Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2 (27 page)

My original plan was to get to Alaska, figure out which Alaska Native culture (even then I knew there was more than one) would suit my novel best, learn all I could about it, and then put that culture into my novel. But the more I learned about the five distinctly different Alaska Native cultures—all of which have their own language, customs, history, and incredibly ingenious technology—the more I realized that putting both the traitor and his son into an existing culture was not only fraught with pitfalls for an ignorant Caucasian from the Lower Forty-Eight, but that I might also end up inadvertently slandering some innocent lawyer and his kid.

So in the end, I decided to do what science-fiction and fantasy writers do best and made up my own tribe. The Ananut people and all their history, customs, and beliefs are pure fiction, invented by me. And I apologize to the Eyak of the Copper River for plunking my Ananut down in their territory.

The other bit of live research I did for
Traitor’s Son
proved conclusively that writing novels is the best job in the universe: I got to go for a test ride in a Tesla Roadster. Zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds. My sincere thanks to Tara Flanagan and Mario Gambacorta of Tesla Motors in Boulder, who gave me all the information I needed and much more—including the weird things authors need to know, such as what would happen to that gorgeous car if you crashed it. As for the Tesla itself, I have only three words. Coolest. Car. Ever. (And zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds.)

Finally, I owe the state of Alaska an apology for . . . shortchanging it. In
Trickster’s Girl,
my protagonist traveled from Utah to the Alaska/Canada border—and Kelsa is a nature girl who could appreciate and marvel at the gorgeous places she passed through. Jase, the protagonist in
Traitor's Son,
is
not
a nature boy. In fact, he’s the kind of kid who can drive the Glenallen Highway, otherwise known as Glacier Alley, and not even see the ethereal ice floes that look like they’re floating on the other side of the valley, because he’s thinking about his car. (It’s an amazingly cool car, but still!)

In a novel, you see the world through the eyes of your protagonist. Jase is who he is, and that means I can’t describe the Glenallen Highway, or the arching waterfalls of Keystone canyon on the way to Valdez, or the enchanted fairy-forest where we camped outside Sitka, or whales half breaching out of seas as clear and clean as glass, or rain-shrouded fjords, or the soft
chee-chee-chee-chee-chee
sound bald eagles make when they’re talking to each other, or the terns dipping daintily into the turquoise water of the Kenai River, or sunset at 1:25 a.m. in the campground outside Denali, or . . .

Once we knew we were going to Alaska, whenever my mother and I met someone who’d been there, we’d ask them what Alaska was like. They’d open their mouth and then get this funny look on their face and say, “Alaska is fantastic.” And then they’d stop. Now that I’ve been there, I know that the problem isn’t that there’s not more to say, but that if you start trying to tell someone how beautiful, how wild, how open and clean and incredibly varied Alaska is, you end up babbling till your victim’s eyes glaze over. If I had to pick just two words to describe Alaska, the first would be
grandeur
and the second
unearthly
Aside from that . . . Alaska is fantastic. And through Jase’s eyes, there’s simply no way for me to do it justice.

Kelsa moved onward, both her light and her attention fixed on the rough floor. The glitter of crystals around its edge warned her about the first ice patch, but she slipped a little anyway.

“To the right,” Raven murmured. “The floor rises. There’s no ice there.”

They picked their way between the frozen puddles for another dozen yards before a long stretch of floor coated with a thin gleaming skin brought Kelsa to a stop.

“I can’t see any way around it.”

“We haven’t passed the bend yet,” Raven protested. “We can still see light from the entrance.”

Kelsa looked back. The white circle behind them looked plenty far to her.

“This is deep enough.”

Raven stirred restlessly, but made no further protest.

Kelsa pulled the medicine bag out from under her shirt. Warm from the heat of her body, it felt as if it belonged to her—which was probably why Raven had insisted she wear it.

She sat the flashlight carefully on the floor and began untying the cord that closed the bag. “All right. What do I say?”

She only hoped she could say it in English instead of Navajo, though if it had to be Navajo he could probably coach her through it.

“You’ll have to figure that out,” said Raven. “It’s your magic.”

“What? You said all I had to do was drop a pinch of dust and say the incantation to activate it.”

“That’s exactly what you have to do.” Raven’s tone was utterly reasonable, though his teeth were beginning to chatter.

“But I don’t know any incantations! This is crazy! You—”

“Don’t get upset,” Raven snapped, “or you won’t be able to focus, and this is important! You were reaching out to the tree spirit when we first met. That’s how I knew you could do this. Just reach out to the earth in the same way and tell it, persuade it, to heal!”

He sounded all too serious. Kelsa gazed around in exasperation. Even with her night vision and the flashlight, she couldn’t make out more than a small portion of the floor and a bit of the wall beside her. But she could sense the space around her and the rock enclosing it, old and solid. The bones of the earth itself.

She didn’t need to see. This wasn’t a place of seeing.

Taking care not to spill the pouch, Kelsa sank down to sit on the cave floor. The stone was rough and cold under her butt—not at all comfortable. But that was part of this place too.

She let the cave seep into her senses: silent blackness and the scent of damp stone. It had a different aliveness from that of the trees, from anything in the world above. He’d been right. They hadn’t been deep enough before.

She took some time to assemble all the words, but they felt right. Real.

“Bones of the earth, flowing liquid to the surface, crumbling to form the flesh of the world. You are so strong, nothing but time defeats you. Be strong now. Strong enough to forgive.” ERB-1 loomed in her mind, in her heart. She’d been calling it dust, but what the pouch really held was sand, gritty between her fingers. Her father’s ashes were mixed in with them. “Be strong enough to heal. Be strong!”

She scattered a pinch of sand over the cave floor as she spoke. The moment of stillness that followed was just long enough for her to feel monumentally silly—then all thought was wiped away by a shattering blow that set every bone in her body vibrating like a mallet-struck gong. The vibration went on and on, receding into darkness, pulling her with it.

Kelsa was lying on the tunnel floor when thought returned, lumps of stone pressing into ribs, hip, temple, and one sore knee. Her head ached fiercely.

“Ow! What the hell was that? Did you hit me?”

“No.” Raven sat cross-legged beside her, looking far too comfortable on the hard stone. “You had a good connection to the ley, and some of the power lashed back through you. You were right. We were deep enough.”

The smug smile was back.

“Frack you.” She picked up the light, pulled herself to her feet, and started unsteadily out of the cave. Her headache lessened with each step, which it wouldn’t if he’d hit her hard enough to knock her out. She was done with him, anyway.

Kelsa felt almost normal by the time she climbed back to the surface of the lava field, more shaken and angry than hurt. It took her several moments to notice that no one was on the trail anymore. The tourists were milling around the parking lot, waving their arms as they talked.

“What’s going on?”

“I told you that nexus power frequently has physical manifestations.” Raven was retying the cord around the medicine bag’s neck.

She glared at him, then started back to the parking lot.

“Did you feel it! Biggest I ever—”

“Thought it would knock me right off my feet,” an elderly woman was saying. “Would have, if I hadn’t had my walking stick.”

“I wonder if it did any damage.”

“I wonder how big it was, on the Richter scale. Must have been at least a two.”

Kelsa stared at the chattering crowd. Then she turned and waited for Raven. He was only a moment behind her.

“There was an earthquake? While we were in the cave? Why didn’t I feel it?”

“You more than felt it.” He took her arm and led her over to a picnic table. “Sit down. You’re still pale.”

“Did I . . . Did we . . . You’re kidding!”

“I doubt it did much damage,” Raven said. “Healing magic almost never does.”

“But that’s crazy!”

“You know, one of the main symptoms of crazy is denying or ignoring what your senses perceive. You can hardly deny you perceived that.”

She couldn’t deny it. Any more than she could deny she’d seen him shapeshift. Which meant . . .

“I could heal the tree plague? For real?”

“Not heal it,” Raven admitted. “That will take a lot of people doing the same thing you’re doing all over the planet.”

“Is that what the other shapeshifters are doing?” Kelsa asked curiously. She had a lot of questions about shapeshifters, and he’d evaded most of them.

“No,” Raven told her. “This is our first attempt. In fact, this is the first proof we’ve had that humans can heal the leys at all! But if you can strengthen and open this ley, all along its length, when the plague reaches the forests of the Northwest it will stop. And then, maybe, we can start pushing it back. If you succeed, your scientists will probably claim the bacterium couldn’t survive outside the tropics. But if this ley isn’t healed, strengthened, if the power doesn’t flow along it like it does now in the nexus point you just blew open, then that plague
will
move out of the tropics.”

“So.” He held out the medicine pouch, dangling from the cord around his fingers. “For the final time, Kelsa Phillips, will you take up Atahalne’s quest and finish the healing he started?”

She didn’t have enough money to travel to Alaska. She didn’t have time to get there and back before her mother missed her. She was only fifteen . . .

“Yes.” Kelsa took the medicine bag and hung it around her neck once more. It felt right there. “But first, you’re going to answer some questions.”