Phoenix Rising

by Alec Peterson

  Soon only Atiya, Janessa, and Ceyrabeth remained, “I know you,” Janessa murmured.

  “Do you?” Sul asked smoothly.

  “Yes. Amongst by people we have a legend of a maimed chieftain who could see into the souls of friends and enemies alike and was unbeatable on the field of battle. We call him ‘sipahasaalaar’.”

  “Which means?” Ceyrabeth inquired.

  “Warlord,” Sul answered on her behalf, he looked back at Janessa, “As apt a title as any I suppose.”

  Janessa was grinning wildly, “Then you are him! The siege of Quhath. The defeat of the both the djinn and lithmorte armies. The liberator of the slave citadel at Yhen-Naga. The-”

  Sul nodded, “Yes I am,” He interjected to stem what seemed to be an endless tide of accolades.

  “That is so…,” Her grin threatened to split her face in half, “This is such an honor,” she gave her best military salute, “Where do want me?”

  “You’ll be assisting Ceyrabeth in her efforts with Pellinore.”

  “I’m what now?” Ceyrabeth demanded.

  “Pellinore is going to need a staff. I expect you will be amongst them. You are able to both give and follow orders, you understand the enemy we face and you have a talent for making the most of various opportunities other, more traditional minded individuals may overlook and ignore,” He nodded towards the tent exterior, “Put them to good use and assist the commander. In turn, Janessa will assist you.”

  The younger woman flashed Sul a bright grin that showed up even more brightly against her dusky skin, “Aap ek kalaakaaravaadee maut mar sakate hain!” she recited and spun on heels heading out of the tent.

  “And you as well,” Sul answered.

  “What’s going on?” Ceyrabeth asked still feeling slightly sandbagged.

  “An old expression from the deserts of the south. It means ‘May you die an artistic death.’”

  The elven woman made a face, “Charming but not what I’m talking about,” She sat across from the man, “I mean ‘why me’? Out of everyone in this camp, why am I suddenly third-in-command?”

  “For the reasons I stipulated earlier. You instill confidence.”

  “In the men?”

  “And their leader.”

  Ceyrabeth felt a touch of warmth flood her face, “That’s...unexpected. Thank you, Sir,” She said quietly before turning a frown towards the tent exit, “But do I really need her help?”

  “I leave that entirely up to you but I would not dismiss her out of hand. Like yourself, Janessa enjoys the luxury of non-traditional thinking.”

  “If you want to call it that,” the elven woman muttered before looking down at her feet. Right next to her boot was one of the jewels from the shattered mask. This one was fully intact.

  It increases one’s perceptions and reveals that which is hidden.

  More out of curiosity than anything else, Ceyrabeth discreetly reached down and palmed the jewel. It was the size of her thumb and shone a piercing sky blue. Carefully, she raised the gem up to her eye. The room was cast in azure as she scanned it. She peered at her own hand in wonder; it showed up in vibrant shades of orange, green, violet and red. When she focused on Atiya she saw no colors at all, only a shadow that permeated her entire being. Then she focused on Sul, who had his head down studying the map.

  Screaming. Hooks and chains. Ropes caked in gore. Sharpened spikes and blades. Carving, cutting, shredding, impaling. More screaming. Wailing. The cries of the damned. Flesh being torn, flayed. So much blood….

  Ceyrabeth cried out and yanked the gem away from her face; her heart pounding eyes wide as she gasped for breath.

  “Was there something else you had to add Lieutenant?” Sul inquired calmly.

  “No-no Sir. Sorry Sir,” She cleared her throat, and then again. Barely trusting her trembling legs to support her she stood and made her way to the door.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes-,” She swallowed around what felt like a mouthful of cotton. “Yes Sir?”

  “The gem currently in your possession is dangerous,” He gestured at the tabletop with a quill, “Leave it upon the table.”

  Ceyrabeth licked her lips as she nodded hurriedly and rushed to the table, casting the stone upon its surface as if it were a poisonous creature, “Yes Sir. ”

  Sul looked up at her, his eyes an intense, sickly shade of goldenrod, “Thank you. Dismissed.”

  She didn’t trust herself with any other words as she hurried out of the tent.

  “What do you think she saw?” Atiya asked stoically.

  “Enough,” Was the captain’s only answer.

  Ceyrabeth made it ten paces outside the command tent before her stomach emptied itself in a torrent of vomit and bile.

  “Goddess…” she swore. She grabbed a canteen from a passing soldier and drained it in a single gulp, “More,” she rasped, shaking as she pressed it back into his hands. The soldier hurried away as the elven woman bent double, the heels of her hands pressing into her eyes. Green Lord, Mother War, spirits above, oh…

  “Child, are you quite alright?”

  The soldier was back and he had brought back Mother Reiko. Ceyrabeth looked up at Mother Reiko’s question. “You know. You know what was done to him?”

  “Roland, thank you. You go ahead.” Reiko gently dismissed the soldier who wasted no time following her order. Reiko slipped an arm around Ceyrabeth’s waist and gently urged her away from the command tent. “Yes, Ceyrabeth. I know he has suffered greatly.”

  “Suffered greatly?!” Her angry howl sent birds winging from the trees. “Tortured! Mutilated! You…you cannot stay sane. You cannot! And yet he is here and you follow him. You all do, even with that hellscape behind him and Goddess! How do you do it, and know, and still follow?!”

  “I do, because I must. Because sane or not, he rescued me from my own Void. Now I must help deliver him from the Void that he carries within,” The older woman smiled, sadly, “I have managed to put my torments behind me, but the Captain? I believe his suffering is the closest thing to a constant companion he has ever known.”

  “What a terrible life you must have led,” Ceyrabeth stumbled along next to Reiko, her pale skin flushed and feverish. “Alone, always forgotten except when they forced you to….” “Do not look too deeply.” Reiko’s voice cut through the haze at the edge of Ceyrabeth's vision. She sat her on the edge of a bench, placed a cool hand on Ceyrabeth’s forehead. The elven woman leaned into it, almost desperate in her need for the small comfort offered. “Was someone in your family a seer, child?”

  “My father,” She murmured. “I don't have his...the gift died with him.”

  “I wouldn't be so sure of that.” Reiko replied with a gentle roll of her dark eyes. “Just focus here. What do you hear?”

  “Screams. Tearing flesh. Metal on metal…”

  “No, Ceyrabeth.” The healer’s voice was sharp. “Here, in this camp. What do you hear?”

  Frogs. They were still near a bog on the opposite side, and the chorus was nearly deafening. The shrill, droning whine of mosquitoes coming out for their nightly bloodhunt. A soft whicker from the stables. People moving, hurrying but hushed, trying to move as fast as they could under the grim authority of their captain and so many being called to stand by. Be ready to march, any second…

  Ceyrabeth's eyes snapped open. “I need to help break down the camp. We need to move, now.”

  Reiko smiled as Ceryabeth stood and offered a hand to help her up. “Indeed. Captain's orders.”

  Ceryabeth nodded, her sable eyes no longer sharp with fear but steady and determined. “Captain's orders.”

  “Before you do,” Reiko reached into her robe and removed a vial with a small note, “This...may help you.”

  Ceyrabeth took the vial and the note and studied it;

  That which is seen cannot be unseen. Thus, it must be forgotten and cast aside. The flowing handwriting, crisp and precise, could only have come from…

  “This
is from Sul,” Ceyrabeth murmured.

  “His creation, yes,” The elderly woman confirmed. Ceyrabeth held up the vial. It was filled with a purple substance that made Ceyrabeth feel dizzy and sick to her stomach as she watched it shift and flow in the light.

  “What is it?”

  “Something to help you forget. You now carry a terrible burden. This will relieve you of it.”

  “What happens if I don’t drink it?”

  “Then you will carry a piece of the Captain’s Hell with you. A bond will form, forged of shared agony and either your compassion, strength, and mercy will temper this bond…or it will become a cancer within your soul that will consume you completely.”

  Ceyrabeth un-stoppered the vial. The scent that wafted from it was sickly sweet and it made her light headed. She couldn’t focus. Shaking her head to clear it, she cast Reiko a wary look.

  “It’s your decision, Ceyrabeth. The burden is yours to bear or cast aside.”

  The elf regarded the contents of the vial. It would be so easy to forget…

  Screams. Blood. Shrieking torment. Endless and terrible.

  She tipped the vial over and poured it upon the Earth.

  “If you can bear Sul’s Hell, so can I,” Ceyrabeth took the older woman’s hand and squeezed it, giving her a brave smile, “And I think it’s time someone helped you carry the burden.”

  Reiko took the young woman’s face in her frail hands, “You remarkable child,” she kissed Ceyrabeth’s forehead gently, “Thank you.”

  The other woman smiled a little, “You're welcome,” Taking a deep breath and pushing aside the horrors that now dwelt within her thoughts, she got to her feet and stood straight and unbowed, “Come on Reiko, we’ve got work to do.”

  “At your command, Lieutenant.”

  Chapter 11

  The Battle of Targeste

  Ceyrabeth tossed and turned. The night had turned sultry, heavy with promise of rain, but until it fell it made sleeping nigh unbearable. She scrubbed her hands across her face with a growl of impatience and rose from her cot.

  She made her way to the tent that Sul had set up as a mobile library. Rows of chests containing neatly sorted books of all varieties stood stacked atop each other, each chest with a small latch that could be closed and locked at a moments’ notice. She would have bet her sword arm that the chests also contained enchantments to protect against fire and water. She knew for a fact that they were warded against theft.

  She chose a volume- Brother Arturo's celebrated treatise, Peoples of the Underwild- and sat at the desk where Commander Pellinore could usually be found writing letters, organizing orders, and doing whatever else Sul required of him,

  She blew lightly on the fist-sized stone that rested atop the desk and it flared to life, bathing the tent in a gentle white light. What had Pellinore called it? “Bioluminescence,” Ceyrabeth tested the word on her tongue. Like everything in the Phoenix Legion even a simple lamp had a greater meaning attached to it.

  And like as not the words: ‘The Captain found it on his travels’ attached to it. She added with a sigh.

  Sometimes she’d like to drag him down to the Underwild, just to see what would happen. He’d probably find the fabled fortress of Roth Relas and then persuade the Five Thousand Wraiths to join his army. The thought made her sigh again.

  Study. She told herself firmly, banishing all other thoughts from her mind. She had little enough time to prepare for the coming battle against the Taintbrood, and one thing she had absorbed from her time at Sul’s side was that knowledge is power. The Brood hailed from this blighted region after all and so she would learn what she could.

  She quickly lost herself in the tome, smiling at the occasional turn of phrase. It brought her back to when she was young, listening to Brother Arturo talk to himself as he tried to find the right words, the right way to phrase a passage. She hoped she had told him how much those times meant to her; how grateful she was that he took the time to take a half-blood under his wing. It had surely saved her life when she was amongst humans.

  The wind was rising. Ceyrabeth slapped her hand down on the book’s pages with a jerk and looked around. She was no longer in the library tent. She and the book were lying on the grass by the moat of a tremendous fortress that towered so far above the ground, its’ battlements were obscured by the clouds above. She sat up, frantically looking around, her mind trying to remember the disconnect. She had been reading, interested, awake, even taking notes...and then she was here.

  Carefully, silently, Ceyrabeth stood and made her way to the drawbridge which was, blessedly, down. She could feel magic singing all around her so she stepped cautiously onto the planks. They held and she made her way across. When she reached the door, she looked up...and up...and up. Closed tight, unscalable, even if she had the proper equipment, which she didn’t. No handle. No bell. No attendant.

  “Merowr?”

  Ceyrabeth looked down. There was a cat, the largest cat she had ever seen. It had a long, expressive face, a coat of midnight fur that seemed to catch all the light around it and enormous iridescent eyes. Currently it was eyeing her from around the corner. Ceyrabeth crouched,

  “Here kitty kitty.” She soothed, rubbing her fingertips against her thumb in an effort to call it to her. “It’s ok.” The cat came a pace closer but remained out of reach, watching her with eyes that seemed almost far too intelligent. “Are you hungry, kitty?” Slowly Ceyrabeth reached into her pocket and withdrew a bundle wrapped in a clean handkerchief. She carefully withdrew the cheese from her snack, and placed it an arm’s length away.

  The cat edged toward her, walking, Ceyrabeth noted, with a clearly defined list to one side. She watched him as he ate. He didn’t favor one paw or act in pain, but his back had a funny twist in it, as though he had been put together just ever-so-slightly crooked. “Well, you certainly have good manners.” She informed him as he sat up and washed his face with one paw. He tilted his eerie rainbow hued eyes in her direction and sashayed toward the door before disappearing though it.

  Ceyrabeth gasped. Where in the world...? she trotted to the door near where the cat had gone, and then she saw it. A crack in the wood, hidden inside the seam that was just big enough for her to slip through, nearly invisible in the watery grey light.

  The cat was waiting for her on the other side. He rubbed his cheek against her ankles and when she reached down to lift him up, she felt the thrum of his happy purring all the way up her arm. “Where is everyone, kitty?” The keep was huge, she noted as she wandered, the vegetable beds well- kept and growing beautifully, the rooms that she peeked into clean and in good repair. Many of them even had food and drink on the table as though the owners had sat down for dinner and just remembered a pressing need to be elsewhere.

  But other than herself and the cat, she saw no other signs of life. No animals, no people, no sound at all. The strange stillness made her want to tiptoe, and even her breathing sounded deafening to her ears. And there was something else, a strange taste in her mouth, or perhaps it was a strange scent. She sniffed at the air and rolled her tongue around her mouth trying to figure out what was wrong. It finally came to her. As a child she often helped her parents with their gardens. She could remember how the air smelt of rich soil, she could recall how the vegetables left a scent in the air that she could taste: onions, carrots, cabbage. Here though, there were no scents in the air, no tastes upon her tongue surrounded by all these living things.

  Ceyrabeth avoided the front door with its austere height and thoroughly forbidding glyphs and instead followed the line of greenhouses to the side of the keep. She was rewarded with a small servant’s door in the stone....and it was unlocked. The door was strangely shaped, as if it had been made to blend into the surrounding wall. And yet it was ill-fitting; the door did not sit completely in the doorway, almost as if it had been added without the careful precision that the rest of the castle exhibited.

  She kept her ears open as she made her way down th
e hall. Still no sound- not even the sconces on the wall crackled, even though she could clearly see they were lit with merrily burning flames. The cat seemed perfectly content to settle into the crook of her arm and purr, occasionally chirruping when he saw something he liked. It made her jump every time.

  She was standing in an opulently furnished living area, her hand trailing on the brocaded arm of a very plush looking armchair set in front of a warm fire, when she finally heard something that wasn’t her feline companion. A thin thread of sound, but it was enough to make her perk up. “Well, kitty, maybe we’re not alone after all.” The cat narrowed his brightly colored eyes, and the purring stopped.

  She followed the sound all the way down the hall, through a cavernous arming room, a well-stocked kitchen and an impressive wine cellar. She felt it tugging her deeper into the keep, and after she had gone down a few flights of stairs, she could hear it clearly. It got louder with every step and with it came an emotion she knew all too well- fear. She had borrowed a sword from the arming room and as she turned into the corridor, she carefully set the cat down and drew it.

  Ceyrabeth blinked, rubbed her eyes again, her face locked in an irritated scowl. Ever since she had hit the lower floors, the lights were playing funny tricks on her eyes. Spots flitted against her vision, doors were and then weren’t there, and everything was bathed in an increasingly shadowed mix of red, purple and yellow iridescence. Here in the bowels of the castle the darkness seemed to be a living thing. Smothering. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear a sound like deep, slow breathing.

  Finally, she reached the end of the corridor. She was there. Even if the door hadn’t been covered in runes and ornate carvings, she would know. She felt the pull in her chest as surely as she could feel her sweating palm on the hilt of her blade. She went to open the door pulled back her hand with a start- the handle was freezing.

  Ceyrabeth could feel the cat crouched at her feet, clearly unhappy yet not willing to leave. The animal flattened its ears against its head and hissed its displeasure. She looked down, ready to move quickly, but the angry outburst wasn’t meant for her- the animal’s attention was fixated on the door. Why am I not leaving? She asked herself as she wrapped her hand in her shirtsleeve and reached for the door again. The compulsion to go forward, to open the door despite the sounds of despair on the other side, was absolutely irresistible.