Lost Moon Page 5

  Kepriah thought on that and nodded as she waited for Sorinieve to open the next archway.

  ****

  Larisa could no longer feel her body or her limbs and her breathing grew heavy. I am so very tired. Her mind began to play tricks and she thought she saw something glimmer up on the hillside, which was now the bank of this murderous river, but she dismissed it as a hallucination brought on by her condition. She could not swim well enough to get through this debris, even if she could free her arm, so she contented herself with watching the sky. The rain had slowed but she still had to blink to keep it from clouding her eyes.

  She thought she saw movement on the elevated ground and drew her gaze there. A jabber? Impossible? It was an illusion, a ruse of death. Someone might have called out to her, but that was just a trick of a dying mind. Fatigue wracked her body and she closed her eyes, the blessed darkness taking her.

  ****

  Once off Forbidding Mountains, they had continued to travel through various archways past village after village, until finally Kepriah could see what she thought was Donigere. Water covered the entire village, drowning people, animals and homes in what she imagined was once a great river, damned up so villagers could settle in its lush terrain. As a warrior, she had learned that no matter how rich or powerful a person grew, nature always had the last say.

  Sorinieve moved the scepter until the archway shifted to reveal a woman clinging to a treetop. Kepriah recognized the pale, blonde woman from her dreams. She had seen that body posture too many times, the look a warrior got when death was near, and a sudden urge overwhelmed her.

  I must save her! “What are we waiting for? Move!”

  Jakon kicked his jabber into motion and Kepriah followed him through the archway. Once on the other side, the sound of rushing water and colliding debris assaulted her ears, along with pattering of rain. They were on elevated ground and she had a clear view of the trapped woman. Getting to her would prove much more difficult than Kepriah first thought. There was too much debris to swim through the water safely and it was much too deep for a jabber. The idiot beasts might be good on rough terrain but they sank like boulders in deep water.

  Jakon called out to the trapped woman but she did not respond.

  Kepriah looked around for anything she could use as a raft. A sudden thought entered her head as she jumped down from the kneeling jabber, and she gazed up at Sorinieve. “Can you still the water or move it out of the way or something?”

  The old woman gave her a sorrowful look. “The scepter does not work that way for me. There is a limit to my power with it.”

  “Are you telling the bloody truth about it choosing me as some sort of magical Noble?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why can you not move this water with me touching the scepter? Like you made the archways.”

  “Because I am still the one directing the magic. You are simply the bridge now.”

  “Then teach me to do it.” She reached out for the scepter but Sorinieve drew it away.

  “We do not have time.”

  “We will make time.” Kepriah snatched the scepter from the old woman’s hand.

  Instead of arguing, Sorinieve said, “You must clear your mind of anger. You must remain calm and concentrate on the water.”

  Kepriah knew how to clear her mind, knew how to push anger away. Unchecked rage could defeat her in battle if she let it. She used an old warrior’s meditation Manry had taught her years ago and envisioned a tree moving in the wind. This was her anger. In her mind, she stilled the branches, one by one.

  “You must hurry, Noble,” Jakon said. “She is slipping.”

  Several branches on her invented tree began to move again and she fought the urge to curse. Instead, she concentrated on shutting out the man’s voice the way she shut out noise on a battlefield until every branch of her tree went still. When she moved her gaze to the river again, Larisa had indeed slipped, skirts floating near her head.

  “What next?” Kepriah’s eyes stayed on the unconscious woman.

  Sorinieve took in a ragged breath. “Concentrate on what it is you wish to do. Be sure. Do not hesitate. You must know exactly what you wish to do and envision it in your mind.”

  With that advice resonating inside her head, Kepriah took in a deep breath and envisioned the water clearing a path from the bank to the woman in the tree. She ordered the water to part but nothing happened.

  “Hurry, Noble.”

  “I know.” Anger bubbled up inside. “And stop calling me that idiotic name.” Larisa’s head was now under the water. Kepriah had to still some loose branches on her mind tree again to push away her anger and focus on the task. Again, she envisioned what she wanted to happen with the river.

  Her palm tingled and the scepter vibrated against her grip but she managed to hold her concentration. A word she did not recognize filled her mind. Instinctively, she uttered it and instantly forgot it. Slowly the water began to separate until it appeared as two giant waves caught in a moment of time. After what could have been a moment or a lifetime, the muddy path was clear. Kepriah had no time to revel in amazement as she slid down the bank and began to move through the mud-laden road, using the scepter as a staff to keep from falling.

  “You must keep your concentration, Noble,” she heard Jakon say as he stepped alongside her. He moved with more ease than she did, but she could wonder about his training later.

  She held eyes on the trapped woman, who dangled from the tree like a rag doll about to plummet to the ground. She had planned to climb up the tree but Jakon beat her to it. He moved like a screech cat, and Kepriah had to force her mind to stay focused on the water, sweat building at her back and temples, despite the cold air. Jakon snagged Larisa about her waist, levered her over one shoulder, and climbed down. Once on the muddy ground, he started toward Sorinieve without hesitation. Kepriah followed, amazed at his agility.

  Jakon took the lead and beat her to the riverbank then climbed up the slippery slope to higher ground.

  Fatigue pressed in on Kepriah. As she hurried to catch up, she lost her concentration. The water began to move and panic swelled. She managed to suck in a breath and hold onto the scepter a mere heartbeat before two giant waves crashed down on her. With all her might, she kicked for the surface, scepter still in hand. She tried to clear her mind again and move the water away but she just could not manage it.

  Once she broke the surface, the water had pushed her several feet from the bank and she had to swim against the current. Something struck her in the gut and knocked the scepter from her hand. She could not reach it so she forced her arms and legs to pump toward Sorinieve, toward dry land. The rushing water kept pulling her under until she sucked it in and coughed it up in a cacophony of a repetitive dying song. Despite Sorinieve’s healing, she had not the strength for this.

  She cursed the Moirai for letting her get away from bounty hunters only to drown in some mediocre village. As she went under for the fifth time, or was it the sixth?—she could not remember—someone grabbed her arm and yanked her from the water.

  She coughed and vomited, while Jakon held her like a fellow warrior on a battlefield. Finally, she spat the last of the bile on the ground and swiped an arm across her mouth. Her body shivered in the cold and her teeth chattered together like a clumsy puppet’s mouth, but she managed to stand up. “Jabber shit! I dropped the scepter.”

  Sorinieve stepped close and lifted Kepriah’s arm towards the river. “Wait for it.”

  “What?”

  “Just wait.”

  Kepriah shivered, coughed, and followed the old woman’s gaze. At first, nothing happened that she could see, but soon she felt a tingle in her palm. The scepter rose from the water, several yards from where she stood, and floated to her until it pressed gently against her palm.

  Sorinieve gave her shoulder a squeeze. “The scepter will always find you now, always remain near. It is yours to carry.”

  Kepriah nodded, her teeth still chattering
, and studied the half-drowned, blonde woman. Jakon had stripped Larisa and wrapped her in skins. “How is she? Will she live?”

  “Yes, Noble, but she needs healing.” He reached to remove Kepriah’s clothes but she gave him a look that dared him to touch her.

  Sorinieve stepped between the two and gazed up at Kepriah. She looked like she did not know what to do with her hands and settled for clasping them together. “You must trust him. With your body, as well as your life.”

  It was then that Kepriah understood the relationship. The scepter would be her weapon and Jakon her right hand. If she accepted them. Right now, the cold had her in its grip. These wet clothes would be her death, so she stood while the golden-eyed man placed the scepter in a holster on the jabber’s saddle and stripped her down. He did not seem aroused by her nakedness, nor did he touch her in any inappropriate way, a fact that somewhat disappointed her. Instead, he quickly dried her with a rag, avoiding her womanly parts, and dressed her in skins. Very methodical, like a healer.

  Once she stopped shivering, Kepriah realized this blonde woman, the one she had rescued, was the only survivor she had seen. There were only bodies here, jammed against debris, against rooftops, against each other. Some were beginning to bloat.

  Sorinieve coughed. “We must get back to the cave. You need to heal your sister.”

  Was the woman losing her mind faster now? “I have no sister.”

  “You do now. And soon, you will have another.”

  “Why back to the cave? Why not a warm place?”

  “It is where we will find your other sister.”

  Kepriah began to understand and offered no argument. Of all the places for her to hide, she had insisted Manry take her there. If she was part of prophecy, the way Sorinieve believed, the Moirai would see to it that she settled in a suitable location. The talemaster’s story of the mountain hideaway, the incorrect accusations of murder, the royal bounty hunters that gave chase, were they just a series of events to get me to that cave?

  She had no more time to dwell on her fate because Jakon stepped to her. “Are you strong enough to walk for a while, Noble?”

  “Yes.” And walking gives me time to think.

  Jakon helped Sorinieve onto her jabber as it knelt down, then draped and secured the unconscious Larisa over the other. He took one set of reins, handed Kepriah the others, and ordered the beasts to their feet. He and Kepriah would walk.

  The old woman placed her hand on the scepter and waited until Kepriah did the same. Together, they began opening archways needed to get back, and Kepriah found herself uttering odd words along with Sorinieve. When she tried to remember them afterwards, nothing came to her.

  She asked Sorinieve about it and the woman said, “The scepter has many tricks to keep its identity safe. If a wielder is ever captured, she cannot reveal her magic, even if tortured.”

  Kepriah fought a shiver that had nothing to do with the weather. She had tortured a prisoner or two in her day.

  ****

  Larisa groaned and her mind began to sputter with recent events. Water. Cold. Papa. Village. Pain. Numb. Mother. Slowly, those thoughts coalesced into more than simple words and she realized she no longer felt wet, cold and in pain. Death had taken her at last. She opened her eyes, expecting to see her parents in the Hollow of the Dead. Instead, she saw three strangers leaning over her, one a very big man with dark skin and strange eyes.

  “Do not be alarmed, child,” an old woman said to her. “You are safe now.”

  “What—” She swallowed to relieve dryness in her throat as she sat and gratefully took an offered cup from the old woman. Water had never tasted so good. Another woman who looked about her age pushed a camen fruit into her trembling hand. Larisa began to eat, too hungry, grateful and stunned to refuse such an offering. The old woman stroked her hair much the way her mother had when she was younger and she fought down the awful pain of loss.

  No one said a word as she finished the camen fruit and wiped her hands on an offered rag, but weariness receded and her limbs began to feel stronger. “Thank you.” She eyed the fruit. “What was in that?”

  The old woman smiled and her eyes brightened in their wrinkled sockets. “Very astute. I infused this camen fruit with magic to help you recover. We healed your wounds but you will need to rest a day or two before you are at full strength again.”

  “Magic?” The very word sent a shiver through her. “Is this the Hollow?”

  “No, child. You are very much alive, and we have quite a story to tell you.”

  ****

  Larisa had rested a few days to regain her strength. As she ate each meal with enthusiasm, she had listened to Sorinieve explain magic, the Trine, and her role as Second Noble. Though her parents had warned her from childhood not to get involved with those who used magic, part of her was intrigued and excited about such an extraordinary future as one of these Trine. She had a lot of time to think when she dangled from that tree and begged the Moirai for help. Or for death, depending on the moment. Larisa’s parents died trying to keep her safe and these people had risked their lives to rescue her. Now that she was safe again, she would not waste her future. If she could help, she would do just that. She just was not sure how.

  There were no royals in these Moirai-forsaken mountains and Larisa had finally learned to relax whenever Sorinieve spoke about or demonstrated magic. Besides, Jakon and Kepriah looked like they could handle any trouble that might come along, even a royal looking for a magic puppet. The large desert man and formidable warrior woman made Larisa feel safe, despite her recent ordeal, or maybe because of it. Images of the recent past surfaced and she shoved down her grief to focus on Sorinieve’s explanations about how to bring their Earth sister to them.

  I like the idea of having sisters, I really do. “But how can I help? I have told you, I have no magic.”

  “But you do, child. Or you will once the Trine is officially created. You were born for this task, just as Kepriah, and just as this Earth child you will help us with.”

  “Now, come and let me teach you what we need to do to bring her here.”

  “What if she does not want to come with us?”

  Sorinieve gazed at her as though she expected that exact question. “It is her destiny, child. She has no choice.”

  Chapter 5

  Patrice stood just outside her detached garage, head craned up to the Alaskan night sky. She thought she saw a blue light within the aurora but she must have been mistaken. Or maybe it had been a spotlight from some local business. She had witnessed the northern lights since she was fifteen and knew instinctively when they would appear and for how long, something her parents jokingly called her “psychic gift”. Her mother, a native of this state, had named her only child Patrice Aurora Gray because she was born during one of the longest and brightest northern lights sightings in recorded history.

  Patrice was her great-grandmother’s name, the one her great-aunt said she favored most. The woman had died when Patrice was a toddler so she never knew the woman. From old family photos her mother possessed, she saw a resemblance in the eyes and hair. Her great-grandmother’s round, blue eyes and curly brown hair looked like Patrice’s, but the woman rarely smiled in those old photos. Patrice, on the other hand, laughed at many things, usually at inappropriate times because she was nervous. Her mother still scolded her about that habit. Sometimes she treats me like her third grade students.

  Patrice was born in Alaska but her family moved to Arizona when she was six months old. They returned to Alaska when she was fifteen, because her father accepted a professorship at the university in Anchorage. That had been a difficult move, because she loved the desert so much, until she saw the Aurora Borealis for the first time, or at least the first time she remembered seeing it. Something in those undulating lights kindled her soul in a way the desert could not. Alaska, much like Arizona, was filled with dangerous beauty, and she had learned to love her birthplace. Even now, ten years later, the aurora ignited
her blood. Whenever it appeared, she sat outside watching it wave majestically across the sky. The past couple of months, it had been performing a nightly show.

  Her eyes searched for that blue light she thought she saw a moment ago. Nothing. Her faux-fur-lined coat gave her body ample protection from the falling temperatures but her stomach rumbled and she grinned to herself. It would be another microwave dinner, since she hadn’t picked up anything on the way home. Not that there was much fast food in Seward, where Patrice lived, mostly restaurants and waterfront cafes, but they offered take-out. It took about two and a half hours on a good day to drive to Anchorage, the nearest major city, where her parents still lived and worked. Patrice preferred the quieter life of Seward and The Book and Mug, the local used bookstore and coffeehouse she now owned, well, half-owned. And since The Book and Mug also carried souvenirs, she did very well when cruise ships docked.

  “You really should learn to cook, Patrice,” her mom often said. “You might get a man to stick around.” Patrice’s mother, daughter of a ranger, born and raised in a modest-sized home here in Alaska, believed all women should cook and sew. Whenever Patrice tried to explain that she had little time or desire for cooking and that buying clothes was cheaper than making them, her mother would flip her hand and say, “Nonsense. Women need to cook for their husbands. Men need to eat. And those clothes you girls wear—not much material to them. Can’t be expensive to make.” Then her mother would start in on tales of her youth and the native Inuit women she knew growing up.

  Whatever strange light Patrice had seen didn’t return, so she shucked her driving gloves and tossed them in the truck. The door closed with a loud creak. The weather report stated it wouldn’t get cold enough to use the truck’s plug-in heater so she simply closed the manual garage door and locked it. Keys in hand, she crossed the snowy yard and mounted the front steps to her home, a two-bedroom cottage her parents had helped her purchase after her father reached tenure. The cottage stood a few blocks from the water, and was the perfect size for a single woman who spent most every day at The Book and Mug.