Age of Valor: Blood Purge

by D. E. Morris

  “That's why she wanted Rowan to stay,” Connor surmised. “She liked her fighting spirit, she said, but it bothered her that my sister couldn't see.”

  “Undoubtedly.” Gerwyn agreed. “She would have tried to cure her and likely would have, but the cost would not have been worth it, I can promise you that much.” He looked at Kyo. “We should have them talk to Eira.”

  “Who is Eira?” asked Badru.

  Kyo got up and went to the oven to pull one of his freshly baked loaves from within. “She knows a great deal more about Rhiamon than we ever could; she used to be one of her maidens.”

  “What?” Lilia gasped. “Used to be? How did she escape? Why is she still in this village?”

  Using his elbow, Kyo pushed one of the curtains aside so he could set the loaf on the windowsill. A glimpse outside showed the sun was already going down. There would be no journey up into the mountains tonight, it would have to wait for morning. “That is a tale I will let her tell you. Just give it a minute or two. She's downwind of my home and always comes running when she knows I've been baking.”

  Sure enough, it wasn't long at all before a rhythmic rapping came to Kyo's front door. “I smell rosemary,” came a singsong voice, her accent unmistakably Caedian. “If someone's baiting me, it's working.” Kyo laughed and ambled across the room to open the door to a young woman. She was short and curvy, around the same age as Lilia and Mairead by the look of her, with light brown hair and round lime green eyes. Peering up at the older man with a cheeky grin, she lifted a dish. “I brought fresh butter.” Kyo's amusement over her eagerness made him slap his thigh before pulling the door open all the way. She beamed at him and climbed the stairs up into the main room of the house, pausing in the threshold with raised brows before he could close the door. “Well! If I had known you were having a party I'd have brought the mead as well. Hello.” Eyeing all of the faces, she paused on Mairead for half a second. None of her good humor dimmed, but when her eyes fell on Gerwyn, her confident posture gave way to rounded shoulders and her grin drooped into a grimace. “I see. It's a party all right, but not one I should want to be invited to, is it? What's happened?”

  Gerwyn rose and took the butter dish from the young woman, introducing everyone around the table. “They're from Siness, of sorts.”

  “I'm from Ibays,” Connor offered, looking over his shoulder at the woman.

  Badru rose to properly greet her with a kiss to her hand. “I am from the Sandlands, but we are all here as emissaries of the High Kingdom of Siness.”

  “How did you know something was wrong when you saw Gerwyn?” Lilia asked, watching Eira as she took a seat at the already full table.

  “Two Keepers in one place doesn't happen often, especially here. Especially after what happened up in Caedia at your summit games.”

  Connor bobbed his head. “So you heard about that.”

  “Everyone's heard about that, more than likely.” Eira looked Lilia over. “You're the girl that got away.”

  Lilia blinked. “Excuse me.”

  “The whole town was talking about the girl with the pretty wings that Rhiamon led up to the village. Thought for sure you'd be her new pet but then the next day, you came strolling out.” Eira glanced at her friends with a meaningful lift of her brows. “Word travels fast here when it concerns her. It concerns you now, too. If I were you, I'd put those away. You don't want to be walking around this place, showing your wings off like that. You've become something of a local hero.”

  Lilia gave a nervous little chuckle. “In two days?”

  “Trust me,” Eira promised, “you told Rhiamon no and lived to tell the tale. That earns you much deserved respect.”

  Badru fixed her with an inspecting gaze. “You speak from experience.”

  Her eyes slid from Lilia to Badru, expression darkening. “I'm one of the lucky ones, too, yeah, though my star lost its shine a long time ago.”

  Kyo set a plate of bread and a mug of tea before her, giving her shoulder a squeeze of encouragement before returning to his chair. She picked at the bread a moment, pulling little seeds from within before absently stirring her tea. “I was four years old when she took me from my home. North Frostford in Caedia. It's a small backwater village. I doubt any of you have heard of it. She found me there one day. She was part of a small company that had gone to visit the castle as representatives for something, I couldn't tell you what, though knowing what she's about and who was on the throne at the time, I can guess. Her horse threw a shoe and she needed a place to rest while the farrier worked. My father offered her a seat at our table and for some reason, she became enchanted with me. She convinced my parents to let me go with her, telling them she could give me a better life, a better education, all of the things they could not, and away I went. I remember being terrified of her because she was such an enormous, powerful presence, but comforted and drawn to her at the same time. I became an apprentice of sorts. She taught me to read and to write, things I never would have learned at home, to translate dreams. She taught me her religion, made me believe things I now know to be false and terrible.”

  “Like what?” Connor asked.

  Her lips curled into a frown. “That the Elemental of Malevolence is the one true power and it is he whom we truly serve. She doesn't believe that's his true name at all, either, that he goes by another name entirely, though what name, I couldn't tell you. She does not believe in the Giver or the Deceiver, nor the teachings of the scriptures. She believes they are made up stories written down by men to make sense of a world they can't understand in an effort to make themselves feel better.”

  “Feel better?” Lilia scoffed. “It isn't all roses and sunshine in there.”

  Eira only shrugged. “Rhiamon believes that one day, the Elemental of Malevolence will return to his full power and reveal his true self once again, overthrowing any other remaining Elementals and take his rightful place as ruler of the earth. She believes Gaels are an insult to the Elementals as a rule, that the Elementals should be the only ones with the power to turn from dragon to human and back again, and the shedding of Gaelic blood is what makes the Elemental of Malevolence stronger.”

  “That...” Connor blew a thin stream of air out between his lips. “That's messed up.”

  “Rhiamon and her people worship him. He is their god in every sense of the word. They offer sacrifices and prayers to him and believe it is he who grants them powers. She believes with her whole being that there is a place of glory beside him when all of this is said and done.”

  “All of what?” asked Badru.

  “All of the Gaels are extinct and the Elementals are destroyed,” Gerwyn answered for Eira.

  She pushed her bread and tea away, untouched but for the extracted seeds. “She takes these children and brainwashes them, desensitizing them to blood and death so that it all become natural to them. And now, since the destruction of Mirasean and the way it was shown that everyday people can control even dragons, she wants them gone too.” Eira gave a humorless laugh. “She feels it is her divine duty to purge the earth of the unclean before her god can return and claim it as his once more.”

  Lilia looked down, her stomach churning. “There is that word again...purge. If I never hear it again, it will be too soon.”

  “It will only get worse before it will get better, I fear,” Kyo sighed. “If history is any indication.”

  “I know you weren't up there for long,” Eira continued, turning her attention back to Lilia, “so I'm sure you only saw what she wanted you to see - everything that was sweet and alluring - but she is training assassins. Each of them, male and female, hunts, traps and kills, and bears a mark of recognition or honor for each life they claim.”

  “What do you mean?” Connor asked.

  “Each time a dragon is killed, the executioner is branded with the mark of a crimson talon. If it is a Gaelic life that is taken, a crescent moon is the mark that is given.”

  “And how many marks to you have?” Thou
gh she had been silent since arriving at the village, Mairead's question of the young woman and her gaze on her through the opening in her veil were steady.

  The small woman turned her face toward Mairead with only a trace of regret in her expression. “Nine. Five crescents and four talons.” She tugged up the long loose sleeve of her dress to show the faded crimson marks stained deep into the length of her arm. With a flicker of a smile, she turned her arm over. “I'm most proud of this one, though.” Like a majority of the others in the room, she, too, had the mark of the Keeper on the inside of her left wrist. It wasn't as new as Lilia and Connor's tattoos, but it certainly wasn't as old as Gerwyn's and Kyo's.

  “If I had been anyone else, Rhiamon likely would have executed me, but she loved me. I was her star pupil and the one she relied on most. But I broke the cardinal rule and I got too close to one of my marks. Instead of killing him, I let him go. Actually, I helped him escape and then tried to flee the House of Maidens myself. Naturally, Rhiamon caught me before I got very far. She told me how disappointed she was, how heartbroken, but in the end she just...let me go.” Eira stared off into the distance, her large, round eyes filling with tears. “I should have known it was all too easy. Yes, she let me go, but she followed me. She's so good at what she does, her people are so skilled that they could be walking right behind you and you'd never even know it until they slit your throat. I didn't realize they were following me when I fled to where I left my Gaelic friend and his family. I thought I'd gotten away by some miracle, and I was going to start my new life with a chance at love, but I could not have been more wrong. They waited until I was within feet of him before they came out of the shadows. They shot him with arrows, pinning him to the ground so he couldn't move.”

  She paused and it was obvious to everyone watching her that she was no longer in the room with them but locked deep within her memory. Muscles in her face twitched as she fought for composure. “I tried to free him but I was held against my will by people I had lived with for years, people I had considered family. They were heartless and cold as they killed him right before me, killed the rest of his family and burned the little village where they were supposed to be safe. When the few other families were running away to safety and the Gaels were dead, I was freed, left to weep over their corpses as everything turned to fire and ash around me. It was only then that Rhiamon came to me. She told me I was free to go, but I would never be free from her, not after that.” Blinking away the memories and swiping at her tears, Eira shook her head and returned to the room. “She was right. She still haunts my dreams nearly every night.”

  Badru watched her with sympathy. “Why did you return here?”

  “I didn't have anywhere else to go.” She sniffled and pushed her hair behind her ear. “I tried to go home, back to where my parents were. I stayed there for about a year, worked really hard at assimilating back into a normal life.” A quick smile lit her face but disappeared quickly. “I even picked up the back-alley accent of the villagers I lived with to try to make myself feel like I belonged there but I never felt like I did. I kept feeling like an outsider, and I wasn't the only one that felt that way. Everyone else, even my own parents looked at me like I was a little bit off. So I came back here. It's sick, I know, but I feel somewhat normal here. I'm close, but not too close.”

  “Does she know you're here?” Lilia asked.

  “I'm sure she does. I haven't set eyes on her since I've been back, but she knows things. She just does.”

  Kyo reached over and put a hand on her shoulder, heavy and protective like a father to a daughter. “Eira is part of our family now and is protected here, as are all of you.”

  To answer the question on Eira's face, Lilia and Connor showed her their marks as well, eliciting a small, albeit genuine, smile. She took them both in with an open face. “I'll do whatever I can to help. Whatever you need, just ask.”

  Lilia nodded her thanks. “You've already given us a great deal more information than we were expecting to go in there with.” She glanced at Mairead. “It's good to have a better understanding of what we're facing.”

  Eira turned her head once more toward Mairead, looking over her veil with a twist of her lips. “There are few who wear things like that anymore unless they wish to appear mysterious or are hiding a malady. If it's the latter for you, I would caution you against going up there. Rhiamon will latch onto you like a tick and burrow so deep that you won't know she's gotten inside until it's too late. She favors broken and damaged things. Makes it easier for her to cast herself as the role of their savior and redeemer.”

  “I only have one Savior and Redeemer,” Mairead assured. “My faith is not so easily swayed.”

  “I pray you keep that attitude,” Eira countered with amusement, “as well as your faith. You'll need both of them. She's cunning, that one. You'll see.”

  As Kyo rose to refresh tea and clean away dirty dishes, Lilia leaned forward in her seat and linked her hands together on top of the table. “I do have another question, if you don't mind. While I was there, I was able to explore a bit and came across these hills, dozens of them to the south western side of the village. One of them had this tall ring of stones erected upon it like a crooked crown.”

  Eira nodded in certainty. “Those are the ringstones. They have no special name but their purpose is quite meaningful. As far as I was told, they've been there since before the continents split, possibly put there as far back as when the world itself was created. Most of Rhiamon's important and sacred rituals are performed within the circle. I don't know if you noticed in your exploring, but there are smaller rings of stones on the other nearby hills that her followers set up for themselves.”

  “The old religion used to believe in circles of power aiding them in casting spells, divination, all sorts of things,” Badru added. His face was grave. “They believed they could read the future in the stars, that the gods of old had given us all of the answers and the power to divine them for ourselves, but we had lost touch with that power over time. It is blasphemous.”

  “It is what a great deal of people used to believe,” Gerwyn inserted. “The elves used to believe it before they examined what their beliefs really meant and started questioning everything.”

  “That's true,” Connor pointed out, his brows lifted. “I have a map that lit up with elvish magic only by the light of a certain star chart. They used to rely heavily upon the stars. From what I understand, they believed starlight aided in creating the purest form of magic. It was cold, unfiltered light and for some reason, I guess, that's important?”

  Eira shook her head, accepting a fresh mug of hot tea from Kyo. “I never fully understood it myself.”

  “Whatever the reason,” Badru continued, “what the elves were doing by worshiping the stars and the power they believed they gained from them contrasted greatly to the spreading acceptance of the Giver and what He stood for. This ended up splitting the elves into two separate factions: the elves who lived on Mirasean and the Chrynir, also known as the Dark Elves.”

  Kyo returned to his seat across the table from Badru with his brows lowered over his eyes. “The Chrynir are a myth.”

  “So are the other six Elementals,” Connor countered, “which include the Elemental of Malevolence.”

  “The boy has a point,” Gerwyn told his friend. Nodding to Badru, he said, “Continue, if you would.”

  “It is told that the Chrynir accepted the power of the old religion, the one that relied on the power of the stars and that we now know likened the Elementals to gods. They made idols of them. Had the Elementals been complicit, they could very well have been the gods they were revered to be. Thankfully, most of them knew their true purpose and understood themselves to be no greater than any other creation in the Giver's great kingdom, all but one, and that was Malevolence. He thought himself far greater than all the rest, greater than even his Creator, I would suspect, and the Chrynir chose to follow him and made him their leader. He became their god and
they became his people through and through. While the elves remained morally grounded and neutrally good, the Chrynir began to lose sight of who they used to be. They craved for more magic, more dominion, more of everything. They were selfish and unpredictable, and pledged themselves to whomever could promise them the most power. None could do so more than an Elemental. Their beautiful smooth skin lost its color and turned ashen, making them look like the living dead. Their pointed ears grew longer and sharper, drooping in their length, and their eyes took on a reddish hue.”

  Lilia shook her head, her bottom lip between her teeth. “I saw none of that while I was there.”

  “Neither did I,” confirmed Connor.

  “And I never saw it in all my years of living there,” Eira added, but Badru was unconvinced.

  “They are powerful magicians,” he stressed. “You may not know what you have seen until it is too late.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The next morning, Lilia awoke to find Mairead already dressed and staring out the window toward the mountains beyond the town. Sounds were coming up from the kitchen below where she could make out Badru and Kyo talking, the smell of frying salted meat thick in the air. She didn't know how late it was by the time Eira had gone home last night or when they'd been shown to the room they shared, but it had been a fitful night of slumber for all of them. She slept sandwiched between Connor and Mairead, and her friend had tossed and turned, muttering indiscernible words in her sleep. How she was awake now was beyond Lilia. She opened her mouth to tell her good morning, but realized just in time that Mairead's eyes were closed. Whether she had dozed off or was in prayer, it was a moment that was not to be disturbed.

  After breakfast, Connor wrapped Lilia in an embrace so tight, she wondered if he was trying to break her in two. “I'll be fine,” she promised in a whisper, her arms around his neck. “I know what I'm walking into this time. I'm prepared.”