Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1)
Page 64
The storm worried him. The cool winds of autumn were no trouble, but the approaching winter meant that pleasant breeze could turn bitingly cold at the drop of a hat, with no warning. If it weren’t for the invading slavers, he’d have turned his wagons off the road to wait out the storm. As it was, fear drove him to continue another few days at least, hoping to reach a settlement in the eastern reaches of Forvale where he could hunker down and wait.
Sudden shouting from the covered wagon where his wife still slept drew his attention. The morning was early yet, and it would have been another hour before they were ready to actually move. He’d let her sleep, as dreams of ill omen had been troubling his spouse since before they left Fort Expedition. It was there, in the dream, that her nascent talent at divination manifested best, which had been what had spurred him to abandon his profit and flee the city.
“Get everyone off the road!” Laren Torm was panicked, suddenly screaming at everyone. “Belka! Get the wagons off the road! We have to get out of the way!”
“We’re just about ready to get moving, what are you on about now!?”
“Get. Off. The. Road!” she screamed in his face. “They won’t stop for us! We’ll all be trampled!”
Belka Torm was many things, but a fool, he hoped, wasn’t one of them. His wife’s dreams had led him to many a profitable venture, but more often had helped him dodge disasters. He wasted no more time, joining his workers in leading horses and their wagons off the road into the grassy fields to one side. They’d barely cleared the road when the winds picked up, storm clouds suddenly darkening the skies. Thunder rumbled in the distance, strongly enough he could feel it through the soles of his boots more than he could hear it in the air.
“That’s not thunder,” Laren said, standing nervously beside him. “Or at least it’s not just thunder. They’re coming.”
“Who?”
Laren shook her head helplessly. “Red eyes and one arm, thunder under the banner; the dream wasn’t any clearer than that, except that we’d have been crushed if we stayed on the road.”
Belka didn’t argue with her. His wife didn’t have true dreams often, but when she did, he knew better than to invite tragedy by protesting. They didn’t have to wait long; the low, scudding clouds drew closer, shadows deepening in the hills to the northwest, as the thunder he could feel under his feet finally grew loud enough for him to hear.
“It’s not thunder. Drumbeats. And hooves.” The clouds above flashed, lit from within by grim lightning, and the shadows on the road gave way to reveal a banner in the distance. Underneath it he could just make out the shape of a wagon. As it bore down, he saw the face of a grizzled, bearded old man at the reins of a pair of mules. The grass in the fields swayed and bent before the frenzied wind, and the sound of thunder and drumbeat grew louder. The darkness deepened almost to midnight, the morning sun hiding its face from that awesome banner, and the soldiers who marched under it.
As above, so below; the lightning dancing through the clouds was mirrored by sparks of electricity leaping from the hoofstrike of every horse in the caravan, as wagons continued to melt out of the darkness. Soldiers marched alongside and among the wagons, their hobnail boots hitting the ground in near unison. Their gaze was fixed straight ahead, and their pace never faltered, as if by their stride they demanded the earth itself surrender to their will. They marched, the wind howled, but their banner remained immobile. A rough black stripe split the fabric in half, and collars dangled beneath it, tassels weighing it down.
Lightning finally did crash then, a burst of light that drove the shadows back to reveal a towering, armored form on an even larger horse, his lance couched and held upright. He came to the side of the road as the caravan continued rolling past, and his stallion stamped and pawed the ground as if eager to return to its head. Two hulking wolfmen, small next to the horse, slunk out of the shadows to flank him.
“What do you carry?” rasped a voice as dry and cold as the autumn winds that had preceded him.
Belka stood there a moment, finding his voice. “Stamina potions, healing tonics, and a wagonload of mana crystals bound for Forvale from Fort Expedition. We got out ahead of the siege, and…” Belka’s voice trailed off as the apparition tugged a pouch from his belt, tossing it at his feet. The renowned symbol of the City of Prophets, an eye in a white circle, decorated the bag in embossed stitching. Belka retrieved it, and his hands shook as he tipped several rectangular chits of silvery metal into his palm.. “This…is this mithril ?”
“We’re buying your wagons.”
“But this is too much—” Belka protested, before Laren dug her elbow into his ribs. “Wait, what do you mean the wagons?”
“Your goods, your wagons, your men…all of it.”
“But we just left Fort Expedition barely two weeks ago!”
“Yes, and? Now you’re going back.” Thunder crashed again as the man spoke, the last soldiers in the column marching past. “Fall in, and keep up.”
* * *
Everything was red. Red light—red like heat, red like fire —burned through her being. Even the scent in her nostrils felt red. She was inundated by the light, subsumed by it. Eventually she became the light, the all-consuming hue defining her existence, until it slowly faded into blessed darkness.
She woke with a gasp, jerking upright from the cold stone upon which she lay. She rose to her feet and looked at the space she was in. Tall gothic arches surrounded an atrium, and in the center was what looked like…
“Is this an altar? Or a crypt?”
“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” came a voice from her left. She spun to look, but limbs rendered unfamiliar by the redness betrayed her, and she fell back to the floor.
“Now, now, no need to panic,” a second voice said, and the woman pushed herself up from the floor with weary arms that only reluctantly obeyed. Her eyes met three pairs of feet, one in armored boots, one with comfortable looking sandals, and another pair bare on the floor. Three women stood before her, looking down on her, on hands and knees, clothed in a plain white shift.
“Where are—? What—?”
Her eyes traced up the women in front of her. The one on her left was dressed in scuffed, battle-worn armor. She looked to the side, toward the other two, and clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “She’s forgotten so much, Ruga. Are you sure we should be bothering with this instead of letting her pass back into the cycle?”
“Hush, Koma. You know she’s earned the chance to make this Choice,” said the center woman, her figure and bearing much softer and more open than the harsh, closed-off Koma, with her hard eyes. She’d been afraid of the armored Koma instantly, but this Ruga was a kinder presence. The third had yet to speak, but even in her silence, she was confusing, her clothes flickering from one outfit to another every few heartbeats.
“What choice do you mean?” she choked out. Her lungs ached, as if breathing were a burden, and she found she couldn’t remember her name or how she got here. That made not knowing what was happening even worse.
“So sad,” said the third woman with the shifting clothes, with a sad shake of her head. “She always wanted to enter the Temple, and now that she’s finally here? She doesn’t even remember.”
Temple? The thought was familiar and mournful.
“Don’t taunt her, Ingra,” the middle woman admonished before turning back to kneel before her. A small basin of water and a washcloth appeared in Ruga’s hands, the latter of which she offered with a comforting smile. “She’s sacrificed enough.”
“Sacrifice? What did I do? Who am—? Who are—?” she sputtered uselessly, confusion rising once again.
“Shhhh,” Ruga said, helping her wash her face. “Yours was a long and twisting story, and there will be time enough to help you remember.”
Koma snorted with amusement. “I’ll say, you don’t see one such as her sacrifice themselves. Ever.”
“So that brings us here. You did an impossible thing,” Ruga said gently, “
and the reward for a job well done has ever been more work to do.”
“If you’ll take the job,” the last woman said, her clothes shifting from blouse and breeches to a scandalously sheer silk gown that covered little and hid less. “You’ve earned the Choice, to pass on, and forget, and start again.”
“Or you can stick around with a new job, maybe help some more people,” said the woman in armor.
“Maybe help lots of people,” Ruga said, helping her to her feet.
“How can I help people? I don’t know who I am!” she complained, finally finding her feet.
“You’ll get those memories back if you choose to take the job. You won’t need them if you choose to pass on,” replied Ruga.
“That’s not—”
“Fair?” Ruga supplied. “You’re right, it’s not. Nothing in life, or in death, ever is. But the Choice is before you: you can choose to keep doing good, or you can choose to pass on. None will fault you, whichever you choose. You’ve already died, girl.” Ruga pulled her close suddenly, a gentle hug that soothed her mind, small comforts against the confusion. “Most only do it once, but you’ve managed to go and do it twice.” Ruga stepped back, holding her at arm’s length while looking in her eyes. “If you could remember, it would sway your choice. That’s why you’re held apart from your memories. You have to decide from down here in the dream, the person you are, not the person you were.”
“Everything was red…” the woman said softly.
“We can’t tell you any more than we have,” Koma said gently, “but if you choose to stay, I promise you, it will be worth it. If you want to help people. Not easy, but worthy.”
“You’ll have to travel a long way, from this island temple all the way to the middle of the mainland.” Ingra’s clothes still shifted, now luxurious robes of purple with oversized golden loops hanging from her ears.
“…How will I get there?” she asked, looking from one woman to the next.
Koma suddenly smiled. “I think she’s choosing to stay if she’s worried about that!” She laughed.
“I’ll tell you, if that’s your choice,” Ruga replied with a smile.
“I think I’d like to help people, if I can.” She nodded at the women, strength slowly returning to her limbs.
“In that case, you’ll get to the mainland with these,” Ruga whispered, this time stepping close and reaching behind her. She could feel a strange sensation in her back as the other woman’s arm pulled something out to the side, holding a wing draped in feathers of brilliant white. Its mate twitched behind her.
“Regain your strength and recover your memories…Zizael, Herald of Redemption.” Zizael gasped and shuddered, strength suddenly flooding her body as her memory began to trickle back to her.
“You’ve got a job to do, and people to save.”
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1: The Drop
Chapter 2: Survival, with a side of screaming.
Chapter 3: Fruits of Thy Labors
Chapter 4: End of an Age
Chapter 5: Climb Down
Chapter 6: Enchantment
Chapter 7: Aspect Locked
Chapter 8: Crystallized
Chapter 9: Run, Fight, or Die
Chapter 10: Know Thyself
First InterLulude: Defend!
Chapter 11: Storm Break
Chapter 12: [Skyclad Sorceress]
Chapter 13: Sympathetic Reflex
Chapter 14: Blood Burns True
Chapter 15: First Raven’s Roost
Interlude: The Broken
Chapter 16: [Mage-Eater]
Chapter 17: Living Runes
Chapter 18: Terrakinesis
Interlude: The General
Chapter 19: Experimentation
Chapter 20: Eye of Madness
Chapter 21: Glimmers and Glimpses
Chapter 22: Incineratus
Chapter 23: Expedition
Chapter 24: Bitter Tears
Chapter 25: Wanderings
Chapter 26: Territorial Disputes
Chapter 27: Shattered Fates
Chapter 28: Crimson Ruin
Chapter 29: Bounty of the Wilds
Chapter 30: Entrenchment
Interlude: The Dreamer
Chapter 31: A Slight Miscalculation
Second InterLulude: Hello!
Chapter 32: A Fireside Chat
Third InterLulude: Filth!
Chapter 33: Under Ashen Skies
Chapter 34: The Devil’s Drum
Chapter 35: Aspect of the Harbinger
Chapter 36: Thunder and Mud
Chapter 37: Reunions
Chapter 38: Impact Duality
Chapter 39: Dirt
Chapter 40: Coronas Judicas
Chapter 41: Unending Duty
Epilogue: Winds that Whisper