Gathering Storm (The Salvation of Tempestria Book 2) by Gary Stringer (howl and other poems .txt) 📕

Daelen shook his head to clear it. He could scarcely believe what had just happened.

“How?” he demanded.

“I have friends in high places,” Cat replied, cryptically, “or rather from high places.”

As if on cue, a small, green reptilian head appeared from one of her pockets. After tasting the air for a moment, fixing Daelen with her unreadable eyes, the snake disappeared again but continued to hiss for a moment before she was still once more. Except Daelen could tell she wasn’t really a snake.

“This is Pyrah. I believe her people are from a plane just below yours. Apparently, not all your people have your…restraint…when it comes to entering minds and violating consent. So her people have developed defences against you. We share a sympathic link, so I’m protected, too, as is anyone else I choose to link with.”

Just then, Pyrah hissed again, and Cat laughed lightly.

“Pyrah, please! Such language. To be fair, I did give him permission this once.” Turning back to Daelen, she apologised, “Sorry about her. She doesn’t like being in the sky, but then she isn’t terribly impressed by you, either.” With a well-timed blush, she added, “Never mind, I’m sure she’ll change her mind about at least one of those things before long.” Her smile grew to a grin, and she addressed Pyrah once more.w “I won’t let you fall, I promise!”

“Well tell her that if she’s so uptight and so afraid of falling, then…”

Determined to regain control of the situation, before girl or snake knew what had happened, he teleported them down to the ground.

“OK, that was flashy,” Cat conceded. Slightly disorientated, she sat down on the grass in Justaria’s garden. “Bit rude, but flashy.”

Daelen tried hard to be patient. “Look, Catriona, I really need you to tell me where Kullos’ army is.”

“I know you do,” the druidess nodded. “So negotiate for the information. Forget the question-for-a-question game. Just tell me straight. Community opinions are divided on you, Daelen. Some want your head. Others think you’re a hero.”

“I’m no hero,” Daelen insisted, joining her on the grass.

“And yet you claim to be our Protector while spending so little time here. Why is that?”

Daelen was hesitant. He wasn’t used to this.

“I protect your world and can barely stand to be a part of it for the same reason,” he admitted, finally. “Because I’m partly responsible for the danger it’s in.”

“Explain that,” Cat ordered him. “Consider me to be a representative of the people of this world. Imagine I’m linked with someone connected to the highest authority in this land.”

Of course, gentle reader, she really did have such a connection. Through their sympathic link, Dreya could get the essence of the conversation, if not the actual words. As Black Secondmage on the Council – and since she had the leader, Laethyn, in her pocket – she could take the information to the Council leadership and encourage them to take whatever action she felt was appropriate. Plus, she had Cat’s exact location, so she could teleport in, grab her, and teleport back again in the blink of an eye, should Cat be in more danger than she could handle.

“We’ve heard all kinds of rumours,” Cat told him, “but I want to hear the story from you. Justify yourself to the people of Tempestria. Explain to us why we should trust you and help you, because right now, honestly…I don’t know whether giving you my information is the right thing or not.”

There was something about this druid girl that fascinated Daelen, so he decided to try opening up, try to make her see why it was so important that she give him the information.

Chapter 4

Before I relay my father’s story, gentle reader, I feel I should explain how Temporal magic works. Without getting too bogged down with the intricacies of Time and dimensional harmonics, the best way I can think of to do that, is to fall back on another of my famous facetious analogies from my college days.

Temporal Magic is like Looking for your Keys.

(Once again, I was marked down for my ‘irreverent treatment of the subject.’ I’m sure you’re sensing a pattern.)

Have you ever misplaced your keys? You know they must be in your house somewhere, but that knowledge does nothing to save you from wasting a chunk of your day turning your house upside down and inside out. Now, suppose you didn’t know for sure they were in your house, but they’re definitely somewhere in your street, or your town, or your country… Imagine having to search your entire world to find your keys. (How did you lose your keys that badly, you may ask? Well, it seems to me you can either (a) blame a Trickster, or (b) accept that this is an analogy and just go with it.)

Now imagine you have access to time travel. You might think that makes things easier – just go back to the moment you lost them and sort of un-lose them. Sadly, it doesn’t work like that. It’s like when a friend asks you, “Where did you last see your keys?” If you knew that, they wouldn’t be lost. Asking “When did you last see them?” is equally unhelpful. Because now you have time travel, so maybe you last had them sometime in the last year or ten years or a hundred years… Time travel doesn’t solve the problem, it just makes it worse.

Even if you lived outside of Time, even if you were immortal, you wouldn’t have all the time in the world, because that’s impossible: space and time are infinite. In fact, this only compounds the problem even further, because you now have to search for your keys in an endless amount of time in an infinite number of places. Plus, how many times have you eventually found your keys behind a cushion on your sofa, when you know you already looked there three hours ago? So now you have to search an infinity of time and space TWICE. Even if you could