CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A spirit made a body of red clay
With water flowing through to give it life
And for companionship a mate of stone
The blood a sacrifice to wed a wife
The Father and the Mother so were made
From their embrace, emerged Folk of the cave
—THE BOOK OF UNVEILING
Darvyn returned from the bootsmith carrying a sack filled with the smallest shoes he could find. Many were still too large for the children. The toes would need to be stuffed with fabric or straw, but at least they would have proper shoes on their feet when they crossed the mountain into Elsira. For many, it would be their first pair.
He spotted Kyara, sitting where he’d left her, and the coiling tension eased within him. He shouldn’t have left her alone. Not just because Aggar would be furious if he found out, but because Darvyn had seen her fear. His Song wasn’t required to sense her breath shortening or the anxiety invading her body. The desire to hold her, to pull her into his arms and offer comfort had been strong. He’d combatted it by searching for the physician—his orange tunic and distinctive hat should have made him stand out even in the crowd, but the man had disappeared.
He’d tried scanning the marketplace for threats as well, but nothing was amiss. There were, of course, the cheaters, the pickpockets, thieves, and the like, their intent to do wrong almost tangible to his Song. Once upon a time he would have tried to catch them all and restore the victims’ hard-earned money or possessions, but he had learned long ago both the impracticality and the danger of trying to help everyone.
Yet, if he could have located the man who’d struck such dread into Kyara’s heart … He shook himself and forced his clenched fists to release.
When he reached her, she looked up, giving him a weak smile. He held his hand out, and she took it, gripping his fingers lightly as she stood. A riot of sensation cascaded over him from that one brief point of contact. She let go of him quickly, looking down as if embarrassed and focusing on brushing off the seat of her trousers.
She was still on edge, but much more of her confidence shone through now. Her eyes finally met his, and she gave a brief nod to indicate she was all right. He took a step back, flexing the hand she’d touched.
Farron ran up, out of breath, the portable radiotelegraph they’d liberated from an army supply truck slung across his body. “You’ve got a message,” he said, holding up a piece of paper with his scrawled writing on it.
“For me? Have you decoded it?”
Farron shook his head and handed over the message, exchanging it for the bag of shoes and headed back toward the wagons.
Darvyn studied the writing, decoding it in his head. It used a simple cipher, reserved for urgent, nonclassified messages. As he read, a pressure grew around him, making it feel like the air was constricting him.
“What’s happened?” Kyara asked, squinting at the paper.
He crumpled the note and began walking toward the waiting wagons. She followed close behind. When they reached the one he’d been driving, he handed her up to the driver’s seat.
“Wait for me here. I need to find Aggar.”
She looked at him curiously, then nodded. Her gaze slid away, back to the busy market.
Aggar wasn’t back yet, so Darvyn paced in front of the lead wagon. Finally, the man appeared with a bulging sack over his shoulder. Darvyn rushed up to him without preamble.
“Asla relayed a message from the school. The well’s gone dry. They need—” He stopped short, noticing one of the street children hovering. The little girl headed toward the market, but Darvyn lowered his voice. “They need the Shadowfox to go there and rework his spell.”
A flash of annoyance crossed Aggar’s face, though it took years of knowing the man to distinguish it from his normal expression. “Asla will have to set some of those children of hers to digging.”
Darvyn’s own annoyance flared. Why did everything have to be a fight with him? “There are eighty-seven children there, plus the teachers. And the water in that part of the land is deep, too deep for them to dig for.”
Aggar muttered under his breath, something about orphans and urchins. Darvyn was close to losing his temper. “You helped save many of those children from having their Songs stripped away, from being sent to mine or farm or breed for the rest of their lives. They are the future of Lagrimar, and they need help.”
“We saved them from the tribute. You’re telling me that with all those Earthsingers, not one of them can find water in the desert?”
“They’re still being trained and the teachers aren’t strong enough. Asla can teach them to pull a trickle of water from the plants, but that won’t last very long.”
The school was the largest Keeper compound and their greatest success. Darvyn had done much of the construction himself, singing the foundation and walls into place. He visited as often as he could, sometimes delivering a party of rescued children, sometimes to satisfy his curiosity and bear witness to the joys of childhood he’d never experienced.
Creating the well had not been easy, and if it had truly gone dry, then a new one may be needed. There was only one person capable of a spell that strong and Aggar knew it.
Aggar shook his head. “The elders would never allow it. With all the plans afoot, you’re needed elsewhere. Hanko would have my hide if I let you go running around the bush following whatever fancy has caught your attention. Besides, how would you even get there?”
The school was well hidden, far enough out in the bush to never be discovered accidentally. And in four days’ time, Jack was expecting to meet him at the army base to remove the disguise spell and help him get home. The trip to the school would take two days on horseback but far less if Darvyn had a motorized vehicle. If he could get his hands on a diesel contraption, he could make sure the children had water and be back in time to lead Jack home.
“I’ll think of a way to get there. This is too important to ignore.”
Aggar crossed his arms. “No. We’ll find another way to help the school. You’re not going. That’s an order.” He stomped off, leaving Darvyn shaking with anger.
The question of how to be in two places at once occupied Darvyn’s thoughts as the caravan got back on the road. They were headed west to another safe house to drop off the rescued children. Some would be reunited with their families, but most would be headed even farther west, to Elsira, the safest option for them.
At the Crossroads, he might be able to acquire a diesel contraption capable of getting him to the school and back in time. He would have to defy Aggar to do it, but the man was simply too stubborn for his own good. And after the school and Jack were taken care of, he would head to Checkpoint Seventeen. Not only could he follow up on the lead regarding his mother, but that was where Kyara was headed as well.
Not that such a thing should influence his actions in any way.
They’d been traveling only a quarter of an hour when Kyara stiffened beside him and swung her head around, trying in vain to see behind them. Darvyn shook off his brooding, awakened his senses, and cursed aloud.
“Bush wranglers!” he cried out, tossing the reins to Kyara so he could pull the rifle from below his seat and check his pockets for extra ammunition.
The back door of the wagon in front of him opened, and Navar climbed out, balancing on the foot rack before closing the door. Darvyn couldn’t see inside the darkened interior, but felt the children’s fear. His warning gave the Keepers notice of about two minutes before a cloud of dust from the northeast approached the wagons from behind.
In broad daylight, a heist such as this one was gutsy but not entirely unexpected. Only the larger gangs would attempt to hold up four wagons at once. Darvyn sensed twenty men approaching—this was the largest group of bush wranglers he’d ever encountered. Many were on horseback, but nearly half of them approached much faster. The roar of engines pierced the air along with war whoops shouted by the thieves.
He glanced at Kyara. Her gaze was on the horses she now controlled. Her expression was pinched, more annoyed than frightened. She must encounter bands such as these all the time as a courier.
Sucking in a deep breath, he filled himself with Earthsong, allowing it to engulf his senses and take over his body. He almost never gave himself to the power so completely. He’d learned very early that strength was nothing without control. He’d always practiced excessive restraint, but the presence of so many bandits left him little choice but to gorge himself on the source energy.
The heartbeats of those around him pounded in his veins, his Song raging inside him. The distance between the thieves and the wagons was shrinking by the second.
Through the glut of Earthsong, he felt the energy of every living thing for kilometers. From the insects burrowing beneath the ground to the birds overhead. Every man and woman, every bush, every root. The whisper of the gentle breeze was a cyclone against his skin. He struggled to not be taken under by the myriad forces crashing into him. Instead, he sought to bend them to his will.
A bolt of lightning shot down from the clear, blue sky. Smoke rose from the strike location but didn’t catch fire. Had that been him or one of the other Keepers? He tried to pull back from the deluge rushing through him but could not. It begged him to let go, to let it take over, but he knew better.
Discerning the positions of the bandits on horseback, he latched onto the horses. Their hooves ate up the ground beneath them. He didn’t want to hurt the animals, just the men riding them. A nest of snakes nearby caught his attention. He urged them forward, propelling them to charge the approaching horses en masse. Animal suggestion was simple when it involved an action the animal was likely to take on its own. Pushing the snakes was no hardship.
Frightened whinnies from the horses filled the air as the ground before them became overrun with snakes. Darvyn pushed the reptiles to act like herding dogs, guiding the horses away, back into the bush. The horses complied, even as their riders tried desperately to beat them back toward the highway. Agitated by both their riders and the reptiles, the horses bucked sharply, throwing their riders off and leaving them amid the writhing horde.
Darvyn turned his attention to the other bush wranglers riding up alongside the caravan. Eight diesel crawlers roared, their engines deafening. Unlike most motorized contraptions found in the Midcountry, these crawlers weren’t cobbled together from discarded parts. They were uniform and well made, likely imported straight from Yaly by the government. The bandits must have stolen them, but how could they have taken so many? And how was it possible they hadn’t been caught yet?
Each man straddled a crawler, hunched low over the handlebars as the single caterpillar-like moving track churned the dirt of the road. And though they each dressed the part in leather riding clothes that conformed to their bodies, the men all appeared to be clean-shaven with closely cropped hair. Not the usual, ragged style of a bush wrangler.
A crawler approached Aggar’s horses at the front of the caravan and was promptly enveloped in a cloud of dust. Navar, hanging on to the back of the wagon with an iron grip, was focused intently in Aggar’s direction. His spell, then.
Darvyn glanced over his shoulder to find Lizana and Farron in the wagon behind him, pelting the thieves with rocks and mud and throwing small obstacles onto the highway. They held hands to link their Songs and combine their strength.
He didn’t want to do anything that would cause the crawlers to lose control and crash into the wagons, injuring the children, but the thieves cut through the pesky obstacles created by the other Singers easily.
A gunshot rang out, from where he couldn’t tell. Answering shots fired from in front of and behind him. Darvyn calmed the frightened horses with his Song, then stood in the driver’s seat, his rifle loose in his hands, ready to use if necessary. A bandit pulled up beside him and lifted a shiny, new-looking pistol. Darvyn raised a wall of solid dirt, waist-high, directly in front of the crawler. The vehicle slammed into it, tossing the rider over the handlebars. Another wall of dirt on the side between the crawler and the wagon ensured the now-driverless vehicle veered off away from them, crossing the road and careening to the ground on the other side.
“Halt!” Darvyn screamed. All four wagon drivers slowed their horses, and Darvyn released another spell. The tightly packed dirt of the unpaved road rippled beneath them. He marked the position of the remaining crawlers and opened sinkholes under each one of them. The bandits’ shrieks filled the air as they found themselves trapped in three-meter-deep holes in the ground where the road had been a moment before.
The wagons rumbled to a stop at the side of the road. Darvyn remained seated as the armed Keepers approached the sinkholes and peered down into them. One by one, Darvyn put the bandits to sleep, his body sagging from the effort of the past few minutes.
He surveyed the scene. None of the Keepers had been hurt. A scan of the wagons showed that the children were all uninjured, as well. He took a deep breath and sat back heavily, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“Well, that was exciting,” he said, expecting a retort from Kyara, but she was strangely quiet beside him. He turned to her, a teasing question ready on his lips that died as he took in the sight before him. Blood seeped through her tunic where a bullet had pierced her stomach. Her lips curved in a sad smile before she collapsed into his arms.