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The sun was approaching its zenith. At midmorning, the old road turned west, and they had no choice but to leave it and continue north along the remnants of an even older road, one more rock than packed dirt. Because it was the only way over the mountain the kraals and the litter could manage, they had little choice but to follow it. The rest of the morning was spent climbing the road into the mountains. Nomar rode slightly ahead of Ailish. His kraal was the only one that had not run off during yesterday’s ambush.
After spending too much time looking for the two runaway kraals, they’d gone north on the old road. They’d reached the foothills of the high mountains of Northcrom just before nightfall. They made camp in a small clearing near the river, where Ailish again worked her healing magic on Jalil. The Dark Master was alert, and his mind functioning as it should. Whatever had happened to him, had passed.
Just after sunrise, and their meal of the leftover rabts Nomar and Yar had brought down for their night meal, they’d returned to the road. After an hour, the road turned smoother and the litter rolled nicely over it.
Today, Ailish knew, might be their last in Northcrom. Having two kraals allowed them to make good progress, and they would reach the edge of Northcrom by evening. A strange sadness fell over her. She tried to push off the heavy chains it wrapped about her, but could not. Her mind was uneasy; her heart as heavy as it had ever been.
“We have been fortunate,” Jalil said, his voice low but strong.
His words struck her badly. She shook her head. “You have been fortunate. Me ... I see that not.”
“Are you feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Do I have not that right?”
“You do,” he agreed, “but in truth, you have the right to look at the fortunate side.”
Ailish’s short burst of laughter was far from humorous. “Which is?”
Jalil stopped using speech. The man who rides with us. He is a good man, strong, honest, and humble I sense him to be. He will be of great service to us.
And do you ‘sense’ him to be stupid enough to continue on this ... march to oblivion, if he discovers our true intent?
Only you look at our goals as such. You willingly committed yourself; you know there is no other on the face of Nevaeh who can not only help me, but survive to ensure all those of Nevaeh will survive as well. Ailish, it is long past time to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?
Ailish shook her head.
You do! I know such as truth. It is your emotions fueling your doubts, emotions of what you have left behind. Think carefully on this, Ailish, Daughter of Sirc, Woman of Power, Wife of Nevets, Queen, Mother, Widow. You have in your short life accomplished much, yet your destiny calls for more.
And why is that?
In five hundred years, a Woman of Power will be born. Her name will be Bekar, and she will be a direct descendant of yours. This woman will be the one to keep your legacy alive, the legacy of hope, and of faith that each Woman of Power has for one another and for all Nevaens. This woman will spend fifteen hundred years in a place where there is neither life nor death. There, she waits for another of your direct descendants to begin to walk the path to finding you. Ailish, this woman child will finish what you started the day we met on the Landing—
—Stop! We have done this before. How can you state so explicitly this foreseeing is accurate? Unlike any other, it will not change—it will—all of it come true? I am to believe in this, when all I have been taught tells me that one shift, one misstep can change everything about the future?
Believe what you will. I can only tell you that if you do not follow through with what is necessary, if you do not arrive with me at our destination, Nevaeh will fall to the Dark Masters. But follow through as foreseen, and all will happen as it should.
“And Nevaeh’s future is what awaits you at the journey’s end.” When Jalil spoke aloud, it was the first time she had heard emotion thicken the voice of the former Dark Master. His emotions, not his words, made her concentrate on what came next. “For you will meet this child, you will see her, you will know her, and you will understand how important this journey has been for all the people of Nevaeh yet to be born.” And you, Ailish of Morvene—fifteen hundred years after she meets Bekar—will guide her through the final challenge to Nevaeh ... You!
She blinked away the emotional web his words spun around her. “Nomar.”
The Free Blade turned, and she waved him back to her. When he reached her side, she smiled. “I need to get off this beast for a few minutes.”
“Very good, My La— Ailish.”
She slid from the saddle, went to the litter, and looked down at Jalil. Seek you to woo me into doing what you want by teasing me with some future only you can see?
His pale blue eyes crisscrossed her face before he responded. Or what you could see if you allowed yourself to do so?
Spinning from him, she walked into the woods with Yar following. She found a place among the rock and stunted trees of this mountain, a peaceful place where she knelt on the soft earth. There, she bent her head, and for the second time on this journey, released her tears. When there were no more to shed, she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Suddenly there came a sensation of heat rising from the earth. Unsure of this strange heat, she expanded her senses, but found no darkness within it.
Closing her eyes, she pushed both hands as far as she could into the soft dirt. It took but an instant for the heat to spread into her hands, and spread upward along her arms. The heat moved like a snuck, yet without the coldness of the reptile. As she worked to understand what was happening, another part of her, one she had never sensed before, opened.
She knew instinctively, whatever this was, was an ability gifted from the Staff of Afzal. Yet, she feared it not. As the winding and shifting heat swept through her body, it filled this newly opened part of her. Then it was gone.
She started to draw her hands from the earth, but it was as if another set of hands grasped hers and refused her escape. Her breath caught; the coppery taste of fear flooded her mouth. A sudden spurt of adrenalin burst into her arteries—an instant later the world disappeared.
No, not gone, it was below. She floated high above everything. She saw the old dirt road they were on, saw her kraal, and even Jalil within the litter. She saw her body still kneeling on the ground, her hands imprisoned in the earth. She watched Yar, standing next to her body, lift his head and look skyward to exactly where she floated.
Then everything changed—again. A pale golden glow surrounded her. She remembered the old legends of Women of Power reaching another plane of existence. Her mother told her it was called the Astral Plane, but she had known of no one who had ever experienced such a thing.
Be not afraid of this plane of existence, came Jalil’s thoughts.
I fear not this. But why ... how?
I know only it is the earth of Nevaeh itself. Nevaeh needs you to know who you are, just as I have tried to tell you. This is your chance to find the freedom to understand. Take it now!
With his last word, she found herself flying over the mountains. When she reached a height from which she could barely discern a tree from grass and dirt of the ground, she looked north, and saw the emptiness of the Northern Tar Fields.
Caught within that instant of time and space, she knew she had been wrong. To go there would be death. She knew not why, only of its certainty. Nevaeh itself, from deep within, was warning her. Nomar had been right, using the Tar Fields would be a mistake.
She turned west as she floated within the golden light, and saw Morvene and Troit as well. She looked as far as she could see, and found the new direction they must take.
And then, as if this golden plane knew she had finished what it had sent her to learn, she was back in her body. She opened her eyes. The last thing she saw before a dark veil fell across her eyes, and everything vanished, was Yar’s amber eyes staring directly into hers.
<><><>
Lezah watched everything from a distance, just as she had since Irret ordered her to follow Haron. Her danglore had shown her everything that passed. When the Free Blade’s knife ended Haron’s existence, Lezah knew she must do what the other could not. She must find a way to kill Ailish and recover the Staff from the Dark Master.
Knowing better than to be too close to the Woman of Power and renegade Master, she returned to her kraal, and led it off the road. Within the safety of the trees, Lezah built a small fire and then sat before it. She closed her eyes, and reached into the mind of the danglore watching the road ahead.
She saw Ailish and the others go into a clearing, watched the woman heal the Master, and followed Ailish deeper into the woods. Through the carrion eater’s eyes, she watched the woman kneel within a stand of trees, and plunge her hands into the ground.
Instantly, Lezah realized Ailish was vulnerable. She pushed hard, desperately seeking something to help her strike down the woman. After a few seconds, she found what she needed. Calling softly, she whispered a formula that pulsed through the danglore on the high branch, and arrowed into a thick branch twenty feet below.
Under the black witch’s control, the branch came alive; only it wasn’t the branch, rather it was a huge brownish-green snuck wrapped around the branch. Perhaps ten feet long and a half-foot thick, the snuck was the perfect weapon, Lezah knew, for its bite would first paralyze, and then its muscular body would crush the life from Ailish.
Now! she commanded.
The snuck unwrapped itself from the branch, using the tree trunk to slither slowly downward until its triangular head touched the earth. The rest of its body glided down the tree trunk until its ten-foot length was on the ground. The snuck moved silently toward Ailish, aware the rantor was watching and guarding the woman.
The moment the snuck touched the ground, Lezah, stoked her powers. She directed a rush of power at Ailish, to hold her prisoner while she sent an order to the snuck. The snuck coiled and launched itself. Its wide open mouth and three rows of teeth caught her upper arm, pushing its paralytic venom into her bloodstream just as it whipped itself around her midsection in quickly looping coils before the rantor could interfere.
It took only seconds for the snuck to lodge itself securely around Ailish. Yar could do nothing but scream and hiss at the snuck while the black witch smiled at the death throes of her mistress’s enemy.
<><><>
Jalil had sensed Ailish’s sudden ascent into another plane. When he did, he smiled to himself; and touched her mind. Ten minutes later, his sense of her vanished as if she herself had done so. It was then he sensed the darkness.
He struggled to pull himself upright. “Nomar!”
The Free Blade was at his side in an instant, his eyes questioning.
“Ailish, find her, quickly. Something is wrong.”
Without a word, the Free Blade charged into the woods. A dozen steps later, Yar came bursting from behind a tree. The rantor stepped in front of Nomar, then, with a yelp, turned and started back.
Nomar followed the huge cat. Seconds later, he found Ailish being crushed by a huge snuck. Frozen for less than a heartbeat, Nomar drew the same long knife he’d used to kill the black witch, and charged at Ailish and the snuck.
He grabbed the snuck just below its head. Careful not to touch Ailish’s skin, he sliced through the snuck with one stroke, pulling its spasming body from her. Then he used his knife to open the dead snuck’s mouth and remove it from Ailish’s arm.
Ignoring the blood flowing from the torn skin and muscle, he picked her up, and raced back to the road, where he placed her on the grass next to Jalil’s litter. No one noticed the danglore settling itself on yet another tree above them.
“Lay me next to her! On my side, facing her.”
When Nomar placed him next to Ailish, Jalil took the Staff and set it on the center of her still-unconscious body, Jalil placed one hand on the Staff, and the other on her bleeding upper arm. He sought her mind, but found it blocked by a dark power.
Rather than force it, he used his powers to stop the bleeding in her arm. Then, slowly, and carefully, he pushed his senses to the Staff. There was a strange shifting within the air surrounding them. The Staff rose slightly as a stream of white vapor pulsed out of the ends of the polished wood. The white cloud moved along the ground, swirling in ever-tightening circles until it covered Ailish.
For the next twenty minutes, and with every breath the Woman of Power took, the white mist entered her body. Once Ailish completely inhaled the mist, Jalil closed his eyes, and placed a hand on her forehead.
He pushed hard and broke through the dark trance blocking her mind. Come out ... now! he commanded.
Ailish’s eyes snapped open. The first thing she saw, was a danglore looking down at her from a high branch. You! Her arm shot upward, her powers flared, and she sent a stream of blue fire into the tree. The danglore disappeared in a flash.
Ailish turned to look at Jalil. “We travel not to the Tar Fields.” Then she looked at her arm, and the blood drying on it. “What did you do?”
Jalil cocked his head to the side. “Without a healing ability I am not.”
“Thank you,” she said, then she looked at Nomar. “To you, Free Blade, I am indebted.”
“You have no debt. Of service to you am I pledged by our contract.”
“Be that as it may seem, the debt is mine.” She turned to Jalil. This was my fault. I was unable to maintain shield or block.
Fault matters not. From this minute on, you do what is necessary for us to reach our destination. I will maintain our protection from the dark ones.
“There will be other spies ... Birds, animals, people,” she realized aloud. “We must let her think we still go to the Tar Fields.”
“The danglores are their spies. They are easily taken by dark minds. Whenever we see one or sense one, we must eliminate it.” Was this Irret, or one of her minions? he asked silently, I cannot tell.
I know not ...I ... the snuck’s venom clouded my perception.
Nomar looked from one to the other. “Danglores? What have they to do with us?”
Ailish shook her head. “They track us for the dark ones—the Masters and their witches.”
Nomar stared at her, his eyes, the unusual shade between blue and green, darkened. His fingers wound around the handle of his sword. “I think it is time to tell me what exactly it is you are doing.”
