The Heart of the Phoenix

by Brian Knight

  Penny found Zoe considerably calmer, she even smiled at Penny’s approach.

  “I leave for a few days,” Zoe said, struggling for a light tone, “and everything falls apart.”

  Ellen tittered nervous laughter. Katie gave her a look and shook her head.

  “It’s good to meet you,” Janet said, and held out a hand. She looked wonderfully exotic to Penny. She held up her new wand, brought back from the secret room in Penny’s basement. “Strange to hold one of these again.”

  Zoe hugged Penny again, and whispered in her ear, “How cool is she?”

  “Very cool,” Penny agreed.

  “We thought you were on tour,” Katie said.

  “Just finished. I was looking forward to a nice break from the action when Reggie called and said Dana wanted to visit.” She laughed and ran a hand through her spiked rainbow hair. “About a half hour after she arrived, all my lost memories did too.”

  “Everybody,” Reggie called out, and waved them over to him.

  They joined him, Penny careful to keep Zoe a safe distance from Flanna. Jaiden listened from her spot next to the sleeping, and now clover-speckled, Erasmus.

  “I’m going to town,” Reggie said. “And I’m bringing a few friends with me.”

  * * *

  Dana and Zoe hugged Reggie, Katie and Tracy hugged Michael, and Flanna bent to give Jaiden a few final pointers on wand use while Bowen waited and watched the open field toward town.

  At last they gathered and left, Michael in the lead, followed by Bowen and Jaiden, Reggie at the rear.

  “Do you think it’ll help?” Penny asked the group at large, and Susan answered.

  “I don’t know, but it can’t hurt.”

  “If they don’t get themselves caught,” Katie said, who was not as confident in the plan as her brother was.

  “There have to be other people down there who have noticed something is wrong,” Janet said. “And none of them will be hanging around the carnival. They’ll be hiding in their homes or trying to find a way out of town.”

  “Tynan won’t stay in town for long,” Torin said. “When Turoc and his mercenaries don’t come back he’ll know something’s wrong, and when he comes, he’ll come in force.”

  Tracy nodded her agreement.

  “If Reggie can break the Reds control over the carnival workers, they might be persuaded to help.”

  “And everyone from town?” This was Penny’s least favorite part of the plan. “If they come to, our secret will be out.”

  Penny suddenly wished for her new robe; if Reggie, Bowen, and Michael came back with half the town behind them Penny would appreciate the anonymity. Moments later Rocky scampered up to her with the chest held in his large hands, dropped it at her feet and pulled the key from around his neck.

  “Thanks, Rocky,” Penny said, and bent to open it. She pulled the folded robes out and began to pull hers on.

  “We’ll need as many people as will come if we’re going to force the Reds to reverse the damage the Chaos Relic has done.”

  “The damage can’t be undone,” Erasmus said, and all heads turned to him. He was awake now, picking clover blossoms out of his coat and dreadlocks. “Not all of it anyway, but we might contain it, and we don’t need the Reds for that.”

  “Did you have a good rest, my friend?” Ronan looked pleased to see his strange friend awake again, despite his mixed news.

  “Informative,” Erasmus said. “I had a good hard think about our problem, and the solution is simple. We get it out the same way it got in.”

  “Sounds too easy,” Tracy said. “What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that someone will have to lay hands on it to get it out, maybe more than one of us, and anyone who touches it will...”

  Susan didn’t look like she wanted to know, but asked anyway. “Will what?”

  “No one really knows for sure,” Torin said. “It’s thought that the Chaos Relic tears a person apart, divides them between an infinity of other worlds... other realities. We just don’t know.”

  “It’s a physical relic of a time when all universes were one,” Erasmus said. “It’s a piece of that earlier, primordial universe.”

  “The first time I saw it,” Penny said, remembering the nightmarish events vividly, “was when I went into Turoc’s lair beneath the landfill looking for you, Ronan.”

  Erasmus was regarding her with morbid interest, his expression rapt, but frowning. The others only waited, adding to the growing atmosphere of dread.

  “One of Turoc’s homunculi opened the box and touched it. It burned him away until nothing was left, but I could still hear him screaming even after he was gone.”

  “What happened to the box it was in?” Erasmus turned on the spot until he found Flanna trying to make herself small behind Nancy. “That box is one of the only things that can contain it.”

  “I don’t know,” Flanna said, trying to avoid everyone’s eyes. “I think I dropped it.”

  Without prompting, Rocky sprinted back for the hollow to find it.

  Penny saw the many unfriendly eyes turned Flanna’s way and her heart fell a little.

  “It’s not her fault,” Penny said, drawing the unfriendly eyes to her. “Tynan caused the accident that killed our mom, then kidnapped Flanna. I was born dead or he would have taken me too.” She made her way to her sister, felt a little braver when Tracy gave her an approving nod. “He told her that he was her father, that Torin betrayed our mother and the Phoenix Girls killed her. Everything she did was to close down the gateway forever, to keep her world safe from us.”

  “She’s with us now,” Tracy said. “That’s the end of it.”

  “I’m still not certain you’re with us,” Janet said. She’d gotten a very short version of the events that had led Tracy into Tynan’s service, then back again. “She’s cute and cuddly though, so I’m inclined to trust her.”

  A racket erupted from the hollow, and the homunculi appeared from hiding to guard the path. Shouts, human and homunculi, boomed, a clatter of weapons and the blast of wand bolts.

  “They’re here,” Penny said, drawing her wand.

  She led the charge to the hollow, but when she reached it her father, sister, aunt, and all of her friends were with her.

  * * *

  The Red Soldiers spilled through the sepulcher door with spears and crossbows raised, splashed through the narrow remnant of Clear Creek, the border between the sepulcher and the hollow, ducking stones flung by the wild homunculi, countering with wild thrusts from their spears and metal-tipped crossbow bolts. The spears and bolts scratched and scraped, but couldn’t pierce the gray men’s stone hides.

  The first wand appeared, held by a robed and red bearded man with the family insignia embroidered over his chest, and the first gray man died with his head blasted to dust and rubble. Penny saw this as she slid down the dirt path into the hollow, and she fired at the man while she was still moving. Her blast missed, striking the wall a few inches from his left ear. He forgot about the homunculi, regarded Penny with surprise even as he leveled his wand at her.

  “No, Savas!” Flanna bumped into Penny at the end of the path. From the corners of her eyes Penny saw first Tracy and Torin, then the others lining up with her. “She’s blood... my sister!”

  “Flanna? What are you still doing here?” He looked down at Turoc’s still body. “What happened here?”

  His surprised deepened as he recognized Tracy, and then became outraged shock when he saw Torin standing with them.

  “What are you doing with the traitor?”

  The Red Soldiers had halted their attack and held their ground, waiting for the man Flanna called Savas to sort out the confusion for them. The homunculi, Rocky among them, clustered together and began to join hands. This was strange behavior to Penny, but she didn’t have the luxury of curiosity.

  “He’s no traitor,” Tracy said, drawing all eyes from Flanna and Torin to her. “He was the King Brom’s intended heir, and Fl
anna’s true father.”

  This announcement was met with a long moment of total silence before the sneering Savas found his words again.

  “He killed King Brom, his own blood... his own father!”

  “I did not,” Torin said. “I loved my father, and I respected my king.”

  “You disobeyed him.” Savas pointed at Torin, his outstretched finger trembling with his anger. “You made alliance with barbarians.”

  “And he forgave me,” Torin said. “He was preparing to accept my alliance when he died.”

  “You lie,” Savas said, pointing his wand at Torin. “You poisoned him to speed your ascendancy.”

  “Someone poisoned him,” Erasmus said, squeezing between Torin and Susan to be seen. He held three wands, one in his right hand, two in his waving tangle of dreadlocks, all pointed at Savas. “As for his ascendancy...”

  Savas averted his eyes, but kept his wand trained on Torin.

  “Keep your lies and your eyes to yourself, monk!” He motioned toward the Red Soldiers, and Erasmus found himself on the wrong end of every spear and crossbow.

  Susan and Nancy stepped in front of him, wands raised, and Penny saw the shimmer of raised shields.

  Savas turned back to Flanna, and his anger retreated a step.

  “You can’t mean these things, child. Come to us now... your father will forgive you if...”

  “He’s not my father,” Flanna screamed. “I saw what happened the night my mother died. He killed her. He took me from her and left her to die. He told me we were here to close the door between our worlds, he told me how to do it, and that was a lie too.”

  Penny could see his sympathy for Flanna waning with each shouted word, and knew by the raised wands all around her that the others saw it too.

  “Your place is not to question our King, your father.” His eyes turned to the door as more figures stepped through, and Penny saw more wands raised from the ranks of the Reds. “You’ve aided our enemies. May your father be merciful.”

  To the Red Soldiers around him he said, “Kill them all but the princess. She awaits King Tynan’s judgment.”

  “So much for diplomacy,” Janet said behind Penny, and sent the first bolt of the battle into Savas’s face, knocking him unconscious against the sepulcher wall.

  Penny threw up a shield as the first retaliatory shots came for her and Janet. The force of the blows threw her backward, but a laughing Janet caught and steadied her. Magical bolts flew from her left and right, striking down the Reds as they came through, spears and crossbow bolts flew at them in a barrage, but most rebounded off shields or were blasted aside.

  Ellen screamed to her right, and Penny turned in time to see her go down with blood pouring from a wound in her temple. Katie stepped into her spot and sent a forking bolt of lightning into the crowd of Red soldiers. A half dozen fell to the ground, and more retreated from the electrified area, twitching and jerking.

  A magical bolt broke through Penny’s shield, and the impact felt like a hammer blow against her chest. She cried out from the pain, but returned fire, striking the wand from a Red’s hand.

  The trees came to life and began to swat Savas’s men aside.

  A second volley of crossbow bolts and spears flew their way, and more shields appeared to block them. Torin caught a spear in the leg, but hardly seemed to notice. He snarled and fired spells in return.

  The homunculi were strangely absent from the fight, and when Penny searched for them, she saw only the top of a bald gray head as it sank beneath the soil.

  Erasmus shoved his way past Susan and Nancy, yanking his dark goggles down around his neck with his left hand while he blocked with the wand in his right. His living dreadlocks were a blur of activity, firing his other wands, snatching the enemy’s spears and crossbow bolts from the air and hurling them back. One, then a second Red Soldier turned on their comrades, breaking their line.

  A sudden wind whipped through the hollow, picking up dropped weapons, dead leaves, old ash and charcoal from the fire pit and whipping them into a vortex that danced along the ground and into the confused ranks of Red Soldiers.

  Penny heard Ellen scream again, in effort instead of pain, and saw her rejoin Katie at the forward line. Her wand was up, her teeth bared, the right side of her face drenched in blood. The wound seemed superficial though, to anger rather than impede her. She shouted again, lowered her wand, and the vortex exploded and rained debris down on the Red Soldiers. A second, more powerful gust blew down from the willow canopy that shaded the hollow, then turned, as if directed, on the enemy. It blew them off their feet, slammed them against the sepulcher wall.

  Already the wounded were retreating back through the door to the citadel, dragging their unconscious comrades behind.

  Penny fired again and again, missing more often than she hit, but keeping the enemy occupied dodging instead of fighting.

  Ellen sagged to her knees, the last of her energy spent, and Katie quickly dragged her back behind the line.

  For a few tense and silent moments the fighting stopped, the remaining Red Soldiers watched the defenders, and the defenders waited to see if another attack was coming.

  Torin noticed the spear in his leg and yanked it out with a scream. He and Ellen weren’t the only ones injured.

  Susan bled from her nose and a cut beneath her eye, Erasmus groaned, and Penny saw two severed dreadlocks squirming in the dirt in front of him. Janet dropped a hand on Penny’s shoulder, and Penny saw blood on the fingers. Penny herself ached from a bolt that had broken through her shield and struck her in the chest. The magical barrier had robbed it of its lethal force, but her chest throbbed.

  “Do you give up yet?” Erasmus bent and picked up his severed dreadlocks, regarded them with a frown and dropped them into a pocket of his long coat. “We’ll accept your surrender.”

  Savas’s replacement stepped to the front of his crumbling line.

  “We do not give up, monk.” His men reformed their line behind him, some no longer even armed, and not quite as eager for the fight. “We will not accept your surrender.”

  Flanna shoved her way back to the front of the defender’s line and stepped up beside Penny.

  The man’s bravado faltered at the sight of Flanna, and her resemblance to the strange girl standing beside her. “What is this?”

  “This is my sister,” Flanna said.

  “And this,” Tracy said putting a hand on Torin’s shoulder, “is her father.”

  Penny had no reason to believe his new man would be willing to listen. She kept her eyes open and her wand ready.

  “Friends,” Erasmus said, and Penny was frightened by the unaccustomed tremor in his voice. “We are about to get our butts kicked.”

  “What are you talking about?” Janet hissed, keeping her eyes and wand on the men in the sepulcher. “You crazy old...”

  The Red Soldiers turned their eyes up suddenly, and dropped to their knees, heads bowed.

  “I am surprised to see you all here,” Tynan said from behind them. “Especially you, Tracy West. Have your old sisters welcomed you back?”

  Tracy did not dignify Tynan with a response, only regarded him coldly.

  “We sent you home, Flanna,” Imogen said. She stood just behind Tynan, but stepped up beside him to the edge of the trail. “Why are you still here? Have these people harmed you?”

  “They rescued me,” Flanna said.

  “Silence,” Tynan shouted. Then to Imogen, “You forget yourself, cousin.”

  “I forget nothing, cousin,” she snapped back at him. “Including the reason you brought us here.”

  She spoke again in their incomprehensible Latinate language, and there was a rustling and a low murmur from the gathered Reds behind her.

  Penny looked to Torin and Flanna, who understood the exchange, and saw something that was almost relief.

  Tynan turned, cast a stilling look back on his family, and Penny saw his red stone pendant, the heart of the Phoenix swing free from hi
s cloak.

  We have to get it from him, she thought. Whatever else happens tonight, he doesn’t get to keep her heart.

  Torin called out loudly, cupping his hands over his mouth to be sure everyone above could hear.

  “English,” she said again, though too quietly to be heard.

  He finished his speech by grabbing Penny by the shoulder and pulling her to his side.

  “Penelope ‘es Torin Sinclair Fuilrix!” He put his other hand on Flanna’s shoulder. “Flanna ‘es Torin Fuilrix!”

  Their shock was audible, and Imogen’s was loudest of all.

  Tynan regarded her dangerously, then stilled the unrest behind him with another sweeping glance.

  Penny leaned her head close to Flanna’s to be heard. “What is he telling them?”

  “He just formally claimed us as his daughters,” Flanna said, and despite the danger perched above and around them, she smiled. “He would have done this fourteen years ago if he could have, but better late than never.”

  “They see you for who you are now, Penny, and they know what he did to you,” Torin said, and loud enough for all to hear. “If he had claimed you as daughter instead of locking you away in the citadel’s deepest cell, his claim over Flanna wouldn’t now be in doubt.”

  “He’s not my father,” Flanna said for the third time, speaking directly to Imogen. “Penny and I saw our mother’s last memories last night. Diana Sinclair was a Phoenix Girl, she was the wife of Torin ‘es Brom Fuilrix, and Tynan killed her.”

  Imogen faced Tynan, chin out and hands on her hips. “What do you have to say about it?”

  Tynan regarded her, his face expressionless, his eyes cool, but Imogen did not back up or back down.

  “Flanna is the child of a traitor,” Tynan said, casting his cold glare over them. “I took her as my daughter and she has repaid me with her own treachery.”

  Imogen reverted to her native tongue, and Tynan replied in kind. The exchange was short, and ended when Tynan drew his wand on her.

  Her own wand was up in a flash, but not quick enough to deflect his attack.