Lodestone Book One: The Sea of Storms (4 page)

She swept the
cloak free, and draped it over her shoulders, making the necessary
shoulder and harness attachments. The soldiers marching by regarded
her as if she were a curiosity–a stranger in their midst.
Which is exactly what I am
. She salvaged another small canvas bag and briefly checked
the contents before tying it about her waist. Preparations
complete, she handed the reins of the graylesh to one of the
soldiers.

Waving the convoy on, she stepped
in front of the oncoming cart, with one hand raised.

“Hold!”

The cart pulled
to a halt. Keris moved to the side. The cart was drawn by a
graylesh, but the animal looked half starved. Its normally graceful
snout seemed unnaturally thin and sunken, and Keris could see its
ribs poking through. The Kelanni seated in the cart did not seem to
have fared much better. The driver had a young face, made to seem
prematurely aged by lines born of work and worry. He wore a rough
shirt and shabby trousers. Behind him were a woman–his wife, it
seemed, and two girls. It was the girls who caught Keris` eye. They
were both barefoot and had long, untidy fair hair. One, the
younger, was clutching her mother as if it meant her very life. The
older sat by herself and eyed Keris with what looked like pure
defiance.
That could so easily have been
me
, Keris couldn’t help
thinking.

“Name and
destination.”

“Amion.” The man`s voice was a
thin rasp. “We are headed for Saria. We were hoping to find field
work on one of the estates.” Amion`s wife shifted uncomfortably,
but the older daughter was unmoving, not taking her eyes off the
Keltar.

“You are from
Chalimar?”

“Yes, Keltar.”

“There has been a theft at
Chalimar. I will be conducting a search of your goods.”

“But
Keltar,”
his pitch rose to a thin
pleading.
“We have nothing of
value!”

“Get down, please.”

The man climbed
down resignedly and helped his family to disembark. The younger
daughter still clung to her mother and looked as if she were about
to burst into tears.
Why
am I doing this
, thought
Keris? Words about duty and appearances being deceptive came to
mind, but sounded hollow and unconvincing in her head.
Nevertheless, she was thorough and methodical. The family stood by,
not daring to make a sound. Their possessions were meagre indeed;
mainly worn-out bedding and worn-out clothes. She found no money
and certainly no silver. She stepped back and motioned for the
family to climb back into their cart. “On your
way!”

Keris made to
turn away but caught the eye of the eldest daughter once more. It
felt as if she were looking at her younger self through a long,
dark tunnel. She would have been not much older than this girl when
her parents, with too many mouths to feed, had placed her in
service to a local landowner. There, with sharp wits and
determination her only assets, she had earned a grudging respect
and ultimately come to the attention of Mordal, the man who had
changed her life and ultimately become her mentor.
What will be the future for this
one,
she
reflected,
this “other
me
”?

She reached into the canvas sack
at her waist and tossed the mother a flatbread and a skin of water,
registering the surprised look on the woman’s face. Without waiting
for response, Keris turned away from the image of her past and
began running to meet the escort where the path to her future lay.
Behind her she heard a woman’s voice.

“Blessings of the Three to you,
Lady! May Ail-Gan guide your steps…”

Keris resisted the temptation to
laugh.

~

Running into open country, Keris
leaped upward and flared her cloak, feeling for the pressure from
any latent lodestone in the rocky landscape. A deposit to her left.
She pivoted in the air, fully retracting the bronze shield in her
cloak and exposing the upper layer of tempered lodestone. The
repulsive force pushed Keris higher and to the right. As she flew,
she sought to feel pressure from any other naturally occurring
source. Finding none, she allowed her flight to bring her down to
earth in a low trajectory arc. She hit the ground and continued at
a loping pace.

Sensing a deposit ahead of her,
she angled towards it until she felt it passing under her, and then
leaped and flared once more.

The landscape was rough and
uneven, as if a giant hand had grasped it at one end and shaken it
like a sheet. Boulders were strewn about beneath her like the
giant’s discarded playthings. Here and there, a stunted tree or a
tangled bush clung stubbornly to a patch of miserly soil. The sky
was bright, with all three suns shining forth, broken only by a few
wisps of cloud. Keris began to feel hot from her exertions. She
landed gracefully on a shelf of red-brown sandstone and reached for
a sip of water.

The ground was starting to rise
upward to meet the plateau on which Chalimar stood. Far behind her
now, the road she had left disappeared into the narrow rift which
would convey the tributes and their escort to higher ground. She
only needed to bear a little to the right, and negotiate the
escarpment to reach the place where the road widened out onto flat
terrain. She moved off again, blipping her neck control and
scanning for the nearest deposit that would allow her to take to
the air once more.

A short while later she stood
atop the escarpment. A sudden breeze had sprung up, causing her
flying cloak to flutter restlessly, and stirring her long raven
hair. She brushed her hair back from her eyes. There seemed to be
no sign of the escort. A pair of mylar birds wheeled lazily
overhead, searching out rising thermals. Ail-Gan was near to
Ail-Mazzoth, washing out its colour to a pale red. Ail-Kar was well
above the western horizon.

Running forward once again, she
leaped, adjusting her shoulder control until she felt the familiar
repulsive push of a lodestone deposit, and then opened up her
cloak, as she sailed through the light gravity on a wide arc. She
angled toward a low rise in the barren terrain, letting herself
descend to the ground gracefully, and walked the few steps to the
crest.

Keris could see
the road now, only a few hundred feet away, but there was still no
sign of the escort. Finally, after looking around, she glimpsed
them some distance ahead. But there was something very wrong. The
escort was not moving, the soldiers standing in a knot before it.
Then all of a sudden, Keris saw a movement out of the corner of her
eye to her right–a darker shape moving erratically away across the
landscape. One of the tributes had made a break for it.
Why were the soldiers not in
pursuit
? Then, another movement from
near where the carts stood. A small shape arced up and through the
air towards the running figure. She watched, transfixed, as the
projectile followed its trajectory and then impacted noiselessly.
The figure dropped and lay motionless.

Keris was running now, down the
other slope and towards where the fallen figure lay. She flared her
cloak impatiently, leaped, ran on and leapt again, finally
detecting a deposit and pushing against it to gain
impetus.

Three of the
soldiers were trotting over to where the prone figure lay. As she
arrived, one of them, Rodann, was retrieving his weapon, whilst the
others were chatting animatedly and clapping him on the back. Keris
landed in front of them, and the conversation tailed off. She
regarded the victim. It was one of the men; the younger of the two,
she remembered. He was laying face down, the wound made by the
shuriken clearly visible in his back. His sandy hair moved lightly
in the breeze. Keris suddenly felt weak, bile rising up into her
throat. Her stomach was knotting.
Why did
this happen?
Closing her eyes with her jaw
clenched, she fought to regain control. Finally, she opened her
eyes again and turned to face Rodann. His face was
unreadable.

“What happened here?” she
demanded.

Rodann spoke up, “Escaped
tribute, my Lady.”

“He is
dead!
You did not think to chase him
down?” The two soldiers with Rodann shifted uneasily, contaminated
with his guilt.

“Apologies my lady, I should have
explained to you that we are testing a new method of restraint for
the tributes. They have been fitted with lodestone
breastplates.”

To impede their
progress
, she realised. The act of running
would cause the lodestone to push the man backwards, the harder he
tried to run. He probably panicked, not realising what was
happening to him and only pushed the harder. But why kill
him?
So he could not tell
others
.

All of a sudden
she was struck by a horrific thought. Rodann
planned
this all along. He had been
looking for a way to test his asinine devices.
Now a man is dead, and I am responsible
. Perhaps someone had put him up to it? The keep had a
complex political structure, and her rapid advancement in the ranks
of Keltar had made her her fair share of enemies. She thrust the
thought to the back of her mind. There was nothing to do now except
take charge of the situation. She rounded on
Rodann.

“Get back to the others now and
remove those breastplates. You will watch the tributes closely, and
if they flee, you will chase them down and bring them back. I do
not intend to lose another. Do you understand?”

“As you command.” Rodann pursed
his lips; then motioned to the other soldiers and they began
walking back to where the carts stood.

Keris stood, looking down at the
fallen man for a moment. Then she turned and followed the soldiers,
her flying cloak flaccid about her shoulders like a useless
appendage.

~

The wheels of the carts clattered
across cobbled stone as the tribute convoy passed under massive
wooden gates and into the great city of Chalimar. Keris had packed
away her cloak and was riding the graylesh once more. Following the
incident on the road, the remainder of the journey had been
conducted without incident and in near silence. Her first instinct
had been to report the matter to Mordal, but she was certain it
would be a waste of time. There was also the fact that it was
likely that she would have to work with Rodann again and it was
never good to have an enemy as your Captain. Nevertheless, she
resolved that she would have to watch the man more closely in
future.

The late afternoon streets were
eerily quiet. The city under the Prophet`s “protection” was a
depressing place outside of the keep. The houses were of rough
stone, with peaked wooden roofs, closely packed together. There
were wooden shutters over most of the windows, despite the fact
that it was day. A few people glanced nervously at the soldiers and
their three tributes, but most ignored them and hurried on. They
were passing through the merchants’ quarter and she saw that most
of the stalls were empty. The rest of the sellers were engaged in
the act of packing away their wares. It felt as if most of the
citizens of this once proud city were cowering inside their
homes.

They passed through the narrow
streets which eventually widened out into a spacious main square.
Buildings flanked the square on three sides. They were taller than
those on the outskirts, with stone roofs, and up to three stories
high. The fourth side was dominated by the Great Cathedral of
Chalimar.

Easily the most impressive
building in the city, more so than even the keep itself, the
cathedral was dominated by three immense spires– one yellow, one
red and one white–symbolising the unity of the Three Suns. The
cathedral building itself was constructed of immense stones, with
narrow slits which admitted only slivers of outside light. There
were wide stone steps, leading to a huge wooden door which was
firmly shut. Above the door was the familiar symbol of three
concentric rings, above which, someone had more recently carved a
flame, the symbol of the Prophet. The Three and The One. The
addendum looked distinctly out of place–more like vandalism than
devotion. Keris rode past and on to the wide uphill street that led
to the keep itself.

The gate of the keep swung open
to meet them and the small procession clattered into the mustering
courtyard. Keris dismounted the graylesh and handed the reins to a
soldier. She turned to see Borian, the Gatemaster, walking over to
meet her. He was a large man with close cropped dark hair and an
easy smile. His skin was a dark olive, and he swished his tail
confidently.

“Greetings, Keris. I trust your
trip went well.” He cast his eye briefly over the caravan. Servants
of the keep had arrived and were busy unhitching the animals,
whilst the soldier escort stood together in a knot, speaking in low
tones. The three “tributes” were glancing nervously about them, no
doubt fearing the worst. Borian turned back to Keris. “Orders. I
have been told to tell you that you are to report to Mordal in his
chambers as soon as you arrive.”