Clear your mind. Feel nothing.
The squalling of an infant gaja jerked her attention to the side where one of the beasts was charging at her. Meg snapped her saber blade up and tilted sideways, the off balance weight of the high setting awkward and new. She caught herself before she tipped over and swung, the blade glancing off the dragon’s thick hide, though at least it left a mark. The dragon skittered away with a squeal of pain.
Meg shut her eyes.
Clear your mind. Feel nothing.
Another shriek but this time it was gaja Tzaitel took care of. Apparently she’d figured out her new saber settings well enough to fight with them. That was something.
Meg swallowed hard. Clear your mind. Stop feeling.
Another gaja went down, its abbreviated roar of rage suggesting that Velanna had taken its head off.
“Margaret, call the Kirana!” Velanna shouted.
What a great idea. I wish I’d thought of it.
The ground shook as a baby gaja landed behind her, its teeth dripping with poison as it loomed over her. Meg swung her saber again, and it cut into the dragon’s hide a bit. But not enough to make a difference as the beast snapped at her.
How am I supposed to feel nothing in the middle of all this?
She dove behind a rock as the gaja nearly snatched her ankle. Meg spun and brought the blade of her saber down on the gaja’s nearest foot, and it shrieked in agony. Meg hadn’t managed to sever its foot, but she’d cut the beast badly.
Small victories.
She’d take it.
She let her eyes drift shut as a wave of pain washed over her, her heart throbbing inside her as though it would burst.
Don’t think about Jenny. Don’t think about Barb.
Maybe Danny was right. Tiron hadn’t given them proof. There was no evidence. Maybe he was lying.
Maybe he was telling the truth.
Her stomach turned. She couldn’t think about this.
Clear your mind. Feel nothing.
Was wasn’t it working? She’d been trying to call the Kirana since they were thrown at Tiron’s feet, and nothing was happening. Were her emotions too extreme? Was her mind too jumbled? Velanna said it required discipline and stillness to summon the Kirana.
If that’s the case, we may be in trouble.
The mountain shook. Was it erupting? No. Meg peered around the boulder as one of the full-grown gaja tromped into view out of the darkness. It might have even been the one that had attacked Chandan Village.
Thirty feet long. Wings that stretched fifty feet. The monster threw its head back and screamed at a pitch that made her ears bleed, and all the remaining gaja infants scurried back to her.
Great.
This fight just kept getting better.
Rocks skittered next to her as Tzaitel slid into view, saber glowing. Her hijab was gone, and her hair had come loose. A stream of dark blood dribbled from one of her ears and the side of her mouth, and she didn’t face Meg as she spoke.
“We cannot fight these beasts,” she muttered.
Meg didn’t answer. They could. Of course, they could. It would just take time and practice to learn how to do it, which were two things they didn’t have enough of.
At the center of the chamber, Velanna spun her saber and faced the dragon with a glare, but even from this distance, Meg knew something was wrong. Velanna favored her right foot. She was hunching over. And she was pale—so pale.
Tzaitel saw it too and hissed, igniting her saber once more. She didn’t look at Meg. “Remember our training.”
“Tzaitel, wait!”
The young Celtican charged the gaja from the side before it could lunge for Velanna, and the dragon reared back in surprise. Tzaitel swung her off-balance saber at the dragon’s legs, and while she didn’t pierce its skin, she didn’t bounce off either.
Tzaitel slid out from under it and stopped, but the gaja whipped its tail around and smashed her through a stalagmite. Tzaitel disappeared in the rubble, and the gaja returned its attention to Velanna.
“Oh, this is a bad idea.” Meg clutched her saber and ran toward Velanna.
“Margaret, no!” Velanna shouted.
The gaja shifted its weight and dove at her, teeth snapping after the long trail of her braid. Meg dodged its teeth and leapt onto the side of the dragon’s monstrous neck, scrabbling up its side.
The gaja shrieked in anger and shook, trying to dislodge her, but Meg clung to the spikes on its spine as the motion slammed her against its rock-hard skin like a flag in a high wind.
With a final shriek of rage, the gaja dislodged her. Meg hit the ground with her back, and her saber flew out of her hands. The dragon lunged at her again, and she rolled out of the way of its bite. It got a mouthful of pumice again, and Meg crawled to where her saber lay.
The dragon pounced on her as she grabbed it and turned it on, and she stabbed upward into the dragon’s belly. But the blade skimmed off the leathery skin just like before.
Meg leapt out from under it and rolled under a deep ledge of rock, desperately fighting for breath as the gaja strained to reach her.
The Centaurs were gathering on the mezzanine above them. It was only a matter of time until they opened fire. And what if Tiron had been lying and Barb and Jenny were still alive? What if he was going to get them right now? She needed eyes on Tiron. She needed to know what he was doing. She had to stop him.
But they couldn’t do anything while this gaja was trying to eat them.
The gaja shoved its yawning mouth under the ledge in an attempt to snap at her, but she was too far back. She could see down its throat, and its needle-teeth shone in the darkness.
I can’t just hide here. I have to do something.
She clutched the saber hilt in her hand and pressed her head against the ground.
Velanna might try to attack again, but she was so weak she could barely stand. And now Tzaitel was down too. The only weapon in the chamber that could take the gaja down was her own. But she couldn’t even cut through an infant gaja’s hide. How was she going to kill an adult?
Maybe it was her mind slipping into despair, but the gentle scent of white jasmine tickled her nose. Hathi vela, like the flowers hung at Tolan’s memorial festival. She’d been hanging them up when she and Jenny spoke last.
Before they fought.
Before the attack.
“You’re so good at that, Meg.” Jenny’s words drifted back to her.
Meg’s balance was laughable, so she’d laughed. But Jenny hadn’t. Jenny never laughed about things like that, the failures and shortcomings Velanna and T’zuman laid at her feet. Jenny didn’t see them. Jenny was blind to them.
“I believe in you enough for both of us.”
Meg grunted and raised her head, feeling tears sting her eyes as she grasped her saber hilt again.
Jenny thought she could do it.
But hanging flowers and killing a gaja were two very different things.
Balance.
That was the key. It was what Velanna insisted on her having. But how could she improve something she didn’t even have?
The saber felt cold in her hands as her fingers brushed the settings dial. The only way to pierce a gaja’s hide was to use the high-level setting, and the only way to use the high-level setting was to be an Andai Warrior.
Wasn’t it?
Balance. Velanna said it was all about balance. And I don’t have any.
Wrong.
She had balance. She just didn’t have balance like a Celtican.
She couldn’t balance like a Josharon; she didn’t have tails. But she’d figured out how to do everything a Josharon could do and more.
Why couldn’t a saber technique work the same way? Because she wasn’t Celtican? Because she was human?
The gaja above her twisted, its mouth leering at her while it drooled venom on the stones.
Tolan had told her that it wasn’t just Celticans that made up the Andai Council of Sages. Peoples from multiple races across many dimensions had been students and masters of Andaiku. It wasn’t just for Celticans. And if other races could master Andaiku, a human could too.
Meg eyed the lashing tongue of the gaja, and just as it reached for her again, she switched her saber on. The electric blade sliced the tongue in half, and the gaja shrieked and backpedaled, flailing its giant head back and forth.
Meg rolled out from under the gaja’s belly and faced it, switching the saber off and turning the settings on high. When she activated the saber blade, instantly the weight shifted. It was like trying to fence with a baseball bat.
Jenny thinks I’m fine the way I am.
She could work like a Josharon without being one. So she could fight like a Celtican too.
Balance.
She shut her eyes and let her body set itself where it felt natural. She let her feet take the stance that felt solid, her arms find a position that felt right.
Balance.
Her body shifted. Her ears perked up. The gaja was angry—really angry now. The burning air squealed as the dragon lunged at her again.
Balance!
Meg opened her eyes. The mouth closed in on her, teeth dripping and throat swallowing. Meg spun, sidestepping the charge, found her center again, and swung down, letting her body follow the weight of the saber blade and following through with a fierce thrust that punctured the side of the gaja’s neck.
The beast wheeled sideways as Meg’s blade cut through its skin, severing and cauterizing the artery in its neck. Meg ripped the blade out of its neck, and it thrashed and flailed with horrifying shrieks.
Meg stood back from the dying animal, gasping for breath.
She’d done it.
She stared at the saber blade in her hand.
A gasp of shock interrupted her thoughts, and she lifted her head to make eye contact with Velanna. Velanna stared at her, mouth agape. Meg gathered herself and bowed her head slightly, and Velanna gave her a fierce, quick nod.
A rage-filled roar sounded from the end of the chamber as Tiron slid back into sight, clutching the velvet bag in his massive hand.
“What have you done?” He wailed. “My sumojoka!”
Meg slid her saber back into its sheath at her lower back and gripped the crystal around her own neck.
“You have slain my dragon!” Tiron screamed. “Death will take you all!”
He tore the velvet bag around his neck open, and the Andhera spilled out of his hands like something living and breathing and full of anger.
It poured out of Tiron’s hands like a river, but it moved like something sentient.
Velanna scrambled to her feet, but she wasn’t upright for long. Viscous black tentacles of darkness snatched her feet out from under her.
The darkness spilled over the chamber, devouring every creature it touched. As Meg watched it consumed Danny and Mickey and Jim. It devoured Tzaitel too as she struggled out of the rubble where the dragon had thrown her.
At the end of the chamber, Tiron cackled like a maniac as the last of the shadow slithered out of the crystal in his hands.
How can I fight that?
She clutched the medallion that hung at her chest, and the stone warmed her palm, even in the stifling air.
The Andhera swirled and coiled like a snake along the floor of the cavern. The Centaurs that managed to escape its grasp flung themselves screaming into the lava pit as it tried to grab them, choosing death on their own terms rather than allowing the Shadow to break their minds.
“Margaret!”
That was Velanna.
The darkness hadn’t consumed her yet, but it was dragging her into its depths. Meg leaped for her hands and clung to her, bracing her feet and pulling as the Shadow tried to pull her into itself.
“The Kirana! Margaret, call the Light!”
The Shadow ripped Velanna out of Meg’s hands, and she tumbled backward. She scrambled back as shadowy tendrils reached for her boots.
Still clutching the medallion, Meg closed her eyes. Her heart hammered behind her lungs. The scalding power of the jewel in her hand beat in time with her heart. Or maybe she imagined that part.
Clear my mind. She took a slow breath. Clear my mind. Focus. Clear my mind.
Somewhere within the darkness, her family suffered. She remembered what it was like. Surrounded by shadow and pain, images and memories and terrors made real and forced upon you.
She had to get them out.
She had to stop Tiron and his Shadow.
Meg pulled the Kirana crystal off her neck and cradled the jewel in her hands.
“All right,” she whispered. “This is it.”
Clear your mind.
Meg shut her eyes and held the crystal out in front of herself.
The terror at loosing Jenny and Barb faded to the back of her thoughts. The rage at Tiron and all his minions for what they had done to the Josharons, to her family, Meg swallowed it, shoved it to the darkest corner of her heart and pretended it didn’t exist. The fear of disappointing Velanna. The hurt at Tzaitel’s rejection. The pain of losing Tolan. Everything she felt, everything churning inside her, Meg pushed it down, far down, and focused on nothing but the jewel in her hands.
Seek the void. No emotions.
Meg tightened her fingers around the crystal.
Heat wavered in her palm, and she dared to open her eyes. A soft glow had started at her wrists, slowly spreading up her arms. Electricity crackled at her fingertips.
At her feet, the Andhera reacted instantly, peeling backward with a shriek of its own, revealing a battlefield strewn with bodies, Centaur, Celtican, and human.
Dread, horror, and anger spiked in Meg’s veins, and the shimmering power at her elbows shot toward her shoulders, surrounding her in a cloak of white light that boiled just under her skin.
No emotions. No feelings. You feel nothing. Meg gasped for breath and shut her eyes. Clear your mind.
The warmth continued, but the crackle of the electricity at her fingers faded.
“What is this?” she heard a gasp across the cavern.
Tiron. He’d seen her.
Hurry. Take him out.
Meg clenched her fingers harder around the jewel.
Go. Do your thing. Whatever you do.
The warmth in her arms continued to tingle. The sparkle of the light around her body continued to shine. But nothing else happened.
Tiron released a roar of rage. Meg opened her eyes again. Tiron raised his arms, and the Andhera swirled around him as he stood on the mezzanine. He screamed and flung out his arms, and the river of darkness shot through the wavering air toward her.
“Now would be a good time.” Meg shook the crystal slightly.
Nothing.
“If I can be an Andai and not be Celtican, I can use this weapon too!” Meg thrust it forward. “Go!”
The shimmering light at her hands and arms sparkled and faded, along with the warmth in her hands.
Meg froze as the glow dissipated.
In its wake, only a cold sensation remained. Full of pain and hollow disappointment, mournful and wretched.
Meg turned the crystal over and looked into its depths, shimmering and sparkling as brightly as it ever had.
Why wasn’t it working?
She’d done everything right. She’d done just what Velanna had said.
“Why aren’t you working?”
Meg lifted her gaze as the Andhera reached her. The force of its power stripped her breath away, emptying her lungs and filling her up with pain. Like icy needles under her skin, the darkness wrapped her up in an embrace of agony and squeezed the life out of her.
Even in the darkness, the Kirana shone deep within the crystal, glittering like tears against the black.