Upon the Flight of the Queen Page 19

  Elenai realized something about the kobalin she hadn’t before. Ortok hadn’t just seen the outward manifestation of the energy she used. He’d seen the inner world. “Can all kobalin sense magic like you, Ortok?”

  “Yes. Can you not?”

  “They have to,” Kyrkenall explained. “Otherwise they can’t make it through the shifts. Kobalin are far more sensitive to disturbances and storms out here, and far more resilient to changes.”

  “One is coming,” Ortok said.

  “One what?” Elenai asked.

  “A storm.” He scrambled to his feet, wobbling a little. “I think you called it when you brought so much magic in one place.”

  She wanted to ask him a host of questions, starting with how he could be sure and how a storm could be “called” but Kyrkenall cut in as she opened her mouth.

  “How close? How strong?”

  “It is beside us,” Ortok said, then stumbled forward. Elenai hurried to his side and offered an arm. But the kobalin lord seemed confused by her gesture and righted himself.

  “Why did it hurt so to throw those spears?” he asked her

  “When you injure the lizards, they share their pain,” Kyrkenall replied. “That’s what Elenai’s been trying to tell you. Didn’t you hear her?”

  “I thought you were not mighty as I am.”

  Kyrkenall grinned and scooped up the trio of spears Ortok had dropped when he’d been stunned.

  “But they had bad magic that was more mighty,” Ortok concluded. Even in close proximity to him, Elenai noted again he had very little scent.

  She accompanied him toward his mount. For once, the big steady plow horse was nervously flicking his ears.

  “I will remember,” Ortok said, then grasped the saddle and pulled himself heavily into it.

  Elenai hurried to her own horse, surprising herself a little when she used the magical power of her hearthstone to push herself easily into the saddle. She’d done it without thinking. Putting aside guilt and worry, she told herself to focus on the task at hand. To her eyes, nothing around her was amiss. The sky was calm. But beneath the fragile shell of pseudoreality, she sensed energies gathering around the weak point where she’d broken into the void. She had no need to urge her horse to flee with the others.

  They were only a few hundred yards out when the ground shook. Elenai gentled the minds of the animals, then sent tendrils of will toward the ground beneath and ahead of them. The surface vibrated when a terrible explosion occurred behind, sounding like some monstrous entity had just torn open a mountain.

  Looking back, she discovered the earth splitting wide in an uneven crack, one that gained on them. “Keep going!” She curvetted her horse as the others galloped on, then stared down the storm. If she had called it, maybe she could disperse it. She must at least try, for if the tear opened to the void the lizards might return.

  She touched the storm with tendrils reinforced by the hearthstone. Violent pulses flowed out from the stone, past her, and into the maelstrom. The strange artifact was actually tapping into the storm’s energy! She understood now that it must have been low on power, for the hearthstone took on a brighter sheen.

  She shouted in a mad mix of joy and abandon, and worked her magics. This time she strove not for a bandage, but to relink the pieces of this land’s matrix, soothing and mending lines of force. It was like taking a shattered timber from a bridge frame, righting it, and smoothing it into place, except the entire time she did so wind roared and lashed at her.

  She felt the void below her, and tried not to think of the hungry entities she had sensed there the time she and Kyrkenall and N’lahr had fled a storm so dangerous it had completely stripped all pretense of reality from the shifts. What would she do if some of those waited below?

  She smiled, awash with power, knowing she could master anything, be it monstrous being or glowlizard or a mighty storm. She laughed to think of the fears she’d once had when manipulating the stuff of the shifts, discovering that the task grew simpler the longer she worked. In the hearthstone’s glow, all things were easy.

  When she at last had everything restored, she put hands to hips and regarded her work. No sign remained of the damage, and nothing was left of the storm but a few rough winds.

  Normally when she finished working with a hearthstone she disengaged, but now she tried to remember why she’d want to relinquish the godlike power. Because it isn’t safe, she thought, and laughed.

  This isn’t right, she told herself, and again strove to recall exactly how hard it had been to untangle from the stone after she’d fought Denaven. But that was as nothing, so she thought of the withered husk that Belahn had become after long immersion in his own hearthstone. While she knew that would never be her fate, she found impetus enough to withdraw her own energies from the stone and spiral it closed.

  She sat silent and whole, trying to recognize herself again for who she truly was, like an actor who had immersed herself in the role of majesty.

  Kyrkenall grinned at her as he trotted up on Lyria. “That was fantastic! Do my eyes deceive me, or did you just completely quell a storm in the shifts?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t stop smiling, thinking all the while that was because of the lingering tingle of pleasure from controlling so much energy.

  “You’ve really gotten good,” Kyrkenall said.

  Was it her getting better, or was the stone getting good at working with her? Her eyes drifted to the saddlebag where she kept it.

  Not for the first time, she thought back to what Kyrkenall had once suggested about hearthstones being alive. Had the thing made a deliberate choice to feed from the storm, or had she directed it?

  “Are you all right?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “I feel fine,” she said, and wondered if she lied.

  10

  Challenge in the Shifts

  They halted when Ortok nearly fell off his horse. The kobalin seemed woozy, though he refused to admit that he was impaired in any way, even after it happened a second time.

  Elenai could have kept on for hours longer, even days. She was comfortable, confident, and ready for action. In the first few weeks of hearthstone use she’d had to make a conscious effort to recharge after wielding her hearthstone. This time it had happened with little to no effort on her part.

  She felt so strong that it was hard to muster much inclination for concern. She’d managed to deactivate the thing, after all. Maybe her stone was less addictive than Belahn’s, or perhaps she was less prone to getting trapped in it. She supposed it would be nice to consult with someone who knew more about the hearthstones, someone with more experience. Unfortunately most of the true experts left alive were numbered among their enemies.

  And so as Elenai bedded down beside her comrades in a tiny splinter of reality deep in the shifts, she thought of Rialla. If Elenai really had spoken with the dead alten’s spirit in a dream, she could return again. If she did, Elenai wouldn’t just ask for more details about the warning meant for Kyrkenall, she’d ask for help with the hearthstones.

  While she lay fighting for sleep, she rehearsed the questions she’d ask, afraid she’d have little time to talk during a dream visit. Thinking and rethinking kept her awake deep into Ortok’s watch, until she drifted off at last, her dreams alive with confused images of rafting upon a river of stars with her mother.

  Kyrkenall woke her with a hand on her shoulder. His voice was low. “We’ve been found. Get dressed.”

  “The glowlizards?” she asked groggily.

  “Kobalin. Ortok says it’s a hunting party. They’ve crept close for a look.”

  Waking was unpleasant, owing to the onset of cramps no longer abetted by the hearthstone’s power. She was sorely tempted to tap its energies once more and restrained the impulse. The night’s sleep had brushed out foolish optimism like a broom taken to corner cobwebs. The hearthstone should always be a last resort; Belahn had surely thought himself in control as well. The stones were deceptive that way, and
when you were flush with their power you felt invincible. Remember this, she told herself. Remember how Gyldara had to physically shake you back into yourself after that battle in the shifts. You could lose who you are.

  Elenai had long since learned the mind-over-body exercises drilled during squire training, so she rose without voicing complaint, surreptitiously scanning their surroundings.

  She saw no obvious sign of kobalin watchers. Orange clouds spiraled over craggy hills thick with dark blue grass and tough clumps of reedy bushes topped by broad, cinnamon-scented flowers. Despite the chill and unwelcome wind, it was one of their more attractive stops in the last few days.

  Kyrkenall had his bow ready and studied the lands opposite her, arrow nocked but not pulled back.

  Ortok stepped past them both, smote his dark hairy chest with both hands, then spread his arms and lifted his voice. “Cease your stalking! I am Ortok, Hunter of Beasts! Slayer of Nemrose! I have journeyed long. I have traveled deep! I have seen rare beauties and horrors, and trod the lands of Dendressi! I have earned the friendship of N’lahr the Grim, and dined with Altenerai!”

  Apparently they weren’t going to play this coyly. Elenai wondered why he mentioned only N’lahr by name, but supposed it was the commander who’d officially named him friend.

  It looked as though Ortok was addressing the wind until a distant bush rustled and a tall, brown-scaled manlike thing crept from behind it. The creature held a spear in a fist dangling at the end of arms so long they reached to its calves.

  Then, at fifty yards out, more kobalin stepped from the cover of rocks or lifted themselves up from the ground. There were almost twenty of them. Two looked nearly human; the rest were strange amalgamations, covered with fur of varying lengths. Many boasted horns or scales, and one strange entity even had a third eye in the center of its head.

  Kyrkenall raised his bow, arrow nocked to string. The long-armed kobalin drove its spear point into the ground with sudden violence, then struck its chest as Ortok had done.

  “I am Qirok!” It cried in a querulous alto. “I am slayer of Red Tongue, slayer of Four Patch, and master of the Five Corners. You’re foolish to dare our lands! You’re foolish to enter with none but Dendressi!”

  Ortok chuckled. He indicated his companions with a sweep of his arm. “These are Altenerai! The mighty Kyrkenall the Eyeless, great archer and sharp swordsman! Elenai Oddsbreaker, enchantress of stunning potency! We have no fear, and we are no fools! We have no need of your meager lands. We pass through them to better places!”

  The watching kobalin muttered among themselves. Elenai studied them calmly. She knew how swiftly Kyrkenall could kill, and had learned herself capable of the same, but even so, twenty to three on even ground wasn’t especially good odds.

  “What do we do?” she whispered to Kyrkenall.

  He answered without looking away from the kobalin. “Leave it to Ortok.”

  Qirok stamped a foot beside his spear and sent dirt billowing. “I say that you lie, Ortok! You have built a fire! You claim this place for your own!”

  Ortok laughed again. “We do not want your flowers or your clouds. We travel far to test our might! Already we have overcome many dangers!”

  The challenger took two steps forward and puffed out his chest. “Why would kobalin travel with Altenerai? I say that you lie! Dendressi do not belong here. If you won’t kill them, I will!”

  Elenai looked to Kyrkenall, who subtly shook his head.

  Ortok raised his hands. “They are mine to kill if I wish it, not yours!”

  That was a startling pronouncement, Elenai thought as she recalled Kyrkenall’s warning.

  Snatching up his spear, Qirok stomped forward.

  “This is about to get interesting,” Kyrkenall said, and for some reason he eased the hold on his bow. The watching kobalin seemed to relax as well. Elenai didn’t understand what was happening until Qirok stopped six paces from Ortok, re-drove his spear into the ground, spread his arms, and addressed him boldly.

  “I say that you are a liar who spent his last years hiding under a rock in the Dendressi lands!”

  A ritual challenge had begun. Elenai had only seen one before, but she was familiar enough with stage portrayals of them. Elenai looked to Ortok for his answer.

  The black kobalin spoke with great ease. “You are only a sand eater who wanders from sight and returns with lies of great victories!”

  Qirok smirked. “You are only a pet of these Dendressi, who groom you and feed you treats!”

  Ortok crossed his arms. “You are a boaster, who lacks cunning and grace.”

  “Hah! You are no great champion, or you would have better phrases! Mine are masterful, for I have practiced long and won many battles!” Qirok then jeered, as though he had delivered a death blow, but Ortok merely shook his head.

  “You need more than words to be great. You need strength, and skill, and wit. These are strangers to you. You pretend before your band of weak ones, but must bow to true greatness.”

  Qirok let out a high-pitched shriek of rage and sprang at Ortok, who flexed his knees and raised knotted fists. The challenger came in swinging his two absurdly long arms. Ortok ducked one and batted the other aside before slamming his opponent in the kidney. Qirok yipped, his momentum carrying him past.

  Elenai leaned toward Kyrkenall. “Why aren’t they using weapons?”

  The archer seemed as curious as she did. “They’ve always attacked me with weapons. Maybe it’s different when they’re fighting each other.”

  Maybe, Elenai thought as Qirok swung at Ortok’s head, their hand combats were deadly enough without weapons. The shot clipped Ortok’s cheek and he grunted. He threw up two clenched fists to block another blow.

  Qirok danced forward on his long legs and threw two accurate, powerful punches before leaping back. Elenai was a little dismayed to see Ortok merely blocking, turning to face the shifting, ongoing assault. On the whole his defense was effective, for only an occasional blow slipped through as his opponent circled and hammered, but Ortok’s forearms absorbed a tremendous amount of punishment.

  Qirok leapt back and stepped high, shouting gleefully. “You’re slow and weak! Ortok the warrior! I call you Ortok the dullard!”

  The spectators seemed to share Qirok’s assessment, for they crowded close and grinned wickedly.

  “Here is another, and another!” Qirok pivoted and shifted all about Ortok, raining blows upon him. “And here—”

  Ortok caught Qirok’s right arm in his furred left hand, pulled him off balance, then hammered him in the face with his right. Again and again he punched, and as Qirok sagged, Ortok drove a fist into his stomach and then kneed him in the face. Elenai winced at the crunch she heard.

  Qirok slipped to the ground, groaning, and curled into a protective ball.

  Ortok slowly turned to regard the others with baleful gaze. Before long, their heads sank in shame, as though they were hounds who’d failed their master.

  Thrusting one hand at the defeated kobalin, Ortok barked a question to the watchers. “You chose this one to lead you? Look how easily I defeated him! You are a lot so sorry I don’t even wish you as followers. I will permit only that you walk with us until we reach the border, so you can be eaten by any beasts we meet. Now. Provide us with food, and do not sicken us.”

  The kobalin hurried forward with bent heads, crying that they had guessed his prowess from the first, promising their allegiance and asking whether they should finish Qirok for him. Ortok roared at them to fetch food and drink and they scattered.

  They brought forth sacks of small, headless furred creatures and weird, orange roots. Though they peeked continually at Ortok and the two Altenerai, none made direct eye contact. Nor did they pay any heed to Qirok, who slunk away with his bloodied face in his hands.

  Elenai had about as much interest in sampling kobalin cooking as she had in gnawing her boot heel, but she sat down on a boulder near Ortok and watched the kobalin drive sticks through the j
uicy tubers and put them over the fire. Kyrkenall leaned between her and Ortok and softly addressed the combat’s victor. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

  “Did you want me to?” Ortok asked.

  “No. I was just wondering.”

  “If I killed him I’d have care of his band. I don’t want them. Do you?”

  Kyrkenall laughed. “No.”

  “What’s going to happen to Qirok?” Elenai asked.

  “When I am gone there will be other battles to see who leads.”

  Three of the kobalin finished erecting a wooden frame over the fire, then hung slabs of now skinned meat.

  “And you’ll ask about the ko’aye soon?” she suggested.

  Ortok leaned forward and attempted to keep his voice low. “I told them I want nothing from them. I have to think about how to ask.”

  She wished they could be more direct and get on their way, but she supposed there were some kobalin social graces after all, and that they’d have to be followed.

  “I’ll do it,” Kyrkenall said. “Once we sit down to eat.”

  “That will be fine,” Ortok murmured.

  Before long, Qirok, nose dramatically swollen, returned and declared that the middle hunk of meat was clearly the best and must be saved for Ortok. He then plopped himself down in the center of the first of the serried ranks formed opposite Ortok.

  Elenai was surprised that the meal smelled enticingly sweet, particularly the tubers. But Kyrkenall quietly advised her to eat from their stores, and none of the kobalin seemed to mind when neither alten tried their fare.

  The attention of the kobalin centered upon Ortok, and once the meal commenced they begged him to tell a story of his deeds.

  “We all want to hear that,” Kyrkenall agreed, then spoke boldly to Qirok. “But first we want to hear what you know of the ko’aye here.”

  “Oh, yes.” Qirok raised his head from one of the fire-blackened vegetables. His voice was more nasal than it used to be, perhaps because of his broken nose. The left side of his face was swollen as well. “If it pleases Ortok I shall happily speak of it.”