Shade of Honor: From the Federal Witch Series (Standard of Honor Series Book 1)

by Taki Drake

  Irina had brought another ghost with her. The shy slip of a ghost who went by the name of Galina.

  When Zhanna inquired as to why Galina was coming along, Irina said that Galina was one of the artisan mages of Blagogarsk and might be helpful in finding some small but useful things for them to take back with them. Since Zhanna had been concerned about the weight they were carrying and how to find things that were appropriate for them to be using, this seemed like a good solution.

  The party of five, three of them alive and two in ghost form, set off for a short walk. Their ultimate goal for the day was the building of two towers that was only a 15-minute walk away from the bookstore.

  It was a pleasant day for a stroll, a mild sun overhead and a temperature that was pleasant. Zhanna knew that if she wouldn’t have been so worried that she would have thoroughly enjoyed the day. Despite Stefan’s reticence, the overall conversation was pleasant and her companions amusing.

  Zhanna’s biggest problem was that she couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom. It was one of those situations where she felt like she had all the clues but could not put the puzzle together. Something was going to happen, and she wasn’t sure that she would be ready to deal with it. From the massive sense of dread that she was experiencing, it was going to be horrible. Not something that was conducive to quick actions.

  Then and there she resolved that they would be spending that day in the city but early the next morning she was going to head back home. She needed to see her grandmother, she needed to start training.

  <<<>>>

  Zhanna and the two mercenaries didn’t know where to look. Their entry into the building had been somewhat unusual. Prompted by Galina, Zhanna had pressed a confusing mixture of little squares on the wall next to the doorway. Apparently, it was some type of magical lock that even those without a spell could use. Zhanna saw Mikail making notes on a dirty scrap of paper, obviously considering how the spell could be duplicated. It seems pretty useful to Zhanna also, and she hoped that he would figure it out. And then that he could be persuaded to teach it to her.

  Entering the building, they found themselves in a large chamber. Scattered around the room were a variety of glass cases. Most of them had some form of opaque shield over them, obviously spelled and some of them emanating that cold, clammy feeling of death magic that anyone familiar with magic could detect. The cases were very well protected.

  Galina took them through that room and down a short featureless hall that led into an even bigger chamber. This room was filled with shelves. Arcane markings and labels were attached to each of the shelves. It was easy enough to see that this was a storage facility where useful items could be found. Looking around the room, Zhanna could see Stefan and Mikail calculating the wealth that was represented here. What a prize this would be for someone like Krava who wanted power above everything else.

  Galina took them first to the section that contained an assortment of cases. Each of them picked out two to hold the items that they would choose to take home. The two mercenaries chose large cases. Zhanna wasn’t sure how they were planning on carrying them all the way back to the village, but that wasn’t her problem. She chose differently. Focusing on small things gave her the ability to be more agile, and to ensure that what she was carrying could be adequately handled by her strength. She did not want to have them rescue her again.

  Zhanna came down the long aisle from one last trip through the warehouse to see if there was anything that caught her eye. She overheard Mikail asking Galina and Irina, “Do we get to choose from the items in the other room?”

  Irina laughed, responding, “Only if you are favored by the gods!”

  Galina chimed in, “Everyone tries to find out if they are favored by the gods. Even you can try it. We go to the room then walk over to the dull gray stone in the middle of the floor. Tales say that if the gods wish to give you something that the stone will glow and one of the cabinets will open. Who knows, maybe that’s true.”

  Laughing at the thought of it, Zhanna said, “I think it’s time for us to go back to the bookstore. I know that William was going to go over some of the maps with Stefan and Mikail and I want to check on Dascha.”

  With that, Zhanna turned and led the way out of the back room toward the main chamber.

  She had traveled about halfway down the hallway headed back to the main room when she came to an abrupt stop. Turning around, she looked at Galina and asked her, “When we came in this way there were no doors in this hallway. Where did these doors come from?”

  The sharply indrawn breaths from the rest of her party told her that they had not noticed the sudden appearance of six doors in the hallway that it only been 6 feet long before. The hallway itself appeared to have quadrupled in length.

  Galina responded hesitantly, “I don’t know, I’m sorry. To my knowledge, this has never happened before.”

  With a cocked eyebrow, Stefan inquired wordlessly if Zhanna wanted him to lead the way. Since she was effectively unarmed, she agreed. The older mercenary approached the door that they thought led to the main chamber carefully. Peering through the doorway, he looked around and use the tip of his sword to break the plan of the door. When nothing happened, he glanced back at Zhanna, nodded his head, and stepped through. The others soon followed him with Mikail bringing up the rear. The front chamber was unchanged. No new doorways, no strange lights, nothing different. Zhanna was relieved. The last thing they needed was to have some sort of bizarre area spell go off and zap them someplace else.

  It was hard enough dealing with the here and now without throwing additional complications into it. Zhanna was headed for the outside door when Mikail said, “Zhanna! Wait a moment. We need to take our chances with the gods here. After all, how many other times in our lives are we going to get the chance to see if the gods want to give us a gift?”

  It was impossible really to stay angry at Mikail. He loved life just too much to stay annoyed with him, plus which he was cheerfully willing to share anything that he had. He was a good team player and a loyal friend.

  Zhanna gave in gracefully. “Of course, Mikail, you and Stefan need to go over there and see what the gods have left you.”

  “No, lady, you’re not getting out of it. You have to do it also. All three of us are on this adventure together.”

  In the face of such cheerful camaraderie and with the strength of the first acknowledgment of her value and acceptance as an adult, Zhanna agreed. After all, she thought to herself, what harm could it do?

  Stefan went first. Walking over to the plain gray block of stone set in the middle of the room, the older mercenary put his hands flat on the block and waited. Nothing happened. After about 30 seconds of standing there with his hands in position, Stefan shrugged his shoulders and returned to the others saying, “I guess it wasn’t my day to get gifts.”

  Most of them laughed heartily. Or at least Mikail and Irina did. Zhanna didn’t feel much like laughing although she was amused and little Galina had a strange look on her face and kept sniffing the air. As Mikail headed over to the block for his turn, Zhanna asked Galina in a low tone what she was smelling. The little ghost answered her, saying, “I keep thinking I’m smelling flowers, which doesn’t make any sense.”

  Mikail also laid his hands flat on the stone. Once again he stood there for half a minute waiting patiently. Shrugging his shoulders, he said in a mock disappointed voice, “I guess it’s not my day for gifts either!”

  Zhanna would’ve turned and left the room except that Mikail insisted that she take her turn. Grumbling about the waste of time, Zhanna walked to the middle of the chamber. She laid both hands in the middle of the gray block. The very instant that she did, light exploded from the block and flashed in a crazy circling spin from case to case around the room. All of the people in the room, even the ghosts, covered their eyes in pain as the intensity of the light tried to sear through to their brains. Luckily for their eyesight, the flash of light was short-lived. Seco
nds in duration, it ceased abruptly leaving only the afterimages to interfere with vision.

  “Well, that was certainly exciting!” ventured Zhanna. She looked down on the block and saw nothing. Turning back to the rest of her group she said in a bright tone, “No gifts left on the block. I guess it wasn’t my day for presents either.”

  She had expected some response but heard nothing. Looking at them more carefully she saw that they were staring past her. She turned to see that two of the cabinets had opened.

  Before the light show, all of the cabinets had been covered by shield walls and obviously bespelled. Now, a small cabinet to the left of the room and a slightly taller one directly to its right had open doors. From where the others stood, they could not see into the cabinets but Zhanna could. She saw a hand-sized object sitting in the smaller of the two cabinets. The other cabinet had something suspended from the center. Something long and slender and she couldn’t focus on it well enough to see what it was.

  “What do I do?” she asked the others. Irina spoke for all of them, “None of us have any idea. If the gods are trying to give you something, you probably should go over and pick up the gifts.”

  Drawing a deep breath to steady her nerves, Zhanna walked over to the smaller of the two cabinets. It was as she suspected. There was a small object a little bit smaller than the palm of her hand. It lay in the bottom of the cabinet wrapped in a soft cloth. The young witch reached down and picked it up, noticing in passing how badly her hand was shaking.

  Zhanna unwrapped it, catching her breath in surprise and with the force of memory. It was a hair clip just like the one that she had seen her mother wearing in the wedding picture that her grandmother kept in the parlor. Just like her mother, Zhanna wore her hair long. Normally, it was secured up from Zhanna’s neck and out of her way. She did not want it to interfere with her daily activities, but she just loved the sheer sensual nature of the long hair and how it felt to brush.

  She had avoided cutting it for years. Both in memory of her mother and to please herself. Looking once more at the beautiful design of the flower and the hummingbird and the sturdy, carved stick that would secure it in her hair, Zhanna made a lightning decision and picked the clip up. She then took one more quick breath and placed it in her hair.

  When nothing miraculous happened, Zhanna felt relieved. It was just a beautiful clip, something that a thoughtful person would give her. Murmuring a heartfelt thank you, Zhanna turned her attention to the next cabinet. The long slender item that she had seen from across the room turned out to be a sword sheath hanging from a clip in the cabinet. The young woman could see that it actually looked like two sheaths, one long and slender and the another shorter and wider made for a 16-inch blade.

  The long sheath was filled with a slender sword. This was not what caused a strange chill to run up and down Zhanna’s spine. It was the realizations that the second sheath looked like it would fit her athame exactly. Reaching out with hands that shook badly, Zhanna unhooked the sword belt. Holding the weapon in her hand, she took two steps backward. When her foot hit the ground on the second step, the two doors on the cabinets slammed shut. A wash of shadow swirled around the room and when it lifted the two cabinets were once again concealed behind their protective walls.

  More rattled than she wanted to let on, Zhanna made a beeline for the door. Stopping only long enough to grab her two packs off the ground, she practically ran out of the building and into the street. This had been enough strangeness for one day for.

  It was time to go home.

  <<<>>>

  Bolormaa leaned her head forward against her folded hands in distress. She had tried three more times to see Zhanna. Each time it was like something was blocking her. She simply couldn’t get through. This had never happened to her before. The strength of her vision had always been something that she could rely on. Why now, why her granddaughter?

  With teary eyes in the face of defeat, the seer reached to put her scrying bowl away only to pause in amazement. Where before there had been no vision in the bowl, now there was a clear image of Dascha, Zhanna’s familiar. The cat was calmly cleaning itself and grooming a healed incision on its side. Bolormaa leaned closer to see more clearly what was going on. As if the cat could feel the weight of the seer’s gaze, Dascha turned her head and stared straight across time and space at the beloved grandmother of her witch. Pausing briefly to stare meaningfully at the old woman, the cat turned and resumed its grooming.

  That image was whisked away by a swirling light that disturbed the surface of the scrying bowl. Growing like flowers out of the swirling surface, a series of six symbols came and went. The seer had never seen them before but knew that they were going to be engraved in her memory. If it dealt with her granddaughter, she would figure it out. She waited longer, but no other sounds or visions appeared. Satisfied that Dascha would not be so calm if something had happened to her witch, the seer rang for the servant to help her go to bed. At least for the moment, Zhanna was safe. With that, she had to be content.

  Chapter 16

  All that Zhanna could hear in the stunned silence was the dripping of water. Water dripping everywhere. Plunk, plunk, plunk. Her hair was plastered to her face, and she reached up a hand to clear her vision. The cavern was now decorated with dripping water, fragments of vegetation, and one very pissed off familiar.

  <> she thought to herself.

  The usually elegant Russian Blue cat looked like a skinny black drowned rat. Her eyes seem to have doubled in size, glaring beams of green flame at the sodden witch. Slowly, ever so slowly, the cat raised first one front paw and shook it, and then the other. A sharp ripping sound started to emanate from its chest, and the familiar appeared to grow in size.

  A nimbus of green flame had surrounded the form of the feline before a swirl of invisible wind encircled it. Instead of an 11-pound, normal-looking cat, the creature that stretched and arched its back before deliberately pacing over toward Zhanna was the size of a cat seen last on the Earth a millennium before.

  If sabertooth tigers had come in black, this is what they would’ve looked like. Dascha had totally transformed into her alternate shape. Her dense coat had a subtle striping to it with blue, black, and dark gray forming stripes that ran along the body. Easily measuring 12 feet from her nose to the end of her tail, Dascha’s head now came up to Zhanna’s shoulder. What had been a very upset small cat now was a whole lot more infuriated feline.

  At last, Dascha found her voice, producing a thundering roar in Zhanna’s head and an earsplitting caterwaul that echoed around the cavern.

  <>

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  The cat looked around the cavern, noting broken stalactites, translocated fish that were gasping their last breath, and the continued dripping of water. Pinning her green-eyed gaze on her witch, the familiar summed up her opinion succinctly, <>

  Softening both her mental tone and audible snarling, the familiar continued, <>

  Dejectedly, Zhanna stumbled her way out of the cave. If she would’ve had more energy, she would have dreaded the walk home even more. She was soaked and the weather was cold. The sunny days that had seen them returned from Blagogarsk had turned to gray skies and chilly rain. The weather had matched Zhanna’s mood.

  To come home and find that her grandmother was no
t there had been upsetting. The house did not feel as welcoming without her baba. And all of the things that Zhanna had wanted to share stuck in her throat like unchewed food. It would be a miserable walk home and a cold hearth to receive her. Zhanna fought tears back knowing that crying would do no good.

  << Don’t worry, Zhanna. I am sure that your grandmother will return soon. After all, even grandmothers need vacations. >>

  Zhanna didn’t bother to answer, convinced that something terrible had made her grandmother leave. A small meow by her side informed the young witch that Dascha had resumed her normal form. Grateful that her familiar had remembered, Zhanna walked out of the cave and into the chill wind.

  The woman didn’t even have time to shudder a second time when a familiar voice called out, “How is the practice going?”

  It was Stefan standing beside Mikail and several horses. The younger man immediately grabbed a blanket off the back of one of the horses and hurried over to wrap Zhanna warmly in it. Calling back over his shoulder to Stefan, he said, “You can ask her about it when we get her home. She is sopping wet! In this weather, she will end up sick if she doesn’t get inside.”