Alexa Drey- the Gates of Striker Bay

by Ember Lane

  “How?”

  “Take their power; it is too much for them. You are limitless; use it.”

  I sucked at their screams, holding my hands, and pointing them down like I was clawing at the ruddy fire. Suddenly, like it understood, a huge jolt of overflowing electricity pushed its way into me, jostling to fill me, tumbling over in a bid to escape.

  The screams began to die, and I understood their relief, so I stole the rest of the power, and just for an instant, silver snaked from Ruse’s stump, but it soon snapped back, and darkness fell again.

  I jumped each stump in turn, ignoring Variant, knowing there was nothing I could do for her, and I eventually came to Valkyrie. When I stood upon its budding wood, a surge ran through me, and I brimmed with power, its meniscus bursting from me, my arms glowing, my shoulders an aura of shimmering silver. As suddenly as I was about to burst, my power exploded down into the trunk to the ground, and a dozen, maybe more, jaspur rose from the mud, surrounding the stumps and sucking them away, silver roots and all.

  And then they marched, the march of the jaspur, as they formed their own forest atop this scant plateau, and though my joy wanted to burst out, I was done, emptied, and tired: the kind of satisfied euphoria you get from loving, or from being loved.

  I sank to my haunches, crouching, recovering, my shadowmana drained. I’d stolen from Ruse and given to Valkyrie. Kaleb backed away from me, staring blankly like I was some monster that scared him so much he couldn’t even run. He backed right into a jaspur, and the leaves embraced him, and the fear drained from his face, replaced by ecstasy, as he understood the good that had returned to his land.

  My shadowmana slowly returned, its capacity without limit and its recovery steady as if I harvested it subliminally, and it no longer had any reservations about filling me. Instead, I’d become part of its natural equilibrium. I’d become part of the fabric of this magic and its balances, and if there was a void within me, then it had to be filled.

  Kaleb let the strings of jaspur leaves run through his hands, his fear now consigned to deeper within him, pushed back by wonder, the wonder of the jaspur. His skin glowed mauve, and I watched as the tree continued to infuse him with its love, its power.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, his wonder so complete that I didn’t know where to start. My own clarity too crystal, so stark that it’s conclusions were too vivid to ignore.

  “I think Valkyrie’s engines just started,” I muttered, in no more than a whisper. I could feel it too, the vibrancy, that I could only describe as the change in a darkened room when its light is switched on, but the explanation was no good for him—would make no sense.

  “What?”

  I changed tack, trying to get him to understand without blowing his mind or getting labeled as mad. “Your world is healed. Now it must grow, and we must eradicate the last of its poison.”

  “What must I do?” he asked.

  I tried to imagine what was going on, how we’d affected the real world. Normality was all I could come up with. Each had to perform its function while we eliminated the last rotten apples from the crate. “You must draw, paint, and sing. You must drink coffee and strum your lute. Everything you do must reject the evil that once reigned here. For Valkyrie to continue, its soldiers must fight, but its citizens must live a normal life. Spread that message for me; that is your task.

  Kaleb took my hand. He brought it to his lips and kissed it softly, and then he led me from the hill and into the forest then down to Jaffur. Before we could see him, I could smell the roasting fish. My mouth watered as my hunger rushed at me like a famished avalanche.

  “So did you see the stumps?” Jaffur asked.

  “Yeah,” Kaleb replied.

  “And the light show? That was just crazy. I’ll swear it to any that somehow black lit up the sky. How can that happen? How can black light up anything?”

  “And then?” I shifted closer, sitting by him as he dished out his catch.

  “Then the dark was pushed back, and a brilliant mauve took over, like a red sky at night but—”

  “But not,” I completed for him, and Kaleb told him all that had happened, and Jaffur kicked himself for staying by the boat.

  We finished our food in comfortable silence and then traveled back to Pangor. I had a few ales with Will, but then my own will faded, and tiredness washed over me just like the bells that started my day.

  “Good night, Alexa,” Will said as I got up to leave. “I hear they stopped the banquet to look at the lights in the sky. It appears you were still star of the show.

  Chapter Fifteen

  To Striker Bay

  I rode away from them, from the little army that now traveled with us.

  We had a dozen or so bows, the same amount of militia. Four scouts ranged ahead at all times, and the cavalry surrounded Joss, Mezzerain, Melinka, Sutech, and Pog. We had a cook, a seamstress, hunters, woodsman, and supply carts that formed a small tail behind us.

  It was a little army, not suited to the vast battles of fantastic tales, but boy was it devastating. Most battles could be won with this little army because most armies we faced weren’t much bigger. War was just too damn expensive to bear huge armies, so though we might have encountered Ruse’s supposed finest in Valkyrie, and though they might have outnumbered us two to one, for the most part, theirs comprised of bullies and conscripts while ours was just plain badass.

  I let my horse have its head, and it ran upward, away from the coast and its winding road. Dragnor lay ahead, and while Dragnor was in no way the force it had once been when Tobias had ended Rakesh, it still boasted a tower rising from a small park, and it still had a sturdy-stone stronghold.

  My task was the tower.

  I crested the hill, its top part covered by a stand of trees—perfect for my horse, with a view perfect for me. I faced west, toward the sea, and looked over Dragnor. Twenty-foot-high walls surrounded the small city, with many a dwelling clinging to its sides as if they weren’t good enough to be allowed access into the city but still fancied its protection.

  Away to the north, our tiny army looked like a black rat, ready to fight a big dog. It was an insane match, an impossible task, but one we were well practiced in. Setting my horse to graze, I gathered some firewood and surrounded it with stones. I blasted it alight not even worrying about my concealment anymore.

  They knew I was coming; it was now just a matter of when I’d get to them.

  For the most part, the towers had grown progressively weaker—for me at least. The priests, like the militia, had little poke about them, little to surprise. I suspected a trap here and waited for it to bite me in the ass. Taking out some cold pork, I heated it over the fire, drinking down a draft of berry juice.

  Our little army closed in, and I scoffed down my pork, swilling it around with another swig, and then setting everything aside, I rubbed my hands dry on my tunic, closed my eyes, and delved into myself.

  I centered on my groin, my mana exchanger, cycling the mana around me faster and faster until I could feel its static, its friction. When my eyes began to burn, I opened them, focusing on the black tower. My consciousness entered it, four or five priests around its flaming cauldron. They looked up, along my thread, my way, and they ducked their eyes away, not even bothering to resist.

  Superheating the cauldron, I poured my manas in until it simply exploded, its head blown to smithereens, no more than a small shower of scree filling the air surrounding it. I held that in suspension before turning it back on the dying priests and strafing them with vengeance. The tower would burn now, like a black candle, a reminder to all that the combinium’s power was done in Valkyrie. It was over.

  I then turned to the gates, picking them out and wishing them gone. They exploded as easily as a snap of my fingers, and our little army began its assault.

  I kept my consciousness roving, watching each and every fight. If needed, I sent a small, magical bullet down, and the enemy died on the spot, but in truth there was lit
tle resistance, the population was ready to rise, just waiting for us to come. Even though I knew the tower to be blunt, to have little power, it still imposed its doom on auspicious citizens.

  But once it was lit, well, that was a different matter.

  The lynchings started then, the same pattern repeating itself town after town, city after city. I yearned for Striker Bay—the last stronghold—the closest port to Ruse. I needed to test myself, for this was now simple fare.

  With each town, port, or city conquered, my power grew; my levels grew, and I grew. Barakdor was readying me. I understood that now, and I accepted the responsibility wholeheartedly.

  Striker Bay, the day had finally come.

  The city itself was shaped like a crab’s claw, both its banks clad in stone dwellings that rose and fell with its rocky contours. White lighthouses stood sentinel at the end of each claw, and hung between them were the famous gates.

  Vast slabs of blackened timber, just like those that protected the Five Isles, formed the dominant gates, reaching three quarters of the way up the lighthouses and protecting the natural harbor. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like buildings were perched on its top, and beyond them, at least ten ships bore the black standards of Ruse, and I couldn’t help but hope they were leaving, giving up, retreating back to their land of midnight.

  From what I could see, Striker Bay had more than one stronghold. A palace, all white and fluted pillars, sat atop a bluff about halfway down the southern claw, and where the southern and northern claw met, a vast castle sat upon a river island, the river itself so wide, so busy with boats like ants hell-bent on the business of trade.

  Another stronghold graced the northern claw, but this one looked more like a temple-cum-castle, clusters of dwellings cowering in its shadows. I had my concealment up. Though they knew I was coming, I wanted to surprise them a little bit.

  We all sat on our horses, each of us taking in Striker Bay, knowing it to be our final hurdle here, free it, and Valkyrie would be truly liberated.

  “Do you feel the stone yet?”

  Pog released Stalker. It hovered around the pair of us before taunting Faulk.

  Melinka rolled her eyes. “I have never known magic to be insolent before.” As if it had heard her, the stone streaked straight over, making the witch duck. “Can’t you get it under control?”

  “It’s not mine—we’re just partners.”

  “You’d understand if you had one,” Mezzerain added. “Take mine; it’s independent as Pog quite rightly says, but when I go into battle, it's right by my side—the power in my arm, the rage in my bellow.”

  “What has that got to do with this”—she waved her hand dismissively toward the stone—“this annoyance?”

  “I think I know.” Sutech leaned forward, patting his mount. “Pog, by his very nature, is mischievous, and therefore, so is the stone. So there is an easy solution.”

  Melinka frowned, clearly sensing a trap but unable to do anything but walk into it. “Pray, what?”

  “I suggest that in all things Pog and Pog-related, you are compliant.”

  Pog beamed. “That would make me happy, and if I’m happy, so is Stalker.”

  Melinka threw her chin high in the air, looking down her nose at little Pog. Just as she appeared ready to issue some damning proclamation, she folded. “Very well, it’s a small price to pay.”

  The stone buzzed around her head, settling just above her shoulder, taunting her. “Then we have a deal,” Pog said, and he held his hand out, the stone immediately darting over. “The palace.”

  “Palace?” I asked.

  “I think Vengeance is in the palace. Only Taric or Belved had designs on the stones, so the palace would make sense. If Belved had stolen it, then it would be back in Ruse by now, but we know it’s here, just hidden, so the palace.”

  Mezzerain grunted. “I have to think back—back to the days before the mists. Taric was rarely out of my sight, and I don’t recall him meeting emissaries from Mandrake.”

  “Did he travel to Kyrie when they judged Poleyna?” I asked.

  “Yes, why?” Mezzerain asked absently.

  “Because I’m sure I remember it from the auguries. All the gods traveled there, but their seconds were the ones asked to judge.”

  “That’s right—I attended for Valkyrie, ShadowDancer for Ruse—”

  “And Cronis for Mandrake. What’s your point?”

  “My point is this. Shylan attended too.”

  Mezzerain’s expression changed from blank to one filled with suspicion. “If any plot and plan this far in advance, it’s the likes of him.”

  “All you can truly draw from this line of thought is that the stone Pog seeks may well be here and that it was likely given to him at Kyrie,” Sutech snapped. “I find guessing tiresome. Is the stone here or not?”

  “Yes,” Pog declared.

  “And just how do you know?”

  Pog sent Stalker Stone to Sutech. “Because he tells me, and if I were going in the wrong direction, he’d make me go in the other. As to where it is, the palace, because that’s where Taric lived before they killed him.”

  “That makes sense,” Joss the Nine declared. “My scouts tell me that Ruse’s forces are stripping the plaster from the palace walls in a bid to find something. My forces arrive from Rakesh tonight. We cannot invade Striker Bay with a handful of soldiers. We wait for dark. The palace will have to wait until we’ve captured the main strongholds.”

  “Then we steal it sooner.” Pog looked me straight in the eye. “Fortunately, we have just the team.”

  Pog fell to the grass verge with barely a sound. Crouching, he snuck across the single-track way. Mezzerain pulled him into our shelter—a dry-stone building with little in the way of a roof or windows. The approach had been littered with similar buildings. It appeared gainful employment was very much dependent on a resident god.

  “Well?” Sutech asked.

  “A good thirty or more guards, horseback patrols, plus twenty odd working on the palace. It’ll be difficult to do it with any stealth.” Pog beamed up at Mezzerain, clearly baiting him to deny it.

  “And they’re tearing the place apart?” Sutech pressed.

  “The palace, yes, but the palace is only half of it.”

  “Half?”

  “The gardens,” Mezzerain said, his words filled with the wonder of sudden realization, and he began laughing. “Taric’s favorite place.”

  Pog scoffed, “Hardly gardens anymore, though.”

  Mezzerain became wistful. “They were once his pride and joy—”

  “All very well,” Melinka snapped. “Joss the Nine’s troops are to begin infiltrating the city by sunset. I’d suggest we have a plan in place by then.”

  “We could just blast them,” I suggested. “Seriously? What’s the worst that could happen? We’d have a good hour to search the grounds before they could march any kind of force up here.”

  “A fundamental of Joss’s plan is to keep Ruse’s troops in their barracks. If they run riot in the city, the civilian casualties could be unbearable.” Melinka walked up and down the ruin. “We should attempt to do the same. Mezzerain, you’re more familiar with the palace’s layout than me. How many ins and outs?”

  “Just the two, no, three with the garden entrance.”

  “We can assume any magic will alert the combinium?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “Then we wait until sunset; we have no choice. Alexa and Sutech will take one entrance, Mezzerain and myself the other, while Pog and Faulk sneak into the gardens.”

  “So we just wait…” I muttered.

  “I hate waiting,” Pog said sulkily.

  “With our concealment we could start looking earlier, perhaps map out the grounds,” I suggested.

  “Get a list together,” Pog added. “So we know where we’re going in the dark.”

  “Just go!” Melinka snapped. “But take care not to be seen.”

  Pog jumped up, bea
ming. He reached out, grabbing my hand and pulling me out the door.

  “Gardens?” I asked, but he was already off and running, scaling the wall, and vanishing over the side.

  I followed, landing softly beside him. The palace sat on top of its rocky bluff. From a distance it had looked like a white edifice, proud, defiant. Close up, it was a little more aged, its paintwork blistered and cracked, red roof tiles missing, shattered on the crumbling patio below. The business of destruction rang out from within, the knocking of mallets and chisels, the whine and scream of wrecking bars and snapping wood. We crouched behind an overgrown topiary, sniffing out our next move.

  “Lookout,” Pog pointed up to a low balcony. “We can’t go anywhere while he’s there.”

  Before I could answer, Pog vanished. I watched the guard. He jerked once and then his head fell to one side as if he were sleeping. Pog soon reappeared by my side. “Come on.”

  We darted low across the garden, through its knee-high grass, into its clusters of statues, topiaries, and overgrown beds. “It’ll be nowhere ordinary,” Pog muttered as we crouched.

  I pointed at a raised platform, edged by pilasters. “What about there—looks like a bandstand?” Without waiting for an answer, he shot off.

  Once more, the figure nine featured prominently. Nine busts sat between the pilasters, facing inward. I recognized Poleyna, ShadowDancer’s god, Belved, even Taric looked vaguely familiar as did Scholl. In the center, consuming their attention, sat a weird-looking sculpture, like twin spirals with metallic leaves growing from them. I touched it, reaching up it, and my fingers tingled, picking up on its power.

  “Double helix,” Pog said. “The beginning.”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “Everything. These gods are posed worshiping the helix.”

  I suddenly understood what he meant. Each of their carved heads was turned downward, a degree of reverence etched into their expressions. “So what does it mean?”

  “I’ve seen it before; they’re always etched on the portal-room doors. I think it means that the gods are bound to worship us, to serve us, like a prime directive, assuming we are the helix.”