Serpents Rising (Eve of Redemption Book 3)

by Joe Jackson

  “Oh, she’s powerful, but one of the things…,” she paused for a second, her breath caught. She frowned, took a deep breath, and sighed. “One of the things Uldriana taught me was that someone who is completely focused on hurting you is actually very easy to repulse, compared to someone who’s interested in besting you.”

  “You mean like when she tried collapsing the cliff instead of just killing us outright?” Danilynn asked, and Sonja nodded. The fures-rir priestess turned to Kari. “Remember when the Warlord had us collapse the mountainside to clear out the brys archers that had perched behind us? And it wiped out a few columns of enemy infantry, too.”

  Kari nodded somewhat absently. She was glad Sonja was able to repel the succubus and her magical power, but even with Danilynn’s assurances, Kari was still nervous for her child. They may have gotten lucky this time, but she was not looking forward to fending off attacks from the succubus or anyone else the entire way back to Anthraxis. She stood up and looked west, her eyes seeing only pines before her, but her memory showing her the high peaks of mountains beyond the forest. That way, she knew, lay Mas’tolinor, the one realm she was forbidden to enter.

  She turned east, then, and gestured away into the forest. “Near as I can figure, it’s going to take us about ten or eleven days to get back to the northern border of Tess’Vorg if we follow the border here,” she said. “I have no idea how dangerous Si’Dorra will be, but honestly, I don’t imagine it can be any worse than Sorelizar was. At the very least, though, we’re going to want to be far from here in case anyone comes looking to see who all the arcane damage was from.”

  “Well, let’s finish eating, and we’ll see if we can put some distance behind us,” Danilynn said. “Se’sasha may need to rest before we can travel again; that climb was tough even on me.”

  “Got too used to working in a temple, did you?” Kari teased. The fures-rir priestess laughed and waved away the joke.

  Se’sasha watched them closely after hearing her name, but she offered no words in her own language. When she finished eating and drinking, though, she rose and gestured eagerly to the east. Kari glanced at Sonja and Danilynn, and they both agreed with the syrinthian girl’s unspoken sentiments. Kari got to her feet and her friends followed suit, and they set off to the east for as long as their weary legs would take them.

  “Should we get back to traveling during the day?” Kari asked. “Without Etolivor or any places to hide, I’m not sure sleeping during the day would be smart.”

  “No, I agree,” Sonja replied. “Let’s push ourselves through the morning and afternoon, even if we have to take frequent breaks, and then we can get back into a regular schedule.”

  The first day of getting back on schedule was rough, but the companions found that the forested edge of Si’Dorra that dropped down to Sorelizar below was fairly devoid of life. Only the hooting of the owls at night and the screech of high-circling birds of prey during the day really broke up the muted monotony of the wind and the crunch of pine needles. The smell of the forest was quite pleasant, reminding Kari of the more northern portions of the wooded continent of Terrassia, and at times it was hard to believe they were in the middle of “the underworld.”

  Se’sasha’s strength started to wane again after a couple of days, and she made an effort to mime what the problem was to Kari and her friends. It seemed that though the divine sustenance Danilynn was conjuring kept her energetic, the woman needed meat. Once they finished their travels on the third day in Si’Dorra, Kari got the folding bow off the side of her pack and went out to hunt. Even a wild turkey or similar game animal would probably do the syrinthian girl wonders, and they could let her have as much as she needed: the divine food was of no issue to the rir women.

  Kari crept along as quietly as she could among the old pine needles, and even managed to bite down a choice expletive when she stepped on a dried, sharp pine cone. Ketava, she hissed, and then nearly laughed at herself. Animals seemed to stay pretty far from the bluff, and Kari wondered if it was natural for them, or if there were other hunters out here on the edges of Si’Dorra. Certainly any erestram or mallasti living out in the wilds away from civilization would be hunting to keep their families fed. After nearly an hour of looking, Kari had found neither game nor tracks, or signs of any having been in the area.

  What she did find before she turned back to the camp, however, made her hackles rise. She approached a pine tree slowly, staring wide-eyed at the delicate image carved carefully into a single piece of bark. That she had even noticed it was testament to the fact that her hunters’ eyes were still sharp from her lessons among the elves. That very training was doubly important in this situation: the marking she saw, unless it was an incredible coincidence, had been left by an elven ranger from Laeranore, the elven woodlands of Terrassia.

  Kari ran her fingers over the piece of bark softly; it seemed to have been carved in the last few days, based on the fresh edges of the cuts. She glanced around for a couple of minutes, and then up, but if there was an elven ranger nearby, they were keeping themselves hidden for the time being. Kari reached up absently and snapped a short, brittle branch that had long since stopped getting enough light at its elevation. She then drew a knife from the back of her belt and spent a few minutes carving a message of her own on the bark below the elven mark.

  Kari returned to the camp and made an apologetic gesture toward Se’sasha, who simply bowed her head in thanks for Kari’s effort. Kari sat and accepted some of the food Danilynn had conjured, but she also pulled out the remains of her trail mix and offered some of it to Se’sasha. The syrinthian girl ate some of the berries and nuts, then she took some food from Danilynn and sat down to eat. Kari stared at Se’sasha for a minute, wishing desperately that she had some means to communicate with the girl. Still, she remembered there was likely little the girl could tell them about anything, especially the lay of the land in Si’Dorra.

  “Just so you know, I found something strange out in the woods while I was hunting,” Kari told her friends over dinner. “Unless it’s just an amazing coincidence, I found the mark of a hunter, and it looked like it was left by an elven ranger from Laeranore.”

  “Laeranore?” Danilynn repeated with a gasp.

  “What would an elven ranger be doing here?” Sonja wondered aloud.

  “He could have been brought back here against his will after the battle with Arku on Terrassia during the War,” Danilynn said.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Kari said. “It’s possible it was left by an erestram or something, but that their marks would be so close to those of an elf seems unlikely. So I left a return message: ‘Join us by sunset, we head east.’ If it’s an elf, we’ll probably see them in the next couple of days. If not, whoever left that mark will probably have no idea what I was saying.”

  They slept the night in shifts, and Sonja did her best to get enough rest first so she could take the morning watch and let Kari in particular get more sleep. The nights could be tense without Sonja’s masking spell, and Kari remembered how exposed she had felt when they did so outside of Braxus Gaswell’s fortress some three years before. At least then, they weren’t being actively hunted, they weren’t in enemy lands to the extent they were now, and they’d had a lot more people to keep watch – half-guardians who could forgo sleep not the least of them. Still, the night remained quiet but for the sounds of nocturnal nature.

  The next day passed quietly, just as the ones before. There were no sightings of anyone living in Si’Dorra, no attacks by the succubus, and no sign that anyone even knew they were travelling along the border between Si’Dorra and Sorelizar. They chanced coming out of the woods now and then to look down the bluff into Sorelizar and get their bearings. Kari was pretty sure they had passed the center of Sorelizar, and the way the land graded down toward that arid center of King Sekassus’ domain made it easy to confirm. They still had nearly a week’s worth of travel ahead of them to reach Tess’Vorg, but if things continued as they were, it w
ouldn’t be bad at all.

  Kari kept alert, her hands near her hilts as they made camp that evening. Sonja kept her masking spell up despite the fact that they were expecting company, reasoning that should the elf show themselves, she could dispel her magic. Kari gave their potential elf visitor some time to show themselves, but eventually she took out her bow and decided to try hunting for Se’sasha again. Sonja and Danilynn bid her be careful, and she acknowledged their warnings with a nod before she headed further into the woods.

  The scent of a wood fire blew past her when she got a decent distance from the camp, and Kari scanned the forest, trying to determine which way the smoke was blowing from. There had to be a cabin nearby, but despite her changing views of the beshathan people, as Uldriana had called them, she was still leery about meeting any – especially in Arku’s realm. Of more interest to her were the tracks of a flock of large ground birds – turkeys, she thought, no matter what the people of Mehr’Durillia might call them. Or close enough, anyway.

  She briefly considered that the birds might “belong” to whoever owned the cabin, but it seemed a reasonable risk to take. If worse came to worst, she and her friends would probably be long gone by the time the beshathan farmer or woodsman realized they’d lost a bird. Kari made an even greater effort to be quiet, walking high on her toes and trying to crunch as few needles under her feet as possible while she stalked down some prey. After several minutes, she saw movement through the trees, and heard the strange, high-pitched sounds of the birds ahead.

  Kari wasted no time. As soon as she got into position for a good shot, she let an arrow fly and dropped one of the birds. The rest of the flock scattered, but Kari wasn’t as worried about it as she might have been if she was planning to take more of them over the next few days. Instead, she hurried forward, made sure her felled quarry was dead, and then picked it up and hastened back to the camp. It felt as though the forest had eyes, and those of the turkeys that marked her retreat weren’t the ones that bothered her. She wanted to be back at the camp before any inquisitive beshathans decided to see who was hunting in their territory.

  The others looked up when Kari returned, and there was a strange expression on Se’sasha’s face when she beheld Kari carrying the dead bird. It seemed to be a mixture of shock and gratitude, and Kari was satisfied with that. She put away her bow and the arrow, which she was thankfully able to salvage; she carried only two, so losing one was always aggravating. She sat down and began preparing the bird to be cooked, and Danilynn used one of her smaller axes to dig a hole for burying the bird’s feathers, guts, and blood once Kari was ready to butcher it.

  Preoccupied with the prospect of a hot, meaty dinner, none of them even noticed their visitor until he spoke. “By the gods, it really is you,” he blurted, though his voice remained light and even-toned, even through his shock.

  Kari reached instinctively for one of her swords, but when she turned on the speaker and took a good look at him, she froze, stunned. She took in the light skin contrasted by the short, dark hair, and the way his golden eyes were wider and narrower than a human’s. He was dressed in hunter’s garb that appeared to be handmade, a far cry from the intricate armor she’d normally expect to see upon an elf. There was that hazy dividing line between her past life and the current one that sometimes made memories come a little more slowly. Looking at the elf’s face, though, the memories of her days among his people clogged up only briefly before coming back in a flood. She remembered their woodland home, their beautiful cities, their rigid militarism that masked and safeguarded a prosperous and loyal people. And finally, she recalled the name of the man who stood before her.

  “Shefter!” Kari barked suddenly, shocking her friends and the elf. He recovered quickly, though, and made no move to dodge Kari’s hug. Despite her desire to cling to someone familiar, Kari kept the hug cordial and brief. After sorting through the wave of emotions that continued to rebound between her heart and her memories, she turned to her friends and gestured toward the elf. “This is Shefter Dragonseek, Outrider of Laeranore.”

  Shefter bowed politely to Kari’s friends, who introduced themselves in turn. He turned back to Kari. “What are you doing here, old friend?” he asked, but he didn’t even give her a moment to answer. “I had heard rumors when the War began…that you had been returned to Citaria somehow, but I could scarcely believe it. I have so many questions…but please, tell me what you and your companions are doing here, with a syrinthian among you?”

  Kari laid out the story for him with some input from Danilynn and Sonja. The mention of Uldriana’s death made Sonja’s breath catch again, which even their elven guest didn’t miss. He took in the entire story eagerly, and even tried to speak to Se’sasha in infernal before Danilynn explained that the girl spoke only syrinthian. Unfortunately, the ranger couldn’t understand the tongue of the snakefolk, so Se’sasha was still cut off from the rest of them by language. Soon, Kari turned the question back around on Shefter, and asked what he was doing on Mehr’Durillia.

  “I was one of the legion chosen to follow King Kalamaris Talvorus into battle during the War,” he answered, but that only created more questions in Kari and her friends. Shefter could apparently see as much, so he sat down among them and silently offered to dress and prepare the bird for cooking while he explained. His nimble hands made quick work of the bird carcass, and it was on a spit before he ever started explaining the details of his marooning.

  Once the bird was cooking, Shefter began to tell his tale in full. “Kalamaris Talvorus was king of the nation of the Luranar, and was considered a Tenth-Order paladin by our people,” he said, once again considering the confusion on the faces of the women before him. “Our people identify paladins by various orders. A First-Order paladin is one who never recognizes that they have been called, but they have the moral urge to serve and protect others. They typically end up in positions you might call a policeman or city watchman. A Second-Order paladin is also one who never recognizes their calling, but these follow a slightly higher call to serve and protect. These you find among the military, serving as battle clerics or commanders, protecting and serving their entire nation through service to the military.”

  “A Tenth-Order paladin, by contrast, is one who has not only received and followed their calling, but risen to a position where the strength of the gods flows through them in a completely overt manner. The first time King Kalamaris stood among our people before our Queen, he drew out this incredible sword that appeared to be carved from ice, and by force of will he made it sprout the blue flame of the pantheon. You may have seen such blue flames on the porches of your deities’ temples: the eternal flames that judge the hearts of those who touch them.”

  Kari recalled all the times she’d run her hand through the light blue eternal flames of the deities in front of Zalkar’s churches. She remembered how Eli had hesitated to do so, afraid that his decided lack of faith or trust in the pantheon might cause him to be burned. Kari had hardly been surprised when he wasn’t; obedience to the will of the gods came in many forms, and though Eli may not have bent knee to any of them, he did their work, even if unwittingly. Kari could only imagine what it would feel like to be a force of evil and be struck not just by a sword, but by one shrouded in the judgment of the gods.

  “King Kalamaris asked our Queen to send her fiercest fighters to aid in stopping a demon king from crossing over onto Citaria from here, what we commonly call the underworld. I still have little idea how he knew of Arku’s coming, but the Queen had no reason to distrust or refuse a Tenth-Order paladin. She immediately committed her strongest legions to aiding the luranar king: the Arborean Guard, who were our most skilled archers and hunters; and the Spearguard of Laeranore, our vanguard warriors for combating threats to the kingdom.”

  “You were a member of the Arborean Guard, I remember that much,” Kari said. “But you were still just an initiate when I first met your Queen.”

  “Aye, well, that was nearly two centuries ago
, old friend,” he said with a chuckle. “I will be happy to tell you details of the battle if you like, but for now, I will try to keep this tale short. When Arku was defeated, it opened some arcane maelstrom that pulled many, many corpses and survivors through to this realm, Si’Dorra. King Kalamaris and his friend and fellow paladin, Galadon Turcullen, were both killed in combat with Arku, and I believe they were also pulled through. Myself and several others, who were close enough to witness Galadon return a fatal blow at the same time he suffered one, were likewise brought through.”

  “Here, we have remained for the last several years, trying to find some way home, but to no avail. Arku’s minions hunted us down, and were it not for my skills in tracking, hunting, and keeping out of sight, I would not be the last survivor of my kin.” He went silent for a moment, tending to the cooking bird busily, though it hardly needed any maintenance. When he looked back up, he added, “Now, we have more important issues to see to. You are being tracked by servants of Arku.”

  That hardly surprised Kari. She thought about what he’d said, and wondered if it was just coincidence that they’d met. “How did you find us?” she asked.

  Shefter beheld her curiously. “I followed the mark you left on the tree. Breaking the branch to attract my attention was very clever; you learned the ways of my people well.”

  “No, I mean, what were you doing in this area?” she pressed. “Is it just coincidence that we happened to cross paths, or did someone tell you to look for us here?”

  “The border has been the safest place for me to live,” he said. “The people here, they do not respect their king very much. I am usually able to find some small measure of hospitality from the people of Si’Dorra in exchange for hunted meats, pelts, or other products from my foraging and ranging. When Arku’s hunters come into the area, I can cross the border into the realm of Sorelizar, as long as I do not remain there long. If I do, King Sekassus has a habit of trying to have me captured as well. Arku has put quite a price on my head.”