Tristaine Rises

by Cate Culpepper

  The harsh snap of static buzzed loudly in Brenna’s ears, a raw, ugly sound. She turned back to the shattered altar and the almost-forgotten specter that still hovered above it. The twisting tendril of smoke that was Botesh flickered like a sinister shroud in a fierce gale. She was the source of the hissing crackle that filled Brenna’s mind, the same cacophony that provided the dissonant background of her first vision.

  Even as Brenna watched, the mist above the altar drifted and diffused, then began to form again. A vaguely feminine figure materialized, suffused with a murky scarlet light. In her physical incarnation, Botesh’s body held womanly contours and all the grace and allure of a bristling tarantula.

  “Samantha!” Brenna was unable to take her eyes from the burgeoning shape of the Amazon sorceress. Samantha’s hand clasped hers, and Brenna held on tight.

  The face of Botesh was forming now. Brenna felt Samantha sag beside her as she absorbed one horror too many, and she slid a firm arm around her waist. The hatred blazing from Botesh’s features felt like the dry skittering of that tarantula across a sweat-soaked back.

  The powerful figure of Botesh rose higher in the air. She appeared only marginally human. The skin of the undead queen was armored with small interconnected scales, and her jaws widened to expose multiple rows of wickedly sharp fangs. Brenna learned there were worse things than the horror of Botesh’s eyes—like the guttural, rasping fury of her reborn voice.

  “Harlot queen!” Botesh lifted a broadsword as long as Brenna was tall and swung it around her head.

  Brenna realized the half-demon was not targeting her and Samantha. She whirled and saw her intended victim. Shann was running, but she had not yet reached the center of the village square. She was nowhere near any cover, and none of Tristaine’s warriors were close enough to defend her. Brenna screamed Shann’s name in warning, but her voice was drowned out by the ear-splitting shriek Botesh released as she attacked.

  Shann saw the raving queen streaking toward her, and she stood still, her body braced and centered.

  Samantha gasped and pulled hard on Brenna’s shoulder, forcing her down. Brenna looked up just in time to see two other figures in full flight above them.

  Dyan’s fist was snarled in the torn leather of Jess’s collar, hauling her bodily through space with her. In midair, they thudded in tandem against the very solid back of their adversary, and Botesh dropped under their joined fury like a raving beast brought down by dogs.

  The impact of their landing scattered the rancid fog still carpeting the village square. Botesh’s newly human form held the same size and power Dyan commanded in this world, and she jumped immediately to her feet.

  Dyan and Jess fought together like the two lifelong friends and sisters in arms they were, each mirroring the other’s deadly thrusts. The beauty of their brutal dance all but hypnotized Brenna, but they fought a formidable enemy.

  Botesh injected centuries of repressed wrath into every wide swing of her sword, and the hissing static emanating from her scarlet skin made it difficult to focus. She seemed tireless, spinning to parry every blow from Jess’s sword and Dyan’s double-headed axe.

  Part of Brenna watched Shann as she circled the fierce battle toward her and Samantha, her eyes riveted on Dyan. Brenna grabbed Shann’s hand as she reached them and pulled her close, encircling her with one arm and Samantha with the other.

  J’heika, rise.

  Samantha didn’t seem to hear the challenge this time, but it rang clearly in Brenna’s mind. “I’ll trust in our Mothers to guide us when the time comes,” Shann’s silent voice repeated, and that guidance was there. Brenna knew immediately what she had to do.

  “Dyan!” Brenna roared, with a force that stripped her throat raw, and she held out one hand. “Tristaine’s blade!”

  Dyan spun at the command and faced Brenna, and she, too, obeyed immediately. Her labrys left her grip and sailed through the air in a gentle arc, and its hilt smacked into Brenna’s open palm.

  Brenna balanced the axe in both hands and looked at Shann. Shann smiled down at Brenna with pure pride and touched the hilt. At Brenna’s nod, Samantha rested her fingers on one of the labrys’s gleaming blades.

  Brenna clenched her jaw as the shock of power coursed through her body again, reuniting her with her mother on one side and her sister on the other. The labrys, regenerated by the combined energies of the Crone, Mother, and Maiden, sparked again with divine light.

  “Jesstin!” Brenna bellowed.

  Jess, fighting solo now, was hard-pressed to fend off Botesh’s ruthless advance. She finally twisted free and dodged past her opponent, then whirled to see Brenna.

  Brenna took the labrys in both hands and hurled it to Jess, praying fervently to her Mothers or Grandmothers or anyone else who could possibly guide her often errant aim.

  Which was perfect. Jess dropped her sword, surged up, and snatched the glowing labrys out of the air, spinning before her boots hit the earth. She braced herself and snarled into Botesh’s frothing face.

  “Your granddaughters will mock your grave, Amazon.”

  It was the worst fate imaginable in their Nation.

  Jess swung the shining labrys with all the power she had, and one curved blade punched deeply into Botesh’s chest.

  The effect was immediate and gruesome in the extreme. Botesh exploded in a torrent of foul-smelling blood, so copious it seemed her human form held no viscera, no bones, just an appalling flood of crimson. Jess and Dyan were both liberally spattered, and they staggered back.

  The hideous static filling the square went silent, so abruptly the sudden lack of chaos was disorienting in itself.

  Brenna drew a series of quick, deep breaths, fighting off a surge of light-headedness. She felt Shann leave her side, and she turned to Samantha.

  “Sammy, I want you to sit down.”

  “Okay.” Samantha folded her legs and plunked down immediately. Brenna knew she had seen enough. Her nerves had to be flash-fried.

  She patted her sister’s head, then ran past her. The square was filling again with Tristaine’s warriors, cheering raggedly. What was left of Botesh’s Amazon army had disintegrated en masse with her last sulfuric breath. Brenna sighted Jess and arrowed straight for her. She had dropped to the ground in exhaustion, but was already sitting up when Brenna fell to her knees beside her.

  “Jesstin—”

  “Bent,” Jess gasped. “Not broken.” She lifted a hand to forestall any other questions until she could catch her breath. Brenna braced her until she was reasonably sure she could stay upright.

  “Sit still.” Brenna whipped off her linen sash and folded it, then pressed it against the deep, seeping cut across Jess’s shoulder. “You wrecked all my good stitchery, ace.”

  “Doesn’t hurt.”

  “Macha crap, this doesn’t hurt.” She checked her pulse, then pulled the torn and bloody topshirt aside to examine her ribs.

  “I’m just spent, Bren.” Jess still struggled to draw an even breath.

  Brenna ripped a strip of fabric from her topshirt and bound Jess’s lower leg. “I remember ordering you not to lose any more blood.”

  “The night’s ending, Brenna.”

  Jess was right. The trees were taking on that whispered illumination that came before the first hint of dawn. The red moon was less florid now, its malignant light weaker. The false night Botesh had summoned was giving way to first light.

  “Come here. Let’s get you warm.” Brenna shifted behind Jess so she could lean back into her arms. The move was strategic. Jess really did need her body heat. Both of them needed the physical contact. But Brenna also wanted a private moment to let her feelings play across her face, without worrying Jess. They were both shaking, Jess obviously with cold and shock, and Brenna with profound relief.

  The extinction of the villainous queen had freed the souls of the warriors she had imprisoned in Tristaine’s trees. Brenna held Jess and watched an amazing light show unfold. Streams of individual glowing s
parks were ascending into the night sky in two separate directions. One stream arced toward the north and the star system those Amazons called home.

  “Those are the spirits of the stone queen’s clan.” Brenna pointed to the other river of sparks, spinning eastward toward their own constellation. “And those are the souls of Botesh’s tribe. It looks like Tristaine freed three clans tonight.”

  “How do you know all that?” Jess squinted at the same sparks. “I’m seeing pretty little lights.”

  “You want me to be a seer? Hush and let me see.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Tristaine’s own immortal warriors were leaving now, returning home. They were a stream of brilliant silver lights, spiraling slowly up toward the Seven Sisters, still faintly visible overhead. There were several figures—Tristaine’s most recent fallen—who lingered for a last farewell. In the distance, Brenna saw Camryn’s glowing form standing close to Kyla.

  Nearby, Dyan and Shann spoke quietly, inches apart. Dyan’s larger figure loomed over Shann, but the exquisite tenderness between them was unmistakable. Brenna could see Shann’s eyes, and they glowed with a profound joy. The words exchanged by these adonai were for their ears alone.

  Finally, Dyan turned and walked toward Brenna and Jess. She put her hands on her hips and grinned down at them with fond pride. “I’ve come to give ye what’s yours, Jesstin.”

  Jess had dropped the black labrys after it pierced Botesh’s gory heart. Dyan gestured, and the two-headed axe rose from the ground and drifted lazily to Jess’s open hands. Her fingers closed around the hilt, and Brenna felt tears rising in her eyes.

  “You and I are champions of Amazon queens, adanin.” Dyan nodded toward Brenna. “Serve your lady well.”

  “With my life, teacher.” Jess answered with a title considered a high honorific in Tristaine.

  Dyan sketched a blessing in the air and was gone.

  Jess relaxed in Brenna’s arms like a tired child, and she cradled her like one. That Jess would allow such a public display of weakness told Brenna all she needed to know about her exhaustion. She had to get her to the healing lodge soon, and there would be urgent need for her own skills there.

  But for now, in this brief lull between battle and rebirth, Brenna and Jess held each other and watched the sun rise.

  Chapter Twelve

  Six days later

  Brenna clenched her teeth against the vicious sting and counted backward from ten.

  “The needle does smart a bit,” Jess had said. Jess had said lots of things since Brenna met her. She ruled supreme in the abyss-is-ditch, mountains-are-hills, Amazon art of understatement.

  Between the fiery jabs, Brenna released a deep breath and searched for distraction, something to focus on other than the burning at the base of her throat. She closed her eyes and thought of her father. Shann’s low voice filled her mind again, telling her two daughters the story of her first love.

  “His name was David, and he was a good man.” The fire-light played over Shann’s fine features. Brenna and Samantha sat on cushioned chairs in her private cabin, warmed by the crackling fire in the hearth. Jess stood close by, listening, her arms folded. She had healed well in the days since the final battle.

  “David and I fought in the same cell of the Resistance,” Shann continued, “before the City Government hunted down and destroyed its leaders. We had two daughters before David was murdered and I was imprisoned. I was told my children died in the same explosion that killed my husband. They released me after four years in Prison, and I was exiled from the City.” Shann fell silent, gazing at her hands folded in her lap.

  “And how did you find Tristaine?” Brenna asked gently. She didn’t want to interrupt the flow of this sad history.

  “Tristaine found me.” Shann looked up and smiled at them. “Dyan and several of our sisters came across my sorry self, lying unconscious in a ravine high in the foothills. I’d been wandering for days, perhaps weeks. There were rumors of settlements in the mountains, and I had some vague notion of finding one. I’d passed out from hunger, and it’s a simple miracle Dyan’s patrol discovered me. The first of many miracles.”

  Shann lifted a kettle from a grate near the hearth and refilled their mugs with steaming cider. “My Dyan was a miracle in herself. I never dreamed I’d find love again. Certainly not that love, that powerful, bone-deep sense of rightness and belonging I felt in Dyan’s arms. So my Mothers delivered me to my destiny with this clan, this family of Amazons, and the lifemate They always intended for me. And I never went back.”

  Shann put down the kettle, rose from her chair, and went to the window. “I believed what the City told me, and I never went back for my daughters. I’ve suspected our bond almost as long as I’ve known you, Brenna. I was too much of a coward to tell you earlier.”

  Brenna cleared her throat. “Why a coward?”

  “I didn’t want to admit to either of us that I’m a mother who abandoned her children.”

  “Lady,” Jess said quietly, “you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t question.” Shann raked her fingers slowly through her hair. “I had better reason than most to suspect the City’s duplicity, Jesstin, yet I accepted their death sentences as blind fact.”

  “When I heard your voice emerge from the stone queen, Shann,” Brenna said, “you told me you were sorry.”

  “I have no conscious memory of those words, dear one, but I can validate the message. My heart has been saying something very like that to you, and your sister, for twenty years.”

  “And when I gave you Dyan’s instructions for fighting Botesh?” Brenna asked. “I saw your face, Shann. You looked scared.”

  “Terrified,” Shann confirmed. “Just when I’d discovered you both, when I finally had you and Samantha back, safe and whole—Dyan tells me I must expose my daughters to hideous danger. In order to embody the three faces of the Goddess, I knew the three of us must face the maw of Botesh herself. My protectiveness made me secretive and deaf even to the counsel of my wisest advisors.” Shann rested her hand against Jess’s face for a moment.

  “I’m sorry you went through so much.” Samantha’s inherent kindness warmed her voice. “But why are you so sure about us? When did you know?”

  “I first suspected when Brenna heard an immortal voice address her as ‘j’heika,’ Samantha.” Shann smiled and returned to her chair by the hearth. “It’s an honorific, an old Amazon word for queen. That’s how I learned Brenna would inherit my crown.”

  “Which still has not been decided,” Brenna put in. “Or in any way agreed to, Sammy.”

  “Hey, better you than me.” Samantha nudged Brenna. “I heard that ‘j’heika’ thing too.”

  “Yes, Sam,” Shann said. “Your hearing that title confirmed my hopes. You and Brenna are both of the royal line.”

  “But, Shann…” Brenna’s head was starting to hurt, and Jess stood behind her and rested her hands on her shoulders. “What royal line? I thought Tristaine’s queens were chosen. You were. The crown doesn’t pass from mother to daughter.”

  “Except in times of Tristaine’s greatest travail.” Shann leaned forward and took Brenna’s hand. “Think back, Blades. Remember the scrolls of our Mothers and the promise Artemis made our clan.”

  “Artemis...” Brenna frowned.

  “When Tristaine is in deepest tribulation…”

  “She will be led by three generations of blood-bonded queens,” Jess recited. Brenna mouthed the words with her, remembering that spectral voice.

  “Thank you, Jesstin.” Shann smiled at her second. “This century presents tremendous challenge to our sisters. Artemis keeps Her word, adanin. I believe our reunion is goddess-sent.”

  “Shann. Wait.” Brenna felt a bit dazed. “You’re queen. And I’m your daughter. And you think I’m supposed to rule Tristaine after you. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that much, mind you. Now you’re talking about a granddaughter. This is some future kid? A child Sammy or I might have?
”

  “Perhaps, Bren.” Shann’s gaze was on Samantha.

  Samantha’s face lost all expression. “My baby is dead, Shann.”

  “Brenna was told you were dead, Samantha. And I believed it of you both.”

  “And we’re finished, Brenna.”

  Vona straightened and stepped back to examine the vibrant colors of the design etched at the base of Brenna’s throat. The older woman’s face was a fine webwork of wrinkles and laugh lines that deepened with her smile. “I hope you’ll be pleased, honey.”

  “How could I not be?” Brenna stepped down from the high stool she had perched upon the last three hours, wincing at the stiffness in one hip. “You’ve drawn our clan’s glyphs for forty years, grandmother.”

  “And no two alike.” Vona’s nimble fingers corked small vials of ink. “By the sound of things, they’re almost ready for you out there, dear. Go on. See what your handsome adonai thinks of your sigil.”

  Brenna kissed Vona’s cheek, then ducked out of the tent into the frosty night air.

  The square was thronging with Amazons just beginning to settle into place for the covenant ceremony. It was the first time Tristaine had assembled in full since lighting the funeral pyres for her fallen warriors. Nineteen lost in all, a stunning toll. Tonight was the clan’s first step out of grieving, a time to celebrate their salvation.

  Six festive bonfires burned at intervals around the square, illuminating their gathering in a warm gold light. Brenna searched the crowd for Hakan and saw her resting against her wife’s shoulder, cloaked in heavy furs. Shann had fought for Hakan’s life over a series of three nights and only today released her from the healing lodge.

  Samantha’s light hair made her easier to spot. She sat with Vicar and Wai Li, cradling their son on her lap.

  “That hurt like a sumbitch.” Dana pulled her collar open and peered at the top of her shoulder. Her own glyph had been drawn just before Brenna’s.