Schism: The Battle for Darracia (Book 1) (10 page)

There were screams, and Zayden reached for his Fireblade.

The Quyroo’s mate wailed and pulled at her red braids. “This is how you give us Darracian hospitality?” she cried bitterly.

Reminda moved directly in front of Staf, her face filled with cold rage.
“Where is my husband, the king?”

“
I am here.” Two guards pushed Drakko into the room, his hands tied behind his back with thick hemp. He was bleeding over his dark brow, and a tic pulsed under his eye. He scanned the room and located his older son just off to the side in an anteroom with his niece. He bore into his son’s gaze with a wealth of meaning, hoping Zayden would understand what he wanted him to do. He needed him not to react but to keep a clear head. Staring at him hard, he moved his eyes to the back exit; his meaning couldn’t have been plainer.

Zayden
steamed.
He wants me to run?
he thought with rage, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his intent written in his hostile stance.

Drakko then looked at
Hilde, his niece, and held his breath for a second, wondering which side had her loyalty.
Good girl
, he thought, watching her turn to whisper to his son, barely hiding his satisfaction as they slipped out the back door. Their exit was missed, as everyone in the Ambros room was riveted to the confrontation between Reminda and Staf.

“
What is the meaning of this?” Reminda demanded.

“
We will not stand for the peace accords!” Grabbing her by her thin arm, Staf pushed her out of the way. “We will not change our ways. Drakko’s reign is over.”

“
Don’t touch my wife!” the king sneered.

Staf laughed
. “Why, brother? What will you do about it? It’s time to put this Planta in her place.” Ruthlessly he tossed Reminda to the center of the room, where she fell hard onto the floor. Staf walked toward her, putting his booted foot on her hip, his eyes never leaving his brother’s furious face. He grinned as the king stiffened. “What’s the matter, brother? You are not laughing at me. Do you not find me amusing now?”

“
I will kill you,” Drakko shouted.

“
I sincerely doubt that, Your Majesty,” Staf said with a snicker.

“
Long live the house of Nuen,” Countess Beatha said in a spidery whisper as she entered the room and circled her husband.

“
Pacuto has killed V’sair. He is the new crown prince. Your days of lording over me and mine are over.” She walked closer to Reminda, her eyes venomous black pits of hatred. “Kill them, Your Highness! Kill them now!” she commanded her husband.

Chapter 15
 

“
Help me with his feet!” Bobbien demanded of her granddaughter. “Tulani,” she urged, “he is bleeding to death!”

The fires lit
Bobbien’s face, and Tulani stared back in shock. Her grandmother had appeared out of nowhere, lobbing the percussive zandy grenades. They were small and homemade but packed a powerful punch.

“
Tulani!” she shouted again, as she bent down to examine the prone prince.

Pacuto’s Fireblade
pinned his shoulder, and he bled from a dozen wounds. Reaching into a pouch tied to her waist, Bobbien sorted through herbs and twine to subdue some of the bleeding.

Tulani
knelt, her head bowed. “Tell me what to do.”

Bobbien motioned
to Mori, whose body hung upside down near the burning hut. “Untie him, and throw him into the house. Let the fire do its work. He is beyond help. Drag your mother in there too.” The older woman tied a cloth around V’sair’s shoulder as tears dripped down her wrinkled cheeks. “I don’t want animals to get her. Let the house be their pyre.”

Tulani
bent low and caressed her mother’s torn flesh. Closing the eyes, she let her fingers linger on her wide cheek bones. She whispered the pray of her people hoping her mother’s soul had fled before she was tormented by these villians. Holding back her grief, she looked to the stars, wondering the reason for this destruction. Her mother’s body made a slight imprint as she pulled her towards the burning hut. The same light footprint she made in Tulani’s life.

Using
a small knife she cut her father down, and pulled him by his lame foot into the burning hut that would become his grave. Her heart beat wildly in her chest with sorrow for losing parents that she never had a chance to really know.

B
y the time she returned, Bobbien had withdrawn the Fireblade from V’sair’s shoulder. “He lives,” she told her granddaughter, “but just barely. We must get him to safety.” She slid the two Fireblades into the back of her loincloth.

“
I will take him home,” Tulani said.

“
Did not you hear Pacuto? The prince no longer has a home. We must hide him. Come. We will talk later,” she told her urgently.

They
lifted V’sair’s nearly lifeless body and placed his arms over their shoulders to carry him together. He groaned then fell silent, but Tulani was reassured by his ragged breathing. His head hung listlessly forward, his eyes crinkled with pain.

“
Where, Greanam? Where will we go?”

Bobbien grabbed her staff and point
ed it to the rumbling giant, Aqin. “Into the belly of the beast.”

***

It felt as though they had traveled through the Desa for days. Living in the clouds had made Tulani vulnerable. Her arms ached from helping to carry V’sair, and she was clumsy with the tree vines. Her grandmother finally lost patience with her and hefted the unconscious prince over her thick shoulders so they could make better time swinging from tree to tree. Tulani admired the old woman’s stamina. Wiping sweat from her brow, she followed breathlessly, the calls of the night birds jogging memories of her youth.

It was a clear night
, and the four moons lit their path. Twin explosions lit the sky at the two entrances of the castle. Sirens wailed, and she watched the Petrion guards head quickly to the fortress, their flying beasts cut down by a giant cruiser that had moved to the front of the castle. Tulani watched the brave warriors being picked off like harmless gresh, the spraying torpedoes creating a rainstorm of blood and guts that pounded the Desa floor. She turned to Bobbien, fear written across her face.

“
Hurry we must, child!”

Every so often
Tulani caught Bobbien’s worried expression, but she was too busy trying to keep up to speak to her. As she reached for an elusive vine, her fingers slick with sweat, the first wysbie attacked. She heard the hum, and her stomach clenched with fear. “Wysbies!” she cried out. It started with a sting on her shoulder. Cursing, she slapped the spot, and the electric zap bit into her hand; a shout of shock escaped her lips. Bobbien turned around and yelled, “Faster, Tulani. They are right behind you!”

The
wysbies, with their innocent, fey-looking wings and streaming tentacles that stung with the ferocity of a thousand needles, attacked in force. Tulani gasped from the pain, slapping at the demons with her free hand but refusing to let go of the vine with her other. The harsh hemp sliced into her fingers, drawing blood. Bobbien turned around, her powerful arm wrapped around a vine, V’sair balanced on her shoulder, and a sack gripped in her other hand. The two Fireblades hung from her sides, and if Tulani weren’t so scared, she would have laughed. Her grandmother looked like a many-armed spider. “Tulani!” she called out. “Catch!” She threw the sack, and Tulani reached out to grab it. Suddenly her hand was covered by a screaming wysbie, its long streamers wrapping around her forearm like a thick bandage. Tulani wailed, her fingers slippery with blood, watching as the sack fell through her powerless fingers toward the Desa floor.

“
No!” Bobbien yelled. She draped the unconscious prince between two branches, used a vine to secure him, then nimbly leaped down into the gloom. “The dust,” she called out breathlessly. “Gums the wings, it will.”

Tulani tore at the
wysbie, its pink eyes bulbous sacks of fluid. Her arm lost color as the creature squeezed it tighter. Her vision narrowed, and a strange buzzing that had nothing to do with the gigantic insects filled her ears. Her death grip on the vine slackened a bit, and for a minute, she lost awareness of everything around her.

She realized sluggishly that Bobbien
was thrashing her way up the branches, the sack between her teeth. The old Quyroo was humming, trying to communicate with her granddaughter to keep her from fainting, because speech was beyond the girl. Tulani dangled from a limb, her fingers numb, ready to release. Glancing down, she saw her grandmother’s bright eyes burn with purpose. A wysbie had attached itself to the old woman’s back, but Bobbien hardly noticed. She reached their level, hauling herself up, then grabbing Tulani’s wrist. Tulani felt herself being lifted and watched in a detached way as Bobbien reached into the sack and threw something at the buzzing furies behind them. The insects screamed as a dusty substance coated them, their wings becoming useless as the creatures dropped to the forest floor.

Tulani
heard more of the whining sounds nearby and knew another group was on their way. She stared at the struggling insects; she had forgotten how viciously these creatures stung. Maybe she didn’t miss the Desa so much after all.

“
Hurry, girl!” Bobbien urged. “Others will come.”

She stared stupidly at her grandmother, as if she spoke a
foreign language. Bobbien shook her. “Hurry we must. They will come. Look!”

She pointed in the distance, and Tulani
’s stomach clenched as white wall of a swarm headed their way. Bobbien untied the prince, heaved him over her shoulder, and with a speed that belied her size, moved as if the devil were on her tail. Tulani stopped thinking and just moved, her breathing harsh in her ears, her heartbeat thumping a wild tattoo in her chest.

They reached a dense grouping of trees that shaded the area so that the four moons brought no light to
the area.

“
Shh,” Bobbien warned her granddaughter, a finger before her lips.

Tulani hear
d the sounds of the Bottom Dwellers’ encampments nearby, the sad string instruments they strummed whining on the breeze from the ocean. They were near the base of the volcano; she smelled sulfur expulsions from Aqin, and the air was thick and humid. They must be near the forbidden Quyroo settlements, where the Bottom Dwellers rebelliously chose to make their homes illegally.

“
Why are we here?” Tulani asked.

Bobbien
’s eyes widened with a warning. She leaped to a branch and parted a wall of ferns. Tulani squinted in the darkness, peering through the dense leaves to see that her grandmother was waving her staff at a rock wall.
It must be Aqin itself
, Tulani thought with a shudder.
This is madness, Great Sradda!
Suddenly a pulsing white light lit the darkness, coupled with an odd hum, and for a second, Tulani thought the wysbies had returned, but instead the wall parted, and Bobbien turned her head and urged her granddaughter through the narrow opening.

It was a hallowed
-out cavern, pitch black. Bobbien tapped her staff twice on the stone floor, and the chamber lit with an odd pink glow. Tulani looked, but her grandmother shook her head, letting her know to stay silent. The doors slid shut, and all sound disappeared. It was ice cold in the cavern, but Tulani was drenched with sweat and blood and couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her body. The welts from the wysbies were painful, and she longed to wash their poison away. Bobbien motioned for her follow, and Tulani moved close behind her, her eyes wary. She glanced at V’sair, who was slung over Bobbien’s strong back, his head resting on her grandmother’s shoulder blade. The old woman wasn’t even breathing hard.

It felt like they
’d walked for hours, but Tulani knew it had been barely minutes. At each intersection Bobbien stamped her staff, and a twilight glow of weak lighting appeared and illuminated their way. Their feet echoed in the caves, and Tulani noted that while the walls were made of rock, they clearly had the finish that could be accomplished only by machines. She looked but could not find the source of the lighting.

They entered a huge cavern
with clear, polished stalactites dripping from the ceilings, illuminated with a soft glow that bathed the room with gentle light. Tulani saw a crude bed, a stove, and a small store of roots and berries along with a few cooking utensils.

“
You come here often?” Her voice echoed in the room.

“
When thinking must be done,” her grandmother responded, lowering the prince then removing the two Fireblades from her belt and setting them on a small altar.