Phoenix Rising

by Ryk E. Spoor

  She sighed and turned back to the crate, leaning on it slightly, slanting rays of sun coming from a side window. She could see the deep impressions left in the wood where Condor and Shrike had finally pushed it all the way to the back. A faint silvery sheen seemed to cover the wood.

  Her heart seemed to stop.

  Crescent-shaped gouges. Silvery sheen in the slanting sun. One set nearly a foot higher than the others.

  “No.” She heard herself whisper, backing away from the crate that now loomed before her like a sign of doom. “No, oh, no . . .”

  But those were feeble, impotent words against the implacable understanding that was now surfacing, a hideous truth that a part of her must have already guessed.

  Not one man striking the doors twice, high and then low. No.

  Two men, one very tall, one short, striking those doors at the same time.

  The understanding—and the realization that those same two men had made these marks, glowing with bitter cold cheer from the wood—made her stomach twist.

  We should have known. Perhaps we did know, and just didn’t want to believe. But it’s so obvious. How could one corrupt Justiciar hide his true nature within the entire brotherhood? How could he cloak his lies from those who could see truth?

  “No. No. No, Myrionar, NO!”

  But the memories were merciless, especially the last words of Rion, looking at her with grim certainty—“you won’t want to hear everything I have to say”—and that final look of utter horror.

  How much more simple, how much more sensible, to believe that it was the whole brotherhood that was responsible?

  The brotherhood I sent Rion to question!

  I SENT him there!

  She tumbled backwards down the stairs, scrambled to her feet, sent one more horrified glance at the crate squatting on the tenth stair, indentations glowing like soulless grins in the final rays of sunlight, and turned away, stumbling, tears streaming from her eyes, unable to do anything but run, run, any direction, and repeating the single word no.

  Inside she knew the answer was yes, but she could not bear to hear that voice, and so she ran. Brush and vines tore at her, but she ran on, heedless of anything save the terrible need to escape the heart-rending realization of betrayal more monstrous than anything she had ever imagined. She remembered green eyes gazing into hers, a hand warm on her own, and screamed, half in denial, half in rage, her voice echoing through the jungle and dying away like shattered hopes.

  I sent Rion to them. I sent him to ask questions, to let them know someone suspected the truth!

  Rion died because of me!

  A part of her, a very distant part, tried to turn her back, knowing she was fleeing into the Forest Sea, but it was impotent before the seething fury and self-hatred boiling ever higher inside of Kyri. Something lunged at her, bladed legs and venomed fangs and a screech of hunger, but that was its one and final error, for without even truly being aware of it, Kyri caught the striking forelimbs, broke them, shattered the carapace, left the thing dying, and ran on, crying now, tears that seemed torn from the core of her soul.

  Full dark had fallen and she burst through into a clearing. Shadows of movement were in the clearing, but fled, sensing that the newcomer was heedless, reckless, perhaps mad in truth, and thus a thousand times more dangerous than any more cautious foe. Stars glittered overhead, sparkled in the clear sky, and as Kyri paused she saw the twinkling stars of the Sword and Balance.

  The sight was a shock of ice-water, bringing her to her knees. Then she surged to her feet, balling her fists, and screaming at the sky.

  “Why, Myrionar? Why? We believed in you, we called your name, we trusted in Justice and Vengeance and your Wisdom and Mercy! My parents raised us to believe!” She reached inside her shirt, tore off the golden symbol so hard the chain left bleeding welts on her neck, but she didn’t care. She shook the tiny sword-balance at its celestial mirror. “Even after they died we followed you, Rion gave his life for you, and you did nothing! Your own Justiciars! Your own Justiciars betrayed us, mouthed lies and deceit in my own house, set foot in your temples and you give us not a hint?”

  The tears streamed down her face so that she could no longer see the stars, and her furious tirade was full of pain and sorrow as well as smoke-black anger. “How could you? Where is the Vengeance or Justice that could explain this?” She hurled the symbol away from her and fell to her knees again, crying, no longer able to scream, just to speak in pain-wracked sobs. “The Arbiter tore his soul to save Rion in your name! Kelsley almost died, and Rion did, and all for nothing! How could you? How could you abandon us all?” She raised her face and glared once more at the distant stars. “ANSWER ME!”

  Her final cry echoed through the trees and died away to nothing. Silence surrounded her, a silence deeper than any forest should hold, and a chill went down her spine. Not a bird, a single animal, even the buzz and hum of insects was absent, and in the profound quiet the only sound she heard was her own ragged breathing and, under that, the pounding of her broken heart.

  “I have not abandoned you.”

  With the words came the presence, the feeling of something vast and wise that had always been a part of the Temple; only this time it was a hundred times stronger, and the voice itself, though quiet, thundered through her bones, echoed in the ground, a voice that seemed both as unfamiliar as a stranger on the street, yet so familiar that she felt she had always known it.

  “I have not abandoned you, Kyri Vantage, and I grieve for all you have suffered. Your faith has been true and even the gods cannot condemn one who is given such cause to doubt.”

  Kyri, open-mouthed, wanted to scream her accusations anew . . . but just as she could feel the Presence, so, too, could she feel Myrionar’s pain, a sorrow that felt as deep as her own and older, ancient, as though the god had lived with such pain for all of Its existence. “Then . . . then why, Myrionar?” she said finally, a question instead of a demand or accusation. “Why, and how?”

  “Many are the gods, Kyri Vantage. Powers there are greater than mine, and others subtle and cautious who spent ages finding solutions to dark puzzles of their own. I cannot say—precisely—how my Justiciars could be subverted within my own gaze. What I know would be too dangerous for you now, and there is still much hidden from me.

  “But not for such useless riddles and half-answers have I spoken to you. You call on me in the name of my last true Justiciar, for the sake of my wounded priest, for the love of your family and for the loss of your innocence, and if any Justice remains in the world, I can do nothing but answer you.”

  The stars blazed brighter, and suddenly a golden Sword of heavenly flame burned in the sky, a golden Sword holding aloft a silver Balance of cold-fire beauty, casting aside the night and bringing argent-auric daylight to the clearing in which she stood.

  “Kyri Victoria Vantage, hear now the words of Myrionar, God of Justice and Vengeance. If you will have faith in me, I shall in you place all of my faith. Your path will be long, and hard, and filled with pain. But this I promise, this I swear, on the very power of the gods, that if you will remain true through all, if you will be for me the living symbol of Myrionar, then to you I shall in the end deliver all the Justice and Vengeance you desire—knowledge of your enemies, and the will to confront them, and the power to drive them to ruin as great as the pain they have caused.”

  “Have faith in you?” The words were ludicrous. Moments ago she was cursing Myrionar. “How . . . how can I? How, when I have seen nothing of your Justice, Myrionar?”

  The familiar, alien voice was both stern and rueful, recognizing her plight yet yielding nothing. “Only you can answer that, Kyri. That is, and has always been, the test of true faith. Can you believe, without proof? More, can you believe still, in the moments when all seems to shout at you that what you believe is a lie?”

  She shook her head slowly. Believe . . . have faith in Myrionar. How?

  The treachery of the Justiciars pressed in upon
her, and she shuddered. They had been one of the greatest symbols of her belief, and now she knew they had been false, every one of them a lie.

  No. Not every one.

  For a moment, she almost felt she could hear Rion’s voice, and her eyes stung again with tears. Rion had had faith, and Myrionar had given him the power. He had been seeking justice when he died.

  Can I let my brother have died in vain?

  And she remembered Arbiter Kelsley. An act of faith and devotion so extreme that he nearly died.

  “Be for me the living symbol of Myrionar . . .”

  And what was Myrionar? What was the truth? She remembered the many discussions in her classes, time spent arguing with Rion beneath the starwood tree in the back yard, Kelsley’s sermons, even—though spoken by false lips—speeches of the Justiciars.

  “There is a reason Justice is always spoken first,” she remembered Kelsley saying. “Because Justice is always to be foremost. Vengeance comes only after Justice has been done, after wisdom has found the truth and after careful judgment has guided us to the Just and Right solution, and, if warranted, tempered with Mercy. Only then is the cold and implacable power of Vengeance to be unleashed.”

  If Myrionar spoke truth . . . then something inconceivably terrible had happened, arranged and guided by some force so mighty and subtle that a gods’ own servants had been subverted in a manner so constrained by power and necessity that even the god dared not alert others as to what was happening.

  And was it not one of the most basic of the tenets of Justice that it was easy to give justice to the strong and secure, and thus far more important for the weak, the betrayed, the helpless?

  And suddenly Kyri understood, and she laughed—a painful laugh, filled with the ghosts of tears shed and other tears to come, but a laugh. God though It was, Myrionar was the helpless one. Evanwyl, the stronghold of its faith, was held somehow by the enemy—perhaps the power that lay beyond Rivendream Pass, perhaps something else—and in Its own name it now came to her . . .

  Because she was the one who would truly understand both what It asked, and why.

  It was that which released the terrible knot in her heart. The pain was not gone, but the bile-acid corrosive fury against Myrionar, the foundation of her childhood, faded away. The god asked her to help make all these things right, asked her here, in the shadow of the First City, far from the corrupting power that had destroyed her family, and she realized that whatever game Myrionar was playing, it was a deadly serious one, one whose price could be the life of a god . . . or more than one.

  She rose slowly to her feet, gazing at the burning symbol. “You swear that if I hold true, that in the end I will have justice and vengeance?”

  “By all the Powers that are or have ever been or will ever be, I swear this to you.”

  “Then . . .” she took a deep breath, “then I will swear to you that I will keep faith in you, Myrionar. My brother died in your name, died because I sent him into that danger, and I believe in Rion . . . so I believe in you. I have to believe in you.”

  The Balanced Sword flared so brightly that it seemed to light the entirety of the sky. “Then you, Kyri Vantage, shall be my one, true, and only Justiciar, the founder of the new Justiciars. Your course will be long and painful, sometimes darker even than the moment in which first I spoke to you; but believe, and hold, and be true to Justice, and there is a way out for you. Follow your instincts but temper them with thought; Justice, Wisdom, and Mercy before Vengeance.”

  The Balanced Sword descended, its light drowning out all other sights. “My touch is upon you, and you shall see it reflected in the morning’s light. Find your course, and know my blessing is with you . . . and my thanks.”

  The Sword and Balance rose then, ascending to the heavens, fading . . . and then there were only the stars shining softly down.

  But inside, Kyri felt . . . somehow at peace, at least for this moment. She knew Rion would be happy, he would approve . . . and so would the Arbiter.

  Two people, against all the ocean of pain and guilt and betrayal.

  But they were two people who mattered.

  17

  “Auntie Victoria . . .”

  Victoria Vantage spun around at the voice. “Kyri! Good gods above and below, child, you’ve had us worried half to death!” In the darkness of the night, this far from the City, Aunt Victoria was barely visible as an arrow-straight figure of deeper black. Kyri let the older woman hug her. “Myrionar’s Justice, girl, you’re shaking! What—”

  “Not . . . not just yet, Auntie, please. Tell the others I’m back and . . . tell them I saw something, chased it into the forest and got lost. I’m . . . going to my room. When everyone’s settled, I . . .” She shook her head. “I need to talk to you. But only you, Aunt Victoria. No one else.”

  The tone in her voice seemed to reach her aunt. “Very well. Get inside then and I will call in the others.”

  Kyri stumbled up the stairs, exhaustion dragging at her every stride; she noticed that in her absence someone had dragged the last crate upstairs. It was astonishing how difficult the last ten steps were; the shock of her terrible discovery, the run through the Forest Sea, the wild extremes of the emotional highs and lows of the last hours had drained more energy from her than any day of training ever had.

  She closed the door behind her and dropped into a chair, glancing at the fateful crate which the same someone had thoughtfully delivered to her own room. The room itself was dark, no lightglobes on, and she didn’t feel like bothering for now. Despite the quiet and the dark and the softness behind her, her mind refused to slow down. Her body wanted to fall asleep, but her thoughts ran fast and far.

  She had no idea how long she sat there, still trying to comprehend what had happened, when there was a gentle rap on her door. “Kyri? Can I come in now, child?”

  “Yes, Auntie.”

  The door opened, her aunt was momentarily silhouetted against the exterior light, and the door closed. “Sitting in the dark? May I give us light, or do we meet here like two thieves conspiring?”

  Kyri managed a ghost of a chuckle. “No, Auntie. You can give us light.”

  “It’s taken me hours to get everyone back and in bed where they—and by rights we—should be. Dawn is already showing.” She muttered something about no lightglobes in this room, and then the shadow of her aunt crossed the room and pulled on the wooden slide, turning the slat-blinds fully open and letting the soft gray light of early morning fill the room. “There. I never enjoyed sitting in the—Great Balance, girl, what have you done to your hair?”

  “My hair?” Kyri blinked in confusion, then turned to the full-length mirror that leaned against the far wall, awaiting her decision as to where to hang it.

  Her jaw dropped in surprise. The night-black of her hair was gone, replaced by a rich, deep sky-blue, with a flash of pure silver-white in the very center of her forehead. At the very tips of every strand glittered a hint of gold. She heard the voice echo in her memory: “. . . my touch is upon you, and you shall see it reflected in the morning’s light . . .”

  Blue, silver, and gold: the colors of Myrionar, of the Balanced Sword.

  She couldn’t help it; she began to laugh, a laugh that she realized didn’t sound either very comforting or perhaps even entirely sane, and it kept on going, getting louder and louder and less controlled, until all of a sudden a sharp smack reverbrated through the room in time with a flash of quick pain from her cheek. In startlement she paused, finding her aunt’s concerned eyes gazing into hers, Victoria’s long, strong hand raised for another slap. “Are you all right now?”

  “I . . . I think so. Sorry, Auntie.”

  “I should hope so. Now are you going to explain?”

  She swallowed and took a deep breath, glancing over to the fateful case. “I . . . I know who killed Mother and Father. And Rion.”

  She saw her aunt’s eyes narrow, trying to decide if Kyri were still not entirely there. Then Victoria nodded sharply.
“I see. You do know.”

  “Yes.” Even now, sure as she was, with Myrionar of the Balance Itself having verified all she knew, it was almost impossible to say. But she had to. She didn’t know what to do now, but she did know that she couldn’t possibly do this alone, without even advice and support from her family—from perhaps the only people who would really understand. She found herself on her feet, pacing, and could feel Victoria’s gaze on her as she moved. Finally she stopped in front of the window and opened the shutters wide, leaned on the polished stone and wood of the sill, looking out into the deep black greenness of the Forest Sea, remembering the gold and silver fire speaking to her. She gathered her courage and turned, meeting Victoria’s concerned gaze. “It was the Justiciars. All of them.”

  The color drained entirely from Victoria Vantage’s face, turning her white as bone, and she collapsed into the chair from which she had started to rise, her pale lips shaping the same “No . . .” that Kyri remembered herself repeating in futile denial those endless hours ago. Kyri waited sympathetically, knowing that words would be useless now.

  But it was only moments before the shock and denial drained away, to be replaced by grim understanding and acceptance . . . and even a dark, wry smile that startled Kyri. “Of course,” Victoria Vantage muttered, half to herself. “No wonder Rion had to die. No wonder he didn’t want to tell any of us anything. They admitted him to see if he could be brought to their side . . . and to silence him, if he couldn’t. They knew that otherwise he’d be out searching on his own, harder to watch, harder to control, and something might get out.” The swiftness of her acceptance and understanding reminded Kyri that Victoria Vantage was a Guild Adventurer and had been for fifty years, since she was fourteen. I’m awfully lucky she’s with us.

  Victoria looked up. “But you’ve gone far beyond guessing this, Kyri. It’s a good guess—a terribly convincing guess, one that explains so very much—but for you, it’s not a matter of guessing, you know, I can tell. And the simple realization doesn’t explain why your parents were attacked, and certainly not your hair.”