by Anna Steffl
Kieran tilted his head thoughtfully, as if the idea had never occurred to him. “That would have displeased the Maker. It’s wrong to kill even an animal in sport.”
Degarius bristled. What misguided mentality thought soldiering a sport? No frontiersman under his command would’ve dared speak to him with the heran’s zeal and conceit. But, he wasn’t the captain, not in title. Someone must be in charge of this regiment. Though Miss Nazar held the Blue Eye, he had all the expertise. As he did in assessing his new men at the start of a patrol, he stowed Kieran’s remark and Miss Nazar’s riding abilities into his mind like blankets into a pack. He didn’t have to like the man; his being a good archer and a presence besides Miss Nazar were enough.
An orange flash flitted in the corner of his eye. Degarius glanced to the sky. It was an even, cloudy gray. The sun couldn’t have broken through. Miss Nazar had stopped, was watching the sky, too. He hadn’t imagined it.
The glow again lit the clouds. It moved, disappeared, and then glowed again. What the hell?
Out of the clouds dipped a black form, like a bat, but a thousand times larger. His horse jerked its head.
It had to be a draeden, but a dozen times more immense than the one in Lake Sandela Hant. Degarius’s feet throbbed.
The draeden burst into a blinding light as if it was lit kindling. Heat waves swam in the sky. The treetops under the creature burst into flame. A hot breeze, like a blast of air from a furnace, rolled over. “Take cover,” he shouted and steered his horse deep into a stand of pines. Miss Nazar joined him, the Blue Eye in hand, her thumb on the latch. Heran Kieran, with the packhorse, slipped in with them.
Degarius grasped Assaea’s hilt, but the sudden backward thrust of his arm sent pain shooting through his shoulder. He stopped. What good would the sword do, even if he were full strength? For all love, the draeden mustn’t see them or be enticed to them with the relic. “Don’t try to use it,” he said to her.
Heran Kieran, who’d drawn a bow and held it aimed to the sky, looked desperately to them. Didn’t the man understand the damn thing would incinerate them before they could get close enough to engage it? It would be pure foolishness to tempt it to them. On the hillside, there’d be nowhere to hide from the heat. It would have every advantage.
A curtain of smoke rose in the distance.
“Solace. It must have attacked Solace,” Heran Kieran cried. “We must ride back to see if we can help.”
Degarius, perched on his horse, listened with the air of a lieutenant awaiting an order—however foolish it might be. Miss Nazar’s sentimentality would send them on a pointless errand. Solace’s forested ground was kindling. He would negate the order, of course, but he wanted to hear it first. Then, there’d be no doubt of who led this little regiment.
Miss Nazar couldn’t tear her gaze from the smoke, not until Heran Kieran rode from the pines, his horse poised to retrace the path to Solace.
“Heran, there’s nothing we can do,” she said.
“But they’ll—”
“It was looking for us,” she said. “Stay in the trees until we’re sure it’s left.”
As Kieran returned to them, his eyes hardened on Miss Nazar. “Couldn’t you have stopped it? Isn’t that why you have the Blue Eye?”
Before she could answer, Degarius said, not to defend her, but to defend his decision not to engage it, “With our weak vantage point, we would have been incinerated.” At the word incinerated, his feet burned as they had the night he narrowly escaped Lake Sandela.
Degarius had amassed a lead on the Gherian horsemen and veered onto a path into a wood. He wanted to stop and pull off the boots. His heels burned as if he was holding them to a flame. But it wasn’t safe yet. They traversed two brooks before reaching a middling-sized stream the horses easily forded. Coming out upon the other side, they kept to the path until it reached a relatively dry plateau where the horses’ hoofprints wouldn’t be so marked. He stopped, and turning around, said to Salim, “We’re going back to the stream and following it through the woods.” His hope was that it would take the Gherians a while to figure out that they’d backtracked and followed one of the streams instead of the path.
The horses trudged along the sandy-bottomed shallow stream until it flowed into a larger one. Here, finally, was one bit of luck among so much very bad luck. “This stream takes us in the general direction of the Outpost,” Degarius said. “If the Gherians follow, at least it won’t be the whole lot of them. They’ll have split up to cover the area. Do you hear anything?”
Salim turned his head from side to side like a wild beast as he struggled to hear beyond the dripping trees. “Not for now.”
“I think it’s safe to water the horses,” Degarius said. He dismounted. When his boots hit the ground, excruciating pain shot up through the soles of his feet. His knees began to give. Clenching his teeth, he threw his arms over True Pearl’s back to alleviate the pressure and gain a moment to recover. “Steady, girl.”
Salim was at his side, locking his arm around his.
“Damn it, get off me,” Degarius growled, but Salim was lowering him to the ground. Sitting, he cringed and leaned to take off a boot. One tug and his mind went white with pain or was it the light Salim was making. Damn him, making a light.
His head swimming, Degarius leaned back onto his elbows, and then sprawled on his back. He could hear Salim whispering, but his voice seemed unreal, distant, like something he was remembering.
“Let’s see what’s wrong,” Salim was whispering. “Oh, Maker.”
Oh, Maker, indeed. It had cost Degarius two excruciating months for his feet to heal and to force himself to walk upon the tight, fragile, sensitive new skin. What massive damage this fire draeden could do not to just one man, but to an entire army.
As if he hadn’t spoken of their poor vantage point as the reason for not engaging the beast, Miss Nazar said to Kieran, “It was too far away. There was nothing I could do.”
“How close to you have to be?”
“Close.”
Maybe there was wisdom in trying to sneak into Gheria, Degarius thought.
Out of the smoke over Solace, the draeden reappeared. With a few hard flaps of its wings, it gained altitude and disappeared into the clouds, which didn’t periodically glow anymore. “It is returning to Gheria,” Degarius said. “Hopefully it thinks whoever planned to use the Blue Eye is dead. We’ll have the advantage of surprise, which we’ll need to get close.” Close enough for a sword. Close enough for a Blue Eye.
“As long as I don’t have to use it,” Miss Nazar said, “we will have the advantage of surprise.”
Degarius nodded. The draeden gone, his concern turned to the trees smoldering in the valley below. “Let’s go. I don’t want to get caught in a fire.”
For dinner, Kieran passed out the cloth-wrapped pastries from Solace and bottles of ginger beer, then closed his eyes to make a prayer of thanks. Out of habit, Arvana closed her eyes too, but no prayer came. She felt empty, as if someone had gouged her and the one small draught of spirit she had left had leaked out. If her soul had been overflowing, she’d have borne it, found consolation in the reserve. Her sinful love of Nan, the suffering over leaving the order, and Chane’s death, had each consumed a portion of her soul. She was unworthy of mercy so it never replenished. What was left drained away with the burning of Solace. Only now did she truly see how wrong it had been of her to love Nan. His bravery and handsomeness weren’t permission for her to break her promise to the Maker. Even as he had renounced his love for her at Solace, she had kept a kernel of hope that there was something worthy, enduring in what had been between them. But now she saw it for what it was—wrong. She had no right to call him by his child name. He must be Degarius, or Lord Degarius. He had always been the one to do the moral thing. He was the one who was adamant about the choices in life he’d made for his career, the one who stopped coming to the archive, the one who had tried to keep their last meeting unemotional. And because she’d be
en too weak to abide, Chane was dead, Nan—no, Degarius—had lost his generalship, and the worst of all, Solace was burned. The Scyon had learned who they were when the Hera Musette, unknowingly, called to the superior while the Blue Eye was open. Did the superior know the draeden was coming? Had she evacuated the valley? No, she sacrificed them so that The Scyon would think whoever had the Blue Eye was dead. The Solacians didn’t deserve that fate, to suffer for another’s sins. Where was the Maker’s mercy? Was there even a Maker? Perhaps all that was beyond was Hell. Perhaps the swords weren’t blessed, but merely clever manmade instruments like the Beckoner and Blue Eye.
A cork popped from a bottle of ginger beer. Arvana opened her eyes and so did Kieran. “Don’t let me interrupt you,” Degarius said and took a long drink.
“You may join us in prayer,” Kieran replied with the irritating self-assurance of a man who had no doubt of how he stood with the Maker.
Degarius shook his head to Kieran’s invitation to pray. “Pray to a Maker who lets things happen like what happened today?”
“Men caused what happened today.”
Drumming his fingers on the bottle, Degarius said, “Then I don’t see the point of praying.”
“We pray for perseverance to do the right thing when our freewill allows the wrong. Even over something as simple as a meal, we can choose to eat it without consciousness of the labor and life that went into it, or we can be mindful of it.”
“A man doesn’t need to pray to know those things.”
“Different men need different things. I congratulate you if your soul is a model of perfection.”
Degarius looked over his glasses and chewed his lip. Whatever he was going to say, she didn’t want to hear it or any more of this conversation.
“I never—” Degarius began.
She stood and held her still-wrapped food to Kieran. “Save it,” she said as much of the food as their argument. None of it mattered.
“You must eat to be strong enough to ride,” Kieran said in refusal. “You’ve been ill.”
“I’ve never been too ill to ride,” she grumbled.
Both men looked at each other and Degarius raised a brow as if he begged to differ. Yes, he’d had to carry her to Solace. But, there was a vast difference between being ill and being dead. She tossed the wrapped food to Kieran.
EFFIGY
Forbidden Fortress, that evening
“The eunuchs and Fortress Guards are so full of wine they’re pissing on her,” Alenius said with glee to Sibelian at the sight of his clerics raising their robes and aiming their steams at the effigy, a woman’s form sewn of sack-cloth, stuffed with straw, and dressed in a plain gray dress that was now darkened with streaks. It was one thing men and half men could do together. Having drunk a bottle Gherian burned wine before summoning his court to the plaza in front of the Worship Hall, Alenius’s own bladder was full and ached to empty on the hanging image of his enemy. It would be a fitting gesture before the grand end to the celebration. He strode to the effigy, taking pleasure in the sensation of his robes billowing behind from the breeze and the masterfulness of his stride. He felt like his draeden must when skimming the sky.
With a cheer, the crowd of clerics and guards made way for him. When Alenius reached the effigy, Rorke appeared from the crowd. “Turn your backs, servants of the divine. Bow your heads and close your eyes. You are not worthy to witness the glory of the sovereign.”
Despite his disappointment, what a dedicated servant Rorke is, Breena whispered into Alenius’s thoughts.
Not wanting to think of Rorke, Nils, or any concern other than pissing, Alenius blotted the words from his mind and pulled up his robe. He took his manhood in hand and sent a strong stream up the front of the effigy. He laughed as it reached the crudely painted face. A mixture of relief at the emptiness and pride at the youthful power of his flow made him feel more alive than ever. And now that the Blue Eye and those who kept it were destroyed, no one could take that sensation from him ever again. Not the wickedness of his mother against Breena. Not age. He shook off the last drops and released his robe. “Who shall execute the whore who drank of the divine?”
The clerics and Fortress Guards opened their eyes, turned around, and with bellicose shouts each clamored for the executioner’s duty.
Except for Nils. Away from the crush of clerics, he sat hunched over his cane, with a young eunuch, upon the low stone wall around the plaza. Alenius’s soaring spirit dipped. He wished he hadn’t seen Nils; he’d just vowed not to think of him. Yet, his conscience had taken his gaze directly to his old friend. Despite all his power, Alenius couldn’t stop the effect of time on mortals. Such was the burden on the divine, to be untouched by time but to bear witness to it. I shall let Nils execute the woman.
Nils? Breena asked. He won’t even notice what is happening. He has the young cleric trapped in conversation.
That was true. Once he had someone’s ear, Nils always rambled about the old times. It was as if he were locked in a prison of his own past and had seen nothing of the current world for years. Not that long ago, Alenius reflected, he too had been fond of such talk. Now, he knew the young cleric wished nothing more than to escape and join his peers. It would be foolish to waste today’s honor upon Nils. Who should I choose?
Why choose? Give Sibelian and Rorke each a part, Breena said.
Both? Breena had finally come to appreciate his adopted son. Sibelian had found Assaea whereas Rorke had been tricked by the spy. But Rorke had lost much and this was a small compensation for his continued loyalty. “General Aleniusson and Our Excellency Rorke, we command you to execute this woman.”
At the mention of Aleniusson’s name, a wild hurrah came from the Fortress Guards. The clerics clapped in unison for Rorke.
Nils lifted his bald head. Did he understand what was happening? The downward drag of guilt further grounded Alenius’s high spirits.
And what of Sibelian? He was standing as solemn as one of the statues of the ancestors peering down from over the massive arched doors to the hall. At Alenius fixing his gaze on him, he finally started toward the effigy.
My love, he doesn’t seem happy about the honor you give him.
Indeed, Sibelian looked putout and a faint hint of disgust played on his lips, as if this celebration was beneath him.
Perhaps he doesn’t stand and make water like a man, Breena said. Or perhaps he knows that with the Blue Eye destroyed you are invincible, and he is forever doomed to only be a viceroy.
It was an unthinkable accusation, that his own son would have used the Blue Eye against him. He has proven his loyalty, Alenius thought staunchly, though anger at his son simmered in the pit of his stomach. Why must the boy always appear such an ingrate? It was the way of youth, but after two treks to the frontier, Sibelian’s soft youthful features had firmed. He should have known how to act the part of a man of honor.
Sibelian has proven his loyalty for the rewards of a generalship and a priceless sword. Ask of him a sacrifice that you yourself made and see if he can abide it. Ask him to live a life without love. Rorke has already made that sacrifice.
I won’t castrate my son.
No. Breena laughed her sweetest laugh. I would never ask you to do that. Sibelian has lost enough of his body. I mean his soul.
“What did the sovereign say?” Nils asked the cleric at his side, a recently made eunuch who had been an asher under Rorke. “Why the cheering?”
“They are going to burn the effigy.”
“Help me up. I need to go to the front.”
The boy bent and offered his elbow.
Nils grumbled that he should have gone forward earlier. Alenius would have offered him the honor of setting the effigy aflame, for he still was the ranking cleric though the sovereign had taken Rorke into his confidence. And, after all, he was the one who had supervised the Lily Girls’ sewing of the effigy. Wasn’t he? Or had he just heard them speaking of finding the sackcloth? In any case, once the pissing started, he’
d retreated to sit on the wall, embarrassed that he’d have had nothing to add except a stinking puddle on the plaza stones. Watching his step by prodding the uneven pavers with his cane, he edged toward the clerics and Fortress Guards who circled the effigy. Upon reaching them, they stepped aside. Nils looked up. Aleniusson, Rorke, and the sovereign were gathered at the feet of the effigy, which was propped upon a post.
“General Aleniusson, are you my son in every way?” the sovereign asked.
Sibelian put his single hand to his chest and bowed.
“Then swear to me that this woman is your love and that you’ll never marry another.”
“What woman?” Sibelian asked and began to look about.
Though Nils knew who the sovereign meant and why, he said nothing; Alenius never liked his surprises to be spoiled. Nils smiled to himself. He had never particularly liked Sibelian; the boy never seemed to appreciate the riches heaped upon him simply because he bore a resemblance to the sovereign. Now that resemblance was going to cost him dearly.
The sovereign pointed his gloved finger at the effigy.
“She’s the enemy,” Sibelian said.
“Surely your charm would have won her to our cause.”
“She’s dead.”
A hushed snicker went around until the sovereign, with all seriousness said, “Love never dies. If you are my son, fall to your knees and pledge your love.”
Sibelian slowly sank to his knees.
“Rorke, lead him through his marriage vows.”
Rorke? Why Rorke? Nils knew the words to the vows. He began them in his mind, reciting the first passage, but when he came to the second, the words disappeared as if they’d been rubbed out from a wax tablet and only vague gouges were left were the letters had been. As he tried to decipher them, he heard Rorke already speaking, pronouncing the words with relish, and Sibelian mumbling the promises to provide home and hearth.
