Roar (Stormheart #1)(41)
With another whistle from Locke, the remaining crew took off on horseback. Rora tapped her heels against Honey’s sides, and they darted forward. Honey must have been excited or anxious, because the horse took off faster than Rora expected. With a pull on the reins and a few soft whispers, Rora convinced Honey to ease her hurried pace, and they moved into position on the left of the carriage near Locke.
“How does the Rock move?” she asked. “I have never seen anything like it.”
“That’s because it’s the only one of its kind as far as I know. And it works on storm magic. There’s an enclosed space in the back, a chamber that we throw torque magic into, and the rotation turns a ratchet system that turns other gears that turn the wheels and allow the carriage to move unassisted.”
“Torque magic?”
“It’s what hunters call storms that rotate around a center point. The eye.”
She frowned. “I’ve never heard it called that. Not in all the books I’ve read about—”
“Ah, but your books are written by Stormlings, aren’t they? They inherit their power. They rely on their magic to fight at a distance. Any idiot with an affinity can dispel a storm, but to get close and stay close long enough to steal magic—that takes skill.”
“And just a dash of a death wish,” Jinx called back.
“Maybe a little more than a dash.” Locke smiled at his friend, and it was the first time Rora had seen him do so since she arrived.
He turned back to her and continued: “No one has ever gotten as good a look at the inner workings of a storm as us. To defeat a storm without an affinity, you have to know how it behaves, which is why we divided storms by movement. Besides torque, there’s torrent—rain, snow, sleet, lightning.”
“Storms that move from sky to ground?”
“Exactly. Third type is tide. Anything that sweeps over the land like an ocean tide. Sandstorms are one. Though it can happen with dust here in the grasslands too.”
“Fog,” she supplied quietly. Though unassuming, fog had always featured prominently in her nightmares. Perhaps it was the parallel to her real life—that slow, agonizing creep toward the inevitable. Fog had not the strength of a twister or the power of a firestorm, but fog was greedy with its victims. Once it had them trapped in the mists, it liked to keep them, wandering till madness or death or both.
“Depending on which of us you talk to, tsunamis or forest fires could be considered tide storms too.”
“Those have Stormhearts?” Rora had thought it only the religious sects that worshiped storms who believed that way.
Locke shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Sly believes they do because that’s how she grew up. Her tribe believe all extreme acts of nature to be storms. They believe that storms come from the souls of the dead who lived exemplary lives. They’re birthed again as part of the elements. But as far as I know, no one has ever successfully captured a Stormheart from one.”
“Sly belongs to the Church of the Sacred Souls?” Rora had read about the cult that worshiped storms, but she never considered it more than superstition and foolishness.
Locke laughed. “Don’t let her hear you say that. The Church of the Sacred Souls is a new group that borrowed some old ideals. Sly was raised by a much older tradition. In Vyhodi.”
Rora’s jaw dropped. Those that remained of the first tribes after the Time of Tempests were said to be extremely devoted to the old ways, the old gods. They did not even associate with the rest of Caelira. They had no royalty or palaces but lived simple lives in the near wilderness. How had Sly come to join a crew that hunted storms if she was from a tribe that revered them?
“And what do you believe?” she asked Locke.
He adjusted his grip on the reins and tossed his head to move some unruly hair out of his face. “I think this world is an incredibly complex place and we’ve barely scratched the surface of knowing it. But I’d rather stay dead and buried than come back as a storm.”
“Then I guess we don’t disagree on everything.”
He looked at her, but did not smile like he did for Jinx. “I suppose not.”
“When do you think we’ll meet our first storm?” Rora asked. Her heart thumped as something occurred to her. “Will we wait for the storm approaching Pavan?”
“You are not ready to be anywhere near a storm, princess.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he added, “And we only hunt in the wilds. Unclaimed territories are fair game, but near cities, the risk of getting tangled up with Stormling militaries is high. They’d sooner throw people like us to the storms than save us.”
She wanted to object to his insult to the military, many members of whom had offered up their time and patience over the years to help her. She hated to think ill of them, but if Locke was wary and Nova too, she would have to learn from the experiences of others instead of just her own.
Locke picked up speed, pulling away from her and focusing his gaze ahead of them. Rora knew that was her dismissal, and she saved the rest of her questions for later.
They were moving past the wheat fields now. She loosened her grip on the reins, and twisted her torso for one last long look at home. The palace glittered in the early-morning light, the black rolling clouds of an incoming storm unfurled behind it. Pavan was not a particularly religious land. They held no monuments to the old gods, only to Stormlings. Her homeland had stopped looking up for answers centuries ago. Only one thing came from the heavens here, and it wasn’t hope.