by Dark, Raven
“How do they keep the peace, though, Master?” Mindful of my station, I kept my voice low. “One of those men was from Ganta, and there was another one back there from Siest. Those two Clans hate each other.”
“This is what is called Neutral Ground, Kitten,” Hawk murmured. “There is an ancient pact in effect for anyone who visits the Yantu or wishes their help. All have agreed to it, since I don’t know when. Any act of violence results in banishment from the village.” Hawk put his finger to his lips and waved his hand toward the back of the group. “Stay behind me, Kitten, and don’t speak again until I say so.”
I might have been annoyed at him for that, but the urgency in his tone made it clear he had no choice. His eyes spoke of those age-old customs that couldn’t be violated.
I fell behind with the others.
Hawk dropped off his guards, along with Bear, Grim, and Blade, at a small restaurant in the middle of the village, while the rest of us went on toward the temple.
As we headed west out of the village, it took everything in me not to wince from the thudding in my head that had now become almost painful. It had become a pulling sensation, as if someone had attached a tether to me and was pulling me onward. Onward toward the temple.
As soon as we reached a crest on the mountain and I saw what lay before us, my breath caught.
“Oh, Hawk…” I covered my mouth with my fingers, as much because he’d told me to be silent as out of sheer awe.
Below us, stretching across a wide basin was the most beautiful and fascinating place I’d ever seen. Towers that looked as if they’d been carved from smooth stone rose in spires many feet high, each one with flat, wide precipices that created the look of many-tiered fountains. Except when I looked closer, they weren’t the layers of fountains, but huge housing areas; windows looked out of the stone, hundreds of them. Fields of grass and trees ran between them, streams wending like glistening snakes here and there. Everything was thick and lush. It looked so peaceful and untouched, so serene as to be almost dream-like.
My heart raced, excitement nearly making me forget the strange urgency pulling me toward that single place. It was stunning.
“Whoa.” Pretty Boy widened his eyes beside me. “Look at that place. That’s wild.”
I heard Doc swear. “Hawk, how… How did they even build that?” I glanced at Doc and thought I could literally see his scientific brain trying to work out architecture that seemed to defy logic. No wonder. Those huge layers of stone looked like single pieces, seamless and too large to have been lifted so high.
Hawk gave us all a rare smile that looked proud and pleased, then waved for us to follow him down the path to a wide set of stone gates that stood closed at the front of the temple’s expansive grounds.
“Sheriff, you should see this place,” Steel started, apparently too excited to think about what he was saying. “It looks like—” He cut off when Sheriff shot an unseeing deathly look toward him. Steel looked away and coughed. “Sorry.”
“How did they do it, though?” Pretty Boy asked Hawk, hurrying along at his side.
Hawk didn’t answer, and I wondered if he didn’t know, or he was just being Hawk—mysterious and secretive about his people.
No one spoke a word as we made our way to the gates. I didn’t see anyone moving around the grounds. Silence lay over the whole place, quiet that should have felt ghostly, but instead emphasized the tranquility of the place.
Birds chirped from trees and the streams trickled, a soft, serene sound. Still, my head pounded.
A few feet from the gates and the wide stone steps that led to them, I dropped to my knees. I groaned and grabbed the sides of my head.
“Setora!” Hawk knelt beside me, his palm on my back. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, desperately trying to clear the fog.
“Doc,” Hawk called.
“No.” I waved off Doc’s help before he could take a step toward me and leave a worried-looking Sheriff.
“What the fuck is going on?” Sheriff demanded.
“I’m fine,” I panted. “This…this is supposed to happen.”
“It’s fucking Julian, isn’t it?” Sheriff felt his way to me.
I gripped his shoulder as he dropped beside Hawk who took my face in his hands.
“No. Masters, I’m fine. It’s not him. There is someone… I don’t know. I only know I’m supposed to be here.” I stroked Hawk’s wrist soothingly. “It’s like this place has been waiting for me. It wants me here so badly it almost hurts. It’ll pass. I just need to get to those gates.”
“We better get her the hell away from here,” Steel snapped. “Hawk—”
Hawk put up his hand for silence and looked at me. “Setora, are you sure you want to—”
“Yes. I have to. Master, just let me get there. Please, no matter what happens, don’t interfere. I have to present myself to… Just don’t interfere, please.”
Hawk’s brows went up, but I could see it in his face, he knew something was happening, something he had to let run its course.
“The hell we won’t,” Steel rumbled. “You look like you’re going to—”
Hawk put out his hand to stop him. He nodded to me and stood slowly.
Doc peered at me once I was on my feet. “This is like before, isn’t it? With Adeline?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Without another word, I headed toward the steps, toward the gates. The men stayed at my side, none of them touching me, but all of them looking on the verge of grabbing me the moment I collapsed. Every step felt as if that pulling sensation was tugging harder. My head felt like it was going to split apart.
And then the moment my feet reached the bottom step, all of it…stopped.
The pounding in my head silenced, the last beat of a drum resounding and then leaving a nothingness behind so complete it was almost as painful as the pounding. The pulling…backed off, the tether cut.
The awareness that I was supposed to be here filled my being to the point where I all but heard it as a voice in my head. A voice that said one thing.
Home.
The buzzing. That buzzing I only felt whenever a Violet was there hummed in the back of my mind, barely there, yet nevertheless indicating a powerful mind.
I threw a glance over my shoulder at the men, giving a nod to let them know I was okay. They visibly relaxed, but all, Doc and Hawk especially, wore expressions of muted worry, as if they were waiting for the other shoe to fall.
They were expecting Julian. So was I, and yet while I should have been terrified, I wasn’t, and that scared me.
A rumbling sound made me look up to the doors at the top of the stairs.
The gates opened, a long, low grumble of stone on stone.
Hawk tried to pull me behind him, probably in effort to obey whatever custom that demanded I remain behind my master. I shook him off and he released me.
Something compelled me to remain exactly where I was. If Master Leif’s Keepers were coming out to meet us, I was supposed to meet them first. How that was possible, I didn’t know, but it was true.
No, it was more than that. It felt as if I’d come to the single place in all the world that my entire life had somehow led me to find.
I drew myself up straight and tall, only half-registering what I was doing, as though some instinct drove me to it.
It was important that I appear strong, that I present myself as…
As someone of great power.
To the Keepers? What in the…?
Except when the gates opened, the Keepers didn’t come out of them. Instead, a single warrior dressed in the same silken garb Hawk wore when he practiced strode out. A sword was strapped to the warrior’s back, a cloth wrapped around the face, forming a mask.
And…except for the black dragon on the breast of the warrior’s uniform, every stitch was crimson red.
My heart gave a giant leap. I’d only ever seen one Yantu dressed like that. The warrior may have been masked,
but I knew exactly who it was.
“Oh, Maker…” I breathed.
Walking down the steps toward me, the warrior removed the mask, setting the cloth about the shoulders with the same ceremonial care I’d seen Hawk use. Revealing pale hair as purple as mine, and eyes glittering like violet jewels.
It was a Violet, but it wasn’t Julian.
Collective murmurs rose up from the men behind me.
“Holy fuck,” Pretty Boy said.
“Incredible,” Doc whispered.
The warrior nodded to me. “Welcome, Liberator,” she said. “My name is Ali’san. I have been expecting you for a long, long time.”
Chapter 5
Master Leif
The moment I saw her, all I could do was stare.
I was supposed to say something. Something formal, something fitting of a situation that had been pushing itself toward fruition for weeks, months, perhaps even years. Something that, although I was not Yantu, was befitting of the warrior in front of me, offering her the respect that everything about her seemed to command. But I couldn’t say a word.
My brain seemed to have stalled.
It wasn’t just that the warrior coming down the steps toward me was a woman, and in full Yantu garb, though that alone was enough to leave me staring at her like an imbecile with my mouth hanging open. It wasn’t that she was coming out of a Yantu temple where females were forbidden, carrying a sword that violated laws just by being on her back, though that, too, left me dumbfounded. Especially since she wore the weapon the way most women wore a frock.
None of those things gave me so much pause as the plain and simple fact that I’d seen this woman before, and in a place reality was never supposed to show itself. This woman—Ali’san—was the one who had haunted my dreams more than once. This woman was the one who had saved me from Julian. And now she was here, real and larger than life, descending the steps of the temple from Hawk’s youth like a heroine out of an ancient Old World tale.
Having seen her armed and dressed like this in my dreams should have prepared me for her appearance, but somehow it didn’t. It was as though, because that had been a dream and this was real, some part of me had never expected her to look as she did in real life.
Then slowly, as the numbing shock of her presence began to wear off, it fully registered what she’d said.
Welcome, Liberator. I have been waiting for you for a long, long time.
She’d been waiting for me. Just as she’d promised in my dream. I could only assume the mountain on which we stood was the “Mountain That Waits.”
She’d known I was coming. No, she’d called me here.
Pretty Boy’s and Doc’s reactions made sense, but I had a feeling it wasn’t just that she was a female with a blade or in warrior regalia. They both knew she was the woman from my dream. I could all but feel the tension pounding off the men as they—even Hawk—tried desperately to understand how a figure from my dreams was right there.
Absently, I heard Sheriff asking what was going on, but I kept my focus on the warrior woman.
“It’s you,” I said stupidly.
The corners of Ali’san’s mouth turned up as she arrived at the bottom step. Her amethyst nose ring sparkled in the sunlight, reminding me that I’d seen her at that bazaar. I cleared my throat and was about to give her the customary Violet’s bow, but she shook her head.
“The Liberator bows to no one.” She stepped down so that she stood level with me, although she was a head taller. She unsheathed her blade with a soft whine of steel.
“Hey—” Steel snapped.
I heard a few of the men behind me shift suddenly, and Pretty Boy grabbed my arm as if to yank me back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hawk hold up a hand in command.
“Stop…” he murmured. Apparently, he knew what was happening, which was more than I could say for myself.
Feet shuffled as everyone backed off.
I looked at Ali’san. Without reacting to the men’s attempts to protect me at all, she held her blade out in front of her, across her palms, and dropped to one knee.
My hitherto racing heart froze in my chest. Everything about the woman screamed of command and power, but she was kneeling to me as if I was far above her. I wanted to ask her what in the Maker’s Light she was doing, but the words wouldn’t come. Strangely, what she was doing felt…right.
“My blade and my hand are yours, Liberator. May the Banner of Your Eye wave long and high over the New World.”
My Eye? What?
My arm moved, and as I heard the men murmur behind me, I looked down. My hand had moved with a will of its own, as though some instinct had compelled it, so that now my fingertips rested on the center of Ali’san’s blade.
She stood and sheathed the weapon with the skill of one who had done it a ten thousand times. Exactly like Hawk. I blinked at her.
“I…I…sorry.” I was staring still, and I knew it was rude, but I couldn’t help it. “How… how are you here? How is this possible?”
“You know how it is possible, Setora.”
My face paled. “You drew me here, didn’t you? You were the one pulling me here. I felt you in my head.”
“Not only me. The Hive.”
“The…what?”
Without answering me, she reached out and touched her fingers to my temples. “You are still linked with him. I can feel him; the thread that connects you stretches across the world.”
“Julian.” I felt my face pale.
“Yes.” Ali’san lowered her hand and stepped back, giving me space. She still didn’t look at the men, her eyes fixed on me as if I were the only one there. I wanted to think she was being rude, acting on some sort of female superiority, but I knew it ran deeper than that. It was custom.
I felt suddenly awkward, torn between wanting to include the men out of loyalty, and needing to follow her lead.
“You would have found this place even if your warrior master had not led you here,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Hawk behind me, but only for a second.
“Ali’san, it is wonderful to meet you, and to know you’re real. But I didn’t only come because of Julian. I—”
“I know.” She nodded behind me. “You came because of the one who cannot see.”
Sheriff. I heard him cough roughly behind me.
“You know… How?” I asked.
“All of you are here for her and for him,” she said, finally including the others. For all that she’d been ignoring them until then, now she eyed each of the men with an intensity that made it seem as though she were looking straight into their souls. “But not all of you are here. Where are the rest of you? Where is the one who carries the banner?”
The one who carried the banner? Her words made no sense to me. “Are you talking about the men we left in the village? None of them had any banner.”
“More will come.” She stepped forward and took my hands in hers. “Master Leif has been waiting to see you.”
“He knew we were coming, too?” I looked back at Hawk, who appeared as surprised as me. “He never answered Hawk’s letters.”
“I told him,” Ali’san said simply. “He will be out momentarily. He is eager to see you, Hawk. He has missed you. He would have replied to your letters, but the Order was in the Deep Solace.”
“Deep…oh.” Hawk sighed. “I should have guessed. It’s been years since the Order has done that.”
Ali’san’s gaze settled on each of the other men again, this time with amusement that made me glance back at them. None spoke, all of them visibly trying to process what was happening and looking stunned, unsure what to do with themselves. Even Sheriff seemed quietly curious. If the situation hadn’t been so solemn, I’d have laughed.
“Forgive their gawking, Mistress Ali’san,” Hawk said, nodding to the others. “They mean no disrespect. They’re just…surprised.”
Some of them cleared their throats.
“But not you.” She looked at him, his face only a hal
f a head taller, making her seem huge. “You are not surprised at what I am, Master Hawk.”
She said the word master in a way that told me she was referring to his Yantu status rather than the way I used the word.
He lifted his shoulders in that calm way of his, not the least bit ruffled at being faced with a woman who, for most other men, would have made them feel uncomfortable. “I am not entirely surprised, Tai Dan Ali’san, no.”
“Why? Because you have seen me before?”
His eyes widened. “So it was you I saw as a boy.”
Her eyes smiled enigmatically.
“Ali’san.” I waited until she focused on me. “You told Master Leif we were coming. Will he help us? Me and General Sheriff?” I nodded back at him.
She sighed. “Only Hawk may ask him that, Liberator.”
“Then I will go to him.” Hawk started up the steps.
“You won’t have to.”
As if on cue, a low, rhythmic drumming carried deeply from within the temple. I looked up at the open doors behind Ali’san, and my heart began to beat hard in time with that drum.
Two lines of men emerged from the wide-open doors. Each were dressed in the same black silk garb I’d seen Hawk wear, with the red dragon on the breasts of their folded-over tunics. Five men in each line filed out onto the steps and flanked the doors in a long line across the top step. Three more emerged from inside, but it was the one in the middle who held all my attention.
The man wasn’t at all what I expected. Almost as tall as Steel, but thin and draped in long, thick cloaks in red and black, he walked slowly, every step with purpose. Hands that bore only a hint of wrinkles were folded over his stomach, his expression so solemn he made Hawk look wild. For some reason, I’d expected a long white beard and hair, but instead, his short hair was jet black, and his smooth face, neither young nor old, was clean-shaven. He had the same yellow eyes as Hawk, but his were so intense I felt my heart stop at seeing them.
Master Leif. He carried himself with the regal demeanor of a king, yet somehow, without seeming arrogant. Without a word, he took his place in front of his warriors, on the top step. Nothing about him suggested great age, in fact, he looked not a day over forty, but I had a feeling he was profoundly old.
