Quintessential Tales: A Magic of Solendrea Anthology (3 page)

White-and-gray was a female. That explained her slighter stature and the grace with which she moved. The female of any race, in Royce's experience, was imbued with an ability to move in a certain way that just defied male understanding. Orange-and-white then, was the brother. The spat between him and Shreth took on an entirely new light now, and Royce made an educated guess.

"Your brother," Royce said slowly. "Hsaan. He wanted to kill us as soon as he found us."

"Yes."

"And again here at the clearing."

"Yes."

Royce rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. "Why did you stop him?"

Shreth's whiskers twitched and one ear flicked forward. It was hard reading the Shyraan. He had no frame of reference, other than what he'd observed in other predators. He didn't know if that twitch was a sign of amusement or agitation.

"My brother is a glutton," Shreth rumbled finally. "Why kill two when one would go to waste?"

"Kill only what you need to survive," Royce said with a nod. He understood the premise. It was a common premise among the elves of Aldstock. One that humans tried to adhere to with mixed success. Humans had a tendency to horde. It was an offshoot of their versatility and adaptability. You never knew what you might need, or when.

"You think we mean to devour you?" Shreth's ears flicked back and his face drew into a mask that Royce easily identified as disgust. He'd missed the mark altogether. "How repugnant. Shyraan would not debase themselves by feeding on man's flesh. We will kill one of you as a message and free the other to deliver the message."

Now Royce understood what the Shyraan had meant when he's said that one would go to waste. Killing both of them meant that there would be no one left alive to deliver their warning. He sighed. There were probably thousands of places to wash ashore in the vastness of the Ebon Sea. Why did they have to wash up on the one that was inhabited by the Shyraan?

"You could let both of us go," Royce said, without much hope that the idea would hold any merit with the great feline beast.

No, beast wasn't the right word. Shreth and Hsaan wore loincloths, and Faarsh a crude jerkin and short breeches. They understood modesty. They used language. They certainly had a firm grasp of tactics. Beast was a misnomer, and a dangerously derogatory one at that.

"Release me from this cage, you filthy animals!" Torus roared from above the fire. Shreth's claws, which had mostly retracted during his conversation with Royce, flashed into view. Royce sighed.

Torus was a good man and more open-minded than most, but he had a tendency to speak without thinking. It had landed him in the city jail more times than Royce could count, particularly after an evening in the tavern. At least in Dragonfell, among his own people, the worst that would happen to Torus as a result of his big mouth was landing in a cell overnight to sleep off the rest of the ale. Here, it could get them both killed.

"Watch your language, Lieutenant," Royce said in a soft, almost conversational voice. Though he didn't raise his voice much, his command carried well. Torus let out a startled yelp.

"Captain?"

"Lieutenant. We find ourselves in a precarious position, Torus. It would do us a great service if you didn't offend our captors again."

"Offend them? I'm surprised they even--"

"Torus!"

"Sorry, Sir." A pause. "Captain! You're standing up!"

"A very astute observation, Lieutenant."

"What sorcery is this?" Torus called.

The effect Torus's statement had on Shreth was dramatic and immediate. The Shyraan's claws came to full extension, and his ears laid flat against his head. Shreth's tail, which had been languidly oscillating behind him drew up against his spine and puffed out to twice its original size.

"Sorcery!" Shreth hissed, his fangs gleaming in the firelight. "Wizard!"

Oh Torus,
Royce thought to himself,
you have fantastically poor timing and an even more dire choice of words.

"I'm not a wizard," Royce said, holding up his hands, palms outward in a gesture of supplication. "Our people call them
Quintessentialists, but I'm not one."

It wasn't a lie. Not really. Quintessentialists were trained to draw power from the Ethereal Realm and focus it, using it to create effects beyond the laws of nature. Quintessentialists could summon elementals from the earth, balls of flame, or lightning from clear skies. Royce couldn't do any of that. His magic was the energy of battle. Tapping into the Quintessential Sphere allowed him to move faster, swing stronger, and heal more rapidly. That was all. There was no real act of sorcery involved.

Shreth's nose flared and the whiskers drew back. It was getting easier for Royce to read the Shyraan. Of course, distrust wasn't a very long leap from disgust.

"You smell of wizardry, human."

"The Captain? Ha!" Torus chuckled from the cage above. "And I'm the Queen of Pheen."

The Shyraan's eyes flicked toward the suspended cage
, and Royce wished that Torus weren't feeling so helpful. He was in for a surprise, especially if Shreth forced him into a demonstration of his power.

"The Quintessentialists move freely among our people, Shreth." Royce hoped that explanation would be sufficient. He didn't know how keen the
Shyraan sense of smell was, nor if they could identify a wizard merely by odor. "Perhaps that accounts for the smell of sorcery upon me."

Shreth's reaction to the word was something ancient and powerful, Royce decided. It was an ancestral instinct so powerful that the use of the word might be considered an insult. Having used it to confirm his suspicion, he wouldn't use it again. The last thing he wanted to do was to provoke the Shyraan into killing them. He still had hopes of both of them making it out alive.

The black claws began to retract and Shreth's ears pitched forward again. His tail, however, remained erect and puffed out. The Shyraan wasn't as relaxed as he wanted Royce to believe. Perhaps there was a certain amount of deception on both sides. Royce decided to try a different tactic.

"Do you fear wizards, or hate them?"

Shreth's whiskers twitched in surprise. The slits of his eyes narrowed slightly, an unnerving response that sent a chill up Royce's spine. He regretted asking the question.

"Both, human. The ancient Shyraan, my ancestors' ancestors, were created by the Sirens, then enslaved and forced to do their bidding."

A soft sigh escaped from Royce as he put the pieces together. He almost chuckled, but then stopped himself. There was no way to know how the Shyraan would respond to being laughed around. Not that Royce would be laughing at Shreth, but he didn't want to take the chance.

"Hsaan saw the wreck of the Warhorse," Royce said. "Then he found us on the beach. He thought we were sent by the Sirens to attack you. He came and alerted you. You're the leader of your family, so he had to come to you. He wanted to kill us outright, but you wanted to keep one of us hostage and send a message to the Sirens that you were capable of defending yourselves."

Royce heard Torus snort. "Of all the rid--"

"Silence, Lieutenant."

There was a long pause. Torus was a good solider, but he also had a fair amount of pride. He wouldn't care for being spoken to that way in front of what he clearly still thought of as an inferior.

The stiffness left Shreth's tail and it dropped to the floor of the clearing, jumping back and forth.

"You are not emissaries of the Sirens?"

Now Royce did laugh, but it was a mirthless laugh, with no humor behind it.

"No. We're not. I daresay the Sirens have killed as many of my people, if not more, as they have yours."

"Your people were not enslaved to them," Shreth spat.

"No," Royce agreed. "We were not. We share a common enemy, but not your suffering."

"Even if this is true, why should we not kill you both? If you die, there will be no evidence that you were ever here. You will be assumed to have been lost at sea, with the destruction of your vessel."

Royce nodded.

"That's probably true. But if you kill us, we can't help you. Perhaps we share common enemies. We both oppose the Sirens. Maybe there are others."

Whatever reply Shreth might have made was preempted by the arrival of his brother and his mate. Hsaan's absence hadn't improved his mood any. The large feline's eyes were narrow slits, his ears and tail displaying the same tells of agitation that Shreth had shown only moments before.

"What treachery is this?" he spat, bounding into the clearing. "Why have you freed one of the prisoners?"

"We spoke of common enemies, nothing more," Shreth's voice was a low rumble. "Remember your place, Brother."

Hsaan jerked upright, as if he'd been struck. His lips pulled back from his long fangs in a low, threatening hiss.

"Common enemies? The human seeks to deceive you, Shreth. They are sent by the Sirens to destroy us. Look! See what we've found in the wreckage of their ship."

Royce noticed for the first time that Faarsh was carrying a bundle in the crook of her arm. He didn't know what they'd found in the wreckage of the Warhorse, but it probably wasn't going to bring him or Torus any luck. The ship had been carrying weapons and supplies to the Pearlwatch Estuary,
the first human settlement on Solorest, the southeastern continent across the Siren’s Sea from Mizdan, where the Human Imperium had continued to grow and expand for thousands of years.

Faarsh tossed the bundle at Shreth's feet and he kicked it open with an agile toe. Steel gleamed in the firelight. Weapons from the ship's hold. If they'd survived the wreck, there had to be more of the ship further down the coast. Perhaps other survivors.

Shreth glared at him, and Royce forced himself to keep an impassive mask. If he showed any sign of guilt now, the Shyraan would assume he was lying about the Sirens and kill them both. He wanted to salvage the relationship if at all possible. The Sirens had been a thorn in the side of the Imperium for a long time. They'd harried countless ships crossing the Ebon Sea, drawing them off course, or worse.

"What say you, human?" Shreth peered at Royce. The question hung pregnant in the thick jungle air.

"No more talk!" Hsaan roared.

The surprise of the attack was betrayed by the bunching of the thick
muscles of Hsaan's thighs. Royce saw him coil, quickly deduced the weight of the massive body, and ducked under the attack with a boost of speed granted by the Quintessential Sphere.

Hsaan flew over the empty air where Royce had been. He spun in the air, an act of feline grace that no human could hope to match, and landed on the balls of his feet, ready to attack again. Shreth spat something in their native tongue, but Royce paid him no heed. With the tip of his foot, he flipped a sword from the open bundle into the air and caught the hilt with a single deft motion.

Pain flashed through him, and it was reassuring. Skin-to-steel contact could kill a Quintessentialist. They'd burn just for having the audacity to lift a blade. For Royce, the pain was a reminder of his connection to the Sphere. The physical price that was paid for his miraculous fighting abilities.

~

This was the end, Royce knew. The realization didn't come to him with a sense of panic, just the knowledge that he had a decision to make. He had enough strength, enough power from the Quintessential Sphere, to save one of them. He could save himself, or he could save Torus, but he couldn't save them both. It wasn't even a decision, really. Royce would welcome death when it came, the last honor of a true warrior. Torus would live to tell of his Captain's fall.

Hsaan and Faarsh closed on him, claws like daggers, waiting to rend flesh and taste his blood. Shreth, who had been so close to being reasonable, succumbed to the thirst for combat last. But he had succumbed, Royce knew, and could no longer be considered a potential ally. It was three against one and Royce knew how it
would play out. The Shyraan hesitated, their eyes flicking up and down the length of the blade.

Royce would have preferred a longer sword, a two-handed great blade that would have cleaved the three of them in half at a blow. The blade he held now was barely three feet long, but it would have to do. Slipping into the Quintessential Sphere, he was comforted by the silver-white colors of the Ethereal Realm. Living memory flowed through him, conquests of wars long past. His heart quickened and he embraced the power that came to him.

The Shyraan attacked at once, falling on him in a chaotic mass of flashing claws and slavering fangs. He struck with the broad side of the sword, knocking Hsaan's legs out from under him and darting through the hole in their ranks. His legs still pained him greatly, but not enough to rip apart his concentration and drag him from his commune with the Sphere.

"Torus, when you hit the ground, RUN!" he roared, and swung the sword from his shoulder, severing the thick vine that held the cage aloft. There was a soft scraping as the vine that held the cage whipped around the trunk of the tree, then a crash as the cage hit the ground, the sides splintering from the impact.

Torus helped, hammering his massive shoulder into the wall of the cage and sending it exploding outward across the clearing. It slammed into Faarsh, sending her sprawling, and both Shreth and Hsaan were briefly distracted by her fall.