The Vanguards of Scion

by Michael E. Thom

  "This is frivolous misdirection!" proclaimed Nochtli as Beldamor, shaking his silver-painted papier-mâché scepter. "Do you still deny the accusation of rape by Princess Taria of the Imperial House of Valkaia? To lie before the Vizir Priests in trinity is punishable in the next life by fire!"

  "I deny! I have never laid eyes on her to this day, as she is not here to validate her claim. For all I know you have fabricated the entire accusation," said Kazimir as Glorin Baal. He caught glimpse of a recent addition to the audience, a foreign woman of southern fair-skinned decent and wearing a pale gray gown staring at him intently before he turned his back on the three Vizir priests in protest.

  "What have you to say of this, Harrok? You have been silent. It is not consummate with Rodinna, God of Justice, for us to sentence without the decree of the three," said Xolin as Utar.

  "Blasphemy! This bloodskin blasphemes the gods in this holy hall of justice!" shouted Bruca, a local spinner who had just joined the theater troupe recently, playing as Vizir priest Harrok. "Seize him and drown him in the Long Sea! You have my decree!"

  "Saviour Samuel! Finally, a rhyme!" called out a member of the gathered audience followed by a stronger wave of laughter. The crowd had grown in number.

  This was the moment Kazimir had to shine. The finale. He reached into his pocket and tossed out a smoke packet he had made earlier which when busted on the stage created an enveloping cloud of red smoke, which it did beautifully. In seconds, he was completely hidden from view. He quickly reached down into a satchel he had discreetly placed behind the dais and pulled out the fake breasts and wig of black and gray loose hair. He tied the breasts on beneath his tunic and got the wig over his head just in time before the smoke dissipated and turned around to face the crowd which to his surprise had grown to what looked like over a hundred.

  Kazimir addressed the Vizir Priests as Glorin Baal, "Ha! You have failed in murdering all your witches! Behold I am a ravnaz woman, and I am well grown into my power!" Kazimir performed a quick hand gesture and opened a can of imagery powder and slung the entire contents into the air which rooster-tailed high above them all into a sparkling array of colors until it formed into a mass of a giant three-headed hydra that snapped and hissed at the audience below. Many of them screamed and stumbled back in fear and awe. Some stood still in confidence smiling, fully aware this was an alchemist illusion that Kazimir had performed in previous shows but with different beasts. It was a sequence he felt comfortable with here in this setting, but it had never worked well in a class demonstration.

  The hydra faded within a moment and tiny spirals of powder rained down the entire scene. The audience cheered and clapped.

  Kazimir, Xolin, Nochtli and Bruca all clasped hands and bowed together. Nochtli tossed his paper machete crown out to an audience member and began shaking hands with admirers who clustered around him, patting him on the back and offering him praise.

  Xolin, always the modest one, turned quickly away and disappeared backstage before anyone could get his attention to congratulate him on his performance. He seemed to truly dislike compliments. He never took them seriously when they were positive. Xolin preferred constructive criticism because he claimed it kept him on his toes.

  There was nowhere Kazimir felt quite as loved as he did after performing on stage. He greeted his fans with big smiles and embraced a few who had been coming to his shows regularly for months. Today, one of the elder women who had never missed a show had brought him a bag of sweet buns. Another adolescent boy gifted him a wooden mask he had carved himself in the likeness of a ram.

  He shook hands and exchanged pleasantries for several minutes before the fair-skinned woman in the gray gown approached him. Her brown hair was tied up in a bun on her head, and she carried a large leather purse over her shoulder. Her face had high cheekbones and thin lips with tiny lines on her face, but she had a youthful demeanor.

  She held out her hand, "I'm Gretta. It's a pleasure to meet you."

  Kazimir shook her hand, and though she still held a smile, she darted her eyes away from him when he made eye contact.

  The expression on her face read that she was about to say something else but instead she only created an awkward silence.

  He suddenly said, "It's certainly a pleasure to meet you! Glad you stopped to watch the show!"

  Gretta kept smiling and made a flash of eye contact before she said, "It was really great. Especially the monster." She made a single giggle noise and crinkled her nose.

  Another long pause followed and Kazimir realized then she had been darting her eyes because she was staring at his red-painted skin. "Did you find the ravnaz interesting?"

  She took her finger and touched his forearm, rubbing a bit of the paint away to reveal his coal black skin. She furrowed her brows. "Yes, actually that's why I felt compelled to come up here and talk to you. I've seen a bloodskin. She lives among the trogs. And she's indeed a witch. I'd never seen another with blood-red skin like that until today, or at least someone who seemed to know about them. I had thought maybe she had painted her skin, but it didn't wipe away when I fought her and barely escaped with my life. No one believed me when I told the story of how a red-skinned witch murdered my husband. They said bloodskins are for children's fairy tales and had been cleansed of the world in ancient times."

  Kazimir looked up and around to see that no one was in direct earshot of them and that the crowd had mostly cleared before he said, "Come with me backstage and tell me the story. I must hear of this. Every detail."

  Gretta nodded and took his hand to help her up on the stage.

  "This way." He pointed to the backdrop of the set which had been painted to look like an ancient temple of the aergos ancestors. A black velvet curtain hung in the center where a standing window frame had been painted around.

  She followed him through the curtain, and he led her to a bench where Xolin and Bruca were sitting and removing their costumes.

  Kazimir sat on the bench and patted an open spot next to him. "Have a seat, my dear. Let's talk about this ravnaz witch."

  Gretta sat in the dirt in front of him and let her leather bag slide down from her shoulder. "Very well, what do you want to know?"

  "Tell me about what happened. Did she use her magic?"

  "Oh yes! It was terrifying! I'll never forget it!" Gretta was visibly shaking then. "She used her own blood to summon a demon."

  10

  Aeile

  Aeile couldn't breathe. She tried to inhale but every wisp of air had suddenly been deflated from her chest as she landed from a dead sleep face down on the ground. Her eyes widened and she saw it was daylight. Nice way to greet the day, she thought. She rolled over panting for air, but her body refused to take a breath large enough to escape the feeling of suffocation. She pushed herself up and managed to fall back on the tree trunk, her hair full of grit and leaves. Slowly, her body recovered, and she was able to breathe normally. Her chest ached, and her eye felt like it might be bruised from her eyebrow down to her cheek, but the leaves had saved her from broken bones. She thanked the Forest Father she hadn't broken anything. She knew well a broken ankle or arm could be cause for serious panic this far out in the wood.

  She used the tree to scoot her way up onto her feet and the top portion of her longbow spun around and slapped her in the face and then dangled over her shoulder. She sighed and said, "No!" In the fall from the tree, she must've landed on it and snapped it in two. This was a major setback. She might be able to find a good sapling to carve up another, but the time it would take to cut down the tree, chisel out the wood and sand it down would be an all-day project. She needed to get over the side of the bluff and start searching for the white mariheema while the daylight was still with her. She could cut another longbow tomorrow.

  Aeile brushed herself off, shook out her hair and tied it back into a ponytail. She removed the gut-string from the two shards of wood and coiled it up in her belt pouch. She headed to her campsite and saw that the fire coals were
still smoldering. Everything appeared undisturbed. Maybe she had misjudged the two men. She thought for sure they would be back to loot her gear or worse. She smiled to herself, glad to know there were still good people in the world and that you could never judge people too quickly.

  By midmorning, she had prepared and finished herself a breakfast of oats with a hot cup of tea. She gathered together her climbing rope and anchored it by wrapping it around the tree she had slept in. With rope secured around her gloved wrist, she rappelled down the side about ten feet before she saw an outcrop of vegetation for what it was growing out from a ledge of sod about twenty more feet below her. Her chest fluttered at the sight. Growing on the outermost edge of the ledge was a plant with purple leaves and tiny white flowers. "Yes!" she said aloud.

  She tried to speed up her descent without burning her leg on the rope she had looped under her thigh but found it to be too painful and dangerous. She took some deep breaths and told herself to go slow and stay focused. If this was the real thing, she need not slip and fall or crash into it and destroy it. Directly below her about sixty more feet stood a sea of evergreen treetops. It was impossible to tell how much farther down it was beneath them. She needed to muster patience.

  She lowered herself a few inches at a time for what felt like several minutes before her boots hovered just above the ledge where the blades of weeds tickled her calves. It was a white mariheema just beginning to bloom. It looked just like the drawings she had seen in her healing book she had bought in Belaz. She had traveled there specifically in search of the Belazonian texts that were said to be the most knowledged in medicine and science. It had cost her dearly and taken two months of total travel time, but it had paid off. The Tome of Physiological Remedies and Elixirs had proven to be an invaluable item.

  "Looks like she's out for a piss." It was the voice of Grendy. "Or maybe she's still sleepin' the day away."

  Aeile froze. They were in her camp.

  "Nope, just a prank," said Frikk. He kicked at her bedroll and knocked the tent down. "Fire's still going. Maybe she's close by."

  "Well, ya don't have to worry about getting an arrow in the back. Looks like she broke her bow in half," said Grendy. "Wonder how she did that?"

  "Women can't rightly hold a bow, you know this!" Frikk chuckled. "Probably slapped herself in the tits trying to shoot it, ay? I'd like to see that!" Frikk laughed, and it echoed from rock surfaces above and throughout the ravine below.

  Aeile breathed slowly, trying to keep silent and perfectly still. The roped bit into her hand and felt like fire in her wrist. Please don't let them notice it, she thought not knowing how they hadn't tripped over the rope yet.

  "Hey, what's this?" Grendy said, and Aeile felt him shaking on the rope above. "She's got a tie out of something. It's that where she keeps her bag a gold?" Suddenly Grendy's face appeared above the cliff as he stooped over and stared down at her, squinting. It seemed his eyesight wasn't the best.

  Frikk appeared beside him then. "Well what do we have here? A maid on our line! Looks like we caught us a beauty! Let's pull her up and skin her for dinner!"

  "Ya got any gold down there?" called Grendy.

  "No! I don't have any coin!" she said. "Please just go away and leave me be!"

  "No coin, then?" said Frikk. "Well that's a problem, ya see, cause we need some kind of reparations for keeping all your stuff up here safe while's you's hanging around down there!"

  Aeile narrowed her eyes at that. "What do you want? I think I still have some oats in my bag up there and a potato or two."

  "Nah, you see, we got plenty to eat this morning, fishing was good," said Frikk. "We hadn't seen a pretty maid like you a month or two. We have needs like all men. What say you show us your tits, and we'll be about our way?"

  "Yeah, show us your tits," said Grendy, gesturing as if he were bouncing melons on his own chest.

  "You can go fuck yourself!" Aeile snapped back up at him.

  "Alright, wrong answer!" quipped Frikk as he whipped out his knife and began to saw at the rope.

  "No wait!" Aeile shouted. "Hold on!"

  Frikk stopped sawing. "Oh? Change of heart, love?"

  "Fine," she said as she began to unfasten her jerkin with one hand. It was a small price to pay for the white marhiheema. "For Shiele," she whispered to herself as the first button came loose.

  As she got the second button undone, her rope suddenly dropped her back about a foot. She glanced up at the two above and saw the rope had frayed and unraveled where Frikk had sawed on it with his hunting knife.

  "No!" she got out before the rope snapped. She reached out for the white mariheema plant as it went by her in the fall and managed to grab a fist of one of its branches which came with her as she fell backward down into treetops of the ravine. Thick branches bludgeoned and scraped at her. She tumbled from one branch to another. It felt like getting clubbed and stabbed by a mob. A sharp broken branch finally impaled her calf muscle and stuck up through the other side, snapping her lower leg bones and suspending her midway up in the tree. She hung nearly upside down, holding herself on another branch with her arm. She screamed.

  Afterward, she could hear laughter above. She felt blood fingering down her hips and filling up the crannies of her crotch and beltline.

  "Oh, Forest Father, please! Save me! I don't want to die like this!"

  She fainted then.

  * * * *

  She awoke to what felt like only a few minutes later. The blood was still wet inside her clothes. It dripped down on the evergreen bark and ants had begun to taste it. The pain was still intense, but she had to survive to save Shiele. She still had the piece of white mariheema in her hand. She kissed it. It was symbolic. She was meant to live.

  She took a few deep meditative breaths and tried to assess her options. The length of rope hung dangling about a foot away from her head. It had landed over one of the thicker branches above, and both ends hung by her side within her grasp. "I was meant to live," she said, stuffing the white mariheema into her pouch. A redbird studied her from another branch close by and took flight when she spoke. She grabbed the rope ends after a few painful attempts and pulled herself upwards, screaming the entire time.

  Just as she had pulled herself fully upright, the branch inside her leg snapped off, leaving her dangling on the rope. She cried out in agony again, feeling blood drip down the bottom half of her leg then. She couldn't die. She wouldn't allow herself to. Shiele needed her. She was losing too much blood. She felt dizzy. She didn't think she had the strength to hold on much longer. She looked down to see that the ground was rocky about thirty feet down. An array of needly evergreen branches still awaited her before she would hit the ground.

  She closed her eyes and let go of the rope.

  She took several more punches to the ribs and needles to the face before she struck the ground, but they padded her fall enough to keep her from further serious injuries. She vomited on herself as soon as she landed. She was lucky it had been a soft wooded evergreen. A harder wood might've killed her. She had only one other thought. She must make a tourniquet.

  She unbuckled her belt and pulled it tight around her thigh and tied it as tight as she could. She passed in and out of consciousness so many times she lost count. A chill crept up her spine and clawed around the back of her head to her face. She stared up at the forest canopy. It seemed to spin ever so slightly. The edges of her vision blurred into darkness until there were only two points of violet light, like little stars. They came closer and closer to her until she could make out a withered face with a spindly black crown above it.

  "Swear to serve the King of Scion, and I will grant you the power to give eternal life to those you love." It was the voice of a young man, smooth and fluid.

  "What?" she heard herself moan. "Who?"

  "Swear faith to the King of scion, and you will live, and I will give you eternal life and the power to give eternal life to others."

  She managed to open her eyes. A man
with a long black goatee tied with several small finger bones and wearing a dingy green cloak stared down at her. His eyes were fiery red. He held a crooked black staff with an orb on top of it that looked to be filled with a green milky liquid and a small skull.

  "Very well," she managed. "Just get me to my sister, please, before I die." She passed out again.

  11

  EMMANORA

  Emmanora kept reliving the nightmare of the previous day as she walked by the place she had fallen against the tree where the dark stranger had visited her and healed her wound. She'd had bad days before, but not so much insanity in one day. She knew one thing. She was going to find Ruby and make Liobe pay for all she'd done.

  She had awoken that morning to Bandit's tongue up her nostril. Apparently, he had remained safe up in the tree. She decided to walk back to the redwood and retrieve important things like her traveling pack and a properly filled waterskin and plenty of road rations for a few days. On her way back out a thought occurred to her that Uncle Lomah was in danger too if Liobe had been ordered to kill all the assassins in the East Realm. Uncle Lomah was Lord of Spiders in the Spiders on the Wind in Vylket, her place of birth. The Spiders on the Wind harbored assassins and thieves, all milg descent. Someone in her milg ancestry had figured out that being short had extreme advantages in climbing and creeping into tight spaces in the dark of night and had started a very successful underground society. All members had a hidden tattoo of the purple death spider, the most poisonous spider in the world. The purple death was a small spider, purple and nearly translucent like glass. It carried a dark orange mark on its thorax shaped much like a cat's eye. Emmanora still had the tattoo inches above the tiny tufts of red hair above her womanhood, but she had abandoned the Spiders years ago to go it as an independent. Uncle Lomah never stopped begging her to come back. He was Lord of Spiders after all. She knew this was the only reason she hadn't been murdered in her sleep. For anyone else, that was the only way to leave the guild.