Song of the Sea Spirit: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles) (47 page)

He watched, wide-eyed, as Jora squeezed between the frozen enforcers and removed his gag. “God’s Challenger,” Korlan said. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“Three elders confronted me in the ’twixt,” she said as she untied his hands.

“They can do that?”

“Apparently. Are you hurt?” Jora asked.

“No,” he said, sitting up. With his hands now free, he rubbed the side of his jaw. “One of these dirty cusses hit me.” He looked around at the enforcers and tapped one of them on the knee with a fingernail. “Are they dead?”

Po Teng shook his head.

“You can reanimate them, can’t you?” Jora asked.

Po Teng nodded.

“Good, but we’ll let them stay like this for a while longer.” Jora looked around. “One second.” She peeked into the Mindstream but saw no sign of Elder Gastone. “The third elder’s gone. Probably went to warn Sonnis and the others.”

“They look like the statues around the Legion building,” Korlan said, walking past each of the stone enforcers and appraising them, poking them now and then.

She looked around at them, realizing now why they looked so familiar. Korlan was right. They looked exactly like those statues.

He reached up and touched her temple, and she winced. “He hit you?”

“Can’t blame him for that. I’d have done the same if I’d been him. Let’s get going. It’s almost sunrise and we don’t want to give them time to prepare.”

He picked up his sword from where it lay a few yards away. “Now that we know the elders can enter the ’twixt, you’ll be ready for them.”

They squeezed past the enforcer statues and continued west to the Justice Bureau. To war.

Neither spoke as they walked the remaining block to the Justice Bureau. The excitement and fear and determination they shared was communicated in the occasional glance and in the set of their shoulders. The morning air was cool enough to fog their breath, and the growing sunlight behind them illuminated their path with an eerie bluish light. There was no longer any reason to hide in the ’twixt, and with Po Teng by her side, no need.

The city was eerily empty and quiet. No dogs barked. No roosters crowed. No crickets chirped. It was as if the entire city held its breath, afraid of what was to come.

Outside the building, a single man stood at the Spirit Stone, his hand laid upon its glassy surface. Elder Sonnis himself. Alone.

“Kill him, Po Teng,” she said.

Before the ally could reach him, Sonnis blinked out of sight.

“Damn it,” Korlan said. “He can’t hide there forever, can he?”

“No. He can’t. And I won’t get any answers until he comes out or I go in.” Jora entered the ’twixt herself. Po Teng came with her, leaving Korlan alone in front of the building.

“Jora, wait!” Korlan cried, spinning about. He had his sword drawn, but he didn’t know where she was, nor Sonnis. “Come back. I can’t protect you like this.”

“So it’s true,” Sonnis said. He was standing near the Spirit Stone, hands clasped behind him. “Somehow you managed to cheat your way to unearned power.”

“Cheat? I’m the one who learned to decipher the tones. You tried to steal that knowledge from me.”

“And you snuck into the dominee’s office to take what didn’t rightfully belong to you in the first place. I’m surprised you had the courage to come back here.”

Jora walked slowly, casually up the wide stone steps. “You thought I would shrink away? Cower in a corner while you committed unspeakable crimes with impunity? You issued the command to slaughter two thousand people in their sleep.”

“Jora, where the hell are you?” Korlan muttered. He took a few indecisive steps up the stairs.

“I had little choice,” Sonnis said. “Elders in the Order of Justice Officials have been entrusted with knowledge that children like you can’t possibly comprehend. We have to make decisions for the good of Serocia that are at times distasteful.”

“Distasteful? You call mass murder distasteful? Try reprehensible, inexcusable, criminal.”

“Like I said, you couldn’t possibly understand. This is about more than a few smuggled crates of godfruit.”

“You’re right. This is about murder.” She stopped at the top of the steps, several yards from him. “You killed Elder Kassyl. Your puppet, Gafna, murdered Gilon.”

Elder Sonnis drew back with a gasp and put a hand to his chest. “What? No. Even if I did, you’d never be able to prove it. Your attempts to observe houseplants and trees and whatnot are inadmissible, had such plants been present.”

They had been there. He must have gotten rid of the rhododendrons, but unless he’d chopped down the tree in front of the dormitory in the last week, she could use that against him.

“If Gafna’s done something wrong,” he went on, “she’ll be prosecuted, but I doubt you’d be able to intimidate her into claiming I conspired with her. She’s quite smitten with me. Now, shall we return to the matter at hand?”

“What matter is that?” Jora asked.

“Your sentence for murder.”

“Sentence? I haven’t been tried yet.”

“Oh, but you have. All the elders know exactly what you’ve been up to lately, whom you’ve slain. You’ve been tried in absentia and found guilty of murder and treason. Have you anything to say in your defense?”

“You killed Elder Kassyl so you could take his place and issue an order that defied the Legion’s command. No matter how you try to justify it, what you did was wrong. You must answer for your actions.”

“Novice, you have no authority to sentence anyone in the name of justice, let alone execute them. I, on the other hand, do. That makes you the murderer, not me. Elder Kassyl was only weeks away from a natural death, if not days. His sudden passing spared him further suffering. It’s ironic, really. I issued the order to cull your hometown to spare your life, and you earned a death sentence by killing the people authorized to carry out that order. It’s up to me, as your elder, to decide your fate. As much as it pains me to say it, I must. It’s my duty.” He took a breath. “I, Elder Sonnis Gordyn, hereby sentence you, Novice Jora Lanseri, to death.”

Though his pronouncement came as no surprise, her heart still sputtered. She had to think fast. Po Teng couldn’t attack him here, and she couldn’t possibly best him in a wrestling match, even with the full benefit of her senses. If she left the ’twixt, she would be blind to him, and he would still be able to sense her by observing himself.

Korlan was at the top of the steps now, inching toward the Spirit Stone with his eyes closed, as if he was trying to sense where Jora and Sonnis were.

From her vantage point above and slightly behind her left shoulder, she witnessed Sonnis produce a blade. She stepped away from it and barely avoided the elder’s thrusting knife. He came at her, swinging the blade back and forth while she backpedaled as quickly as she could toward the bureau’s door. Though she felt no pain, a line of blood appeared on her left sleeve below the shoulder.

Sonnis darted over to Korlan, jabbed with his knife, and spun away, opening a wound between Korlan’s ribs. Korlan cried out, clutched his side, and swung his sword blindly as he stumbled away.

“No,” Jora said. “Leave him alone. He’s done nothing to you.”

“He’s a deserter, and he was sentenced to death for treason by the top officials in the Legion. I don’t think they’ll mind if I carry out their sentence. In self-defense, of course. Surrender to me, and I’ll let the Legion deal with him as they will.”

Korlan leaned against the wall of the building, one hand clutching his side while blood ran down his hip and leg. He looked pasty and unsteady on his feet. If he didn’t get a medic soon, he would bleed to death.

Her choices were few: surrender and save Korlan, or watch him die and still be in a stalemate with Sonnis. “Why would you trust me to surrender when Po Teng could slay you the moment you reenter the realm of perception?”

“Tell your minion to stand down,” Sonnis said. “Let me tie a gag around your mouth so you can’t command it to kill me when I’ve reentered, and I’ll suspend your sentence by fifty years.”

Fifty years would, in essence, cancel the death sentence. “Why would you do that, when you’re obviously intent on killing me?”

“To give you an opportunity to redeem yourself by teaching me what you’ve learned.” He took a few more steps toward Korlan, who slumped heavily against the wall, and lazily waved the bloody knife point at him. “I never wanted you to die, Jora, but we couldn’t allow you to tell your friends and family about the smuggling. Culling Kaild was the only option I had left. We’re your family now. Don’t you see? You’re too valuable to us. I wanted to earn your friendship and trust.”

Trust? He’d done nothing but betray her trust and that of everyone who knew him.

She looked to the east at the brightening orange sky. The sun was about to peek over the waters of the Inner Sea. The Spirit Stone would change its tone for the new day. Jora longed to touch it, to feel that moment one last time, for she knew that if she surrendered, she would never be permitted to hear it again.

There was only one way to save Korlan and get justice for Kaild.

Jora licked her lips and began to whistle.

“Open way betwixt and gate between helix and its twin.”

There, in the ’twixt, the darkness deepened into the blackest black. The glow of the rising sun appeared to brighten from red to orange to yellow and then to white, illuminating the gateway between the two realms of perception. The twin helixes.

“Challenge the god,” Sonnis murmured, mesmerized by the sight before them.

Jora seized the moment, taking advantage of his distraction. She ran to Korlan and snatched the sword from his loose grip. She turned and plunged it into Sonnis’s back.

His body arched. The knife flew from his hand and fell harmlessly to the ground.

As he staggered to his knees, she grasped the hood of his robe and stepped forward, through the gates of dawn, dragging him with her. He collapsed to the ground. Blood bubbled out of his mouth and ran down the sides of his face and chin. All around them, freakish beings of every size and shape gathered, watching. Sonnis twitched at her feet, every jerk of his body changing him into something else. Something twisted and grotesque: a fat worm with spines and a sucking mouth like that on a leech. The sight of it filled her with repugnance.

“You’re mine now, wretch,” she said, looking down at the hideous creature writhing at her feet. “Submit or I’ll finish you.”

It looked pleadingly up at her with Sonnis’s green eyes. “Suh-buh-mit.”

Though it had submitted to her, pledged its loyalty as her newest ally, she loathed it from the depths of her soul. Looking upon it, she couldn’t help but remember who and what it was. Murderer. Liar. Thief. Everything in her wanted to stomp the life out of it and leave it there to rot. She raised a foot to do just that, but something stayed her.

She’d learned to command monsters. She didn’t want to become one.

The gate was starting to dim. It was time to go. She stepped back into the fading light of the gate as it changed back toward red and disappeared into blackness once more.

Outside the Justice Bureau, a few dozen people had ventured out of the building—justice officials of all four ranks and the physician, Naruud, who tended to Korlan. They startled when Jora appeared, her novices’ robe spattered with Sonnis’s blood.

“Look at her robe,” someone murmured.

The blood droplets grew larger, each one merging with the one beside it. They spread across the fabric, engulfing it, until the entire robe was the deep red color of blood.

At her feet, a spiny worm writhed, sucking at the air with its grotesque mouth, while its green eyes gazed adoringly up at her.

The Truth Sayers gasped and huddled together. Whispers of “Gatekeeper” rippled among them.

“Elder Sonnis was corrupt,” she said to them. “He murdered Elder Kassyl and Novice Gilon. He ordered the slaughter of the people of Kaild. He sullied the very creed upon which the Order was founded, and I urge you to revoke his titles and honors. Take back what he and his co-conspirators have stolen from this institution. And if any of you were in league with him, I advise you to step forward now, because when I get to the root of this, I will punish the ones responsible, and I will show no mercy.”