Phoenix Rising

by Ryk E. Spoor

  But now he was at the top, and skeletal hands hovered to pluck him off as soon as he was clear of the cage of bone. But he had no intention of actually emerging yet. Steelthorn was in his one hand now. Okay, Khoros, let’s see if that blessing you put on was good enough!

  He swung the slender blade, directly between the vertebrae, as he leapt up the last few inches. There was a flash of white light as Steelthorn struck, and the spinal column was not merely severed, but cleaved, as though Steelthorn had been a bastard blade wielded by a full-grown human warrior. The sand-bone demon collapsed in a heap, the animating spirit gone; Poplock bounced from the pile, heading for cover.

  His victory enraged the other two demons, who howled, sending a blisteringly hot, achingly dry storm of sand after him. Instantly he felt slower, more sluggish, and in horror he saw the plants nearby collapsing, withering, going through hours of dehydration in seconds. My will’s holding off some . . . but I’m a Toad, I can’t handle this for long!

  And then there was a chiming double clang, and the heads of both demons were spinning through the air. Xavier Ross stood behind the collapsing bodies, both blades extended fully.

  “Good timing!” Poplock croaked.

  Xavier flashed him a smile and paused for just long enough to allow Poplock to hop on his shoulder. “Let’s go help Tobimar!”

  In the short time they’d been gone, Tobimar had managed to break free. But as the focus of this trap, most of the forces had concentrated on him, and Poplock had a sort of deja-vu moment, seeing the young Prince of Skysand surrounded by monsters, including mazakh, in what seemed an untenable position.

  This time, however, he had two allies. Xavier made a tremendous jump as he approached, and Poplock jumped from his shoulder at the peak, bounding into the branches above for a better, and safer, vantage point. They had some allies in the trees before, but I think those were the mazakh, and most or all of them are down there now.

  Xavier Uriel Ross landed precisely, back-to-back with Tobimar Silverun, and for a moment the two black-haired, dark-skinned young men stood in identical poses, dual swords held parallel before them.

  Something about that caused the demons, especially the leader, to draw back. To Poplock, it looked as though she was staring in shock at Xavier, at his swords and then at his face, perhaps his eyes.

  But the mazakh were not so intimidated, and they lunged forward, clubs and blades raised.

  Tobimar cut high and low; Xavier, low and high. Two bodies fell in unison, and then the boys leapt apart as though signaled by the same mind, into the mob pressing in on them.

  Poplock sent a well-placed bolt or two into the mazakh, but the fact that the demon called Lady Misuuma was edging away seemed much more significant. He scuttled through the trees and bounced towards a location above her.

  “. . . retreat to the extraction circle,” she was saying. “Those blades and eyes . . . it is worse than she believes. If this new ally is truly what we think—c’arich! We must retreat. Let the snakes buy us time.” Even as she spoke, two more mazakh fell, and Poplock agreed with Misuuma’s evaluation; unless the two boys messed up bad in the next few minutes, they’d be both standing and none of the snake-demon things would be.

  From higher up, Poplock could look ahead and could see the destination—a glowing mystic circle, made of twisted, woven dead plants in runic shapes he could read just enough of to know how bad news that was. Gotta move!

  He leapt from branch to branch, trying to keep ahead, get farther ahead, and he only had seconds at best. Only gonna get one chance at this! Have to distract them!

  He focused, extended his throat pouch for maximum resonance. “You’re running from the wrong threat,” he said, his voice far more hollow, echoing slightly around the mountain clearing they were entering. “Your doom is already ahead of you.”

  As he spoke, he stopped on a forking branch at the edge of the clearing, reaching back into his pack. Hesitate, please, just a moment . . .

  Lady Misuuma halted, looking up, searching, finding. “You threaten us?” Her laughter slithered through the air like a hiss of sand. “You should run in fear for your own life!”

  “I’m not the one who needs to run,” he said, pulling what he’d searched for out of his pack. Even as two of the sand-bone demons bounded through the air, he hooked the nynyal strap across the forked branch and pulled back with both legs on the slingshot, holding the marble-sized sphere in the pocket. Aim, up, up . . . there!

  “You should fear me,” he said, and let go.

  The tiny glowing sphere bulleted away, streaking through the air and detonating on impact—right in the middle of the mystic circle. Fire essence blasted the runic creations to shattered ash, consumed the structure, and with a blazing blue-black flare an implosion shook the mountainside; a crater yawned where the circle had been moments before.

  “No!” Misuuma shrieked.

  Well, that was satisfying. Glad I salvaged a few of those things from the cave. The sand-bone demons had paused only momentarily as the escape circle had collapsed, but that gave Poplock enough time to jump to the next tree. Can’t keep ahead of them forever, but at least I kept them from just running off to tell whatever it was to whoever it was. Which is probably a victory.

  “I will destroy you, Toad,” Lady Misuuma hissed. She tore a glittering crystal from a harness about her body and raised it. “Come forth, Phy—”

  Brilliant green blades suddenly grew from between Misuuma’s shoulders, one striking and shattering the crystal, which exploded in crackling flame and buzzing smoke that circled the clearing once and then flew off into the sky. At the same time, the sand-bone demons collapsed, clattering apart like poorly made toys. Misuuma herself coughed, looked horrified, and then literally began to disintegrate, turning into a dark, noisome cloud that slowly dispersed in the sun.

  “Ancient magical blades, I choose you!” Xavier said enigmatically.

  36

  Kyri watched, fascinated, as the Spiritsmith hammered layers of metals together, producing an iridescent shimmering pattern across the armor, a shimmering like that seen on a bird’s feathers. The immense hands were startling in their delicate precision, the usual claws chipped and roughly trimmed to keep them out of the way. As his claws grew quickly, she’d already seen the Sauran performing his manicure a couple of times in the past week—grabbing some handy metal shear and chopping the claw back until it no longer protruded. “That’s beautiful,” she said, nodding to the feathery pattern.

  The draconic head bobbed in acknowledgement. “Armor itself can be plain and solely for protection. The Raiment of a Justiciar is far more than that. It is defense, yes, but also a weapon—a symbol of fear to the enemy, a rallying cry to your allies, a flag or standard. It is your touchstone when you are in the darkness, something to remind you of who you are and what you have chosen to become.” He took the armor and tapped once on the inside with the hammer, and to her surprise the feather-patterned metal dropped off in a single layer, a gossamer-thin iridescence that floated down into a tank of some dark liquid the Sauran armorer had placed nearby. At her glance, the Spiritsmith explained, “That, too, has its use, and must also be reinforced to withstand the use to which you will put the armor; it will remain there for three days.”

  Kyri bent down to the liquid; the smell was sharp, metallic, and her skin tingled from some immense power held within; at this range, with the fire nearby, it seemed to have a tinge of red in the dark color. “What is it? It smells almost like blood.”

  “It is. Dragon’s blood, to be precise,” the Spiritsmith confirmed.

  She straightened, startled, nearly banging her head into one of the anvils. “Dragon’s blood? But you’re—”

  “—A T’Teranahm as are they, yes.” He shook his head. “I did not kill any of my brethren for this, nor even injure them. Such materials are freely given me by Elbon and the Sixteen, from time to time, so that I may fully ply my trade.”

  She looked with awe at the tank,
whose contents now showed sparkles of other colors deep within it. “That . . . is the blood of one of the Dragon-Gods?”

  “It is. T’Eless’a of the Amethysts, the Traveller Between. Appropriate for your symbolic wings. I am, as you know, not a magician of any sort. Yet my armor must at least equal, if not surpass, that made by any of the modern enchanter-smiths. To that end I have learned all the techniques ever conceived to make such armor. I walked to Asgard’s Fortress in ages past and in Thologondoreave, the Cavern of a Thousand Hammers, I learned the skills of the Children of Odin that can bring forth the power of an image and a name in steel; at the Suntree I watched the ways in which the essence of the Forest Sea might be guided into the very heart of a weapon; I have spoken long with the Wanderer on the ways of metal and lightning-power in a world where magic is seen not at all; to the Great Abyss I travelled in the dawn of the world, when Erherveria sat for a moment in dominion over the Demons, and learned the powers that lie beneath the foundation of the world; and I have sat in the Great Archives and studied the meaning of symbols and sigils, the alchemical secrets of power locked within blood and bone and crystal, leaf and stone and living hearts.”

  He opened up the armor and spread it out upon an anvil larger than a banquet table. “And I have studied at the feet of the gods themselves, to understand what it is that they would ask of their servants, to know what it will be for you to become the instrument of Justice and Vengeance, what it would mean for one to train from infancy in the Crucible of Athena and become a God-Warrior, one of the Chosen of Chromaias or an Einherkyn of Odin.”

  He’s studied under everything from the Gods to the Wanderer; no wonder there is no one to compete with him. She watched him laying down a pattern of metal the color of summer sky with an undersheen of gold, placing strands of delicate thinness in a pattern like veins throughout the armor: layered metal cuirass, arms all the way through the gauntlets, and legs from the mail-and-layered-plate that would cover her from the waist to mid-thigh, down all the way to the toes of her new armored boots, the wire-thin metal held in place by some adhesive liquid he painted across the surfaces. “What is it that you are doing now, if I might ask?”

  “This is thyrium. A rare metal, a magical variant of copper, with unique properties. It is perhaps the perfect channel for power, especially for that of the gods, when properly prepared. If you confront enemies such as you must in your quest, one day you may need to call upon the power of Myrionar and become a vessel for Its power; your armor should contain and guide that power with you, supporting you in your union with the god, not be a hindrance; without careful design, such power could simply destroy your armor, and without containment your other equipment would likely be destroyed by the power of the gods.”

  Kyri blinked at that. It hadn’t occurred to her that there would be such . . . mundane yet crucial problems associated with being a god’s representative. This triggered another thought. “So my sword—”

  “Oh, indeed. That is an alloy of krellin, iron, silver, thyrium, and valatra, with a single strand of terianing as the core.” He gave a savage smile. “No strength will break that blade, and few the powers that it cannot withstand.”

  She picked up a strand of the thyrium that lay near. “You say this is a variant of copper? They look nothing alike.”

  “No, they do not,” agreed the Spiritsmith with a shrug. “Yet the Wanderer says they are the same base material, with thyrium having magic infused into it; the alchemists with whom I have worked agree. Many are the things for which it is true that a bit of magical essence utterly transforms them. Diamond becomes adamant, looking much the same but hard enough to scratch even a krellin breastplate; amber becomes suncore, holder of holy light, capturer of the essence of souls; sapphire transforms to Vor-nahal, and dances upon the wind.”

  “But if that’s what they become with magic, how do magicians manage to make, well, ordinary things? I’ve heard of alchemists making gold, and there was a wandering wizard who used to conjure up little silver toys as part of his act.”

  The Spiritsmith chuckled as he carefully moved the armor over a large firepit and pulled a lever, releasing a blaze of blue flame that was cold enough to put frost on his scales and make Kyri shiver even ten feet away. “There is a great difference between that which magic creates, and that which already exists. In some cases the magician is actually creating nothing, merely building it from materials he has summoned thence; in others, they may indeed be creating something, but it remains magic in its essence. For many years it may last, but unlike that which was built from the true material, a single dispelling or negation or counterspell gone awry may cause it to vanish into nothingness.” The hammer came down through the blue fire, driving the thyrium threads into the chilled metal, somehow neither shattering the threads nor cracking the armor. “It is not just that there is magic with the copper that makes it into thyrium; it is that the magic is bound to the copper’s essence. One could make thyrium from magic—create magical copper and bind more magic to it to create thyrium—but it would be potentially evanescent. In the true material, the magic bound to the heart, or essence . . . what did the Wanderer call it . . . nucleus, that was it . . . of the copper cannot be removed without shattering the material itself into nothingness.”

  That did make some sense. “So that’s one reason your armor is used by the gods, rather than—for example—them creating it from pure power?”

  “An excellent deduction, Kyri Vantage. There are a few—a very few—ways to make armor that can be, in effect, summoned or created into existence without need for a material structure, but almost all of those will have a terrible vulnerability to being countered by a power like unto that which made them.” He drew back and leaned for a few moments against one of the other firepits, this one glowing with the warmth of ordinary flame, letting the ice and frost that had accumulated melt away. “And so they come to me for my weapons and armor which are forged by my hands from steel and krellin and gold, from dragonhide and demon sinew and crystals dug by long labor from the heart of the mountains, and into those I forge the attunement of the armor and weapon to a purpose that lies beyond them and within them, with a piece of my own soul as the price.”

  Her head snapped up and she stared with horror at the Ancient Sauran. “A piece of your soul?”

  The booming laugh rolled out again, as the Spiritsmith reached out and took up his hammer again. “Yes, Kyri Vantage. An artist places a part of his soul into all his works. In my case, this is simply a more literal truth than it might be in others. I thank you for your concern, but this is not black necromancy, no terrible demon’s price; a soul can recover from such a loss, if it be not too great, and it has been a long time indeed since I forged something so worthy and so well; my spirit has long since recovered, and I have much to give without it being a grave danger.”

  “But I had heard that soul-wounds . . .” she remembered Rion’s death, “. . . soul-wounds are almost impossible to heal.”

  The Spiritsmith frowned, but his eyes were gentle. “Something close to you, I perceive. But here we speak not of soul-wounds in the same way. I place my soul into my work slowly and carefully as the work proceeds, and it is less a wound than merely a reduction, a sacrifice of current strength, which will rebuild in time. What you speak of are the results of attacks upon the very core of existence, the powers of the highest of the Undead, the weapons of the mazakh assassin-cult Ssivilisstass, the Hunger of the Great Wolves, the spirit-destroying powers of the most powerful and fearsome demons. From those, indeed, recovery is slow, perhaps impossible for some, and for those of magical or spiritual powers they are more terribly dangerous, for you may feel physically fine; yet make any attempt to use your powers, to channel magic through your soul, and your soul shatters as though it were cracked glass.”

  She swallowed, remembering what had happened to Rion, and how Arbiter Kelsley had nearly followed him by trying to bind a soul together that was too damaged to save. “So the cost . . .
isn’t the same. That’s a relief.”

  “I am weakened, yes. But not to the same extent, and not in a way that makes me fragile; merely unable to do certain things until I have recovered. And by doing this,” he smiled again, with the razor-sharp teeth giving the smile its predatory edge, “I make the armor and weapons themselves become a part of the living will of the person who wears them, of the one who has the right to wear them and wield them.”

  “You mean,” she said slowly, “that the armor, that my sword . . . will be alive?”

  “Not . . . precisely.” The Spiritsmith pulled the armor from the coldfire and dropped it into a quench tank; the enchanted water hissed as though struck by red-hot steel, and vapors boiled out—but instead of rising like ordinary steam, the mist cascaded to the floor and flowed out. “Yet in a sense, yes. It will resonate with your will, support your soul and senses, impose itself between threats that lie beyond the physical, give you the ability, if you are strong enough in mind and body, to strike down even those things that are not of this world. The power is still dependent on you—your mind, your skill, your will and dedication—but a true Justiciar can cleave through spells, deflect or split demonfire, even break curses and ancient seals with a stroke of a blade, if their will and courage be enough.”

  She looked at the armor with new respect as he lifted it from the tank, small shards of ice falling from it to tinkle on the stone beneath. “I thought that was either, well, exaggeration or the doing of Myrionar’s power itself.”

  A smile of blades. “No exaggeration; and some of those feats can, in fact, be achieved by a warrior sufficiently trained that she can pit her own will against powers sent against her. As to the others, Myrionar—and the other gods—could of course achieve such ends, but they do not provide such protection at all times. That is, after all, the point of the gods appointing their champions, their Justiciars and paladins and high heroes; to have these be their eyes and ears and hands without the god having to directly perform all of the deeds.” The Spiritsmith examined the inlaid thyrium pattern carefully. “The gods support us, but even they cannot watch us all the time—and there are the other gods who oppose us. Thus, in the end, it oft-times is not the power of the gods, but the power of the mortals—Adventurers and champions, priests and sorcerers, rogues and skalds and sometimes simple farmers—and that which lies within them which will decide the day. And for those days, for those battles, you will find no finer weapons and no stronger armor than mine, forged with my soul and my arm and my will . . . and by your own.”