Phoenix Rising

by Ryk E. Spoor

  She reached back for her own sword, but her voice was pleading. “Please, Mist Owl, don’t make me do this! Let Myrionar protect—”

  “Myrionar cannot protect Its own temples, you stupid little girl!” the Artan Justiciar snarled, coming to full guard position. “And the worst you can offer me is death; what he threatens—and can do—is far, far worse, as Silver Eagle found out all too late.” His voice dropped back to the cold-iron of a warrior prepared for battle. “Draw your sword, Phoenix Kyri, or die a pathetic death trying to argue with my blade.” His sword, Cloudweaver, came up in the ritual salute.

  She felt tears sting her eyes as she slammed the helm back on her head and pulled Flamewing free. Blink them clear now! No time for blurred vision! The great two-handed weapon glowed faintly in the falling night, showing the red-gold pattern that looked like ascending flame, and she brought it up in salute.

  No sooner had she finished than Mist Owl was moving, circling. She had watched him fight on two occasions and understood his tactics; use the terrain, use the lighting, maneuver and confuse the enemy, make him believe one tactic while unleashing another. Now he circled, watching, looking to see where her weak spots were, and formulate a plan to take advantage of them.

  Don’t play his game. She remembered Rion saying those words when they trained, and Lythos, too, though in terms more flowery than Rion’s blunt description: “Mist Owl’s a thinker and a planner. Give him enough time, he’ll beat the living hells out of you.”

  She charged forward, whipping Flamewing in a circular arc that made it difficult to parry, forcing Mist Owl to leap aside. Keep him moving, off balance. Force him to improvise.

  The problem, of course, was that even if Mist Owl didn’t have time, he was still old and yet unaged, an Artan deadly and savage.

  An Artan . . . maybe . . .

  She focused on the speed within, praying that Myrionar would support her here. Warmth rewarded her, warmth that drove heaviness from her limbs, lightened Flamewing in her hands, and she suddenly parried and cut as though she were wielding a dagger, not a greatsword; her opponent was taken aback, driven entirely on the defensive as a storm of metal edges seemed to descend upon him. “Lythos trained me for most of my life, Mist Owl. I am a Vantage. You know what that means.”

  She could see Mist Owl’s mouth tighten; he had known her brother, too. “Myrionar is with me. You can see that, Mist Owl. Maybe whatever monster you serve could withstand It, but you cannot.”

  The lips compressed even more, then spat out a curse in Artan that she did not recognize. “Do you think we are able to play the part of Justiciars without the power?”

  And now it was her turn to be driven backwards by a hail of blows that flicked out and back like lightning. A stinging on her cheek from one barely deflected, another shock of pain in her upper arm as Cloudweaver tried to bite deep; but the Raiment of the Phoenix, the newest work of the Spiritsmith, was far too strong to be cut even by Mist Owl’s blade—at least with a single stroke. Even so, the impact staggered her and left her arm half numb.

  Mist Owl stepped back a half pace and spun Cloudweaver three times; gray mist flowed from the blade like water from a fountain, and Mist Owl’s next series of cuts sent cold, clinging fog in all directions, shrouding the area in almost impenetrable gloom.

  I’m an idiot. Of course they have all the powers. The charade would never have lasted. Rion would have seen through them immediately.

  Mist Owl had disappeared; his armor had been designed for this, just as his namesake would appear from night fogs and strike its prey. And he’s very quiet. Fast and silent.

  Cloudweaver tore through its mists, the Mist Owl’s talons outstretched. Something, perhaps only the sound of wind on steel, warned her with not a single fraction of a second to spare. Even as she dove aside, Cloudweaver sheared through her hair as it trailed behind, and then he was gone again.

  I can’t play this game his way, she reminded herself. But the mist is everywhere . . .

  She grinned suddenly. Not quite, I think!

  With a leap, she was in the trees edging the clearing, climbing the ancient oak, climbing . . . and at only twenty feet she came into clear air. At the next branch she stopped, waiting.

  A low, hard chuckle came from below. “Ah. Well played, Kyri Vantage.”

  She concentrated. As I am balanced, so you balance me. These trees are no more to me than the ground below. You are my guide and balance, Myrionar!

  The sound of boots on bark, running up the tree. She sprang aside, landing with the surety that proved that the Balanced Sword had heard and answered her prayer, just as Mist Owl streaked through the space she had been. Her return stroke, however, nearly cleaved him in half, rebounding from his armor with an impact that sent him skidding off the branch and plummeting towards the ground below; he somersaulted and landed with an impact that shook the tree slightly. She was sliding down just behind him, trying to follow up on the attack before Mist Owl recovered.

  She found she was once more in balance, strangely so, with herself. Half of her was filled with a fierce joy in this battle, the first blow she had been able to strike against the people who had slain her family, betrayed everything she believed in; the other part was crying in pain and aching sympathy, for one thing she had heard in Mist Owl’s voice: a moment of longing, of wishing for what she offered, and a fear that would never let him accept it.

  And with that balance of vengeance and justice—or even mercy—came the renewed determination to finish this. I accept the pain and the responsibility, Myrionar. They are yours, now they are mine as well.

  And even as Mist Owl’s sword rebounded from her helm with an impact that made her ears ring and the world go momentarily dim, she realized the path to that ending, at least for this duel. Mist Owl was better than she was, but—surprisingly—not by nearly as much as she had feared.

  And he was Artan, not Vantage.

  Now she attacked with her full strength. That was something that he could not counter easily. Oh, he might pray to whatever dark god was providing false Justiciars their powers, but she could be strengthened in the same way—and the differential would still be in her favor. Skill could negate strength . . . sometimes. But she was not that unskilled, and Mist Owl’s mouth was set in a grim line so narrow that his lips were all but gone. “Surrender, Va-Nye-Kimda,” she said, using finally his name, a name all but forgotten in the years since he had become a Justiciar. “You never wanted this. You are Artan, a protector, not a killer and a false friend!”

  Mist Owl redoubled his attacks, suddenly putting her back on the defensive, forcing her to retreat, until she managed a parry-block that made him stagger back; her riposte struck his helm on the side, tearing it from his head, sending the owl-helm flying into darkness.

  The twilight-gold eyes held hers for a moment, and she read the truth there; that she was right, that he regretted every moment.

  And that he had no hope.

  Even as she saw that, he was charging, Cloudweaver tearing through the air. She leapt aside, deflected his blow, swung her own blade.

  He did not dodge, and his block was slow. Flamewing cut cleanly through muscle and cartilage and bone, and the head that rolled on the night-shadowed grass wore a strangely peaceful expression.

  As Mist Owl’s body fell, Kyri felt as though she had struck herself as well. The eldest Justiciar had never been a family friend, but a trusted advisor, a defender, a local legend. And now she had slain a legend.

  “No,” she said after a moment. “No, Artan Justiciar, I didn’t slay you. You did, didn’t you?” The half-smile on the still face answered her, and once more the tears threatened to overflow. But I shouldn’t feel that is wrong. We need to be able to cry for the loss as well as be strong in the quest for justice and vengeance.

  She stood and looked down. “You decided that you couldn’t live the lie any more . . . but you feared your secret master too much to ever fight against him. And so . . . with that . . . the wors
t I could offer became the best you could hope for.”

  She sighed. This wasn’t what I dreamed it might be. I wanted to save them or kill the wicked, not . . . not find they were neither so foul they had to die, nor brave enough to turn against their master.

  She went to her pack, which she had dropped when the combat began, and took out a cloth to clean Flamewing. Once that was done and the sword returned to its sheath, she went back to Mist Owl’s body. “I’m sorry, Mist Owl. You have paid the price for your crimes, and vengeance is satisfied. But there will be justice, too. I will make sure your death was not in vain. And if any of the Justiciars be not beyond redemption, I will reach them . . . somehow.”

  That left the question of the body. She couldn’t take it to the traditional burial ground (and there’s another problem. How many false Justiciars are buried there? There’ll have to be a complete purification when this is all over!) and she didn’t have any shovel worthy of the name, so burying him here was out of the question.

  But as with the Chromaians, there was another way.

  Smoke looks very like mist as it rises.

  39

  “Well,” Xavier said, looking at the faint trail leading to the east, “I guess this is where we split.”

  Poplock felt somewhat depressed at the thought. Not only had Xavier been a useful companion, he’d been fun. And constantly surprising, what with his strange attitudes from his native world.

  Tobimar seemed to feel even more strongly. He stepped forward and gripped Xavier’s hand. “It’s been an honor and a pleasure to travel with you, Xavier Ross.”

  Poplock noted again how the two seemed, in many ways, similar—the hair, the dark-tinted skin, and of course the twin swords. Xavier looked slightly disconcerted—not by the emotion, Poplock guessed, but the formality. “Well, likewise. I mean, I really appreciate your help, Tobimar, Poplock. I might have made it on my own, but it sure wouldn’t have been as easy . . . or nearly as much fun, even if we did almost get killed several times along the way.”

  “When you’re stopping off to investigate reported monster trouble in one town, bodyguarding a family to their village, and spending three days trying to find the entrance to Thologondoreave along the way? We were lucky things didn’t try to jump us more often.” Poplock observed. “Though, as the saying goes, the failure isn’t in the jump but in the landing, and we’ve gotten very good at giving nasty people very, very painful landings.”

  Both Xavier and Tobimar laughed. “I suppose we have, at that,” Tobimar said. “But I don’t think we regret any of it; none of us seemed inclined to ignore people in trouble, for which I am glad. And it appears that—at least for now—our extremely sound defeat of the Demons has thrown them off the track, or at least caused them to reevaluate their strategy.” He bowed quickly to Xavier. “And with your ability to go unseen, you were able to get us past the Dalthunian border without trouble, something I am not at all sure we would have managed on our own.”

  Xavier nodded. “Maybe not; they sure had a buttload of guards on that border, and a lot of ’em weren’t human or anything like it. I think we’ve made real good time, too; we’ve actually made it most of the way in three months.”

  Good thing, too, Poplock thought. Rainy season’s going to start in a couple more months and while I won’t mind at all, they certainly will.

  Xavier had gotten out his own copy of the map Toron had given them. “So you guys continue pretty much along the north-northwest path here, and I go east and a little north along this path until I hit the Broken Hills, right?”

  Tobimar nodded. “If legend is at all correct, the Wanderer’s Fortress should be somewhere near the center—and not easy to get to. He’s supposed to put all sorts of tricks and challenges for people to get past.”

  “I’ll bet. But I’ve got a few tricks of my own to show him.” He looked at the map again. “Still, whether I find him or not, I’m still gonna be awfully close to Evanwyl. Let’s see if we can meet up there, okay? I mean, who knows where you’re going to have to go next.”

  “I think we’d both like that a lot,” Poplock said, and Tobimar added his agreement.

  After a few minutes of measuring distances and making guesses as to time, they settled that they would stay in the Evanwyl area, checking in periodically, for at least the next month. “If I’m not there in a month, either something bad’s happened or, more likely, I had to get moving somewhere fast and couldn’t afford the side trip. But where would I check? It may be a small country, but it’s still a country.”

  “The capital, which is also named Evanwyl. We will leave messages at the local temple—they’re sure to have a main temple to some deity, probably this Myrionar that Toron mentioned—and at whatever the local inn is.”

  “Sounds workable.” Xavier turned and used thumb and forefinger to shake Poplock’s hand. “You keep watching out for both of you, Toad.”

  “I always do. You watch out for yourself. You’re going to be alone.”

  Xavier looked uncertain for a moment, staring into the distance where the rough, rolling tree-dotted plains began to merge with jungle again. “Yeah, I know.” He shook himself, then straightened. “But there’s no other real choice. You’ve got your things to do, too.” He did a stiff bow. “We’ll meet again—I promise!”

  “We’ll be there,” Tobimar said. “You have our word on it.”

  Xavier turned and strode off down the eastern pathway. “Later!”

  Tobimar and Poplock watched him for a moment, pushing through the grasses almost effortlessly, and then Tobimar turned northward and started on the final leg of their journey.

  The departure of Xavier cast something of a damper over the rest of the day; they made camp and slept, but their conversation just seemed . . . empty, as though an essential element was missing. For three months and more he’d been there, a constant presence with strange alien expressions but a familiar courage and will, and now he wasn’t.

  Still, the next morning dawned bright, and Poplock felt cheery. Tobimar seemed more positive too, and they set out early, moving quickly down the remains of what had once, before the last Chaoswar, been part of the Great Roads. Despite cataclysm and many millennia of neglect, parts were still intact, but it was a far, far cry from the perfect maintained smoothness of the road they had traveled from Zarathanton to the Dalthunian border.

  A darterfly came just a little too close and Poplock snagged it, chewed appreciatively. “That one had a nice crunch and a sort of smoky flavor to it.”

  Tobimar looked sideways at him. “Poplock, I suspect our taste experiences would be rather different. For one thing,” he brushed at his shoulder, making the little Toad hop over the fingers, and sent several long glittery wings flying off into the breeze, “if—and I must strongly emphasize the if—I were to eat bugs, I’d have to cook them first.”

  “Go ahead, ruin the meal. Though steamed or deep-fried armorfang is pretty tasty according to a lot of humans I know.”

  “Point. I’ve eaten those myself, and they are good. Giant water-beetles, yes?” Poplock bounce-nodded. “Thought so. Darterflies, though . . .” Poplock held on and rotated slightly, checking behind them as Tobimar continued his steady walk up the roadway—a road much more like a trail than the Great Roads they’d been able to follow for much of their trip. Nothing there at the moment, but it paid to keep an eye to the rear.

  Of course, the other part of this sort of travel was spotting big trouble in time to avoid it. Tobimar was good, especially with that not-magic magic stuff he could do in battle, but even with a Toad’s help there were some things you didn’t want to mess around with.

  Poplock had scuttled up onto Tobimar’s head en route to the opposite shoulder—he tended to alternate sides every half-hour—when something caught his eye. “Hey, what’s that?”

  “What’s what? Your eyes are higher than mine right now.” Tobimar walked forward a few more steps, finally reaching the crest of a small hill. “Oh, now that looks mor
e hopeful.”

  Ahead, the road and small river they had been following passed through a small ridge, the river having cut a miniature canyon through the rock. Across this natural choke point was a solid, blocky wall, a guardpost with a gateway that closed off the road and extended not merely to the river’s edge, but well into it, precluding any easy passage; the water ran swiftly here and was quite deep, and Poplock knew that a lot of very nasty things indeed would likely be found in that water, waiting for anything dumb enough to try to swim around or across. There wasn’t much of a shoreline on the other side . . . and, squinting up, the little Toad was pretty sure he could make out arrow and spell slits. Try climbing ashore there and you’d just be target practice . . . and there were watchtowers on each side of the ridge, too, so if you tried to go the long way around, you might get spotted; the forest wasn’t nearly as thick here. Probably they burn it back every couple of years, Poplock guessed, looking at a blackened stump nearby.

  He could tell his human friend had spotted most of the same things; Tobimar had a good eye. As the two approached the guardhouse, a man in uniform stepped into view, holding up his hand. “Stop, please, and state your name and business.” A glance upward revealed faint movement behind the nearer slits—crossbows or spells being readied, Poplock figured—that gave the guard’s polite request a great deal of force.

  “Tobimar Silverun of Skysand.” Tobimar deliberately didn’t mention Poplock; the two had agreed that there were definite advantages to people not noticing the little Toad, and Poplock didn’t feel bothered at all when being ignored was part of his plan. He sat in the shadow of Tobimar’s long hair; if they saw him at all, people would likely consider him to be a pet or familiar spirit or something similar. And while some familiar spirits were pretty tough, Poplock knew they had some pretty strict limits—limits he didn’t share.