Fae (14 page)

A man I recognized all too
well—and dreaded ever seeing again—stood a dozen feet away with his
back to us. The room hushed as he straightened and
turned.

Every weapon came up to
point straight at our hearts. A lot of good it would do them. I
looked sideways at Cailen and realized he hadn't grabbed his own
cloak. My muscles tensed as my stomach dropped. Every person in
this room would die before they touched Cailen.

To my surprise, Lastrini smiled. "It's
time."

"So now you'll deign to
treat us like human beings?" The energy around Cailen prickled. I
pulled up the points of light and took a step back as I saw the
solid wall forming directly in front of Cailen. The disdain rolling
off him was palpable. My gaze flitted to Lastrini and I wondered if
he grasped the danger he was in.

The Commander's smile widened.
"Circumstances have changed. You want to kill Mamood, don't you?
What difference does anything else make now?"

I tensed, not buying a
word of it. He was up to something. I just didn't know
what.

"That's a screwed up
excuse and you know it. You've threatened to kill us and
now
you want to work
with us." The box of seeds was in Cailen's hand in an instant.
"Screw the Mamood. We've got bigger problems."

I froze at the sight of
the box. I'd thought we'd decided against this. Something must have
changed while Cailen was gone. He never would have changed his mind
like that if something major hadn't happened.

Lastrini stepped forward,
curiosity written all over the lines of his face. "What is
that?"

Cailen chuckled and shook his head.
"Now you listen! They're seeds. Auri seeds. And I found them in a
merchant's pavilion above."

"Seeds." The disappointment in
Lastrini's voice was hard to miss.

"Auri seeds,” he repeated.
“And these ones are weapons."

Lastrini's eyebrows peaked, his
interest returned.

Every person not busy at the control
panels and holographs moved forward, their eyes on the box in
Cailen's hand.

"Explain," Lastrini said.

Cailen opened the box and
there was a collective gasp as everyone saw for the first time the
wonders of Auri technology. The three seeds nestled on a bed of
black velvet were gorgeous and elegant. The green swirls of light
along the skin of the seeds glowed bright. "Aurora Class Warship
Seeds," he said. "I planted a similar seed in the ground of Auru
and fed it with my own blood a little over a year ago. That ship is
now floating above your planet on the dark side of your
moon."

"Hmmm." Lastrini's head tilted as he
stepped closer, entranced.

"Let me put it to you this
way, Lastrini. If I hadn't been the one to find this box in a
market anyone can frequent, someone—maybe one of your many
enemies—could have three fully-armored battleships growing and
ready for battle in a year with defensive and offensive technology
you can't even begin to imagine."

"How is it even possible?"
A soldier with wide eyes and soft, boyish features in the front
said. "I mean, how do you
grow
a ship?"

Cailen's attention moved
to the boy. He studied him for an immeasurable moment before
answering, as if weighing his worth with a mere glance. "Auri grow
everything with seeds. Our homes, cities, ships, anything.
Everything has a blueprint, nature included. It was simply a matter
of taking what nature had already given and adding to it what we
wanted. We know what we want the end result to be, so we manipulate
the genetic code of a plant to grow a building, a wall...a warship.
Of course, whatever we grow takes on some of the properties of the
original plant."

"And it takes a year to
grow something like..." Lastrini nodded toward the box of seeds
"...a warship?

Cailen nodded.

Pride in my people welled
up inside me.

"That's pretty
fast."

"If we can manipulate an
organic life form to join properties with inorganic materials and
make it grow, accelerating its rate of growth is the easy
part."

Silence. The air grew
thick with the weight of what Cailen had revealed. There was more
going on than any of us had guessed. I could almost hear their
thoughts. If these seeds were out there, what else was there? And
how had anyone gotten these in the first place?

With a hint of smugness in his voice,
Cailen said, "So tell me about the alarms."

"The battle starts today,"
Lastrini said.

"The Mosandarians have
given up on their thunderstorm?"

The Commander's always
serious face hit a new level of grave. In a matter of seconds, he'd
aged at least twenty years. "They're getting their thunderstorm."
He eyes went flat. "You should see it for yourself." He turned
toward a golden statue of an ancient Ladeshian warrior and extended
his arm, gesturing us to follow in its direction.

Cailen went to the statue
and I followed close behind with Lastrini at my side. It was then I
noticed not every soldier had gathered around to look at the box of
seeds. Six soldiers with humming rifles at the ready formed two
walls of protection around the foreboding statue.

As we drew closer, the
soldier standing nearest the statue’s extended right arm placed his
hand on its shoulder. The statue turned its back on us and I saw
what the soldiers were guarding: the door to the outside. A hole
had opened far above us and the floor underneath our feet glowed
blue. Cailen, Lastrini, and I rose above the Control Room inch by
inch in the weightless blue light. The sound of the humming weapons
faded away.

Seconds later, we found
ourselves in the middle of tightly formed ranks of hundreds of
thousands of Mosandarian soldiers in their shining metal gear,
their eyes raised toward the sky. I followed their gaze and gasped.
Right above us, a cloud as black as charcoal was forming in the
twilight sky. Literally forming in seconds, not rolling in from the
horizon. I'd only been out in the real world for a little over two
months, but even I knew this wasn't natural.

The black cloud grew until
it extended across the entire expanse of the sky, blotting out what
remained of the sun. The moisture in the air was heavy, stifling.
My dress and cloak were soaked through in seconds and clinging to
my skin, and it hadn't even started raining yet. I called up the
green points of light and a chill went down my spine. The air
around me was thick with the green molecules and spreading
rapidly.

"Shit," Cailen
said.

I nodded in total
agreement of the sentiment.

Lastrini grunted in
response.

The first crack of thunder
peeled through the sky. The ground shook and the air filled with
cheers around us and screams in the distance.

Cailen turned to me and
took me by the shoulders. "We need to get out of here."

"This is what we've been
waiting for. We can't just leave now."

"You don't understand." He
looked to the sky and his eyes widened in terror. "This isn't
natural."

"I know."

Understanding passed over
his features. "What do you see?"

"It's green everywhere.
The air is swollen with them."

His lips formed a tight,
white line across his face. His wings burst out of his
back.

I ripped myself away from
his grasp before he could transport. Shock and dismay ripped
through him to me. "What are you doing? We can't leave yet," I
said. "Not when we have to warn them."

Another thundercloud
cracked directly over our heads. The Mosandarian's answering
response vibrated the very air as hundreds of thousands of drums
beat through the night. My eardrums swelled with the
pressure.

Just then we started
descending again and within moments we were back in the Control
Room. The drums and thunder had become nothing more than muted
thumps against the steel walls. The Control Room buzzed with
excited energy.

"What's happened?"
Lastrini marched over to the nearest lighted panel of glass with
its projected holograph and looked over the technician's
shoulder.

"It's a miracle, sir," the
technician said. "There are thousands of them."

The air behind me hummed,
but I was too busy wondering what the technician meant to give it
too much attention.

"It's not a miracle,"
someone with a watery voice said behind me. "It's your
annihilation."

Part III

Manoo delighted at the
word: annihilation. And the plan he
’d so
carefully devised could now be brought to fruition.

Though the universe had hoped for a
savior, he would give them their Destructor.

Chapter One

Fae’ri

Cailen brushed past me and
patted the Watergatherer on the shoulder. I recognized the man with
his long, silver hair. Olorun. One of the Auri
who
’d accompanied Cailen on the ship
that’d taken me from Talia to Soltak.

"There's a Marid here,"
Cailen said.

Olorun nodded. "That would
make sense. The Fae'ri ships came out of hyperspace seconds before
a storm cloud formed planetwide."

"Wait, wait, wait." I
shook my head to make all the words make sense. It didn't work.
"What are you talking about?"

As soon as Olorun's
crystal blue eyes fell on me, he froze in horror before dropping to
one knee. "Your majesty, forgive me for transporting in your
presence. I only knew Lord Cailen was here. I did not know you were
with him. My life is forfeit. Command my death as you
wish."

Your majesty? Lord
Cailen?
My head pounded behind my
eyeballs. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"Olorun, get up," Cailen
said. "She's not used to these formalities. And I'm sure she has no
intention of having you executed."

"No, I'm not. So let's
just forget about all that for now." It was way too much to take in
at once. Right then, I chose to focus on one thing at a time. "The
Marid. Explain."

"Do you remember what I
told you about the Marid?” Cailen said. “That they're
Watergatherers from the House of Djinn? A warrior class bred for
planetary control?"

It hit me then; the
drought. The lakes drying up. It all made sense now. My heart
dropped into my stomach. This Marid had been here for weeks. It
could be anyone. And we were totally at his or her control. One
person had put an entire war on hold.

"So you're saying all
those red dots around our planet,” Lastrini’s harsh voice ripped me
out of my confused stupor, “the ones coming up on our sensors,
aren't yours?" I stared in horror at the wall beside him. The
information on it couldn't be right. The Mosandarians had stopped
their EMP, that much was clear. And the data the Soltakians were
picking up was something out of a nightmare. If each red dot
signified one ship, we were in a lot of trouble because I was
staring at what looked like a thick wall of red.

Olorun shook his head.
"No, they're not."

"Those red dots aren't
your biggest concern, Lastrini." Cailen crossed his arms in front
of his chest. "The thousands of Fae’ri in each of those dots are."
He paused to let the numbers sink in. The mood in the room darkened
in an instant. Several soldiers mumbled and a few technicians
started crying. And then Cailen said something that made all of us
shiver: "Thousands of Fae’ri who can transport."

A heavy hush fell upon the
room. The tension prickled. Dozens of pairs of eyes swept from one
corner to the other as if their owners expected to be overrun any
moment. Each soldier pressed his rifle tight against his shoulder,
waiting.

Lastrini stormed up to me,
his arm drawn back and his eyes screaming rage, and punched me in
the face.

I fell to the floor and
covered my nose. Blood poured into my mouth as tears streamed down
my cheeks. I screamed in pain. A high, keening screech ripped
through the air and Lastrini was gone.

Hands grabbed my forearms
and my insides jumped as I felt the lift and weightlessness of
transport. The pain in my face melted away. When I opened my eyes,
instead of seeing where we'd transported, I saw only darkness like
smoke descend on me.

***

Galen and the
Watergatherer with him melt away and I'm left alone in the dark
forest. I lean back on my heals and plop onto my butt. I don't even
care the ground is wet and soaking through my clothes. My skin is
already shivering. What difference does it make if it shivers some
more?

I've heard stories of the
Fae'ri. Evil, despicable people who don't even care if they hurt
someone. Or kill them. And I'm sure beyond all doubt I've just seen
one with my own two eyes. What I don't know is why Galen had been
talking with him. But he'd been doing more than talking, hadn't he?
They'd been planning something together.

But Galen is Daddy's best
friend. They grew up together. Daddy even made him Lord Admiral of
the entire armada. Galen would never do what I'd just seen him
doing. I must have misunderstood.