Taniel and Prime joined them. Taniel did not seem as affected by the sight of the thing as she had been, though his breath did grow short. Prime merely scowled at it, like a man returning to a hated live-in relative.
“So they found you, eh?”
The voice made both Vlora and Taniel whirl, drawing their pistols. A woman had stepped out of the cabin and stood by the doorway, her arms crossed. She looked to be in her late thirties: a slim woman of medium height with a shaved head and an old scar that lifted the corner of her lip and crossed her cheek to her temple. Her arms ended in strange gloves that, upon closer examination, were unmoving bronze hands held in place by leather straps.
Vlora had never met this woman, but she knew exactly who she was from Borbador’s stories.
She was another Predeii, personally responsible for the summoning of Kresimir during the Adran-Kez War. If Bo was correct, she was as much a catalyst of the war as Field Marshal Tamas. Vlora was not happy to see her.
“Hello, Julene,” Taniel said, lowering his pistol.
“Two-shot,” Julene purred. “It feels like we were hanging from Kresimir’s ropes together just yesterday. How have you been?”
Taniel seemed neither perturbed nor particularly surprised to find Julene here. Vlora was both, and she kept her pistol raised for several seconds after Taniel had put away his. “That was ten years ago,” Taniel said.
“When you’ve been alive as long as I have, Two-shot, a decade feels like nothing more than a long weekend.” Julene’s gaze fell to Vlora and she pursed her lips. “I told Prime he should have killed you the moment he spotted you in town. But he’s a damned coward. What do you call yourself, Prime? A pacifist?”
“I went to finish her off,” Prime snapped, “but this one showed up.”
Julene took two steps toward Taniel, her nostrils flaring and her eyes narrowing. “Your blood witch is getting stronger,” she said. “I can barely see the wards protecting you.” She let out a sudden, half-mad, barking laugh. “Bad luck for you, Prime. You finally get up the guts to kill someone and the one powder mage in the world who can stop you happens to be about.”
Vlora looked from Prime to Julene. “Some warning that you weren’t alone would have been nice,” she told Prime.
“You didn’t ask,” he responded.
Julene held up her metal hands. “I may be near immortal, but I’m not much of a threat. I still can’t touch the Else.”
“That only makes you slightly less dangerous,” Taniel said. His casual manner was betrayed by the tension Vlora could see in his arms and the intensity of his gaze, like a dog with hackles raised. Vlora took a half step back. If this came to a fight, she was so badly outclassed that it was almost laughable. Taniel would be on his own against these two.
“We’re here to destroy the godstone,” Vlora interjected.
All eyes snapped to her. Julene turned her head to one side. “You what?”
“You heard me.”
“I heard you. I just don’t believe you. If you cornered Prime, you obviously know what the godstones do, and if you know, then you have no intention of destroying them. Mortals don’t give up that kind of power.” The wild look in Julene’s eyes was suddenly gone, replaced by a focused gaze and a very distinct air of distrust.
“She’s not lying,” Taniel said quietly. “Both Lindet and the Dynize are looking for the damned thing. We intend on reducing it to rubble before either of them can reach it.”
“You can’t destroy it,” Prime insisted once again. “It’s too powerful. Kresimir made these things to last until long after all life on this planet is extinct. I can’t even pick apart the simplest of the wards surrounding it, and I’ve been doing this for millennia!” Prime’s voice rose in crescendo, and Vlora wondered if he truly had been trying to destroy the stone. He sounded frustrated as pit that even his powerful sorcery paled next to that of a god who’d been dead for a decade.
Julene had grown quiet, returning to her place in the doorway and watching Vlora and Taniel warily. “This is the work of a god,” she said. “You would destroy it just to keep it out of the hands of others?”
“I would destroy it either way,” Vlora said, forcing down her fear and fixing Julene with a look that dared her to question her resolve.
Taniel stepped between them, waving his hand in front of Julene’s face. “Everyone should calm down. If I’m not mistaken, and unless the two of you are lying through your teeth, we should all be on the same side. We don’t want the godstone to fall into the hands of any of the local powers: Hence, it should be destroyed.”
Vlora stared at Julene until the Predeii finally looked away with a sigh. “Agreed,” Julene said.
“Agreed,” Vlora echoed.
Prime still looked uncertain. “How do you propose we destroy it?”
Taniel looked to Vlora, and she suddenly felt foolish for her belief that the invention of a gunpowder maker from Adopest could do what thousands of years of sorcerous knowledge could not. “I intend on blowing it up.”
“We tried that already, years ago,” Julene said. “We piled several carts’ worth of powder barrels on it and lit the fuse. It didn’t do anything but cause a second landslide that we had to clear away.”
“And we tried it on the godstone in Landfall,” Taniel said.
“So why,” Julene said with more than a hint of disdain, “do you think you can blow it up?”
Vlora remained silent, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and fearful. “We have to try,” she finally said. “If we cannot destroy it, then we’ll haul the thing to the coast, put it on a ship, and sink it to the bottom of the sea.”
“And you expect to be able to do that with Dynize and Fatrastan armies crawling all over the countryside?” Prime demanded.
“With your help we could.”
Julene scoffed again. “Don’t look at us. I’m useless without my hands, and this coward might as well be. He’d rather pick up and run than raise his hands to cause bloodshed.”
Prime’s lip curled, but he did not dispute the claim.
Vlora looked to Taniel for reassurance, but he seemed just as uncertain as she felt. His brow furrowed, he walked to the godstone and ran his gloved fingers along the runes, shuddering visibly. “I should have brought Ka-poel,” she heard him mutter. Louder, he said, “Like Vlora said, we have to try.”
“It’ll be a waste of gunpowder,” Julene stated.
“We’re not using powder,” Vlora responded, heading over to a rock and sitting down where she could watch the entrance to the valley. She ignored the others, taking the time to close her eyes and meditate.
It was almost three hours until a convoy of wagons finally appeared, with Flerring sitting in the foremost one. She said something to Burt’s guards, money changed hands, and she continued on through the pass. Vlora went down to meet her and show her the way to the hidden godstone.
“Get working right away. We’ve got one shot at this, and then, if it doesn’t work, we’ll have to figure out another plan.”
Flerring leaned down from the lip of the wagon. “I’ll get to work,” she said, “but you might want to head into Yellow Creek.”
“Why?”
“Because four hundred Riflejacks just showed up outside the town and Burt is getting mighty nervous.”
Vlora thought of the destruction and the rumors that must be swirling about her fight with the other powder mage. She then considered what Olem would do if he assumed her dead at the hands of a bunch of frontier ruffians. “Get started on the stone,” she shouted into her shoulder, sprinting for her horse. “I’ve got to stop a slaughter.”