“Sharr hasn’t crafted a magefinder in decades, you know,” Gideon said as he looked over the cliff. The wise man on the rock held his enigmatic quietude.
“So, you know I’m a mage too?” Ahna finally asked, gazing upon the rebel figures in the distance.
“I knew from the start!” Gideon exclaimed with a child’s pride. His eyes lit up, and his lips curled with an innocent rascal’s smile.
Ahna turned to him and gave him a surprised look. “You knew?” she asked, just to be sure.
“The dragons tell me things,” he replied, mysteriously. “They also tell me you feel a great deal of pain. They tell me you won’t see Mother Divine because of it.”
That was true. The Mother Divine had summoned Ahna the day before, but the dark elf had not yet mustered up the courage to respond.
“I will go,” she assured and reinforced.
“The Congregation forgives, Ahna. But you must forgive yourself.”
Ahna, slightly irritated by Gideon’s virtue, scoffed at the cleric’s words. “Gideon, with all due respect, could you please let me be? I said I will go.”
But the old man in the alb did not comply. Instead, he rose to his feet and came to sit beside her. “The war divided all of us. People made choices they thought were best for them. No one can be blamed for something beyond their control.”
The walls in Ahna’s mind collapsed one by one. “I left Bravoure behind. I left the city behind! I left them to die!” Her voice broke. She was too close to tears and she sought to hide her face. The cleric stayed and listened. “I was an archmage, Gideon. The city relied on us for protection. People relied on me. I had a responsibility.” The tears she wanted to hold in began to flow. She covered her eyes with her hands. “And I ran away.”
She tried to regain her calm and dry her tears. Gideon remained quiet by her side, letting the elf say the things she needed to say. She looked back at the people below them, and the cleric spoke softly. “All you’ve lost, the fight against your own. You had the best of reasons. Plus, if it consoles you, the choices you made then do not define the choices you make now.”
“No, Gideon, you don’t understand. I cannot bear to look at the Congregation in the eyes and promise to fight gloriously like I’m some kind of hero returned from the dead. It would sound like the most outrageous lie!”
The wise cleric then searched her eyes. “Why?” he simply asked. As she gave him a silent response, he continued. “No one would ask you to be a hero. Every little effort counts. One act of kindness, one child saved, one battle won, can inspire a generation. The Resistance was not built in a day. It began with just a few dissidents hidden in the capital’s sewers! It was faith that united them in this fight. Faith is all we have, and faith is all we really need.”
Ahna looked into Gideon’s protuding eyes.
Faith, that dim light of hope she had lost at the hands of Sharr. The wise cleric’s words inspired something in her mind, there, in the moment of their conversation. Whatever demons she had, what mattered, all along, was the present. Them, the Resistance, in the here and now.
A warm smile was drawn upon her face. “Did the dragons tell you that?” she asked this jocular question.
“No, my master did. I was just a boy when the war began, and my master was conscripted.” Ahna felt a painful memory had been raised in Gideon’s mind. “I was too young to understand, but now I do.” He paused for a moment. “You fled Bravoure because you lost hope. And because you’ve lost hope, you don’t believe you have a place in this fight. Your guilt and regret have become your ball and chain. You are frozen. But I will tell you what my master once told me.”
As he paused again, Ahna grew curious. “And that is?” she asked.
The cleric glanced in the direction of Ahna’s horse. He smiled again as he recalled the words of his dear master. “When you are frozen on the battlefield, look at your horse. The animal doesn’t care who wins or loses, just whether it’ll have hay in its belly before the night. So at least make sure you will be the one who feeds him.”
A battle was coming, and where and how were the only questions left to be answered. Ahna thought of Bark, and how, in the end, she had to be the one that fed him. Gideon had made her realize something important. He had encouraged her to move forward. No matter her choices, despite what had happened fifty years ago, today was a different day. The choices she made today had the power to change the future. There was no time to linger on the past, there was a cause, a cause that could finally result in a revolution. With this new resolve, Ahna headed to the Mother Divine.
The door to Astea’s quarters was opened by two guards who stood at both sides of the entry. The place was illuminated by the sunlight that rained into the room. Ahna entered hesitantly.
The Elder sat on a large seat in the middle of the room, her back toward the elf. She faced the windowpane, contemplated the outside as she spent most of her days. Her eyes had seen many years pass. She was a tad older than Gideon, the two must have known each other for quite a long time.
When the doors closed behind Ahna, the Mother Divine looked at her kindly. “Arkamai,” she uttered. “I remember that name.” She motioned for Ahna to come closer.
“Mother Divine, you asked for me.”
The Elder nodded. She gazed deep into the elf’s eyes. Astea had bright eyes that, in the light, appeared translucent. Her skin had aged, but her smile still shone full of youth. She had the hues that reminded Ahna of Lynn’s, revealing a distant Tazman origin. Her hair could not be seen under her white cornette.
“I was a young nun when the war broke out. After moons in the dark, the Congregation finally sided with the Resistance. We had been under Sharr’s rule for too long, so we revolted. Many of us didn’t make it.” Ahna frowned a little as she wondered why Mother Divine had begun to tell this story. “Most of us alive today were just children or even unborn at the time. But there are legends, Ahna.” The elf listened carefully. “You were there. You must know about the prophecy.” Ahna’s heart had skipped a beat. “The one that doomed Sharr to fail,” the Elder finally said.
“The one that spoke of a Dragonborn.”
Astea’s eyes opened wide. Her voice had a sudden enthusiasm in its timbre. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “The Congregation named the chosen hero. I remember. But there was something I recall, something with the Academy...” She had to think for a minute, then the memory popped into her mind. “There was a mage involved!”
“The Dragonborn is dead. The prophecy was wrong!”
Ahna had suddenly spoken with a graver tone. Mother Divine’s eyes rounded in intrigued surprise. She reclined in her seat. She looked at Ahna, unsure of what had caused this distress.
The elf exhaled deeply and closed her eyes. “The Dragonborn was named...by me.” Ahna had just confessed another truth she had not faced in years. “But we failed, and Sharr killed him.”
“Arkamai, that’s why I remembered that name. You and your mother! Arkamai...” Mother Divine glanced outside. After she took a deep breath, she turned back to Ahna. “Prophecies are never wrong, Ahna, but interpretations may be. The ineffable design set in motion may not be complete just yet.”
The Elder’s hopeful words muted into a soft silence that flowed into the room. Ahna looked through the windowpane and saw a group of younglings playing near the coops. There were three children, two boys and a girl, who could have been brothers and sister. The sight of the three human cubs brought a peculiar familiar pinch to her heart. This feeling settled in what seemed to be a deep hole that had been dug long ago. The Elder caught a glimpse of Ahna’s sudden wistfulness, and she rose to her feet.
She came to stand in front of the elf and laid her brittle hands on her shoulders, as a gentle mother would do to comfort her child. “There is much work to be done, Ahna. The Resistance welcomes you to the family.” Her soft voice drenched the room with a genuine feeling of compassion. Ahna smiled and nodded to acknowledge Mother Divine’s faith in her.
They said a piece of Ghydra’s soul, the first dragon to live among mortals, then descended from the Heavens into its tangible vessel and fused with the mortal’s soul. The chosen, now named Dragonborn, carried the power of all dragonborns before them. They said the ritual was glorious, majestic, the most beautiful spectacle to see.
The last Dragonborn had been named by the Congregation’s Mother Divine at the time, the fallen King, and Meriel Arkamai. But Sharr, aware of the prophecy through his own clerics, hunted the Dragonborn. The divine plan had soon failed, the chosen had been vanquished, and the magi had soon followed. This loss had been the last toll Ahna could take, and she had regrettably fled soon after without looking back. This loss had taken her hopes and her faith along with it.
Kairen showed Ahna around the armory. The elf had volunteered to help sort out a few crates of weapons and armor to distribute them among the new recruits. As captain, Kairen was given the task to train the cadets and catalogue some of the new supplies that had just arrived in Orgna. While the red-haired woman wrote down a few numbers, Ahna counted the swords.
“Sixteen cutlasses, twenty shortswords, twenty longswords, and...one dagger!” Ahna’s sentence ended in a silent chuckle. As she held the single dirk in her hand, she looked at the rest of the boxes. “Where do these crates come from?”
Kairen lifted a large box of chainmail armor. She dropped it on top of another crate then exhaled deeply. “You’re going to like this—it’s from East Haven. It’s all there’s left from those ships you toasted.” Ahna rounded her eyes in surprise. “Yes! A few squadrons raided the abandoned village a few days ago and came back with all this. Apparently, some were stored in a small warehouse close to the harbor, and a few crates were underwater.”
Ahna could not help but wonder. “Why didn’t they raid the village in the first place? It would have saved us some trouble...”
“Well, for one, they had a warlock, so even a full battalion would have been useless. And the Council wanted it to be a covert mission, a get-in-get-out order.”
Ahna dropped the small weapon in the dedicated dagger crate.
“Can’t you use one of your cantrips to sort all this metal?” Kairen asked humorously. “Or do your bands even disable your cantrips?”
“These?”—she lifted her wrists in the air and showed her bands—“Well, I can still use cantrips, but there are no cantrips to get weapons magically sorted.”
Kairen jocularly expressed her disappointment, her lips pouted. “Well, we’re almost done here anyway.”
The two finished inventorying the crates and lunchtime was about.
Ahna was invited to join Kairen and her husband, Commander David Falco. She just realized that she had actually never talked to the man directly. He greeted her, and she came to sit between him and the man-lynx Councilor Luk Ma.
“It’s nice to finally get to speak to you, Ahna. Kairen told me so much about you,” David said with a kind and gentle tone.
Ahna had heard from Squadron Five and other rebels that David was a great commander. He was righteous, much like his Tazman ancestors were known to be. His eyes were as black as the coal of Orgna’s torches. He wore the same fir green garment as the High Commander’s, but with epaulettes of a silver color. He had short, thick black hair, and his beard was almost always cropped close to the chin. Unlike Lynn, he did not have the red paintings of Tazman traditions, but his skin was as beautifully dark as the swordswoman’s.
“Kairen told me so much about you too!” Ahna smiled. David chuckled at her words, a little embarrassed. “Only but good things!”
And they quietly laughed together.
Luk Ma remained calm. His yellow eyes had a tint of constant happiness, as though he always seemed content with everything. His ears were dark-tipped and pointed, with short, black tufts. His nose had a bit of a heart shape, and long feline whiskers sprung from both sides of his muzzle. Ahna grew very curious about the Ailuran tom.
“Far from home, sir?”
Luk Ma cast an emotionless glance at her. “Can I call a place I’ve never lived a home?” he retorted in a gravelly voice, with a slightly condescending tone. Sindurs always liked to respond with rhetorical questions when offended. But Luk Ma quickly recovered his contentment and smiled. “We’re not many here indeed. My kin came to Bravoure after the raids of Ailura, about two centuries ago. Bravoure welcomed us as refugees. So, as you can see, I am a proud Bravan!”
Ahna then understood. Luk Ma had been born and raised in Bravoure—Ailura was no home to him. Just like the Dwellunder was no home to her.
“Luk Ma had his third rebirth with us!” David said proudly.
The man-lynx had nodded with a smile. Sindurs were a particular race of catlike beings. They had the same regenerative abilities as their feline ancestors. They lived a cycle of eight rebirths, a total of nine lives. Their life expectancy was shorter than that of a human, but when approaching old age, they plunged deep into a Koth’enok trance. The Koth’enok was the sindur ritual of regeneration. After the Koth’enok, they returned to the infant state of a man-lynx cub. Their memories would be erased. They would have to be cared for and raised again by their own children, as was sindur tradition. Their children would tell them about their previous lives, and the tales were like ideals they would have to excel in the next one.
Ahna drank her cup of barley milk as she finished the last momrogi on her tray. These dumplings were leftovers from yesterday’s honoration. She noticed Luk Ma only had a bowl of vegetable broth.
“No meat?” she asked.
Luk Ma giggled. “No, I am trying something new.”
David grinned at his friend. “And how is that working out for you, Luk?”
The man-lynx smiled. “I am always hungry, but I am healthier than ever!”
Ahna’s gaze combed around the dining hall, and she spotted the captain of the shrikes in the distance. Their eyes met, and he held somewhat of a contrite look. Ahna was puzzled by his concerned stare. When he finished his plate, he gave her a nod and went off into the hallway.
Ahna stood outside by the stables and tended to Bark. She brushed him softly, then a sudden, deep male voice startled her.
“I was wrong,” he said.
She turned to Cedric, tensed due to what he might say next.
“I let my anger take over my judgement,” he added with a dark tone.
What’s happening? Where is all this coming from? Ahna relaxed her shoulders and gazed into his cerulean eyes, searching for something that could explain. The hostile veil that covered the marksman in hatred had faded. Ahna was faced with an honest man who expressed a sincere apology.
“I’ve done terrible things in my life, some of it in the name of the cause. After the Uprising failed, something died inside me. I lost a piece of my humanity. I began to sink in a dark pit of hatred and self-blame.” He was unexpectedly so sincere, almost virtuous. “In the end, Diego had to slap me awake!” He chuckled hesitantly and raised his hand toward her, as an invitation for her to shake it. “I’d like to start this over.” He cleared his throat. “My name is Cedric Rover, I lead the shrikes, and my superior is Jade Lark.”
He smiled and waited patiently. Ahna, speechless, mechanically clasped her hand around his. “I’m Ahna,” she candidly said.
“Nice to meet you, Ahna.”
This was the first time she had heard him call her something else than the regular dokka name. As she co
llected her thoughts, she added more to her introduction. “Actually, it’s Meriel Ahn Arkamai, and I’m a magic-user. But people call me Ahna nowadays.”
An honest smile drew on Cedric’s face, and he let go of her hand. His stance had turned from his usual aggressive and resentful self to something almost welcoming. His blue eyes lit up as she smiled back.
He cleared his throat. “And I’m in bed with the Shadows.” His last words seemed so serious. He had a dim note of hesitation behind his voice. “Can you help?” he finally asked, stuttering, as though he had just come clean, in front of her, by the stables.
8
Bane
Ahna and the captain of the shrikes sat alone on the stone circle at the center of the chapel. There, they had complete privacy to talk about something Cedric should have shared from the start. His heart pounded in his chest. He was still cautious to lower his walls. Ahna laid a gentle hand on his arms as a sign he was safe to be honest. He looked at her and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“Start from the beginning,” Ahna requested.
His blue eyes darkened, and his tone was grave. “I was betrayed, and we failed. The battle was lost.” He closed his eyes and said the words unsaid. “I died on the battlefield.”
Ahna noticed the torment in his voice, something that had laid beneath and eaten him inside over the years.
“I don’t remember what I saw, just a feeling.” He plunged his troubled gaze into Ahna’s. “I didn’t go to the Underworld, where I should have gone.”
The dark elf understood little by little what had happened. “You took a sharp turn to the Shadow Realm,” she concluded.
He became silent for a cold moment. “I heard a voice tempt me with a second chance. It said I could keep fighting.” Ahna sighed deeply. She began to grasp the big picture of what Cedric had endured. “I had to give them my soul and become a voidwalker. When I woke up, she...” He paused again. “Naiel, the traitor, she was dead.”
Tempest of Bravoure: Kingdom Ascent Page 10
