Face Of The Void

Chapter 3-1

3

A crackling campfire sent tiny flickers of flame up to an overcast sky. The night was cool, but at least it wasn’t raining. Desa felt exposed, sitting in the middle of an open field with no one but Kalia and Midnight for company. The stallion waited patiently at the edge of the firelight with their packhorse. At first glance, he almost seemed eager to press on, but Desa knew that he would appreciate the rest. They had been traveling hard for the last six days. Soon, they would reach the northern shores of Ithanar.

Desa knelt in the grass with her coat off and the sleeves of her blouse rolled up, heat from the flames leaving sweat on her brow. “We’ll make an early start tomorrow,” she said. “If all goes well, we’ll reach the Halitha in a few days.”

Kalia stood on the other side of the fire with her back turned, peering off into the distance. The woman said nothing, lost in her own thoughts. Not a good sign. Desa had come to know her well enough to realize that silence almost always meant that Kalia was trying to decide how to bring up a difficult subject.

“After that, we press north,” she went on. “North and west. We should be able to reach the desert’s southeastern border in about two weeks. Assuming no major setbacks, of course. We’ll have to pass through Pikeman’s Gorge. Not an easy trip. Bandits like to take refuge in the caves. But you and I can handle-”

“Tommy and the others might still be at Hedrovan,” Kalia cut in. “We should try to find them.”

Desa wrinkled her nose in distaste. “No,” she insisted. “Kalia, we don’t have time. We have to get to Mercy as quickly as possible.”

The other woman turned, looking over her shoulder, watching Desa out of the corner of one eye. “With every passing day, you grow more desperate,” she said. “Will a day’s delay make that much difference? The others may need our help.”

Desa stood up with a sigh, reaching up to thread fingers through her short hair. She blinked a few times. “The world needs us more,” she said. “You saw what Adele did.”

“I did.”

That should put an end to any further discussion on the matter. Any delay, no matter how small, put more lives at risk. Adele would attack the Al a Nari again. It was only a matter of time before their defenses fell. Desa had to find a way to thwart the other woman’s power before that happened. If Mercy had the answer…

She ignored the niggling thought that had been plaguing her for days. What if Mercy didn’t have the answer? If the goddess knew something, wouldn’t she have shared it by now? Instead, she sent Desa and Kalia on a quest to recover artifacts that had been buried under the earth for millennia. Artifacts that told the secret history of her people.

Desa had activated the strange crystal a few times on their journey back to Te’Alon. She would have combed through it for every last scrap of knowledge she could find, but the device required a great deal of power, and she was often too tired after a day in the saddle to Reinfuse it. Still, she had pieced a few things together.

Mercy had once been a human woman, a scientist who specialized in expanding her people’s knowledge of Field Binding. They seemed to have been trying to Infuse living tissue with a direct connection to the Ether. Just as Bendarian had. Was that what had roused the Hanak Tuvar? She would have to watch more of Mercy’s diary.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Kalia asked.

Nudging a rock with the toe of her boot, Desa clamped a hand onto the back of her neck. “Talk about what?” She had no idea what her lover was getting at, but she was sure that it would be a most difficult conversation.

The fire cast flickering shadows over Kalia’s face, but her eyes were like daggers, trying to pierce through Desa’s armour. “Your growing desperation,” she said. “I hear you talking in your sleep some nights.”

“You do?”

“You blame yourself for what happened at Te’Alon.”

Clenching her teeth, Desa turned her face away from the other woman. “I gave Adele the lightning that she used to kill those people,” she said. “I didn’t think. I just attacked. Threw everything I had at her in pure desperation.”

Kalia seated herself on a rock, folding hands in her lap. She looked up at Desa. “And that’s not like you,” she noted. “For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been careful, methodical. There’s only one thing that sends you running headlong into danger without considering your options.”

Desa arched an eyebrow.

“Guilt,” Kalia explained.

“You’re exaggerating.”

“No, I’m not,” Kalia breathed. “Eleven years ago, you blamed yourself for teaching Bendarian Field Binding. So, you left everything you knew behind and chased him into the wild, nearly getting yourself killed in the process. You felt guilty for killing Tommy’s lover; so, you took off again, racing into the desert for a final showdown with Bendarian. No doubt you expected to die.”

“All right,” Desa said. “Your point is made.”

“You can’t let guilt drive you, Desa,” Kalia pressed. “If you do, you’re going to make the same mistakes. So, tell me, why do you feel guilty?”

A single tear slid down Desa’s cheek. She closed her eyes, trying to steady herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she croaked. “Just another failure in a long list of failures.”

Sighing softly, Kalia stood up and made her way around the fire. She put her hands on Desa’s shoulders, leaning in close to kiss her forehead. “Don’t run from it, my love,” she murmured. “Tell me what happened.”

“It’s my fault.”

“What is?”

“Adele,” Desa growled. “I trusted her, and I shouldn’t have. If not for me, she would have never gotten anywhere near that pyramid. She would have never become whatever it is that she is now.”

“Trust is not a sin.”

Desa backed away from the other woman, shaking her head in disgust. “It is when you know better,” she said. “Something about her seemed off from the very beginning. But she was so insistent.”

“Is that why you took her with you?”

“No,” Desa muttered. “We took her with us because she said that she could track Bendarian.”

Sucking on her lower lip, Kalia looked down at the ground under her feet. “And stopping Bendarian came before everything else,” she sighed. “Desa, you weren’t blinded by Adele. You were blinded by your obsession with Bendarian.”

“I created him. I had to stop him.”

“No!” Kalia insisted. “You helped a man in need by teaching him a valuable skill. That he went on to abuse the knowledge you gave him is not your fault. The real problem here is that you went against the customs of your people by teaching Bendarian how to commune with the Ether. You decided that the philosophies of Aladar were misguided; so, you rejected them. And when that resulted in disaster, you were humiliated. You’ve been living with the shame of it ever since. It consumes you.”

Shutting her eyes tight, Desa buried her face in her hand. “What do you want me to do?”

When she looked up, Kalia was watching her with such sincerity. “I want you to forgive yourself,” the other woman said simply. “To let go of the shame.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then you’re going to make more mistakes,” Kalia replied. “And people will die.”

Another day of travel brought them a little closer to their goal. Desa kept expecting to see the Sapphire Sea, but it never came. She did, however, recognize the outcroppings of rock that protruded from the grass as the land sloped gently downward to the water’s edge. The trees that sprouted here and there were all bare, but she remembered when they had been lush with foliage. This was the way they had come five months ago.

So much had changed in such a short time: Marcus gone, their hopes for defeating Adele dashed. Now, the Eradians were marching south. That fact alone slowed her down considerably.

Desa tried to avoid the simple paths that an army would use. That forced them to travel over some very difficult terrain. As they neared the sea, she began to suspect that she needn’t have bothered. There should have been some sign of an enemy force making its way into Ithanar, but the land was barren, empty. Which meant that Adele must have been transporting them to their destination. Such extensive use of her powers was ravaging her body.

Night came early at this time of year, the sun dipping under the horizon to make way for a dark sky where the stars twinkled faintly. It was cool here but not bitter cold, and once again, she blessed her good fortune. There was no sign of rain. That would make it easier to sleep. The tiny tent Rojan had given them would be enough to keep out the night’s chill.

Desa found herself lying on her back with hands folded over her chest, staring thoughtfully into the darkness. Was Kalia right? Was it guilt that drove her to make poor decision after poor decision?

The other woman was curled up on her side with her back turned, breathing slow and steady. So beautiful. What would a goddess like that want with Desa Kincaid?

Rolling onto her side, Desa wrapped an arm around her lover’s tummy. She kissed Kalia’s cheek, waking her.

The other woman turned, looking up at her through fluttering eyes. “It’s not your fault,” Kalia whispered.

“What do you-”

“You know what I mean.”

Kalia seized her face with both hands, kissing her hard on the lips. The next thing Desa knew, she was being pushed down onto her back. Deft hands undid the buttons of her shirt. Soft lips found her neck, her collarbone, the smooth skin of her tummy.

Piece by piece, their clothing fell away until she was alone and vulnerable with the most magnificent creature to ever draw breath in this benighted world. Kalia kissed her, and she melted into the other woman’s embrace.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Desa arched her back and shuddered.

Enough was enough. She had never been the sort to remain passive in such moments. She rolled Kalia onto her back and kissed every inch of her. Every delicious inch.

She couldn’t say how long it lasted – hours or minutes; Time seemed to blend when she was lost in the dreamy haze of lust – but it wasn’t long before Kalia was curled up, sound asleep with her head on Desa’s chest.

Desa, however, was wide awake.

With the moment past, the niggling guilt returned, creeping into her mind despite her efforts to keep it away. She had defied her people. She had taught Bendarian the basics of Field Binding. In a way, that one decision had set all of this in motion. Would Hanak Tuvar have been released if not for Bendarian’s twisted experiments? Would the world be facing destruction if not for Desa Kincaid?

Unable to sleep, she rolled Kalia over – the other woman didn’t wake – and dressed as quietly as she could. Her legs wanted to move.

Out in the night, she found nothing but grass and rock and the odd tree that sighed in the gentle wind. After the warmth of her lover’s arms, it was painfully chilly. But the cold was good for her.

Desa marched over the uneven ground with arms swinging, shaking her head. “Let go of the guilt, she says,” she muttered. “By the Eyes of Vengeance, how am I supposed to do that?”

She fished the blue crystal in its brass cage from her coat pocket, setting it down on a rock. “Let’s see what secrets you have to tell.”

Backing away with her hands in her pockets, Desa closed her eyes and nodded once. A thought was all it took to trigger the Electric-Source that she had Infused into the metal.

The crystal began to glow with cerulean light, thin beams fanning out in all directions, drawing the outline of the room. Colour entered the image a moment later: white walls and white cupboards, tables loaded up with equipment that she couldn’t even begin to describe.

Then Mercy appeared.