The Balance (The Stone's Blade Book 2) Read online

  She hummed the opening phrase of the focus song her mother had sung before each of Ani’s competitions. Layson frowned. Perhaps she recognized the tune. A smile curved Ani’s lips and her adrenaline rose. It didn’t matter that she was on an alien planet. She was in a blade ring, and that was home.

  When the starting chime sounded, she backed away and presented the blade. They parried. Layson’s methods mirrored many fighters Ani had met in the blade ring. She was intrigued that some sequences reminded her of her mother. Perhaps Layson had had the same instructor. Ani met each strike with only enough to defend herself.

  Despite her own intentions and Kela’s admonishments, Ani’s thoughts drifted to the doctors who had drawn yet another bag of her blood the previous eve after the conversation with the Singers. They had already collected enough to create the vaccine, but when they were informed that she would be leaving Lrakira, they wanted more in case the first rounds failed to work and she did not return to Lrakira.

  A quick stab by Layson startled her back to the blade ring. It was time to show them she could do more than defend herself. Charging through the Singer’s defense, Ani struck Layson’s chin with her free hand. She knew the rules allowed it. The Singer sucked in her gut to escape the arcing swing of Ani’s blade. Layson backed off, her expression wary. Good. She was now aware of the trouble she was in. Layson’s eyes flicked between Ani’s hands, telegraphing a question about her ability to use the blade in either hand.

  Good, she’s almost ready. Ani allowed Layson to lead her to a different rhythm, and she kept a straight face as she felt the Singer’s tactics change. A kick thumped her ribs. Whipping around, she answered in kind and followed up with a furious combination. This demonstration needed to end before she forgot she was not to seriously injure the Singer. Layson backed away, taking deep, rapid breaths. Oh yes, she knew the end was approaching. But like a champion, she would not back down. She gave a quick salute and, switching the blade to her other hand, slashed under Ani’s guard.

  Someone in the audience gasped in surprise at the hand change, though Ani had expected it sooner. Now she would be able to end the charade with some level of respect. She responded with her own unique moves, encouraging the Singer to press her apparent advantage. Ducking under Layson’s lunge, she struck the empty wrist with the butt of her blade. Ignoring the cry of pain, Ani carried the momentum down and across to the inside of Layson’s knee and on the rebound, brought the blade tip upward as her opponent’s head and shoulders buckled forward. Ani watched the blade rise in slow motion, savoring the moment. It took strength and technique to ensure Layson would not die.

  Shouts from the observers warned too late as the blade skimmed past the Singer’s cheek. A finger width to the right and she would have died. Ani allowed her to stumble out of range, withholding the second killing strike with great effort.

  Favoring her injured leg, Layson looked at her, eyes wide with the knowledge that she had been allowed to live. Ani saluted her, Northern style, and then flung the borrowed blade toward the observers.

  A startled shriek came from someone in the stands though the blade struck nothing but the blade ring’s raised edging. “Now that I have your attention, I must tell you that while I appreciate the removal of the coma device, I am disappointed with my treatment otherwise. You felt it necessary to ignore knowledge of my blade championships and endangered one of your precious Stone Singers in an effort to verify my blade skills. My mother and uncle taught me well enough without disclosing my own alien roots, even to me. My mother was true to her status as Stone Singer, though none but the Stones knew she was the Anyala Stone’s Singer.

  “As of this moment, I am done with your demands to prove my skills and knowledge. I am through with all of you. You have taken copious amounts of my blood, and since I am assured you have enough to complete a vaccine, I am finished with being your savior, The Blood. Your people are saved. I have fully demonstrated I can protect myself, so there’s no need for the constant surveillance you have provided. I promised the Anyala Stone I would find The Balance. I will honor that promise in spite of your reluctance to believe that someone raised without knowledge of your world would do so.

  “Now I need time to think on these matters and about the transformation my life has undergone. I promise I will not endanger a soul. You would do better to protect your all-knowing Stones from deranged Singers. I will be allowed to walk about, free of surveillance or guards, and I will handle anyone who follows me with a complete lack of respect.”

  Not waiting to hear protests, she walked to the ring’s edge, pulled the blade free, and motioned to Kela. They left the room. Thankfully, no one, not even Renloret, followed.

  Ani sighed loudly as they hurried down the hall. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone. The adrenaline of the skills test was still coursing through her body and she needed to ease out of fight mode. At her silent request, Kela led her into the second side hall to a small practice room he had apparently noticed on their tour of the blade training facility earlier that morn. Lights came on as they entered and Ani slid the door shut hoping no one would think they would stay in the building after her rant. Kela offered to guard the door and listen as Ani marched over to the practice dummy.

  She began slowly, stretching through the moves, precisely placing each punch and kick. Gradually, she increased the speed and power of the strikes. Unlike the skills test, during which she’d barely broken a sweat, Ani’s top was soon wringing wet and her breathing was ragged. Then the tears came, mixing with the perspiration. Why were her skills always questioned? Was it because she was female? Unlikely. Renloret had explained that female bladers were accepted on Lrakira, and the Stone Singers were trained at the highest levels. She dismissed the possibility of sexism. Did she give off some kind of aura of incompetence?

  She hit the punching bag with both fists, causing it to swing, thereby making it a moving target. Had the constant questioning of her skills on her home planet, her family’s allegiances, and even the alleged alien connections finally worn her out so much that she presented a less than in-charge personality? She thought she’d gotten over that. But once again, here on Lrakira, everything, including the makeup of her family, was being questioned. What were her mother’s reasons for lying about having twins? There had to have been something wrong with The Balance. Otherwise, Ani could not imagine why a mother would keep such a secret.

  Could it have been as simple as her mother misunderstanding The Blood and The Balance Prophecy? How was it that her mother decided Ani was the prophesied Blood of Lrakira, the child whose blood would carry the cure of the gravitus plague, which had already killed tens of thousands of women and threatened the people of Lrakira with extinction? Ani now knew that she had a twin who was the other half of the prophecy. This unacknowledged sibling was The Balance, destined to save the life of the Anyala Stone, one of the crystalline guardians who had guided the Lrakirans for over a thousand years. Ani’s mother had never mentioned a twin — not to her husband, Yenne, and not to Ani — but the three guardian Stones of Lrakira were adamant that there was one alive on Teramar. This newest revelation was just one of many.

  Just days from waking on this previously unimagined planet populated with two very different intelligent beings— one set that looked surprisingly similar to the bipedal people of Teramar and the other huge crystals who communicated through color and music as well as telepathically — Ani was still trying to adjust to the knowledge that her parents and uncle would be considered aliens on Teramar and not the other way round. Though not fully convinced that alien life even existed, she could not refuse to acknowledge the intelligence of those crystal stones. After hearing the music of words directly from all three of the Stones, so similar and yet so different from her own telepathic connection with Kela, Ani had promised the Anyala Stone that she would retrieve The Balance. And Ani knew she would do everything in her power to fulfill that promise. In spite of logic, Ani knew the stones were alive and intellige
nt, and they deserved to live.

  The number of strikes had lessened on the now bedraggled dummy. She jogged around the room trying to decide what her next move should be. In the relative silence of the room, Ani heard a rumbling from Kela’s stomach and became aware of an answering rumble from her own, confirming that it was most likely mid-aftermorn.

  I’m hungry.

  Kela’s complaint brought a smile to Ani’s lips. She stopped jogging and returned to the punching bag. So? Ani thumped the bag.

  Aren’t you?

  Maybe. She rubbed her face. Kela, am I going about this wrong?

  Maybe.

  A knock on the door interrupted them. Kela jumped to his feet and sniffed at the bottom of the door. It’s Renloret.

  Ani opened the door. The alien pilot stood, unsmiling, but with a placid expression on his face.

  She waved him in. “How’d you find us?”

  “I waited for everyone else to leave and then tiptoed through the halls listening for a punching bag being tortured.” Now he grinned.

  She hit his shoulder then turned a guilty look at the abused bag.

  Kela chuckled, and she swatted at him.

  “Are they going to leave me alone?” she asked.

  “You convinced them you can take care of yourself.” He pulled a small bag from his pocket. “Look, here is some money. You can walk anywhere you want. I promised them you would be okay if no one bothered you. There is one thing you’re asked to do before we leave.”

  Ani stiffened. “What now?” She recognized a guilty expression as Renloret hesitated. She was not going to like this one.

  “You have a meeting scheduled with your father.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m to meet with the man masquerading as my father? No thank you.”

  “Ani, I know you believe he died in the attack on the research center when you were five, but he escaped to come to Lrakira for help. If not for the time-song, he would have been back within two of your months.”

  “You still want me to believe those crystals can change time?”

  “To be honest, we didn’t know they could do that either. But they have been our guides, our leaders, for a thousand years. And this meeting is not about them, Ani. This is about you and your father. He’s in just as much shock as you. Plus, he just found out his wife is dead and you are not five but twenty-five. He needs to talk to you.”

  She tried to push past him. “And if I don’t talk to him?”

  Renloret stood his ground. “You won’t be allowed to go back until you do.”

  Kela growled at the words. They would endanger the life of one of their guardian Stones to insist that you speak with him?

  Ani paused. What would Mother say? Ani crouched to look Kela in the eyes. If I agree, we can leave sooner and the Anyala Stone will have a better chance of surviving.

  You’re doing this for the sake of the Stone or for yourself?

  Both. I owe it to Mother and I promised to save the Stone.

  She stood. “All right. We’ll be back at seven bells.”

  Renloret nodded and stepped aside, allowing them to pass.

  Erid, Lrakira’s largest moon, was three fingers above the eastern horizon and the sun had just set, coloring the western half of the sky. Ani steeled herself for the appearance of Cranite, whose rising glow was brightening the edge of near darkness in a race to catch the orbit of its skyline companion. These two would be halfway across the night sky before the third and smallest moon, Denert, would make its diagonal dash.

  As Cranite added its waning crescent to her sight, Ani held her breath. Not vomiting was her first goal. The fact that none of the moons had rings brought tears to her eyes. She missed her moon, a moon that was singularly spectacular, a moon whose embracing rings reflected Teramar’s sun at varying angles throughout the year. Drawing a sleeve across her face to catch those unwanted tears, she forced herself to watch.

  On her walk to this secluded overlook, she discovered she was not as anonymous as she’d hoped. Because she had supplied the blood from which the lifesaving vaccine would be derived, she was considered to be The Blood, the prophesied savior of Lrakira. Her likeness appeared on all the news screens. Every woman and girl had saluted and some even hugged her. Fortunately, they seemed to know that she understood very little of their language and simply smiled and bowed. Those encounters had pushed Ani off the busy thoroughfares and into the quieter residential neighborhoods.

  At the edge of the park, a meat roll vendor had insisted she have two of his savory rolls, refusing payment for them. Ani was embarrassed by the citywide acclaim she had garnered within her three days on Lrakira. Being treated as a celebrity had never set well with her. The fame inflicted on her after becoming Northern’s first female continental blade ring champion had proven difficult enough. This was so much worse. She could barely wait to go home to Teramar.

  A gentle tap on her mental shoulder reminded her that Kela was checking on her. She smiled and sent back a noncommittal reply, satisfying his concern. He would wait at the bottom of the hill until she was ready for physical company. Kela had been traumatized by the more than two weeks of zero mental contact with her on the trip from Teramar to Lrakira. Because of that, she had honored his request for an open mental link between them. Ani shivered at the memory of the silence in her mind upon waking from the coma. Her imagination was still shaken by the knowledge that Kela had suffered so for the entire trip. Their connection had been severed by the tiniest machine Ani had ever seen.

  The device had been intentionally implanted by a still unknown assailant. Now, on a hill on a planet in another galaxy, Ani struggled to remember the encounter in the cavern. He had said his name, hadn’t he? If he had, wouldn’t she have remembered at least that? What she did remember was that he had accused her mother of allowing his wife to die and there was something about her uncle. She was beginning to worry about her memory of what happened in the cavern. The details she thought should be quite clear seemed to fade before she could actually grasp what they were, leaving her with lingering feelings of uncertainty and confusion. And with each passing day, she remembered less. All she had to go on was what others had told her she’d said during the first hours after awaking from the coma. She wondered if she would ever truly remember what happened after being cut by the poisonous blade. Harrumphing at the turn of events, Ani rubbed her face, as if trying to scrub away the unimaginable.

  The twists and turns of so many blades in her life over the last year were impossible to follow: the death of her mother, her uncle’s flight to Southern, her rescue of Renloret from the ship crash, and everything else that had led to this moment on this alien planet. She longed to go back in time and make other choices, but as her mother would have said, “The Stones have a plan and you must follow.”

  Ani now knew what her mother meant by the “Stones” and she knew she must return to Teramar and find The Balance to save the life of an alien whose existence would have been beyond her imagination if she had not seen the life lights and heard the Stone’s song. The Anyala Stone was barely alive, and she would make every effort to find a way to save it.

  She glared at the moons, both now fully risen. They seemed to be daring her to make order out of the chaos of her thoughts. One moment she was in awe of her surroundings, wanting to soak it all up; the next moment she was devastatingly depressed at the loss of her former reality and angry that she was forced to function under new, unknown, alien rules.

  What had been her first mistake? She pronounced the self-indictment aloud once she pinpointed it. “The pride of Star Valley allowed an amateur blader to draw blood first.”

  Kela’s mental touch strengthened, reminding her that no one had expected the blade to be laced with a poison meant to immobilize her, allowing the assailant to insert the tiny device that had put her into an artificial coma. No one could have predicted the device itself. Even the star-traveling Lrakiran doctors and scientists were astounded.

  Still tryin
g to blame herself, Ani added words to the telepathic connection. But I didn’t follow my earliest lessons, Kela. “Beware the beginner and the fanatic because they are less predictable and more dangerous than any professional you will ever face. Beginners don’t know the rules and fanatics don’t care.” This had been her mother’s training mantra.

  Kela’s reply was immediate. Sheath it, Ani. That skirmish is done. You are here in my mind once again. You are well and we are going home soon.

  Home. Oh, how she wanted to be in Star Valley, drinking Melli’s cinnamon tea on the cabin porch. But, she lamented, even home would be different now.

  Who do you think the twin is? Ani asked.

  Kela gave a mental shrug. I have considered several options but none that fit the criteria. Perhaps your mother sent the babe to another village to keep her safe.

  Ani frowned. I agree. I don’t think she is in Star Valley. She closed off direct communication with Kela and settled down to observe the scene spread before her. The first time she’d witnessed this she’d been totally unprepared. With a deep sigh, she opened her eyes and her mind.

  Pulsing colored points of light signaled work shuttles arriving from an orbiting station. A rumbling roar announced a freighter heading for some faraway planet and other aliens she was barely able to envision. Other alien races. She pushed away the thought. She could handle only one trauma at a time. At least the Lrakirans looked like her.

  Ani checked on the moons’ progress. If she used Lrakiran time increments, she had more than a bell of time before she was to meet Renloret near the Stone Chamber to be escorted to a conference with the man claiming to be her father. Closing her jacket to the cooling mid-autumn air, she focused on the changing light show across the city of Awarna, soaking in the sight of this village on her mother’s home world.