by J. A. Comley
They nodded simultaneously, mouths ajar in same expression of wonder.
They edged closer to the bars of their cage.
“What does a High Lord do?” asked Davan, his dark-hazel eyes looking more curious and less haunted than before.
Larkel was relieved to see that they at least seemed mostly unscathed. Just a few bruises.
“It sounds awfully important and very interesting,” Orla prodded sweetly when Larkel didn't answer immediately.
Larkel smiled again, heaved a sigh and began to tell them all about Makhi and the Order of Trianon, giving the adults time to sort their chaotic thoughts.
Some time after the sky had turned fully dark, a skinny lady came through the door as it opened noisily.
“That'll be the food lady,” Father Joe said, happy for something mundane after all the talk of magic, and watching the young man's burns heal slowly as he spoke.
The priest shifted expectantly towards the door. The lady was moving very slowly, as if one of her legs was injured. As he moved, Starla's shawl fell out from under a fold in his coat.
“Where did you get that?” Larkel exclaimed, staring at the shawl. “Only Hypaeon royals have those.” He picked up the shawl, running his hand over it. Tiny five-pointed stars spread across it, their gold softly glittering in the dim light. Among them, red flowers fell.
“That belongs to Starla,” Raoul said bitingly, snatching it away.
“But that … if it is hers—” Larkel floundered, not able to stop the excitement from entering his voice.
“Starla was wrapped in it on the night her adoptive parents and I found her,” Father Joe said, giving Larkel an odd look. “What's a Hypaeon Royal?”
“Really?” Larkel laughed in delight. “The Hypaeons are Galatia's royal family. If Starla was wrapped in it, then she must be a Galatian princess! She must be Princess Alshira's daughter,” he said, triumphantly, recalling to mind the only child of Eldos and Astria to live in Cosmaltia.
So the woman I've fallen in love with is a Royal Princess. Not only that, her bloodline makes her a true Soreiaphin. And true Soreiaphin often have to make the largest sacrifices to access their power. The last thought caught him off guard. Sacrifices were not things he wanted to be considering, at the moment.
“Little orphan, a princess?” Davan said as he and his sister snickered.
Larkel turned his blazing indigo eyes on them, glaring. They tripped over each other's words in their haste to apologise.
“Starla doesn't have any pleasant memories of you two. From what I saw, you always treated her with utter disrespect,” Larkel commented when they fell silent.
Something painful fluttered over their faces and they looked at each other with haunted eyes.
“Saw?” Raoul spoke before the twins could say any more. He had heard this man talking all evening about Makhi like him and all the abnormal things they could do. “You were in her head?”
Raoul's voice was hard with anger, jealousy burned in his chocolate eyes.
“Soup of Wisdom,” croaked the scrawny lady as she shoved the last bowl of porridge towards Larkel, cutting off his unwise retort. The spoon clattered to the ground as Larkel failed to take it from her hand. Ignoring the High Lord's gaping mouth, she retreated back to the door twice as fast as she had entered, casting nervously about her the whole way.
Larkel sat, shell-shocked, watching the emaciated woman retreat, the door slamming shut behind her. He had known her long ago. She had been beautiful. His elder brother had wanted to marry her. She was supposed to have died with her aunt and uncle in the ergothan attacks on the coastal villages. She was Rosila, the Baron's cousin.
“What a crazy old bat,” Davan commented, his newly recovered happiness undiminished for long.
“It's not even soup,” Orla added, eyeing the usual grainy porridge with distaste.
Larkel snapped out of his memories and shifted sideways. Slowly, he slid his fingers into the glutinous mixture.
“What are you doing?” Orla squealed, sounding disgusted. “She gave you a spoon, you savage!”
“He's just as crazy as she,” muttered Davan when the High Lord just continued to poke around his porridge with his fingers.
“I am not crazy and neither is Rosila,” he said, his fingers finding what he was searching for. “Soup of Wisdom is a code we used to use as children.” He smiled, triumphantly holding up a small, light-blue egg.
“A robin's egg?” asked Father Joe dubiously.
“A what?” asked Larkel, just as confused, as he wiped the remaining porridge from the egg with the cloth they had dabbed his face with.
Father Joe just shook his head and motioned for Larkel to continue.
“We used to play this game as children. Soup of Wisdom meant a clue or secret message was hidden inside.”
The others exchanged unconvinced looks as the High Lord shut his eyes and fought against Kyron's restraining chains. He only needed an infinitesimal leak to open the egg.
The egg suddenly crumpled, turning to blue dust. Inside lay a small roll of parchment. The others inhaled sharply at the transformation.
“I thought those chains didn't let you use your magic!” Davan spouted indignantly.
“Not strong magic,” Larkel corrected, feeling a wave of disappointment. He had hoped for an unbinding crystal, or something that would have allowed him to get everyone out of here. Away from the certain death that loomed in the shadows.
“Read it aloud,” Orla asked, her eyes wide with curiosity.
Larkel matched her whispered tone. “S. escaped but Cursed. Must not come here or trap will spring. I have been an idiot.”
The twins threw each other a strange look and then doubled over laughing. With no drodemions patrolling the pit and Larkel's strange tales, everyone had recovered some of their higher spirits. Antonio gave a low chuckle that was echoed by the other adults.
“Perhaps you could translate?” Father Joe asked, after the sound of the twins happy laughter died down. It had been so long since they had heard any happy sounds, no-one had wanted to interrupt.
“It says Starla escaped. She's alive! I knew it!” Larkel crowed, his smile faltering as he moved on. “But she was Cursed. I am sure my Order can heal her,” he added, seeing the looks of distress on the other's faces. “Kyron has some trap in place to catch her should she come here.”
“Why would she do that?” Elise asked. Starla had a wilful streak, but she had never been stupid.
“To rescue us.” Larkel felt his buoyant mood vanish. Why else would Kyron have kept him, them, alive? They were bait. The Earthlings had been bait, all along. Suddenly, the nightmares made sense. Kyron had been trying to get Starla's subconscious to activate her magic and bring her to them. But she hadn't. Now Kyron seemed to have similar plans for him. He felt his heart spasm as he thought he might be the reason Starla died.
“But she doesn't know we are here,” Father Joe pointed out. “You said this place was cloaked, that none of your … Makhi could see into here. She has no way to find us.”
“For her sake, I hope that I am right,” Larkel said, sighing. “I don't recognise this handwriting, so I have no idea who the idiot is.” The paper turned to ash in his hand.
No one laughed this time. Instead they all lapsed into silence, all fearful for Starla's safety. Even the twins sat curled up together, brooding, their young faces wrinkled with worry.
“Will you tell us another story, High Lord Larkel?” Orla's small voice echoed out of the darkness a while later.
The drodemions had come to shut the lava pit again a few hours ago, plunging the cavern into almost complete darkness.
Larkel smiled in the darkness. “All right.” He decided to pick a nice, triumphant story that included Earth, too.
“Once there was this alchemist called Markis—” he began.
As his lips told the story, in a soothing low voice, his thoughts strayed back to Starla, his beautiful Starla. He hoped with everything in hi
m that she would never learn where he was. That she would never come to this dark place.
Chapter 20
Fool Me Once
Grobblers, ergothan, drodemions and magmi patrolled Abyss Valley in pairs, their eyes able to see in the deep darkness of the Destroyer's realm.
Starla and the Sacrileons had been travelling on foot ever since a slight orangey glow, that she was told were the gates of Kyron's stronghold, appeared in the distance. Rya's enchanted fire led the way.
Magmi grew thicker in the air as they drew closer to the glow, red dots flying in a black sky. They were Kyron's own constellations, twirling round and round, drawing pictures in the night sky.
The company kept their Darkness Mantles tucked tightly around them, moving as fast as they dared, keeping the animals concealed, too. Flek travelled with Starla and they both seemed unhappy with the pace.
They stopped, keeping silent. The ergothan patrol in front of them passed them by just as all the others had, the mantles doing their job of keeping them invisible in this dark place. Starla had been fascinated by the big cats at first, getting a better look now that they weren't actively hunting her. They had markings similar to those of Earth's leopards, but their colours were shades of blue and purple. Pink or green marked the end of their tails, their chests and bellies, and the tips of their ears. Their gold eyes probed the dark, their sharp gold claws clinking against the stone under the ash. After they passed by, the group moved on.
She continued forward in a trance, feet moving automatically. Starla's thoughts raced back to her last image of Larkel, his body hanging over a fiery pit. Her family, friends in cages.
And then Gaby was hauling her back.
“We're here.” Gaby risked a whisper, the first voice since they had entered this accursed place.
Starla looked ahead, surprised by how lost in thoughts she had been. She scolded herself. She had to concentrate or they would never succeed.
After a short stretch of deepest black, the ash turned grey as it caught the light emanating from the gates. The Ever-Burning Tree, the only known entrance into or exit from Kyron's stronghold.
They crept to the very edge of the darkness. The gates looked exactly as their name suggested. Made of shiny, black stone, they curved and bent to form a leafless tree, its empty branches reaching to the sky. Glowing veins of red and orange gave the impression that the tree was on fire. To either side of the enormous gates stood two drodemions, coated in slabs of molten rock, their white eyes sweeping the small, lit space.
The group crept around the pool of half light and laid their backs against the all but invisible black wall that encircled Kyron's home.
“What now?” Starla asked, keeping her voice to barely a whisper as she looked towards the closest drodemion.
“Maybe—” Lua's whisper was cut off as the huge alpha magmus landed before the gates. It didn't appear to speak, as Starla had seen before, but the drodemions' reaction was instant.
The group watched, silent and shocked as the drodemions walked away into the darkness. Starla dared not trust her luck as she waited for the magmus to leave as well.
The sudden burst of fire from the magmus had Starla clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the cry of surprise that escaped her. The Ever-Burning Tree glowed white-hot, then cooled to its original state as the magmus flew away.
As one, the group hastened forward, Starla ahead of all the others. She stood before the gates and automatically began to reach out. Suddenly, the guardians were hauling her back into the darkness.
“Hush, listen,” Alli breathed, when Starla opened her mouth to protest.
Then Starla could hear it too. The sound of running, booted feet.
After a moment that seemed to take much longer than it should, Makhi Ditte appeared out of the darkness, stepping into the circle of light. The grobblers that had been guiding him nodded and left the way they had come. Behind Ditte came twenty others. Some Makhi, but mostly civilians. Starla recognised Harknine Keeper Thorten.
Starla's heart turned to stone. How could so many betray Galatia?
“Master Kyron, lord over all,” Ditte proclaimed, falling to his knees before the gate. The others hastened to follow his example, “your humble servants have returned!”
The instant he finished speaking, an orange light fell over the kneeling people. Starla shuddered as she realised the light came from the mouth of a carved magmus perched in the branches of the tree high above them. Slowly, the light turned yellow, then red. When it vanished, so did all who had knelt before the gates.
The company waited a moment longer then hurried to the gates again, the Guardians making a study of any symbols or carvings they could find. The stone magmus above them looked eerily life-like in the strange light. Starla tried to ignore it, contemplating the sealed gates instead.
The place along the bark where the gates opened was only just discernible. No red or orange veins passed through it.
“I don't suppose we could get in the way they did,” Starla muttered to herself, even as bile rose in her throat at the thought of kneeling before Kyron's gates.
“Time to take a risk,” Gaby whispered, waving Starla over. “Flek, take my Darkness Mantle and circle the building. See if there is any other way in that our spies didn't find.”
The Darkness Mantles seemed happy to stretch or shrink as need arose, and Starla's swelled effortlessly to include Gaby, just as hers shrunk to fit around Flek, who held it shut with his teeth.
Then Flek was gone into the darkness faster than Starla's eyes could follow.
“Biki, use your ability to become invisible to check for any ways through the sky. Passing the magmi will be more dangerous, but this looks impossible,” Lua said, letting Biki out of the mantle that covered them.
The Sacrileons' violet eyes raked the darkness uneasily as they waited for Flek and Biki to return.
Starla turned towards the gates, not wanting to see the worry in the Guardians' eyes. Gaby shot her one glance, then went back to her vigil.
Starla took a small step closer, the Darkness Mantle stretching with her. Hesitantly, she extended her hand, expecting to feel heat radiating from the molten-looking surface.
“It's cold,” she murmured. “It looks like it's burning, but it's cold.”
She turned around to see if Gaby had heard. Flek was back and Gaby, Heny still in her arms, was getting back under her own Darkness Mantle.
“Negativenodoorsholeswindowsoranythingelse.”
“This is the only way in from the ground,” Gaby confirmed.
Starla turned back to the gates, running her fingers lightly over the cold surface.
“Biki says the same, there is no way in from the sky. At least, not that she could find,” Lua said, turning towards the others, showing Biki's grey fur beneath her mantle once more. “The magmi only get thicker the further in you go. She couldn't get all the way through.”
“Starla might have found something,” Kal piped up. He had been watching Starla from under Alli's mantle as she had traced her fingers along the stone tree.
Starla half-turned to the others as Kal spoke her name.
“I haven't found a handle or keyhole or anything like that, but look at this,” she said, her fingers tracing the raised contours of the shape. “Come closer, it won't be visible from there.”
The Sacrileons huddled around her, peering down to where Starla pointed. There, just beneath Kyron's crest of a flaming tree, was another mark. It was a set of seven concentric circles, with tiny drawings Starla couldn't really make out.
Are they animals? she wondered, tapping one with her finger. It looks sort of like a bird. But that one might be a flower or a star.
“Did any of you spot that earlier?” Fey asked, a note of apprehension in her voice.
“What is it?” Starla asked as the others shook their heads.
“Power,” Fey said.
“But magical power,” Rya added, clearly trying to think of a human way to expla
in it. “Like spirit power or energy.”
“Magical power is the key?” Gaby sounded doubtful.
“It seems too easy,” Alli muttered after Rya nodded. “Anyone with magic could get in, then. It has to be more specific than that.”
Starla fought the urge to scream at them as they started a quick back and forth in their liquid language.
“Listen,” Starla hissed, just managing to maintain a whisper, “let's just try it. Honestly, he doesn't need a difficult lock on his gate, does he? No one can get into Abyss Valley uninvited. Not that many would dare, anyway. And without these mantles, we never would have even reached the gate,” she said, her emerald eyes glinting in the light of the gates. “We have no time to waste. We have to get in there now. Larkel, my friends, my family, all of Galatia needs us. Kyron attacks tomorrow,” she finished, stabbing a finger up at the sky.
The moons were just past their apex.
“She's right about time being short,” Fey conceded, unhappily.
“And maybe about all the other stuff too. No one could make it here unless he wanted them to. Not without the mantles,” Lua added but she, too, sounded defeated.
“Go on, then,” Gaby said. “We'll try it and hope it's not rigged.” She turned the full force of her violet eyes on Starla. “But if an alarm goes off, or anything else happens, you and that Star and whichever of us are left are leaving. Straight back to the City. This is an all or nothing gamble.”
Starla nodded, mutely. Could she resist crying out for Larkel if this went wrong and they were hauling her back to the City?
“Which of us will do it?” Rya said, looking apprehensive, her tone serious. “The gate might be Cursed. It might even be able to kill whoever touches it with magic.”
Starla gave a low groan of frustration as they began to discuss which of them should risk it. Before anyone could stop her, Starla laid her palm against the mark, concentrating like she had done with Larkel. It was the only way she knew to access her powers. It wouldn't work unless there was other active magic present, but she was willing to bet Kyron's gates had a constant stream of magic coursing through them.
