Wings of Tavea

Chapter TWENTY

Island Rebels


THEIR ACCOMMODATIONS WERE NO different than what Kiora had seen spread over the rest of the island—a large tent.

“Why aren’t there homes, like at your camp?” she asked once Einar had left.

“This is more of an outpost,” Alcander explained. “We use it for defense as well as to house backup troops in case of emergency. Few stay for long.”

“Except the one we came to see,” Drustan said, flopping onto of the sleeping mats, his arm draped over his eyes. “Why are we talking to a crazy old bat?”

“He might not be crazy, that’s why,” Alcander said. “And you’re welcome.”

“For what?” Drustan drawled.

“For not sticking you in the camp with the rest of the Shifters.”

Drustan rolled over, his arm slamming into the ground. He sat up, leaning towards Alcander. “You’re welcome I flew your sorry ass out of that camp instead of leaving you to walk! You ungrateful, self centered—”

“Enough!” Kiora said, jumping between the two. “Thank you for flying us here, Drustan. And thank you, Alcander, for making sure Drustan stayed with us.”

“I did it for you,” Alcander said.

Her head dropped in exasperation. “I know. But we’ll pretend you did it because for a second you realized Drustan has feelings and is entitled to a little respect after all he has done for me and you.”

Alcander’s lips pressed together in a thin line. Turning back to Drustan, Kiora explained, “We are talking to the crazy man because he is the only person we know who has made it out of the Manor—where Emane is now.”

Drustan snapped to attention. “You found him?”

“Yes, Dralazar is holding him at the Manor. It will take a few days to fly there.”

“This place, it’s dangerous?” Drustan asked.

“Yes,” Alcander replied. “That is the only reason we didn’t head straight there.”

“Oh, how very thoughtful of you to be kind to the Witow.”

“Drustan!” Kiora yelled in exasperation, sinking onto her bedroll. “Will you please stop baiting him?” Gripping her head, she lowered her voice. “I am trying to ignore the fact that they are torturing Emane as we speak. Can you two please, please, please stop making it worse!”

The silence forced Kiora to look up. Alcander and Drustan stared at each other across the tent, eyes narrowed, words waiting on each of their lips.

“Fine,” she snapped. “If that is too much to ask, can you at least take it down a notch?”

“Done,” Drustan said, flopping back down.

“As you wish,” Alcander said.

* * *

NIALL WAS AN ENORMOUS specimen, although not intimidating. He wore nothing but a pair of pants—frayed at the bottom and nearly see-through at his giant knees. His hair was long and tangled, hanging down his back between two large wings. The other winged people Kiora had met kept their wings pristine white. Niall’s were grey, dingy, and rumpled. She wondered if he could still fly. He sat on the sand, gazing out at the water with a forlorn look on his face.

“Niall?” Alcander called as the trio came upon him.

“Go away,” came Niall’s gruff voice.

“It must be your charm, Alcander,” Drustan muttered under his breath. “Works on everyone.”

Kiora put up her hand, stopping both of them in their tracks, and gave them a look that clearly said: Stay here. Drustan smirked. Alcander raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms. Satisfied they had received the message, she walked along the beach and sat next to Niall. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she pulled them up to her chin.

“My name is Kiora.”

“I don’t talk to anyone,” Niall said, his eyes fixed on the lapping waves.

She chewed on her lip for moment. “All right.” Resting her head on her knees, she stared out at the waves with him. After a few minutes she could see him glancing sideways at her, but he made no other move.

Finally Niall sighed deeply, his wings fluttering up a bit before dropping back into the sand. “They said you wanted to talk about the Manor.”

She smiled softly. “My friend is there, and we have to get him out. They say you are the only one who has ever gotten out alive.”

He laughed. “No they don’t. They say I am crazy.”

“Lomay doesn’t think you’re crazy. He sent us here to talk to you.”

That got his attention. He sat a little straighter, looking at her curiously. “Lomay?”

“Yes, he tried to ask the Wings about the Manor, but they couldn’t see anything. After that, he sent us here to get the answers we need from you.”

Niall’s chest swelled, looking plumb thrilled. He sat straight up until he towered over Kiora wiping some stray hairs out of his face. “What do you want to know?”

She motioned behind her to Drustan and Alcander, indicating they should come. “We need to know everything,” she said as the others settled, uncharacteristically silent, into the sand beside her.

Niall looked hesitantly over at them. Kiora moved her head to the side, catching Niall’s gaze with her own. “It’s all right. They believe you too.”

He nodded. “I had heard rumors of the Manor.” His mouth twisted ruefully. “I thought they were crazy, the things they said. But then a group of us decided to stay there one night on our way between camps.” His eyes darkened as he turned back to the lake. “It was deserted and we put up the normal wards. We were getting ready to turn in for the night when it felt like the magic was draining out of me, out of all of us. It was like one minute I could do magic, and the next minute there was nothing.”

He looked down at his massive hands, as if recalling how helpless they had been. “I was with some Taveans and a few Omelians. I was the only winged one.” Dropping his hands he closed his eyes. “We sent out one of the Taveans to check the wards. He ran back in, telling us the wards were gone. We all thought for a moment that the rumors were true. That the Manor was alive, that it lived on magic. Eats it right out of whoever inhabits it. But that wasn’t what happened at all. It isn’t the Manor. The Manor is just a simple house.” He ran his hands over his matted hair before looking up. “It’s the Shadow.”

“The Shadow?” Alcander interrupted, sounding exasperated.

“You mean the Shadow that took the lights?” Kiora asked in an effort to smooth over Alcander’s disbelief.

Niall nodded solemnly. “It had to be. First there was nothing, and then suddenly it was there. Huge and billowing and—” Niall gulped, the Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing. “It devoured everything. It . . . it . . . poured over every surface, everything. The others ran. I flew. I flew as high as I could. As I looked down, I watched it. It—it just . . . engulfed them.” He wrapped his hands through the air, closing them on the scene only he could see. “And when it moved on, they were gone.” He turned over his empty hands, palm up.

“Why didn’t it come after you?” Kiora asked softly.

“It tried. By the time it had eaten the others,” Niall swallowed again, “I was already very high. I could see the Shadow turning, searching. As soon as it found me, it started to billow upwards, coming after me.”

“What happened?” she asked, leaning forward.

“My magic came back and I bubbled.”

“Just like that?” Drustan asked.

“Yes.” Niall nodded, his rat nest of hair moving with him. “One second I could do nothing, and the next my magic was back as if it had never left. As soon as I bubbled, the Shadow screamed.” Niall shuddered. “The Shadow was mad at losing me, mad that I survived.”

“Why do you think your magic came back?” she asked.

He looked at her curiously. “Nobody has ever asked me that.”

“I’m not like everybody else.”

“No, you don’t feel like everybody else.” He leaned in closer, examining her features, his head turning to the side as if trying to solve a puzzle. “Who are you?”

She didn’t know if Alcander planned to tell the others who she was, but she figured it was safe to tell Niall. Even if he blabbed, no one would listen to him anyway. Leaning very close to him, she whispered, “I am the Solus. My Protector, a Witow, is trapped in the manor right now.”

The man gasped like a child, covering his mouth with his hands. A single tear slid down his face, tracing a line through the dirt and grime.

“Please, help me,” she said. “Why do you think you were able to bubble suddenly?”

He looked at her with all seriousness as his hands dropped back into his lap. “I think I finally got out of range.”

She placed her hands over his. “Thank you.”

Pulling one hand out from underneath hers, Niall placed his hand on top. His giant hand easily covered both of hers. “No, thank you.” He patted her hand twice before standing and lumbering away, somehow looking less disheveled than when they had met a few minutes earlier.

“Well, his description matches the legends of the Shadow,” Drustan said, absently spinning his fake bracelet.

“Yes,” Alcander said darkly. “That is the problem. The Shadow hasn’t been seen in—” he shook his head, “hundreds and hundreds of years. And now he says he saw it and escaped from it, with a description that matches the legends exactly.”

“Except for the escaping part,” Drustan amended.

“It’s hard to tell a story when you’re dead, isn’t it?” Alcander said pragmatically. “He would have to change that part, wouldn’t he?”

“You said yourself if had something to do with the Shadow,” Kiora argued.

“Something to do with the Shadow, not the Shadow.”

“I believe him.” Drustan smiled, nodding in the direction Niall had gone. “Look at him, does he look like someone who made up the story? He is devastated everyone thinks he’s crazy. Besides, Lomay said it would take something very powerful to prevent him from seeing what he needed. The Shadow also prevented the Wings from showing where it hid the lights. That is a strange coincidence, don’t you think?”

“No,” Alcander said, stubbornly setting his jaw. “I don’t believe it.”

“Why are you so determined not to believe?” Kiora asked.

Alcander didn’t answer. He scowled at the sand like it had personally offended him.

“Because,” Drustan began slowly, “he doesn’t want to believe we are going up against the Shadow. That would be—”

“Suicide!” Alcander snapped. “It would be suicide!”

Kiora looked down, tracing shapes with her finger through the sand. “But that doesn’t make it a lie,” she said. “If we know what we’re up against, maybe we can move fast and get Emane out before the Shadow appears.” She looked up from her drawings hopefully.

Alcander snorted. “With a thread like yours, the Shadow will be there before we reach the front door.”

“So teach me,” she pleaded, leaning towards Alcander. “Teach me how to mask my thread. Teach me what I need to know so we can go get Emane.”

Alcander looked at her with steely eyes. “That’s not the only thing you need to learn. We will need to stay here for a few days and learn more battle techniques as well. You are not ready.”

She bit her tongue, clenching her fists at her side.

“Kiora, if you believe this story, you have to give me some time.”

The two stared at each other, neither one wanting to relent. Kiora finally broke his gaze. “One day,” she said.

Alcander’s jaw clenched. “We will see.”

She looked out to the lake. “And then we go?” she demanded, turning

back to him. “Once you’ve had your time?”

His eyes narrowed, fixing on hers. “Are you asking me if I am willing to die for this Witow of yours?”

She stared silently back. “I am.”

Alcander stood up, seizing a stick next to him and angrily hurling it out

to sea. He stomped off, his blond hair blowing behind him. “Meet me in the middle of the village in an hour,” he yelled over his shoulder. “And Drustan, stay in the tent if you value your life.”

Kiora relaxed back into the sand.

Drustan rolled onto his back. “If you value your life,” he mimicked. “I should eat him,” he said thoughtfully. “using something with really large teeth.”

“Maybe he really is looking out for you,” she pointed out. “You remember what Lomay said about what they do to Shifters not on their side.”

“That’s why I wear this,” he said, tapping the bracelet. “Regardless, Alcander has an enormous attitude.”

“You all do, I don’t know what I will do when all three of you are back together again.” She closed her eyes. If, she thought. If I get them all together again.

* * *

THE CENTER OF CAMP turned out to be a large training area. Three separate training circles were drawn in white across the ground, each breaking down into smaller circles. Alcander stood on the edge of one, his arms crossed.

Kiora walked up to him. “What do you want to do?”

He acted like he hadn’t heard her. “After we get Emane,” Alcander paused, as if he very much doubted the likelihood of that scenario, “then what?”

“What?”

He whirled to face her. “Then what? What is your plan?”

She took a step back. “I, we . . .” Her eyes dropped. What was her plan? She had never had a plan, and she wasn’t any closer to having one now. “We need to get the lights back.”

“Don’t you think others have tried? We can’t just walk around hoping they drop out of the sky.”

“I know that! What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to figure out what it is we are supposed to do so I can train you,” he snapped, taking another step towards her.

She wanted to yell at him, to tell him she was doing the best she could, because she had no idea what she was doing. She was following instinct and stories and visions. But instead she hesitantly placed her hand gently on his arm. “Teach me how to mask my thread.”

His blue eyes locked on her hand, and his bristling posture softened for a moment before he abruptly he moved out from underneath her touch. “We will work on masking your thread tonight. For now, outer circle.”

She marched to the other side of the outer circle, unable to contain her excitement. She was getting closer. Hopefully they would have Emane back tomorrow.

“All right,” Alcander barked. “We’ll work on combining battle techniques with the natural abilities you posses. Since you have a larger range than I do, it should make it a little more fair.”

“You mean the elements?”

“Yes. Anything you can do to even the playing field is fair game. And with your lack of experience, you will need the playing field leveled.”

She wasn’t sure why, but that statement made her really angry. Maybe it was the comment, or maybe it was the buildup of power lingering under her skin that was like an itch she needed to scratch. Making as little movement as possible, Kiora pulled a gust of wind out of the air, put a spin on it, and slung it straight at Alcander’s feet. He realized a second before it hit what she was doing, but it wasn’t enough time to get out of the way. His feet swung out from underneath him. He landed flat on his back. Kiora started to laugh, but stopped when she saw his hands moving and the wind rushing back at her.

Throwing out her hands, she tried to redirect it. Luckily, she managed to take the edge off, but it still nearly blew her over. Planting her feet, she opened her magic up and the wind finally obeyed her command, moving back the way it had come. Unfortunately, Alcander was gone. His thread betrayed his presence and she swung around.

“You can command wind?” she asked. “I didn’t know—”

He threw two green bolts of magic one after the other. One hit her in the arm, spinning her around. The other she managed to deflect with a single hand shield.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” he said.

“Wind and water,” she said, remembering how he had parted the water at the falls. “Anything else?”

“Not all gifts are elemental. You should know this by now.” He leapt in the air in his usual gravity defying way, disappearing a few feet off the ground.

“Blast!” she swore, picking a direction and running. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong way—he appeared right in front of her.

“Forgot my little trick?”

“No. You never taught me that one.”

“Hmmm.” He smiled. “I will have to do that.” Instead he spread his hands wide, small threads appearing between his fingers. He threw them over her like ropes, quickly binding her in magical cords.

“Ow!” she yelled as he pulled them tighter.

“Get out,” he commanded.

“How?” she grunted, twisting and turning under the restraints.

“Mother of Creators! Do you think every enemy will whisper in your ear how to escape?” To make his point, he jerked her against him. Putting his head over her shoulder, his lips nearly brushed her ear as he whispered, “You have to think. That is part of training.” A shiver ran through her from her head to her toes. He pulled even tighter. “How will you get out?”

She stomped on his foot. He chuckled quietly in her ear. Leaning even closer, his lips brushed against her neck and ear, sending pleasant pops of magic through her. “Is that really the best you can do?”

A little ball of energy burned and rolled in her stomach. It might have been from his whispers, but she seized it, rolling it into a different type of sphere. With a grunt she launched it outwards, white light flashing, neatly snapping every cord and sending Alcander stumbling backwards. She spun around to face him. He grinned from underneath his waterfall of hair.

“That’s better,” he said. “Now ring two.”

She stepped inside the next ring, feeling less and less like her old self. Anytime the magic flowed like this she felt different, stronger, more powerful. And very unlike the little girl who had discovered her magic in Meros.

They circled each other, hands splayed at their hips, waiting for any movement. Alcander started it with a volley of green magic from his left hand and a magical rope from his right that tangled around her ankle. Throwing up a full body shield to deal with the volley, she punched through the rope with her magic. Her own imagination stirred. Concentrating on the image of a net, she flung out her hands. Although not as pretty as she had wanted, the general idea appeared. A woven configuration of magical energy flew out from her. He yelled in surprise. He flipped wind towards the net, managing to push it slightly off course as he dove out of the way.

Dropping the net to the ground, she bubbled and ran straight for him. She had an idea, but she needed to be close or she might lose control of it. He scrambled to his feet and sent out a locating sphere. It didn’t matter—she was already where she wanted to be. Crouching down, she placed her hand on the ground just as his sphere popped her bubble. She didn’t want an earthquake, so she released just a tiny bit of magic. Responding, the ground rolled towards Alcander like a tidal wave, picking him up and pulling him along with it. He fired off some wild shots as he stumbled on the rolling earth. The ground rumbled beneath her. Nervous she would start an earthquake despite her caution, she moved her hand from the earth and stopped the motion.

The circle they had been using was now bent and wavy. Ahead of her, a large berm where the tidal wave of dirt had frozen blocked her view of Alcander. She ran forward, putting up a bubble and flattening her back against the large bump in the earth. Suddenly Alcander came flying over the top, lacking only wings. With a twinge of regret for her dirty tactics, she dropped the bubble, firing off two rapid shots. Both hit, one on his arm and the other in his chest, slamming him to the ground.

“That’s it!” he yelled, pushing himself up. He threw a wall of green magic, as wide as it was tall. There was nowhere to go. A huge shield flew out from her in response, the likes of which she had never seen. It resonated with a boom as it erupted from her fingers. The green wall rippled neatly around it. Alcander groaned before flopping back to the ground.

Wiping her hands on her pants, Kiora cleared her throat. “So did I need the playing field leveled?”

“Not always,” he grumped.

She started laughing and couldn’t stop. It felt almost as good as her magical release. Shaking his head, Alcander pulled himself to his feet. He offered his hand, his mouth pulled up on one side.

Almost wheezing at this point, she reached out to take his hand. As soon as her fingers wrapped around his, magic moved between them in a way she had never felt before, flowing and thrumming. She jerked her hand back with a start. The smile fled as he looked down at her. His gaze was fierce, but she could not discern the emotion behind it.