Chapter 19 Thaleo
THALEO
Warrek and I had already turned ourselves homeward after a day of flying when we saw it. Something else in the air. Something big.
It was not Valeria’s shuttle. We’d already seen the shine of that in the distance, heard the whine of its human power source.
Seeing that shuttle a little earlier – knowing it had landed, and had brought her back to me – was part of the reason I had called Warrek off and turned us about.
My heart beat like the wings of my braxilk knowing that she was back in my mountain.
Now, it beat for another reason entirely as my eyes tried to make sense of what I saw.
Whatever it was, it was heading the same direction we were. Straight for our mountain.
“I see it, Gahn!” Warrek called to me before I even had the chance to ask him. Simultaneously, we urged our braxilk as fast as they could fly. But the thing, whatever it was, was closer to our mountain than we were. It was so huge that my sense of the distance was warped.
But though it was closer, we were faster. Slightly, anyway. Never letting our mounts slow for even a moment, slowly, we gained on it.
It was a living thing. A flying creature, with a wingspan of brain-boggling proportions. Its body was heavy and huge and ominously familiar. It almost looked like…
“A borog!” Warrek shouted.
No. It could not be. Borogs did not have wings. This was something else.
Could it be some dark cousin of the Vrika?
But the closer we got, driving ourselves and our mounts to their greatest limits, the more its shape came into familiar focus.
That powerful, lumbering body, which seemed like it should have been impossible to hoist into the air.
That snapping tail that could kill a man with a single blow.
The huge head meant for scraping, pummelling.
It was a borog, or some new, terrible version of one.
Wings.
And all at once, things finally made sense. The way that its tunnels were so far apart, with no signs of it walking between them.
It did not need to walk between them, or burrow great distances underground.
It could fly.
And now, it was flying right for our mountain.
Our people.
Nazreen.
My hand burned with the ghost of old acid as I did everything in my power to make Yeralk move faster than he ever had, faster than was even possible for him. The loyal creature did his best, his body straining, pulling slightly ahead of Warrek and his mount. But it was not enough.
The borog roared, a caterwaul of doom. And then it dove.
For a time – too long, too long! – we lost sight of it between the Deep Sky peaks. When we finally caught up with it, we found it in the lake, at the brolka pasture.
Good. I let a small wave of relief wash through me, though I did not let it slow me down.
Perhaps the beast would take some brolka and be satisfied enough to leave.
At least for now. At least long enough for us to regroup, make new plans now that we knew that it could fly.
I had no doubt that even with its wings, Linnet could escape the thing if she were on her braxilk.
In fact, there she was in the air above the creature now, flinging ineffectual arrows down upon it.
Leave it! I wanted to shout at her. But there was no breath in my lungs to do it. My entire body was tense to the point of cracking with singular purpose. To get there, get there now. Protect my people. Find Nazreen.
And then, as if my desire had conjured her, I saw her, and horror like nothing I had ever felt, not even when I’d seen my dying uncle’s ruined body, ripped through my guts.
She was down there. How? Why?
She was not the only one. With her were Tilly and Zaria.
The three of them were running to the rocky slope and narrow valley that would lead them out of there.
Oxriel, Zoren, Valeria, Grim, and Arton were standing in a messy line, weapons in their hands.
But when the borog launched into the air, they began running, too. Not away from the thing. But after it.
Because now, it was hunting Nazreen, Tilly, and Zaria.
The three females slipped into that narrow band of space between two high walls of stone. The borog landed atop it, and I couldn’t see her, Vrika help me, I couldn’t see her.
When it began smashing its head upon the stone, making it crack, I felt those lethal blows as if inside my own body. Already, I had my bow in my hand, but the arrow I loosed did nothing at all. Neither did the spears that Oxriel and Zoren threw.
I would never make it in time.
The first weakened piece of stone fell away.
Fell down to the place where Nazreen and the others were, and I had never felt a fear like it.
It was a fear that told me nothing would ever be worth it, nothing would ever be enough to keep my pathetic body alive, if I could not save her.
The borog kept on smashing its brutal head against the rock, another terrible crack forming.
“No!” The word ripped itself from my throat, a pitiful sort of prayer that I knew would do no good. Foam of exertion whipped backwards from Yeralk’s beak as we thrust ceaselessly forward.
The stone cracked more. And then it fell away.
At the same moment, Valeria halted and aimed her hands up at the borog. A new sound rang out, a sound that made me think of a log cracking in a fire, but deeper, louder. The borog screamed, its head jerking back as if struck by something, though I had not seen what.
Whatever it was, it pained or angered the creature enough that it once more took to the air, screaming and writhing. It swooped aggressively towards the brolka, taking two in its massive jaws before slicing its way out of the valley.
“It is fleeing, Gahn!”
I barely heard Warrek. I barely cared. Let the borog come back and smash me to bits if it wanted to. What was it to me? All that mattered was Nazreen and the others. Down in that narrow place where the rocks had fallen.
“No.” Again, a word that did nothing. A word that I could not stop myself from hoarsely uttering anyway when I saw her.
I did not even wait for Yeralk to land. I leaped from his back, landing roughly on the loose stones of the slope and running to her.
She was laying on her belly, entirely limp. Her two friends knelt over her. Tilly’s small brown hands were stained a dark and terrible red.
No. No. No no no no.
“Get back,” I snarled savagely at them, as if they were my enemies. “Nobody touches her. Nobody touches her but me!”
“Oh, Christ. Oxriel, Zoren. Run and get a healer. Now!” Valeria’s frantic voice was behind me. “Grim, go to the shuttle and get the stretcher. If she has a neck injury, we need to be careful moving her.”
I skidded to my knees. I did not feel the way the rocks bit me.
“She saved me,” Zaria was repeating over and over again as Arton shoved his way into the scene and dragged her up against his chest. Her sight stars were blown with shock and fear. “She saved me. She saved me.”
“Hush now, mate,” Arton murmured. “You are safe now.”
“Because she saved me!”
So much red blood in her beautiful hair. The strands were soaked and shining with it.
“She pushed me out of the way,” Zaria whispered. “She saved me.”
She was breathing. But she did not move and she did not speak.
“Someone give me something!” Something. Anything. Anything that would fix this.
“Here, my Gahn.” That was Linnet behind me now, speaking gravely. She handed me a long, folded band of clean spinner silk, freshly woven, saying something about it “staying dry in the basket.”
My hands shook as I held it. Spinner silk.
I remembered Nazreen putting her arms around me for the very first time in the spinner’s cave, and on my knees beside her now, it was as if something vital and vulnerable in my chest became physically punctured.
I was bleeding out inside. Without ever having sustained a wound.
I gritted my fangs so hard my jaw crackled and gently pressed the spinner silk to her wound.
Things happened in a blur around me then.
The only constant for me was Nazreen. Nazreen so pale and still on the ground.
Nazreen with Vrika’s blood being dumped upon her by Salina, the closest healer who’d answered the Sea Sand men’s call.
Nazreen’s neck being held so still as she was carefully loaded and then strapped onto a bright yellow plank that Grim produced from the skies knew where.
The plank had wheels on legs that extended from its flat bottom, but the terrain was far too uneven for that. Grim and I carried her between us.
I should have been able to carry her alone. I should have never let this happen at all.
Zaria’s words echoed in my head. She saved me.
Nazreen had sacrificed herself for one of my people. It should have been me.
For so much of my life, I’d attempted to not feel much of anything at all.
But it was as if stopping it all up for so long made everything suddenly all the more explosive now.
Grief. Shame. Fury. Fear. Hatred. Longing.
Then hatred and hatred and hatred again, aimed solely and squarely at myself.
They all lashed me, one after the other, in nauseating succession, until I was certain that, in any other circumstances – circumstances that did not involve carrying the battered body of the woman I loved – I would have been driven to my knees.
Just like I had been at the sight of her face-down on the stones.
We made it to the aguir circle outside of my mountain before she stirred. I saw the flicker of her eyelids immediately, heard the stuttered change in her breathing.
“Nazreen,” I hissed, stopping walking and not quite daring to let myself be relieved by this. “I have you. My beautiful one. I have you.”
Valeria rushed in at Grim’s side to see Nazreen’s face.
“Nasrin? It’s Valeria. We’ve got you. We’re going to get you on the shuttle right now and take you to the Sea Sands.”
Nazreen gave a groan then. Then, in a cracking voice, “No.”
“I will go with her.” But of course, as soon as I said the words, I knew I couldn’t. How could I? With this new threat facing my mountain? The borog with wings. It could appear anywhere. At anytime. My people needed their Gahn.
“I don’t think she wants to go,” Tilly said with quiet firmness.
“Well, she has a serious head injury!” Valeria exclaimed.
“So maybe someone who isn’t concussed should be making that decision!
” She took a calming breath before going on.
“The big ship in the Sea Sands has a lot more medical stuff. We could do X-rays. We don’t even know if she has a spinal cord injury or not! ”
“But even if the X-ray shows something,” Tilly said in that same quiet voice, “what could we do about it? We have some people with medical training, sure. But it’s not like we’ve got a neurosurgeon on board.
Of course, we could dump her in the pools of Lavrika’s blood.
But it would take a while to get there even with the shuttle, and if there is damage, it might be too far gone.
Like Ark.” She glanced at me then. “Ark is one of Gahn Baldor’s warriors.
He lost most of his eyesight in a fight.
His tribe’s healers restored some of it, but not all.
Once he was part of our settlement, he tried dunking in the pools of Lavrika’s blood, because that’s done some pretty miraculous things for others.
But it had no effect after that much time. ”
“Fuck,” whispered Valeria, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Let me think.”
“What is it?” I snapped. “Will going back to the Sea Sands help her or not?”
There were few things I wanted less that Nazreen returning to that place.
But one of those was seeing her deteriorate here when she could be helped there.
“We have equipment that can tell us more about her condition,” Tilly explained. “It can tell us if any parts of her spine are broken, for example. But even if it does so, we won’t be able to do anything about those injuries.”
Her precious spine. Skies help me.
“My toes.”
All of us ceased speaking at once when Nazreen’s hoarse voice cut in. Our eyes went to her feet, which she was moving in weak little circles. Then, she shakily clenched and unclenched her fists.
“That is a good sign,” Salina said from near Nazreen’s feet. “She is conscious, and her limbs can move freely.” Nazreen got suddenly paler the same moment that Salina added, “She might need to be sick.”
I kept one hand in place holding the yellow plank, the other supporting Nazreen’s shoulder and neck, gently helping her roll without twisting her head. She vomited over the side of the plank, then lay back again, breathing hard.
“Would visiting the Vrika’s peak help her?” I demanded, the idea suddenly coming to me. “If the Lavrika’s pools have helped others?”
“But the Vrika lives at the top, doesn’t it?
” Valeria squinted in the direction of the Vrika’s tall spire of stone.
“In the Sea Sands, the Lavrika lives on the ground, in its pools. It’s not about the Lavrika’s blood.
Lavrika’s blood alone can only do so much.
It’s about being where the Lavrika is. It can make things happen.
It’s what gave all of us the Sea Sand language and the ability to speak to you now.
Just dumping some Lavrika’s blood over your head wouldn’t accomplish that. ”
The Vrika did live at the peak. Yeralk could get us partway there, but for the last treacherous stretch, one had to climb. I thought of making that climb while also somehow holding her fragile body in my arms and my heart contracted painfully.
I could do it.
I could also make things worse.
“We need to make a decision,” Valeria said, her eyes now on the skies. “I don’t want to still be standing out here when that thing comes back.”
“It was even bigger than the shuttle,” Oxriel said. “While I’d like nothing more than to take Nazreen back to the Sea Sands now…What happens if the borog attacks the shuttle in the air?”
“We’d be completely fucked, that’s what would happen,” Valeria admitted after a tense moment’s thought. “My shuttle isn’t as agile as something like a braxilk. If it surprised us midflight, there wouldn’t be much of anything we could do.”
“Then you will stay,” I decided. I could not risk a second attack on them in the air.
Especially if I was not there.
“We will take good care of her, Gahn,” Salina assured me as Valeria jerked her head up and down in one tight motion.
“Yes,” I vowed, gazing down at Nazreen’s face, no longer slack with unconsciousness but drawn tight with pain. “We will.”