Chapter 23
“And then the farggle birds fly into the air and drop spoors all through the boughs.” Leeta spread her arms and spun around. She and Jayce made their way up a slightly inclined hill. A fog surrounded them. Small blue flowers sprouted from the grass that bloomed and died back within a few seconds.
“Sounds amazing,” Jayce said. “We had scharple squid migrations twice a year. But there wasn’t any sort of celebration. Those squid would eat anyone too close to the water.”
“Your planet doesn’t sound . . . the best.” She scrunched her nose at him. “Are you going back?”
“Not if I can help it. The Tyrant’s forces were there, and the Syndicate probably won’t be too happy to see me again.”
“Then where will you go?” she asked.
“Paragons go most anywhere, don’t they? The whole galaxy needs them. Us.”
Leeta sighed.
“I had a great-aunt that was touched. Attuned? Is that what you call us? She was eight years old when a Paragon came to our tribe lands. The Paragon was some sort of outlander with skin the color of lava and thick scabs all over.” She waved at her face. “He demanded her, he demanded a little girl and promised she’d be well taken care of and put to work for ‘the greater good.’ My grandparents were . . . not convinced.”
“Not convinced he was a Paragon?” Jayce raised his hilt. “Did he have one of these?”
“Not convinced she wouldn’t just be some sort of slave. The tribes had rebelled from outlander control a generation before and they didn’t want to invite new overlords. They refused the Paragon and asked him to leave. He took her anyway. Killed my grandfather to do it.”
“What? That’s horrible,” Jayce said. “How could a Paragon do that?”
“He must have bragged to the rest of his order because every generation more and more slavers came looking for Attuned in my tribe lands. We had little in the way of weapons, so we hid our children every time the omens said the sky gates were about to open. The Syndicate were . . . were more thorough than others.” Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “They had one of those vile beasts with them—the one with the magic bones—and it found me in the deep forest.”
“I’m sorry, but we’ll get you back home,” Jayce said.
“Where is Illara? Because Kelku’i is in the Tasshal Arm, eighty-five light-years off galactic north.”
“Kelku’i? I’m not exactly sure . . . three days in FTL from Hemenway where I’m from. I’m not exactly an expert on interstellar travel. Need to take a skiff from one trade lash-up to another? Easy work,” he said. “But I heard Syndicate complain about coming out to the Navras Arm.”
“Then your home is tens of thousands of light-years from mine . . . Illara is likely that far as well.” She stopped and put her hands in her face.
“Hey, hey, no reason to cry.” He rubbed her shoulder.
“How can I ever get home?” she sobbed.
“I’ll help you, don’t worry.” Jayce smiled.
Leeta hugged him and the press of her chest against his caught most of his attention. She kissed him on his cheek, then grabbed him by the hand and led him up the hill.
“There anyone waiting for you back home? Besides family?”
“No. I’m one season away from betrothal. My father hopes he can get at least two cows for me as dowry.”
“Two? Why not ten?” Jayce asked.
“No wife has ever gone for ten cows. Ever.” She squeezed his hand.
“Well, you should be the first,” Jayce said.
“That’s sweet of you . . . Jayce, why do you want to be a Paragon?” she asked.
They continued walking toward the Pinnacle; its needle shape glistened in the distance, the base still lost to the haze.
“To matter. Be more than some dock rat. And fighting the last of the Tyrant’s followers will be a bonus.”
Leeta lessened her hold on his hand but didn’t pull it back entirely.
“The Tyrant never came to Kelku’i, but when he was in power, no Syndicate came to steal me away. No one from the Sodality either.”
“Huh. I didn’t know. The Tyrant cost me my father . . . and my mother, in a roundabout sort of way. No Tyrant, no draft. No draft, no soldier’s salary to my mother. If the salary didn’t stop when the Tyrant was killed, my mother wouldn’t have had to go looking for work and she might not have drowned in that storm. So, no Tyrant and my father would’ve stayed with us.”
“That’s good reasoning,” Leeta said. “We live in peace on my world. We’re poor. Nothing worthwhile but the clans and kin. Sometimes slavers will come, but we fight. They found me, so they might think there are more Attuned for them to take the next time one of these Pilgrimages comes about. I wish there was a way to cut my planet off from all this.”
“You need more protectors.”
“You think the Governance will do it? The Sodality?”
“Isn’t that what they’re for?” he asked.
“Not in my experience. Not in my part of the galaxy. The less we’re involved with all this business, the better off my clan and kin will be.”
“That sounds like a good life,” Jayce said as he pulled ahead of her and let her hand go. “Your clan and kin know anything about . . . here? Sometimes it seems like we’re closer to the Pinnacle, other times I can barely see it.”
“No. Anyone taken by the Paragons or the criminals never comes back.” She squatted down and plucked the blossoming flowers and began twisting them together.
“Hours!” Jayce raised a hand to the distant Pinnacle. “Hours walking and it’s still all the way over there.”
“Shouldn’t we have come across your mentor by now?”
“Uh . . . should’ve. I need to clear my mind and try and focus. I’m going to practice the kata and see if I can enter the Flow.” Jayce drew his hilt.
Leeta clutched a pile of flowers to her chest and took a step back.
“Don’t be afraid.” He flicked his hand and the sword came to life. Motes sprang out and formed a lattice of the blade, then it appeared as dull, solid, light.
“Don’t leave me.” She buried her nose in the flowers and looked at him with wide eyes.
“I won’t.” Jayce sank into the starting position, then raised the first deflection and stepped into the spin-and-slash. His mind didn’t focus on the kata, his thoughts were on the look Leeta had just given him.
He felt a presence behind him, and he shifted to the next deflection and a phantom blade struck toward him and was pushed away by Jayce’s kata step. Jayce didn’t feel the impact as he snapped a high stab, then ducked another ghostly attack. He continued through the kata and drew in a deep breath for the final strike.
He cried out and stabbed forward. The tip of his sword glanced off a polished wall and the hilt jumped from his hand. The blade collapsed back into the hilt, which clattered onto the second step of a stairway.
The Pinnacle scraped against infinity; the heavens behind the Pinnacle were not the creaking sky wall, but the dark of the space surrounding a swirling pool of stars. The apex may have pierced the fountain of light from the center point of the pool.
“Ooh . . . whoa!” He stepped back into the grass and bumped into Leeta.
“How did you do that?” She slunk behind him.
“I am not entirely sure, but we’re here now. Or it came to us. I’m not entirely sure of that either.” Jayce moved slowly toward the stairs leading to a flat area before the Pinnacle. The Pinnacle was a dark gray; its shape wasn’t fixed, but roiled slowly with fractals and geometric shapes. The stairs were made of basalt so polished that they had a mirrorlike sheen.
His reflection was a bit rougher than he thought he looked. He felt Leeta clutch his arm. Her reflection wavered for a moment, then resolved into a fanged monster with stormy skin and red eyes.
He flinched away. The Leeta next to him was just as beautiful and human as the moment he first laid eyes on her.
“You OK?” She smiled.
“Yes, sorry, it’s all . . . it’s all a lot, all of a sudden,” he said. “And I’m suddenly very tired. Are you?”
“I am, but I don’t want to stop. What if your master’s ahead of us?” She fiddled with the flowers.
“I don’t think they’d wait out here in the open. The top of the stairs and that super-tall doorway that just appeared out of nowhere . . . more likely. That’s where I’d find him.” He glanced at her reflection on the stairs. Normal.
“Maybe not.” Her front foot grazed the bottom step, and she pulled back. “We still have our anchors. We don’t have to do this. Let’s just break them and leave before—”
“What? You’d go straight back to being sold into slavery or killed. We can’t give up now.” He took her by the hand.
“What if the anchors don’t even work in there? What if we can’t leave?”
“You don’t know that.” Jayce tugged her hand.
“And you do?”
“What happened to wanting a chance at life instead of a sure death? The chance is there.” He pointed up the stairs. “That’s the only place where I know I can find Maru. He’s an expert at all of . . . this.”
Leeta frowned.
“You’re lucky we’re just getting to know each other and I can still say you were right about things.” She moved a woven flower bracelet from her wrist to Jayce’s, leaving a second one behind. “Let’s go.”