Ascension of Death

by Andy Peloquin

  Issa had spent the last seventeen years dreaming of her parents. Though she’d known they were dead, she had still clung to the hope that they would be reunited in the Long Keeper’s arms.

  Her grandfather’s words had shattered her dreams. Her grandparents had told her that her parents had died, nameless, never spoken of in her presence. It had been a lie. A lie, just like who they truly were. Not simple Earaqi laborers, but Keeper’s Blades, sworn to serve the Long Keeper and Shalandra. Chosen of death, just like her.

  But not her grandparents.

  The woman that had called herself Issa’s Savta, the kind smile that had brightened her life as Aleema wiped away Issa’s tears, bandaged her wounds, and offered the comfort of her boundless love. The man that had been Issa’s rock, a solid bulwark of virtue in a bleak city, a source of strength and honor. The people that she had loved, and who had loved her, more than anyone else in the world.

  She could understand why Aleema and Nytano had made their choices. They’d kept Callista’s secret to protect her, the one they had loved as their own child. Issa could picture herself doing much the same thing.

  But she could not understand Lady Callista’s choice—her mother’s choice—to abandon her.

  “Why?” The hoarse word tore from her lips, hoarse, quiet, ringing with all the pain coursing through every fiber of her being.

  For the first time, the strong, confident Lady Callista, the highest-ranked warrior in Shalandra, commander of armies, champion of the Long Keeper, couldn’t meet her gaze. The Lady of Blades’ eyes remained locked on the table between them.

  “For your sake.” She spoke in a quiet voice. “It was the only way to—”

  “No!” All the anger bottled up deep inside Issa exploded out in that one word. She stepped forward and slammed a clenched fist onto the wooden table. “No more lies, Lady Callista. No more half-truths or evasions. Give me the truth. You owe me that much, Mother.” The word dripped vitriol, an accusation backed by the force of her hurt and fury.

  Lady Callista winced at the vehemence in Issa’s voice. With effort, she lifted her eyes from the table. To Issa’s surprise, tears sparkled there.

  “You think I wanted to give you up?” Lady Callista spoke in a whisper, her voice hoarse with sorrow. “Wanted to have the most beautiful, wondrous, captivating thing I had ever seen ripped from my arms mere hours after your birth?” The Lady of Blades seemed a heartbeat away from collapse, clinging to the stiff chair back to remain upright. “I have sent soldiers marching to certain death. I have executed men and women for doing nothing more than stealing to feed their families. I have stood by and watched as those who followed my orders died to protect me. None of those decisions have ever haunted me as much as the one I made the day you were born.”

  “So why make it?” Issa’s shout rang off the gold-tiled walls of the Council Chamber. “You are the Lady of Blades, the most powerful warrior in Shalandra. Why can you choose to fight for your soldiers, but you couldn’t…” Her voice cracked. “…couldn’t choose to protect me?” The words stuck in her throat. “To love me?”

  Fire blazed in Lady Callista’s eyes. “I never stopped loving you! Never, for a single second, did my love for you fade. Every hour of every day, I wondered where you were, who you were, whether or not you were safe. And I did choose to protect you, the best way I knew how. My mentor and trainer, and his wife. The people that had shown me the meaning of true, unconditional love. My family became yours.”

  “Why?” Again, the question burst from deep within the core of Issa’s being. “If you loved me so much, why would you give me up? How was abandoning me the best way to protect me?”

  “You have seen for yourself what the Keeper’s Council is capable of!” Lady Callista’s jaw muscles clenched. “The depths to which they are willing to stoop to claim more power in Shalandra. I could not risk their using you against me. Against...your father.”

  The Pharus. The revelation that Lady Callista was her mother had struck Issa hardest, and she hadn’t even begun to think of what it meant that she was daughter to Pharus Amhoset Nephelcheres. Everyone knew the Lady of Blades and Pharus despised each other; Issa had seen as much during her few weeks as a Keeper’s Blade. The thought of them together somehow felt even more wrong, more difficult to comprehend.

  Yet Lady Callista’s words confirmed it.

  “He was so young, so inexperienced, yet so determined to right the wrongs of his father’s reign.” Lady Callista spoke in a quiet voice. “I knew from the first moment I met him that he would be a great ruler. But it would be an endless battle to reclaim his city from the Keeper’s Council. And if the Necroseti ever discovered the truth of who you were, they would use you against him. One way or another, they would find a way to turn his love for you as a weapon to wound him, to bring him down.” Tears streamed down her face. “So I did not tell him.”

  Issa’s jaw dropped. “He…doesn’t know?”

  “No.” The Lady of Blades lifted tear-stained eyes to Issa. “I spared him the pain I bear every day. If he had seen you, if he had held you in his arms, he would have fallen hopelessly in love with you. As I did. To have you ripped away would have killed him, as it nearly did me.”

  Removing her gauntlet, she slipped a hand into her armor, beneath her breastplate, and pulled out a wad of cloth. Soft linen of a delicate sky blue, it was just large enough to be used as swaddling or an infant’s blanket.

  “I have carried this with me every day since,” Lady Callista said. “As near to my heart as the memory of your face. You have no idea how many times I nearly abandoned my resolve, threw all caution to the wind and set every Blade in the city to hunt you down, to find my precious daughter.” She unfolded the cloth to reveal four words stitched into the fabric in swirling, elegant black letters. “Until I saw this, remembered what it meant.”

  Issa read the words. “Sword and scepter align.” She looked up at Lady Callista. “What do they mean?”

  A shadow passed across Lady Callista’s eyes. “They are the first words of an ancient prophecy.” She spoke in a solemn voice, reciting words that echoed with a grave note.

  “When sword and scepter align

  The blood of ancients revived

  Child of secrets, child of spirits, child of gold

  Half-master seeks the relic of old

  Then Hallar’s blood shall rise

  And sew the final destruction from midnight eyes.”

  The words echoed in Issa’s mind, ringing off the stone walls, fanning the flames of her anger. “You gave me up…for a Keeper-damned prophecy!” Fury surged within her, and she clenched her fists so tightly her steel gauntlets groaned, the crusted blood staining their metallic surface cracking.

  “The Prophecy of the Final Destruction.” Lady Callista’s face hardened. “Hallar’s prophecy of the day that Shalandra is destroyed. Perhaps all of Einan with it.”

  Sword and scepter align. The four words spun in Issa’s thoughts. The alignment of the Lady of Blades and the Pharus of Shalandra. Their blood, united. In me.

  “You saw what happened when the people believed in Hallar Reborn.” Lady Callista’s voice grew somber. “Aterallis’ death nearly destroyed the city. And that was just a fraction of what the Final Destruction—”

  “A prophecy?” Issa gripped the back of the chair so hard the wood snapped. “Vague words, spoken by a man who died thousands of years ago. And for that, you abandon me?” Her fury turned to disdain, a bitter taste on her tongue. “You are a coward, Lady Callista!”

  Issa spun on her heel and stalked toward the door.

  “Wait, Issa—” Lady Callista called out.

  Issa ignored her. Instead, she flung the door open with enough force to slam it against the wall behind it.

  The moment she stepped into the hall, a shout echoed through the corridors. “Enemies in the palace!”

  Rage flared white-hot in Issa’s chest, fueled her muscles. She tore her sword free of its sheath, snapping the
leather strap holding it to her back, and raced down the hall in the direction of the shout. She had no idea how many enemies she faced, whether they were man, beast, or monstrosity. At that moment, the prospect of any foe was welcome. She needed an outlet for her fury; if she didn’t hit something soon, she might unleash the full weight of her anger at Lady Callista.

  The cry of “For Shalandra!” rang from an adjoining hall, just past the nearest intersection. Issa sprinted down the hallway and barreled around the corner.

  Directly into a scene of horror and death.

  A score of Stumblers were shambling from the secret opening in the wall, their corpse-like flesh defacing the sacred halls of the palace, a filthy wall of flesh, talons, and murderous intent. Four warriors stood between her and the monsters: Evren and Hykos had drawn steel and hurled themselves into battle. Behind them, stumbling down the hall toward her, came two familiar figures clad in the black steel armor of Keeper’s Blades.

  “Nechda!” Relief echoed in her Savta’s voice, but Issa had no time to ask what Killian and Aleema were doing in the palace, nor any desire to examine the cloth-wrapped bundle on Killian’s shoulders. She wanted nothing more than to kill enemies. By the scores, hundreds. To kill and kill until the anguish, bitterness, and rage within her faded or drowned her. It didn’t matter which—all that mattered was that she no longer felt the pain coursing through every fiber of her being.

  Issa raced up the hall and threw herself into the battle against the Stumblers. Evren fell back to give her room to swing her huge sword, and Hykos grunted in acknowledgement of her presence.

  Issa had no words, no greeting. The thrill of the fight washed over her, an alluring siren’s call that drew her into its depths. She lost herself in the red haze of battle.

  Her arms were a blur, her sword a relentless finger of death. She hacked, chopped, and thrust, opening throats, shearing limbs, severing heads, and carving devastation through emaciated bodies. The black steel of her blade grew soaked with crimson, its curving edge thick with gore. Blood sprayed hot and wet across her face, seeped down her neck into the collar of her armor, drenched her padding and undertunic.

  Issa felt none of it. She heard no cries of pain or the Stumblers’ rasping gurgles, only the sound of her heartbeat thundering in her ears.

  A prophecy. The words echoed in her mind, like fuel thrown on the fires of her rage. All in the name of a prophecy.

  Because of the Prophecy of the Final Destruction, Issa had never known her parents. Nytano and Aleema had given her a good life, better than most Earaqi on the Cultivator’s Tier. Yet they could never truly fill the holes in her heart—holes left by the absence of parents.

  She’d tried to be strong, to grow into a warrior that would make her parents proud. Everything she’d done had been in their names, so she could hold her head high when they were reunited in the Sleepless Lands. It had all been a lie.

  A rational part of Issa had no problem understanding Lady Callista’s decision. It was the same choice Hykos had made when he sent her away from the Hall of Bounty to face the battle. The same choice Issa had made when she went to the Hall of the Beyond to arrest Tinush rather than fighting beside her grandparents. Lady Callista had chosen to honor her vows of service to Shalandra and the Pharus above all else. Above her family, above personal desire. She had sworn an oath, and she’d done everything in her power to fulfill it no matter the cost.

  Yet logic faded beneath the storm of her rage. Issa was angry: angry at a decision that Lady Callista had been forced to make because of evil men; angry at the choice itself, even if it was driven by honor and service; angry that she had missed out on her true life, a life as a child with two parents that loved her, because of evil, greedy, cruel men.

  That anger drove her to fight. She was a wall of steel and death, her flammard punching through emaciated flesh, shattering brittle bones, shearing off reaching hands and ghastly heads. She hacked her way through the nearest Stumblers and pushed forward to destroy the rest.

  Stumblers lurched from the Serenii tunnels in twos and threes, a steady stream of monstrosities flooding the palace. Issa welcomed them all. She couldn’t kill the Keeper’s Council whose actions and intentions had forced Lady Callista to give her up, but she could damned sure kill Stumblers. She would continue killing until the anger died.

  She’d run out of Stumblers long before then.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Wait, that’s all you have?” Kodyn looked from Ennolar to Thevoris. “Fifteen Thunderstrikers?”

  The Guardian’s face darkened as he spoke in the silent hand language. “There were fifty sent as a gift from our brothers in Odaron, but the rest are defective, cracked, or damaged.” He pointed down at the dark grey orbs nestled in the straw-filled wooden crate. “These are all that will serve our purposes.”

  “Keeper’s teeth!” Kodyn swore. He strode toward the edge of the roof and peered at the Stumblers amassed below. The two Thunderstrikers Thevoris had dropped into the creatures’ midst had knocked back close to thirty, yet the concussive blast had only killed half a dozen.

  Kodyn’s eyes traced the route they’d have to take to reach safety on the south side of the Temple District. His mind worked, trying to guess the range of the blasts, how much space each would clear. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  “It’s not going to work.” He turned to Ennolar and shook his head. “Not with just fifteen.”

  Ennolar’s brow furrowed. After a moment of contemplation, his frustrated expression told Kodyn he’d come to the same conclusion.

  “We’d need at least five to clear a wide enough path to get the vault door open.” Kodyn pointed to the entrance below. “And we’d have to throw them in pairs of two just to make gaps in the ranks of Stumblers.” He did a few crude calculations in his head. “If we had thirty of them, it might be possible. But just fifteen…” His shoulders knotted. “We’ve got to find another way.”

  Ennolar turned to him, a shadow passing across his eyes. “What do you suggest?” His face twisted as if at a sour taste; clearly he disliked asking Kodyn’s opinion, yet given their current circumstances, he had no choice.

  Kodyn returned his gaze to the surrounding temples. A quick scan of the nearby temples reaffirmed his original belief that their best chance of escape lay across the Artificer’s Courseway, at the Temple of Prosperity. The temple was tall enough that they’d be safe from the Stumblers, yet short enough that gravity would work in their favor. If he somehow managed to get a rope anchored on the temple’s roof, they could slide down the aerial walkway. From there, it would be a short descent into the near-empty alleys.

  “We need to get there.” He thrust a finger toward the roof of the bizarrely-patterned temple. “We’d need a very powerful crossbow, something with enough force to drive a bolt deep into the stone. Something solid to use as an anchor for a rope. From there, we’d just slide across, land on the roof, and climb down onto the streets beyond.” He turned to Ennolar. “Please tell me you’ve got something that can make that shot.”

  Ennolar’s face darkened. “Ours is a house of knowledge and research, not of war.”

  Kodyn racked his brain. Without a crossbow like Handsome’s, there’s no way we can—

  “What’s in the Thunderstrikers?” Hailen’s voice came from beside Kodyn. “What’s causing them to explode like that?”

  All eyes turned to the young boy. “A marvelous black powder,” Ennolar signed, “one which combusts when exposed to a spark. The creation of the ancient Serenii, believed lost to time, recently discovered by our brethren in Odaron.”

  Hailen’s brow furrowed.

  “What are you thinking, Hailen?” Briana asked.

  After a moment of contemplation, Hailen looked up at the Secret Keepers. “What if there was a way that we could control the explosion. Direct it, maybe? Instead of having it make a big explosion—” He mimed it with his hands. “—we do a smaller, channeled one?” His brow furrowed.
“When I was studying with the Cambionari, I read something about a weapon called a Fire Lance, something created during the time of the Serenii. It was like a long, thin pipe made of bamboo or metal that could actually fire short lances really, really far.”

  “Fire Lance?” Ennolar cocked an eyebrow. A strange expression twisted his face, and he turned to Thevoris. “You think that could be what our brothers spoke of when referring to ‘besiegers’?”

  “I could bring it.” Excitement sparkled in the bearded priest’s eyes.

  “Go!” Ennolar’s fingers moved, a new urgency in his hand signals. Thevoris rushed toward the door and disappeared down the stairway.

  Kodyn shot the Arch-Guardian a curious glance. “Besiegers?”

  “Another gift from our brothers in Odaron,” Ennolar signed. “A tool intended to be used in the Pharus’ shalanite mines to speed up the extraction of the ore. But they spoke of crafting them into weapons far more powerful than crossbows, weapons powered by this explosive powder, capable of hurling a projectile over the tallest city walls. Knowing of Tianath’s abilities with minerals, they sent a few of their rudimentary besiegers along with samples of the powder to test.”

  A faint hope dawned in Kodyn’s chest. He had no idea if Hailen’s idea could work, but it was better than hoping for a miracle or waiting for the Stumblers to overwhelm the defenses below.

  Thevoris returned a few moments later carrying a metal pipe. Made of brass, it was thicker than Kodyn’s largest finger and not quite as long as his forearm, with a hollow opening at one end and a steel cap at the other.

  Hailen hurried over to the pipe. “Yes, the hollow end there, that could work!” His voice rose, his expression growing eager and curious. “With the black powder at the base of the pipe, you could insert some sort of extra-long crossbow bolt into it, tie a rope to the head, and the explosion in the pipe could send the bolt hurtling across to drive it into the rock.”