Exiles & Empire

by Cheryl S Mackey

  “I’m fine. A lot–happened. I’m still trying to figure it out. I will tell all–wait where are the others?” She pulled away just enough to see past him. His steady heart beat was so solid, so real, so wonderful.

  Ivo grunted, mumbled from her tangled hair. “An alarm sounded. Incoming strangers at best, the enemy at worst. Gabaran, Dehil, and Jaeger are the welcoming committee. The three of us stayed to guard you and decipher the map.”

  Emaranthe nodded. “We must hurry, Ivo. Time is drawing near.”

  “Wait, we have the map. Rodon can’t find this Crown thing without it, I thought,” Sesti said. She gestured toward the scrap of parchment in Jadeth’s hand. “Why do we need to hurry? Why not simply destroy the map?”

  “Because this is about more than finding The Crown of Gods. I think he doesn’t know what it really is, like us, but whatever it is we need to find it first,” Emaranthe said.

  “The spelled book didn’t tell you what The Crown of Gods is, I suppose?” Jadeth asked.

  Emaranthe shook her head against Ivo’s damp tunic, her gaze downcast. His muscled arms twitched as he held her tighter.

  “Emaranthe, the map seems to be of an island far from Ein-Aral,” Sesti said. Her eyebrows arched high. “It appears to have no names, no features other than the odd double ring of mountains depicted on the map.” Sesti traced the shape, a sideways number eight, in the air.

  Jadeth added with a frustrated growl. “And we have no way of getting there.”

  Emaranthe slipped free from Ivo and tugged on her gloves. She dropped her gaze, unable to look him in the eye. His hands remained outstretched, shaking, but his jaw set and he let her go.

  “Yes we do.”

  ***

  The wind whipped Jaeger’s dirty blond hair into his face. Out of habit he glanced around for his brother. He grimaced and turned back to the scene playing out below the tall parapets of the Tevu-Anat fortress. The Tevu guards had stationed ten deep and a hundred wide in the open expanse behind the biggest stone doors he had ever seen. On the inside a large square bailey, void of anything but a handful of lit fire pits and a sea of snow, on the outside a wild mountain range, high and ragged, and blanketed in cold fog, cradled a single narrow path to the outside world far below.

  A scout caught up to them as they made their way to the surface of the fortress. A small party reached the lower mountain pass that led to their secretive world.

  “Let them come. They won’t get through the Cold Gate,” Gabaran ordered. The scouts scurried to comply. “I want to see them with my own eyes.”

  His gaze flared white in the grey gloom of the frozen mountain weather, beacons of cold anger.

  “Too small for a war party, Gabaran.” Dehil leaned over the stone wall, his upper half invisible. “I wonder why anyone would brave coming here.”

  Through his friend’s body, Jaeger studied the ragged valleys below, and between the steep gorges and heavily snowed peaks, the narrow path that was the only way in or out of Tevu-Anat. The forbidding ice and snow, the jagged peaks, and the fact that Exiles ruled the last Citadel of the Windwalkers was enough to keep the wary at bay. More than one soldier had flanked him in a barely concealed effort to take him on. Only Gabaran’s harsh growls and glowing eyes had turned their spears and swords aside.

  “I wonder that myself,” Jaeger muttered. He wondered what would happen if they knew what he could do to them in seconds. He shoved that thought aside just as quickly as it came. He vowed long ago to never use his powers for offense, had sworn an oath on the deaths of his wife and daughter. He dragged a cold, shaking hand over his face. “How long until they reach the gates?”

  Gabaran studied the empty road. The switchbacks and narrow ravines made full observation impossible. The intruders could easily stop in a blind spot.

  “Hour or two at the most unless they stop and make camp at twilight. The road at night is perilous.”

  “Night?” Jaeger glanced up. The constantly shifting cloud cover let the sunlight come and go, alternating in both warmth and cold. This far north the sun had little strength and it vanished quickly with the ever-changing weather. As he watched, a foggy mist shrouded the peaks far above the fortress towers and walls, and the light dimmed into a grim grey. “I see what you mean.”

  Gabaran grunted. “Our weather is as unforgiving as we are, friend.”

  Jaeger eyed the giant elf. Gabaran leaned on the stone wall, both hands gripping so tightly that his fingers dug into the stone. Tense and motionless, he radiated a brooding anger that Jaeger had never before seen.

  “You know who approaches,” Jaeger replied. It wasn’t a question.

  Gabaran’s broad shoulders stiffened.

  “I suspect, nothing more.”

  It wasn’t an answer.

  ***

  “What do you mean?” Ivo asked.

  Emaranthe’s gaze remained on the puddle riddled floor. Without Jaeger the ice would slowly melt, including the stairs and platform.

  They were out of time.

  The words pierced her chest like a dagger to the heart, the thought so bitter that she almost laughed out loud. An Immortal out of time. Such irony, but their existence was unnatural, the hasty spell work of gods playing with their creations in an attempt to stop something they should have done themselves long ago. Emaranthe frowned. She didn’t know where that thought had come from. The truth hit home.

  She glanced up. “I need to see the map. It might work. We need to hurry.”

  Ivo’s heart dug into his ribs. “What are you talking about?”

  Jadeth gripped Ivo’s arm. “Ivo, you know what she is talking about.”

  “She can’t make another portal. It might kill her.”

  Fiery eyes clashed with pain darkened green. Shaggy hair, dark and damp, hid Ivo’s face. Usually shielded behind iron, the feeling was familiar and comforting. The jag of panic each time his heart beat wasn’t.

  “If I see where I’m going or have been there before, I can do it. I brought us here, to my home, Ivo. To a place I never thought I’d return to.”

  “I can’t lose you,” he said. “I just found the courage to love you and I don’t think I…”

  “Don’t,” Emaranthe whispered. She stepped close enough that her linen covered breasts brushed against his lean stomach.

  He inhaled and his muscles tensed at the brush of soft, curvy, flesh. He studied the emotions shadowing her gaze. He knew it was mirrored in his. The guilt. The sorrow. The pain. The fear. The loyalty. The honesty. The love. All of it now focused in her upturned face.

  She whispered, “Don’t you dare tell me you are not brave. Don’t you dare tell me you don’t know what you will do if I die. I know what I would do if you were lost to me.”

  Ivo shuddered. He closed his eyes against the tide of panic. He molded her sleight frame against his.

  He asked, “What?”

  “I would burn down the world for you.”

  “I can’t Emaranthe,” Ivo said. His words rang in the room, gruff words of rage and denial. “I can’t live without you.”

  Again.

  The word hung, silent and unspoken.

  “I know. That’s why we must do this together. All of us. As we were meant to,” Emaranthe said. “I love you, Ivo, more than anything.”

  He lifted her against his broad chest, heart hammering. Soft lips teased his, leaving a scorching heat roiling deep within. Her soft exhale, a gasp of pleasure against his mouth, stoked it.

  Far away in the gloomy depths of the Citadel, drums beat in the dark.

  War drums.

  All but hidden in his arms, Emaranthe’s slender frame stiffened, her gasp of shock mirroring his.

  Ivo set her on her feet, a protective arm still curled around her. He slid his sword from the shadows at his side and put it between Emaranthe and the danger without second thought.

  Emaranthe pressed a soft kiss to his dark jaw and pulled away, her staff already aloft. Her let her go. He had to. Even if h
e didn’t want to.

  A sharp gust of wind ripped around the room as he tested the farthest corners for danger. Glowing embers drifted and danced above Emaranthe’s staff, its cracked and splayed crook stoked by a deep, fiery power.

  Jadeth appeared at the foot of the ice steps, her hammer glowing a faint green.

  “Something is happening out there.” She moved to join Sesti in front of the open doorway.

  Ivo and Emaranthe followed, weapons readied.

  Sesti stared into the blackness beyond the doorway, mute and pale.

  “What is it, Sesti?” Ivo asked.

  “No, that’s not possible,” she whispered, ignoring him. “Not here. Not now.”

  “What is it? What do the drums mean? Are they war drums?” Jadeth asked.

  “Those are no war drums,” Sesti spat out. Her dark hair swirled when she spun on her heel and marched to the ice steps. The light from the oculus had faded into a stormy gray twilight and with it a foreboding feeling rose with every sharp rap her heels beat on the stairs. “Those are royal heraldic drums.”

  “What does that mean?” Jadeth yelled up after her.

  Sesti paused, her back to the Immortals below.

  “It means my mother has returned.”

  ***

  The drum beats rode the snow laden wind, faint at first, then gaining strength and volume with each successive minute. The sound carried far in the jagged valleys below the fortress, a slow, steady beat of pending arrival. Or doom. Mayhap both.

  “What are they doing?” Dehil asked the silent males on either side of him. At the first sound of the distant drums in the dark, both stiffened and grew silent. “Why drums?”

  Jaeger frowned when it felt like his heart beat in sync with the drums. He rubbed his chest, the ache of uncertainty unwelcome. “Why would they announce their arrival? Do they hope to show that they are not weak by this display?”

  Gabaran hunched over until his forehead touched the rough stone wall of the battlement. The rock dug into his skin unfelt. It was the steady, horrible, drum beat instead that hurt.

  “No. That is no war party,” he muttered. “It is something far, far worse I’m afraid.”

  Jaeger twisted to stare at him. He traded looks with Dehil.

  “What could be worse? It can’t be Rodon. Who else is such an enemy?” he asked.

  Dehil straightened, his gaze on the hundreds of soldiers blockading the Cold Gate. He scanned them, noting the armor and shields, the undrawn weapons. The giant gate, when closed as a first line of defense, didn’t seem to need an actual army behind it.

  “Gabaran, who comes?” Dehil asked.

  “Ishelene. My twin sister.”

  “Ishelene is your sister,” Jaeger muttered. He paced, his gaze was crystalline, icy.

  “Ishelene was Immortalized a thousand years ago, among a dozen others of our kind. We were Co-rulers of Tevu-Isid. Our home was to the west, in Isid, but on that night—” Gabaran hesitated. “That night our home was destroyed because of Ishelene. She turned mad, out of control, made crazy by The Fall. I tried to stop her. I was struck, took the full force of her power. Yet I lived when many perished.”

  Dehil whispered, “What power does she possess that does such damage, Gabaran?”

  “I do not truly know. I saw the stars fall from the sky. I tried to stop her.”

  “You did what you could. You were mortal, too, my friend,” Dehil said. He traded looks with Jaeger, whose own eyes swam with the power of the sea.

  Gabaran continued, “Ishelene forced us survivors to flee. Told us all, even her own daughter, to forget her. That the old gods had forsaken us. We left her to burn with the city, to live with what she had done. We became exiles. The godless.”

  Dehil paced along the wall. “Something else happened, Gabaran, something that you refuse to acknowledge.”

  Gabaran laughed, a hoarse, pained grunt of bitter amusement and rage. The sound turned Jaeger’s stomach and made his throat too dry to swallow.

  “What happened?” Dehil asked.

  “I don’t know. Something.” Gabaran gestured to his eyes and the pinpoints of starlight within.

  “Your eyes?” Dehil asked. He frowned, his ears flicking wildly. “Yet you do not have Immortal abilities?”

  “No. I don’t know. I can do nothing. I am mortal, I cannot wield it, nor do I wish to,” Gabaran whispered. His eyes slid closed just as the last of the gray, stormy twilight faded into the kind of darkness only the mountains can possess. The temperature dropped and the drumming halted. “She is nearby. Near enough to destroy us all if she wished.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Big Brother,” Emaranthe’s voice rose over the wind. “We will stop her before she sets foot in your Citadel.”

  All three jerked, startled, and turned to find the source of her voice.

  Fire swirled. A miasma of flame and heat waves erupted in the middle of the battlement. Snow melted into puddles at their feet and the burst of light turned their shadows into a melee of jagged shapes along the walls. The fire flickered out, the sudden switch between icy cold, scorching heat, and back leaving Jaeger, Dehil, and Gabaran with crawling skin.

  Emaranthe swayed on her feet, her breathing a hoarse rasp. She bent at the waist, shaking hands on knees in a vain effort to regain the energy literally burned so suddenly.

  “Emaranthe, how did you–” Dehil lunged forward when she sank to her knees, but stopped, ready to catch her. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “I used too much energy too fast,” Emaranthe whispered. Golden eyes glowed beneath the tangled fall of pale hair hiding her face. The glow faded, leaving them all in an even darker, colder, twilight. “I’ve never tried it that way before. Huh.”

  Jaeger frowned. “Tried what?”

  Gabaran’s frown grew stormy. “She teleported a goodly distance without a portal. Without seeing her destination. She has always been able to do it, to flicker on the wind like a little burning flame, an ember, but never this far. She has to see where she’s going. She can otherwise form portals to teleport distances, like the one she made for our escape off the plateau. She has to have been to her destination before, and the energy drain to do it is costly to her soul.”

  Jaeger’s eyes widened. They swirled with frosty anger, cold and blue. He remembered his first encounter with the urchin at the Inn all those years ago. He had marveled at the tiny female vanishing and appearing in a blur of fire and then later, when battling the Necromancer.

  “You could have just as easily gone off of the wall or burned up your soul, couldn’t you?”

  Emaranthe shrugged. She shifted to a less painful position on the damp stone. The snow and ice had melted when she had blazed onto the wall, leaving a cold puddle of water for her to sit in. Shivering, she drew her legs and arms closer to her body.

  Farther down the corridor, a heavy iron door exploded open, ripped off its hinges, and sailed off the wall. It may have clattered noisily as it bounced down the mountain, but it went unheard over Ivo’s bellowing.

  Everyone spilled out of the narrow doorway and onto the wall walk, weapons bristling in the eerie green glow of Jadeth’s hammer. Led by a furious Ivo, and flanked by two scowling elf females, they crossed the distance to the huddled group in a heartbeat, but their opened mouths and sharp tongues stilled at the sight of the army guarding the massive gate.

  Sesti reacted before anyone could stop her.

  Chapter Nine

  With a hiss, she leaped atop the crenellated wall and stared into the dark crags of the mountain valley below. The wind howled through the ragged passes as she scanned the darkness. Below, hundreds of tiny pinpoints of light winked into existence and the entire parade ground glowed with row upon row of torches glinting off iron and ice.

  “They know who approaches,” Gabaran called up to her, his eyes pinched shut as the deep, steady thump of the drums returned, magnified. “They know not to relax their guard, niece.”

  “We can’t let
her in, uncle,” Sesti snapped. She jumped to another crenellation, her eyes narrowed on the rows of soldiers below. “We must stop her.”

  Gabaran’s broad shoulders sagged beneath the weight of her conviction. Emotionless and cold, Sesti had a very good reason to hate her own mother.

  Jaeger leaned over the wall and squinted to see beyond the Gate. The darkness was absolute, the only light now what filtered to them from the rows of torches held by the soldiers and Jadeth’s still faintly glowing hammer.

  “I see nothing, where could they be hiding?”

  Gabaran grunted. “The trail twists and turns, leaving more blind spots than an old hag has. We won’t see her until she wants to be seen, and we won’t know her reason unless she wishes it to be known.”

  Jaeger continued, “Atil was our ally. Rodon is not. So, Gabaran, do we trust your sister?”

  A grim silence fell over the group. Thoughts roiled. Hearts slammed against ribs in time with the distant drumming.

  Gabaran’s scowl carved grooves in his face and hardened his gaze.

  “I don’t know.”

  The green glow of Jadeth’s hammer turned Dehil’s features into a jagged map of shadows as he spoke.

  “I believe Atil spoke the truth, knew the truth, about Rodon. I fear he underestimated Ishelene. I don’t think he knew about her powers or who she is allied with. Neither do we.”

  Jaeger stiffened, his broad shoulders rigid. The frost ringing his pupils darkened until they were a blue swirl, like a stormy sea.

  “And now Rodon is on the loose, Atil is gone, and Ishelene has come calling for her brother.”

  “Something has turned the tide, but what?” Jadeth asked.

  “We can’t trust her,” Ivo said. “We don’t know whose side she is on. She may be a spy for Rodon.”

  Dehil’s ears twitched, his gaze grim. “We need to confront her and discover what she knows.”

  “Sesti, Jadeth, and I will return to the library. We need to find a way to the Crown of Gods’ location. The rest of you stop her from approaching any closer. We need answers from both that book and Ishelene. You need to get them one way or another,” Ivo said. Heads nodded around their circle, and Ivo’s pained stared settled on Emaranthe.