His blue-bladed spear steaming and dripping, the Lord of
Guards tore kicked the door to his wife’s chamber open, startling the
cluster of women within.
“We’re out of time!”
They looked up, terrified of what his words meant. The
enemy was coming to devour their bodies and drink their souls. They stood
frozen in their actions, still bloody from the birth. The newborn mewled in his
wife’s embrace. Zerah was pale, sweaty and clearly exhausted and in pain. He
had not wanted her here, pregnant and vulnerable, but she was an Heir. She
belonged at the battlefront where her kin fought. The Great Families still
had their honor. Besides, she provided an advantageous route of retreat. She
was an Folder.
“The lady can’t be
moved,” the midwife said but Keleb brushed her aside.
“Zerah, they’re coming. We have to get everyone out now!”
“Take the girls.”
Keleb let go of the spear to take his unnamed daughter in one arm and two year old Ayla in the other. The
instant the weapon left his hand it vanished in a bolt of light that shot up
through the ceiling without a trace. Both his daughters in his arms, the Lord
of Guards stepped away from his wife. She winced as she adjusted herself on the
bed and summoned her black folder staff. Zerah closed her eyes, focused on the
formulas, the mathematics and physics required to open a safe passage from the
manor house to the Great House of Beyz some sixty miles away.
Outside the room, the last of his guardians screamed as their
lives were torn from them.
Zerah’s eyes snapped open, her calculations complete. Lightning blazed from the black rod in her hand and tunneled through
space pulling two points across the world together. The baby in Keleb’s arms began to
scream. He turned to the women.
“Through the portal! Now!”
The servants hustled through. Zerah, crawled from the bed,
her pain evident. Her bright blood glistened on her gown. The agony overwhelmed
her and she stumbled, leaning heavily upon her staff. Keleb was already moving.
He lunged through the opening as his wife’s concentration wavered. The portal
seemed to warp as Zerah lost control of the portal’s end point. It jumped, just
for an instant, to another world. She gasped through clenched teeth. “Keleb,
no!”
Keleb hated portal travel. It was impossibly fast, but the
sensation was unsettling. Fortunately, it passed in an instant. But instead of
relief and a return to normalcy, Keleb emerged from the portal’s far end into a
world of pain and noise. A searing gold light tore into his eyes, slashing into
his retinas even through his eyelids. A weight seemed to slam down upon him,
dragging him to his knees. He barely managed to keep his grip on his daughters.
The baby screamed. A gale tore at them.
He forced his watering eyes open as a shadow fell across
him. He looked up into a silhouette framed against a scorching wall of light.
“Where am I?” he groaned.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, young man, but I’ll
take a guess,” the woman said, flinging her coat over his, and his daughter’s
heads. “But if I’m not mistaken, you’re a long, long way from home.”
~SJA
This is a deleted scene from my award winning novel Terra Soul. Check out this and many other extras in the hard cover, special edition.
