When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  As Rialla beckoned, Elenai perceived a lightening of the horizon. The sun was on its way. She turned her mount toward Rialla, and Gemon responded easily, even though approaching the strangest figure he was likely ever to have sensed. N’lahr rode with her, and the two Naor leaders came after. From the three dozen members of the Altenerai force, Varama and Kyrkenall cantered forward.

  N’lahr swung down before the short figure and Elenai dropped beside him. Vannek and Muragan moved closer but remained seated on their restive horses, while Elenai’s and N’lahr’s exhaled loudly, seemingly to express distaste at their larger cousin’s ill manners.

  Rialla returned their salute. “Hail, Altenerai.” Her voice, while synchronized with the movement of her lips, didn’t seem to emanate from her, but rather echoed in Elenai’s mind.

  Elenai and N’lahr answered as one. “Hail.”

  Rialla’s gaze passed over the pair of Naor, watching with wary awe. “Greetings, Naor.”

  Vannek only stared; Muragan bowed his head with great formality.

  Varama and Kyrkenall reined in, the archer dropping from his saddle before his horse came to a full stop.

  Rialla didn’t acknowledge them. Her high brow was furrowed as she scanned the distant group. “Where is Lasren?”

  “He was killed by the queen,” N’lahr answered.

  Rialla sounded troubled. “He was here the last two times.”

  “Two times?” Elenai asked. Did she mean that this had happened twice before, and she didn’t have a memory of it?

  “Was he necessary for victory?” Varama asked.

  Rialla ignored Elenai’s question and replied to Varama. “We’ve yet to succeed, so I cannot say. But none of my adjustments should have impacted his actions. This worries me.”

  Varama agreed. “It suggests the existence of a greater degree of random result even when the same individuals are presented with nearly the same options.”

  “I’m afraid so, Alten.”

  Though the women looked very different, they communicated in a similar, clipped manner.

  Rialla held a hand to Varama. “Four times,” she said. “You usually ask. And, yes, you can watch, but I do not have time to teach you. I taught Cerai because I was trying to drain power from the battlefield, but that didn’t work.” Turning to N’lahr, she said, “The disposition of the queen’s forces has always been the same.”

  “It seems you can anticipate our questions well,” N’lahr said as Elenai was trying to work out what that middle part meant. It had been about portals, she guessed.

  “You’ve asked them before. Kyrkenall, I will do what I can for Kalandra if we get through the battle.”

  Though this statement confused Elenai it must have made eminent sense to Kyrkenall, who raised a hand in acknowledgment.

  “I must reserve some energy should things go poorly again,” Rialla said. “N’lahr, let Vannek spur forward when the queen flies up.” Before he could answer, she went on, “I will speak to the others, and then we must start.” She winked out of sight.

  “Does this make sense to you, Commander N’lahr?” Vannek asked.

  “Yes. This is just information on the finer details.”

  “Where did she even go?” the Naor general demanded in frustration.

  Kyrkenall pointed back the way they’d come. “Over there.”

  Sure enough, the shining figure had appeared in front of the exalts and squires and was raising one arm to gesture their direction. Elenai noticed someone was now standing with the ko’aye. Rylin, probably.

  “Does she always drop in and out like that?” Vannek asked. “And is she a spirit, or some new kind of witch?”

  “It’s complicated,” N’lahr said.

  Vannek looked even less satisfied by that answer than he had been a moment before.

  Kyrkenall spoke up. “There’ll be time to explain if we win this. And not much point if we don’t.”

  Vannek took a breath as if to say more, then closed his mouth. “Enough talk then. Let’s get to the battle.”

  11

  The Blood of Paradise

  The portal swirled into existence at ground level thirty feet below, just to the right of the ghostly alten. Rylin kept his eyes upon it even as Lelanc turned in the air beneath him, the russet-colored feathers of her tapering wings smoothed flat by the wind.

  The hole broadened swiftly from a strange violet disk to a pulsating circular gateway wide almost as the entry to Darassus. Disturbingly, as they continued in their circle, Rylin saw the portal seemed not to exist when viewed from the rear.

  “It has a wind that is strange,” Lelanc called to him. “I do not like the magic of these tunnels.”

  Rylin patted her back, meaning to reassure. “We’ll travel this road together,” he vowed, voice raised to counter the air rushing past them.

  The small invasion force had lined up behind the hairy Naor land treader in their forefront. At N’lahr’s shouted command, it lumbered toward the magical gateway, lowing in dismay. Rylin spared a glance for the drover and Meria and M’vai, seated just behind him on benches built into a platform erected on the creature’s back. As the drover shook the reins, the beast put down its head and broke into a charge that kicked up a plume of dust.

  Kyrkenall circled with Drusa in the lightening sky overhead. Rylin glanced up at them, the weight of his own helmet almost unfamiliar after so many battles without it. In the early morning, Drusa’s blue feathers looked almost black, and her white underside nearly gray. Her deep ebon beak, though, gleamed like bronze.

  As Lelanc continued her turn, Rylin saw ranks of Darassan men and women standing on the city walls, outlined by that bright line of gleaming gold on the eastern horizon, heralding the sunrise.

  The huge Naor beast vanished within the portal. Vannek and his blood mage galloped on their heels. Immediately after came N’lahr and the Altenerai forces, all thirty of them on horseback, disappearing in groups of two. After them ran the Naor infantry.

  In a few moments only three figures remained: ghostly Rialla, Varama, and a squire holding two horses, one for himself and one for Varama, who would be passing through as soon as she finished observing Rialla’s spell.

  “Follow me!” Kyrkenall roared. Drusa let out a caw and dove for the glowing portal.

  Lelanc followed. As his ko’aye friend shifted in the air, Rylin held tight to the saddle horn, his stomach lurching in a familiar and not unwelcome rush of excitement.

  Kyrkenall and Drusa dove into the upper third of the large opening, lit by its violet glow. The moment they passed within, their forms snapped forward so that both appeared to have moved a quarter mile in a single breath.

  Lelanc dropped lower, and lower yet, until they were only a spearlength above the ground. She flapped once to correct herself, seeming nervous about centering on the tunnel. Rylin raised his shining ring in salute as they neared Rialla and Varama, and then they had swooped inside.

  He’d been told what to expect, but he still hadn’t fully imagined what the portal would be like. He took in a nervous breath and discovered the tunnel’s air was thin and cool. Cliffs and plains flashed by to left and right, now dark, now light, as if they looked upon the Shifting Lands through a moving window. Kyrkenall, on Drusa’s back, looked impossibly far ahead. The archer was a black blot perched upon a line that was Drusa’s extended wings.

  Sound was muted. Lelanc shrilled another cry, and the strange conditions magnified and distorted the noise so that it left Rylin crinkling his face in discomfort.

  He was about to ask her to quiet down when they soared out into an idyllic twilight land where the rim of the sun sank beyond a line of hills. Once again they were near Drusa and Kyrkenall, rising swiftly above the long grasses. Lelanc fell silent at last and beat her wings with great force so they climbed after.

  Ahead of them the great Naor beast thundered straight for a giant wooden scaffolding. The head of the immense crystalline statue it supported caught the failing light and spr
ayed rainbow shadows across the hills.

  Their little army raced toward their appointed targets, the mounted troops making for the farther twin hills to the left while the foot soldiers rushed the nearer hill to the right.

  The Naor beast roared and hit the immense statue.

  Just before the moment of impact, Meria and M’vai dropped from the animal, and Rylin didn’t have to be watching through the inner world to see that they used magic to slow their descent, the drover borne between them. As the twins touched gently down with the Naor warrior, the land treader slammed its head into the huge crystalline icon.

  The hearthstone Goddess rocked backward into the scaffolding and then fell with it and struck the earth with a thunderous crash. Its arm and head broke free and one leg cracked in half. Hundreds of hearthstone shards caught the light as they flew in from every direction. The scaffolding toppled with the statue and broken lengths of wood tumbled through the air.

  The magical backlash swept up from the fallen stones and splashed against the poor land treader like a silver wave. In a heartbeat the great beast’s forward quarter was encased in a crystalline prison. Rylin knew a stab of pity as its back legs scrabbled for purchase before they stilled, overrun with crystal, encasing it like melted wax. Even anticipated, the creature’s fate was ghastly to witness.

  The enemy exalts and aspirants struck from the three nearest hillsides. Two of the queen’s people sent blue fire lancing from extended hands, blasting onrushing squires from their saddles. Other magic proved less visible, for charging Naor troops dropped yards from gesturing exalts, no outward sign of damage upon them.

  Elenai led a charge up one of the two hills assigned to cavalry, sword high, shouting the old cry: “Strike as one!”

  Only then did Rylin recall that he had once wished to serve under a vigorous warrior queen like the great Altenara, and smiled, for his dream had come true without him realizing it. Elenai bore down upon a pair of exalts, guiding her mount with legs alone. She turned a sword blow from one, then deflected a crackling red-white energy spike with her off hand.

  Lelanc turned and he could no longer watch. The ko’aye flew out of the setting sun, shrunk to a mere sliver, her goal a band of exalts on the closer hill. Rylin’s first spear toss caught the foremost spell caster, a pale man who hadn’t bothered to pull on his khalat. It was his last mistake, for the spear went straight through him. His spell sparked uselessly in his fingers as he writhed out his life in the grass.

  Lelanc soared on. Rylin’s ring lit, and he felt dim impulses to flee or surrender. Multiple exalts had targeted him, their assault backed by hearthstones, opening brightly in the grasses to his right, but their power was countered by that of the Altenerai sapphires, working in concert.

  “Did you feel that?” Lelanc called back to him. “It was like the mind stealing Cerai did to me!”

  Pained fury rang in her voice. He touched her side. “Your mind is safe with me,” he shouted. His ring would protect Lelanc almost as well as himself.

  They passed over a beautiful reflecting pond lined with statues. On the southern hill, N’lahr rode through a knot of defenders, effortlessly driving them back with his flashing, deadly blade. Muragan and Vannek were only a half horselength behind. Kyrkenall flew past to shoot two exalts who’d thrown fire.

  Thelar slowed his horse at the side of Meria and M’vai, already advancing into the field of hearthstones and the immense sections of the fallen Goddess statue. They were pointing the aspirants to work as Varama and a single squire galloped up from the rear.

  Lelanc banked, cawing in confidence. So far it looked like a rout. Careful planning, guided by Rialla’s scouting, seemed to have worked for them. The hearthstone statue was shattered and the queen’s followers were either surrendering or dying, overmatched and outnumbered. But where was the queen?

  So far Rylin hadn’t seen Rialla, either. Or Tesra, but he was glad for that. He wasn’t sure he could attack her, nor did he want to see her fall. N’lahr had told them that they should spare lives when possible, but not to risk themselves to do it, for these people would be trying to kill them.

  The queen was his true target. N’lahr had appointed him and Kyrkenall to neutralize enemy mages until they saw her rise into the air.

  The mages on their side were advancing through the hearthstones, shutting them down. Elenai cantered down from a hilltop to join them.

  Something popped up on the edge of his field of vision. He turned to find the queen suspended in the air. She opened her arms, and a hundred more of the hearthstones brightened.

  “There she is,” Rylin cried.

  “I see!” Lelanc called.

  Rylin didn’t need to tell the ko’aye what to do. Already she was banking, moving so the dying sun would be at their back.

  He should have known Kyrkenall would reach Leonara first. Drusa flew in from the side with her head low, and Kyrkenall launched arrow after arrow.

  Not a one of them struck the queen, whose wind gusts sent the shafts spinning uselessly. Drusa flapped, struggling to climb past the buffeting currents.

  Leonara raised her hands as if she intended further mischief, but before she could act, Rialla appeared beside the scattered hearthstones. Rylin didn’t have to see through the inner world to know the lost alten pulled on the queen’s spellthreads, for Leonara dropped like a kite yanked to earth by its master.

  Lelanc finished her turn and dove toward their enemy.

  Leonara flailed as she was dragged toward the ground, finally halting only five feet above it. She drew silvery threads from one of the hearthstones and whipped them at Rialla.

  Their ghostly ally, rooted to the same energies used by the queen, spun up a translucent shield that wavered under the attack. It shuddered like heat haze. Varama and Elenai stood to either side, feeding energy into Rialla’s spell.

  Lelanc’s body rumbled with a repressed urge to cry, but the ko’aye remained silent as they closed on the queen. Rylin tossed his spear and it drove deep into the queen’s side. Success!

  Rialla poured energy at Leonara, who crashed to earth only a few yards from M’vai and Meria.

  Leonara climbed to her feet, shouting in fury. The spear dropped away. No blood flowed; no wound shone. She lifted hands overhead as if she hefted an invisible boulder, and silver lightning gathered above her. Before she could release it, dark-feathered Drusa swept in and Kyrkenall launched another set of arrows. Fierce gusts tore two away, but a third struck above the queen’s collarbone. It drew no more blood than Rylin’s spear, or his blade a few days previous, but the attack spoiled her spell, and the energies were swept away.

  N’lahr and Vannek spurred in from the right, the Naor general leaning out from his mount, sword blade low.

  The queen lashed at them with an expanding scythe of white energy. Their horses dropped on the moment, squealing in pain and fear. N’lahr and Vannek tumbled clear, the commander rolling immediately to his feet. Rylin’s own ring flared, dimmed, then stuttered on and off.

  Elenai shouted in alarm and whipped a loop of blue burning energy at the queen. Leonara raised a hand, and the attack dissolved into blue mist. She returned to her silvery attack upon the commander, and Rylin’s ring blinked once more as N’lahr bore the brunt of her fury. Rylin’s heart thudded in fear for him, now on one knee and struggling to rise, moving like a man bearing a weight through water.

  Lelanc, banking tightly, cawed in fierce joy, for they neared the queen. Rylin threw another javelin. The queen’s shielding wind sent this one spinning. The ko’aye beneath him banked once more and flapped to take them high.

  At a dual onslaught of energies from both Varama and Elenai, the queen turned from N’lahr to rain crystalline energy at them. Rialla’s shield held the attack, then burst into pieces as the spell broke with it.

  Thelar and the twins hurried forward to assist, but Rialla screamed at them to keep shutting down the hearthstones. They backed reluctantly off.

  Drusa had fought the wind
s to dare her closest pass yet, and when Kyrkenall threw his own spear it drove through Leonara’s chest.

  The queen staggered and her hands dropped. Her spells unraveled.

  It was then Vannek reached her, sword upraised.

  Now facing forward as Lelanc lined up for another pass, Rylin witnessed the Naor general’s strike. It was an ideal blow, wielded against an armorless target. The sword sliced just above the arrow shaft protruding from Leonara’s collarbone and sent the head hurtling away. The queen’s body dropped. Little blood fountained from the stump.

  The head struck the ground beside a shining purple hearthstone and then rolled into the grass.

  Lelanc opened her beak and released a cry of delight. Her whole chest shook with it and Rylin joined her in a delighted roar. So great was his exultation that a long moment passed before he noted the incongruity that he celebrated the death of a queen at the hands of a Naor general, and then he laughed, thinking how Vannek would likely lord that over him for the rest of his days.

  Lelanc soared out toward the statues near the reflecting pool and then circled back so Rylin could see the whole of the battlefield. Most of the enemy were down; a handful of the surrendered walked with hands raised, surrounded by squires escorting them toward the reflecting pool. Their own dead were few: There was the beast, encased in crystal. Two squires who lay unmoving. A handful of Naor sprawled and broken at the foot of the hill.

  A shout erupted from a band of Naor above them. “The queen is dead,” one of them called. “All hail Lord General Vannek!” While they began to chant and shake their weapons at the sky, their general stared down at the queen’s body, as if in disbelief.

  Drusa landed beside N’lahr, who’d made it to his feet, and Kyrkenall threw himself out of the saddle with a whoop of joy.

  Rylin smiled to see all this, but his mood ebbed when he saw Varama and the rest of their spell casters working among the hearthstones. He heard Rialla shouting and couldn’t make out her words but the tone was frantic.

  All of the hearthstones lit at once. Those scattered in the grass burned like colored lanterns, those in larger clumps and grouped in recognizable body parts grew into a blinding blaze. Worse, threads of energy swirled up from them in a great spout, as if some invisible force was pulling on all the threads at once and draining them into the sky.