Strange Land (The Young Ancients Book 15) Read online

  Sara touched her arm though, before she cast the tile, which was white moon focus stone, to the floor that wasn't there.

  "Good. Now, simply ask Him to first turn the light down to a level where it won't harm our eyes, then after that, if it is His will, ask if he will turn it off."

  It took far longer than it should have, nearly five minutes in all, but the point was, the woman had done it.

  "Now you must go and teach all of the others of Tellerand that are here and cannot yet do as you have, to do the same. It is proof that He is with you. Tangible and real. None should doubt this." Except the part where it was all fake. Then, did she really know that? Who was she to be the one to tell the universe how to organize things?

  After all, the light lit, when the All High had been asked for it to happen.

  Enid tried to pass the device back to her, but Sara shook her head.

  "No, that is for you now. A sign that he walks with you always. Take it, and show the others that need to learn such how to do the same. Soon we will need to have people go to his lands and make certain that everyone can do this."

  Magda seemed highly pleased by it all, and Enid looked like she was about to be cast out for witchcraft. That was what they tried to call real magic where the woman had come from, Sara thought. They had legends of witches in Noram too. People that used a more primitive and basic kind of magic. Sometimes on accident. Anyone could do that from time to time, even if they weren't very powerful mentally. Cause things to go their way, when they otherwise might not, and that kind of thing. That wouldn't build space ships, but it was a natural enough idea.

  When it happened in other places they either tended to ignore it or call it something else. Skill was probably the most common one. Even in Noram they did that all the time. That or luck. Tor had given her a long lecture on the subject once, which she'd listened to, because he was so pretty. Smart too, but she wasn't going to lie to herself by claiming that had been the real reason she'd paid attention.

  Rather than try to run all over the place, Sara called Terry directly. She knew he was up already for the day. Ready to go and work. That meant he answered almost instantly.

  "Terry Baker-"

  "Sara Debri here. One of the women from Tellerand, Enid, worked out how to use... The miracle devices that the All High is allowing them to use now, through prayer. She's Magda's mother. Can you set up some classes for that? It seems that anyone with need and faith can use this to activate a device. As long as it's His will that it be used." Because that kind of made sense, didn't it? If He didn't want them to do something, He wouldn't turn it on for them.

  The small and very pretty boy in her hand smiled then.

  "Yes. I can see to that. Do you know where she is now?"

  "Here with me. So's Magda. Oh, by the way, she's sending a go between to your mother later today. You marrying a girl from Tellerand makes a lot of sense. You should consider it." He better also consider that the girl was probably right there. Sara held her breath, because he was young and not from the noble world. Tor had a really hard time when people had started propositioning him in even seeing that it was going on. There were other factors involved though. It would have been worse than rude for Terry to say anything negative where the girl could hear however.

  She nearly told him to shut it, like a dock worker, when he looked slightly taken aback by the idea. His words however, were far more gentle than that.

  "That... Seems like both a good plan, and something to work for. Magda is very sweet. I might have a bit of competition there, actually. Tenet likes her too." The words seemed to be honest enough, as if he really didn't know that the blushing girl was standing right next to Sara, listening and getting enough of what they were saying to seem like it was influencing her ability to stand a little.

  "Good. She's not from Noram though, so keep that in mind. She may expect you to hold to only having her, even if that isn't the way of things back home for us."

  "For you, Sara Debri. I grew up in Two Bends. The rules of Tellerand aren't all that different than the ones I know. That a man has only one wife is how it's done there, too. We can work that out later. Right now I need to get ready, the first air crews are going in." He didn't turn the com off instantly, so Sara nodded.

  "Right. Try to work on those lessons for Enid to give on the needed prayers and how to best connect with Him that way. We'll get a crew together and get to an air center to help. Debri out."

  That she'd just ended a communication with an Ancient in control of a land amazed her for a second after it was done. She nearly got back in touch with him to try and fix it, and beg him not to take offense. There was no time for that though. She forced a smile, and ran her left palm over her totally smooth head.

  "Enid, Magda... We need two more people for a work team." She was going to just grab any two people that came their way and ask, since people from Harmony were ridiculously good about being willing to work. They didn't even ask what things paid, or how hard the hours were.

  Magda however, saw two children she knew from school and gestured for them to come over. One of them was the tiny and shy Afrak boy from the day before. The other was a Tellerand boy. One that, it turned out, wasn't a saint. His father was however.

  "Enid, can you instruct him in how to pray to the All High for aid in this?" Sara tried to act confident. It was hard, since one success wasn't going to be enough. They needed for everyone that tried it to make it work, at least at first. Then, if people couldn't, or wouldn't try hard enough...

  Well, they'd claim that they lacked the needed faith, inside.

  It was mean, but also sort of true. Bradley, the boy, who was a bit older than Magda, and would have been a grown man, if a young one, in Noram, actually picked it all up while walking. That meant, when the light Enid handed him went on, he fell to his knees for several minutes, praising Him, but other than that it worked pretty well.

  They all made a point of capturing enough air to last a day or so without going bald, and then headed out onto the slightly silver looking surface. There was an eerie silence to the whole thing, but it wasn't hard to get everyone on board with using the devices the right way. Sara and Magda had to run the earth moving equipment, since it took a lot of fine magical manipulation, and the Afrak boy handled the food device that was the size of a house, causing it to make air that fed into the round tube that came from the main hangar near the ship. That left Enid and Bradley to handle the loading boxes.

  It was slower than it should have been, since it took a long time for the two people that were new to magic to realize they could use the Tor-shoes on their shields, like the rest of them were. It turned out that the All High was good with them just thinking commands at things themselves, once he had them turned on for them.

  Then they worked for hours. Long enough that a group of slightly worried Afrak women came for them eventually. That was, she figured out, about retrieving the little boy who was busily working along with them. He didn't even look up long enough to see them, because the work was that important. Sara didn't let herself stop either, though she waved at them when she could.

  Then she called in for a relief crew, since it really had been a long time that they'd been out there. With no food or water either. She'd been nearly a day and a half without eating herself, and she felt sick from it already. The lack of water was a bigger problem however.

  Worse, even though the three ladies that had come were clearly trying to get the little boy to go with them, using gestures and waving, he simply looked away and kept working. For a man from that land, it was practically like fighting a lion, standing up to anyone that way. Sara smiled again, with her lips closed, and gestured silently for them to back off and let her friend do his job. They didn't leave, but when the replacement crew came, they seemed to understand.

  They still had to be trained, but it was a mixed crew. Two women from Soam, a girl from Vagus, and two Noram nobles. One was a man, who looked familiar, but the other was a man t
hat she knew for certain. Baron Coltress. The spy master.

  He had his own ring, but Sara had bumped into them from time to time. It was the other man though that had the sense to use his com unit to connect with her directly. That meant he knew her name.

  "Timon sent us out. I won't be here too long. Prince Gerent is coming out to take my place in an hour or so. You and I are supposed to head up the investigation into this on the Austran side of things. Oh... Mike Coltress. Don't let the dark skin fool you, this man next to me is my father. I'm the liaison between Timon and Austra."

  Which explained the jumpsuit that the man was wearing. Also why he'd be going to that land for the investigation. Now she just had to wonder why she was expected to go.

  Well, she was willing to bet she'd get a chance to ask about that in a few minutes.

  "Got it. Where am I supposed to be headed right now? Hopefully it will be a place with food and water." She didn't want to be whiny, so she tacked on a tired smile.

  "Back into Harmony. Through the airlock over there, to the right, around the bend. That's just you, the rest can go back to that ship, I think. The Pain Wagon?" There was no hint of joking in the words, but Sara grimaced a bit, then sighed.

  "Pain Maiden. I was in a bit of a dark mood when I named her. I'll get people headed the right way, you five can take over here. Watch what we're doing for a cycle, then take over while we watch you?" That was the standard practice when a new crew was taking your place there. Even if they knew the job, since so much of the time things changed without notice. These people all got to work however, so she didn't get a chance to ask why Baron Coltress was there, or why his son looked so very different than he did. For that matter, since when did he have a son at all. There had been five girls. Bonita, the Baronetta first, and now the Dowager Lairdgren, Michelle the second in line. Then Collette, who was a famous beauty and who had managed somehow to become her rival for half the men Sara was connected with. That left Countess Ward, her worst enemy in the world, and Ginger, the youngest, who'd been murdered.

  None of them were men. None named Mike Coltress.

  Unless Michelle had become a man? It might explain the darker skin too. None of the rest were pale complected, but this was enough of a difference that it reminded Sara a bit of Brown. The old Ancient of Austra. Even the face on the man looked a lot like that. He, Mike, was taller, and had light hair and eyes, but it was too close to be a mistake.

  She just waved at people and got them to do what was needed, then started them heading toward the ship. It wasn't until she was nearly to the correct airlock that she realized Magda had followed her. None of the others had.

  When they got inside, the girl refused to look at her, but explained in a soft voice. At least once they were in an area with air.

  "Mother is going to find the others as she can, along with Bradley, and teach them the devotions they need to learn. I'm to stay with you, so that I don't fall to mischief."

  Sara let her eyebrows go up. It seemed to her that Enid had just decided to set her up with babysitting duties. It wasn't a smart move really, since she kind of thought that getting drunk and trying to practice her seduction skills on boys her own age seemed like a perfectly fine thing for the girl to be doing at her age, but she nodded, knowing they didn't have time for that kind of thing.

  "Good plan. Not that it will keep you out of trouble. It will just end up being the official kind. You may also have to wait outside the meeting chambers. I don't know who's in on this, so it could be a while. Try not to drift off though, and pay attention to everyone. If I were one of the people attacking, I'd go after the people in charge if I got a chance, so keep that in mind, and let me know instantly if you see anything strange to you. Or if you feel that the All High is telling you something. In that case come and get me, or one of the wizards, instantly." Because why not?

  "Yes, ma'am. I will be doing that." She spoke Noram well enough to be understood, and it was all good practice.

  They went in, not knowing what to expect, and Sara was only a bit surprised to find a large conference room filled with Ancients, not all of them, thankfully. Just Tor, Ali, Laurie and Douglas Baker, Timon, Trice and Kolb. Sara raised her hand in greeting, which cutely had Magda doing the same thing.

  "This is Saint Magda. She may be related to most of you someday, through marriage, so be nice to her." She was trying to be funny, but Tor smiled at them both and gestured for them to come sit next to him at the giant wooden table. It looked real, but had to have been made piecemeal using a Maker. At least she didn't know of anyone shipping wood all the way up there yet. The chairs matched, which was a great sign that someone had figured out how to do the work there. It was just too much work to get done almost any other way. Lustrous wood that seemed out of place there, in the cold white room made mainly of stone.

  Ali smiled at her, and touched her arm as she moved past, though there was a worried undertone to it. It practically came off the woman in waves of tension. Tor was more relaxed about things, and when Sara sat down next to him, he took her hand, and held it under the table. It wasn't like him, really, but it didn't have the feeling of being a trap either. He was just being nice. Loving.

  The way she'd always dreamed he might be with her. Better, he didn't have to do it now, if he didn't want to. It was his choice.

  When Magda got into the chair next to her, the conversation started again, apparently where it left off, without explanation for the new comers.

  Timon started, his fingers set into a steeple in front of his chest, elbows on the smooth surface of the table. "It could be two separate things happening at one time. Or even one group using the distraction caused by another to attack."

  Kolb snorted at that, but Timon smiled at the noise, his face peaceful.

  "I know, it isn't very likely, but we also can't be certain that we've dealt with all the threats from the Ancients that once were. If I were one of them I would have made my way here. We've let people come for a while now, and haven't checked anyone for that at all. If that happened, I'd keep my head low too, but that's me. I'm not a half insane being that's lived too long for my own good."

  There was a stare that addressed the weapons master directly. Baron Kolbrin, who was thousands of years old, didn't act like he wasn't getting the dig either.

  The man just sighed.

  "That's possible. Or it might just be what it seems. A group of Austrans that doesn't love you as much as the rest of them do right now. An oversight on their part, I'm sure." It was a bit cold, but Tor gave her hand a squeeze.

  Whispering, he explained. Except it was too loud, and clearly done on purpose.

  "They've been digging into each other for the last hour. I think it's because we don't know who did this. Clearly it's at least someone trying to blame Austra for it, but we haven't been able to tell if the explosions were also their technology or not. We've been too busy trying to seal this place up. These two are letting it get to them. Probably because they're both terrified about what nearly happened here, but too manly to show it."

  That got a chuckle from Trice, but she hid the smile that was trying to fight its way to her lips. She waved at Sara however, locking eyes. It was a friendly looking thing, an old sign they used to use that meant she wanted to speak to her alone, if she could get free later. They'd had time to come up with things like that in school, and were both being trained to be spies.

  Back then it had seemed special, and clever of them. They were the ones in the know, who were going to collect all the secrets of the Kingdom. It had been exciting for a while. Until it became clear that doing the job they'd been trained for would, eventually, end up causing them both a lot of pain. The King needed to know a lot of things that people wouldn't want to tell him. So he had to have some kind of method to get at that kind of thing. Her. Trice too. More so really. Or at least that had been the case. Now her old friend lived on a different planet. It had to be hard to spy properly from there.

  Timon smiled and
looked at her directly too, his gaze lingering longer than she'd notice him doing in their last few meetings. In fact his brown eyes locked on hers, holding her in place with a force that meant he was focusing a lot more intently on her than was normal.

  "You dealt with the first attack very well. How did you know that moving the shield would work?"

  "I didn't. It could have just killed me, I guess. It made sense though, since the thing was flaring like that, burning the tiny particles up."

  He nodded.

  "Yes. It worked. That attack was designed to wear down the protection of the shield. Someone obviously did some testing in order to work that one out." He kept looking at her, but his eyes softened, making it seem less like he was trying to imply that she'd been behind the attack. Which wouldn't make any kind of sense, would it? Timon was the only person that might make her immortal, which was a prize worth doing a whole lot for.

  Well, Tor could probably do it too, but so far as she knew he hadn't done it. Tiera either. That meant she needed to keep Tim alive, didn't it? Not that she'd stepped in front of him when that woman had attacked because of that. No, he was just someone special to her. One of the very few men that had ever said he'd wanted to spend a lifetime with her. That made him someone to protect, to her mind. A person that was better than she was.

  Also, clearly, he'd been reading her mind. Because that kind of attention almost had to mean that. Worse, he was Timon Baker, which meant that everything about her had been collected, processed and sorted already. Before she'd even understood that it had happened.

  The boy, who was a man now, in charge of an entire continent, didn't react to what she'd been thinking as far as she could determine.

  "I don't want to send you to Austra, Sara." This was spoken so quietly that she nearly missed the words. There was a stark honesty to them that resonated through the room.

  Rather than blush or seem embarrassed about having said it, several people around them just nodded.

  Alyssa went first, but she wasn't the only one. Tor just gripped her hand more tightly, which she expected meant he was going to be the voice of dissent, arguing that she was the one with the duty. That she had to go, because someone had tried to kill his brother, and he couldn't.