Lodestone Book One: The Sea of Storms (10 page)

“Very well,
Keris. May the Prophet guide your steps.”
The Ring fell silent.

Keris extinguished the lamp and
sat in the dark for a long moment. Then she got up and left the
room, closing the door behind her.

Chapter
6

Shann looked
tiny and distinctly uncomfortable clad in the flying cloak of a
Keltar. It felt like she was being made to become the thing she
most hated in all the world.
This
is
necessary,
she
told herself. What was it Lyall had said?
Once you understand the source of a tyrant’s power, you can
use it against them.
She adjusted the fit
across her shoulders as best she could.

“It feels a bit heavy,” she
commented.

Lyall stood opposite the girl, an
identical cloak draped about his shoulders. “That’s the downward
pressure from the lodestone layer pushing down on the bronze layer
below it. Try retracting the bronze layer a bit.” She adjusted the
control at her neck. “Better?”

She nodded.

“All right. The first thing you
need to realise is that the flying cloak does not enable you to
fly–at least, not in the same way as a mylar or any other bird. It
would be more accurate to call it a ‘leaping’ or ‘jumping’ cloak.
You remember the discs? Lodestones will push against all materials,
but the push is greatest against other lodestones. There are
naturally occurring lodestone deposits in the ground from
meteorites which have been falling for millennia. We use the
refined lodestone in the cloak to push against these deposits to
gain lift.”

“How do I do that
exactly?”

Lyall gestured with his hands.
“You need to ‘feel’ for deposits. It’s something that will come
naturally once you get the hang of it. Start by retracting your
bronze layer very slowly, bit by bit. Stop the moment you feel
anything unusual.”

Shann moved the control slowly
with her fingers. She stopped. “There, like a slight
pressure.”

“Good, now can you tell which
direction it’s coming from?”

“Over there.” Shann pointed to
the left.

“Come on.” Lyall set off in that
direction. “Tell me when you feel it move under you.”

They set off across the broken
savannah. After a little way, Shann held up her hand and they both
halted. She turned to look up at him. “So if I can use my cloak to
detect deposits, why doesn’t the Prophet mine loadstones that
way?”

“Because it just isn’t exact
enough. For example, the deposit you are detecting now. Can you
tell where it is precisely? How large is it? How deep? Lodestone
ore hardly looks any different from normal rock. You would need to
dig and sort through tons of dirt by hand, and that would take a
small army of Keltar. Can you imagine Keltar doing that?” He was
smiling at her, and she forced a smile back.

“Anyhow, it isn’t necessary,” he
continued. “In the Southern Desert the ore that falls from the sky
is clearly visible on the surface. You don’t need Keltar to find
it, just a herd of slaves who don’t mind dying from heat and
exhaustion.”

Which is why we
are here,
she thought. “All right, so what
do I do?”

“Try jumping up and at the same
time, extending the upper lodestone layer of the cloak. Remember,
you won’t travel straight up because there will always be some
slight deviation from the vertical. Think of being pushed up by a
fountain of water. Go on, give it a go.”

Shann bent her
knees and leaped up, flaring the cloak as she did so. She sailed
upwards, stifling a cry as she did so. Her legs bicycled in the air
and she tipped over, landing a few steps away in a crumpled heap.
She got to her hands and knees in time to see Lyall, hands on hips,
throwing his head back in laughter. She frowned, angrier at herself
than at him.
I’m never going to get the
hang of this.

Still chuckling, he walked over,
offering a hand. She took it and allowed herself to be pulled up.
“Don’t feel bad, everyone does that the first time. Actually, that
was pretty good for a first try.”

“I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
Shann adjusted the cloak and brushed off the dust and sand as best
she could.

Lyall looked as if he was
enjoying himself. “All right, time for lesson two. Remember, the
lodestone will always push you in the opposite direction. If you
detect it to your left and you flare the cloak, then it will push
you to your right. You can angle the cloak by twisting in the air,
adjusting your trajectory. Try again, but this time instead of
fully flaring the cloak, do a small jump and blip the control until
you get used to the feel of it.”

Shann felt the deposit to her
right and behind her. She did as Lyall suggested and leapt a short
distance to her left. She stumbled a little on landing, but
regained her balance.

“Good.” Lyall was clapping. “Very
good.”

He walked over and looked into
her eyes with intensity. “The real secret to using the cloak is
always to be thinking one step ahead.” He flattened his hand to
simulate her pattern of flight. “As you leap,” he moved his hand
upward, “you should already be looking for another deposit to push
against or a safe place to land. If you detect another deposit you
can push off it,” he moved his hand in a different direction, “and
remain aloft.

“Remember; always be thinking
what your next move will be. And be careful not to over commit.
Always leave yourself with a safe option.”

Shann nodded
thoughtfully.

“Now let me ask you something.
What would happen if I leapt, and then at the apex, I extended the
lower bronze layer in the cloak?”

Shann furrowed her brow. “The
lodestone would push against the bronze and the bronze would pull
away from it. You would be forced downwards.”

“Quite right. I would be
accelerated toward the ground, which would normally be a very bad
idea.” His mouth quirked a little. “However, there are some
circumstances where you may wish to slow your leap, perhaps to
angle yourself toward another deposit. Blipping the bronze layer
can work as a brake, giving you more control.”

“When will you show me how to use
the staff?” Shann’s face was eager.

Lyall chuckled again. “Patience,
Shann. You have to learn how to run from a fight before you learn
how to get into one.” He looked up, shading his eyes from the suns.
Ail-Gan was rising through a cloudless sky. Ail-Kar was a dazzling
point of light near the western horizon. It was becoming distinctly
warm. “Let’s take a short break.”

He headed for a low shelf of rock
and sat down with a sigh, his long legs splayed out before him.
Shann followed and sat down next to him, cloak still draped about
her. He took out a skin bottle of water and offered it to her. She
took a swig and handed it back. He quaffed, wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand and replaced the stopper. They both sat in
silence, looking out over the flat grassland. Here and there,
tufted plants that she could not name broke through the sandy soil
or stubbornly clung to rocks. A few even boasted tiny yellow and
purple flowers.

She went over Lyall’s training,
trying to commit the points to memory, but there was something
else–something nagging at the back of her mind. Fragments slowly
converged, like a conjunction of the three suns, coalescing into a
single inescapable thought.

She spoke the
thought.
“You’re one of them, aren’t
you?”

“One of them?”

“You’re one of
them.
You’re a Keltar
.”

Lyall’s voice was quiet. “What
would make you say that?”

“Well,” Shann
began, “you have the same devices that they do: the cloak and the
staff. But more than that, you
understand
them. You know how they
work. Only the Keltar have knowledge of such things. And then there
is the money…”

“The money?”

“You don’t seem to have any work.
Alondo is a musician, but doesn’t seem to have a trade as far as I
can tell. Yet you have more money than I have ever seen. The only
other person I know who has that kind of wealth is the Prophet
himself….”

She glanced at
him with guilty expression.
I shouldn’t
have said that.
Lyall didn’t react,
however. He continued to gaze out across the rough heath. There was
a long pause before he spoke.

“You are a very clever girl,
Shann. But you are wrong…although it is true that there was a time
when I wanted to be a Keltar more than anything else. And I did
train as one. But I decided in the end that it wasn’t the path for
me.”

“The cloaks and staffs–believe it
or not, I obtained them legitimately, although many in the keep at
Chalimar would no doubt be shocked to find out how. The ‘offerings’
he demands have made people short of coin and desperate. The parts
can be purchased, if you know the right people; then they can be
assembled if you have the right skills.”

“You
made
them?”

Lyall laughed. “Alas no; that’s
Alondo’s department.”

He made that
instrument he carries with him
, she
reminded herself.

“As for the money…let’s just say
I thought the Prophet’s servants had a little too much to carry, so
I relieved them of some of it.”

“You
stole
it?”

“Well he extorted it from poor
townspeople and farmers, so I suppose it depends on your point of
view. We have to use whatever resources we can if we’re going to
defeat him, Shann. Besides, I think there’s a certain poetic
justice to our using his ill-gotten gains against him, don’t you?”
He gave a satisfied smile.

Shann was dubious. “I
suppose.”

“Come on.” He pushed himself to
his feet. “Shall we see if we can try a few more practice jumps? We
will have to catch up to Alondo soon …unless you’re ashamed to be
seen with a self-confessed thief?”

She smiled in spite of herself
and joined him for another gruelling round of training.

Later that afternoon Alondo the
musician watched as two cloaked figures alighted on the roadway
just behind their tiny caravan. He gave them a cheery wave.
“Impressive. I see the lessons are going well.”

“Indeed, Shann is ten times the
student you ever were,” replied Lyall. Shann looked down,
embarrassed.

“That’s only because I had enough
sense to keep both feet firmly on the ground. Hey Shann, did he do
that thing to you where he gets you to stand directly over a
lodestone and jump as high as you can?” She looked up, recalling
her ungainly landing. There was a moment’s pause. Then all three of
them burst out laughing.

Alondo turned to lead the morgren
forward and Shann noticed his instrument was slung over his
shoulder. She turned to Lyall, speaking in low tones.

“If we meet up
with any dangerous beasts what does Alondo intend to
do–
serenade them to
death?”

Lyall cocked his head to one
side. “Well, I really don’t know. Let’s ask him, shall we? Hey
Alondo?”

“Yes, Lyall?”

“Shann wants to know if we meet
any dangerous creatures, whether you were going to serenade them to
death.” Shann shot a look of injured betrayal at Lyall, but Alondo
merely appeared pensive for a moment before speaking in a cheerful
tone.

“Well I’ll certainly do my
best!”

~

Keris the Keltar swooped low over
the rock shelf, her flying cloak casting a shadow like an immense
bird of prey. She landed and assumed a crouched position in one
fluid movement. Only a few steps to the edge. She pressed herself
to the ground and crawled across the smooth surface to the lip of
the outcrop, quickly peeking over the edge as it jutted out over
the pass. She had a view of the road a hundred feet below her, as
it meandered through a cut in a range of low hills. The sides were
steep and there was evidence of rock falls both young and ancient.
They would be coming through here in a short while.

She was little more than a day
out from Lind before she spotted the little party in the distance,
moving slowly across the desiccated landscape, shimmering in an
early morning heat haze. She allowed herself to get close enough
only to make a positive identification: two morgren, three people,
one tall, two shorter. The shorter one in front had strapped to his
back what looked like a musical instrument, of all things. A
musician, then, just as the stableman in Lind had described. There
could be no doubt; it was them. The other short figure had to be
the girl, reported to be the impostor’s accomplice. That meant the
tall one was the impostor himself.

Keris took a
fix on their position, and then fell back, plotting a wide arc
across country to re-join the road ahead of them. The route led
through a constricted pass with steep sides.
One entrance. One exit. Perfect.
Their journey ends here.