“Enough questions. I need to concentrate.”
Jasside relented—not understanding the answers anyway—and angled her glance sideways towards the cluster of flaming objects. Only they were flaming no longer. Closer now, they streaked across the sky perpendicular to the summit upon which they stood, and Jasside was able to get her first clear look at them.
Her first thought was of elongated boulders, impossibly huge and falling from a great height, but that conception soon faded before the truth. They were not falling—they were flying. Banking and swooping, they arranged themselves into what could be called, with no uncertainty, a formation.
And they were slowing down.
Though they still appeared as great lumps of rough stone, she now knew them for what they were.
“Skyships,” Jasside said.
Vashodia, lost in her own working of power, merely grunted in reply.
“But who are they? And where did they come from? And what the abyss are we trying to accomplish here?”
Jasside turned back only to find the Timid Moon twice as large as she remembered and with its edges now ringed by flames.
The Eye of Elos was on the move.
“Keep pace with it,” Vashodia demanded. “I’m not done yet.”
Jasside once more complied. Out of the corner of her eyes, she witnessed the front edge of each skyship begin to glow with lurid, colorless light.
“We come,” Sem Aira Grusot said.
Arivana followed the trail of the woman’s eyes and squinted towards a darkening horizon. Through the shimmer of the desert heat, she saw no more than shadows, faint specks against a sky caught midway between day and night.
“That was . . . quicker than I expected,” Sem Aira continued. “That can only mean—”
“What?” Arivana asked.
But the creature clamped her oddly curled lips shut and shook her head.
Arivana knew she would need to press her for answers, but the thought of interrogating the woman who had once been her closest confidante drove hollow spikes through her gut. Someday soon, I’ll get answers from you. But not today. Today, I can only mourn for the friend I lost and the trust broken so completely by this hurtful truth.
The young queen vowed never again to let herself become so vulnerable. Never to let herself be duped or betrayed. She gritted her teeth as the last remnants of the child inside her died. A necessary sacrifice, she deemed, if she was to hold together the broken pieces of her people through the trial to come.
She glanced back towards the horizon, which seemed to have captured Sem Aira’s gaze. A sound of surprise escaped her throat.
Those specks she’d so easily dismissed had morphed into boulders in the sky, growing larger—and closer—by the beat. Their front edges began glowing with malevolence, and her throat closed up.
“What are they?” Arivana asked. “Why are they here?”
“Punishment,” Sem Aira said.
“For what?”
The strange grey-yellow lips curled up in a sad smile. “For the sins of your kind against ours. Sins, it seems, you have forgotten in the eons that have passed. I see that now.”
“Then do something! Tell them to stop! Tell them it wasn’t our fault!”
Sem Aira sighed. “I doubt they would listen to me. None of this was according to plan.” She chirped with what Arivana could only assume was laughter. “But if there’s one word that could adequately describe my people, it would be . . . uncertainty. It quite literally empowers us.”
“Empowers?”
The woman shook her head again. “I’ve said too much. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.”
Arivana knew that issues of power had never been her forte. Claris and Tior had been experts in the field, and lately, in their absence, Tassariel had been whom she’d turned to for advice.
She spun, seeking to locate the woman, even knowing the valynkar was not . . . herself.
What she saw, instead, was a sky filled with figures who were the very embodiment of both light and dark. The valynkar she recognized, but the others . . .
“Those must be mierothi,” she said to herself. “I didn’t know they, too, could fly.”
The two races, once the most bitter of enemies, sailed through the air, weaving among each other in a display that would have left her breathless on any other day. With the impending threat, Arivana was only glad they weren’t at each other’s throats. A toll ago, the story had been different.
It was amazing what could change in so short a time.
She hoped that the change would have an effect on whatever was occurring now.
Valynkar and mierothi alike swept through the dusty air above her, arranging themselves into two massive blankets of cloth and flesh. The valynkar led. The mierothi formed up fifty or so paces behind them. She could see Tassariel issuing orders from the ground, flanked by a mierothi male just as youthful and confident in appearance as she.
Arivana’s eyes were drawn sideways as the gathered glow from the distant objects shot forward like hungry vipers.
“I’m well clamped now,” Vashodia said. “I don’t need you anymore.”
It was not a moment too soon. Jasside collapsed.
Her power fled, and any hope of retrieving it vanished, along with her sense of balance. A lone darkwisp limped free of her control and skated down the mountainside, soon lost in drifts of shadowed snow. Jasside barely had the strength left to angle her head and eyes towards the conclusion of all she’d worked for.
The skyships raced sideways across her line of vision, strange energy beaming forward from their hulls. But the Timid Moon approached them faster still.
“Just a matter of time, now,” Vashodia said. “Let’s hope my brother is cognizant enough to heed to the last testament of our supposedly rival god.”
Jasside could barely comprehend the words, much less make sense of them. It was all she could do to keep her gaze locked upon the clash soon to come. But even that effort proved futile as both the cluster of skyships and the Timid Moon dashed away, becoming mere dots on the horizon opposite whence they came. Her neck could only bend so far.
Shaking, Vashodia sat down at her side and sighed in obvious relief. “There. All I can do, for now. In less than a mark, it will be finished.”
“What will be?”
“The first skirmish of the war to come.”
“You call this a skirmish?”
“Yes. Unfortunately. Things will only escalate from here. We’re going to need help.”
“Nearly every nation in the world is already gathered. Who else can we call upon?”
“Old friends.” Vashodia smiled, then a sly look came across her face. “And speaking of which, did I mention that Mevon Daere is still alive?”
“What!”
Tassariel watched from the background of her own mind and body as Elos directed her people, in concert with the mierothi, in a desperate defense of life itself.
Energy beams raked towards them from an enemy as ancient as history itself. The valynkar formed a wall, erecting their patchwork shield just paces away.
The beams vanished just outside.
Behind them, the virulent rays re-formed, having somehow skipped across the ensuing space. But now, a wall of darkness met them. The strange beams, which seemed a different color every time her eyes grazed across them, met their match in the even more massive barrier of shadows.
Energy exploded across the sky, careening every which way in chaotic patterns. But no one that she could see was harmed.
Elos directed her eyes once more towards the approaching skyships. Tassariel could see them gathering energy for another attack. But she saw something else as well. Behind them, closing fast, came a disc of pale, reflected light.
Is that the Eye of Elos?
“Yes,” Elos whispered in her voice. “I’m afraid my calculations were correct on this point. My time draws to a close.”
What do you mean?
“Take care, Tassariel. I couldn’t have asked for a more faithful or capable servant.”
I’m not even sure what I did.
“You helped me experience my people again. To understand what they’ve become. To love them even if they can’t or won’t return it. The abyss will soon take me, but this close to the end, there’s no reason to hold back what little there is left of me. You’ve convinced me, by your very nature, that I should use myself to help those in need.”
Tassariel felt power flow out of her, but it was not the simple energy she was used to manipulating. It was greater, more complete. Like a woven wool robe compared to an unshaven sheep. It was the same power she’d felt coursing through her the day of her hundredth birthday. Yet she could see no effects around her. The power manifested far, far away, touching those lost souls lying dormant in the temple of healing.
Awakening them.
“Tell Gilshamed, you’re wel—”
The flaming orb that housed her god’s body, almost forgotten by her in the distance, intruded into the middle of the enemy skyship formation . . .
. . . and detonated.
She lost and regained all sense of herself and her surroundings in the next moment. Surging forward once more into the forefront of her own body, Tassariel gasped in a breath fully under her own control for the first time in a toll.
It felt glorious and horrible all at once.
She flexed every muscle in her body, only barely aware of the debris falling to the ground a few leagues away. Lifeless scrap and nothing more. She was too busy exalting in the fact that she was herself again. Whole.
Elos was gone. And in his place came something she’d had her whole life, and whose absence she’d only grown used to in recent months. Tears flowed freely down her face as she flexed her back, and her wings sprang forth once more.
At last . . . I’m whole.
“Is it over?” Arivana asked, watching pieces of the attacking skyships fall scattered and flaming to the ground.
“No,” Sem Aira Grusot said. “That was only one fleet. We have many.
“I’m afraid this war has only just begun.”
EPILOGUE
Yandumar swept a cloth-covered finger along the display case, which was lit from behind by discreetly placed lightglobes. He ran his hand along the length of his personal shrine, then raised the pearl-colored cloth to his eyes. Faint grey specks screamed at his sight. Dust.
Once again, my vigilance falls short. Will my failures never end?
“We have servants for that, you know.”
The emperor of the once-veiled empire turned to face his best friend and greatest adversary.
His wife.
“I know, Ren,” Yandumar said. “You don’t need to remind me every day.”
“Apparently I do.” Slick Ren approach his side and rubbed a hand down his arm. She perched her chin on his shoulder, and a lock of red hair fell into his peripheral vision. “And you have more important things to concern yourself with.”
“What? Like running this abyss-taken empire?”
“It will only become that way if you stop ruling it. No one else can do the job half as well as you can. I thought we’d exhausted this particular subject of discussion?”
Yandumar shrugged her off. “Don’t you have some dissidents to intimidate?”
She let loose a throaty laugh. “There haven’t been any of those in a year at least, my sweetness. Word got round of how the last bunch were dealt with.”
“With the tips of your blades, you mean.”
“Why, dearest, you wound me!”
“Just as you wounded them,” he said wryly.
“But it was my brother’s silver tongue that made them see reason,” she protested.
“That would almost be convincing,” Yandumar said, “if Derthon still had one.”
Slick Ren laughed again, nestling her cheek deeper into his neck. She tried to grab at the cloth covering his hand, but he jerked it out of reach. She should know better.
“Come to bed, Yanny?” she asked. “I’d like to entertain the notion that I’m still a young woman, from time to time. Please don’t make me suffer.”
The edge of pleading in her tone was not lost on him, but it moved him not. He hardened his gaze on the display case. “I made a vow—”
“Abyss take your vows!” she said, tensing. “What good have they ever done?”
He opened his mouth to retort but found no words that could adequately describe the conviction inside him. He shook his head instead. “It’s just who I am, Ren. I thought you’d realized that by now.”
Though some part of him expected, or even wanted her to blow up at him, she merely sighed and withdrew from his touch. “Don’t stay up too late this time,” she said. “There’s only so much you can do to fight the dust.”
No matter how much I do, it will never be enough. “Sure.”
Her sigh seemed to suck the air from room as she departed. Each footstep echoed across the empty expanse of the receiving chamber, and the musky scent of her lingered long after she’d gone. Even the smell of sawdust and mortar, which permeated the palace as the repairs finished up, were nothing compared to the enticing aroma of his wife of these past two years. Yandumar knew he’d not been the best of husbands to her, but knowing didn’t necessarily make it any easier to improve. He’d long been devoid of any motivation to make things better.
Why even try when I’ve already lost my best reason to live on?
The door clicked closed at the far end of the drafty, rectangular room. Yandumar resumed his cleaning.
Scrubbing from one end to the other, back and back again, he set about ensuring that not a single smudge or speck of dust remained on the glass front of the display. He had to replace the cloth three times. And though he knew not how long it took, eventually he’d cleaned it well enough to satisfy his . . .
Obsession. No use calling it anything other than what it was.
Yandumar pressed his forehead into the cold stone just fingers away from the illuminated glass though careful not to mar it with impressions from his skin. He let loose a long-held breath.
“Oh, son,” he said, “why did I have to lose sight of what was most important? Why did I let my focus stray to things that mattered so little when compared to family?”
“Do not blame yourself,” called a deep voice from far behind him. “The chaos of such times as we went through made many things difficult to discern. What truly counted chief among them.”
Yandumar squeezed his eyes shut, unable to face even the specter of his son. Such visitations were frequent in the past few years but never brought any comfort. A small surge of joy, perhaps, before reason kicked in. But after that, only regret. Only pain.
A few words of logic usually sufficed to banish the illusion.
“There are no excuses for what I did,” Yandumar said. “I can only hope for some small measure of atonement. But that will not come for a long time yet. It may not ever come. And certainly not if I stray from my own vows.”
“What vows would that be?” the ghost of his son asked.
“To never forget who I lost. To never let this empire forget who saved them.”
The ghost sighed. “My part was never significant, in the grand scheme of things. I killed the emperor, yes, but I saw that he was a man long wearied of the life he’d been dealt. In the end, I saved no one but myself.”
Yandumar sagged deeper against the wall. The specter had never been quite so eloquent as this. Nor so wrong. “But you didn’t manage that. I should have been there to protect you . . . to watch your back at least . . . but I was too busy playing general for the revolution instead
of paying attention to the whole reason I got involved with it in the first place.”
“You did a duty no one else could have when you had it thrust upon you. I’d be a fool to blame you for what any sane man would call heroism.”
“Don’t say that,” Yandumar spat, fighting the urge to whirl around and force the ghost gone with a fist. I’ve even started to hallucinate the sound of his footsteps. How long until sanity slips away entirely? “I’m no hero. I never was. Even a memory has no right to mock me.”
The ghost laughed. “You’ve grown old, Father. But not that old. Can’t you—won’t you—see what’s right in front of you?”
“I see a wish,” Yandumar said, tears shaking loose from trembling eyes. “Nothing more. One I don’t deserve to have come true.”
“I see one as well. And not long ago, I thought as you did.”
Yandumar grunted. Much as he wished the ghost to fade, as it always had before, he was unable to resist playing along. “What changed?”
“I realized,” his son’s ghost said, “that I must forgive myself. If I don’t, I can’t expect anyone else to do it for me. And I certainly won’t find any meaning with the life I’ve been given.”
Yandumar couldn’t take it anymore. The specter had never lingered so long. Had never spoken with such force or surety.
With such truth.
He fell to his knees. “Please, spirit, leave me be. Haven’t I suffered enough for my sins?”
“Too much.” Heavy footfalls rang out, coming closer. “Perhaps it’s time to put our self-inflicted pain to rest?”
Yandumar could only wonder, frozen by disbelief, as a waft of warm breath fell across the back of his head. A moment later, a palm as large as his own came to rest on his shoulder.
“It . . . it can’t be . . .”
“It is, Father,” Mevon said. “I’m home.”
Yandumar jumped to his feet, uncertainty fleeing. Energy blazed through his limbs. Without hesitation, he formed a fist and slammed it through the display case. Glass shattered, cutting his knuckles, but he barely paid heed to the blood or pain. He reached in and snatched the object contained within.
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