Rite of Exile: The Silent Tempest, Book 1 (27 page)

Soren shook his head. “I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s only a reaction to its immense age.”

He only inspected the immediate area for a few minutes, then faced his companion with an air of finality. Caleb had no choice but to accept the obvious, and followed Soren back to the door, his heart sinking.

Rennor, with nothing to do for hours but stare at the flickering walls or comfort a fitful child, was in no mood to be humored once he learned of their failure. He groaned at the prospect of the long ascent, and not without cause: the climb back proved much more difficult. The others waited without comment, however, as Rennor paused several times to recover, his breathing raw and labored. Warren kept pace for the most part, having slept for a while in the passage below. But he needed his father’s help in spots where there were few footholds, forcing them to rely almost entirely on the strength of their arms.

Soren and Rennor had long since flung their torches away, relying on the flashlight; the flames still burned at the distant bottom of the shaft like a pair of tiny, fluttering eyes. The climb seemed to take hours. But eventually they caught the wormy odor of topsoil, and saw a dawn sky dotted with a few remaining stars through the opening above. The final stretch proved the most difficult, as Soren had discovered earlier; both Caleb and Warren needed a lift from his helping hand after he struggled out of the hole. Rennor was finished. Already exhausted, the last few yards of dirt were simply too much for him. Like Soren, Caleb was beginning to lose patience with him, and muttered a string of curses as he dropped down into the hole again to help the debilitated man back to reality.

They all rested in the grass near the stone. The cold dawn breeze as it swept about the hill felt good on Caleb’s sweat-soaked face. The brightening world looked vast and empty after that dark cave, and he longed for Ekendoré more than ever. But he was still an outcast. Now that his hope in Graxmoar had faded there was no telling how long his search for Kseleksten or any kind of cure for Warren might last.

They brushed the dirt from their filthy clothes as best they could and gathered their belongings. Caleb contemplated the prospect of searching for some other place on this world to live, some faraway country where they had never heard of Orand or the Yrsten Prophecy. But he knew it would be only another escape, another endless path without any chance of a life with Telai—or, eventually, even his own son. With a final shrug in an attempt to mask the despair that had settled over his heart, he hoisted his pack and trudged down the hillside.

Warren had already made it halfway down, as if weary of adult company or purposes. Caleb and Rennor followed, while Soren stayed behind to cover the ragged hole with a few cut boughs of pine. Caleb kept silent, loath to hear the tone of failure in his own voice. In any case they were all dead tired, save perhaps Warren. Their sole purpose now was to hike far enough from the hill to make camp.

The sun’s first rays leaped over the horizon, and the land brightened swiftly. Colors returned; far ahead an owl wafted toward its roost after a long night’s hunt. Caleb noticed Warren scrabbling at something near the foot of the hill, and his eyes stung with bitterness. The boy looked like a mindless forager, an animal in the dirt.

“Warren! We’ve got to get going.”

“Let him dig,” said Rennor, approaching.

“What?”

“Don’t you see where he’s digging?”

Only a few feet down the slope, where the boy had already dug a small hole, a dull, white sphere gleamed in the soil. It was the skull Soren had found.

A chill struck Caleb’s heart, and with a blistering oath he bent down again to yank his son away. But Rennor swung him around and pointed at the skull, his voice quickening in enthusiasm.

“Don’t you understand? Whoever last found the Lor’yentré dropped it here when he died. Everyone else would have searched in the cavern like us. It’s here, I’m sure of it!”

Caleb snapped free of Rennor’s grasp. “Then why let Warren dig for it? And why did a healthy Raén die on the side of a hill?”

Rennor laid a firm hand on Caleb’s arm again—this time with dire consequences. There was a blow to Rennor’s face like the snap of a twig, and he fell back, his nose and mouth plastered with blood. Caleb shook his knuckles, grimacing, then reached for his son.

He froze, his hand inches from Warren’s shoulder. For the boy had screamed in agony.

Caleb stared aghast. Harsh and almost cruel in its intensity, it was a cry he had never heard any child use before.

Warren remained crouched, gripping something against his chest. He trembled for a moment, then turned to his father and unclenched his soiled fingers.

Two narrow, black cylinders lay across his hands. Elliptical in shape rather than circular, their satin-like finish devoured light rather than reflected it, giving off a faint aura that darkened the skin of Warren’s palms. Each half was rounded at one end, recessed by a small, circular port; one glowed faintly blue, the other green, and the opposite ends were jagged—as if once whole but now were broken in two.

The Second Lor’yentré.

Caleb’s heart turned to ice. The sight should have drawn a shout of victory from his lips. Instead it infected his soul with a poison of utter loneliness, like the cry of a prisoner long left to rot in a forgotten dungeon. A wave of guilt accompanied that loneliness, as if all the griefs in his life—Karla’s death, Warren’s sickness, his betrayal of the Oath—were somehow made manifest in this little device, convicting him beyond all hope of salvation.

He barely had enough breath in his lungs to speak. “Warren—are you all right?” he whispered hoarsely. The boy nodded.

Soren had leaped down the hill at Warren’s scream, and he ground to a halt before them. “What in great Grondolos happened?”

“Interesting choice of words,” said Caleb. “Warren’s found the Broken Lor’yentré—or at least I think so.”

Soren looked down at the boy, then crouched beside him. He smiled and held out his hands, but Warren shrank away.

“Give it to him, Warren. Don’t worry, you can trust him.”

“Why? I’m the one who found it.”

No one spoke. All sound of wind and weather faded from Caleb’s ears.

Warren’s eyes wandered, as if he were struggling to find the right words. “Finders keepers, losers weepers—right, Dad? Isn’t that what they used to say?”

“
Warren?
” Caleb asked, his heart pounding.

“I’m okay,” he said, standing up. “I don’t know how it happened. But I’m all right now. I’m like I was before.”

Caleb’s voice caught in his throat, an excruciating reluctance to believe what he was hearing—lest this all be a dream the slightest disturbance might shatter.

“It’s like I just woke up,” Warren added. “I don’t remember much—only a couple of words from their language, and a few people here and there.” He smiled. “Like Telai.”

Caleb glanced at Soren, desperate for confirmation. But the old Raén only wore a puzzled frown, unable to comprehend the boy’s transformation. Rennor merely sat cleaning his bloodied face with a bit of cloth he had soaked in the morning dew.

Warren grimaced and placed a hand on his stomach. “Dad—when are we going to eat?”

Caleb tilted his head back, spread his arms, and sent a mighty shout into the sky.

He fell to his knees and wrapped the boy in his arms, laughing. Long the sound of his triumph lasted. But his laughter slowly took on another tone, until it faded quite away, and he wept quietly. Warren hesitated, no doubt uncomfortable with such an emotional display, then gripped his father in return.

At last Caleb stood back to look upon him again. “
It found no illness it could not cure,”
he murmured as if to himself. He pointed at the Master Raén. “You!—with your talk of evil and hidden purposes. This was meant to be.
Meant to be!
” he yelled, raising his fist.

Rennor rose to his feet, blood still flowing from his nose and his eyes watering. Despite this he seemed elated, perhaps accepting a punch in the face as the price of success. The trace of a frown still darkened Soren’s expression, but he shook off his reluctance enough to grip Caleb’s shoulder.

“I’m happy for you,” he said. “Warren, too.”

Warren merely blinked at him, and for an instant Caleb feared a relapse of some kind. Then he dismissed the thought as absurd. “Thank him, son.”

The boy turned a strange, blank stare toward his father. “I already told you—I don’t know their language that well.”

“Sorry,” Caleb said, then taught him how to say
thank you
in Adan.

Warren repeated it to Soren, who smiled a little. “Fine, Warren. But you should give the Broken Lor’yentré to one of us.”

Caleb translated his words. A flash of anger contorted Warren’s face, then vanished.

“Soren, let him be for a bit,” Caleb said. “He’s a little shook up right now. Wouldn’t you be? I understand your right to such an important find, but there’s plenty of time for that.”

Rennor was starting to become almost unrecognizable, with his quickly bruising nose and puffed eyes. “I ‘gree” he said, as if suffering from a bad cold. “Besides, de healig powers might go ‘way once Warren gibs it up.”

There was a sharp ring of steel being drawn, and a cold blade slapped against his neck.

Soren’s eyes glared inches away from Rennor’s. “A day will come when you speak one word too many, and it will be your last!”

Both Caleb and Warren looked on, slack-jawed in astonishment. But Rennor had made a valid point, and Caleb stepped where Soren could see him, palms held out in appeasement. “Soren, if there’s any chance that taking the Lor’yentré from Warren might reverse the healing … ”

His voice trailed away as the Master Raén turned his stare upon him. After a moment Soren withdrew and sheathed his sword.

“You grasp for excuses, man from Earth. I’ll bide my time for now, on the off chance you may be right. But rest assured—we will revisit this matter again before we reach Ada’s borders.”

Caleb nodded, relieved. “Don’t worry, Soren. The Raéni have vowed to destroy the
First
Lor’yentré, not the Second. It’s incapable of evil, broken as it is. It’s as safe in Warren’s hands as it is in anyone’s.”

But the Master Raén was finished with the discussion. “We should leave the island as soon as possible. We can sleep in shifts on the raft.” Without another word he began a determined retreat to the shore.

Caleb offered no protest and followed dutifully. He glanced down at the child walking at his side—Karla’s child—his joy almost more than he could contain.

Yet a faint premonition tainted his euphoria. The rocky terrain demanded his attention, and he tried to dismiss it at first. After all, he had no gift of insight such as Telai or Garda possessed. Perhaps it was merely a leftover effect of his strange guilt at the sight of the Broken Lor’yentré. But the sensation grew until it stirred the hairs on the back of his neck. The trees still danced in the wind, and the distant blue lake appeared no different than the evening before. Yet something wasn’t right.

He stopped to look behind him. The crown of the hill rose tall and bare against the rising sun. Beneath it stumbled Rennor, his eyes still streaming as he fought to catch up. Nothing unusual about that, Caleb decided. But he couldn’t help thinking that the man’s tears were no longer the tears of pain.

Eventually Caleb shrugged and turned away, hurrying to rejoin his son. An hour later, it finally hit him.

The old tree was gone.

♦ ♦ ♦

Here ends the first part of
The Silent Tempest
. The second part,
Hope Betrayed
, follows Caleb and his son as Soren leads them back to Ada to face the consequences of Warren’s discovery—and his healing.

Map of Ada

Map of Ekendoré

GLOSSARY OF NAMES

All dates are given in Adan years, which are slightly longer than Earth’s. The year of Caleb Stenger’s arrival is 997. For a full appendix visit: