Last Messenger - Chapter 22

Chapter 22 - Elu

Elu stared at the dead mage. Coyotes had dug the body up and shredded the man’s clothes. That the animals’ teeth hadn’t been able to penetrate the skin meant the death had been recent. It took months, sometimes years, for the magic in a dead mage’s body to dissipate. Elu couldn’t tell what had killed the man, who looked middle age for a mage.

Elu wondered what color that mage had been. The man’s destroyed robe appeared mostly brown, and not the color of his spire that many mages wore. He had no jewelry either. It was unlike a mage to lack any signs of status. They usually strutted around like gods. A dead mage, this far into the desert, concerned him. That Clypse had been near here when he’d disappeared worried Elu even more.

The pack of coyotes left the only tracks. They had probably followed the scent of this man’s companions. Elu was sure the man wasn’t alone. There were too many dangers in the desert to travel by yourself, even for a mage. Elu was one of those dangers.

Elu unwrapped a section of Ru’et from around his right thigh. He placed the cloth on the sand and folded it until it measured three hands wide and the length of his arm. Only two sections of cloth remained on his right leg, and the evening coolness chilled his skin.

Elu opened his Void and engulfed the cloth at his feet. He snapped his Void like a whip and the wave traveled through the cloth, forcing the droplets of sun oil the fabric had been soaked with into a crystal structure. The organized particles made the pliable cloth stiff.

Picking up the rectangular cloth, called a drifter, Elu tried to bend it with his knee. Satisfied that it didn’t flex, he dropped the drifter to the ground and stood on it. His Void still pooled around him and he pushed it into the sand. 

The grains of sand under his feet had rubbed against each other for millennia and were full of miniature lightning. The darkness inside him preferred the concentrated energy mages produced, but the tiny bundles of power under his drifter would receive the same treatment. Everything contained energy, which made the world around Elu susceptible to his influence.

Elu pulled the energy upward and brought as much of the sand as he could with it. He rose a few feet into the air as the sand lifted his drifter. Easing the pull on the sand near the tip of the drifter, he slid down his improvised dune. He needed to move before he exhausted the energy in the sand under him. Letting the front end drop further, he kept the back of the drifter high, sliding him forward. In a few seconds he’d accelerated to a speed far faster than any camel could run.

Behind the Ru’et, Elu had a rare smile. Some things were so enjoyable they had to be acknowledged, and flying across the desert, knees bent, the wind like a punch to the chest, was one of those. He wished he could dune skip, using his momentum, and the dunes as ramps, to fly from dune to dune. But he wasn’t here to play. Something strange was going on, and one of his soldiers had gone missing. He needed to avoid the dune tops whenever possible.

Elu followed the coyote tracks, which led due east, toward the forest. He wondered why a caravan had traveled this far into the desert and if they had Clypse.

Clypse was Elu’s newest recruit. The boy had been born into a family of bakers eighteen years ago. But the baker’s son had been marked as a Messenger, the last Shade Messenger in the clans. Last until Elu had met the arid boy. Clypse would be relieved to know he wasn’t the last anymore. Elu knew the boy hated being talked about. It was unfortunate the Messenger who came after him bore the black circle. The black circle that heralded the end of the world.

Thoughts of the arid boy made Elu think of Mia. He wondered how her mission was going, and if she had come to any conclusions. The girl was too inexperienced for this responsibility. The clans had never had a high judge so young. If only he’d been there, saved Lyllyn’s life, then Mia wouldn’t be the high judge.

Elu lost control of his drifter and tumbled through the air. He wrapped his Void around himself and hardened the wraps on his body, making him as indestructible as an idlewood tree. Hitting the nearest dune, the sand absorbed most of his energy, and he cartwheeled a few times before coming to a rest. 

Elu used his Void to scramble the sun oil particles, removing their structured lattice, and mobility returned. Rolling to his stomach, he pushed himself to his knees. He stared at the ground for a few seconds and then pounded the sand with his fists. His vision blurred and he pressed the Ru’et into his eyes to absorb the tears. This was no time to be thinking of his murdered wife.

Kneeling in the sand, Elu tried to force the thoughts of failure and despair from his mind. It had been over seventeen years and it still felt like yesterday. That day had changed his life, and given it a different purpose.

Elu pressed the Ru’et into his eyes one more time to absorb the last of his tears. Then he crystallized the cloth in front of his eyes and sight returned. Standing, he walked back toward his drifter, angry with himself for acting like a teenager on his first glide: all speed and no focus. He was old enough to know better.

Shaking the sand off the drifter, Elu walked a few steps to the side where the sand would still have all its energy. He dropped the drifter and started east again. This time he kept his mind clear and concentrated on the present. The past held nothing but pain for him.

Four hours later Elu slowed. The tracks he’d followed by moonlight had become dense, like the animals had milled around. He jumped off his drifter and studied the area. Two sets of tracks left, each angled off from due east. Had the pack split to circle their quarry? He studied the sand and made out footprints, half filled with sand. He was close.

Elu started to cast his Void out to see how close the group was, but he hesitated. If Clypse had gotten into trouble and been captured by this group, then they were smart and capable. Elu didn’t ponder if Clypse had died. Until Elu knew different, he assumed the boy remained alive.

Clypse was the newest member of Elu’s handpicked group of assassins, the Black Prism, but he was still a master of the rings. If he’d been taken, Elu needed to approach the situation with caution.

Elu scrambled the sun oil particles in the drifter, and the cloth went limp. He wrapped it back around his thigh and then followed the coyote tracks that led south-east. Two hours later he detected a faint glow a dozen dunes north. The light didn’t reach far into the sky. Whoever operated the lights didn’t want attention, and it was time for him to go unnoticed as well.

Elu shaped his Void like a bubble, with his body at the center. He rotated the Void, spinning the moonlight as it touched him, until it flowed like water across a stone and left him untouched. The light disappeared, and he stood in complete darkness. He knew that to anyone watching, he had vanished from sight. Well almost, his Void Bubble still acted like an obstruction, and the moonlight didn’t reform perfectly past the bubble which caused a small shadow.

Normally Elu would spread his Void like a fog that they called Raln’s Breath, but this wasn’t a normal situation. If the people behind those dunes expected someone like him, they would know how to detect the presence of the fog. He couldn’t risk that. But without Raln’s Breath he remained blind inside this sphere.

Elu stood still while he pondered his options. He wasn’t confident he could keep the bubble whole except for the area in front of his eyes. It would be like generating two spheres, one above and below his eyes, and he had never tried that. Tonight wasn’t the time for experimentation. He could lower the sphere below his eyes and leave his head visible from the ground and his entire body visible to anyone above the ground, which wasn’t good if they had sentries posted on dune tops. That left the last option, let enough light through his bubble for him to see.

Elu slowed the rotation of his Void Bubble until he could see his surroundings. He lifted his hand, and it looked like it was behind a thin curtain. It would have to do. He let the fog gather around his feet and used it to hold the sand in place where he stepped. He didn’t want to create any suspicious sand movement.

Keeping as low as possible, Elu moved with caution. He hated not having the advantage of Raln’s Breath. It would have shown him exactly what he faced: how many people, their animals, and even their weapons. But if an enemy knew you’d rely on it, they could use it against you.

Five dunes from the camp, Elu spotted the first sentry. Adrenalin jolted his system, and the light disappeared as he subconsciously rotated the Void Bubble faster. He took a deep breath, slowed the rotation, and vision returned. The figure sat motionless two dunes over. The sentry hadn’t seen Elu, but his heart thudded against his ribs. The lookout had shaped themselves like a mound of sand on top of the dune. Only one mage color could alter their shape, a Blue.

Elu smiled, and a part of him hoped he would get to fight. Blue’s tended to be fighters and Elu loved the challenge. It made the kill even sweeter. Each mage’s death was like a drop of water on the searing place his heart had been. Maybe this was the mage who had killed Lyllyn. He had taken three steps toward the mage before he stopped himself. Clenching his hands, he forced himself to think rationally.

These obviously weren’t normal merchants trying to cross the desert on their own. Some tried every year to reach Hylt through the desert, foregoing the costly price of Shade guides. They never made it.

Mages never risked coming this far south, and it had shocked Elu to find three of them in the Abbey of Sorrow. But it was possible this was a wealthy caravan, able to hire a Blue as protection. He needed to see the camp and find out if there were any other mages. He hoped the Blue was alone. If the mage didn’t have help, Elu would kill him as he left.

It took ten minutes to reach the final dune between Elu and the camp. He laid on his stomach and pulled himself forward. Six smaller tents surrounded a large central tent. The caravan’s camels sat together at the northern side. There were four poles, spaced evenly around the camp’s edge, and a fifth near the center. An odd contraption that looked like a head with a wide-brimmed hat topped the poles, and it emitted green light that bathed the camp. He’d seen them before, and it meant trouble.

The hat portion reflected light downward through a sphere of green glass, and they served only one purpose, to reveal Shadow Walkers. To expose Elu’s Void bubble. They were a device from a different era, and he had only seen them on his missions in the north, and even then, only once.

When a Shadow Walker bent the light, they changed it somehow, and it didn’t act like normal light anymore. Elu knew if he walked into that light he would appear as a red ball. That probably meant the tents were bright colors as well. If he moved in front of them, he would warp their color and create an obvious distortion.

Elu knew he should turn and leave. He had already spotted one mage, and they specifically made the lamps around the camp to see someone like him. It meant they were prepared for him and he shouldn’t risk being here alone. But it would take days to reach the nearest clan and they might not even have any Messengers, and none of his men were near enough to help. His people needed to be warned though, an incursion like this meant trouble.

But what if they had Clypse? Elu should at least determine that before he left. They must travel in the sunlight, probably to avoid any Shade clans, who traveled at night. Dawn was only an hour away. He would wait and observe them break camp. If Clypse was here, he hoped to find evidence in the morning. Then he could decide what to do.

Elu let his bubble dissipate, reached into the sand with his Void, and gently pulled the grains over his body. In a few heartbeats he lay covered in sand with only his eyes visible. He tensed, ready to fight if they had noticed his transition. When nobody attacked, he relaxed. Now he would wait.