Exiles & Empire

by Cheryl S Mackey

  He whispered only for her. “Please, be careful.”

  She smiled back.

  The fire swirling gently around the edges of her pupils flared, but without a word Emaranthe turned and joined Dehil, Gabaran, and Jaeger at the battlement. Ivo and the others raced for the door to return to the inner depths of the mountains.

  “Now what?” Gabaran paced along the crenellated wall.

  Emaranthe studied the distance to the top of the Cold Gate, her gaze now calculating.

  “We move closer,” she said to Gabaran. “Hold on to my shoulder.”

  Gabaran did so without question and she grabbed Dehil and Jaeger’s arms and held tight. Fire slithered, coating her sleight frame in roiling heat waves and ghostly flames. She spun on her heel, twisted, and leaped.

  Time slowed until all sense of it vanished.

  Sky and earth wheeled away, swapping places as gravity failed.

  Dark and light clashed, up became down, and all the stars in the cold universe spun in place.

  Reality rushed back all too soon.

  They stumbled to a halt on top of the Cold Gate hundreds of yards away. Panting, Emaranthe released their arms and the last tendrils of ghostly fire retreated. The males groaned in unison. Gabaran’s large hand squeezed her shoulder and fell away. He was familiar with her fiery teleport ability and no longer dreaded it.

  “Never again,” Dehil muttered. He bent at the waist, hands propped on his knees. “You could have warned us.”

  Emaranthe peered into the narrow gorge beyond the Gate. Only darkness looked back.

  “If I had, you would’ve wasted more time trying to talk me out of it.”

  She reached for her staff and held it at her side for a long moment. The charred shepherd’s crook, cracked, and splintered at the curl, glowed deep red within the ancient wood. Embers, stoked by her Immortal soul, occasionally drifted from the god forged staff to twist and dance on the cold wind.

  “Do we meet them head on, or try to approach unseen?” Emaranthe asked. Dehil frowned at a hot ember as it fluttered between them on a chilly breeze, mere inches from his nose.

  “There is no way to get past them unseen. The road is too narrow. We’d have to climb the mountain ridges,” Gabaran answered. “Too risky.”

  “Then we have no choice, Jaeger.” She glanced up at the blond warrior. “Be prepared if we need a wall of ice to block an escape attempt. Dehil, keep invisible, be our eyes and ears. Gabaran, let’s go have a talk with your sister.”

  Jaeger grinned, but the amusement didn’t reach his eyes. They narrowed, frosty blue, on the snaking, narrow path and he remained silent.

  She exhaled and traded grim looks with Dehil and Gabaran. “Let’s go.”

  She took a step off the Cold Gate into mid air. Just as she moved forward, a staircase of ice erupted out of the ground a hundred feet below and rose up to catch her foot before she could plunge down to the jagged rocks. She threw Jaeger a grateful glance before marching down the steps at a rapid clip. The males followed, taking them two at a time. The bottom of the ravine was darker and, if possible, colder than higher up on the walls and cliffs. The wind rushed through the narrow gap between the cliffs in a bone chilling mix of snow flurries and ice.

  Emaranthe led the way, her petite frame hidden beneath the giant hooded cloak. Her breath fogged the air as she pushed forward, gripping the edges of the frayed indigo wool with gloved hands. The others followed, ready and watchful.

  “Dehil, your turn.” Her teeth chattered from the depths of the hood, barely audible. Dehil nodded and vanished, his form now nothing more than a warping of the air. He slipped away, breaking into a crouching run.

  All but Gabaran followed at a distance, keeping tabs on him by the footprints appearing in the snow quickly covering the stone path. Gabaran lingered behind, keeping an eye on the path behind them.

  “Can you see them yet?” Jaeger asked.

  Emaranthe squinted into the swirling snow. “About a mile, around the next bend. Seven people in total.”

  “Seven? Not a large entourage. That’s odd.”

  “I have a feeling there’s a reason why,” she said. The steady running was harder for one so short. “And we might not like the reason, Jaeger.”

  ***

  “Wait!” Emaranthe slid to a halt. Everyone froze, including Dehil’s out of place footprints. “They approach.”

  A group of seven came into view around the bend. They fanned out to block the narrow path and returned the steely looks. Emaranthe knew when Gabaran approached when seven pairs of eyes slipped past her.

  Silence reigned. A crow cried somewhere. A cold gust of wind teased Emaranthe’s hair into the air.

  Ghostly fire slithered through the strands. Her gaze tamed to unthreatening brown before she pushed passed Jaeger and Dehil and called out over the caw of the crow.

  “You call upon the Tevu-Anat unannounced. State your business.”

  The interlopers remained silent, watchful.

  She studied the group with narrowed eyes. Two males and two females led the entourage, with a third female behind their protective formation. A pair of figures trailed at the rear, a great war drum held silent between them and at the ready.

  None of the interlopers bore arms, but what was surprising was the depth of their Immortal powers. The energy field radiating from just the four Guardians at the fore was enough to make her take a closer look.

  The two males, both Earthlanders, stood at the center of their flesh shield. Their similar size and grim looks of patience were enough for Emaranthe to realize that they were brothers much like Ivo and Jaeger. The older male wore his age well, he had been perhaps 40 or 50 summers before being cursed by immortality. Vivid blue eyes watched her like a hawk from beneath a straggly brown mane and above a graying beard. The younger brother was perhaps just younger, his age also told by the gray threading through his hair and beard. Lighter of hair and still grayer of beard, pale gray eyes studied her in an open attempt to judge her abilities.

  The older looking of the two women was an Earthlander with fair skin and dark brows. The mass of red hair, bright and wild, coiled in a bright, unbound fall to her knees. It was only Emaranthe’s keen eye that noted the threads of burnished silver at the woman’s temples. Brown eyes, wide and guileless, studied her right back. She looked oddly familiar.

  The fourth Guardian was an elven female, Eideili by her sleight frame and twitching ears. Jet black hair slipped to her waist and did nothing to hide ear tips banded with jewels. Sapphire blue eyes, framed with crow’s feet, stunningly set in her fair skin saw perhaps more than Emaranthe herself did.

  Emaranthe took another step toward the group. She couldn’t see who sought protection behind the four Guardians, though she knew without a doubt that the Lady Ishelene stood waiting for them to make the first move.

  “Speak or be spoken against,” Dehil shouted. The cliff walls bounced his harsh words back and forth until the uneasy silence reigned again. “Ishelene of The Unknown City hides behind her Guardians?”

  The four Guardians shifted uneasily. Their gazes darted about the narrow ravine as if in search of hidden foes. When none charged they stepped aside to reveal the Lady Empress herself.

  Ishelene, long hidden in the gilded halls of The Unknown City as a founder of The Unknown Sun, had come to the frozen north. She stepped forward, her bold stare lingering and meeting each of theirs.

  Dehil asked, “Lady Ishelene, what is your purpose here at Anat?”

  Ishelene’s eyebrow arched. Her face, an older, more mature version of Sesti’s, had none of her daughter’s charming, if alarming, frankness. Cold, calculating blue eyes pierced Dehil with a glare that should have burned holes into his skin before skipping past him to glare at her brother.

  She marched forward and the Guardians fell into formation behind her, keeping pace. They halted only feet from Emaranthe, Jaeger, and Dehil. Behind the trio, Gabaran remained silent, his vivid gaze on his sister.

&nb
sp; His growl made the hair on Emaranthe’s neck prickle.

  “You walk into my world now, sister, be mindful of your words for their price may be too high for you to pay,” Gabaran warned.

  Emaranthe studied Ishelene from the shadows of her hood. Branded as the Empress to the elves by her own words, she carried that banner through the years before The Unknown City was completed and their army of Immortals organized. The three leaders had sat on their thrones and enjoyed wielding the gifts of others while setting no example of their own. In fact, until recently, none of the them had ever used their Immortal gifts in public. The secrecy had been often unwelcome.

  “I come with information, brother.” Ishelene sneered.

  “What is this information?” Jaeger shifted uneasily at Emaranthe’s elbow. His fingers curled on the semi-visible handle of his axe. The Guardians mirrored his motions and bookended the elf leader in unsubtle warning.

  Ishelene glared down at him. As a Tevu elf she stood taller than him, barely. She met his frosty blue glare but paused, noting the icy blue swirls within. “You are bold, Earthlander. What is your name?”

  Jaeger stiffened. His jaw worked for a moment. “I am Jaeger, brother to Ivo, son of Veriuc of the eastern sea peoples of Saro-Shir.”

  “Your eyes. They are unusual, like my brother’s, and the Child of Fire,” she said. She tilted her head and length black hair swished against a fur layered dark green robe.

  “Lady Ishelene speak your peace and leave,” Emaranthe broke in. “We do not seek a battle of wits, weapons, or words with you and your people.”

  “Child of Fire, you know nothing of what you seek or why. I come bearing warning and counsel.”

  Gabaran’s scowl mirrored Dehil and Jaeger’s.

  “Then speak and be gone, sister. I have little patience for your brand of wit.”

  Ishelene’s sneer faded. “I know what you seek, but you know not what it is nor why you must find it, brother,” she said. “We have much to discuss and little time. Where are the others?”

  “The Loremaster’s Library.” Emaranthe chose her words carefully. She had a hunch about what had drawn the icy empress to Anat. “We have The Book of Gods.”

  Ishelene stared at Emaranthe, stunned. “No!”

  “Was it real, Ishelene? What I saw?”

  “Child of Fire, it was as real as it gets. You have The Book of Gods, the path to knowledge that we seek. Where is it?” Ishelene said, her face ashen. Her voice cracked. “Please, it’s vital. Far more than you realize.”

  “I am the one who found this Book of Gods, Mother,” Sesti’s sharp voice rang out from the darkness behind them. She stalked out of the foggy shadows, her lips pressed thin and brows drawn.

  “Sestiravi.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Sesti, why are you here? The others need you,” Emaranthe asked. “Did something happen?”

  Gabaran slipped behind Jaeger to keep Sesti from pushing past them to take the quiet rage burning in her dark blue eyes out on her mother–though he was not sure why he bothered. Dehil and Jaeger traded frowns and Gabaran, silent and watchful, eyed his sister and niece askance.

  Too many tales to be told, too many truths to unravel. Gabaran didn’t know what to believe or why. His arms, crossed before his chest, rose and fell with his steady, too calm breathing.

  His gaze narrowed on his twin.

  Ishelene studied the daughter she had not seen in a thousand years. A daughter she had, Gabaran knew, willingly abandoned for her higher purpose.

  Sesti explained softly to everyone. “The library has flooded now. Ivo and Jadeth seek a way to get to the place.”

  No one moved for a long moment. Sesti remained tense and unyielding, her gaze hard on her mother, her chin high.

  The older Tevu Immortal stood in silence studying her only daughter. Gabaran watched the emotions cross his sister’s face but he was unable to read her. He frowned.

  “Why did the book show me what it did?” Emaranthe asked. She tipped her head sideways as if studying a problem. Her eyes narrowed on Ishelene in a familiar gesture that almost made Gabaran smile.

  “It shows us only what we need and when. It is but a tool. You must take me to it. I will explain all I can now that I know what you know,” Ishelene replied, her focus now on Emaranthe.

  Jaeger opened his mouth, shut it, and tried again. “How in the name of The Four would you know what Emaranthe saw in the book? She hasn’t spoken of it to us yet.”

  Gabaran’s lips tightened. He knew how. He didn’t have to be an Immortal to discern some of the abilities of them. He shot a glare at the Eideili Guardian standing at his twin’s right hand. She glared right back.

  “Because I know what it is and what she was searching for within it.”

  Jaeger ground out, “We can’t trust you. You destroyed your own home, the faith of your own people, and abandoned them to a fate of exile.”

  Ishelene turned to the warrior, her gaze colder than the snow riding the wind.

  “I did not choose this life, warrior. I did not choose to be Immortal,” she sneered. A cold wind whipped through the narrow canyon tossing snow and hair into the air. “I did not want what had happened to my people, both here and in my home world.”

  “Yet you let it happen. And our world paid for it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘home world’, sister,” Gabaran growled at last, his patience done.

  “I will only explain it once, brother, and not here,” Ishelene snapped. She spun to face the Guardians at her side.

  “Echara, lead them to Isid. Gather any other survivors and wait word. We will need everyone we can find to win this war.”

  The tall dark haired Eideili elf bowed and led the others back to the drummers. Together they vanished into the howling white without a word.

  “What are you doing?” Gabaran asked.

  “What needs to be done, brother.”

  Her gaze swept the cold ramparts, towers, and terraces created by the Windwalkers millennia before. Her frown deepened to match Gabaran’s as he turned to lead the way.

  ***

  The sound of feet echoing through the passageway jerked Ivo to attention. He caught sight of Emaranthe. Their gazes locked until she could push through to reach him.

  Ivo crushed the petite mage against his broad chest, the feeling all the more surreal with the lack of armor between them. Heart to heart, they clung to each other in a long, silent moment of relief.

  His voice cracked when he spoke into her ear. “What is going on? What took you so long?”

  Against the firm muscles of his chest, her heart jerked. Her breath hitched, an inhale of terror that drove daggers into his heart. He reluctantly released her, letting her slim, womanly body slide to the waterlogged floor. He didn’t remove his arms.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  A stranger stood before the statues. Dancing shadows caused by the handful of lit braziers encircling the room cast her cool features into relief.

  It took him another moment to recognize her.

  Ishelene.

  His gaze picked out Gabaran, standing at the doorway, his scowl a brewing thunderstorm, his starlit gaze pinned on the female.

  “Ivo, they’re twins.” Jadeth appeared at his elbow, her face tense in the flickering light. “Ishelene is Gabaran’s sister.”

  Ivo saw. He also saw no trace of Sesti.

  To his surprise, and apparently everyone else’s, Ishelene dropped to her knees at the foot of the giant statues. Icy water soaked through her richly layered gown as she bowed low. Her forehead touched the chipped stone foot of the figure.

  The silence grew tense.

  “What is going on?” Gabaran’s voice was deadly quiet. For half a heartbeat, no one spoke or breathed.

  Ishelene tipped her face up to the statues, not seeming to have heard her twin’s cold anger. Longing, grief, and fear lingered in her uplifted gaze.

  Ivo roped Emaranthe closer to him, unable to look away. She twitch
ed against him and gasped. His thumb smoothed along her side until she relaxed into him.

  “Ivo, the statues,” she whispered for his ears only.

  Ivo squeezed her lightly to acknowledge that he’d heard and shifted to see the tall stone figures better in the dim light. His skin crawled as he noted the same thing Emaranthe must have.

  The statues’ eyes were glowing.

  “What. Is. Going. On?” Gabaran roared. The sound echoed throughout the room. He stalked across the waterlogged floor, a growl turning the corners of his lips tight.

  Ishelene stood and faced her twin’s rage with cold grief.

  “It is time,” she said as he halted before her. “For you to know the truth.”

  “What truth, sister?” he sneered.

  “The one you won’t want to hear, I’m afraid.” Ishelene reached out a hand and touched the hewn stone. It crumbled at her touch. She pulled back, an odd grief lingering in the slow motion.

  Sesti stalked through the doorway and halted behind her uncle, her gaze locked on her mother.

  “Mother, you honor the old gods still?” Her mouth twisted at the irony.

  Ishelene’s gaze slipped past her brother as if he wasn’t there and settled on her only child.

  “Yes. I do, daughter. For they are part of the truth few will want to hear.”

  “What is this truth you speak of? What did you do to the statues?”

  Ishelene ignored her daughter’s question. “Truth is a fickle thing. It is only held true if there are facts and proofs.”

  Sesti’s eyebrows matched Ivo’s now.

  “I have none,” Ishelene said. Her hand rested on the massive stone foot once more, her fingers bent as if to caress it. She ignored the tome resting in the cupped stone hands. “But I can tell you that I do not lie. It is up to each of you to choose to believe it or not.”

  “You know of The Four and their choice to create Immortals in their images to battle an evil unleashed on this world,” she said. “There is far more to that story, however, and it begins with a race of people, on the brink of annihilation, in a far away world.”