Earth Awakened, page 27
Within minutes, the air grew wet.
She closed her eyes, breathing it in. Inside, Greneinta did the same.
Then, it felt like her whole being relaxed.
Suddenly, she was much more in tune with her surroundings. For the briefest of seconds, she sensed the ground around her as if it were the back of her hand.
It was nice, being back here, walking in the mountains. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed the forest. Just walking in it. Even when she’d been in the war…
Well, it was probably better not to think of the war.
It was a coastal mountain, technically, but it had a different feel to it, as if it had brought a piece of Ryarne’s farmland with it. It was humid, yes, but the air held a mix of smells that carried more than just the coastal pine and cedar and fir that were dominant in this area. There were more deciduous trees. Maples and birches, the occasional poplar. Heck, they even came across a few dogwoods.
And the trees were old. Very old. She’d noticed that about ten minutes into the walk.
She wondered why no one had logged to this place. During Westray’s industrial boom, they must have been tempted.
Maybe because there’s a big ancient shrine carved into the rock halfway up the mountain. And tons of stories about spirits and ghosts.
A person might scoff and brush away old folk stories, but there was something about coming face-to-face with something deep and ancient that made one stop in her tracks.
She knew. Had come across stuff like that during the war. There were other shrines besides this one, dotted all over the landscape, leftover from life in the pre-Christian times. It was one thing to hear about them, to just know that they existed—but quite another to come face-to-face with one in the wild, when you’re walking through the mist and it comes looming out like some ancient, sentient relic.
She’d forgotten about that.
Thank you, PTSD. I always like a bit of memory loss in the morning.
At least she’d gotten it back. And not in a vivid flashback of gunfire, or with any vicious images of people dying.
Yeah, PTSD sucked.
About five minutes later, her thighs and calves and ass were beginning to burn with the exertion. She wasn’t out of shape. Not really. When she wasn’t blasting awake from a PTSD nightmare or getting arrested by the Mageguard, the ingrained schedule of Basic Training usually got her out of bed and on the road running before she’d even realized she’d woken up.
But months of bad sleep had a way of catching up, especially when one had been attacked by a Dark Mage recently. And had expended a shitload of magic yesterday.
She needed a distraction.
“So, yesterday,” she said, breaking the silence. “What do you think that was?”
“Are you referring to your incident, the fight, or the inability to teleport?”
Ah. She hadn’t even considered the last two. She bit her lip, considering. She really wanted to know about the fight. Who were these people that were fighting? Westrans? Swarzgardians? Was there a resistance? And, if so, why was it in Seola?
Seola wasn’t exactly a hotbed of activity.
She shook her head and pushed the thoughts back.
Nope. As he’d said, the war was behind her. Right now, she needed to figure out what was happening between her and Greneinta so she could stop these episodes. If she did that, she might actually be capable of doing something about the rest.
“Greneinta. I want to figure out what’s wrong between us—what is keeping us from operating like Meese and her Firebird.”
“I can try talking to her, afterward,” he said. “Since we discovered that she’s actually talking.”
“She doesn’t usually. Then again, most people don’t try to talk to her.”
“An oversight on Finnevar’s behalf, perhaps,” he said. “Granted, they would assume that a crystal spirit wouldn’t speak since they usually interact with them through consoles. The spirits themselves don’t usually speak, and haven’t done so in hundreds of years.” His lips twitched. “In fact, I think I’m one of the first Lürians to speak with one in over a hundred years.”
“Congratulations,” she said dryly. “Was I your first?”
“No,” he said. “Mieshka was.”
There was a pause. About two seconds later, he realized precisely how that sounded and visibly flinched. “Please, do not make any jokes. I find pedophilia absolutely disgusting.”
“Oh, agreed. Frankly, that was my fault. I didn’t think—”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Let’s change the topic,” she said. “So, back to the whole… me versus Greneinta thing. What do you think is happening?”
“Well, we won’t know until we actually focus on it, but there definitely seems to be a disconnect between the two of you. And she’s definitely acting erratically. I remember her from before—she wouldn’t have flattened a city block just because she was in proximity to some gun fire. Shielding is an Earth specialty—she’d stop any bullets before they came within half a meter. This is definitely an overreaction.”
“You think she’s being protective, then?” She shook her head. “No, that can’t be. She reacted to nothing at Finnevar. I mean, maybe because Rosie is a Terran Elemental, but then she would have reacted to Kitty, too, by that logic, but she didn’t. Of course, Kitty has a crystal spirit in her, too, and same with Meese, so maybe they have some buddy system or something.”
He stopped. “You think she was triggered by a Terran Elemental?”
McKay shrugged. “It’s possible. I was talking to Rosie when it happened, and she’d been antsy beforehand. But even when Rosie ran away, she kept going—an overreaction, like you said.”
He walked a few strides in silence, only the sound of his shoes breaking the quiet. The forest was bright around them, diffused with the light from the weak cloud cover above. It looked like the start of a grisly day—or, more likely, getting close to the middle of one—a sense of sap and rain came to her mind, whispered through Greneinta’s Elemental sense. In the distance, she heard the trickle of the stream, chirps of bird song, and the rustling of animals. A rabbit broke cover from a bush and sprinted down the hill. She watched it go.
Yeah, there’s definitely not much human activity on this mountain. Not if the rabbits are that skittish.
“Do you think she’ll react to the goddess?” he asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, shrugging. “Also, isn’t that what you’re hoping for?”
“I’m hoping for an actual face-to-face meeting with the spirit. I’ll settle on confirming it actually exists.” He cleared his throat. “The idea was for you and Greneinta to lure it out.”
“Wouldn’t you be better at Lür-ing it out?” she asked. “Since you’re Lürian?”
It took him a few seconds, then he groaned. “You’re terrible.”
“I am,” she agreed. “And you’re stuck with me.” She flashed a grin. “No teleporting here.”
He groaned again.
“So, anyway. Got any other ideas on how myself and Greneinta can work together better?”
“No, not yet. We’ll need to test for what is wrong before we can find a solution. It may be that she just needs to learn how to do it properly. She might think your current arrangement is working well, or she simply doesn’t know how to fix it. So we can teach her to fix it, and it’ll get better.”
“Like sending an update patch to a computer program?”
“Yes, but only to let that program learn to use a different device.”
Great. She was a device, now. Well, she supposed she’d walked right into that one, given she’d just made an analogy where Greneinta was a computer program.
Actually, she was impressed he’d gotten the reference. She hadn’t taken him to be tech savvy enough to catch it that quickly.
“Did you know that many Mages lost their power during the Transition?” he asked suddenly. “Temporarily, in most cases. Only those with crystal poisoning had permanent damage, mostly.”
“Really?” she asked. “What happened?”
“They called it Transition Shock. Something about the trauma combined with switching into a new dimension… Most people have forgotten about it now.”
“God, that must be terrifying,” she said. “How long did it last?”
“A few months at the earliest. Years for others.” He cleared his throat. “My father wasn’t affected at all.”
And here they were, back to dear old Dad.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
“Yes. Mine lasted five years.”
It took her a moment to digest that. Given what he’d already told her about his upbringing, and specifically about his father, she was guessing that he wouldn’t have been all that impressed by the sudden inability of his son.
She hesitated. “That must’ve been rough.”
“It was. Especially when…” He trailed off and shook his head. “Never mind. What I mean is that things can happen with magic, and they can’t always be predicted. Greneinta is a smart, strong, healthy spirit. Whatever is going on, I am confident that we can figure it out and make it work.”
She almost said something flippant in response—another brushingly sarcastic joke about how she’d always been headed for jail anyway—but she stopped herself, instead bringing her gaze up to study him.
He was softer than before, more relaxed, but only toward her. For the rest of the world, he was still alert and wary, but he seemed to have accepted that she wouldn’t, for the moment, attack him. It was hard to describe, but up until last night, it’d always felt as if there’d been some layer between them, and now, that was gone.
Friendship. That’s probably what it was called.
God, she needed some coffee.
“Thank you,” she said. “That is a relief to hear.”
They fell into a comfortable quiet, hiking their way up the path, and she turned her attention to the landscape. Despite the lack of park staff, the trail was remarkably intact. Only a few spots of erosion and collapse, and only where the park had let it continue as a dirt path rather than wood. Farther along, they’d come across some truly ancient stone steps, leftover from centuries ago when this had been a trade route. There was a type of local fern that lined the slopes, tens of them pooling in the dips and eddies of the slope. It had thinner fronds than others, and always struck her as a bit more primal in origin—like this forest drew deep on its ancestral bones, back to when the mountains were first divided. And that sense of unease came back, similar to what she’d felt in the city—except, in this case, the forest hadn’t changed like the buildings had. There weren’t any bullet holes or bomb craters, or signs of evacuation and abandonment.
The quiet here was the same as the quiet she’d experienced hiking this trail when she was a kid.
Little flashes of color caught her eye in the forest. Flowers. Pink and purple and white.
Her grandmother used to tell her about the plants here. Or, well, she’d tried, anyway.
Despite all the time they’d spent together, only a handful of names came to her.
Fawn lilies. Shooting stars. Laurel’s Grape.
They were small, mostly, and the grape only identifiable by its dark, thick leaves—like holly, but softer and with fewer points.
Beyond the odd maple and dogwood, she had a hard time naming any of the trees.
God. Wind back a good ten years, before the war, and this future would have been absolutely nuts to think about. Ten years ago, she’d visited Seola for the last time, popped in to see her grandmother, ranted about one thing or another with her about the family, had a nice meal. There’d been whispers of a war, then, but nothing real.
No one had thought Swarzgard would actually attack. Not over a patent argument.
But they had. And they’d invaded the entire country. The war was over, and they’d lost. Everything was under Swarzgardian control, now.
And she had magic, now. Powerful magic. And she was involved with Mages.
Back then, they’d only talked about Mages from afar. Like looking at a political class. And she’d presumed most of them to be assholes.
Gobardon, at least, fit that bill.
But she also counted more friends among Mages than she did among non-magic folk.
Granted, a lot of her old friends were either dead or disappeared.
It still boggled her mind that any of these massively powerful, competent Mages wanted anything to do with her, much less help her, but Gobardon was growing on her. Even if he did have intentions that were more self-serving than pure.
After another twenty minutes, the trail took a slow bend. An old, thickly gnarled oak tree came into view, sitting back into the hillside like a canker, and she perked up.
It was gorgeous and massive, with bows that twisted and sagged from its trunk.
It was also less than a hundred feet from the shrine.
Grandpa Morrone, she thought, the name coming to her in a whisper of memory. That was the name of the tree.
And, as the next whisper of memory came to her, she swiveled her head back to the path, straightened, and picked up her pace.
The shrine came into sight like a long-lost, long-abandoned shadow. Set into a natural cave crease in the side of the mountain, it looked as though some massive deity had taken an ax and whittled it straight from the rock.
The whole thing was carved from rock. She wasn’t sure who’d done it, or how old it was, but it was definitely not from anywhere within the last century. Lichen and moss clung to its weathered sides, hiding much of the decoration that lined the low table and altar.
As far as shrines went, this was one of the bigger ones she’d come across. Others were simply the size of dollhouses in the wilderness.
Remnants of past offerings still remained on the table.
Mostly, people left flowers or food. Toys. Precious, hand-made things. But, according to the number of empty whiskey bottles lined up on the side shelf, the Malik had other tastes, as well.
While it was possible someone had just come up here to drink by themselves, they looked a little too expensive for just some forest bender, unlike the beer cans littering the slope to the right.
Gobardon came to her side. His gaze slid slowly over the shrine’s table, lifting to the cave wall after a few seconds. A petroglyph etched into the rock face, worn away by weather, filled in with bits of moss, half-hidden by the body of the shrine itself.
“Is this where your grandmother took you?” he asked.
She’d told him about that earlier on, as they’d been walking up the trail.
“Yes.” She glanced around and smiled. “Different weather, though.”
He didn’t reply to that comment, and she immediately felt stupid.
Of course the weather would be different. It had been over a decade since she’d been here, and weather changed every five minutes in the mountains.
God. She’d meant it as a joke, but…
She gave herself a little shake. “So, did you bring anything to offer?”
Again, he didn’t answer, ignoring her question as his frown deepened. His lips tightened into a thin line as he directed his gaze over the cave and altar.
“Hello? Terra to Gobardon? Houston calling.” She waved a hand. “Did you bring anything?”
He gave her an annoyed look. “No.”
Her mouth opened. “Seriously? You knew there was a shrine, and you didn’t bring anything? Shit, I thought you had that covered.”
“I thought to offer myself,” he said. “It is the oldest form of offering, is it not?”
Her mouth dropped open even more. She closed it, taking a moment to study him. “What—did you drink all the expensive booze?”
He gave her another annoyed look, though this time, she thought she detected mild embarrassment in it. “No.”
She stared at him. “Shit. You’re serious, aren’t you?”
He shrugged off his pack, gripping it briefly in his right hand before letting it fall to the ground. All the while, his gaze remained on the altar.
“Yes, I am. I downloaded a few rituals to my phone before we left. If what I researched holds true, one of them should suffice.”
She kept staring. “Suffice for… offering yourself?”
“Yes.”
She gave him a slow blink. “What, like sexually? Or—”
“No, not sexually,” he said. “I am a powerful Mage. I thought to offer my services.”
She gave him another slow blink. “Well, that’s good, I suppose. ’Cause I was definitely equating you with some dudebro who thinks he’s God’s Gift to Women.”
He didn’t look her way this time, only stared at the shrine and let out a long sigh. “You and Kitty just fit in each other’s shoes, don’t you?”
Er. That was an interesting turn of expression. Maybe it was a Lürian idiom.
“Maybe?” she hedged. “Why?”
“I can’t seem to walk two meters without a smart comment from either of you.”
She glanced back the way they’d come. “I think we made it a whole kilometer that time, but you know, maybe I was just out of breath.”
Gobardon snorted.
“But,” she continued. “Seriously, you plan to offer yourself up? It seems kind of odd. You’re looking for her power, aren’t you? Why offer your own?”
He didn’t answer. And when she looked, he lifted his head, his expression shuttering as she read into his eyes.
There was something there. Guilt? Maybe, but Gobardon probably had a lot of things to feel guilty for, especially given everyone’s reading of him. A family name shouldn’t cause that much of a stir—she didn’t care whose name it was.
Well, except maybe ‘Hitler.’ She couldn’t imagine keeping that last name.
She stared at him, narrowing her eyes.
Then, it clicked.
“You want her like you wanted Greneinta.”
That would explain some things. Gobardon hadn’t been entirely self-less in his attempt to steal Greneinta from McKay, no matter what he said—he’d wanted her power for himself.
And now, he wanted the same with the Malik.
Her face twisted. “Really? God.”
