Keepers of the Crown

by Lydia Redwine

  Fiera didn’ t even see him open his mouth. Only heard him speak a single word in his clear tone. “Taj.”

  “Taj…” Lia repeated.

  “Taj...Caelae.” The word stumbled off his tongue.

  “So they have come for the Crown then,” Fiera thought. Surprise was the last thing she was feeling. She watched the figure with a predator’s monitoring state.

  Lia was uttering a string of words, faster this time, and her inflection at the end told Fiera that a question was being asked. The words stilled, and she watched as the figure turned the words over in his head. Considering, those blazing blue eyes watching Lia very closely.

  A moment lasting an eternity passed before he spoke, his voice reaching Fiera’s ears much longer this time. When his words ceased, Lia turned enough to face the general. “Taj Gahara...Crimson Crown is the name of their clan. They have been searching for the Crown of Caelae.” Lia drew in a breath, her eyes narrowing. “He says the Crown was stolen from them. A long time ago. And now that they have heard of its whereabouts, they have come to claim it.”

  “And if we resist?” the general prodded, his voice resonating as his face steeled.

  The figure spoke again, his words as harsh as his flashing eyes.

  Lia closed her eyes as the figure uttered another single word. “Hisarith.” And though Fiera did not know the tongue of the clansman, she did not need it translated. Neither did the general.

  Lia opened her eyes slowly. “They will take the cities. They will besiege us...until the Crown is found.”

  The general’s eyes narrowed as he bared his arms over his chest. “And why, might I ask, would a wandering tribe of rogue thieves want anything to do with a Crown they claim was stolen? What value has it ever been to their people?”

  Lia turned, the question in her eyes. “Yes, really, what the hell have they ever wanted with the Crown?” Fiera thought.

  The figure spoke once more, his voice dropping to a hissing whisper. Lia turned once more, her fingers clenching into fists at her sides. “He will not tell. He says the story of his people is not to beknown to thosewhowouldnot holdit at equal value.”

  The general laughed, the sound cutting the air. “Then he will not receive the Crown. We remain. Until he speaks. And then we will tell the queen.”

  The fire was warm and dancing and enormous, a sign to those

  back at the castle that they were alive. And still waiting. It had taken hours to assemble it, and still, the clansman had not yet spoken. He hadn't been tied up either. He had remained still as nearly every eye of those positioned at the wall monitored him. Fiera included.

  But now she was turning her attention to Lia who was approaching her wearing an expression as grim as the darkening horizon beyond her. Fiera lifted her eyebrows in question. “What is it?”

  Lia did not speak until she had drawn beside Fiera. She stood, arms braced across her chest as she stared into the now flickering fire. The smoldering fire which almost made Fiera turn from its heat. Both women stood, their equally dark hair glimmering softly in the firelight. Fiera’s down and Lia’s pulled up.

  Lia sighed. “I know the story the Alsahara will tell if he answers.”

  “The what now?”

  “Desert dweller. That is what they call themselves. Alsahara.” Fiera nodded. Liasank to theedgeofthewall. Fiera’s own legs ached, but she would not sit. Her nerves were too on fire to remain too still.

  Lia began to speak, her voice remembering the names and words her people must have once used. And Fiera found that she knew this story. Or, at least, some version of it. She had heard it from some scroll Grandfather had read. Or maybe Cam had told it to her from a book. She couldn’t remember. An elaborate story holding words of the ancients, having stretched time and lands with its magnitude and value.

  “A Shadow came on the night of the first crescent moon of the year. The Sacred Sign, they call it, when the first sliver of moon reveals itself beyond our realm. The Shadow came bearing a crimson veil torn at the center. And he came claiming the rise and the fall of nations. Nations he would destroy and nations his Enemy would destroy.”

  “A shadow which brought about the vanishing of the seven kings of the world before the desert clans had sprung into existence. The shadow which had birthed its Bearers from smoke and ash,” Fiera remembered.

  “And he came bearing a crown for the noblest of the rogues of the crimson sands,” Lia said. “The Crown of Caelae which he planned to use to destroy them. And it was taken. By whom, they do not know, but they have been searching for years, leaving crimson trails in their wake.” Her voice drifted off as a wind whispering.

  Fiera saw the milling soldiers before them and the flickering fire. She could hear the crackling of the flames on the wood and the conversation being held between those surrounding it. But it might as well have been just her and Lia alone in the desert surrounded by stars and sand. Fiera spoke at last. “And they want the Crown back because their ancestors once had it?”

  Lia nodded. “Because their ancestors deemed it the beginning of a world where strife did not ride the wind over the sands. Where strife rode north on a galloping horse to be swallowed by the sea. The Crown...well, they believed it protected them. And it did. For a long time.” Lia paused, the air crackling with intensity. “Or so I have heard. It is a tale told to me from my birth.”

  Fiera would have asked her more, would have inquired after her childhood and how her family had come to Mirabelle but still held gems of the south in their memory and in their way of living.

  But chaos was erupting.

  And the general of the Nazerian army was lying on the wall, three crooked daggers protruding from his throat. And another clansman had appeared from over the wall, blood staining his hands as he stood over the general. They were running now. Charging. The clansmen towards the wall, their number far greater than those who stood around Fiera.

  “A voice will be heard in the city, lamentation and bitter weeping. The mothers will weep for their children. They will refuse to be comforted for their children, because they will be no more,” says the Eleventh Watcher

  “Why will their children be no more?” asks the child. “Because the Savior will have come.”

  Fifty-One

  Cam had been pacing for hours.

  Hours . That’s how long they had been at the wall. Long enough that the sky was bruising a deep purple, the sun sinking like the flame of a candle on its last wedge of wax.

  Cam had paused frequently in her pacing, realizing once more that she had been left alone in the main hall of the castle for quite a long time now. Everyone else was still milling outside, anticipation blazing in each of them. “Can they not understand one another? What has been said? Has any deal been struck?”

  No, she had thought, but a fire had. A literal fire. Enough light to prove a bonfire had been lit was glimmering at the wall’s center. Shadows of far off figures drifted in and out of the light. And beyond them...the wraiths still wavered like wisps of smoke steadied in one place.

  The villages below were quiet. Still. Sleeping. Or so Cam hoped. But it could not be hidden that Nazeria was being visited by strangers. Strangers that possibly meant them harm. Cam could see them huddled inside the cottages around dimly flickering fires, anticipation trembling before them.

  Cam did not hear the chaos at the wall erupt, but she did hear the cries just outside of the castle. She jolted out of her absent thinking and rushed to the enormous double doors of the castle’s main entrance which were being pushed open, four figures to each door. The people parted, making way for one figure bearing a flickering torch. “Saffira!” Cam called as she ran to her. “What has happened?”

  Saffira halted and bent to catch her breath. She was still breathing heavily when she managed to say, “They’ve breached the wall, and they’re driving our people into the villages. Their numbers...our numbers...too small.” Cam bent to her friend and found that her skin was ice cold and blooming red from her
run. How had the torch not been blown out?

  “But we have more numbers here,” Cam said, knowing that only a minuscule number of Nazeria’s forces had accompanied the general to the wall.

  Saffira nodded, still panting for breath. “The queen...she must know.”

  Cam motioned for someone, anyone to come and help Saffira. “Get her warm.” She then ran from the hall in search of the queen but found that someone had already been sent.

  Joel was hastening from an offhand room, his eyes wide. “Does she-” Cam started.

  Joel nodded. “The queen is sending numbers to drive them from the villages. We will reassemble when they are out…”

  “Are you going?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am too.”

  Joel glanced at her, a flicker of protest in his sea green eyes, but there was no reason for him to object. Not when some of these people were hers, and he had come from a land farther away. “Why do you fight for us?” Cam wondered again. But she did not voice the question aloud. This was not the time.

  She followed Joel into the armory where those Elizabeth had summoned under the second, a lesser ranking general was hastening to gather additional torches. They had been armored and laden with weaponry hours ago. Cam slung the last belt of daggers across her chest. Her slingshot and satchel of stones were still on her right side. Joel was beside her, a spear in his own dominant hand.

  The soldiers clamored into the night air, their voices thundering into the night. Cam did not know the orders even as the general was shouting them from the front line. She was too far in the back, but still, she knew the plan to be simple. Drive them from the villages. Bring the people safely into the castle. Two divisions had been decided: those who would battle the clansmen and those who would rally the Nazerians into the castle and the mountain refuge around it.

  The night air was nipping relentlessly in a cold force. The sky had melded into the deepest purple, the sun having diminished over the sea. Cam’s legs were already aching when they reached the edge of the clustered villages which stretched in both directions far enough that she could not quite determine the width. They halted before the row of cottages split down the middle by a cobblestone street.

  Silence greeted them. It shifted as if noticing the company from the mountain. The snow on the streets drifted as if silence had turned, its cloak brushing the ground with the movement. Silence was the cottages sealed shut with their occupants locked behind the doors and windows. Silence as the desert clan warriors stood in the streets. Motionless. Their faces were covered with cloth so Cam and her companions could not distinguish their features. Even so, the barbarians seemed to be staring. Staring as intently as silence. And there were hundreds of them.

  “We must only keep them at bay until Elizabeth’s people are safe,” Cam repeated to herself. The thought seemed too loud in her own head as if all those before her could hear it. But with this thought, the general signaled, and Cam didn’t even tell her feet to move. They just did.

  They charged in a mass, Cam among them.

  She knew she only had to keep swinging her slingshot. Keep hurling a stone. Keep throwing a dagger. Dodge the blade. There was enough torchlight to see them before they came. Their crooked blades bent into the firelight, gleaming like teeth.

  Keep Joel in sight. And Fiera too, if she found her. “Fiera...what happened to her?” Cam shoved the question away. Fiera was fine. She was a survivor. She heard instead her own cries of exertion followed by stones finding their targets.

  Chaos clamored in the air, the clanging of swords and wails of fearful and agony-filled voices rippled above and around Cam. The wails and cries of the villagers from beyond their cottage doors. “We only have to drive them out and then they can leave…”

  Cam pushed another stone into the slingshot’s pouch, swung it over her head and then…

  Dropped it as a cry clawed up her throat simultaneous to the pain piercing her arm. A clansman, who had to be a head shorter than her, withdrew his blade from her arm. Cam clenched her teeth even as she felt her own blood dribbling from the cut running from her shoulder to her elbow. She gritted her teeth as she ducked his next blow. Before his sword could descend upon her, she hurled at him, knocking him to the ground.

  The man groaned as they landed on the snowy, stone streets of the square, and his sword clattered to the ground. Moving feet were darting all around them as swords continued to clash in the air. Arrows whizzed overhead. Distantly, Cam noticed that people were being dragged from the cottages, told to run, told they had to run.

  But Cam raised her stone. The man screamed. And that was when Cam knew it not to be a man.

  She clenched the stone in her palm as she ripped away the cloth covering the person’s face. A boy no more than thirteen gazed up at her through pleading eyes. His skin was brown, and his eyes the brightest shade of blue she had yet seen. She was still straddling his waist, pinning him to the ground.

  Cam faltered.

  She couldn't kill him. Not when he was a boy the age Mista had been… Not when he shouldn't be fighting this war. “I’m sorry,”shewhispered. Andshewas sorry. Sorryhehadbeen dragged into whatever his people had forced him into. “How many others?”

  “How many?” she screamed aloud, the air breaking before her. The boy’s eyes shuttered closed in fear. “How...many?” shewhispered. Tears pressedinto her eyes as her hand clenched the stone in her hand hard enough to make a mark in her palm.

  She dropped the stone. “Run, boy!” she hissed as she pulled him to his feet and shoved him off of the street.

  She saw him dart into an alleyway…

  Before the stone she had dropped slammed into her skull, the force sending her reeling back, stumbling into something hard and knocking her to the ground. Sparks flew in her eyes before they flickered and the world faded into gray. Almost black before she was hauled roughly to her feet.

  “Cam!” Fiera was screaming. “Are you…”

  Cam grasped Fiera’s arm. Her headbegan to clear. Sticky blood was dripping from a gash on the side of her head. “Go!” she ordered to Fiera in a hoarse voice. A figure was at her feet, swaying in her vision. But even so, Cam could see the air in his neck. She reached for another stone from her pouch as she spun. The spinning only made her dizzier. And the stone in her hand was the last one she had.

  She slammed it into another clansman...or boy, she did not know. Her hand was at her hip, drawing one of the daggers strapped there. She spun again, her feet nearly slipping on the icy streets. The dagger found flesh through the tattered tan material. Cam did not watch the blood pour, but left the blade in his gut and pushed him over with her booted foot.

  Cam swung, another blade in hand, and only found air. Only found air because there wasn’t anyone immediately before her. Or behind her. She halted, her breathing coming heavily, her lungs aching in her chest. The cool air stung her throat and lungs as it passed through.

  She brushed the hair wet with sweat from her face. There were others around, most wearing torn purple among their armor. No crooked blades flashed in the torchlight. But they were on the ground, and blood was rippling between the stones that paved the streets. And far off, lone figures in small numbers could be seen as blurs fleeing the villages. Back to the now desolate wall.

  Panting breath was at Cam’s ear. She jolted. The figure’s hand clamped down on her shoulder. Joel was panting, his seagreen eyes wide. “We should go with them.”

  “Them?” Those who were brimming in the villages, banging on cottage doors. Some were breaking in and bringing the tear-stained villagers into the streets. Cries rippled through the air as mothers and fathers bracedhands over their children’s eyes. The streets reeked of the dead. Cam reeked. Blood was on her tongue, the taste metallic.

  The second division had arrived and was taking the remaining Nazerians away. Towards safety in whatever form the queen was planning. Cam nodded, her breathing finally beginning to normalize. But as she let Joel tug her back th
rough the streets, her eyes scanned the vicinity in search of Fiera. She had just been here. Panic began to rise in her chest, her heart seeming to beat thunderously in every part of her body.

  And then she saw her. Saw the rippling of her jet black air beneath torchlight in the night wind that had been summoned from thesea. CamclenchedJoel’s arm.“Yes, wehave to get back. They will come again.”

  Joel nodded, his eyes still wide. And Cam saw that his spear was nowhere to be seen and that his face was already torn, blood leaking from cuts. “Yes, into the mountain pass.”

  “What mountain pass?”

  “Thequeen said that ifwearetobebesieged, wewillneed to leave. Take the people somewhere they can never be found.”

  Leave. Forever. Leave Nazeria behind. But where would they go? But a moment of consideration later, Cam knew. The only place that was large and accessible and hidden enough to serve such a purpose as hiding hundreds of people. The same place where Cam had caught Peter with the Shadow Bearers.

  When Cam stumbled into the castle, she found arms around

  her, the familiar and gentle scent of pine and maple and freshly cleaned rooms andwool. “Mia…” she whispered as her aunt took her in her arms. Amelia’s fingers lightly touched the side of Cam’s head.

  “Go,” she said. “Get fixed up.” Cam pressed a wan smile to her lips. “I’m fine. Really, I am.”

  “Then eat.” Cam met her aunt’s eyes. The eyes she knew her mother had had. Cam nodded. Yes, food sounded good right now. “And then,” Amelia continued, “Go see Peter.”

  Cam turned. Sure enough, Peter was there sitting against the wall, his eyes idly roving the persons in the room. Those who were gathered among healers and the servants who had brought food.

  “You should go,” Cam said when she had approached him. “Into the mountain when it is time. When there is nothing left that we can do.” The words spoke an unsettling doom, but Cam was calm inside. She was calm by knowing that she knew an answer. That there was a solution, despite how unideal it was. “There is no reason for you to stay here.” Amelia opened her mouth to protest, but Cam gave her a look. Amelia sighed and nodded. Once more, Cam sank into her aunt’s arms. Once more before they would be separated for who knew how long.