Awakening into Dreams: Part II of the Fabula Fereganae Cycle

Chapter XIII: Confluence

  Sharp cracks rolled about the Alzandia basin, breaking the silence and filling the air with the sharp smell of gunpowder. The Alzandians, despite the protestations of the same Elder who had so berated Cédes, had decided to accept the humans’ offer of help. And to prepare for what was to come.

  Thanks to one elderly Furosan man who had donated his long rooftop lawn and kitchenware, the ten Alzandians most promising with the rifles had themselves a temporary firing range.

  “That friend of yours is a good shot,” Djidou said with a smile as Radus calmly fired off several bullets. His pot split in two with a sharp tinkle. More shots and the halves were quarters. Then they were only useless shards.

  “Radus good?” he asked, his face beaming.

  “Oh yeah,” Djidou laughed. “Pretty damn good.”

  “Damn?” Radus asked, cocking his head curiously. Then, deciding that the new word was good, “Damn!”

  Once the Alzandians had exhausted their carefully rationed training ammunition and the remaining sunlight, Djidou rallied them together for a debriefing. They had all done well for their first time, he explained, and he expressed his wish that they could have had more practice. And time.

  “Do we have a chance?” Stefi asked once the Furosans had dispersed, proudly clutching their strange new human weapons. They certainly seemed to think so, she thought; hope and excitement were visible on their faces.

  “I really don’t know.” Djidou shuffled uneasily, unable to stand still as nervousness invaded his body.

  “Good chance,” Radus said as he and Kei-Pyama approached, rifles in hand. “Cool Stefi and Sister Cédes here. Our chance.” He laid his hand on Stefi’s shoulder, his touch light yet reassuring. I know you’re worried, it said, more articulate than his Common Language, but we’re all here together. “Still hate war. Why war?”

  “Because war is what happens when we run out of words for talking and don’t try making new ones,” Kei-Pyama said.

  The following morning, shouts and commotion hauled Stefi and Cédes from their sleep. Right away they knew what it was, both feeling the same welling of nausea and faintness.

  Their door flew open with a crash, revealing a very excited Radus shaking with adrenaline. “Stefi, Sister, come,” he said. “Elder meeting.”

  “This morning we received news of the humans,” the same Alzandian man Stefi had met yesterday, an Elder named Kas-Rovet, said, addressing the assembly before him in both languages. Tails quivered and ears twitched as he repeated himself in Alzandian, making sure all present understood him. “The Otsukuné returned in the early hours,” he continued, “bearing news from afar. They have brought with them three flying ships, just as the human Djidou said was most likely. They bring with them several hundred soldiers to our sixty or so who are able to fight. They have alighted fifteen yalters from Alzandia. Assuming they left on foot shortly after we spotted them, we have as little as two hours to prepare for their arrival.”

  Unease rippled through the crowd, exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Flying ships? Several hundred soldiers? “Impossible!” some shouted.

  “Only if we believe so,” the Elder replied. “We have new weapons. And,” he pointed at Stefi, “the Fieretsi.”

  More noise from the crowd, this time much more enthusiastic. A few of the younger Furosans let out excited whoops.

  “And with her, the White Demon Cédes.”

  A stony silence erected itself about the crowd, mortared with somber expressions. She, returned? The one who had driven out the humans years before only to condemn Alzandia to the fog and seemingly isolate it from the rest of Feregana? And yet if she had defeated the humans once before…

  “We must protect Alzandia with what we have,” Kas-Rovet continued. “We hold a readily defensible position. With riflemen and archers spread across the upper reaches, we may yet keep them at bay. The flying ships, however, are another matter altogether. For them we must rely on Cédes.”

  Defeated groans rose from the some Alzandians, prompting Stefi to take a stand next to Kas-Rovet.

  “It’s not Cédes’s fault for what she is,” she told them, stern and commanding, resisting the urge to shout. “Your own Elders made her what she was: a weapon to protect home. She did just that, didn’t she?”

  Murmurs of agreement and nods answered that yes, she had, despite everything else.

  “And she’ll do it again, I’m sure. But she needs help. Your help.”

  More noise, a rumble of rising agreement.

  “I’m just a human, but I’ll do my best to help too. Fieretsi or not, human or Furosan it’s the right thing, even if I don’t know how to destroy with my… powers… I’ll do my best to protect everyone” She looked to her new friends, familiar faces amongst a sea of strangers. “Radus, Kei-Pyama, everyone. Because if we fail here, like the Acharnians did, Mafouras is next. Ariga too. The humans may want a war because they’ve run out of words to talk over differences. Let’s show them we can still speak words of hope.”

  Once translated, her impromptu speech was met with a surge of applause and waving weapons: rifles, bows, swords, even farming tools. With little else to believe in, it seemed the Alzandians had chosen to put their faith in a human girl, something even one of her own kind probably wouldn’t do. It was a strange and unnerving prospect even to Stefi…

  Between themselves, Stefi and Djidou, with much additional input from the Alzandians, pondered the best course of action: hole up in Alzandia’s palace. The natural basin in which it sat, along with the broad lake, provided ample protection from foot soldiers. Any that approached could be dealt to from afar with either rifles or bows. But the airships… only Cédes had any means to destroy them before they could rain death upon Alzandia, and only if she could still call Raphanos.

  “The pressure is great,” she whispered to Stefi. “I have summoned Raphanos easily with him as part of me, yet I am not practiced in any other way. I can call… yet I do not know if he will listen, being only half-Mafouran by blood.” Her earlier attempts with both Raphanos and Guratzu had produced only flashes and sparks. Of course, only she and Stefi knew this.

  “W-w-what if they manage to get in?” one particularly timid girl asked. Her unbrushed hair all but concealed her eyes, and her rifle was nearly as long as she was tall. Still, her accuracy had impressed even Djidou and Adnamis.

  “All underground entrances are sealed and guarded, Kei-Tenla,” Elder Kas-Rovet said. “It is unlikely they will ever gain the opportunity to cross the lake.”

  “But w-what if they reach the tunnels?”

  He laughed and slapped her back so hard she nearly toppled over. “Then we blow the supports and see if they can swim as a whole lake falls on them!”

  “Oh… Okay,” she said and lowered her head.

  “No worry,” Radus added with a wink. “Stefi here. Radus protect Stefi. Stefi protect us.”

  “Your Common Language is improving,” Kei-Tenla said, a smile shining from behind her hair. “I thought you said it was useless to learn to talk to humans.”

  “Stefi moto… motivation to learn.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  After the meeting, Radus took Stefi’s hand and led her outside to a quiet balcony away from the commotion. He let her hand slip through his and leant over the railing, where he peered westwards to the perpetual fog.

  “Everything all right?” Stefi asked after a stretch of silence. His shoulders were hunched, his head hung low with a weight only he could feel.

  “Everything all right,” he echoed, not turning around. Then, after an awkward silence, “Most thing all right.”

  “Something’s wrong, I know,” she said, placing an arm around his shoulder. “You’re a Furosan. You can’t hide much from me.”

  “What Stefi… you… mean?”

  She giggled nervously. “I can feel these things. I can do more than talk to ferrets, you know.”

  “I do know. I see Stefi in there, I worried I
not like her, not good enough. Stefi is Fieretsi. Radus is… Radus.”

  “You’re more than good enough,” she said, a light laugh highlighting her amazement at both his use of “I” and his concern for not being worthy of her company. “There’s no such thing as “good enough” for me, silly. If there is, though, you’d be it.”

  “Stefi is good.” His voice came as cold as the wind about them, and Stefi felt a shadow of sadness in his words. His violet eyes, the color of a winter twilight sky, stared into the fog. “What you do when fighting gone?” he asked. “Stefi and sister Cédes be gone too? We make wait so long for sister, then she just make leave again?”

  “That’s what’s got you worried, huh?” She leaned her weight against him, reaffirming her presence for the time being. She had met many people, said goodbye to all but a few so far. It was the best part of the journey, she thought. And the worst. It wasn’t until now that she started to see things from their perspective, to realize that, should all else fail, she had at least touched others along the way. “I’ll keep going,” she said, reluctance in her voice, “to look for Arolha Se-Baht. ”

  “No make stay here?” he asked, eyes showing a flash of hope that maybe she would.

  “I wish I could. Feregana needs me. The ferrets and Furosans, anyway. Sometimes… I wonder if it’s all worth saving, given the nastiness in the world.”

  “Worth lots.” He put his arm about her waist and leaned his head on her shoulder. “You not stay, I go with. Stefi worth lots to me.”

  A new feeling bubbled in her stomach, one she had only felt once before, and even then only briefly. A feeling, she knew, that Ifaut had probably felt every few minutes. It crept into her face, bringing a giddying warmth with it.

  “You’re worth lots to me too.”

  Sharp bangs shattered Alzandia’s air, bringing with them the first signs of war.

  “Scouts,” Radus reported, panting after the long climb to the high courtyard. There, above Alzandia, Stefi and Cédes watched and waited.

  “The air is heavy with the stench of death,” Cédes muttered.

  “Ours or theirs?” Stefi asked, worried at her friend’s sudden morbidity.

  “Perhaps both.” Cédes’s reply sent ice stabbing up Stefi’s spine.

  Radus continued, oblivious to their conversation. “Scouts, only few. Some flee. Djidou say they all come now. Radus… I… go back to post.” After a second of hesitation he patted Stefi’s head, for too long to be casual, too short to be really intimate.

  More shots punctured the air, and from their vantage point Stefi had a commanding view towards the east and the advancing humans. Perhaps no more than fifty had approached, stealing through the cover of the empty aqueduct as she and Cédes had done. But their progress was marred by a rain of bullets and arrows from Alzandia’s defenders. The few that did venture for the stairway into the basin were met with a swift death. The rest waited and watched, letting fly unaimed rounds. Superior numbers against superior defenses. A stalemate, with the only way to force a check on the humans’ side.

  “Scared?” Stefi asked Cédes. She already knew the answer. The Furosan, staff in right hand, stone of Raphanos in left, was shaking as if freezing to death.

  “Terrified, dear heart. Absolutely terrified.”

  “We’re here,” Pheia whispered as the airship Bold’s Fairun-powered engines at last fell silent, their whines dying into murmurs before going quiet. It had been a rough journey for her, crammed away in the airship’s storage area inside the hull. At least a hundred men were aboard the colossal ship, making hiding no easy task. Yet she managed it, and was persuaded by Shizai that the best course of action was not to bring the airship down with her on board. No, there would be better ways to deal with its cargo soon enough.

  Stefi is here too, the bubbly voice of Shizai said from the confines of her stone. Raphanos, Guratzu, Fairun. Everyone but Makora. It’s a real confluence of elementals.

  “Is that good for us, or bad?” Pheia asked, stringing her bow as she prepared to leave her cramped confines.

  Perhaps it is both.

  A quick look around showed Pheia that the Bold had already disgorged its load, and she easily slipped outside into the fresh air. The scent of rain and pines met her nose, a clean perfume after days spent in stale air.

  After clambering down the Bold’s side, she flattened herself against the scented grass. She crawled beneath the gap between hull and earth created by the landing skids. Behind she saw the deep ruts they had torn, and smelled the loamy soil laid bare.

  A pop came from beside her and there crouched a watery ferret. Shizai.

  There sure are a lot of them, the elemental said. Looks like some have already left.

  “Then we should too. My guess is they’ll send scouts on ahead, then try to take Alzandia with the ships’ cannons. Or even drop soldiers right on their white-haired heads.”

  How do you know that, princess?

  “It’s what I would do,” Pheia said through gritted teeth. She turned to the elemental beside her, and her breathing was shallowed by adrenaline. “Can you provide a watery distraction?”

  There is no water source nearby, Shizai said and let out a bubbling dook. I sense a stream, no, an aqueduct, some distance away. If memory serves, many of them once led water to Alzandia. Now it is empty.

  “Straight to Alzandia?” Pheia said, her voice louder than she intended.

  Yes, a road to our destination. Her nose pointed south.

  “Then the humans will follow it too.” Certain that the way was clear, she broke from cover and sprinted in the direction Shizai had pointed. No shouts followed her, no gunshots like the one near Chalja. Within a minute she had tumbled, panting, into the empty aqueduct.

  I thought you’d be more afraid of getting shot, Shizai said. Or isn’t it as bad as I thought it might be?

  “Oh, it’s bad,” she replied sharply as Shizai wandere