Exiles & Empire

by Cheryl S Mackey

  The hammer. Jadeth wondered how this other red headed elf had come to possess it and why.

  Her jaw ached from the strain to hold back a torrent of questions, but Jadeth retreated. And waited. And watched.

  Jawyna lifted the hammer and a familiar green ribbon of light erupted from its blunt, two sided head. Tears swam, blurring the odd scene into a miasma of white and green, as the healing light wrapped around the damaged bones and feathers of the Windwalker. Bones straightened, feathers revived, and slowly the Windwalker breathed easier.

  Jawyna let the hammer drape over her shoulder in a pose that was strikingly familiar. Jadeth resisted the urge to mimic her and instead forced her attention on her mother and Mareva.

  The Windwalker stood and shook out her wings with a relieved exhale. The wingspan was far greater than that of the tiny clearing and Jadeth had to duck once more.

  With a frown, she waited to see what would happen next. Seeing her mother as well as two Immortals, one bearing the very same hammer she now held in her hands, was nothing short of awe inducing. And terrifying.

  Jadeth erased the tears with a shaky hand and waited. The threesome now huddled close together, Mareva’s wings providing a protective and private shelter from both the wind and prying eyes.

  Just as Jadeth had grown too impatient to be cautious and stepped away from the rock outcropping, their hushed voices fell silent. Jadeth froze, startled, when the gap between the two spires of rock beside her hiding spot erupted into a spiral of fire and lightning. Jadeth ducked back into the shadows, squinting from the sudden flare of arcane light.

  The air rippled and whirled as it spread, until it spiraled into a large, oval ring framed by the stones. The center remained swirling, static laced, opaque as the three females turned to face the newly opened portal.

  “She’s here,” Mareva said. Her wings snapped shut, blasting icy air into Jadeth’s eyes. She blinked and rubbed them until the need to see what was going on outlasted the sting.

  The portal continued to swirl another moment longer before the center cleared and the warped, shimmery light within rippled with some unseen motion. Through the portal walked a tall, willowy Earthlander female, her riotous red curls blasted into the air by the force of the magic.

  Tanari.

  Jadeth gaped at the statuesque god.

  “Mareva, Jawyna, Esbetha.” Tanari halted, mere inches from the swirling vortex of the portal. A gust of sleet laden wind muffled the three female’s responses. Frantic to hear more, anything, Jadeth scooted closer, one hand on her hammer, the other buried in the wrist deep snow.

  “What is the news?” Esbetha asked. “We have heard nothing from the Earthlander delegation. I fear for them.”

  “The Dro-Aconi’s reach grows long, as you know.” Tanari nodded to Mareva. The Windwalker flicked her wings in a helpless shrug. “The Southern Skyfall Citadel is hidden, safe. Only Mareva and her brother remain here of their people.”

  Esbetha frowned. “What of the…others?”

  Mareva swung on the Eideili elf, wings snapping wide. They trembled.

  “We do not count them as our people, Esbetha. They are lost to us. The Dro-Aconi has done his dirty work and made puppets of my people.”

  “We must stop them. They continue to swarm and kill in his name.”

  “Esbetha,” Tanari warned. “Enough.”

  “No, Tanari. We have a right to know! Our village is small, defenseless. We hide in our forests and wait. We need to stop them!”

  “The time for that will come, Esbetha,” Jawyna interrupted. “I have hope.”

  Esbetha shrugged away from the Tevu’s outstretched hand, her shoulders hunched. Fear clouded her eyes.

  “I don’t have time, Jawyna,” she whispered.

  Tanari’s sharp gaze landed on the elf with the indigo and auburn braid.

  “What do you mean, Esbetha?”

  Jadeth crept closer as the howl of the snow laden wind increased, drowning out the clarity of the stunning words. Heart beating faster than the wind, she waited for her mother to speak.

  Tears dulled Esbetha’s blue eyes. She shook her head.

  “Anaroth was killed last night. He never made it back from the council meeting in the east. Dehil found him late last night.”

  A chorus of gasps, Jadeth’s included, filled the snowy clearing.

  “Father?” Jadeth swallowed. She hadn’t thought of him in years. She had never been close to him, few Eideili daughters were. She ducked deeper into the shadows, mind reeling.

  Now that she had a time frame, she knew when this odd meeting happened. She even remembered her mother returning home for the Lamentation…but she had not known that it had been Dehil who had discovered her father’s corpse.

  This was just a hundred years after The Fall. The first hundred years had been chaotic and full of disorganized fury. The Immortals had clashed with the mortals and the Tainted in confusion and panic, and thousands were killed on all sides before Rodon, Ishelene, and Atil had gathered up all the lost Immortals and founded The Unknown Sun as a way to control the chaos and realize the purpose of The Four.

  It had taken decades, hundreds of years, to fully bring The Unknown Sun to the forefront of the battles with their unseen and unknown enemy and their enslaved armies and become the voice of The Four to bring order to the chaos.

  “They didn’t know that they’d fallen into the Dro-Aconi’s plans all along,” Jadeth muttered. “Rodon planned this all from the beginning.”

  She eyed Tanari. Had the mysterious god known as Light known? How had she become the whispers in wind for the Tevu? For the Windwalkers. For the Eideili?

  The god turned as if hearing her thoughts. Her gaze bored into the shadows and locked with Jadeth’s. Instead of acknowledging her unwarranted and most likely unwanted presence, the god simply glanced down.

  Jadeth’s gaze followed in time to see Tanari’s fingers twine around a scrap of white cloth.

  The cloth from the desert sandstorm outside of Shed-Akr. Behind her, the portal swirled in a blur of fire and shadow before sharpening on a single moment in time.

  Chaos.

  Death.

  Blood.

  Cries.

  Jadeth watched the image bob and weave through a crowd of people as if she were using someone else’s eyes. Maybe she was. She certainly couldn’t look away. Numb with horror, Jadeth watched the gory scene play out in the glades of a familiar forest as if she’d not seen it once before, long ago.

  Her mother appeared at the tail end of a throng of fleeing elves, her face ashen, her eyes wild. Blood and mud streaked her once pale blue tunic and leggings. Her long dark braid, laced with scarlet, bounced in time to her swift feet. Esbetha screamed into the crowd ahead of her, the words lost in the chaos.

  But Jadeth remembered, and her mother’s words still haunted her all these years later.

  Jadeth! Run, Jadeth! Hide!

  Cold grief twisted her stomach as the image swung around at the strident cry and another figure darted into view. Dehil, his face stark with panic, his dark hair tangled with the gore of fallen friends and family, stumbled to a halt, weaponless and witless. As she watched, yet again, Dehil turned tail and ran, turning to the shadows of the deep forests and away from his people. She heard her own voice then, younger, higher pitched with fear and tears.

  “Dehil! Dehil! Mother! Where are you?”

  Jadeth curled into the ball, her eyes pinched shut. The cold stone and snow was nothing to the pain of what was in her memories and that portal.

  She didn’t need to look at it. She remembered it quite well. She spotted her mother at last among the throng of escaping Eideili and had struggled against the tide of bloodied bodies to reach her. Her mother, struggling at the back of the pack, helping those too wounded to run, stopped to call out for Jadeth one last time.

  The mutilated, twisted, creature leading the pack grab for her mother. She watched the disgusting Tainted’s spear-like nails pierce her mother’
s slender frame and emerge, bloodied and tangled in gore, from her chest and stomach, then snap free with a splash of blood and guts.

  Esbetha only uttered one more gurgling sentence that Jadeth, in her tears and terror, could make out over the screams of her dying people.

  Find it in the chest. Take it. It was always…yours.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jadeth’s sobs broke free. Not even the sleet laden wind could hide her now. Tears hundreds of years in the making streaked down her numbed cheeks.

  She choked out, “Oh, gods. Mother. You knew.”

  Snow crunched. Footsteps. Jadeth peered up at the red-headed god through a veil of tears.

  “Yes, she knew.”

  “Why? Why did she have it, Tanari? She knew I’d find the hammer in the chest, knew what I would do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she know I would become this?” Jadeth slapped her palm over her breast with a moan.

  Tanari nodded, her lips thinned with sorrow.

  “How? When?” Jadeth asked. Her burning gaze studied the others now standing immobile in the snowy clearing. “What’s happening?”

  They were unmoving, frozen, but not from the cold. A shimmering dome of light encased them. Jadeth’s spine stiffened. She recognized that barrier.

  “What must. Good bye, Jadeth.”

  Tanari turned away, her shoulders stiff and unyielding, but not from the cold.

  Atil’s voice, one Jadeth might not have ever recognized before the fateful night they had received their orders to locate a map, rang out over the mountain tops. Large brown wings filled her vision as he landed with a thud. His wings snapped shut. The sleet laden wind churned and swirled in a cloud of fog and ice. The shimmering barrier between the others and Jadeth evaporated.

  Empty eye sockets fixated on Jadeth. She shrank away from his unearthly glare. Finally he rounded on Tanari.

  “They’re coming, we’re out of time.”

  Tanari turned to Jadeth one last time, her scarlet hair tangling into the sleet laden wind. Jadeth’s shocked gasp was lost in its howl.

  Tanari’s eyes were empty orbs and within wheeled all the universes in all the worlds. Tiny pricks of light swirled and spun. Galaxies rotated and stars flared to life and died in glory. Her voice, hollow with the weight of all the ages, echoed off the cold stone cliffs.

  “Go, Jadeth. It is our time now. Yours is coming. Remember who you are. The others must do the same. Use this tome as a guide on your quest for the Crown of Gods. As you have seen, it will show you the knowledge you seek but only when you need it. You must use it wisely.”

  Jadeth’s tears burned hot against her skin. Her ears flicked wildly. Torn between this last chance to see her mother one more time and the knowledge that this was but a piece of the past that had already come to pass, she hesitated, then nodded.

  Shrieks and the flapping of many wings from high above drowned out all sounds.

  A swift motion beyond Tanari and Atil caught her eye. She watched Jawyna shove the giant hammer into a stunned Esbetha’s arms and push her bodily at the still open portal. Her words filled the screech laden air.

  “Go Esbetha! Run! You will give it to me later! Run!”

  Her mother cast one last desperate glance at Jawyna and toppled through the spiraling glow. It popped shut behind her with a blast of heat and fire. Between the twin stones the fog lifted, giving everyone a stunning view of a distant Citadel perched amid stone and ice.

  Jadeth stared at the empty spot, heartsick, then at the elf who now turned to face the incoming horde weaponless, powerless.

  “Why did she give my mother the hammer? She’s defenseless now.”

  Those endless eyes bored into Jadeth’s sapphire ones.

  “She gave it to the one who would need it more, Jadeth.”

  “But, why did…”

  Tanari turned away from Jadeth, now concerned about the approaching battle instead of the teary eyed elf.

  The gray fog rolled in again, swift and blinding. The chilly mist and rasp of sleet sent a shiver of fear up Jadeth’s spine. Blind again in the whiteness, the sounds of battle reached her ears as if they were distant and muffled.

  The roiling white darkened until the urge to blink grew strong. Her eyes flicked shut and then opened to see a ring of concerned faces surrounding her.

  Dehil’s face hovered the closest, his worried, scarred, and age lined face so very different than the once young elf she had loved and blamed all those years ago.

  Against her will, a sharp sob tore from her, a howl not unlike a wounded animal.

  The Library, The Present

  “You saw your past self and your mother,” Emaranthe whispered. “I’m so sorry Jadeth.” Everyone wore the same look of shock.

  “And you saw Atil’s twin sister. Mareva was killed that day. Atil never said what had happened to her. He came back a broken man,” Ishelene added. Her face was void of emotion in the flickering lamplight. “The only survivor that I know of. He would never tell me more than that. I do not even know where that was.”

  “Tanari,” Gabaran croaked, his face ashen in the faint light of the illusions. “What happened to her?”

  Jadeth swallowed the thick lump that choked her throat shut at the sight of his shuttered, hopeful, gaze. The twin sparks of light in his eyes had faded with dread.

  “I don’t know. She sent my mother away through a portal that formed between the stones. I was released from the book and never saw what happened next. I’m so sorry, Gabaran.”

  Gabaran grunted and turned away. He faded into the shadows where Dehil stood in watchful silence again.

  “The book showed you the answer we needed. Two stones forming a portal.” Ishelene moved to the tome and stared at it, puzzled. “And you could not tell where you were, Jadeth?”

  “Not exactly. It was a cold mountain top. I think I saw this place for a split second before I returned, but I cannot be sure.”

  “What is Orin-Iad?” Jaeger asked. His frosty gaze lingered on Ishelene.

  Ishelene frowned at the warrior. “Orin-Iad is…was… the southern citadel of the Windwalkers. It rose to glory long ago in the southern-most mountain range at the same time as this one. Unlike Anat it never fell to the Dro-Aconi.”

  Jadeth’s ears twitched. “Wait, Mareva had said that Orin-Iad was hidden. What did she mean by that?”

  “She meant what she said. She, Tanari, and Atil, had hid the citadel far from Rodon’s grasp. With it went many Windwalkers, I presume. To where we don’t know and may never will, but they are safe and have been for nine centuries.”

  “What about the Crown of Gods? If these stones are portals we can use them to get to it, correct?” Jaeger asked.

  “I believe so. That is what the book was telling Jadeth.”

  “Can you tell us again what you saw of the surrounding mountainside? Mayhap we can recognize its location?” Jaeger asked Jadeth.

  Jadeth hesitated.

  “I was in a small clearing, very high up, at nearly the cloud line. There were many rocks, but just the two largest jutted up at the edge of the cliffside overlooking the spires of rock and trees. The mountain rose steeper still above me along a ridge, and there was a narrow, winding path that vanished into the clouds.”

  Sesti jumped in, eyes narrowed. “And you glimpsed the Citadel from across the valleys? Was it perched higher, lower, or about the same height as the stones?”

  “About the same height, but a little far away.”

  “How far? Could you see detail or was it just the basic shape of the towers and terraces?”

  “Just the basic shape.”

  “Where were the suns in the sky?”

  Jadeth flipped a soggy braid into her mouth and chewed. Her gaze grew vague as she struggled to recall.

  She spit it out. “It was cold and growing colder. I could only see one, the bigger sun, and it was sinking. It appeared to be sinking to the right of the Citadel and the stones.”

  “Then
we look northwest. If there is a trail, we can find it.”

  “So be it,” Gabaran said, arms crossed. “But what about Rodon and his army? We must have some sort of defense should he appear with war on his mind.”

  Dehil stepped out of the shadows and bowed low. His dark skin and the shadows did little to hide the gruesome scar.

  “I will stay and assist the Tevu,” he said. “This is my calling.”

  Jadeth’s face drained of color, but she clamped her mouth into a tight line and nodded when he slipped passed her. No one commented on the pained gaze that remained on the doorway after he’d left.

  “You, my twin, are now the problem,” Ishelene said at last.

  “How so sister?” Gabaran scowled at her. His odd eyes flared bright giving weight to her next words.

  “You should not be mortal, but you are,” she explained. “The journey may kill you.”

  “So be it. I will find her, Ishelene, and once and for all find out what is going on.”

  “Very well.”

  She gave her brother a look that he scowled at.

  He grunted, “We leave at first light to locate these portal stones. Rest while you can. Dehil will have watch from here on out.”

  “What about the book?” Jaeger asked.

  “It will go with us,” Ishelene said. “We may need it in the end. Sesti, as you have demonstrated that you can bear it without burden, you are now its keeper.”

  Sesti grabbed the book without hesitation and stowed it into a nondescript travel bag not so carefully emptied of its previous owner’s junk.

  Everyone shuffled away to find something to lean on. Rest would not come to the weary so easily, however, and instead they found themselves huddled around a brazier in one corner of the library.

  ***

  The roiling clouds did nothing to suppress the uneasy feeling that crept along Rodon’s spine. Even the darkest reaches of the night in The Unknown City weren’t dark. The glint of yellow metal gracing all of the city was now an annoyance. Thunder rumbled, distant still.