The Heart of the Phoenix

by Brian Knight

  “Torin!” Fresh pain gave strength to her voice.

  “Di!” She heard his voice, but at a distance.

  She pushed for the exit again, again, and slid from the door. The shoulder where her car had finished up was rocky, the gravel pressing into her back was uncomfortable, but the fresh, cool air was good.

  She took in a lung full and shouted, “Where are you?”

  “Over here,” Tynan said.

  Diana aimed at the sound of his voice, fired while she was still turning her head, and located Tynan just in time to see her spell ricochet off his shield.

  Before she could try again, his return spell smashed into her hand, breaking her fingers. Her wand spun away into the darkness. A flurry of spells smashed into her car, and flames leapt from the exposed undercarriage.

  She pushed, slid further from the burning car, screamed with another contraction.

  Darkness.

  She awoke with Tynan standing over her. The smile was gone, but he still looked amused.

  “I believe your child’s time has come.” He knelt down beside her, lifted her dress up to her waist. “Time to put modesty aside, Di. If you’re going to do this now I suppose I’ll have to help.”

  * * *

  Flanna, in one of the strangest twists of fate she could have ever imagined, experienced her own birth from her mother’s perspective. She came into the world, silent, and for a second her mind raced with panic, but then Tynan cut her cord with a sharp swipe of his wand and lifted her by the feet. He pinched the flesh of her shoulder, and then she began to wail.

  Diana held out her arms.

  “Please,” she said. “My baby.”

  “A healthy baby girl,” Tynan said, and produced his uncanny smile again. “You’re bleeding quite a lot. I don’t think you’re going to survive.”

  * * *

  Penny watched Tynan walk away with her sister in his arms, felt her mother’s cramp of grief and terror, then another contraction.

  Another contraction?

  Twins. She had twins.

  She screamed with the fresh pain.

  Tynan stopped to regard her, that cold smile on his face turning to a frown when he saw her body clench with another contraction.

  And then Penny came, with a final scream and push, and...

  Darkness.

  She awoke and reached blindly for the second baby, and found her still, silent, lifeless.

  “No,” a voice too weak for shouts now.

  She pulled her baby onto her chest, hugged it, wept.

  I was dead, Penny realized.

  Tynan crouched over her for a closer look at the dead infant in her arms, then slowly shook his head. “Torin will be distraught.”

  Then he rose with baby Flanna in his arms and walked away, leaving Diana Sinclair Fuilrix to her fate.

  “Tynan! Bring my baby back!”

  There was no reply. Tynan was gone.

  “Torin!”

  No reply.

  “Somebody help me!”

  There was nobody. She was alone.

  “Diana!” The voice of Torin’s old companion, Ronan. She hoped he had been careful roaming the night. If anyone saw him, it would surely mean trouble. Ronan did not blend well into this world.

  “Ronan.” She tried to scream his name, but could only whisper. He found her anyway.

  “Where is Torin?”

  She shook her head.

  “He took my baby... Tynan.” She felt like weeping again, but could not.

  “Your child is here, Di. She’s... oh no.” She felt him lift the dead child from her arms.

  “He took my other baby,” she said.

  Ronan nodded his understanding.

  “Save my baby, please.” She motioned weakly at the baby in his arms.

  “There is nothing I can do,” Ronan said.

  “Please,” she said, then darkness.

  She awoke again and found Ronan holding the child, compressing its tiny chest with a large finger. He regarded his friend’s dying love. He saw the blood, felt her cool brow with his soft, furry hand.

  At last he laid the infant back in her mother’s arms.

  “What is her name?”

  Diana thought for a moment, then said, “Penelope.”

  Ronan knelt with them, the dying mother and the dead child.

  He heard cars approaching from a long distance, but moving fast. He looked one last time at mother and child.

  “Your friends have come,” he said. “I will try to find Torin and Tynan.”

  He sprinted into the darkness, and the car arrived seconds later.

  “Di!” Susan’s voice.

  Diana clutched weakly at baby Penelope, but did not stir as Susan dropped to her knees next to her.

  “Di!” Susan checked her pulse, felt her brow. Confident for the moment that her friend lived still, she turned her attention to the baby in Diana’s arms.

  “Oh no… no no!” Susan bent down, resuming Ronan’s chest compressions and beginning CPR. She continued for a long time, then baby Penelope began to cry, to move in her mother’s arms.

  Others arrived then, Tracy, Nancy, and Janet.

  Nancy was wild with anger and grief, and Janet held her while Tracy dropped to her knees next to Diana. She bent down, whispered, put her forehead to Diana’s, and began to weep.

  Diana’s arms fell to the ground, and Susan lifted Penny from her arms, also weeping as her best friend left her forever.

  * * *

  The memory ended, Flanna and Penny faced each other again, Flanna in Aurora Hollow, Penny from her reflection on the spinning, swelling doorway.

  Flanna could not move, could not speak, could not breath under the weight of her rage, betrayal, and guilt.

  Tynan had lied to her. He had used her. He had killed her mother. And Penny...

  Penny was gone. The reflection staring back at Flanna was her own.

  * * *

  “Wake up!”

  Penny came back to herself amid noise and panic, Torin’s hands gripping her shoulders, shaking her. Ronan stood guard over them, growling. There was a rumble from the earth around them, and the sound of breaking stone.

  “Penny!” Torin shouted in her face as her eyes roamed unfocused about the room. It was still dark, still deep into night. The only light in the cell fell down from the hallway above.

  “I’m awake,” she shouted back, and allowed him a brief, fierce hug before he lifted her to her feet. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Torin said, “but it doesn’t sound like anything good.”

  “Something is coming through the wall,” Ronan said, and pointed into the darkness. “Something big enough to tear through solid bedrock.”

  “Nope,” Penny said. “Not good at all.”

  The rumbling continued, grew louder, the vibrations in the solid stone around them strengthened. Ronan herded them backward, until they bumped into the wall at their backs, and planted himself in front of them.

  Groping in total blind blackness, Penny found her father beside him and grabbed his arm. He pulled her against his side.

  “It’ll be okay,” Torin said, hardly sounding convinced of his own words.

  “Will it?” If he had an explanation for the assurance, she wanted to hear it.

  “No, probably not.”

  “Quiet,” Ronan growled at them. “Whatever it is, it’s here.”

  Penny heard a crash as something breached the stone, the clatter of rubble hitting the floor, and the stomping of many heavy feet.

  And then there was light as something small and darting leapt through the huge hole in the solid stone wall. It held a torch over its head, and Penny saw the tunnel it had emerged from, ten feet around and going what looked like forever through the earth.

  Another torchbearer leapt through, then a third. They spread out among their companions already inside the cell, illuminating the entire party.

  Homunculi, a hundred maybe, all dressed in the same gr
ay uniforms as the ones she’d seen in the citadel through Rocky’s eyes, but older, dirtier, ripped and threadbare. Their eyes were colorless, black as obsidian.

  “Wild Homunculi,” Torin said. “Homunculi whose masters have died. I’ve heard stories about them, but I’ve never seen one.”

  “Most die with their masters,” Ronan said. “The ones that don’t go feral and usually aren’t seen again.”

  My girl... my Penny!

  She heard Rocky’s voice in her head even as he broke from the crowd and ran toward her, one set of green eyes in among the black, and Penny understood that this was not a bad thing at all.

  It was a rescue.

  “Is that...?” Ronan asked.

  “Yours?” She could see her father’s face now, saw the wonder and surprise, the hope that he must have thought he’d never feel again.

  “Yes,” Penny said, and pushed past Ronan to meet her little friend.

  Rocky leapt into her arms, almost knocking her over, and chittered his weird monkeyish language at her as she hugged him, spun him in a circle, laughed.

  He finally pried himself free and leapt back to the ground, then offered her the items clutched in one of his large hands. Two shiny black wands.

  From Tracy lady. We go now.

  We go now, Penny thought back at Rocky. Thanks.

  She tossed one of the wands to her father, who caught it on the fly and stared down at it as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing.

  Rocky chattered, and Penny heard a translation in her head.

  “We have to go,” she told them. “To the sepulcher. Tracy is waiting.”

  “I might have to kill her when we get there,” Torin said, and the tone of his voice made it clear he was hoping for the chance.

  “No, you won’t,” Penny said. She lit the tip of her new wand and led the way, her friend Rocky close on her heels, through the parting crowd of wild homunculi and into the tunnel out of their cell.

  Ronan and Torin caught up to her quickly enough, and they found themselves surrounded by a formation of wild homunculi.

  The tunnel started flat, but steepened by the minute until running was no longer possible, and they moved forward in an unbalanced headlong lurch, grasping at the stony soil for balance as they pushed themselves more upward than forward. The homunculi had no difficulty with the rough terrain, and lent an occasional supporting hand when Penny or Torin lost balance. Ronan progressed on hands and feet, easily pacing the gray men. Penny thought he could have outpaced them, but chose to stay close to his clumsy human friends.

  After maybe a half hour, Penny began to wear down, a lack of exercise and food had weakened her, but before she could ask Rocky the question foremost in her mind, he answered it.

  His chattering echoed up and down, prompting filthy glares and a slap on the back of his huge head from nearby homunculi.

  Not far... almost there, Penny heard.

  A few minutes later his words proved true. The ground began to level, and was almost flat again when Penny saw the end of the tunnel, what looked like another wall of stone, until it began to move, shift, and several more wild homunculi that had been pretending to be a wall broke apart and scattered to let them through.

  “Those guys are handy,” Penny said, panting for breath. Rocky grinned and repeated her words in his own language, and the surrounding wild homunculi turned beaming faces on her.

  “They are probably happy to have something to do,” Ronan said. “Poor fellas get bored when there’s no one to tell them what to do?”

  “I bet all your little friend had to do was ask,” Torin said, patting Rocky on his big bald head.

  They emerged into a storeroom, dark except for their torches and wands. Boxes and barrels lined the walls, mounds of broken things, lamps, dented helmets, a chair with two missing legs, clothing too ripped or stained for service.

  “I don’t know this place,” Ronan said, wrinkling his snout. “Smells awful.”

  “We’re in the cellars,” Torin said. He pointed ahead to an old ill-fitting door. “The laundry is through there. Two or three more rooms and we’ll reach the old forge.”

  “No need for the guided tour, old friend,” Ronan chided. “As long as you can find the sepulcher.”

  “That’s easy, old friend,” Torin said. “Up two levels and straight down to the end of the hall. Can’t miss it.”

  “And how many people will we have to fight past to reach it?” Penny was hoping to hear none. She’d had a rough couple of weeks and would like for at least one thing to be easy.

  “No more than fifty, I’d say.” Torin seemed to consider this, then nodded. “Of course the family may have grown, or moved in more guards.”

  Rocky stomped a foot and smashed a fist into the palm of his other hand, letting loose a high-pitched little chuckle, just to show everyone what he thought of guards.

  The laundry was empty but for a single brown-eyed homunculus, sorting a huge mound of mixed clothing into separate piles, dresses, robes, tunics, and britches, and the signature bright red the family seemed to favor from the blacks, grays, and browns. He gave the party no more than a casual glance as they thundered through.

  Beyond the laundry was the stairway, thick lumber steps braced by heavy beams. They ascended in a series of steep steps and sharp switchbacks. They met only one other person on the stairs, a young dark-haired woman who put her hand to her face and shrieked at the sight of a hundred sprinting homunculi, two filthy humans, and a ten-foot tall manimal. She paced them easily in her terror and disappeared behind the first door they reached.

  “Good thing we’re not attracting attention,” Penny said. “Wouldn’t want our escape to be too easy.”

  “Don’t worry, Little Red,” Ronan said. “It’ll get trickier.”

  “There,” Torin said, pointing up at a door one switchback further up. It was larger and more ornate that the last, made of a shiny black hardwood.

  The first of the homunculi to reach it paused with his ear to the wood, then cracked it open enough to admit his large, bald head. He popped his head back into the stairwell a second later and waved them all onward.

  Penny and Torin emerged behind Ronan, their wands up and ready to use. It was empty as far down as they could see.

  “It’s a very long hallway, isn’t it?” Penny’s eyes were good, but she could not see to the end. It just seemed to grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared. “How big is this place anyway?”

  Torin oriented himself, then turned right and began to walk briskly.

  “You know that town you come from?”

  “Yeah,” Penny said.

  “Bigger than that.”

  “Oh.” Penny wished she hadn’t asked.

  When the last of the homunculi were with them, Torin and Ronan began to run. Penny kept up for a few minutes but began to lag.

  She was about to call out for mercy, when Ronan saw her falling behind and stopped. Before she knew it was happening, Ronan had scooped her up and settled her down over his neck. She rode on his shoulders, grateful for the high cathedral ceiling.

  “Hang on tight,” he said, picking up his pace to catch Torin. “Just don’t pull my fur.”

  Penny hung on as they ran down the never-ending hallway, beginning to think they might reach the sepulcher without opposition, when she heard the first screams from up ahead.

  They’d reached a junction of corridors meeting in a cathedral-sized hub full of chairs, tables, the walls hung with tapestries, and a huge floating candelabra that filled the place with a low and pleasant light. The hub was occupied by several small groups, most of whom panicked and scattered at the approach of the motley band. An elderly man with thinning red hair flanked by two similarly redheaded guards drew wands and called for them to halt.

  Other guards seemed to hear the call and streamed in from half a dozen doors and hallways.

  “No you don’t, Cousin Wynn,” Torin shouted, then actually laughed at the expression on his old un
cle’s face.

  The old man lowered his wand, but his younger companions did not. They fired, but hesitantly, as if afraid of breaking any of the fine furnishings in the room.

  Torin ducked the first, blocked the second, and the ricocheted spell blew the stuffing from an overstuffed loveseat in one secluded part of the hub. The couple sitting there, a redheaded teenage boy and his blonde sweetheart, dove aside screaming, then ran for the nearest escape in a cloud of goose down feathers.

  Torin and Penny never got a chance to use their wands. The old man and his companions fell beneath a wave of homunculi, their wands stomped and snapped, and Penny saw them laying on the floor as her entourage passed them by, dazed but unhurt.

  They crossed the room and started down the next hallway with the remaining guards on their trail, far behind but catching up.

  Spells flew past them, chipping stone from the walls, chipping pieces off their homunculi host. One of the little gray men lost a leg at his knee, and hopped furiously to keep up. Two of his companions hoisted him up by his armpits and carried him along.

  Another spell grazed the tough leather of Penny’s mask, and she saw stars for a moment. She shook her head to clear it, gritted her teeth, and twisted around keeping a tentative one armed grip on Ronan’s neck while she aimed with her own wand.

  She fired into the center of the tight formation of pursuing guards, there were more than a dozen now, and watched one in the center fly backward, tripping up the rest. It slowed them for a moment.

  She fired again and again, then ducked as half a dozen spells shot over her head.

  As if on command, the homunculi trailing Ronan and Penny stopped, turned, and charged the other way, shaking their fists and screaming like mad, gray monkeys. A few of the gray men fell under the Red Guards’ concentrated fire, but the sheer numbers of punching, jumping, screaming homunculi, along with a few well-placed spells from Penny, brought them down.

  There was resistance from ahead as well.

  A shout from Torin brought Penny’s attention back to the front, and she saw her father fall.

  “Ronan,” she screamed. “Get them!”

  Ronan did.