Spellkeeper

  Spellkeeper

  Book 3 of The Bacra Chronicles

  Courtney M. Privett

  Copyright © 2019 Courtney M. Privett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All rights reserved.

  For everyone who wakes up each morning, looks chronic pain straight in the eye, and says, “You don’t define me and I’m going to keep living in spite of your chains, so keep those sarding intrusive thoughts to yourself.”

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Part 1 | Endings

  1 | Hael

  2 | Shan

  3 | Benny

  4 | Tessen

  5 | Shan

  6 | Hael

  7 | Benny

  8 | Tessen

  9 | Hael

  10 | Benny

  11 | Tessen

  12 | Shan

  Part 2 | Preludes

  13 | Benny

  14 | Hael

  15 | Shan

  16 | Tessen

  17 | Hael

  18 | Benny

  19 | Tessen

  20 | Shan

  21 | Benny

  22 | Tessen

  23 | Hael

  Part 3 | Beginnings

  24 | Shan

  25 | Tessen

  26 | Hael

  27 | Benny

  28 | Tessen

  29 | Shan

  30 | Hael

  31 | Benny

  32 | Shan

  33 | Tessen

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my beta readers—Tina Dombroski, Elizabeth Nichol, and Jessica Goodman. I’d say sorry about tossing you onto the emotional roller coaster, but it was intentional. Also thanks to A. A. Fouch for her enthusiasm when I brought up my writing, and for starting the first writer group I’ve ever participated in.

  Part 1

  Endings

  1

  Hael

  Screams still echoed through the tunnels. How long had it been now, ten sleep cycles? Twelve? Many, and yet the screams still reverberated and the air still smelled of burning tar. Maybe they weren't echoes. Maybe the Vetarex hive continued to burn. Maybe the dying, starving Varaku within the tar circle continued to scream. They deserved it.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Hael tilted her ears forward and inhaled. Water was near, but was it reachable? Was it large enough to sustain food? She held her hand up and said, “Quiet.”

  Feet stopped shuffling, voices stopped whispering. Hael closed her eyes and leaned toward the wall. Drip. Drip. Drip. Close, maybe just around the bend, and the splash was deep. This was promising. A well meant they wouldn't need to lick moisture from walls for this cycle or the next. Containers could be filled. Fungus would be a certainty, and maybe even animals to eat. It had been so long...

  No. Mustn't get hopeful. The last water drip proved to be a dead end, a tiny trickle through sulfurous slime mold.

  “I hear it. I'll check.” Elan split his light orb in half and set one above Hael's outstretched hand. It hovered slightly above her fingers, bathing her palm in blue light. Elan took his own orb and disappeared around the bend.

  “Hurry,” Hael whispered. She rotated the orb from her palm to the back of her hand before turning around. More blue orbs bobbed in the darkness, illuminating the weary faces of Hael's forty surviving Uldru.

  The captive Varaku's wide mouth twisted into a jagged sneer and his diamond-shaped eyes sparkled. “Useless little worm. What kind of Uldru can't do the little magics? Can't even make your own light. No magic to light your way, no womb or seed to breed us more slaves, too weak to survive the mines, too ugly to give anyone pleasure. Much too sour to eat. Worthless. You're no better than a Raxan. Perhaps you are a Raxan. Barren and ugly little abomination. Did the rest of you slaves check to be sure it has no tentacles hiding in its hair?”

  Hael averted her eyes and sighed. It wasn't anything she hadn't heard dozens of times already. Back in Vetarex, she had been designated a breeder by the Varaku slavers and sent to the stable to birth baby after baby until she ran out of life. That's where she learned she was etten, that she should have been born male but something went wrong with her formation and she was instead born a sterile female. Hael could not create life within her own body, but she could create a new life for her people.

  And she did.

  And the Varaku screams still echoed.

  “Raxan, Raxan, little monster. You're trying to lead when you should have burned.” The captive's head tentacles rippled as he grinned. He was missing several of his sharp teeth. Hael had knocked them from his face the last time he decided it was a good idea to be mouthy.

  Hael's eyes snapped to the Varaku's gaunt face. He was much larger than her, but she wasn't afraid. All four of his arms were shackled and firmly held by his guards. The chain around his neck was Uldru-forged and would not break.

  “Itrek...” Hael said, invoking the captive's name. Her voice was breathy and measured, and she wondered if anyone else had noticed that it never produced an echo. “Itrek, Itrek, Itrek. Monsters enslave and monsters rape, monsters create Raxan upon Uldru mothers. Raxan are innocent. They did not choose the life they were given. Varaku did. Varaku created Raxan to destroy them, just as Varaku breed Uldru to destroy them. Uldru are free now. You are not. We will find The Above, and you will burn.”

  “There is no Above,” Itrek growled. Spittle collected on the gaps in his gums. “Myths. There is only the cavern, only the stone, only the glory of the Jarrah.”

  “There is more than the stone,” said the Uldru at Itrek's left. Her name was Min and she had never liked Hael, but when the time came, she followed Hael anyway. They were not friends even now, but they valued each other. No matter what they were before, all surviving Uldru now had value. “We believe. All of us believe. We know. There is a world beyond this place and you will take us there.”

  “You fools will die believing in nothing. Here, only here, is the world. Above is nothing but an infinite void that burns all it touches.”

  Hael smiled and raised the orb. She stared through its light as it began to spin. “Then we will burn as free people.”

  Orange flames burst from the soft glow of the orb. Faster and faster it spun, and brighter and brighter it glowed.

  “No! No, not again!” Itrek screamed. He struggled, but his guards held fast. His legs buckled and he fell forward onto his bony knees. “No! Please!”

  “You might not recognize my magic, but that doesn't mean it's not magic.” Hael held her hands on either side of the spinning orb, and without touching it stretched it into an elongated disk. One end remained smooth while the other sharpened. “My worth is here, in the magic you do not know, the magic I used to bring death to your kind. We saw the impossible when the dull-skinned creatures were presented to the Jarrah many cycles ago. We saw it again when the Jarrah fell silent and vanished. The Jarrah are gone now, Itrek. There is only us, only my Uldru and you. I am the impossible now. I am your master now, and I decide your fate. You are going to take us to The Above. Let these next breaths remind you of your new place in our world.”

  Hael gripped the handle of the orange light scalpel. It appeared hot, but it was cool against her palm. This was not fire magic, not blue magic, not little magic. She had no name for what she could do, and neither did her people.

  “No. Please. No,” Itrek whimpered, his tentacles tr
embling. “I'll show you the way. I know the way. All Varaku do. We all know the way so we don't find it by accident. Please. Please let me show you. Don't hurt me again. Please.”

  “Many generations of Uldru have been hurt by many generations of Varaku. You are the sole remaining Varaku of the Vetarex hive, so you will receive their punishment. I will not cut deep this time, only deep enough to remind you. I will have no need to hurt you again when we are at The Above.”

  Hael rotated her wrist and sliced through three tentacles, leaving bleeding stumps close to his gray scalp. He screamed and writhed under her blade, but the guards would not let him fall. Hael's bare foot swept the twitching appendages to the wall of the tunnel. She held the scalpel aloft, threatening another slice.

  “No! No! Please! I'll take you! Don't cut me again. Let me take you.” Tears fell from Itrek's eyes to wet the dusty stone.

  Hael slowly lowered the blade. “Speak in hate toward me again and I will cut you again. Take us in circles again and I will cut you again. When your pieces grow back, I'll cut them again and again until they stop trying to regrow. I will cut you and cut you and cut you until there is nothing left of you but legs to keep walking and a mind to feel what you have done to yourself. I have never hurt you. You have only hurt yourself.”

  “Hael?” Elan was behind her.

  Hael held out her palm and allowed the scalpel to resume being a softly-glowing blue orb. She turned around and passed it to Elan. “What did you find, little brother?”

  “A proper well. We have a place to rest,” Elan said, his large, emerald eyes glistening. He merged the orb with the one hovering above his own hand, then held up a squirming creature. A salamander. “Food, too. Fish in the water, crawlers around. Lots of mushrooms. Good place.”

  “Indeed.” Hael smiled. She wanted to embrace him, but affection would have to wait. She turned her head to address the Uldru behind her. “Elan has found water, good water. We will rest. Our Varaku has now remembered his place and he will show us the way up, but first we rest.”

  THE WATER TASTED METALLIC. Hael refilled her clay cup for the third time and returned to her spot behind a stalagmite cluster. She sat alone, as she always did. The others rarely spoke to her when it was time to rest. They followed her willingly and had supported her when her original plan traveled first through the whispers then through the screams, but they did not like her. They did once, but her exposure as etten followed by orange death and uncertainty had made them wary. Had she freed them from the Varaku only to die in an endless labyrinth of tunnels and darkness?

  She hoped not. There had to be more than this place. Underground. She'd overheard two Jarrah say that word many cycles earlier, when she was assigned to scrubbing the dais so they could present their latest prisoners. That was the last time the Jarrah appeared in Vetarex, the last time the gods blessed the hive with their glorious presence. Maybe they were dead. Maybe they were never gods at all. Hael suspected the masked creatures were nothing more than people, mortal queens presiding over their Varaku slaves, and appeasing those slaves by letting them have their own slaves. There were whispers of the Uldru once being free people, after all. Long, long ago, before the Varaku. Before the Jarrah. Long ago when there was something called sky. Hael had to keep her suspicions about the Jarrah to herself, at least until her people were safe in The Above.

  Underground. The world swirled through her thoughts as she slowly sipped the coppery water. If there was an underground, there must be an overground. She was certain that was where the Jarrah came from, the overground, The Above. One of them had said something about 'sunburn' and how it had vexed her skin. Skin? Was there skin beneath a Jarrah's black and white mask and red cloak, was there a person form? The sun was supposed to be a myth, a rumor whispered through the generations, but the Jarrah had made it sound real.

  A fat white spider skittered across Hael's toe. She grabbed it and popped it in her mouth. She chewed it slowly to trick her body into thinking it was more food than it really was. It tasted better than salamander, but not as good as the salted blindfish she used to dry outside her sleep hutch in the housing pens.

  “The prisoner is asleep. I chained him to a stalagmite. Hama and Get are guarding him.” Min stood over Hael, half a salamander clenched in her bronze-skinned fist. Her meal's blood was splattered on her left cheek and in her hair.

  “Did everyone find something to eat?” Hael asked. She stared at the scabby bruises on Min's feet. The geode tunnel they'd passed through two cycles prior had not been kind to any of them.

  “Yes. Your brother is still grabbing things from the well. He's putting them in his bucket so we can take them with us when we wake.” Min crossed her ankles and lowered herself to the ground. She rested her elbows on her knees and leaned toward Hael. “Some of them are talking about leaving you and finding somewhere to live, somewhere without a hive. I told them to give you two more sleeps before they talk about it again. I told them the air smells different here so we might be going somewhere new.”

  Hael closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Min was right. The air did smell different, more like the hive's fungus gardens than the more-familiar ore and stone. There was another scent, too, something organic and fragrant she didn't recognize. “You're right. It smells new. I told them at the start they didn't have to come with me, but they still followed.”

  “They won't leave, not really. They're scared. We don't know how to be free, only slaves. None of us do. You gave us free, but we don't know what to do with it. We follow you because following is what we know.”

  Hael sighed and shook her fingers through her matted hair. It was normally gold in color to match her skin, but both were now muddied to ashen gray. “We'll know more. We'll figure out more. You won't want to follow me once we're Above, but I need you to follow me now because Itrek is indebted to me. He fears pain. I'm using that.”

  “He's a liar. He'd eat us if he had the chance.” Min finished her salamander, then licked her fingers. “You're a fool if you think no one will follow you once we're in The Above.”

  “Why?”

  Min reclined against the damp wall and sighed. “Do you think we would have done what we did if we didn't trust you? You told us if we followed you none of us would ever be eaten again. We wouldn't be beaten or starved or worked until we bled and died. If we lived, we could just be . . . just be us, be Uldru. We followed you. We killed with you. We burned the hive with you. We escaped with you. Even if we die in the labyrinth, we die free. Because of you. If we don't die, if we find The Above, we are still free. Because of you. You, Hael. You did this. You whispered something new into our ears. You said we could feel what it was like to live and die without fear, without pain, without Varaku. Your pain became our freedom. You became the hope we never felt before. We are fearless. Because of you.”

  A small crowd had gathered around Hael's stalagmite cluster. Weary, luminous eyes peered from triangular faces and tangled hair. Layers of mud and grime only barely masked the varied metallic lusters of their skin. Some carried orbs, some only manifested faint vapor, but all could create their own blue light. All except Hael.

  Elan slipped through the crowd and settled next to Hael. He was slight, still a child, but he was nearly as tall as her. He embraced her and kissed her cheek. He smiled, his uneven teeth sharp and glistening, and said, “Dying here is still better than being eaten. Still better than being worked until our hearts stop. We'll find your Above, Hael, I know it. There has to be more to the world than tunnels and caverns and hives. I want to find out where the Jarrah come from, just as you do.”

  “I didn't tell you about that.” Hael shivered and pressed closer to him.

  “You talk in your sleep,” Elan said, his smile widening.

  “We all know what you seek, and we want to know, too.” Min's light orb jumped from her hand to hover over her head. She shifted closer to Hael, but didn't touch her. “We think the Jarrah gave us to the Varaku to torture and eat, many, many generations
ago. We know they came from somewhere not here. We think they came from Above, same as you. Some of us heard them speak of things, strange things, when they were in Vetarex and spoke over us like we were insects. If they are gods, they are bad ones. If they are people, they are worse. Maybe we can find their hive and kill them like we killed the Varaku. Then Uldru will always be free.”

  The gathering crowd nodded in agreement. There were more now, more than there were before Elan spoke. Hael knew some were the same people who wanted to leave her group behind. Maybe they wouldn't now. Maybe Min's words changed their minds. If they stayed with Hael, she wouldn't have to worry about them dying in another tunnel or being captured by another Varaku hive. They needed to live, all of them.

  “We need to find The Above first. Then we can figure out the Jarrah,” Hael said, trying not to smile. She took in the faces of the crowd, the uncertain people she had made herself responsible for. Her heart fluttered and she hid her hands so they couldn't see her tremble. “Smell the air. It's changing. We are almost somewhere new. Maybe even almost Above. I think we are. Will you trust me a little longer? Will you follow me to The Above?”

  Silence.

  Elan lifted his head. His left ear twitched. “The old whispers say we came from The Above. They say we lived somewhere else before the Jarrah took us below. We're not going somewhere new. We're going home. Hael freed us. Now she is taking us home.”

  The uncertain eyes glanced at each other. Murmurs rose from the back of the crowd and slowly crept to the front. “We will follow you.”

  Min touched the back of her hand to Hael's cheek. “The gift you gave us has been whispered down the generations. Hope and small dreams, hereafter no longer slaves. Hereafter is now, Hael, and it is you. I will follow you, always.”

  “Me, too,” Elan whispered.

  Hael put her arm around her brother and held him close. “Then we keep going upward, to wherever the tunnels lead. There is nothing to fear greater than what we have already left behind. Sleep now, all of you.”