Sac'a'rith (12 page)

The stone below my feet was warm, and at first I assumed it was still radiating the heat it had absorbed during the day; when I stopped to examine it with Sight, however, it glowed softly as if it were alive. Crouching down, I placed my bare hands on the stone and tried to communicate with it like I did with the trees. I could almost hear a faint voice, but couldn’t quite make it out. Unbelievably, the stone was trying to talk to me. I could feel it pleading with me, but I couldn’t figure out what it wanted. I strained to hear its voice, trying to block out the rest of the world, but it was just too weak.

“Zah’rak!” screamed Shira, breaking my concentration.

I looked up and saw a group of wraiths flying towards us, too many for me to face alone. I hoped the little power in the stone would be enough to make me strong enough to overcome them. I kicked off my boots so my feet could embrace the stone directly and draw power from it. My claws sank into the hard stone just as if it were a soft mold, giving me a better grip.

Quickly drawing my swords, I called out, “Their touch is death!”

“Worse, those are collectors! Their touch means a living death!” shouted Shira. I don’t know where it came from but she suddenly had a staff in her hands. She was standing with her back straight, holding the staff across her body. She seemed utterly fearless in the face of them, completely unlike the nervous and shy woman who hid in hydroponics.

Before I could say anything else they were on us. I swung my swords through the leader of the pack before rolling to one side. Shira swung her staff and spun away in the opposite direction. Her staff connected solidly and sent a wraith flying backwards into the group, scattering their formation. The creatures had no physical form, but Shira was one of the Sac’a’rith, and that made the staff in her hand just as deadly to them as to any normal creature.

Her spin put her on the edge of the wall as three more flew towards her. I rushed to her aid, but could only cut down the rearmost one before the other two reached her.

To my surprise, Shira leapt into the air and nimbly flew over them. She landed and launched her attack from her new position behind them by swinging her staff hard into one of them, driving it into the other. They screamed in pain as they hit and dissipated. She was proving to be quite resourceful in combat and not as helpless as I had imagined.

“You can fly?” I exclaimed, but had no time to discuss the matter as three more came at me. I spun out of their line of attack and swung my blades, cutting one of them cleanly in half. Each half drifted downwards briefly before dissipating.

“There are too many of them!” called out Shira as she once again leapt into the air to avoid being pushed off the wall.

“Do you have any spells that would help?” I asked.

“One, but I can’t seem to get a chance to cast it!” she called back as she swooped low by me and swung her staff hard, knocking several away from me at once.

“Land, I’ll cover you as best I can!” I called out.

She landed in front of me and I began swinging my swords rapidly and widely around her while she chanted. She was small enough to fit easily inside my reach. My swords formed a fence of deadly steel around her and the collectors hung back, waiting for an opening. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up, but Shira didn’t need long.

She yelled out the last command word and a beam of pure light came from her staff. She swept the beam through the wraiths and they screamed in pain. The entire force of them fell back and Shira called out another command word that stopped the beam, but her staff still glowed faintly, reminiscent of the early morning sun.

“Wow! What was that?” I asked.

She held the staff up high above us and let the light shine down on the rock and our position. “Sunlight. This is a sunstaff, an ancient artifact that my old master gave me in case the wraiths ever tried to challenge me.”

“Why didn’t you use that on the Nightwalkers?” I asked.

“I don’t know how to recharge it and it only has a few charges left. I was trying to save them in case things got really bad,” she said.

As the sunlight fell on the stone beneath us I could feel it gaining power. Its voice was getting louder. I couldn’t yet make out what it was saying but one thing was for sure: it was waking up! “Shira, send a beam of that light at Raquel!”

“What? Why?” she asked.

I could feel the rocks reaching out, thirsting for the light. I could almost make out what they were saying, and I was sure they were begging for more. “I think it will activate the stone and wake her up!” I said.

She hesitated and then focused the light on Raquel. The stone continued to warm up and below us the nightwalkers were falling back. “It’s working!”

The stone was soon glowing of its own accord, obvious even to normal vision, and the wraiths retreated into the night. I closed my eyes and used Sight to look around. The dead were fleeing and more and more stones were lighting up. “Keep it up!”

“The staff will be out of power soon,” she said.

Raquel gasped deeply and arched her back. She began to cough violently. I went to her side and helped her sit up. Her eyes were vacant at first, but little by little she seemed to grow stronger and more aware. Soon she seemed to come to her senses, although confused.

Shira doused her staff and said, “Raquel?”

Raquel took a moment to shake out her limbs, stretch, and look around. “Where are we?”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m fine again, but it’s almost sunrise; what happened?” she asked.

“You never told us how to activate the rocks,” said Shira.

I told her what had happened while she was unconscious.

“I didn’t know that needed to be done,” she said to Shira. “May I see your staff?”

Shira hesitated and then said, “Sure, but it needs to be recharged and I don’t know how.”

Raquel stood up and smiled. She spun the staff over her head several times and then brought it down on the stone, calling out a word in a language I didn’t recognize. The staff glowed dimly and slowly brightened until it was as bright as the midday sun. I had to turn away because it blinded my night-adjusted eyes. Blobs of light bounced around my vision for a bit but eventually went away.

“There, it’s as good as new,” said Raquel.

“You recharged it!” gasped Shira as she took back her staff.

“Yes, that’s a fitting staff for you to have. Many of those were crafted here when this castle still stood. Anytime you need to recharge it, return here and repeat what you saw me do.”

Raquel stretched out and said, “It’ll be light soon. Once the sun is above the horizon we can travel back to the gate. I have my power back, so I can just gate us from here.”

“Wait,” I said. “Every time you cast a spell you use up some of your life, and have to return here to recharge?”

“Yes,” she said. “But please keep this between the three of us.”

“Of course, but Shira will gate us back when it’s time. How did this happen?” I asked.

She turned her back to us and walked to the edge of the wall. “A choice, long ago,” she said softly.

I started to press her for more information but Shira stopped me.
“Let it be. She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

“Just how dangerous is this place?” I asked.

“If we leave the protection of this fortress before sunrise, it’s unlikely we’d survive long enough to active the gate and get home.” She paused and stared off into the distance. “Someday, Zah’rak, someday we must find a way to repair this world.”

We sat in silence after that until shortly after sunrise.

“We should get going. All the activity last night is sure to have drawn the wrong kind of attention, and not all of it fears the sun,” said Raquel. “I’m not confident the little power that remains here could hold up against some of the more powerful inhabitants.”

I looked over the forest one last time, wishing we could stay here. Once this mission was over, we must come back and explore. I hoped to find a less dangerous place, so that we could spend some time among the natural life of the forests.

Shira nodded and cast her gate. When we were all through I asked, “If something were ever to happen to you, how would we get back here?”

“This is the home gate. Any Sac’a’rith can open it from any other gate,” she said and unlocked the gate back to the Night Wisp. “Quickly; trouble can’t be far off.”

Aboard the Night Wisp, I contacted Crivreen over the ship’s internal comm. to let him know we were back.

“Get up to the bridge! We’ve got trouble,” he said.

“Great!” I groaned.

The gate room was right next to the bridge so we were there in a moment. Crivreen was at the tactical station and Ragnar was at navigation. The ship was running in low power mode, and the
main tactical screen was tracking multiple threats.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“With Ragnar’s help, I’m hiding the Night Wisp as best I can,” said Crivreen. “I didn’t want to risk jumping until you were back, but we’ve got pirates sweeping the area looking for us.”

Ragnar looked drained, and sweat soaked his shirt. I doubted he was scared, so he must have been exerting himself doing something. Perhaps he was using his runecasting to stay one step ahead of the pirates. I made a note to ask him later; first I had to deal with the pirates. “Can we jump clear?” I asked.

“Now that you’re back, I think so, but I’m not sure where to jump to. The next jump will put us in a gravity well where we’ll be trapped.”

I pulled up a map of the region and was searching for options when Raquel asked, “Why aren’t we fighting?”

“None of us has any real experience of a dogfight,” said Crivreen. “Plus we’re outnumbered four to one.”

“Yes, but how do their ships compare?” she asked.

He looked over the tactical. “They’re light cruisers. I think maybe we could take any of them one on one,” he said.

“We don’t have to fight,” I said. “There’s a jump route we can take out of here that they won’t guess and will keep us clear of the gravity well.”

“Fine, we can run - but is that wise?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I responded.

“Narcion was never attacked like this because word had spread of how deadly he was,” she said.

“Sure, but we’re nowhere near as deadly as he was, and they know it,” I replied.

“Then let’s change their minds about that,” she said.

“What are you proposing?” asked Ragnar.

“Shira gates Zah’rak and myself over to their lead ship and we take them down,” said Raquel. “Then we contact the other ships from the bridge there and tell them to leave before we do the same to them.”

“That does sound like something Narcion would do,” I said. I hated to admit it but she was right. Narcion must have faced situations like this before he became known as deadly, and I suspected he’d left only a few survivors to tell the tale.

“We can walk away … no, fly away from this fight,” said Ragnar. “I see no reason anyone should have to die today.”

“They’re pirates,” snapped Raquel, obviously annoyed. “That’s reason enough.”

“Is that what a wizard would do?” asked Crivreen. “They don’t seem like the type to go around killing people randomly.”

“This isn’t random,” said Raquel. “They’re trying to kill you!”

“Maybe we can deliver a warning?” came in Shira’s timid voice.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked. I was surprised to hear her pipe up. Tempers were starting to flare, and even before Raquel came on board Shira would disappear when that happened.

“We could just throw some explosives through a gate into their ship and then send a message from here,” she said.

“I still don’t understand why we need to kill anyone. Let’s just leave, and leave now,” said Ragnar.

“How are you going to gate there, anyway?” asked Crivreen. “You’ve never been on the ship.”

“Good question,” said Raquel. She took a deep breath and regained some of her composure. “She can cast a site-to-site gate if you can align our ship so that she can have clear line of sight through the airlock windows.”

“If we get line of sight I can just teleport over,” I said. “Let’s do that. I’
ll teleport over, place explosives someplace that will draw attention and teleport back.
Crivreen, get close to the lead ship. Ragnar, you’re in charge until I get back.”

I quickly left the bridge before anyone could argue and headed to the mission room to put on my armor. Shira followed me down and started to suit up also. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“If you get in trouble you might need a gate out. I want to be ready,” she said.

I wanted to send her away, but she was right; I might need her. Besides, last night she had proven to be pretty handy in a fight.

I pulled out some explosive grenades from the equipment locker. “Should be easy. I pop in, toss these grenades and pop out.”

“It would be safer to throw them through a gate,” said Shira. For the first time I noticed that when it was just us and no one else, she was much more open. Raquel said she saw me as family, and I was starting to understand that better. She obviously trusted me completely, but I wasn’t sure what I had done to deserve that. I would have to be careful not to lose it, as such trust is not easily earned back.

“Yeah, but then we can’t place them where we want,” I said, deliberately switching to the plural so that she would feel included in my plan. I clicked on my helmet and teleported out of the ship via the airlock window. Once outside I secured myself to the hull and waited for Crivreen to fly into position.

Shira joined me and once I had a good line of sight she sent, “
Be
careful
!” I could feel the worry in her mental voice. I guess what I was about to do was dangerous, but it was far from the most dangerous thing I’d done that week, or even that day.

I teleported over to their hull and worked my way around to their airlock. I set the delay on the grenades to give me enough time, and placed two of them into each of the three airlocks I found. Before they could go off, I teleported back to the Night Wisp’s hull.