Call of Brindelier (Keepers of the Wellsprings Book 3)

by Missy Sheldrake

  “What other business could possibly be more important— oh,” I gasp as the light of the vials catches my eye. “Are those…?”

  The sight of the two vials floating in midair at the center of the room dazzles me so much that I can’t even finish my thought. One bottle is ash gray, filled with rose-gold liquid. The second is blood red and shines with pure gold. Both are scrawled with runes of protection that seem to crackle and spit at me the closer I get to them.

  “We have three,” Shush whispers. “We can open the gate now.”

  “How? And by ourselves? So soon? And in the middle of an attack?” I stare at the vials, unable to tear my gaze away even when a loud thump nearby should have drawn my attention.

  “Focus, Azi!” Flitt chirps. She darts in front of me and claps her hands in my face.

  “Oh, my lady,” Saesa breathes. I turn toward her to find my squire kneeling with her fist to her chest and her head bowed.

  “Saesa? Why are you kneeling? Get up,” I say with a scowl. When she does and she looks at me, I see myself reflected in her eyes. It’s me, but changed. I’m radiant with light. The luminous wings gifted by the Wellspring drape my shoulders like soft feathers. I take a step closer and feel myself tumbling into her green eyes, wanting to see more.

  “Azi!” Flitt snaps her fingers in my eye. “There’s no time for that right now. Listen. We have the three, and they know it. They’re all looking for you, and for the vials. We have to get to the gate and present the offering before they reach us. Listen! Azi!”

  I blink my eyes repeatedly and shake my head.

  “What’s happening to me, Flitt? Saesa, please stand up,” I say to my squire, who has sunk to her knees again in awe of me. “I don’t like this.”

  “It’s just an aftereffect from the Source,” Shush explains. “It’ll fade. But Flitt’s right. We have to open the gate. Quickly.”

  “How?” I ask as I reach for Saesa to pull her to her feet. “How do we find it, to open it?”

  “Easy,” Rian’s voice sends a thrill of tingles through me. “Look outside.” I whirl to face him and find him kneeling two paces away, his head bowed.

  “You, too?” I exclaim and rush to him. When I reach to take his arm, his fingers crackle at his chest. “Rian!” I say firmly. “For all that’s good in this world, will you please get up?”

  “What did you do, Azi?” he whispers. His fingers spark and pop again as I move closer. He doesn’t shy away from my touch, but he doesn’t throw his arms around me, either, like he usually would.

  “She went for a little dip, that’s all,” Flitt laughs. “Rian and Saesa, you’re being ridiculous. She’s still Azi. I’m surprised, Rian. Usually you’d be stuck to her face by now.”

  As I place a hand on Rian’s shoulder, a surge of power sparks between us at my touch. When I pull it away in surprise, my fingers glow with magic. I feel the exchange between us. I’ve given him strength; he’s given me love. Just as it always has been, but this time it’s tangible.

  Rian gazes up at me, as if the gesture was permission for him to do so. Our eyes lock and my perspective shifts instantly to his. I see myself standing before him, a beacon of light in the dim room. I feel the awe he feels when he looks at me. I look completely different, and yet the same. My braid, as golden as it has ever been, has unraveled, leaving my hair free to float around my head as though I’m under water. My armor shines with a light of its own, blue as it always is, but dipped in gold so that the light that catches it doesn’t know what color to portray. It’s a shift and a shimmer that’s difficult to pin down. I try to make sense of it, but I can’t. It makes me want to look away, but I don’t. Instead, my eyes find my sword, which beams with light so bright that it obscures my hand and my arm up to my shoulder. My face, even as curious as I am now, is stern and kind all at once, like a warrior ready to rush in and defend the innocent. Then there are the wings. Not my wings, no. I won’t call them mine. They’re too mystical, too magical, to foreign to who I am. Yet they fit me. They suit my personality and what I stand for, just as Flitt’s iridescent ones do her, Twig’s sticks do him, and Shush’s dragonfly wings do him.

  “All that,” Rian’s voice forces me back to my own mind again, my own perspective, “and they couldn’t make you just a smidge taller?” he chuckles and pulls me into his arms, and as I rest my head on his chest, and suddenly it’s the same as it always has been between us. Perfect, safe, and right. When he holds me, I’m just Azi again, a young woman with a fervent need to defend her people and to make things right. Azaeli Hammerfel, daughter of the Elite. Fiancée to Rian Eldinae, loyal to the throne of Cerion. Ambassador of Kythshire. Knight. Paladin.

  He raises my chin with a charged fingertip and kisses me, and when our lips meet the charge sparks warm and powerful, coursing through us both at once. I’m overwhelmed by the two sensations, his and mine, which clash and meld together so perfectly and completely. Light so bright there are no words for it. Love so pure it takes my breath away.

  Our kiss is not just a kiss. The magic it holds manifests between us as an orb of light, of all of the colors of Dawn. I see it in the minds of the others in the room who are watching, but I don’t pull away from Rian. His lips are too soft and sweet, his arms around me and his fingers through my hair are all I ever need. The light hovers at my waist and beckons to the offering. The other two vials are drawn to it, and glide across the room to join with it. The third vial slips from the pouch at my waist and joins the others.

  “That’s enough, you two,” Flitt giggles.

  Her words are barely heard. Rian and I are too entwined. I slip back to myself and let the moment take me. Just us, just he and I, our kiss, our love, our bodies pressed together. His hands slide to my shoulders and then to my back, and despite my armor I feel them leaving trails of warmth and goosebumps in their wake.

  “Okay, it’s getting gross now,” Flitt tugs my ear. When I reluctantly open my eyes, I see that she’s got her feet on Rian’s cheek and she’s actively trying to push him away from me. “Honestly, you two. Nobody wants to see that. I mean, Azi, you just bathed and now you have Stinky Mage smell all over you again.”

  Shush chuckles through his nose, and Saesa, dutifully as ever, has suddenly found the door to the east quite interesting to look through.

  “Well, anyway, that’s done,” Flitt huffs, looking a little jilted. “Azi, take the orb and let’s go.”

  “What?” I whisper in confusion as I open my hands and the orb containing the three offerings drifts into them.

  “Don’t be thick, Azi,” Flitt says with an air of impatience. “Light and love go hand in hand, just like darkness and hatred do. You two just fused the offerings with your love, to claim them for the Dawn. This way, even if the Dusk did get their hands on the three we have, they wouldn’t be able to use them to open the gate. Not right away, anyway. They’d have to break the bonds apart and claim them as their own, first. It’s like extra protection. And now that you can fly, we can get to the gateway outside easily. It’s a good thing, too, because you can’t get there through the Half-Realm. It has to be in person. So you couldn’t have just wished yourself there like you usually do. But you knew that part already, I think. So, ready?”

  I nod slowly, still slightly confused by everything that has happened but too aware of the urgency of the situation to ask for further explanation.

  “This way,” Rian says. He takes my hand and leads the way through the Academy, up stairs and down hallways until we reach the observatory where the ceiling is open to the night sky. Smoke from the king’s pyre to the north drifts up to the stars. At the base of it is a glowing dome of scattered white lights, and inside of that the king’s fire still burns.

  “There,” Rian whispers, and points into the distance over the sea. Hovering high overheard, the black form silhouetted by moonlight is disturbing to look at. It’s a mass of land like the one Tib showed me in his memory of the Dusk’s fortress, but not the same mass. The formations of
broken earth beneath it are different from the one he showed me. The stone is milky white like the cliffs of Cerion, not black and shale-like as the other one was.

  Shush calls out something in elvish, and the wind picks up and carries his words away.

  “Azi,” he whispers as he bobs at Rian’s shoulder. “You’ll have to go on your own. Rian and Saesa will follow by cygnet.”

  “When I get there, what happens? What do I do?” I ask. The orb in my hands makes my fingertips tingle and pulls away from me as if desperate to get to the arch.

  “Not sure,” Flitt replies. “But don’t worry. I’ll be with you and the others won’t be far behind.”

  “They’re trying to go,” I say as my hands are pulled toward the sky.

  “Let’s go, then,” Flitt says excitedly, and tucks herself into my pauldron.

  Rian and I exchange another quick kiss and Saesa stands looking hopefully into the starry sky as I push off, soar out of the observatory, and speed to the archway. Despite the sounds of battle ringing throughout Cerion, I don’t meet with any resistance on my way to the arch. In the distance, I see the cygnets approaching. Over my shoulder, I watch them land on the rim of the observatory and I’m comforted knowing that Rian and Saesa won’t be far behind me.

  The archway grows larger as I near. It’s a small piece of land covered in grass, and the arch is of carved stone. As I soar around it to assess it, I see that there is nothing else to it. It seems like I could fly straight through the arch to the other side if I wanted to. It stands on its own, the width of two men, possibly, and as tall as three. The stone is white, like the cliffs of Cerion and the broken earth beneath the island. Otherwise, the piece of land is eerily empty and unremarkable. If it wasn’t floating in the sky, I doubt it would attract interest from anyone at all.

  “So are you just going to fly around it for the rest of the night, or are you going to land eventually?” Flitt asks, laughing.

  “I’m just looking first,” I reply.

  “It’s an archway on a floating piece of land, Azi,” Flitt chuckles. “Not much else to see. You’ve already circled it about ten times. Can we go?”

  “Have I?” I ask, confused at first. Then I think back and realize she’s right. I’ve been circling and hesitating. With Flitt’s encouragement, I take a deep breath and fly closer, then land lightly on the grassy threshold of the gateway.

  As soon as my feet touch the ground, everything shifts. Cerion and the surrounding area disappear. The ground spreads out from this point, ending in the distance at a thick forest. A fortified wall stretches from either side of the gate, and through the opening of the arch I catch glimpses of a fantastically built city before two solid stone doors slam shut, blocking my view. The figure of a knight emerges from the air. His silvery armor glints blue in the moonlight showing off the impressive intricate designs of strange flora and beasts etched into it. His hands rest at chest-height on top of his great shield, and his eyes are piercing as he glares unflinchingly through the slit of his helm at me.

  “What is your intention, Knight?” he demands. “What reason do you have to approach this, the Gate of Brindelier?”

  I stare at him, wide-eyed and tongue-tied. Why, indeed? I wonder to myself. The orb in my hands glows brighter, but the knight doesn’t seem to notice it.

  “We’ve come to waken the city,” Flitt says. “And to revive the Great Source.”

  “You bring the petty battles of your people to our doorstep,” his eyes narrow menacingly. “What right do you have?”

  “Quite so! How audacious!” A high-pitched voice squeaks from inside the knight’s hood. When I squint, I can barely make out a tiny face scowling out at me from beside the barrel helm. The glint of a wing tells me this knight has a fairy companion of his own. “What right?” he squawks.

  “A suitor for the prince,” Flitt pipes up proudly. “A way to claim Brindelier for the Dawn.”

  “This one?” the knight huffs, eyeing me. “She is too old. Too much a warrior. Brindelier seeks a peaceful ruler. Not one such as her.”

  “Not her,” Flitt scoffs and pushes me away, wrinkling her nose. “Her name is Margary Plethore, Princess of Cerion.”

  “We haven’t heard of her. Go away!” the voice inside the hood yelps.

  “A princess?” the knight muses. “Plethore, you say? The same Plethore who cast down the Sorcerer Diovicus at the beginning of the Age of Slumber?”

  “A descendant of his. Yes, sir,” I explain.

  The Knight takes a slight step forward. When he does, he seems to finally notice the offering in my hand and asks, “What is your name, Lady Knight, and what is it you have there?”

  “My name is Azaeli Hammerfel, Knight of His Majesty’s Elite of Cerion. Cerion’s Ambassador to Kythshire, The Temperate, Pure of Heart, Reviver of Iren, The Great Protector, The Mentalist, The Paladin.”

  “Oh, Azi,” Flitt pushes to me as she covers her face with one hand, obviously embarrassed.

  “Well, well,” squeaks the voice inside the helmet. “Talk about presumptuous. Cocky, too, that one. Who goes around spouting off titles like that, eh? What pride! Don’t let her in, Gustaven. You’d better not!”

  “I didn’t mean to—” I start, but the Knight interrupts me.

  “You may pass, with proper payment,” he declares.

  I raise the orb of offerings to him and he looks at it dubiously and asks, “What is that?”

  “It’s…” I scowl and glance at Flitt. “It’s our offering. The Dawn’s. I was told we were supposed to bring it. Three offerings from three Wellsprings, to open the gate.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” the Knight mumbles. “To pass through the gate, that is what you need. But first you must pass through me, and in order to do so, you must offer payment.”

  “What kind of payment?” Flitt asks, exasperated.

  “A coin,” the voice inside of the helmet chirps.

  “Gold? I have a few gold, I think,” I say, and reach to rummage through my belt pouch.

  “Not gold,” says the Knight. “The Coin of Sky. If you had one in your possession, you would certainly know it, and so I will assume you do not.”

  “We do,” Rian calls out from behind me. I turn to see him, Saesa, and Shush rushing toward us. He pats his robes and slumps his shoulders. “Well, not in our possession, but we can certainly get one. Tib has it,” he groans at me. “I gave it back to him.”

  “Then that is what you must do,” the Knight says with a curt nod, “Harbinger of Dawn.”

  “Oh! Another title for her to spout! That should please her pride!” the fairy inside the hood cackles. “Yes, go and get the coin, silly ninnies. Can’t believe you came so far without it! What a laugh!”

  “Go quickly,” says the Knight, “I pray you return before the Dusk arrives with the same intent as yours. Brindelier is a great, pure city. Its people are lively, kind, and wise. They do not wish to live in Darkness, but they will have no choice. We must bend to the will of whomever comes bearing that which is required to lift the spell and wake them all.”

  “I’ll go,” I say to the others. “Hold this.” I hand the orb to Rian.

  “Be careful,” he says to me, and with Flitt on my shoulder I shoot up into the sky, toward the stars.

  Chapter Forty-Six: Reinforcements

  Celli

  “There are three entrances to the Catacombs,” Sybel tells me as we run through the Sea Market. Everything is destroyed. Stalls on fire, wares scattered over the cobbles, groups of men fighting groups of Sorcerers while wives huddle in windows, watching. The lifts are all up and unmanned. The docks are abandoned. Nobody’s leaving the city tonight by sea. “One through the palace courtyard, one through the High Court. The third way in is via the docks. A passage used to supply the prison beneath the city.”

  She pauses in the middle of her explanation and flicks her wrist lazily toward a group of six approaching soldiers. Her skeletons, which have been following us, march past and bear down
on the enemies. Sybel looks almost bored as she whispers a spell and claps her hands and a jet of red light sears from her fingers and crashes into the soldiers. Three of them fall without even a chance to scream in pain. The skeletons take the remaining three, and Sybel whispers her spell and blows a kiss, and all six defeated soldiers stand up again. They mill around, looking blankly ahead, until she speaks.

  “Follow and protect,” she says, and the risen soldiers fall into line behind the skeletons, ready to serve the Sorceress.

  “Foul and false and wicked,” Osven’s voice echoes over us on the sea breeze. “Your ways will catch up to you, Sybel.”

  “Shut it, jealous,” Sybel sneers. “Celli. As I was saying, there are two entrances.” She starts to walk toward the High Court. “I will cause the guards within to come to the surface entrances and face my legion. You will go to the third at the cliff side and make your way through the tunnels. You know what your task is, correct?”

  “I do, Mistress,” I use the title with a hint of distaste. I know what she did with my master behind closed doors and I hate her for it. Still, she made me attractive to him all that time ago, and if not for her he might have overlooked me. So I show her respect, for now, but my loyalty will always be to him. My thoughts wander to him, and what he must be doing now. I wonder if he’s thinking of me, too. Quenson. Quenson. He is. I just know it. He’s thinking about me even now. Wishing for me as I’m wishing for him.

  “Celli!” Sybel snaps her fingers in my face. “Pay attention! If you fail, you will never see your master again. Do you understand?”

  Her threat terrifies me so much that I gasp for breath. My vision starts to close in. I feel the panic rising in me, ready to take me over. Then, Sybel’s hands are on my shoulders, shaking me.

  “He still needs you,” she says, and her reassurance calms me in an instant. “Go and do what you were sent for. Down the cliff, through the passages. Number twelve.”