by Brandon Barr
Fool, she thought.
He did not grasp what she’d undergone. The training required under the master’s presence. No one knew but those on the inside. How many fellow children had she killed before she was declared sufficiently worthy? She’d stopped counting after fifty. She’d been stabbed countless times. Sliced, pierced, flayed like an animal. Gaping, mortal wounds had been opened on her legs and chest. Her face slashed, twice her right eye gouged out; she’d kept her guts from spilling onto the floor, holding them in with a forearm as she’d run her sword through an opponent’s heart.
Despite the many mortal wounds, she never died before her opponent. Once she had them down, she would hack until they were a quivering mound of flesh, or until she lost consciousness. The quicker they died, the sooner her master would use his power to heal her, and the agonizing pain would end.
The master had made her a heartless weapon. She could deliver convincing performances in the master’s theater, feign heartfelt love and joy on stage, while ruthlessly taking lives in the battle sessions. Her emotions were a tool just as deadly as a weapon in her hands. Every word from her mouth could cut like a knife, or heal like a kiss. Controlled. Calculated. Convincing.
In learning to feel nothing, she became capable of anything.
An envious light blazed in Orum’s eyes as he stared at her. It was then she caught the minute smell of dusty fur and ketvell pollens. Her skin crawled and every muscle in her wanted to spring for the bow and quiver lying next to her, but she maintained her composure.
“The wastelands eat away at the forests,” said Savarah, glancing windward. “I fear the encroaching sands may be a catalyst for foes to become friends.”
A tall blind of grass swayed gently in the breeze. The wind shifted slightly, and Savarah searched the rocks to the right of the blind.
“There is nothing we can do to stop it. The timber is needed for the tunneling, and the land. It will require more work on the part of your fellow—”
The sound came from her right, a soft padding of feet. The sound of her plan turning to shit. She stood, swiveled, released three arrows, then her hand jumped to her longknife as the creature hit her full force.
Her back slammed against the ground emptying her lungs of breath. Her mind teetered on the edge of darkness, Orum’s cursing fading in and out. She fought to remain conscious, concentrating her energy on her knife hand. A mouth full of teeth came at her and she brought her head up, just under the incoming jaws, pushing her skull up into the animal’s muscular neck, and then her knife hand found an opening past the powerful limbs, stabbing deep, ripping. The creature’s neck opened in a gush of blood. She hugged it, wrapping her legs around the huge hind quarters, keeping free of the powerful claws as the animal fought to repay death for death.
When the powerful limbs began to quiver, she pushed the remains off her, and rose trembling to her feet.
Orum had managed only to draw his sword in all that time and was standing lamely, mouth gaping, looking at her as if she were a beast herself.
Her left shoulder screamed in agony, but she bit back the pain. She had to finish this. A glance revealed a ragged puncture where a claw had pierced her. She knew without fingering her shoulder that the clawtip had pierced through her back. Examining her attacker, she noted that her three arrows had found their mark. One arrow sagged from the black whiskered cheek. Another had merely caught the meat at the bottom of the tiger’s ear. The third was buried in the chest, a few inches from the tiger’s heart.
“Come here, Orum.”
He swore reverently before moving timidly beside her, sword in hand.
“What in the stars is that?”
“Kneel down. You’ll never see sharper claws.”
“You sure it’s dead?”
“Yes.”
He knelt, setting his sword down.
She squatted beside him and hefted the huge paw, digging her finger in between a pad, pushing out a claw the length of a dagger.
“Do you see the serration?”
Orum bent closer.
With her remaining strength, she grabbed the back of Orum’s head and thrust the paw up, driving the claw through his ocular cavity and into his brain.
Orum screamed, lashing the air with his hands, but her grip on his hair held him in place. His screams turned to sputtering breaths, and his arms soon hung limp at his side.
Once Orum lay still, she dropped him to the ground beside the tiger and used the claws to pepper his body with slashes and pierce his chest and arms. Orum’s grunt would arrive eventually. Her story would be simple, the evidence lying in plain sight. The boy would go back home with her report and she would be sent a new contact, one who did not have the experience or knowledge or history that Orum had with her.
A fresh start. She breathed deep and looked toward the marsh with a desire to continue her terrapin massacre, but the sun was dipping low and the rush of her second kill was wearing off. She had to attend to her shoulder. Blood enough had been spilt for now.
LOAM
Your last letter stank of mockery, belying your ignorance on these matters. Do not question the very real, and very dangerous, power of the Makers and their Oracles. If you wish to remain Magnus Empyrean, you will do exactly as you are told. That threat is not mine, but Sentinel Cosimo’s.
Within your tiny corner of our galaxy exists three worlds of the highest significance. They are close in proximity to one another and form a near perfect equilateral triangle—the arrowhead of the Huntress constellation as seen from the planet, Seedling Four.
You know two of the worlds I speak of, Loam and Hearth. The third world is yet unvisited, but we know where it lies.
Here are your instructions, of which, any deviation or failure will cost you your position: first, appoint an Empyrean to Loam who isn’t aware of my kind’s existence within the Guardians. Second, watch for an Oracle to arise out of Loam. The prophesied Contagion. This person must be found.
If a portal convergence of the three worlds within The Triangle should ever occur, a rift between our galaxy and another will be opened.
Do you have any concept of what might lay on the other side?
As of yet, neither do we.
-Sanctuss Exenia, (Archived transmission to Higelion, Magnus Empyrean of Sector 54)
…continue meting out justice however you see fit. But don’t forget that will soon come to an end.
Curse Damien and the third quorum!
You have twelve years to get your farmlands aligned with the forthcoming laws of the Guardians. Once the Guardian charter completes its first forty years, you, and all of us, will have to bow the knee to their laws. Let us hope the Opposition Movement finds a foothold in the quorums before then.
Your affectionate sister
-Queen Taia
(letter to her brother, Baron Rhaudius)
CHAPTER 10
WINTER
Please come…reassure me…hold me again…
Winter’s prayers flowed silently from within as she stepped carefully through a tangle of pink flowering bushes, her bare feet sinking into the spongy forest floor. She scanned the undergrowth beneath the bulge oaks and pines and breathed in the smell of freshly drenched woods.
Whisper clung to her chin, a favorite spot to stretch its blue wings. The storm had passed in the night, and the morning light was struggling to break through the lingering clouds. Tucked in a pocket sewn on the inside of Winter’s tunic was a summons from the Baron. It brought with it thoughts from six months ago. When her and Aven’s world had crashed down around them. This summons was the first she had ever received, and it should have concerned her more, but instead, her thoughts hovered over last night’s visions.
The first was of Aven. It had come in the middle of the night and she clung to the hope it was only a dream. Aven sat alone behind a strange metal door with his head hanging in his hands. Nothing else happened, but Winter had felt horrible pain coming from her brother. It was as if the pai
n were flowing from his heart into hers—a sense of loss, not of death, but something close to it.
The second vision came as she dressed herself that morning. It was much more trivial, but still dark. A bird had landed beside an old fallen tree that was green with moss. The bird was young, maybe a month out of the nest, its red speckled grey wings fluttered as it hopped lightly across the undergrowth in search of something. Beside a large rock a centipede crawled out from under the leaves. The bird’s head cocked to the side, eyeing the insect, then its wings spread and it leapt. There was a flash of movement from the rock beside the insect. Something sprang out, pink and long, and struck the bird’s gold-brown chest. The bird was yanked from the air and sucked into a giant mouth that crushed the nimble body, leaving its tail feathers and feet shuddering against the rim of the mouth. The rock, she had realized, was an enormous toad. In one spasm, the creature opened and closed its mouth, and the bird disappeared.
Winter had rushed at random through the woods, stopping at every mossy log she came across. Two hours of searching, brought her to where she was now, frustrated, but not giving up on the rescue of the small bird.
How can I save others…how do I use this gift…
Unlike the myriad of trivial visions she always saw, these were closer to the dark visions she’d had six months ago, that led to her parents’ deaths. They added to the hopelessness she felt with her inability to intervene. Like the first dark vision of the smoke and bodies. The identity of the dead had been only speculation until it was too late; she and Aven lost everyone dear to them except each other.
Then there were the ants and the blood—the death of Rozmin, as Aven finally told her, once he found his voice again. She’d learned the details of that night. How Aven and Harvest had been overheard, her brother’s attempt to save the two families, ending with Rozmin being shot by the Baron and the yellow ants coming from the wall.
The sky above was the same one she looked up into as a young girl, the same colors, the same tree tops, but they no longer brought solace to the battles raging inside her.
The warmth of the blue canopy above had grown hard and sterile. So, too, the trees and rocks and all of nature. Blemished in some way. Everywhere she glimpsed beauty and loveliness, she also saw cracks and rot. The woods surrounding her, though magnificent and full of power, were full of death and decay, and only ever her naivety and ignorance had allowed her to think otherwise.
She was part of that brokenness. Guilt and remorse twisted like worms in her heart—the thought of her sitting idly in her room as smoke strangled her mother and father’s lungs. She felt certain she could have saved them. Harvest’s family, and her own. Next time she would act, no matter how scared. She wouldn’t push the weight of her visions on Aven. They were her responsibility. If they crushed her, that would be the Maker’s fault. But she wouldn’t let them crush Aven again. Where she had grown more determined to battle—to never cower in fear again—Aven had…lost his will. His strength. Winter knew she had to face this alone. The Makers hadn’t destined Aven, but her. The gift was not to be shared.
Winter crawled atop a boulder, surveying the woods for fallen logs where moss grew in shaded glens or beneath copses of trees.
Where are you, little bird?
The blue wings on her chin folded up, then opened again. Slowly the butterfly moved to her cheek, then stopped, opening, folding.
Everyone she knew disliked the Makers. In farm stories, they were characterized as cruel and malevolent, or sometimes as blithe, powerful beings unconcerned about the happiness of the creatures they created. She’d heard that even the Guardians of the portal, that great and powerful people who knew the cultures of a thousand worlds and had ships that sailed the stars, even they seemed to view the Makers as having abandoned the stars they brought forth. The Guardians took it upon themselves to act as peacemakers among the derelict worlds of a god forsaken universe. To safeguard the weak, and hold accountable the strong. There was a void, a silent, mysterious nothingness that was starving to be filled.
For her, the emptiness was swallowed up by her one treasured memory. When she felt like she was drowning in the river again, fighting for a hand hold, the questions surrounding her dark visions could not dislodge her from that beautiful encounter. She embraced it now, more than ever before.
So many years ago, she had fallen asleep, curled up in a treehole, the pounding rain drumming a soothing nightsong. When she awoke, she couldn’t tell the time, the stars hidden behind trees and clouds, but the darkness told her enough. Mother and Father would be out searching for her.
Rushing home in the dark on her surest trail, she reached the river. It sounded more furious than ever before. Nearly blind in the dark, she jumped down upon the first boulder at the river’s edge—but her feet hit fast moving water. The force knocked her legs out from under her and sent her face first upon the submerged boulder. The power of the rushing water raked her body against the boulder’s flat surface. Her fingers scraped desperately at the rock until her hand found a hold. Fighting the current, the frigid water whipped at her face, stabbing like icicles at her bare skin. Her fingers went numb, but still she pressed them into the hold as her body thrashed like a reed against the rock. The numbness spread into her body, the burn of her muscles turning to ice.
Desperate for a breath of air, she jerked her head up against the water biting at her face; the movement ripped her hands from their hold, and she was tossed, gulping for air, into the darkness of the torrent. Objects invisible in the night struck her, spun her, cracking her shins, striking the side of her head, and no matter how violently she willed herself to battle the downward pull, the cold slowly squeezed the fight from her body. Another blow. Her head throbbed. Darkness sucked her down into the deafening roar of the river. Arms and legs surrendering, she sank, holding on to the last traces of breath in her lungs, wanting death now, fighting for death, pleading for it to come quickly.
And then, like a dream, the being came. The most powerful arms she’d ever known wrapped around her. There was no sense of motion, just warmth. And she was no longer in the river, as if the river had faded from existence, and all was dark. The warmth of those arms seeped deeper and deeper until even her bones felt blanketed in heat, and she found herself sobbing with the ecstasy of the sensation.
No man could have entered that river. The arms holding her were not human, for they had restored her body so perfectly, it was as if the river had never been and the cold had never touched her bones. What had saved her?
And then something like a voice cut into her thoughts, I have you, my child.
The question, who, came instinctively to her mind, but before she could fully form it into who are you?, the voice came again.
You can call me Leaf. I am your Father and Mother. A Maker.
The words were so strange they sent her thoughts spinning. A Maker? A being as unreachable as the end of the universe? The question her nine-year-old thoughts had turned to were feeble and childish echoes of the question, why me?
Child, your life carries a heavy load. On your shoulders stands many heroes, and under your feet the life of a Beast. Because you now live, a hundred worlds may yet live. I watched your life, always, and holding you close now, it is like having in my arms a baby still in the womb. Until we are reunited in the Faraway, I leave you with a call on your life:
The spirit of a seer will attach to you. It will be a blessing and a curse, but never forget, it is a gift, and it will save more than it will kill.
The words seared into her mind, like wood touched by a pen of smoldering iron.
Do not leave me, she pleaded, sensing the warm fire of the Maker’s presence departing her flesh and bones.
Though I go, I will be present. We are on the other side of everyplace, so that you are never unseen or unheard by us. The Faraway is closer than your next breath. That is where we live.
And it was with that last word that she felt the side of her face burst in warmth, as if
the Maker’s hand had cupped her cheek. When she opened her eyes, sunlight was pouring down through the trees. Fluttering down in the shafts of light was the blue butterfly.
As the warmth of that powerful memory faded, Winter stood on the boulder staring out at the forest. The woods and rocks surrounding her regained more of their splendor, and the clouded sky above held promise of a calling so large she could not fathom it. On her shoulders were heroes, and under her feet was the life of a Beast.
She trusted she would discover what that meant.
One thing she promised herself; to somehow discern how to use her gift and avert the next dire vision, whatever it be. She would act on every trivial vision she had and learn from them. If she could save a bird from a toad, it would be a step toward fulfilling her deeper purposes. Those that Leaf had spoken of. Her destiny.
Winter picked up the summons beside her and took one last glance at the sky.
You made me a seer. Now make me see what to do.
CHAPTER 11
AVEN
The footfalls on the ground above grew louder. Aven waited for his sister's welcome face to peer over the lip of the hole. Before Winter had risen that morning, a horseman found him repairing a trellis in the vineyard and threw the summons at his feet. The message was simple and open-ended.
Baron Rhaudius requests the presence of:
Winter, the farmer, daughter of Amethyst,
and Aven, the farmer, son of Lynx,
at the hour of nightfall this evening.
He had placed the summons on the supper table for Winter to find, then left. The rest of the morning was spent where he now sat, in Harvest’s hovel. Only six months ago he had stumbled from the Baron’s fortress back to this very place to find wisps of smoke and ash rising from the hole.
He’d lain on the lip and finally fell into tormented sleep. At daybreak he had spotted the bodies inside. All had turned to charred bones in the inferno of the root fire.
