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“Your buddies Jesral and Amkir aren’t on Earth.” I shed my coat, gloves, and rucksack, then stepped up onto the nexus and gave him a cool look. “Which means you know as much as you would if you were free of my tender loving care.”
He scowled and turned away. Score one for Kara.
Within the super-shikvihr loop, I began my own shikvihr. I didn’t bother putting up a shield of potency or telling Rhyzkahl to go to his house. I didn’t care if he knew what I was doing, with this or anything else, as long as he didn’t interfere. I finished my seventh ring and ignited the series.
“A pity Mzatal cannot spare the time to grant you the eighth,” Rhyzkahl said, not sounding the least bit upset on my behalf.
“Yeah, it’s almost as if he’s been occupied cleaning up after you,” I shot back then forced myself to pretend Rhyzkahl wasn’t there. I had more important things to focus on. The shikvihr was a foundation and only the beginning. To have any chance of touching Szerain’s blade, I’d need to do more than simply holler for it. I needed to have some oomph to my call.
I’d called Vsuhl once before. I still remembered the ritual that Mzatal and Idris and I used to gain the blade, and it was those sigils that I traced now to hang in the air. When I ignited the new pattern, a subtle energy shimmered through me like an echo of electric current, its potential harnessed and ready to be unleashed.
Visualizing the essence blade, I recalled every nuance of its form and feel. Though I held no illusions of wresting Vsuhl away from Szerain, there was no wiggle room in the ritual for wishy-washy thinking. The call had to be a pure laser beam of intention to summon the blade. All I needed was a touch, an opening to find the knife—and by extension, Szerain.
As my breathing deepened, I tapped into the ritual and thrust my hand into the air, willing Vsuhl to me. At the edge of my awareness, I heard Rhyzkahl shout something—disparaging or warning, I didn’t know. Didn’t care. I shut him out. Shut out the world and focused on the blade.
Familiar power, a furnace of potency, teased at the edges of my senses.
“Vsuhl!”
A whisper of a touch. An acknowledgment. It knew me, remembered me, and its power vibrated my bones like the buzz of a thousand angry bees. And there, beyond the blade, Szerain—turmoil beneath a calm exterior. Surprise, wariness. A hint of Zack and even Sonny. And, like a white hot sun, Ashava. I trembled with the effort of maintaining the tenuous connection, even as an exultant grin stretched across my face. More, I thought, drawing potency through the ritual to widen the channel. They were on Earth, in the Beaulac area, but—
I throw out my hands for balance as the summoning chamber shakes. The ritual has become a maelstrom, and I cannot stop it. Potencies flash red and purple as fire races through my veins. My lord, help me!
In Lord Szerain’s hand, Vsuhl flashes with the energies of the vortex. A savage wind tears at my robes, snatches the scream from my lips and hurls it into to void. My lord steps behind me and wraps his arm around my waist, steadying me against the breaking of the world. He will save me.
The fire fills my eyes, and through the flames I see my love, my Giovanni, waiting for me.
“Call her!” Lord Szerain’s words reverberate through my essence and beyond the world.
The walls crack. The sound drives through my existence.
Pain sears my chest.
Crack.
A dark-haired woman in white robes frowns down at me.
“Elinor!”
“Call her!”
A bald man in blue.
Blinding light.
Crack. C-c-crack.
“Do not stop calling!”
A blond man smiles. “Everything is going to be fine.”
“Nobody knows who she
is?”
“Elinor!”
The man in blue grips my wrist.
