New release The Fearless, book two in the space fantasy series, Star Legend goes live today. Woohoo! Sadly, that means this is the last Saturday Snippet for this book.
Download your copy here.
Today, we’re reacquainted with cult leader Dwyr Kala Orr, as she struggles to come to terms with the devastating effects of Taylan Ellis’s shot.
If you missed the first Snippet from The Fearless, you can read it here.
Chapter Four
Dwyr Kala Orr lived in darkness. The heavy curtains of her bedchamber were permanently closed, and she rarely left the room. When she worked, she lit only one candle to see her books. She had ordered that every mirror in the castle be removed. If she went out, everyone had to remain in their workplace, and if she passed near them, they had to avert their gazes. Even Perran was banished from her company.
It was not enough.
In her rage during the BA’s invasion of her Jamaican mansion, she hadn’t realised the extent of her injuries. The soldier who fired upon her in the secret tunnel had set her robes alight. The flames had engulfed her torso, arms, and head as she fled, and even the herbal ointments of her medics had failed to prevent severe damage to her skin and face.
The moment she’d first seen her injuries replayed again and again in her mind. She couldn’t shake the image in the mirror of her stretched, red face and neck, distorted and twisted, from her thoughts. It horrified her.
She had been beautiful.
Now, she was a burnt-up husk, and every day her injuries became more painful as her scars grew tighter.
More disturbing even than her damaged appearance was the fact that someone had managed to hurt her, she, who was inviolable. The fact went against everything she’d always understood about herself. It meant Perran was in danger too. Had she misunderstood all these years? It made no sense.
There was one way to find out, but she was reluctant to attempt it. The cost and risk might not outweigh the benefits. She could lose everything she’d worked so hard for. On the other hand, what was the alternative? Could she face living out the rest of her life hidden away or, even more unimaginable, facing the world in her altered state?
Her books provided no other answer than the one she feared. But was she ready to go that way yet? Were things bad enough?
There was no way back to her partnership with Ua Talman. She had burned her bridge to him when she had turned upon him, and now she’d earned his deep animosity. He had aided the Britannic Alliance in their attack upon Jamaica, his ships defending the BA destroyer as it waited in orbit above Earth. And her assault upon his colony vessels had failed. She’d lost ships from her fleet, though thankfully not the Belladonna. Her flagship remained intact and was patrolling the neutral zone beyond high Earth orbit. She’d given her commander and the other heads of her military forces free rein while she dealt with the distraction of her personal crisis.
She could expect repercussions of her failed partnership with Ua Talman to continue. The only advantage she had was the intel Perran had brought back from his visit to the Bres.
And she still hadn’t ended the threat from the mythical man the BA had extracted from his sealed cave in the West BI mountain. She’d been warned about him long ago, and it had taken her decades of research and investigations to find him, only to have him snatched from her just as she reached out to grasp him.
She was also desperate to discover who had succeeded in hurting her. She had to find out how it had been possible, and, then, she wanted vengeance. When she found out the identity of her attacker, she would do everything in her power to locate and then kill them, in the most long-winded, painful way possible. Her own sufferings would be nothing in comparison with those she would inflict.
Unfortunately, her contact within the BA had gone silent. Why, she didn’t know. It was possible the woman had died in the invasion of Jamaica. Or she was hiding for some other reason, perhaps to protect herself. The upshot was Kala’s reach into the Alliance was shortened. She needed a new source of intel.
She walked to her chamber window and opened a curtain a little, enough to peek out. Outside, life went on. Workers passed to and fro in the courtyard. The sun lit a square of grass. She could hear the ocean surging against the castle stones. She wanted to be out there, in command, leading the EAC, not ensconced in her room.
She would never find her attacker and enact her revenge as long as she spent her days ruing her ravaged visage.
She had no choice. It was time to act and take the feared path. She would leave her room early tomorrow. She could only hope the risk would be worth the reward.
***
The apothecary had to be an old man by now. Kala wasn’t even completely certain he was still alive. Since she’d granted him a lifelong place in her household, the man kept to himself, carrying out his experiments late into the night and rarely speaking to anyone. In other places where she’d lived, she’d often seen a light shining from the window of his room in the early hours of the morning, but in her current abode she wasn’t even sure where his room was.
It was time to find him.
The cook would know which room was the apothecary’s. The woman knew everything that went on in the castle. Kala put on a dark, woolen cloak and pulled the wide hood over her head, drawing it low so her face could not be seen. Outside, the sun was rising. The cook would be in the kitchen already, preparing breakfast, but most of the rest of the castle would be asleep.
Kala walked down the stairs and into the quiet hallway. She crossed to the doorway at the back of the hall and descended another, narrower, staircase. As she’d predicted, the cook was already at work, bent over a large wooden table, rolling dough. A young girl was there too, on her knees, starting a fire in the stove.
At Kala’s entrance, the cook’s gaze quickly took in her presence and then flicked to the girl. She sharply told her to go to fetch the day’s milk. When only the cook and Kala remained in the kitchen, she said, “Good morning, mistress. Is there something I can do for you?” all the while keeping her eyes firmly focused on her task.
“I’m looking for the apothecary, Jonathan. Do you know where he is?”
“Jon the Alchemist?”
“Is that what he’s calling himself these days? Yes, that’s who I mean.”
“I know his room, but he’ll be asleep. When Mary comes back I can send her to wake him up and bring him to you, ma’am.”
“No, I’ll wake him myself.”
“In that case…” The cook gave her directions.
The apothecary had—predictably—chosen a room in an out-of-the-way section of the castle, where few people would have cause to go. Kala crept along the passageways until she reached the winding stairway that led to the man’s remote living space. The air seemed chillier here. She drew her cloak tighter and ascended the steps.
A single door stood at the top.
Rapping her knuckles on the solid wood made little sound, and there was no knocker.
“Jon,” she called out. “Jon, wake up! It’s Kala.”
She listened.
Silence.
Had he even heard her through the thick barrier?
“Jon! Wake up! It’s me.”
Still, nothing.
Could she hear snoring?
She turned the iron ring to open the door.
Jon’s room was small and round. A bed occupied one quarter of the stone wall. On the opposite wall stood ranks of shelves lined with transparent jars containing liquids and strange, dried materials. The rest of the space was taken up with tables full of scientific equipment. The air was filled with a heavy, sickly, chemical scent, probably from the experiment that was running on one of the tables. A tiny flame was heating yellow liquid in a spherical glass. A box sat under the bed, clothes spilling from it, and on the bed itself a lump rounded out wrinkled, messy covers.
“Jon!”
Even at close quarters, her shout provoked no response.
She stepped to the bedside and leaned over the sleeper. His bedclothes were pulled up to his chin, and a nightcap had been pulled down over his ears. A thin, scraggly, white beard covered his cheek, and his nose was a map of broken capillaries.
He looked much older than she remembered him. How long had it been since she’d used his services? It had to be ten years or more.
She grabbed his shoulder and shook. “Jon, wake up, you old goat.”
Sleepy groans issued from the elderly man. He shrugged her hand off his shoulder and pulled the covers over his head.
“Jon the Alchemist,” Kala said sternly. “Your Dwyr commands you to rise immediately.”
“Ughhnnner,” Jon muttered. “Whaaaadyou…Dwyr?” A shock seemed to run through him, and he jerked awake, throwing off the covers and leaping up. Kala had to leap backward to get out of his way.
Wearing a grubby nightshirt that hung to his knees, he stood legs akimbo and arms spread out as if to ward off an attack from an unknown direction. Stick-thin calves poked out of his nightshirt, leading to bony feet and hairy toes. He swiveled his head from side to side.
“Wh-where is she? Where’s the Dwyr?”
“Put on your glasses, you silly fool.”
Jon appeared to waken up some more. “Ah, glasses. Yes.”
Turning to the small table next to his bed, he patted it until his hand alighted on a pair of spectacles. He put them on, tucking the thin wire frames behind his ears. When he turned back and spotted Kala, he started, and then sat on the edge of his bed. “You-you gave me quite a fright.”
“Well, don’t have a heart attack,” Kala said. “I need you.”
“Hmpf!” Jon pulled out the box of clothes from under his bed, rummaged around, and found a holey cardigan. He put it on, and then thrust his feet into fluffy slippers. He peered at her more closely. “Why are you hiding under that cloak?”
Taking a breath, she pulled the hood down onto her shoulders.
The old man only raised his eyebrows slightly. “If that’s the look people are going for these days, I can’t say I like it.”
“Don’t joke,” Kala replied bitterly, drawing the hood over her head once more.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I don’t provide medical treatment these days. I’ve been concentrating on—”
“I know you can’t help me. I didn’t come here for that.”
“I’m sure the BA and AP have the technology to treat scarring. If you asked nicely, they would probably give you the surgery.”
“I said, don’t joke!”
Jon had never approved of the Earth Awareness Crusade. It had long been a bone of contention between them and was one of the reasons Kala avoided him.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Have me executed? Have me burned alive?”
The news of what she’d done with the two BA military leaders must have gotten back to him. She didn’t care. He didn’t understand and never would.
She allowed him his taunt. He was the only person in her domain who could get away with it, with the possible exception of Perran. She would never hurt him, and he knew it.
“I want you to prepare me another draught of the formula.”
The querulous old man, who had been picking at the holes in his cardigan, grew still. After a pause, without looking up, he said, “No.”
“It wasn’t a request. I’m ordering you to make it.”
“No. I won’t do it.”
Kala sighed. “Move over.”
He slid along the bed, and she sat down beside him.
“I need you to do this for me, or at least give me the recipe.”
“Again, no. To both. No one else could make it anyway. They would only mess it up.”
Kala sighed again, trembling. Her gaze traveled the room, taking in once more the glass instruments, bubbling liquid, and peculiar ingredients. Jon’s other room had looked much the same when she’d broken into it as a young girl, fascinated by the weird and wonderful things. Her resulting experience had been the beginning of her journey.
The EAC hadn’t been her idea. Others had begun the organization as a reaction to the activities of the AP, when no one else had seemed to care for the sanctity of the Earth any longer. But after her experience in Jon’s room, her young eyes had been opened to the direction the Earth Awareness Crusade needed to take. It didn’t have to be only a society of nature lovers. It could be so much more. It only needed someone to show it the way, and she’d known with absolute certainty she was that person.
The EAC was her life. It was her. And it was slipping from her grasp. She had to have another boost, another delve into the source, if she was to overcome this latest setback.
“Jon, please.”
“I won’t do it. It could kill you. I should never have done it again after the first time. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was too enchanted with the tales you told afterward, I suppose. But you’re older now. Less resilient. Look at you. You’re injured. You must be in pain. How can you withstand—”
“I cannot go on without it. I simply can’t. I’m begging you, as one friend to another. You have to. You’re the one who started me on this journey. You can’t abandon me now.”
“If I could go back in time and reverse what I did, I would. Do you know how many times I’ve regretted leaving that concoction out on my desk, for any adolescent burglar to find?” He shot her a gap-toothed grin.
Kala relaxed. He was coming around. The apothecary had always had a soft spot for her, ever since she’d been an urchin on the streets of Berline, sharing his lunch with her and giving her his cast offs. It was no wonder that one night when the temperature fell to -15C, it had been his shop she’d picked to sneak into for warmth. She knew if he found her, he wouldn’t have her arrested.
Neither of them could have guessed what would result when she’d sampled the experimental mixture he’d left out to cool overnight.
She put her arm around his old shoulders, skeletal under her touch. He’d always cared more about his work than eating. “I think this will be the last time.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I know, but…I need answers only she can give. If I don’t have them, I won’t know how to go on and finish what I’ve started. The EAC will fall apart. All its members will lose their livelihoods, their way of life. You won’t have this cozy little place or free access to everything you need for your experiments. I’ll take full responsibility for whatever happens.”
“I don’t care who will be held responsible. I care about you. Your practices have become more and more questionable over time. I’m not comfortable with the way things are going. I don’t want to encourage you.”
“Perhaps I have lost my way. Perhaps I need her help to guide me back to the truth path.”
Jon groaned. “You have a will of iron and the persuasive powers of a serpent. No matter what I say, you have a counterargument. Ah well, why put off the inevitable?”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Do I have a choice? I’ll make it. I already have all the ingredients.”
Kala wrapped her other arm around the old man and hugged him.
I hope you enjoyed this final Snippet from The Fearless, which goes live today. Snap up your copy here.