The War for Ezryn - Books 1-2

1. Endings-2

One of the girls – a pretty lass with dark, brown skin and black hair that she wore in a multitude of braids – leaned sideways to whisper something to her friend.

“Stephanie!” Desa barked. “What would you do if someone pointed a g*n at you?”

“I…”

Pursing her lips, Desa nodded once. “That’s correct,” she said. “And for future reference, admitting ignorance is always the right answer in this class. There is no exam, no final evaluation, but you will find that my expectations are higher than any other…”

She noticed one of the boys snickering. The kid was tall and skinny, with messy blonde hair. At first, Desa would have said that he reminded her of Tommy. But Tommy had never been so snide.

Striding up to him, Desa stared directly into his eyes. “Something to say? Some tidbit of wisdom that you’d like to share?”

The young man blushed, clearing his throat and looking down at his shoes. “No, ma’am,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“What would you do?”

you“Excuse me?”

“If someone pointed a g*n at you,” Desa clarified.

“I…I’d use a Force-Sink to sap the kinetic energy from his bullets, rendering them harmless.”

Desa turned away from him, sauntering through the grass at a leisurely pace. “A clever solution.” One she had employed herself on countless occasions. “Let’s put it to the test, shall we?”

She retrieved an empty, green wine bottle from her bag and placed it on a wooden table that she had set up in the middle of the field. “The bottle has been Infused with a connection to the Ether,” she explained. “Once activated, it will drain kinetic energy from any object that gets within range. Everybody, stand back.”

Her students were quick to obey.

Desa positioned herself in front of them, loading her pistol with four fresh rounds. “Let’s see what happens.” A thought was all it took to trigger the Force-Sink that she had placed within the glass.

Lifting her weapon in both hands, Desa narrowed her eyes.

CRACK! c***k! c***k!

CRACK! c***k! c***k!A single bullet came to a halt about two inches away from the bottle, then another and another. All three of them hung in the air, their movement stilled by the power of the Ether. Not even gravity could pull them down.

“Quite impressive, isn’t it?”

Several students murmured their agreement.

CRACK!

CRACK!The fourth slug tore through the bottle, sending shards of glass flying in all directions.

Sighing softly, Desa returned her g*n to its holster. She turned around to face her students. “What happened?”

They all stood before her in bug-eyed bewilderment, unsure of what to say. Finally, Stephanie raised a hesitant hand. “The…the Sink ran out of power?” she stammered. “I mean it absorbed all the energy it could handle.”

“Correct.”

“So…So…”

Crossing her arms, Desa held the young woman’s gaze. “A Force-Sink can absorb a limited amount of kinetic energy. A Force-Source can release a limited amount of kinetic energy. Once an Infusion is depleted, the object it was attached to becomes an ordinary piece of junk.”

releaseDesa started to pace again. “It takes about fifteen minutes to make a Sink that will stop six bullets. Another ten if you include the modifiers that will prevent it from turning you into a statue in the process. Just how many of them do you think you can carry on your person?”

The golden-haired young man looked particularly sheepish right then. The others weren’t doing so well either. Now that they were suitably chastened, Desa could start molding them into Field Binders who wouldn’t get themselves killed five seconds after they ran into battle. “So, the lesson for today is…”

“Don’t use Force-Sinks?” one of the girls chimed.

“No!” Desa snapped. “The lesson is to use all the tools at your disposal. In battle, your Infusions are precious resources that cannot be replaced until you have adequate time to renew them. Once they are depleted, you are nothing but an ordinary rube who will be gunned down by the first enterprising soldier who gets you in his sights.”

She stepped forward, standing toe to toe with the blonde boy, staring up at him with a frown that made him flinch. “Field Binding is just a tool,” she went on. “You must rely on your wits and your training. So…”

She drew her pistol and thrust it into the young man’s hand. Seizing his wrist, she pressed the revolver’s barrel hard against her chest. “If you can subdue your opponent by conventional means…”

A quick twist of the boy’s forearm made him yelp and drop the g*n. Desa stepped forward, locking hips with him and cranking his arm to throw him down on his backside. The kid landed with a grunt, wincing on impact. “I strongly suggest that you do so.”

“You’re working them hard, I see.”

When Desa looked up, she saw an older woman descending the shallow slope from the pyramid’s back entrance. Sula was a matronly woman, with wrinkles around her eyes and a bun of steely-gray hair. She specialized in two subjects – mathematics and crystal theory – and her dedication to each was absolutely unwavering. “Some of them are lagging behind on their assignments. Which means their permission to take your class might be revoked.”

Desa bent over, offering her hand to the young man and pulling him to his feet. “You heard her. I think we’ve covered enough for one day. The rest of you are dismissed to attend to your studies.”

“But, Mrs. Kincaid,” Stephanie protested.

“No ‘buts,’” Desa shot back. “Random dismissals are my purview as an eccentric professor. Complete your assignments. We’ll resume at this time tomorrow. Go.”

The students scattered. Many of them hurried into the pyramid, no doubt intending to follow her instructions to the letter. Others ran for the outbuildings. Perhaps they had other classes.

Grimacing behind her spectacles, Sula shook her head. “This course of yours should be disbanded,” she said, resuming a one-sided argument that she had been having for the better part of a year now. Desa’s attempts to ignore her prodding or change the subject had no effect on her persistence. “They shouldn’t be learning such things, Desa. I know that your skills have served you well in the past, but Field Binding was never meant to be a weapon.”

Slinging the strap of her satchel over her shoulder, Desa shut her eyes tight. “It’s nice to see you, Sula.” She started up the hillside, hoping to Mercy that the other woman would take the hint.

“You’re teaching them to kill,” Sula pressed.

Desa froze, twisting around to answer the other woman with a sneer. “I’m teaching them to defend themselves!” she snapped. “In case you haven’t noticed, our city is surrounded by enemies who hate the fact that many of our citizens can manipulate light, heat and gravity.”

“The Eradian Empire is no threat to us.”

“They are if they send all their armies against us!” Desa insisted. “Even a hundred Field Binders can’t do much against ten thousand soldiers!”

This was a mistake. Desa knew that she shouldn’t let the other woman get to her. The best response was silence, but Sula’s bluntness had struck a nerve. After fifteen years in the wild, fifteen years spent hunting the very thing that Sula feared – a Field Binder who used his power to kill – Desa had a long list of regrets.

There was blood on her hands; she knew it. She had worked hard to change, to become the sort of person who took pity on her enemies, but it didn’t assuage her guilt. A man was dead because Desa had trusted her instincts instead of thinking things through. She would have to live with that for the rest of her life.

Turning her back on the old woman, Desa closed her eyes and wiped the sweat off her brow. “Forgive me, Sula,” she mumbled. “I…I am not in the right frame of mind for this discussion.”

A snort of derision was the only response she received.

* * *

Sliding her key into the deadbolt, Desa jiggled it a few times and found that she needn’t have bothered. The door was unlocked. Was Sali still here? She got her answer when she stepped into the front hall and found her mother standing there with Brendan in her arms.

A short and rotund woman in a plain, blue dress, Leean had a smile that always made Desa feel safe. Her gray hair was pulled back with a few thin strands flying wildly. “Home already?” she exclaimed. “Aren’t you a little early?”

After many years of gentle needling, Desa had finally convinced her mother to make the journey from Aladar to Bekala. For a long time, Leean had insisted that she was too old to be travelling across the continent. It was the arrival of a grandson that had changed her mind.

“Class ended early.”

Leean continued to bounce Brendan, but her scowl took Desa back to the days when she used to slip out in the middle of the night. “You didn’t injure one of the students, did you?”

“What? No!”

“Don’t be so aghast. It happened before.”

Desa slammed the door shut, falling back against it. “The only time that happened is when Kal Broshnan pulled a muscle after trying – and failing – to put me in a hold.”

She strode past her mother, into the kitchen, and set her satchel down on a wooden chair. “The children had assignments to complete,” she went on. “And I had no desire to chat with the other teachers.”

It startled her to realize that Kalia was already home and stirring a pot of bubbling soup with a wooden spoon. There had been a time when Desa would have never missed the sound of boiling water. Or the scent of Kalia’s delicious chicken soup! But no longer. A decade in Bekala had dulled her senses.

Dipping her spoon into the pot, Kalia tasted the broth and nodded approvingly. “Sula?” she asked.

“Who else?”

Now, it was Kalia who scowled, but her sudden snarl wasn’t meant for Desa. “Pay her no mind, my love. Your students are learning a valuable skill.”

“I’m not so sure,” Desa mumbled, claiming the other empty chair. “How many recruits does the City Watch need?”

“The town where I grew up is less than a day’s ride from here. We had no electricity, no running water and plenty of bandits who raided us for supplies. As sheriff, it was my job to keep the people safe, and I would have fallen on my knees and begged the Almighty Himself for a few more deputies. Bekala is a bastion of civilization in a vast and hostile wilderness.”

“Yes, but all of that is changing.” There were days when Desa felt like a relic of a bygone era. No one needed a gunslinger with magic bullets anymore. Not in this new world they were building. Sometimes, she wondered if teaching the tricks of her trade was just a sad attempt to relive her glory days.

Abandoning her soup, Kalia sauntered over to the kitchen table. She kissed Desa tenderly on the forehead. “The world needed Desa Kincaid eight years ago,” she insisted. “It still needs Desa Nin Leean.”

still“It will always need Desa,” Leean chimed in.

Blushing, Desa shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at them. “All right, all right!” she said, spreading her hands to bring an end to this conversation. “Mama, will you be joining us for dinner?”

“No, I will not. Brendan is going to spend the night at Grandma’s house.”

“Is he now?”

“It’s been forever since we’ve had a night off,” Kalia explained. “I thought we could use a little time to ourselves.”

Desa grinned as she rose to kiss her partner’s lips. “A splendid idea.”

* * *

The first thing Desa noticed upon waking was the warmth of Kalia’s body. It was still dark – a few hours past midnight unless she missed her guess – and her partner was still sound asleep. The steady rhythm of Kalia’s breathing was almost enough to lull her back into a peaceful slumber, but her attempts to drift off proved fruitless. She was restless, her legs filled with the need to move.

move.Climbing out of bed, Desa found her cotton robe and wrapped it around herself. Her movements had not disturbed Kalia. But then nothing could.

Kalia was the sort of woman who liked to sleep in whenever the opportunity presented itself. A bit of a nuisance, given that Desa had always been an early riser, but there it was. Just one of the many quirks of their relationship. Desa loved her partner more than life itself, but there were days when the other woman made her want to pull her hair out.

Sighing softly, she belted the robe and left the bedroom. By habit, she glanced into the room across the hall, but of course, Brendan’s crib was empty. The romantic evening had been lovely, but she still felt her son’s absence.

Her bare feet padded across the living room floor and through the narrow doorway that led to the kitchen. It was painfully dark with only the ticking of the clock to hold back the silence of the wee hours.

Desa’s first instinct was to reach for a light switch. Then it occurred to her that she had come to rely too heavily on modern conveniences. Once upon a time, she had been forced to provide her own light.

She still felt the Infusion that she had made over a year ago – strands of the Ether connecting the molecules of a brass plate that Kalia had hung up on the wall. Why the other woman wanted such a thing was beyond her. The plate was gaudy and garish, but Kalia liked the engravings along the edge. And truth be told, Desa had never cared much about the décor of her living space. She had spent most of her twenties hopping from inn to inn and sleeping rough in the nights between. She had never really developed a nesting instinct.

With a thought, Desa triggered the Light-Source that she had Infused into the plate, ordering it to emit a soft, yellow glow. Her eyes needed a moment to adjust, but once they did, she had no trouble finding her way around the kitchen. Her mother had brought a loaf of her famous spice bread when she came to pick up Brendan. There might still be some left-

Something was off.

A strange tingle on the back of her neck, the feeling of hair standing on end. She wasn’t alone. All those years of comfort and safety hadn’t completely killed the instincts that saved her life a thousand times over. She could feel the intruder’s eyes on her back.

Snatching the carving knife off the counter, Desa turned around with a snarl. “Who are you? Show yourself!”

A shadow flowed out of the living room, coalescing into the form of a tall and slender man in a wide-brimmed hat. “You had to do it, didn’t you?” a familiar voice grated. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

The stranger stepped into the light, revealing a face of slate-gray skin, soulless eyes and a demonic grin that sent shivers down Desa’s spine. Heldrid wore the same poncho, trousers and boots that he had donned on their last encounter. “I’m impressed, Desa. I took you for the sort of woman who would die in the saddle, but it seems you carved out a pleasant existence for yourself. Here in this echo of your people’s former glory.”

“I told you to leave this planet!” Desa hissed.

“Yes. And therein lies the problem.”

Stepping forward, Desa shoved the knife in Heldrid’s face. He didn’t flinch or react in any way. “What do you want?”

Chuckling softly, Heldrid nudged the knife aside with a slender finger. That hideous grin remained fixed in place. “No, no, no! It’s not about what I want! No one cares what I want! This is about what you want. Or more precisely, what you can’t have.”

Iyou“What are you talking about?”

He leaned in close, his broad nose almost touching hers. “The doting wife, the loving child: you could have had it, Desa. But you had to interfere! You told me to go! You forced me to cross dimensions!”

Standing up straight, he slowly backed away from her. “They found me, Desa. And in so doing, they found you. Things are about to get a lot more complicated. I’m afraid your pleasant existence is at an end.”

you.