Who were these people? All the rumors were true—demons taking human form. Mystics. Magic users. And she had let them use her.

She got to her feet unsteadily, fought the force of the wind threatening to push her over. She felt the skin peeling off her flesh, felt the sand tear it from her like thousands of hungry teeth. But she took one dogged step forward after another. She had to get away. Away from all of this. Away from the pain and the confusion and the blood. All the blood. What did Kaiden want with her?

She took another step forward. Another patch of skin joined the debris in the air.

How dare he accuse her of being one of them! She was no demon.

She stumbled.

Maybe he was right.

The thought came small and dark, entering her mind like a thief in the night, leaving the footprints of a king. She coughed up sand, though more filled her mouth and nose than left. Why was she here? Why had the genesauri attacked early? Somehow the two questions merged in her overtaxed mind.

She took another step forward and tripped against a promontory of rock. She hit the ground hard, sucking in more dust and sand. This time she didn’t get up.

What did it matter? She was dead now. Her life with the Sidena had been nothing short of the first of the levels of hell. This had to be the second. Death would be a pleasant relief to the pain. A freedom from thought, confusion, and . . . and . . . where was her sword?

It was gone. Oddly, she felt a twinge of sorrow at that. It had been a nice sword.

Sand choked her, cut off her air. She struggled to rise but didn’t have the strength. She was dying, slowly suffocating with a mouth and nose stopped up with sand. The thought didn’t seem to sadden her. Though her eyes were closed, her vision lightened, and she caught a glimpse of a far off meadow, the grasses green and verdant, calm and tranquil, like the Oasis would be about then. She smiled.

A face appeared in the light, resolving into a complete form, one whose arms were outstretched, holding up a large metal plate like a shield.

Kaiden?

She slipped into unconsciousness.

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