Storms (Sharani Series Book 2) (9 page)

She was impressed that Gavin had thought to ask specific questions. Maybe there was some hope for him after all. She remembered when Makin had struggled to gain the respect of those he led. True, he hadn’t been trying to unite the clans, but then again, they both had to start somewhere.

“They both wore thick robes with the hoods pulled up.” Orna grimaced again and Khari bent down and put a hand on the cloth. She pulled it away to get a look at the gash on his forehead. It wasn’t deep, but head wounds bled a lot and it was already swelling up like an egg. Gathering her powers, using the water within her own body as fuel, Khari put a light hand on the wound and pushed at the skin, forcing it back together.

The flesh knit beneath her fingers and the swelling subsided. Khari felt herself growing lightheaded and released the magic, grateful that she was already kneeling. She’d need water soon.

Orna put a hand to his head and blinked in surprised. “Thank you,” he said.

Khari grunted. She was too tired to say anything else.

“Are you sure you can’t remember anything else at all?” Gavin pressed, as if nothing had happened.

The kid didn’t miss much. Maybe he
did
have potential, if he was guided correctly. He reminded her of Makin, when he was younger. She had had to help mold him along then as well. She almost smiled as she remembered her initial reluctance to do that, as well. But she’d recognized his potential back then, however reluctantly.

“Well,” Orna said, his voice stronger now, “the one that clubbed me, he got close enough for me to see his face.” He closed his eyes as if concentrating. “He had a topknot.”

“Londik?” Khari asked. Even to herself, her voice sounded sticky and slurred, as if she’d drunk a glass of goat milk.

Orna shrugged. “That’s what it looked like. Or Mornal, maybe.”

“Stay here, please,” Gavin said. Then he turned to Khari, extending a hand to help her to her feet. Khari accepted it, surprised at the strength and callouses in that grip. She looked at him questioningly.

“I thought we could take a look in his cell. There may be something worth seeing.”

Khari nodded. Yes, that was right. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Right, she’d just healed Orna. Khari hated how she felt after using her powers. She was so weak, so
fragile
.

Gavin held a waterskin out to her. Khari accepted it gratefully. How had he known?

Gavin stepped forward, not waiting for Khari, and pushed the broken door to one side with care. Khari took a deep draught from the leathery-tasting water, feeling strength surge through her almost immediately. It was an odd feeling, like the one time she’d had a bucket of cold spring water poured over her head. Still, as the initial shock wore off, she felt an immediate return of all her faculties.

After stoppering the waterskin, Khari followed Gavin into the cell.

“There’s not much here,” Gavin said.

Khari nodded, taking in the room. The leather bonds had been cut. They lay in the sand where Kaiden had rested. Nothing else had been disturbed. Even the lantern still hung on its peg on the wall.

“So it was the Londik, then?” Gavin said.

Khari frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. There’s nowhere for them to go. They must know I can find them anywhere within the warren here.”

“Have you . . .” Gavin started, but Khari was already nodding.

“Yes, yes, I reached out to see if I could sense Kaiden, but he’s beyond my senses. Granted, I was limited, but I would guess he’s no longer in the warren. But the questions remain.”

“Who did it and why?”

“And where are they now,” Khari added. “I’m sure we’ve traitors among us within Evrouin’s people. I don’t trust them. No one trusts them.”

“So what do we do?”

Khari looked over at him. “What do
you
think we should do?”

“We’re already stretched thin just trying to bring in supplies to feed this group. We don’t have the resources to send out more search parties to try and find Kaiden. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”

Khari nodded, waiting for Gavin to continue.

“We also can’t just leave him. He was the cause of so much death, so much destruction. But if we accuse the Frierd as a clan of aiding him, or any of the clans for that matter, it will just cause even more tension between them. They’re already at each other’s throats. We can’t get any of them to agree on anything.”

“So what do we do?” Khari asked again.

“I think we need to discuss it at the Gathering tonight. Spread the word please, Khari. I would like everyone there. We’ll burn a
shufari
for our fallen brother. But I’ll need your help.”

Khari frowned as she listened to Gavin’s plan. It was bold, but it just might work.
If
, that is, Gavin could pull it off. Looking into his eyes then, watching how he worked, Khari was surprised to discover she thought he just might.

“The first Iteration on the Schema is that which begins with the first and simplest evolution of metal. Colloquially, the Rahuli call this Iteration the ‘magnetelorium,’ though this scholar has always expressed a particular dislike for the names given to the first tier Iterations.”

—From
Commentary on the
Schema, Volume I

Cobb leaned back against the wall of the greatroom, cursing the twinge in his bad leg. The idiot boy, Gavin, stood in the center of the room in front of a massive bonfire in which they had burned a
shufari
for Meseck. The entirety of the Rahuli people were either spread out on the sands in front of him or else seated on the various levels along the walkways up the walls. The boy had gotten himself into trouble twice recently without having Cobb there to help him. Now he’d gone and called this Gathering without telling him anything about it.

Fool.

“People of the Sharani Desert,” Gavin said, raising his hands to still the soft hum of conversation. The crowd quieted.

Cobb grunted. The boy had an interesting place with the people. Many of them lauded him a savior because he rallied them against Taren and those that had followed him. Others still only saw the outcast. Yet Gavin acted as if he led them even when he didn’t. At least this time the boy was wearing his greatsword.

“Who leads you?”

The question caught the crowd off guard. The silence, if anything, deepened.

“Your Warlords are dead, many of your people fallen in the Oasis. Who leads you now?”

No one answered. Cobb grunted again. He was sure someone was going to claim leadership of at least one of the clans. None did, not even that Khari woman from the Roterralar.

“Someone has entered our home and let loose the man who was the cause of so much death in the Oasis. What shall we do to respond?”

This brought a small murmur from the clans and Evrouin pushed forward to stand at the head of his group of followers.

“What are you getting at, outcast?” he said.

This caused a stir. None of Evrouin’s followers, which were composed of the remnants of the Heltorin, Londik, and Frierd clans, could see anything in Gavin outside of his status as an outcast. The others though, those who had stood with Gavin in the Oasis, they thought differently. What was the boy doing? He’d argued so passionately about easing the divide between the groups, but this was driving a wedge even deeper.

“Do you lead these people?” Gavin asked, gesturing to the group behind Evrouin.

Evrouin nodded. “I do.”

“And do you agree?” Gavin said. His question took in the people standing around Evrouin. No one objected.

Gavin turned to the others. “And the rest of you? Who leads you?”

The crowd murmured while Evrouin scoffed. After a moment, Maugier and Alia moved forward. It wasn’t really surprising. These were the same three with whom Gavin met when they all needed to discuss things in council, but it was the first time they had stood in front of the Gathering, the first time anyone had acknowledged them as their leaders. Cobb scratched at his chin. He couldn’t see where this was going at all.

“Are these your leaders?” Gavin asked the crowd. Again, no one objected.

“Well then, I declare your leaders usurpers.”

This caused an uproar. Evrouin was the most vehement in his denunciations and even Maugier and Alia looked deeply affronted.

Gavin waited until the noise had died down again. “Taren was your leader,” Gavin said, voice still calm and clear. “Whether by your choice or not, he united you under a single leader. There were no more clans.”

“He’s dead,” Evrouin said.

“He was never our leader,” Alia shouted over the noise of protesting voices. “What are you getting at, man? This is hardly the time for accusations and insults.”

Gavin frowned. “Who have I insulted? I’m merely stating facts. By the laws of the desert, by tradition, whoever defeats the old Warlord becomes the new, isn’t that right? Cobb, hasn’t this always been the case?”

Cobb froze at hearing his name. How dare the boy—

Everyone turned to look at him. Cobb was the oldest surviving Rahuli, respected and known by all here.

“Yes,” Cobb found himself saying. “That is tradition.”

“So Taren, by killing off the old Warlords, was technically the Warlord of everyone, yes? At least, according to tradition.”

“Well, yes, if you want to call it that.” Cobb shot Gavin a flat look. Why was the boy putting him in this position?

“Then, since I defeated Taren,
I
am the leader of this people.”

The crowd was still. The silence was such that Cobb could have cut it with a knife. Cobb himself was stunned into silence. Yes, everyone had given Gavin respect, but was the boy really claiming
Taren’s
title? Did he want to look like a tyrant?

“That’s ridiculous,” Evrouin said into the silence. “You’re an outcast. You don’t have the right to lead any of us. You’re one of those mystics. I’ve seen your powers myself.” Evrouin spat at the sand at Gavin’s feet.

“I still claim my right.”

“Why would we follow you?” Alia said. Instead of angry, she seemed thoughtful.

Gavin turned to her. “Because I know what it’s like to survive against the odds. I know how to live when all else dies. Have I led anyone astray in this last fortnight?”

“Enough of this,” Evrouin said, stepping up a few more steps and getting within a few inches of Gavin’s face. Cobb saw what was going to happen a moment before it happened and, in his mind, found a new respect for Gavin’s ability to manipulate a crowd. He saw the seeds of the plan he’d given Gavin, but this . . .

“If you claim leadership, so be it. I can too. I claim my right of challenge.”

Gavin inclined his head. “I accept.”

“You’re playing with fire, boy,” Cobb said an hour or so later. “I can’t tell if you’re daft or crazy.”

“Probably a little of both,” Gavin said. He shifted from foot to foot nervously. He was tired of waiting.

Neither Alia nor Maugier had spoken up, but the implication was clear. Lack of a response validated Gavin’s claim. This was the most dangerous part of Gavin’s plan. He wondered himself if he’d done the right thing. Khari had agreed to his plan, but it had been brash. Yes, he’d been given a position of respect, but it was an impotent power.

“This
was
your idea, after all,” Gavin reminded Cobb.

Cobb grunted and shot him a flat look. “
My
idea was for you to challenge
them
. Not this farce of claiming Taren’s title.”

Gavin stopped dancing back and forth and turned to Cobb. “Do you really think they would have accepted my challenge if I hadn’t? Even among the clans normally, a right of challenge could only be issued by a senior warrior.”

Cobb grunted. “What’s to say they’ll respect the outcome?”

“I don’t know if they will, but it’s worth a try. I can’t keep trying to figure out how to hold them all together
and
find Kaiden.”

“You could have just let them all leave.”

“I intend to,” Gavin said. “You’re right, they’re not meant to live together in one place, but I’ll have their oaths before they go.”

“Why is this so important to you?” Cobb asked. The old man pointed a gnarled finger at Gavin and his brows came together over his nose. “You’re not power hungry, boy. I can see that. What game are you playing?”

“We’re all one people, Cobb,” Gavin said, shifting his weight once again. “We’re the Rahuli. Whatever Kaiden and Taren were doing, it hasn’t stopped. I can feel it. When whatever it is that is coming actually gets here, we need to stand together. They can’t do that without a leader.”

“We don’t even know what Kaiden was doing,” Cobb scoffed. “You’re basing this off the words of a madman.”

Gavin didn’t answer. He knew they had to stand united, but the biggest obstacle to it was a lack of trust between the clans. In truth, there were only three now, each united by their own leader, but they still would not work together as a whole. In the end, Gavin had relied on how his grandmother had united the outcasts, broken and divided as they’d been. She hadn’t simply forced them all together. No, she’d united them into groups first and then gave them a common cause, a common goal. In the case of the outcasts, that goal had been survival, which had unified them into almost a clan of their own.

Gavin intended to do the same here, except to divide them into their real groups he first had to lead them all. He then intended to let them govern themselves until the crisis that was coming united them. He was sure it was coming. He could feel it in every fiber of his being. They needed common threads and Gavin intended to be that thread.

“You have no means of knowing they’ll honor anything they swear to you once they leave here,” Cobb said.

Gavin nodded. “I know, but I have a plan for that too.”

Cobb shook his head, then sighed. “Your greatsword is short and wide,” he said, “he’ll use a broadsword, so you need to get inside his reach. Don’t let him get a good swing in, either. The longer reach will give him greater leverage.”

“I’ll be fine,” Gavin said, smiling slightly at the older man’s rambling advice.

Cobb opened his mouth to protest, but just then the door opened and someone Gavin didn’t recognize poked his head into the room.

“They’re ready for you.”

Gavin nodded, smiled at Cobb, and stepped back out into the greatroom.

Someone had cleared a space to one side of the room and drawn a large circle in the sands. Evrouin waited on one side of the circle, a broadsword in hand. The rest of the Rahuli people had arranged themselves to watch the match, most having shifted up to the walkways on the higher tiers. They sat there now, legs hanging over the lip, as Gavin strode to the edge of the circle and drew his greatsword. Everything was riding on this. Everything.

Alia had been chosen to officiate the match. She was a formality only. The rules of engagement in a challenge were understood. You fought until your opponent could no longer fight.

“Are you ready?” Alia asked, looking at Gavin.

Gavin nodded.

“Are you?” Alia asked Evrouin. He nodded too, swinging his sword experimentally.

Alia raised one hand and then dropped it.

Gavin and Evrouin stepped into the ring at the same time. Simultaneously, the whole room began to shake.

Deep within the belly of the Roterralar Warren, Beryl struggled against the voice of the vulcanist. The voice reached out hungrily, pulling at the power, at the heat and strength beneath the Sharani Desert. The earth trembled as a pocket of the heat pushed upward against the metal plate which had held it back for centuries.

“No!” Beryl shouted, clasping hands to the side of his head.

He’d let too much of the voice gain purchase, he’d unleashed too much translating the scrolls. The one on which he worked now—the one detailing the traditions and magic of the Orinai, of the vulcanist and the soul stealer—had triggered the voice. It fought on now, struggling with a strength it had not displayed in over a hundred years.