Chapter Eight: The South Gate

Quona Lyonas adjusted the light pack that he had slung across his right shoulder, standing in the shadows of the Twins and looking up toward the bright, hot light of Chai now filtering down through the cooling trees to blind him. Drawing a deep breath his gaze fell from the sky to once more watch the tug of war the twins played anytime there was a gusty day.

The trees were huge, and yet they swayed supplely with the storms. Their latticework trunks gave them away as foreigners to this world, Lyonas only then realized it. They did not grow naturally on this planet, and he honestly couldn't pinpoint which planet they might have come from. In some long distant past the trees had been groomed, boughs interwoven to create a huge arch of living plant, laced patterns of the branches above the arch created stained glass patterns as the suns light penetrated through the oddly shaped leaves. The effect was exotic compared to the tall straight trunks that the native trees possessed, and it made an attractive and inviting entrance to the largest Soua city on the planet.

He studied the two trees closely, remembering the words of the strange Soua who had claimed to be from some clan formerly unknown to him. Noranai...what kind of a clan name was that? The blinding light, though the meaning did not elude him, not with the other things that the Kailan had spoken of. His suggestion was that the Soua had at some point covered up the truth about events in Soona's history.

He had also mentioned Noora, a name that was not unknown in his society. She was a master craftsman when it came to the technology their society used. Her innovations brought the Soua out of the dark ages and into more enlightened hunting habits. What would she have to do with this conspiracy?

Lyonas was also puzzled by the mention of an uprising, something that there was no record of ever in the history records.

The twins do not just mark the exit, but the source as well. One twin is the stronger and one the weaker. The weaker points the way to your answers.

The tree on the left side was the stronger of the two, obvious in the thickness of the high root structure and the girth of the snaking bole that rose towering into the sky. To the right of the path was the just slightly smaller twin and as many times as he had been through this passage he only just noted the fact that the right tree was slightly leaned toward its larger brother, their tug of war becoming a slowly losing battle to the better equipped left tree. Shifting, Lyonas moved closer to the smaller bole searching for some sign that would lead him to the source hinted at by his mysterious informant.

His eyes were first for the canopy of that growth, looking for one branch that held pattern, which looked as if it was focusing attention on another point in the forest. He scoured the upper portion of the tree, becoming frustrated when nothing became apparent in his search. Lyonas again shifted his position thinking maybe it was at the wrong angle to provide the answer he sought.

This procession of position changes and studying the tree's canopy lasted nearly an hour, and had taken him three quarters of the way around the tree. Lyonas breathed out heavily, no nearer the clue he was looking for than when he started this jaunt into the forest. He drug his gaze away from those mocking, whispering leaves, allowing it to fall to the floor under his large and clawed feet.

The Al Eesa sank onto his haunches, running a hand through the loam that had gathered and piled around the seine that was the roots of the tree. That hand fisted as he mentally reexamined the clues the Kailan had given him, trying to divine something more than the words on the surface.

Sighing heavily, he put out his hand to a root of the tree, using it to assist his motion to his feet. He merely stood there, wondering once again why he was chasing shadows, why he wasn't assisting the other Al Eesas from his own city or the other clans in preparing for the closing circle of Noa. The war was inevitable, unavoidable, and lingering out here in the forest chasing myth and legend, would bring them no closer to victory.

His gaze focused once again, taking in the varying shades of blue of the root before him, much cooler than the surrounding air, and of their own accord they traced one line of lifeblood moving moisture from the ground and up into the treeptop. He ran a thumb over that vein he could see but not feel. Once the vein ended a the main trunk of the tree he moved back down the large root under his hand, moving toward the life giving ground.

His brow furrowed as he noted that the vein splintered near where the root disappeared into the ground. He found it strange that the edge he could see started into a near perfect circle. Crouching once more Lyonas pushed leaves away from the anomaly, gasping as the mark formed into something he recognized. There was no way that the arrangement of capillaries could form in such a manner on its own.

Bending further over his muscular legs he studied the symbol, its pattern becoming easier to read as he stared longer. Somehow the life carrying veins had been manipulated, the outer edge was symmetrically circular, framing two stylized lightning bolts, or rather blades, sraha blades. It was a symbol of Noora clan!

Lyonas rose to his feet and stepped back a moment, taking another look at his surroundings, and at the tree he had come to rest next to. He was on the far side of the tree from the path and noted immediately the lean of the bole away from him. He let his eyes slip down the root again, noting that it was thrown out farther than the surrounding roots, which maintained a closer relation with the rising trunk. The growth seemed to be an anchor against the pull of its larger brother.

Was this it? He followed it further until it disappeared into the litter strewn floor, but it seemed to focus Lyonas' attention on the darkness beyond its finger. A breath caught in his throat as he realized that there was a path leading into that blackness. It was overgrown to be sure, but not nearly so much as it should have been if this sign was as old as he had been led to believe. The trees over the path bowed reverently over the packed earth in between their tall forms.

Leaping high, and running as fast as his considerably strong legs would carry him, Lyonas came to the head of the trail. He looked back noting that the main path leading away from the city was obscured from his view, and he no longer wondered how this path had gone unnoticed.

Another item that he noted was the heat that moved up through his feet. He peered down the long trail, past the bushes that encroached on either side and saw the bright orange glow that seeped up through the ground in a nearly ruler straight line from the head of the trail.

Tilting his head he slowly began down the path, anxiety and excitement warring in him. This like the symbol on the tree root was not natural, and it reminded him of the power sources buried near each city to store the solar energy from above. Only here there was no city, other than Donona behind him and this was too far away for it to be of any use to the city. Despite their burgeoning technology, the effectiveness of energy transfer was reduced the further the source was from the outputs. Lyonas saw no other places for the energy to outlet in the forest around him.

The trek through the forest took him nearly two hours. The line of heat beneath his feet had dissipated suddenly and he had been traveling cold packed earth for nearly one and a half hours. The trail had become much more muddled too since he had left the source of that seemingly burned trail through the forest. More than once Lyonas feared that he had lost his way through the meandering trail that had narrowed down to little more than something game might use to traverse the area.

Lyonas was therefore surprised when the trail dumped out into a nearly hidden clearing. He paused at the edge only because of the shock of its appearance. The space was fairly large perfectly circular, and a slight mound rose in the middle of the clearing leaf litter obscuring what was underneath the pile. There was something there, he could vaguely make out the outline of an artificial structure beneath the accumulated matter.

Nervously he extended and retracted his sraha before moving further into that uncomfortably empty space between the trees. It felt and smelled like a trap, even when there was nothing or no one else anywhere close to his position.

Sheathing the short blades he forced himself to step forward, grunting as he misjudged the rise near the knoll and nearly falling as he overbalanced. Ungracefully he fell forward, skidding through the leaves, his gauntleted arm clanging loudly on something foreign beneath the litter.

He was quick to gather his feet under him, using both long muscular arms to sweep away the concealing plant matter. It took some doing, as the gathered leaves were deep and lower layers had already turned to half packed loamy earth.

Lyonas straightened as the last of the matter came free of what was hiding beneath it. A breath was stolen from him as the Noora symbol glared up at him in cold ice blue. Beneath the stylized blades was another symbol, seeming to support the first. A circle with heavy triangular rays bordering it peeked around the forward symbol.

Only then did the relation hit him. Noranai... Blinding light...

Noora meant light, was it Noora herself who had established this conspiracy of darkness around their origin? He still couldn't fathom why such a revered member of the Soua society would hide an origin from the rest of the society.

"There is one way to find the truth," he muttered, crouching over the disk set into the forest floor, and looking for a latch with which to open it.


A/N:

Okay Finally go that one done! The next one should be faster (If I can find my notebook with the passage I want to use), and back to Earth. What was the source of that moan, eh? We will all find out next chapter!