The Cleansing (Book One: The Folara Chronicles)

029: Kara and Rion

Rion turned again to feeling the rock, this time allowing his mind to enter the examination. He felt the stone with his hands and projected his telepathic powers into it, causing a flood of warmth to enter where he touched. He sensed the mountain, felt it hiding something. Give her up to me.... 

"Callous." Her thought was subdued, unaware of his mind touch.

She's here! He exulted. He'd known it all along.

"Not callous." He breathed and then focused his intent on her, honing in on her inside the living stone. "Crevan isn't callous. He's grief-stricken. You've killed one of our best men!"

He heard her angry and tear-filled laughter in the chambers of his mind as he touched the stone wall that she melded behind. Killed one Foeman in revenge for my sister!

He knew it was her! The very girl he'd sought and felt those few days ago, her secret powers and agile ferocity a fascination to him and a source of all his dreams since. Did she even know he heard her thoughts? She seemed so full of passionate emotion, she literally broadcast her hostility. In those brief seconds of contact, he ascertained not only her extreme inner turmoil, but her absolute desire to make them all pay.

Your sister yet lives. But you have killed my brother. He spat into her mind link and slapped the dark wall in vexation for good measure.

Then give her to me! Now she was definitely aware of his intrusion and was actively projecting back at him, her recklessness and grieving disbelief filling the air around them.

Come out here and face me, witch, face me with your revenge! He stood back, feeling her ready to strike out, and drew his sword. See me? Feel me? I will slice you to ribbons, the way I should have sliced her! Face me!

He heard her grunt from outside the stone wall and whirled to face her in the darkness of the hall.

Will you be faster than my arrow, my lord? Her voice was much more breathy and full of hatred in the stillness of the cavern where usually only the dripping of the tunnel walls marked their passage. There was no light behind her, and he knew she had that deadly arrow trained on him. His Salimantor armor bonded into place over his skin and he advanced on her slowly.

"You left your head unprotected. It's just as easy for me to pierce your brain as it is your breast. Not to mention, an arrow that can slice through living stone can slice through living Salimantor scales." She wasn't backing down, and he estimated her to be about 20 feet away. If she let loose the arrow she had trained on him, it would reach him before he registered the shot.

"If you were going to shoot me, you already would have." He lowered his sword slowly, realizing his words were true. His heart was beating ferociously, but he advanced on her anyway. The prize, the beauty of it, her brazen fearlessness, his knowledge of her grief and pain. It all called to him.

"I shot your brother Foeman with a sea arrow. I have the power to heal him from it as well. Is his life worth something to you? Will you trade for the life of my sister? The toxin in the sea arrow will keep him as if dead for about ten hours before it actually kills him. Is that enough time to retrieve my sister?"

A wall of possibilities washed over Rion like a tidal wave bursting on top of him. He'd never heard of a sea arrow, but he had one in his possession. He hadn't known it was toxic, was that toxin even now assimilating into his body? Would he too be susceptible? Was it possible that she would be able to cure him, or even Doral, the man whom she'd shot?