Sparks (24 page)

He smeared a happy smile across his face, and I knew he already felt better.

“I know. I’m going to marry her.
You know
.” Micha teased my ability to sense his thoughts. I was supremely happy for my friend, and hopeful he could find some hint of what I had with Khea.

“I’m going to marry Khea,” I admitted a moment later. It didn’t seem right to know the depth of his caring for Iseut without offering some glimpse of mine.

“Yeah, I figured. You two are always together, though you never actually talk.” Micha silently revealed a suspicion that Khea could read my thoughts as well, and I had to smile at his cunning. He may not have been able to read me, but he certainly knew me well enough to get along just fine.

We spent the next hour or so talking as the mountain drifted closer, and I explained to him about the Affinity and the major points of Khea’s Spark. He was intrigued that we were able to communicate silently, and thought it hilarious that she was far more skilled. We discussed the bracelets worn by the crew and how we were going to come by getting some for ourselves. Neither of us was interested in getting into any kind of trouble as we made our way to Uxmal. It was the first time we got a chance to just talk.

A loud force suddenly shook the Turtle, throwing Micha and me to the deck. Immediately, I looked around to see the cause and couldn’t believe my eyes as a thick stream of smoke began to rise from the mountain.
So it’s a not-so-dormant volcano
. Citrine cried out and swooped in a circle around the ship, her warning too late to keep us on our feet.

I quickly dropped down the ladder to the lower floor to find Khea had been knocked from her hammock and lay on the floor holding her bleeding wrist and squinting from the pain in her head. “Khea–” I said as I approached her, struggling with my anger when I saw her hurt.

“I’m fine. Just cut myself on the rough wood.” I helped her up off the floor and assisted her up the ladder. By the time we reached the top, her wrist had closed and only the blood dripping down her arm gave any sign she had been injured. The rattled thoughts she sent me told me her head was worse off, though.

Micha helped Jhoma and Khasla up the ladder, and I was glad to notice each of them seemed to fare better than Khea.

Standing on deck, the enormity of the explosion became instantly apparent. The entire area of the sky around the mountain had turned black as a cloud of ash shot up and spread in the wind. An orange river began to make its way down the southeastern face, burning a track towards the water. A moment later, fiery hail shot from the top and began to rain down; the wind was bringing them right towards us.

“Khea, you have to turn the wind.” She saw the situation just as I did, but had to concentrate to get the wind to obey her. It seemed like it just didn’t want to cooperate, and I wondered how badly her head had been hurt in the fall.

What limited success she had with the wind came too late as the orange and yellow balls of flame were already closing in.

“Just put them out. Khasla! Get over here!” A rattled Khasla stood idly staring up at the sky in amazement but it was too late. The first flaming projectile struck through the wide orange sail, knocking down bits of fabric and wood that had caught fire. Khasla quickly set to work putting them out before I turned his attention to the next one.

Just as with Khea, he struggled to gain control, only succeeding in reducing the heat slightly. The second hit tore through the rails, skidding across the deck until it burned a hole and fell to the lower level.

I grabbed Khea’s arm to pull her towards the less damaged back of the ship. “Can you swim?” It wasn’t a ‘do you know how to swim’ type of question, as we both grew up in a fishing village, but rather a ‘are you in good enough shape to swim’ type, and I wasn’t entirely sure I would trust her answer.

She nodded but the blurriness in her head disagreed; the fall from the hammock had rattled her more than she realized. Looking over the rails, a second ship was closing in fast. It had managed to evade any direct hits; for a moment I thought we might be lucky enough to be picked up by a passing ship before we drowned.

Tototl appeared on deck next to us looking more frightened than I’d ever seen a man. “Chimalma,” he said more to himself than me or Khea, his thread revealing he recognized the dog on the flag of the ship.

At that moment, I knew it had all been planned. The volcano was just a ploy to get us to Chimalma and let Yaotl have us. Someone had been behind it all, and if someone was working that hard to get us there, nothing good could come from it. We had to find a way off the ship and somehow avoid the Chimalman vessel.

When I thought about everything on board that I needed to get off, it somehow seemed like an impossibly long list: Micha, Jhoma, Khasla, Obsidian, Jasper, my father’s ring. A quick pass of the hand over my pocket told me it was already there.
One less thing to worry about.

Citrine completed another pass as Jhoma and Micha joined us at the back of the Turtle. Jhoma’s sleeve was burned and singed where he held his arm delicately at his side, but otherwise they seemed alright. The horses I couldn’t help. They were on the lowest deck and would never be able to swim far enough. It was a horrible decision to make, but I had to put Khea first; there was nothing I could do.

“Come on, make for that ship!” Khasla yelled as he picked himself over the rail. Tototl grabbed his arm and shook his head.

“Not that ship,” I told him.

With no other choice, we jumped into the deep purple as a ball of fire struck through the tattered core of the Turtle and pushed her into the sea. The water was warmer than I expected, but the sudden shock of the water made me race for the surface. I still held Khea’s hand as she swam towards the light, kicking as smoothly as if she was born for the water.

When we broke the surface, it was clear we’d never outrun the Chimalman ship. It was already right on top of us; we never stood a chance. Only Tototl tried to flee, desperately grabbing at the water to pull himself away. The rest of us could only wait as the ship pulled nearer and a small boat was dispatched to collect us. I knew it would be wiser to save my strength for a fight, than waste it in a pursuit I couldn’t win.

Khea sent me her agreement, but it was covered in fear. Nothing good would come of this, and we both knew it.

Moments later we were thrown roughly to the dark wood deck of the ship. Khea was immediately seized, and before I could make a move, a hard blow to the head wiped everything and replaced it with darkness.

Chimalma

I awoke to the same darkness I had been lost to, only the searing pain behind my eyes a sign I was no longer asleep.

My back leaned against a moist stone wall with a healthy layer of slippery growth, and my hands rested in my lap, shackled at the wrists and connected by a chain. A quick test proved the chain was attached to the stone wall, but the loudness of the rattle caused immediate regret. My hand reached up to reveal a large swollen bump behind my right ear. The stickiness of my drying blood told me it would be there a while.

“Lark?” Micha’s voice called out from not too far into the darkness. I suddenly remembered all that had happened: the Turtle, the volcano, the ship, Khea.

“Are you alright? Where’s Khea?”

Micha’s thread quickly confirmed my worst fear. “I don’t know. Last thing I remember was that guy with the feathers taking her below deck. They went for you first though. They waited a minute for the rest of us. Jhoma’s still out.” His memory showed a Nakben man with generous arm tattoos and a red, feathered headdress pulling Khea by the arm as she struggled against him. Just as Micha said, he had pulled her towards the access panel to the lower decks of the ship–and no doubt intended her for some ominous purpose.

I had no recollection of the feathered man, but immediately recognized the implications of being targeted.
It’s like they knew I would be able to find her.
Reminded, I sent out a thread. Since learning about the Affinity, I had always been able to sense her. When she denied me access, I could sense her blocking. But now there was nothing. A cold terror began to take root.

“How long have we been out?”

“Hard to know. Long enough to get the ship back to port and get us down here.”

Sure enough, Micha was right. The dark room didn’t roll and sway with the sea. We were back on land and, given the total absence of light, probably underground.

“Tototl?”

“Alive,” came the deep voice in Nakben. I sensed the crippling fear that had begun to consume him. His large size would make a great gift to Chichiton, and he was bracing himself for certain death.

Tototl’s memory of Khea being pulled away by a man with feathers matched Micha’s, but his was laced with his certainty that she was dead. He knew Yaotl loved the young, beautiful, and strong as the best gifts for the dog, and my Khea fit every category. Even without knowledge of her Spark, she was far too attractive to get out alive. There was nothing I could do to dispel his assumptions, but inside I struggled to think past the pain in my chest.

“Khasla?”

“Here.”

“Can you melt the chains and get us out of here?”

“No.”

“No?” I asked in awe. Was he really refusing to help us? A quick read showed me the real reason: his restraints were carved of stone.
Someone knew.

“I can’t,” he replied, his words guilty.

“Can you make some light?” A moment later an unbelievably bright light appeared and my eyes slammed shut. It took several minutes for my eyes to adjust enough to make out Khasla’s hand hovering under the small flicker of flame.

The room holding us was made entirely of stone, not stone bricks mortared together, but rather a giant space carved from a single stone. Each of us was chained to the wall, our restraints held to the stone with eye-bolts that looked to have been there for generations. Between each of us were a series of ancient-looking metal bars that separated the room into individual cells.

“Can you use it to melt the eye-bolt in the wall?” The spark seemed to go out at first, plunging us back into the dark, but an orange glow of molten metal appeared on the wall near Khasla’s left shoulder. He pulled away as far as he could, and a moment later the chain let loose from the wall.

“Careful. It’ll be hot,” Micha warned him, prompting a disbelieving look; if anyone knew how to handle heated metal, it would be a Striker. Despite his expression, I sensed he was pleased to be able to assist our escape.

Working around the stone restraints on his hands, Khasla melted through the metal bars that separated his cell from mine, though it took several minutes to heat the thick iron bars one at a time. Each bar would glow hot orange at the site he worked and begin to drip molten iron onto the stone floor.

When he was able to make a hole large enough–and the iron had cooled enough to let him through–he clambered into my cell to begin working on my chain and restraints. The light from his efforts was enough to illuminate the small space around us, but as soon as he was finished the room went dark again.

“Light,” I asked when my hands were free from the iron cuffs.

The flame appeared again so I could evaluate Khasla’s restraints. They were clearly not the effort of a stoneworker, showing no signs of contact with any tools. Instead they were formed by a Shaker, and a gifted one at that; they were made especially to fit him. Without a large hammer and a considerable amount of time, there was nothing I could do to free his wrists. “Help the others. We’ll find a way to get this off you when we get out of here.”

Khasla silenced his disappointment while dutifully melting the chains from the wall. Once they were cool, we slid them through the rings that held them to the wrist cuffs, freeing ourselves except for the wrist cuffs themselves. Again, Khasla proved useful as he lightly touched the hinged connection and let the cuffs drop loudly to the floor. After the first, we were careful to release them on the ground to limit alerting anyone outside to our activity.

As he worked, I combed my mind for how I might be able to find Khea–if she was even still alive. “Khasla, did you show them your Spark when we were captured? A flame? A spark or anything?”

“No. I thought if I showed it, I’d be more likely to be picked for sacrifice.” His logic was sound, but it didn’t answer how someone would have known to use stone restraints. There was only one answer: they had a Reader.

A Reader could have read me to learn that Khea was the Majestic, that she was more powerful than anyone else alive, in Nakbe or otherwise. I had been the reason she was picked immediately, and it was my fault she was gone. It was too much to live with.

Micha brought me back in time to wake Jhoma with a few rough shakes before Khasla could remove the chains and wrist cuffs. It took several minutes to explain what we knew about the cells, and about Khea, and get everyone free, aside from Khasla’s stone restraints.

I had no choice but to explain my Spark. Jhoma took the news about my Spark as well as anyone could, mumbling about knowing I couldn’t learn to read that fast on my own. Khasla didn’t seem to care one way or the other, too bothered by his stone manacles.
 

When at last it was done, Khasla lit up the room and located the only thing that could be a door: a large circular stone carved with ancient Nakben symbols that stood at least two feet taller than me. A look to the side confirmed it was meant to be rolled, based on the deep tracks in the soil and heavy, labored boot prints.
This won’t be easy.

Before attempting to move the stone, I scanned the nearby area to see how many minds were on the other side, but I couldn’t get a read on anyone. No one wore a bracelet, no one blocked. We had been thrown down there and forgotten
. A stone that can’t be moved. A room that isn’t guarded. Restraints that can’t be opened.
Whoever had put us down there had no intention of coming to check on us or keeping us for a later sacrifice. We were meant to die down there.

“Alright, the other side is clear. Grab a side and roll it,” I instructed the group.