Liberator (14 page)

Koren gestured toward her father. “We need stardrop material. We have a possible cure that requires it.”

Orson displayed the crucible in his palm. “I think a full container would provide enough to heal at least fifty. If it works, we could come back for more.”

“You need genetic material from an immune human,” Cassabrie said. “Jason isn’t naturally immune, and harvesting sufficient material from Elyssa would maim her.”

Koren withdrew from her pocket the velvet-lined box containing Cassabrie’s finger, but left it closed. Telling Cassabrie they were using her body parts in an experiment seemed … disturbing. After swallowing, she let out a quiet, “We have your finger.”

“I see.” Cassabrie opened her cloak and gazed at her hand. The gap in her fingers was evident. “How many can you cure with just one finger?”

“My guess of fifty was based on using what is left of your finger,” Orson said.

“Then your plan is inadequate.” Cassabrie guided Exodus closer and stopped again. “Collect what you can. Cure whom you may. But I must continue my journey as soon as possible.”

“Thank you.” Orson pushed the edge of the crucible into the membrane and began scooping radiant crystals. Several flew into the air and scattered in the breeze, confirming Alaph’s fear. For him, being close would have been dangerous indeed.

As soon as the crystals reached the crucible’s brim, Orson backed away and set a lid over the top, locking it in place with two small latches. “I will wait until we arrive to prepare the mixture. I need a fire.”

“You need healing yourself,” Cassabrie said. “You must hurry.”

Orson laid a hand on his stomach. “Yes, I feel it, and we will hurry, but may I ask what you intend to do in the Southlands?”

Cassabrie gazed at the sky, her eyes following Alaph’s flight. “He knows, or at least I think he does. If he sees fit to tell you, I ask only that you don’t try to stop me.”

“Stop you?” Koren slid the finger box back into her pocket. “Why would we want to do that?”

“I will say no more.” Cassabrie guided Exodus over their heads and drifted southward, calling back, “Follow if you wish, or ride on Alaph. Either way, I am sure you will see me there. I think you will have no choice.”

As soon as she traveled well out of range, Alaph flew down. After Koren and her father mounted, she patted Alaph. “What is Cassabrie planning to do?”

Alaph curled his neck and drilled a stare into her with his shining blue eyes. “Ah! She would not tell you.”

Koren shook her head. “I’m worried about her.”

“As you should be.” Alaph turned his gaze toward the south. “Regarding her plans, I am not certain, so I will not speculate.”

He rose into the air, not quite as smoothly this time, and flew lower, no more than a hundred feet above the ground. Below, Cassabrie caught up with a group of running men. Without pausing, she lifted over their heads and continued on a straight path, her face set due south. Many of the men pointed and appeared to shout, but the wind cut off their voices.

Koren touched the finger box in her pocket, frustration rising like bile. With Cassabrie being so mysterious, how could a less experienced Starlighter like herself know what to do about the prophecy? One of the two had to be the sacrificial Starlighter, and so far it didn’t seem that Cassabrie was willing to reveal her choice. Based on
her past, though, it seemed more likely that she hoped to overwhelm the dragons with her influence, and that wouldn’t be sacrificial at all.

As she pondered her options, Koren caught sight of another dragon approaching the men from the north, flying low with a human passenger on his back. His muscular body and powerful wing strokes made his identity obvious.

“Alaph,” Koren called, “Magnar is down there.”

“I see him, and your friend Wallace is riding.”

Koren allowed herself a smile. At least Wallace hadn’t succumbed to the disease yet.

As Magnar landed gracefully in front of the running soldiers, Alaph continued. “Magnar plans to help the Darksphere soldiers, though even with his help their chance of success is minimal. They are a dedicated group, but they are far too few to hope to defeat Taushin’s allies. Courage alone will not be enough to defeat so many dragons.”

Koren looked back at the men as they surrounded Magnar, their whoops and hand clapping barely audible. How odd it all seemed. The dragon who had been the bane of every human on Starlight had become the hero of the Darksphere warriors. The beast who ate drugged children was now ready to fly into battle to rescue parents and siblings of those he consumed. If these soldiers were to be told of his cruelty, would they still accept him as a fellow warrior?

Alaph flew on and on. To the right, the river flowed fast and wild, bending tall grass and thin saplings in its swollen path. The snowmelt surge had traveled quickly, but its turbulent ride would end at the great waterfall.

After a few minutes, her father gave a shout and pointed ahead. Two humans sat on top of a rollicking raft, both steering with stripped branches. The water tossed them back and forth, but they managed to hang on.

“Jason and Elyssa,” Alaph shouted. “It seems that everyone is converging on a common destination.”

Koren shifted on Alaph’s back to get a better look. “Can’t we stop and help them?”

“I cannot carry another passenger. They have chosen this dangerous route, and, as you can see, they are quite capable of steering to the bank and getting out at any time.”

“But the waterfall.”

“They are aware of the waterfall. I know you long to ease everyone’s journey, but that is not possible. Remember, your father needs healing, and your fellow humans need it as well. Allow Jason and Elyssa to complete their journey and gain the strength and wisdom their trials will add to their character. You have enough to occupy your mind with your own destination. Do not imagine that I am unaware of the battle that must be waging within you.”

Koren cringed at his words. He was right, as usual. So far no sacrifice had come to mind other that giving herself to Taushin’s service.

She slid an arm away from her father’s waist and looked at her wrist. The earlier bout with the disease had reddened the manacle abrasions, and they were still evident. Turning herself over to Taushin would be like snapping the manacles back in place herself, whether on her wrists or on her soul.

A great weight pressed down, as if ten pails of river stones had been set on her back. The enormity of the
task crashed into her mind. If she gave in, everyone else would be free, maybe even cured, and on their way to a new world while she stayed at Taushin’s side, bound in chains, a Starlighter who moved and breathed but walked as a dead girl.

She lifted her tunic. The rash had receded upward, no longer visible on her stomach at all, but her chest still itched. The ointment, like the healing trees, had alleviated symptoms, but was it enough? Was Father’s medicine really a cure? Maybe they did have to swallow it after all. Only time would tell.

Koren laid her head on her father’s back and held him tightly. As before, he patted her hand, but this time he added words to the comforting gesture. Although the wind buffeted his voice, it seemed that the vibrations in his back penetrated her mind with every precious syllable. “Don’t worry, Little K. No matter what happens, the Creator will never forsake you, and neither will I. Suffering is merely a prologue, an opening act in the Creator’s tale. One way or another, whether we live or die, the story will have a happy ending.”

Breathing a deep sigh, Koren closed her eyes. Was Father right? Tales in Starlight never seemed to have happy endings. Without exception, everyone was born a slave and died a slave, and whips and chains threatened every moment in between. No one ever escaped the cycle. No one.

As tears crept past her eyelids, she pushed the morbid thoughts to the side. Starlight needed a liberator, and if no one but Koren the glib-tongued girl from the cattle camp could fill that role, then so be it. At least everyone else would have a happy ending.

J
ason thrust his branch into the river and pushed against the bed, trying to get leverage while balancing on his knees. “To the left! To the left!”

“I’m trying!” Elyssa shouted. “It’s too deep! I can’t get traction!”

Water flew everywhere, wave after wave sloshing from every side and splashing them in the face and body as they hurtled southward. The raft rocked like a wild bull trying to sling off a rider, and vines holding the saplings together stretched and snapped.

“Then we’ll have to swim for it.” He unhooked his scabbard and heaved it to shore. He then grabbed a vine and reeled it into a loop, bracing against the constant dips and rises. “We’ll tie the ends to our wrists. The first one to get to shore, pulls the other one. Got it?”

“Got it.” They helped each other fasten the vines to their wrists. “I hope it holds,” she shouted above the tumult.

Ahead, the waterfall roared, far louder than he remembered. It would swallow them in seconds.

Jason grabbed Elyssa’s wrist and forced her fingers around his tunic. “Lock on!”

“But I thought we were both going to swim.”

“Never mind! Just hold on!”

She gripped his tunic tightly. Water flew from her hair as the raft bounced. “Jump now?”

“Stand first, then jump. Whatever you do, don’t let go.”

The roar heightened. The precipice came into view, shrouded in mist.

“Now!” They rose to their feet and leaped, but the raft slid away. They traveled less than a foot before splashing into the rapids. Still holding the steering branch, Jason kicked toward the bank and plunged the branch into the riverbed a pace ahead. Pulling against it, he drove himself forward. Elyssa’s weight slowed his progress, but he battled on, jerking out the branch and resetting it again and again as he surged toward the bank. With each removal of the branch, the current swept them closer to the falls.

He dug the branch in once more and hung on, his head barely above the water. At this rate, they weren’t going to make it. Pulling the branch out once more would send them over the edge.

The current swept their bodies parallel with the bank until their feet pointed toward the falls. Now only five steps from the precipice and maybe ten from the bank, he just held on. There seemed to be no other choice.

Elyssa wrapped both arms around his waist and drew her lips close to his ear. “I’m letting go! You’d make it if I weren’t here dragging you back!”

“Don’t you dare!” Jason coughed and spat as he shouted. “If anyone’s going over, it’s going to be me!”

“I’m not asking permission. This isn’t suicide. I’m going to try to make it on my own.” She let her arms slide away but kept one fist tight on his tunic, her eyes sad and wide. “I love you, Jason Masters.”

She let go.

Jason slapped at her wrist but missed. Elyssa swam toward the bank with all her might, but the current inched her toward the falls. She wasn’t going to make it.

With a flying lunge, Jason hurtled his body downstream. He caught her around the waist with both arms and, digging his feet into the riverbed, swung her toward the bank.

A surge sent him flying over the precipice, but instead of falling, he dangled in midair, his arm stretching upward as he twisted in the breeze and the river beat against his body before cascading to the rocks hundreds of feet below.

Above, the vine led from his wrist to Elyssa’s two-fisted grip. With her feet planted on dry ground at the edge of the cliff and her body bending back, she pulled, grunting as she yelled. “Grab it! It’s slipping off your wrist!”

Jason reached up and clutched the vine with both hands. “Got it!” Wet and slippery, it felt thin and fragile, but the roar of tumbling water kept any sound of breakage from reaching his ears. The surge from the north kept pounding at his waist and legs and knocking him into a twisting sway.

Grunting and yelping, Elyssa staggered backwards until she stepped out of sight. The vine jerked upward in pulses, rubbing against the rocky ledge. With each pulse the woody fiber making contact with the rocks splintered and frayed, then pulled up and out of sight.

Finally, the ledge drew within reach. Jason grabbed a protruding rock with one hand, swung the hand with the tied wrist to the top, and pulled himself up high enough to see the meadow. The sudden slack sent Elyssa tumbling backwards. The vine flew from her hands, and she landed on her back.

She threw herself forward and scrambled for the vine, but Jason hoisted his body onto the ledge before she could reach it.

Dripping from every extremity, he shuffled toward her on wobbly legs. She lay on her stomach, propped on her elbows, holding the vine loosely in her hands. With her head down, water formed in a pool under her nose.

Jason sat heavily in front of her. “Are you all right?” He lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit into the vine. It was so tight his hand was turning purple.

“I’m okay.” Her tone was dismal, and her eyes stayed focused on the ground. “You?”

He chewed through the vine and let it drop. As he rubbed his wrist, he bent low, trying to see her expression. “I’m okay, thanks to you.”

“You saved me first.”

She braced her hands on the ground and pushed up. Jason leaped to his feet and helped her the rest of the way. He pinched the vine on her wrist. “Let me help you with that.”

“I’ll get it.” She jerked away and turned her back. “You’d better find your sword.”

Jason glanced upstream. The sword and scabbard lay somewhere on the bank, but they could wait. “What’s wrong? Something I did?”

She shook her head but said nothing.

“Hey!” He grasped her arm and gently turned her around. Tears trickled down her cheeks, mixing with the water streaming from her hair. “Something
is
wrong. What is it?”

“It’s my problem, not yours.” Sniffing, she nodded toward the north. “Want me to help you find your sword?”

“Only after you tell me what’s got you crying. You’re too strong to break down for no reason.”

She looked him in the eye, her facial muscles drawing taut. “Do you really believe that?”

“Of course.” He nodded at the vine, now loose around her wrist. “Look at what you just did. You lugged a guy fifty pounds heavier than you. Dead weight. You were amazing.”

“Then why didn’t you believe in me before?”

He mopped water from his forehead with a wet sleeve. “What do you mean?”

“You said we would both swim, and the first one to the bank would pull the other one. But then you changed your mind and told me to hold on to you.”

As he looked into her sad eyes, the reality of her words sank in. When the crisis moment came to pass, he decided to trust in himself, not her.

“I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else,” she continued, sniffing again. “I mean, you’re a man. It’s natural
for you to want to protect me. Right? So I should just let you be a man and stop skipping steps, like letting go of you when you’re trying to save me. In fact, I didn’t trust you enough to get us to the bank, so we’re really both to blame in a way.”

Jason thought about her words. She was right. They both had a lapse in their trust in each other. “I can’t argue with that. I don’t know what to say.”

Elyssa gazed into his eyes. As if entering a dark room, her pupils dilated, searching, probing. After nearly a minute, she whispered, “I guess it just takes time.”

“You mean complete trust?”

“Mm-hmm.” She looked to the north. “We left the soldiers pretty far behind.”

“No use waiting for them. Maybe they’ll catch up by the time we get to the wall.”

She turned around, her eyes again probing, this time the land to the south. “It’s about an hour away, right?”

“I think so. Do you sense any obstacles?”

She shook her head. “Let’s find your sword and get going.”

After finding the sword and belt upstream, Jason and Elyssa turned to the south and walked side by side near the chasm. Both stayed silent as the waterfall’s roar dominated the soundscape.

They stepped to the edge and looked into the gorge. White water gushed from the north, flew out over the expanse, and tumbled in a free fall until it splashed over gray stones far below, some flat and some with protruding points. In response, spray flew upward in billowing towers before raining back to the stones.

The raft had broken into pieces, some lodged between stones and some floating westward in a new river that carried water to places unknown. Neither dragon nor human had mentioned any regions that lay outside the Northlands and the Southlands. It seemed that their focus stayed only on their territories, though the world of Starlight had to encompass much more than such a narrow view.

Elyssa turned and wrapped her arms around Jason. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome.” He returned the embrace. There was no need for an explanation. “And thank
you
for another chance.”

Elyssa took his hand and faced south. “Shall we?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Then lead the way, warrior.”

The two marched ahead hand in hand, leaving the roar of the waterfall behind.

Constance stood in front of one of the female white dragons, trying desperately to show no pain. Although her burns felt as if the flames were still raging across her skin, staying calm was the only way to prove to these beasts that she could speak on behalf of her fellow slaves. “I am telling the truth, Beth,” she said through her scorched lips. “A cure to the disease is coming. There is no need to, as you say, eliminate the pestilence. We have a solution, and it is only a matter of time until it arrives.”

Beth’s head swayed in an arc from side to side, as if drawing a smile in the air. “I wish to take no chances. The
soldiers from Darksphere could arrive at any time, and you can provide no guarantees. We will not allow dying humans to linger and suffer needlessly. Begin sorting through the sick. Have the strongest among you bring the weakest three to us.”

With a sigh, Constance scanned the area. The Zodiac’s portico jutted into the street from the main building, providing an elevated porch with a roof over top. From each side, stairs led to the porch, which overlooked the cobblestone thoroughfare. Not long ago, Koren stood at the front edge of the portico and addressed a gathering of slaves. So much had changed. Now the slaves gathered again, but not to listen. They came to die.

Dozens of slaves lay on the street or stairs, while others milled about, passing around water and bread. Some of the children slept, exhausted from fighting the illness. One man sat against one of the portico’s support columns, his head lolling to the side. With every finger missing from one hand and with no ears, he might be dead already.

“I will do as you commanded,” Constance said, “but deciding which three are the weakest will take some time.”

“Then choose any three and be quick about it, or I will choose them myself.”

A whisper reached Constance’s ear. “I think she’s an ice dragon.”

Constance forced herself to keep her focus straight ahead. No matter how many times Deference spoke up, it always gave her a start. Being only spirit, Deference had stayed as motionless as possible in order to remain invisible,
though she sometimes dashed to wherever she was needed when it seemed that no dragons were looking.

“So she’s an ice dragon,” Constance mumbled under her breath. “Why are you telling me that?”

“They’ll probably breathe ice to kill the people. Tell Beth that ice might not destroy the disease. It requires intense heat.”

“Do you know this to be true?”

“No, but it’s a good guess. You have only a few symptoms, so maybe the heat remaining from your intense burns is keeping it from taking hold. Anyway, it’s worth a try. At least it might buy us some time.”

Constance turned toward Beth. “I have heard about your kind. Do you intend to freeze the sickest ones?”

“We intend to freeze everyone. There will be no exceptions. With no cure and no hope for recovery, everyone who has even the slightest symptoms will be destroyed.”

“Then why should I cooperate? You’ll just kill me.”

“You will cooperate, because you believe doing so will give you another hour to live.” Beth breathed a stream of ice at Constance’s feet, chilling her toes. “I know your kind. You will obey.”

With two quick kicks, Constance shook off the ice. “Freezing them will kill their bodies, but it might not destroy the disease. It is sensitive to heat, not cold.”

Beth’s neck whipped around, bringing her head directly in front of Constance. “Do you know this to be true?”

Constance suppressed a gulp. Spreading out her arms, she showed the burns on her skin. “I have only minor symptoms, so I assume—”

“Assumptions are unopened windows that foolish birds fly into, and their broken bodies are evidence gathered too late.”

“Be that as it may, I think —”

“It matters not what you think.” As Beth looked at the sky, her growl suddenly shifted to a purr. “I see that we have unexpected company.”

In the southern sky, two dragons flew toward them, one black and the other the more customary reddish brown.

“Taushin and Mallerin,” Deference whispered in Constance’s ear.

Beth let out a series of squeaks and grunts that sounded something like normal dragon language, but the words were unfamiliar. The other two white dragons skittered toward them, flapping their wings to propel their bodies.

“What is your observation, Gamal?” Beth asked.

The larger of the two squinted at the sky. “Taushin seeks an audience,” he said in a deep voice. “The dragon flying with him is his guide, his seeing eyes — a female, I believe.”

“Dalath?” Beth focused on the smaller of the two. “Shall we grant this audience?”

“By all means. There are only two of them, and one is blind.”

Constance glanced from Gamal to Dalath, male and female. It seemed that the only differences between the sexes were size and voice. Every other detail was identical.

“Gamal,” Beth said, “fly to meet them and explain that any word or action that violates the laws of Starlight will
result in death. Since the female acts as his eyes, make sure she focuses on me just before they land. I want to see his reaction when he first notices me.”