Six Celestial Swords

by T. A. Miles

  Behind him, Taya suddenly squealed. “What is that?”

  Tristus looked up from Xu Liang’s silken mantel at something else as black as night; the pelt and feathers of a griffin.

  “VILCIEL SPANS SEVERAl mountaintops,” Shirisae explained, stroking the great raptor head of the griffin as it lowered before her.

  The rider atop the fantastic beast regarded the lady elf as reverently, having come down from a watch tower to greet her.

  “As well,” Shirisae continued, “the greater walls and towers are difficult to climb quickly. The griffins are an indispensable asset to us.”

  None of the companions were bold enough to approach the amalgamation of lion and bird of prey, but—after Taya had stopped screaming—they all looked upon it with respect.

  “Tristus Edainien,” Shirisae beckoned. “Bring your friend here.”

  Fu Ran grabbed his arm, unsure.

  Tristus did his best to reassure with a calm, determined voice. “It will be all right,” he said, and when the large man relinquished his hold, Tristus guided Blue Crane forward, regarding the griffin with caution now, more out of respect for its sharp talons and beak than its majesty in the moment.

  “It will be quickest to bring Xu Liang to the Temple of Healing by griffin’s back. It rests high above us. Preparations can begin while I guide the rest of your party to a place where you can rest and be replenished.”

  “I want to be there,” Tristus said at once. “I want to witness the healing.”

  “Is it that you do not trust us?” Shirisae asked, neither surprised nor upset.

  Tristus looked at the griffin and its armored rider, then at Shirisae, whose golden eyes seemed to secretly smile at him. He was slow accepting her reassurance, but finally shook his head. “No. It isn’t that, lady. It is only that...” He thought fast and said convincingly. “...I am a Knight of Andaria, who has pledged his services to this man, to guide and protect him on his travels. I must stay at his side until I have fulfilled my duty, or until he commands otherwise.”

  “He can scarcely do so while unconscious,” Shirisae said. “However, it is not customary...”

  He didn’t let her finish. “I must!” She looked at him sharply just then and though he inclined his head as a gesture of apology for raising his voice, he maintained his stern tone. “I am honor bound, my lady. By the Holy City of Eris and my God, I cannot leave his side. It is not an issue of trust.”

  Shirisae watched him silently for several moments, long enough that D’mitri came forward to see what the matter was. The siblings exchanged words briefly. Shirisae’s eyes never left Tristus.

  Finally, she nodded once and said, “Very well, Knight of Andaria. You may accompany him, but no others. This is a delicate ritual and must not be corrupted by the presence of too many outsiders, lest the subject be lost to us.”

  Tristus almost regretted his insistence, fearing that he would somehow ruin a sacred healing ceremony, but he couldn’t let Xu Liang disappear into the hands of strangers while they all sat in wonder. At least, he hoped, the others could be provided with some comfort knowing that the mystic was not alone. He looked back at Fu Ran, telling him silently to explain matters to Xu Liang’s remaining bodyguards so they wouldn’t try to kill anyone in their confusion and concern over their master’s departure.

  Fu Ran nodded, almost imperceptibly, and turned to face the others.

  In front of Tristus, the griffin rider waited. D’mitri dismounted from his horse and Tristus allowed the elf to assist in the moving of Xu Liang from the back of one graceful creature to that of another.

  “You will not require your weapons,” Shirisae told him when he climbed down from Blue Crane. “Perhaps you’d like to leave them with one of your companions.”

  Pearl Moon was already in the custody of Gai Ping. When Tarfan came to take Blue Crane’s bridle, Tristus handed him Dawnfire as well, along with his father’s sword. “Please, will you guard these for me, Master Fairwind?”

  While at first the dwarf looked awkward holding such a long spear, he mustered a proud expression, then consoled Tristus with a warm smile. “Don’t you worry, lad. There’s no one better to entrust a weapon with than a dwarf. This war hammer has been in my family for more than two hundred years. Not a scratch on it.”

  While that wasn’t entirely true—the weapon was heavily battle worn—Tristus trusted the old dwarf, who stated with his eyes on Xu Liang and his smile slowly fading that he was placing a heavy trust in Tristus as well. Tristus briefly clasped Tarfan’s shoulder to offer reassurance, then climbed onto the griffin. The creature abandoned the bridge almost immediately, sending a current of terror coursing through Tristus, who’d never flown on the back of anything. He’d actually never even dreamed of it.

  SHORTLY AFTER THE first griffin made off with Tristus and Xu Liang, Shirisae summoned her own griffin, and was gone faster than Taya could glare. She took her precious spear with her and in her absence, D’mitri turned to the others, looking as if he were trying to decide which one of them to hurl off the bridge first. He must have decided Fu Ran would be too much trouble.

  In a moment, without anyone going over the edge, he said tersely, “Come with me.”

  They went…across the bridge and into the city, through streets wide enough to sustain great rivers and into buildings that could house thousands and still have room for more. Surprisingly, the fire elves managed to make an otherwise uninhabitable city look inhabited. While the streets weren’t terribly full in the cold—and possibly due to the hour—indoors they had converted large halls meant for dragons to comfortably occupy into enormous residences and marketplaces. Elves in armor walked alongside elves wearing the fine clothes of the gentry or the more common—although still well-kept—attire of the workers among them; the artisans, merchants, and even entertainers. Children ran through the inner streets, playing with wolf pups and sometimes young griffins. It was a city, just as anyplace else, and at the same time like no place else in Dryth.

  Food and supplies came from sections of the city designated to handling such affairs. According to D’mitri, on a mountaintop housing what he called the Crystal Dome, plants and vegetables were grown. In the lower regions of the city where the furnaces didn’t dominate, the elves cultivated spider farms, spinning the silk from a rare breed of rodent-sized arachnids. Also in the caves beneath the city, mushrooms grew in abundance and were harvested for food as well as for medicinal purposes, as were certain other fungi. Vast mineral ores, some of which possessed very unique properties, were found in the underground caverns. While in the past they’d been mined by dwarves, the elves brought them to life once again, and by doing so were able to craft swords and armor, among other useful things.

  The elves of a ruined land had found a ‘New Home’ in the ruins of this land. They kept very much to themselves and flourished, their only true enemy being the living shadows that infested the inner parts of the mountains. They found ways to deal with them.

  “The hunter elf would like to believe that his people are the only ones who suffered at the hands of the Keirveshen,” D’mitri was saying while he led the companions up a staircase several yards wide. “While it was true, the Verres Mountains were attacked by unusually large groups, they were not attacked exclusively. We live with demons in our cellars and do not blame or seek help from other elves. We didn’t, when an army of men invaded our homeland. We accepted our fate and the gods admired our courage in the face of circumstances we could not alter. Our ancestors were resurrected and given the chance to begin anew in a different land. By the time we settled in this land, the time of the Verresi was already at an end. Many of their own had already left them.”

  Fu Ran smiled as Taya marched behind the conceited elf, miming his mannerisms while he harangued on about the differences between his people and Alere’s. The flame-haired, yellow-skinned elf had an opinion of himself that was actually quite comical, even considering his strong, athletic frame and regal features. He simply
took himself too seriously, and expected everyone else to as well. Fu Ran had spent much of the incidental tour sizing him up, plotting the different ways he would put him down if it proved necessary, or if it seemed like something fun to do that he could get away with. He didn’t want to get the others into trouble, but what he wouldn’t give for just a few minutes alone with this elf. And all this time he’d been thinking Alere was an imperial pain. At least Fu Ran and the white elf had been properly introduced.

  When it became clear that D’mitri was ignoring the dwarves because they were dwarves and the bodyguards because they clearly didn’t understand a word he said, and that he was actually speaking almost directly to Fu Ran, he decided to nod a few times and make sounds of acknowledgment while his eyes took in the scenery. Occasionally he grinned at the curious youngsters, scaring the life out of them after they thumbed their perfect little noses at him when the adults weren’t watching.

  At some length he decided to ask their host a question, and in so doing interrupted part of a speech on why D’mitri’s role as brother of the next Priestess of the Flame was so important. He asked seriously, “Do all Phoenix Elves have red hair?”

  D’mitri, who’d been gesticulating while he lectured, slowly lowered his hand and scowled with such genuine, highbred umbrage it was almost obscene. It was Song Lu all over again, only more fun because he didn’t have to tread carefully around him—at least, not too carefully.

  “What if the dragons come back?” Tarfan asked, reminding the elf of his presence.

  D’mitri finished glaring at Fu Ran, then said, almost as an afterthought, “We are not concerned with dragons.”

  “Maybe you will be, if they come home and find out there’s been an infestation,” the dwarf grumbled.

  “Why are the furnaces burning, by the way?” Taya finally asked.

  “They are eternal flames,” the elf sighed, as if more bored now than bothered by his sister’s guests. “Cast by dragon magi. They can never go out, and anyway they help to heat the city. In case you’d forgotten, we are in a cold mountain region.”

  The lady dwarf mimed his last statement behind his back, then showed him her tongue, which he utterly failed to notice.

  THE TEMPLE OF Healing was an enormous structure consisting of one main level with an intermediate second story forming a balcony around it. There were at least a dozen support pillars running the length of the hall, slender columns of smooth stone.

  Tristus stood beside one of them, looking down at the center of the great room, which lay several feet below, open and unobstructed with the exception of a solitary stone altar. The room was entirely constructed of gray stone with a polished, marble sheen. Orb-shaped lanterns of stained glass hung on brackets on the pillars, casting a green hue over much of the hall.

  The second story mezzanine was as far as Tristus had been allowed to go. The griffin had landed on the edge of a great archway, leading into the building on the second level and shortly thereafter, Xu Liang had been whisked away by flame-haired elves in black robes, as if they’d been expecting him. Shirisae arrived just in time to convince Tristus to proceed to the mezzanine and watch from there. It had been several minutes since she left to be part of the healing ceremony. So far, the hall remained empty except for Tristus, who was beginning to worry, in spite of Shirisae’s reassurances. They didn’t really know the fire elves. But then, he had to remind himself, Xu Liang and the others hadn’t known him either.

  Tristus stood close to the second floor’s railing, almost in the shadow of one of the pillars. He felt like a child who’d crept into the temple at Eristan to watch a knight receive his rank in full, religious ceremony. Though there was feasting and celebration afterward, the ritual itself was actually very lonely, consisting of the one to be knighted, no more than three clerics—two attending the one who would perform the ceremony—and long hours of silent prayer.

  It was said that a Knight of Andaria never communed more closely with God than during his entrance into knighthood. Tristus could testify to that. After the donning of various symbolic robes throughout the cleric’s part in the ceremony, then being left alone to fast and to pray for a full day before receiving the sword and armor that, in his case, would one day be taken from him, he experienced two visions and heard a voice he had not before—and never again—heard the like of. A knight did not speak of his communion, and so he would never say openly that it was God’s voice, but to this day he believed within himself that it could have been none other. He had been humbled then in the sacred silence. He found the silence in this temple unnerving.

  Worry was set aside for curiosity when a line of black-robed figures entered the chamber below, their crowns of flame hair hidden almost entirely by deep hoods. They approached from the south end, breaking into two rows as they reached the altar. Tristus watched almost a dozen pass before he saw the pair with the litter between them, which bore Xu Liang. The mystic’s colorful silk robes had been replaced with a long black garment similar to those worn by the elves, making him look paler as he lay unconscious with his hands folded upon his chest.

  He looked dead. Was this a healing ceremony or a funeral?

  Tristus gripped the balcony railing tighter, then slid away from the pillar for a better view as the two figures bearing Xu Liang walked the litter to the altar and transferred the mystic onto the stone bed, almost without disturbing a hair, so smooth were their actions. When they were finished, they lined up with the others, adding one to each row flanking the altar. They stood in silence, their hooded heads bowed. Were they praying?

  Nothing’s happening. Tristus bit his cheek to keep from hollering down at them and demanding to know what they were doing, or why they weren’t doing anything.

  And then, two more figures entered the room from the north end. Both wore robes without hoods. Their long, flowing red hair gleamed with a curious hue in the greenish lighting. Both were women, one wearing a black feathered mask that concealed all of her face but her chin and her bright red lips. The other was Shirisae, carrying Firestorm. Tristus presumed that the masked elf was the clan’s priestess; Shirisae’s mother, Ahjenta. The manner in which they stopped at the head of the altar seemed to confirm it.

  Shirisae knelt down, pivoting to face the priestess as she glided to a halt beside her. She bowed her head and presented Firestorm. The priestess took it and held it upright, tapping the butt upon the stone floor once. A small crack of thunder filled the chamber, drawing Tristus’ gaze irresistibly toward the ceiling and walls as the sound resonated deeply. When he looked down at the altar again, Shirisae had carried herself to the foot of it, and was standing with her head bowed like the others.

  Another long silence filled the chamber.

  And then the priestess stepped closer to the altar. Holding her slender hand above Xu Liang’s head, she spoke in a tongue Tristus had no hope of understanding. Her voice carried strong and crisp, though it did not lack the softness of her feminine grace. Recognizing prayer, even though he did not recognize the words, Tristus was inspired to bow his head. Closing his eyes, he reflexively recited his own prayer in his mind. And then, in the same tranced manner, he performed the solemn gesture of respect to God and the Angels, his hand lingering over the insignia on his breastplate as he opened his eyes again and saw the priestess stepping back from Xu Liang.

  Tristus watched in awe and suspense when the priestess lifted Firestorm in both hands, holding the great spear above her head as if in supplication to her own god. She began speaking abbreviated phrases that were answered in humming monotone by her disciples. As she spoke, Firestorm began to glow. Not as it had before, but strangely different.

  The bright blade did not crackle with a luminous silver light, but seemed to catch fire. Emerald flames licked the still air and spread along the weapon’s shaft, over the priestess’s unprotected hands and down her arms. The fire stopped at her elbows, looking like gauntlets of green flame.

  The priestess continued her chant, oblivious to
the magic blaze, her disciples answering. The rhythm of the ritual intensified, as did the green flame encompassing Firestorm.

  A sensation of horror filled Tristus when the flames leapt down onto the priestess, engulfing her fully, then rising back up into the air, as if fueled by the body it was burning. But it wasn’t burning her. Tristus could scarcely breathe, watching her stand motionless and now quiet in the jade inferno, that was rising upward and... was it taking shape?

  With a suddenness that made Tristus crouch down to avoid being blasted, the green flames shot outward in three directions. Two bands of fire spread across the chamber like great wings, and a third column lifted toward the high ceiling, curving and somehow gaining dimension as it plunged into shadows, dashing them away with its eerie radiance. The whole chamber glowed as the beaked face formed of jade flame glared down at the figures beneath it. No, it was of silver fire. The lighting in the room had cast jade upon it.

  For a heart-stopping instant the Phoenix hovered in the air, still connected to the priestess who had summoned it. And then, like a hawk sighting its prey, it dove for the altar.

  Tristus was too terrified to do anything but stare as the flaming bird threw itself at Xu Liang, narrowing in its rapid descent until it appeared more a shaft of fire than a bird. It shot into the mystic like a bolt of unholy lightning, seeming to drive itself directly into his heart.