The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) (11 page)

“In the most critical way. Sar Stusson lived his life, had a family, lost them, and discovered that even later in life he could grasp the Secrets. You, you’ve never lived your own life. You trained at Cathedral, gained your Entitlement, became a Steward almost immediately, entered the fighting circuit as a an exhibition fighter—one might even say for recruiting purposes—and found wild success there. But everything you’ve done has been for the Church, directly or indirectly.”

She studied him as was her unconscious habit, sinking into his slate-blue eyes. He looked like a man of 40, in perfect physical condition, his skin healthy, but brown with the sun and weathered by years and by his training. He was lean and of average height, but covered with corded muscle. Everyone who knew him spoke of his presence, though, having the sense that he has a much bigger man than he was in reality. Lissa knew that this was the result of a combination of his Entitlement and his potent will which spilled out of him constantly, like wine overflowing a cup.

“I know that you want more. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me, hear it in your voice when you speak to me. But that steely will of yours provides you with a variety of armors.”

“Some day, Lissa.”

She took his wrists, lifted his hands from her shoulders, drew his body to hers, and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was long, gentle, and insistent. When finished, she stepped back and wiped the wetness from her confident smile.

“Sooner than you think, Sar Fosso. There is no shame in coupling. Before long all those that can be taught will have been, and your role as teacher, as mentor, as Steward will be finished. You’ll simply be a man Entitled by God, free at least to love who you will. I only hope that it’s me.”

She turned, and started away, but added over her shoulder in a musical tone, “I can wait. And I will. There are things—
people
—worth waiting for. You’ll pardon me for continuing to try while I wait, though. We all have our gifts. I’m simply exercising mine.”

And then she was gone.

Fosso stared after her, grinning in spite of himself, though his eyes were sad. Somewhere below the surface he was weak. In fact, he couldn’t imagine life without Lissa or her advances. Of course it stoked his ego, what ego he could afford to have, but from the beginning it had been different with her. He’d had thousands of students, and though female Entitlement holders were somewhat rare, that fact did not prevent women from studying in great numbers and among them had been and would always be a fair share of those who could be classified as nothing less than beautiful. But Lissa was different. Something about her personality fit the contour of his in a way that made him shudder, that felt more divine than Entitlement itself. He hoped that she’d been sincere, that she would wait. He wanted nothing more than to be with her—when such was possible. It was a hope that he feared to embrace, though. Duty could not be ignored, not if the prophecy were to be believed. And what else was there but to believe it? Fosso had no doubts in that regard, nor could anyone who held Entitlement. One need only focus his or her powers of concentration to know the truth of the prophecy and its coming.

Fosso tore his eyes away from where Lissa had gone and now regarded the rising sun, a bright yellow disk resting on the ragged gear-tooth skyline of Tensa. Time passed and could never be reclaimed, and though the Sixth Secret could be a great boon, the promise of a thousand years meant nothing if the coming calamity could not be stemmed.

He pushed through the bushes and low trees, following the path Lissa had taken. He stopped long enough to collect and don his clothes—white linen britches, a shirt of the same material—then continued through the access way that led down into the cathedral.

He came down a set of widening stairs into a foyer. Both the stairs and foyer were done in the same polished speckled black stone, which spoke not of ostentation, but of strength and security as well as wealth. Sealed doors lined the walls and led off to his personal apartments and those reserved for visiting or other resident stewards. To steward, one need not actually hold Entitlement; it was enough to be an Initiate of the Fourth Secret, and in these desperate times, the Church could use all the help and all the instructors they could lay their hands on. Vos Raansik was at capacity with 450 acolytes and could not function smoothly without at least ten stewards so most of the apartments were in use now but empty at the moment as the day’s training was about to begin.

His slippered feet were soundless upon the smooth stone as he crossed the foyer to the far wall. There he stepped into the middle of three thick glass tubes with open fronts, each wide enough to accommodate three men, and all apparently without floors. As his feet settled to where the floor should be, his body was seized gently by an unseen force and began to sink lazily. At his back, the sun, visible through the glass, climbed higher into the sky while before him all was black. Soon the black gave way to light creeping up from below to fill the tube. The training grounds were revealed as he continued down: ten mezzanine levels filled with acolytes, many of them practicing the movements that Kan Fosso had made famous during his career on the fight circuit.

The crane might not be as fierce as the tiger or as deadly as the snake, but it was well-respected for its concentration, focus, and longevity. It was also quite capable of defending itself.

Fosso reached the bottom of the training grounds and stepped from the aperture in the glass tube. Sunlight streamed into the grounds from behind him through ten stories of tinted windows set within I-beams and concrete. All the surrounding walls were windows held together by the same latticework so that the view to the outside was limited only by the mezzanine floors and various pieces of building maintenance machinery.

The tiered ranks of acolytes quieted as Fosso stepped up onto the dais from which he routinely gave instruction. He looked them over, all of them, with hard eyes that nearly glowed, saying nothing. While he was not dissatisfied by what he saw, he wondered if men alone, with the Entitlement of God or not, would be enough in the face of the King of Spades. They would have to be, though. For even if the King of Hearts made an appearance, he could not save them all.

When all was quiet, he took a deep breath and uttered a guttural and thunderous, “Ho-oh!” with intonation that rose and fell to indicate affirmation and challenge both.

A heartbeat of silence ensued and was shattered by countless shouts and hoots of charge. The men at the base of the dais swarmed forward, each eager to cross fists with Kan Fosso, Champion of Voskos, Senior Steward of Vos Raansik Cathedral. Men upon every mezzanine level scrambled for a way down, by way of stair or by mad leaps through open space. Fosso scanned the crowd for Lissa, noted her, and summoned forth his Halo of white gold. He exhaled sharply and the Halo flared, bowling over fifty men or more who had stood in its path. Other men clambered over their fallen fellows, shouting all the while, making for Fosso. When the first got close enough, Fosso struck him with his crane fist, fingers bent and gathered together to a point which was the striking surface. He struck the man squarely in the center of his broad forehead, causing instant unconsciousness and the man’s eyes to roll up to the whites into his head. Fosso was surrounded now, but few of these acolytes had progressed beyond the Second Secret and so offered little in the way of threat. Each strike Fosso blocked or turned away set his attacker’s teeth to rattling. Even without clothing himself in steel, his muscles and the bones beneath were like iron, but he moved as swiftly as the wind, never stopping and never being caught unaware.

More and more of the acolytes rushed the dais. Fosso leapt once delivering a roundhouse kick that turned four heads abruptly to one side before they dropped to the floor like stones. Sar Aaston was the first of the stewards to fall. A rising front kick caught him under the chin, lifted him up, and sent him sprawling into the crowd.

A sunset-red glow caught Fosso’s eye, but when he looked, the telltale light of Lissa’s hatchling Halo was gone. She was improving almost before his eyes.

He grinned and leapt back, turning a tight somersault in the air to abandon his position on the dais. The height and speed he achieved drew gasps from some of the newer acolytes—he looked weightless, but solid and hard as steel at the same time. Fosso had no mercy for gawkers. His crane fists lashed out, always with the final snap of the wrist to punctuate the fingertip strike. Acolytes fell like rain around him. Stewards Gresskan and Pallsiver went down to a single hopping roundhouse kick. Sar Morros was the first to engage him for more than mere seconds. Their arms tangled, or appeared to. Morros struck with his own crane fist, but was blocked stroke for stroke. Just as the assistant steward thought he was getting the upper hand, Fosso front-kicked an acolyte approaching from one side in the midsection dropping him, and managed to block the simultaneous attacks from both Morro and another acolyte coming from the other side. Fosso felled the acolyte with with an elbow to the forehead, and focused on Morro, intensifying his assaults and beating back the steward’s defenses until gaining an opening through which he snapped a crane fist upon the steward’s brow, removing him from the fight.

There were few acolytes left now, but among them stood the remaining stewards. Lissa was somewhere, hiding in plain sight behind the power of her Halo. He couldn’t sense her at all and wondered if she had had a sudden jump in perception and grasped the Sixth Secret over the course of this exercise. It pleased him to think so and would explain her perfectly masked presence. If she had, she would be more of a challenge than the rest.

Though stewards Fennin, called the Red Wolf, and Krassis, Fullston, and Niistravo, together called the King Kites, had spent time successfully on the fight circuit, none of them had advanced beyond the Lesser Secrets, nor had any of them shown near as much potential as Lissa had. Their skills would force him to give his full and undivided attention, but it was the thought of the imminent contest with Lissa that he relished.

With their experience, those four were warier than stewards Tiilda and Essroth, however. Tiilda leapt for Fosso, but Fosso kicked off the ground, drew his legs up so his body was a tight ball, and soared over Tiilda, driving his legs down into the assistant steward’s back. Tiilda’s grace snapped like a taut wire, his limbs all bent in different directions and he crashed to the floor, unable to rise. Essroth tracked Fosso’s path through the air and tried to take advantage of the senior steward’s landing. He succeeded only in delaying his own defeat by a few extra seconds. Fosso caught the wrist of his striking hand in a grip that made Essroth’s eyes go wide and drove the top of his wrist—the crane’s head—into Essroth’s nose.

Fosso kicked off the ground once more, rising like a shot, his Halo flaring to brilliance. A blazing circle of white-gold light sped down, growing as it descended, until it met the floor where it impacted with a bass thump. Unconscious men and women lying on the floor bounced up as high as a meter and crashed back down unceremoniously from the shock. Anyone who had been left standing and was within the confines of the circle was standing no longer, having joined the rest in unconsciousness. The Red Wolf and the King Kites were able to escape Fosso’s Golden Crown. A sunset-red figure also flashed out of the way only to merge again into shadows and nothing.

Raising their Haloes, the four stewards moved quickly to surround Fosso as he landed. Fennin, the Red Wolf, sported an animate wolf’s head atop his shoulders and was covered from foot to crown in writhing blood-red energy that pretended at fur. His claw-tipped fingers were bent as if he held a cup in each hand. The King Kites were were not so fantastic in their displays, but their Haloes radiated marbled light: blue and gray for Krassis, brown and white for Fullston, and gold and black for Niistravo. Their fighting styles were also unlike Fosso’s, each with their hands set into three-fingered claws.

Fennin crouched, looking for a moment like a wolf on its haunches, before he sprang at Fosso, howling. Niistravo followed up, pulling through the air, hand over hand, with his claws until engaging Fosso, who ducked to avoid Fennin. Fennin sought to uproot Fosso with his momentum and grapple with him, but his course took him past the senior steward. Niistravo’s claw hands came fast and were accompanied by sparkles and flashes of gold that dazzled and distracted, but were ineffective against Fosso’s superior perception. Fosso blocked each and every one of Niistravo’s attempted strikes as well as those added by Krassis, who’d joined them. Both started, though, as Fosso bowed sharply, his right leg sweeping up high behind him to catch Fullston on the chin, defeating his plans for a sneak attack.

Krassis and Niistravo shared a look to cement their resolve and renewed their efforts, both increasing the strength of their Haloes. Fosso smiled and met them: Fennin with his right arm and Niistravo with is left. He could feel them pushing themselves, though, and it was having some effect. He had to exert himself more to prevent their strikes from budging his blocks and there was still Fennin to consider. The Red Wolf, most skilled of all the assistant stewards, circled them waiting for an opportunity.

In a burst of impossible speed, Fosso’s hands flashed, casting away the defenses of both the remaining King Kites, and mirrored blue steel sheathed him like a falling shadow. His hands shot out, the heels of his palms hitting like pistons, straight through their open arms and hammering into each’s chest. They rose up off their feet and followed a V pattern away from Fosso.

Fosso turned to address Fennin, but he saw Fennin preoccupied with a sunset-red flash from above. The blurred shape sped down upon him like a falling arrow, striking him only to spring away and disappear like dissipating fog. White light shining from his eyes and gaping mouth, Fennin stood for yet a moment before collapsing.

“
Excellent
,” Fosso called. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Lissa. When did you master Sar Stusson’s fist?”