The Rising

by Kristen Ashley

  General discussion broke out, no one agreeing on a way to move forward, everyone becoming more frustrated as we talked.

  This followed us into dinner.

  After dinner.

  And the only reason it broke off was when everyone headed to their bedchambers.

  Cassius entered ours, jerking at the buttons of his shirt.

  “Sweetheart—” I began.

  “This is not right,” he hissed, turning to me. “There is something wrong. It’s been weeks, and I do not diminish the loss of those families, but four demons created by fucking gods walk my land and…that’s it?”

  “I think we should be glad of it,” I said carefully.

  “Of course, Ellie, but what are they bloody waiting for?” he asked. “Or more to the point, all this time they’ve had, what are they doing?”

  I did not know the answer to either of those questions, and I did not have the opportunity to tell him I didn’t.

  A knock came at the door.

  I turned to look at it as Cassius called out, “Enter!”

  I expected a servant.

  Not Mars.

  Our friend did not lead into it.

  He announced, “They’ve separated.”

  I stood solid.

  Cassius came to stand beside me.

  “The demons?” Cass asked.

  “Yes,” Mars said. “I’ve had a bird from Faunus. They’ve found one and they’re following him.”

  “Dear goddess,” I whispered. “How do they know it’s a demon?”

  “They saw it transform.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  Mars looked to Cassius, and when they locked eyes, they did not break the contact.

  “Whatever we’re going to do, my brother, the time is now,” Mars said.

  “Bloody right,” my husband replied.

  Thus, in but an hour, dressed warm, packed light, astride our horses, the lot of us galloped behind Star and Sky.

  To meet our destinies.

  151

  The Feint

  King Mars

  Lesser Thicket Forest

  WODELL

  Mars rode Hephaestus, Silence on Epona at his left flank.

  They were bending, leaning, ducking, as their mounts weaved through the dead trees, their hooves pounding into the snow.

  He did this by reflex and instinct.

  His wife, an exceptional horsewoman, did it the same.

  Mostly he kept his gaze on the golden hair that shone in the moonlight of the woman on the horse who was attempting to escape pursuit.

  He cut his reins to round a tree, Silence followed, and they drew closer to her.

  “Now?” Silence yelled.

  “No!” he shouted.

  Opposite them, Elena was moving abreast of the human-like creature.

  And it was then Cassius rode straight in front of her.

  Her horse reared.

  “Now!” Mars roared.

  Silence’s balls of flame soared through the air.

  And hit nothing.

  The woman with the golden hair had leaped into the trees. Then, abandoning her steed, she swung from limb to limb with a speed that made her blur from focus.

  True and Aramus started to give chase but realized quickly there was no hope.

  They wheeled their horses around and galloped back, reining in where the rest of them sat atop their steeds, breaths coming heavy, forming vapor as they hit the cold air.

  “Well, I think we can say the Go’Doan were wrong about their exceptional speed,” Ha-Lah drawled.

  “And agility,” Farah muttered.

  “Regardless that I run the risk of us entering another five-hour, fruitless discussion, I must point out we’re reacting, when we all bloody know that’s the most foolish thing we can do,” True said.

  “And you suggest?” Elena asked.

  “I suggest we’re right where they want us to be because they led us here, and they’re somewhere else altogether doing something we don’t want them to be doing,” True told her.

  “How close is the Dome City from here?” Farah asked.

  Everyone looked at everyone else.

  But on these words, Mars rounded his horse and dug his heels in, shouting, “Yah!”

  The rest all followed.

  Dawn was touching the horizon when Star and Sky led them out of the purple onto the bleached cobbles of the Dome City.

  Those amongst them who had never been had at first gazed around in awe at the tall white buildings built one right against the other, with their golden domes in the middle of which, striking toward the heavens, were spiking finials.

  There were lanes, avenues, paths, elevated walkways, but Mars knew from past visits any green they had was in carefully cultivated gardens on the outskirts of the city or courtyards that could not be seen from the streets.

  The pristine, whitewashed edifices with their priceless domes were all the creators of this place, and those who lived there, wished you to see.

  It was striking upon first sight, how sleek and seamless and clean it all was.

  It took some time to realize it had no character, no color, no depth, no emotion.

  And the outside hid what happened within.

  However, that had been some hours ago.

  Now they had lost patience with the ambassadors who were summoned to speak to them, the sun was in the sky, not a one of them had had any sleep, and Mars and Cass were leading their band across the snow-white cobbles at Elena’s direction.

  She’d studied there. She could guide them.

  This was good.

  For the priests were being exceedingly unhelpful.

  Case in point, the one who had lifted his white robes at the front of him and was jogging to keep up at Mars and Cassius’s sides.

  Doing this speaking breathlessly.

  “As you were told, back in our Communion Hall, it would take no time at all to discuss this amongst the Go’En and garner approval for you to enter the Narration Hall.”

  “We do not need approval,” Mars countered, still striding.

  “I understand that things are quite…unresolved between our peoples, but no one enters the Narration Hall without prior approval of the Go’En,” the priest said. “We were caught unawares by your visit, and—”

  “Turn left up ahead,” Elena instructed.

  “Really, this is…gulk!”

  Mars held him aloft by his throat.

  “You are trying me,” he growled.

  “My darling,” he heard his wife say.

  He tossed the priest aside, ignoring the man’s cry, and the thud his body made when he hit a wall, and Mars continued striding.

  They turned left as Ellie had said, and all saw it up ahead.

  It couldn’t be missed.

  The ornamentation was spartan, but regardless, the colossal circular building was grand.

  And they went right to it.

  They pushed through the double doors, but they barely took five steps in before they all stopped.

  Not because what lay before them, in a round, was spectacular.

  The acres of curved shelves at the outer walls that rose stories and stories up high and were filled with books. The ornately carved, whitewashed desks scattered about with the long feathery, white plums of the quills drifting in the air, stuck at an angle in their beds beside ornate ink pots made of white porcelain. The white marble floors with veins of gold.

  No.

  They did so because they all felt it.

  Farah spoke first and it was tremulous.

  “True.”

  Mars looked to her as True demanded, “Take the women outside.”

  “They stay with us,” Aramus decreed.

  “Then cover their eyes,” True shot back.

  But it was too late.

  He heard his wife gasp.

  Gods bloody damn it.

  He walked that way and saw another piece of lore that it was clear was passed through the generations a
s successfully notated information.

  The demons drank from the necks of their victims.

  Three mauled corpses lay behind a short shelving unit, heads torn from bodies, pools of blood forming from the separation.

  The heads were not close to their remains. They lay some ways away. There was gore at the neck, but no blood had leaked out onto the floor.

  “They might still be here,” Cass said low.

  “Then we all must stay close,” Aramus decreed.

  “Fuck, fuck, shite,” Mars bit, not wanting his Silence anywhere near this madness, but taking hold of his wife and pulling her to his back.

  Pushing aside his mantle, she curled her fingers around the waist of his trousers.

  When she had a hold on him, he lifted his hand behind his neck, grasped the hilt of his sword and released it from its scabbard.

  He heard the other men do the same.

  They advanced together, Cassius with Elena and Aramus with Ha-Lah at the lead, Mars and Silence fanned to their left, True and Farah to their right.

  In this manner, they walked down the center aisle to the middle of the spherical building.

  “By Chas!” they heard exclaimed.

  The priest had caught up.

  None of them slowed.

  They found more carnage amongst the desks and shelves and stacks.

  And more.

  The center of the great building had a circular railing, and peering over it, they could see the structure led into the earth. The shelves that rose above them were accessed by ladders of varying lengths that rolled along the walls.

  The shelves and floors below were accessed by a spiral of stairs.

  They headed down it

  The epicenter of activity, they found on a floor two down from the ground level.

  And it was not of carnage.

  It was what appeared to be a great frenzy of books pulled from shelves, opened, pages torn or smeared with blood.

  “They’ve found what they wanted, and they’re gone,” Mars murmured.

  The men scabbarded their swords.

  Elena and Silence bent by the pile of books.

  “This is a desecration!” the priest shrieked, and Mars watched as he indicated his words did not share his feelings about the gruesome deaths of his brethren when he threw himself down to the volumes close to Elena, holding his hands above them as if afraid to touch them. “The word! The art! The history!”

  “You passed at least fifteen of your brothers, torn to bits on your way to this location,” True pointed out, and the man whipped his head around and back to glare up at True.

  “There is nothing more important than the tomes,” he snapped.

  “What are these particular tomes about?” Mars asked.

  The priest looked down at them, but was apparently so beside himself, he couldn’t answer.

  Thus, he didn’t.

  “They are, many of them, in the old or ancient tongue,” Silence said.

  “They should not be touched unless your fingers are protected. They are old and ancient for they are of the Collected,” the priest stated.

  “The Collected?” Ha-Lah asked.

  “They are not ours, of the Go’Doan. We did not write them. They were written before the true gods were worshipped. We saved them from the other realms and keep them protected here,” the priest answered.

  “Shite,” Cassius muttered.

  “Have they been translated?” Silence asked.

  The man reared back in offense. “All the Collected were painstakingly translated.”

  “Get us those,” Mars ordered.

  “You still do not even have approval to be here,” the man spat.

  Mars was about to move, but True did it before him.

  Thus, the man scuttled back on his hands and feet, True in pursuit. The priest eventually smacked his head into the leg of a desk and stopped before True leaned deeply over him to come face to face.

  “He said,” True whispered. “Get…us…those.”

  “I love it when he gets like that,” Farah said breathily, and at a glance, Mars saw it was to Ha-Lah.

  Ha-Lah was eyes to True and grinning.

  “True, calm,” Elena called, straightening. “I’ll go to the catalogue, discover what these were about and locate the translations.”

  She then walked right to and up the winding staircase with Cassius dogging her heels.

  “Isn’t there someone you should report the massacre of your brothers to?” Aramus asked the priest.

  “I can’t leave you alone with the tomes,” he retorted in horror.

  Aramus looked to Mars.

  Mars shrugged.

  It was not long before they heard a loud whistle.

  Mars moved to the center railing and looked up.

  Cass was peering down.

  “We’ve been had,” he called.

  “What?” Mars asked.

  “She was leading us away,” Cassius shouted as Mars felt the others join him at the railing. “Those volumes are about the prophecy. If they did not before, they know about us now.”

  “Fuck,” Mars clipped.

  “Is that all?” True called.

  “Ellie’s checking.”

  Silence pressed in front of him, her head down, but her voice loud when she yelled, “Tell her two-one point five-seven. Two-one point five-nine. Two-one point six-three. And two-two point naught-one.”

  She was reading from numbers she’d commandeered a quill and inked on the palm of her hand.

  “Louder!” Ellie’s disembodied voice could be heard from above.

  Silence started shouting but Mars pulled his queen to his front, took her wrist, and boomed a repeat of the numbers.

  “Right!” Elena called.

  Mars kept his wife close even as he released her wrist and looked to True. “Do you feel like a bloody fucking fool, standing in a library amongst a slew of dead bodies, accompanied by an ignoramus, shouting at each other?”

  “Yes,” True answered.

  Silence giggled.

  Mars did not find anything amusing.

  He felt this less so when he sensed movement above, looked up, saw Elena was nearly hanging over the railing, her honeyed hair swaying about her face, and her voice was urgent when she called, “Aramus? Do you know what the ‘Mouth of Triton’ is?”

  Aramus looked to True. To Mars.

  Then he raced up the stairs.

  They all raced up after him.

  152

  The Pursuit

  Teddy

  Aboard the Passenger Galleon, the Pentacle

  STRAIT OF MEDUSA

  “I never in my life thought I’d go to Mar-el,” Moira, standing in the curve of Saturn’s arm at the railing of the ship, breathed as they saw land come into view. “This is so exciting.”

  Saturn looked over her head to Faunus.

  He did not share in his woman’s excitement.

  “I love seafood,” she declared. “We never had it, except once, when I was a little girl, and we went for a holiday in Seil Haven. So that’s why I know I love it.”

  Saturn grunted.

  She twisted her head to look up at him. “You don’t like seafood?”

  “I have no idea, gioia,” Saturn murmured. “I have never tasted it.”

  Her eyes got large. “Truly?”

  His face softened a tad. “Truly.”

  “We must go to an eatery the minute we disembark,” she decreed. “Get you some white fish fried in batter. It’s delicious.”

  “You do know,” Saturn began carefully, “we are not here to holiday.”

  “Yes,” she mumbled, now not looking at any of them, “of course.”

  She turned back to face the sea.

  Her excitement had deflated, and Teddy knew precisely what she was feeling, but he loved her all the more for trying to make this into a delightful adventure.

  Saturn again looked to Faunus, to Teddy, then he visibly pulled her deeper into his body wit
h his arms about her chest and bent to her ear.

  “But we will take time before we leave to have this fish in batter,” he promised.

  “All right,” she whispered.

  Faunus brushed his arm and Teddy looked up to him.

  He then followed him down the deck.

  When they were out of earshot of their friends, Faunus stopped and turned back to Teddy.

  “I wish to review the plan,” Faunus said.

  “I know the plan,” Teddy sighed.

  “You do not deviate from it,” Faunus decreed.

  Teddy pressed his lips tightly together.

  “You wanted to come, your job is to keep her safe,” Faunus reminded him, jerking his head back to Moira.

  And your and Saturn’s job is to keep Mars and his queen and their fellow rulers safe. So, who’s going to keep you safe? he thought but he did not ask.

  “We were in agreement with this, Teddy,” Faunus said.

  That wasn’t entirely true. Faunus decreed it and Teddy had tired of arguing about it.

  “I am a trained warrior, bello,” Faunus said quietly. “And you are not.”

  “Neither is Queen Silence, and she will fight these things,” Teddy pointed out.

  “Yes, but she is a witch.”

  Stymied.

  “Do not make me worry about you,” Faunus warned.

  “I won’t,” he decreed, relatively certain he told the truth. “Though we reach Nautilus with you knowing that there are five beings on this planet who have ever, ever, Faunus, held a place in my heart. Nyx, Lorenz, Saturn, Moira, and most especially, you. So, you stand right there and promise me you will keep you safe.”

  “I will come back to you, Teddy,” Faunus whispered, moving closer to him and taking him by the side of the neck, bending to look into his eyes. “I promise.”

  “You have my love,” Teddy mumbled.

  Faunus grinned. “And you have mine.”

  “You have my devotion,” Teddy went on.

  “And you have mine,” Faunus repeated.

  “And adoration.”

  “You can be quiet now,” Faunus said, his words trembling with amusement.

  Teddy thought that was a good idea, and thus, he did as told.

  Faunus gave his neck a squeeze, let him go and they moved to the railing, standing there and doing this close.