“Lyn. Do you hear that?” Jade’s gentle hand fell on my arm.
I shook off the grip. “I don’t hear anything. Which is perfect. They were all in the courtyard while we were on the roof. They’ll have to come all the way around the building in order to get to us. If we—”
“Lyn. The Goddess is trying to get your attention.” Jade’s calm voice was insistent despite its sweetness, though I could hear the tiniest hint of impatience there too. I rolled my eyes and tugged my arm out from under Jade’s hand again.
“We don’t have time for this, Jade. Come on. We can—” “Damn it, Lyn! Listen! ” I froze, surprised. I’m not sure I’d ever heard Jade raise her voice before. With a final glance out the window, I pulled away and turned toward my shield sister.
Jade had always been more in touch with Illindria’s subtle movements than I had been. She could have become a Preoii rather than Cleroii if she’d had more of a temperament for speaking out loud. And for the first time, I truly tried to focus on what Jade was hearing. Only silence replied. I opened my mouth to speak, but Jade stopped me with a gentle shake of the head. What could I do? I shut the hell up and listened.
There. I heard it. It was like listening to a breeze pass over a candlestick. So light, so airy, that it shouldn’t have been able to exist at all. But it was there. A slight touch, like a piece of gossamer silk against my arm, caused me to turn, and my heart filled.
The Goddess’s statue stood before us, proud and beautiful in the moonlight. The lovely, serene smile that I had seen a thousand times before was open and welcome. A beacon in the darkness.
The statue was apparently smaller than the ones that other Faoii monasteries boasted. I came up nearly to Illindria’s shoulder, even though She stood on a pedestal while I had only my boots. The painstakingly carved details in the angelic face made the white embossment seem to be of human flesh and blood. Soft and real, like a woman lightly dusted with flour after baking.
Jade didn’t say anything as she took small, graceful steps toward the pedestal. With a smooth bend of her knees, she knelt in a single, fluid motion and rested her clasped hands at the Goddess’s feet. The intricate pattern of her Cleroii braid caught the moonlight as she bowed her head. I glanced toward the windows one more time, worried about the still-approaching threat, but I pulled away and followed Jade. With a resolute heart, I knelt too. If we are to die tonight, then so be it. It is far worse to forget our prayers than to forget our fight. I clasped my hands over an invisible hilt and rested my head on the statue’s base.
A soft click sounded from the base of the statue as the stone slab beneath my fists shifted. I started as a tile near my knee popped up with a sprinkling of dust. Cautiously, I crept toward it and, with careful fingers, pried it loose. The gap revealed a set of steep stone stairs descending into darkness. I didn’t have to look to know that Jade’s eyes were twinkling in the moonlight as she peered over my shoulder.
“The Goddess provides, Lyn.”
I almost whooped with joy as I pulled that maddening Cleroii from her kneeling position, kissing her forehead again and again as she laughed. Finally, the urgency of the situation forced me to stop, and together we descended into the blackness below, only stopping long enough to pull the tile slab back into place behind us.
The rat tunnels and mazes of the monastery above paled in comparison to the hidden labyrinth buried beneath the grounds. Jade’s quiet contemplation of our pitch-black surroundings quickly produced a torch that had been set high in the wall next to the entrance. I wasn’t even sure how she found it, but suddenly there was a quietly hummed tune and a spark of light. Jade smiled as the torch blazed, and her eyes glinted. I could only shake my head in shocked awe. “Blades, Jade, how do you do that?”
“You could do it too if you practiced more,” she replied.
I rolled my eyes. “Not the time for a lecture, Jade.” She smiled as I took a second torch off the wall and used hers to light it. “Let’s see if we can get to the urchins from here.” I passed the torch through the air in front of us, taking in the hand-carved walls. “Wherever here is. Goddess, what is this place?” Jade didn’t respond. “Well, let’s check it out. Come on.” Together, we set off through the labyrinth.
Dozens of passages led to an assortment of long-forgotten bedrooms, training rooms, and even a primitive kitchen. All lay broken and entombed in the monastery’s maze. Several times we came to a collapsed doorway or tunnel and had to backtrack through abandoned quarters and long-forgotten barracks.
“Look at this,” I called to Jade as I pushed aside a broken bed frame with my foot. “Have you ever heard of any Faoii training underground?”
“The Order used to be larger.” Jade shrugged as she ran one finger over a dust-covered carving. “Maybe they needed the space.”
“Maybe.” I carefully wedged my way past a fallen beam. “But there’s a lot of destruction down here. Has there ever been an earthquake at the monastery?”
“Cleroii-Sung . . .” Jade fell silent for a moment, but then she found her voice again. “Cleroii-Sung said that the west wing was rebuilt when she was a girl. It had fallen before she was born.”
“Maybe they stopped using this area when the supports began to give.” I pushed a broken beam far enough aside to duck beneath it, then held it up as Jade followed. “It’s got to lead back to the outside somehow, right?” Jade didn’t reply.
After what seemed like hours of searching, backtracking, and searching again, we came to a spacious, circular room. The shattered remains of a statue of Illindria lay in its center, the arms broken and lying in pieces on the floor. Five exits led into the darkness beyond. I circled the space slowly, careful not to step on the remnants of the alabaster sculpture. “I can’t tell which direction I’m facing down here. Which way is the monastery?”
Jade closed her eyes for a moment in order to center herself, then motioned down one of passages. I rolled my eyes.
“You could at least pretend it’s slightly difficult to do these things, Jade.” Jade only smiled as we started down the tunnel.
I don’t know how long we walked before we found the dry riverbed. The smooth, cavernous floor and worked edges suggested that the monastery had housed a dock there once, but by the time we got to it there was only the dry sand of the shore surrounded by collapsed stone and rubble.
“I think we overshot the monastery.” I hated admitting it, knowing that Jade probably knew exactly where we were. “Isn’t there a dry riverbed near the old orangery, though?” She nodded, and when I saw the look in her eye, I knew that she’d probably known it for a while. “Damn. Well, let’s circle back again.” Jade nodded again and turned to go. I rolled my eyes and turned to follow, but something stopped me. Citrus. I paused for a moment and inspected the rubble of the timeworn docks.
“Wait a second, Jade. Come look at this.” Jade glided up behind me, peering into the small opening between stones. “It would be a tight fit, but I think the urchins could make it through here.”
“And?” It was not a cruel question, just a simple one. Her large, dark eyes were curious.
“I can smell oranges through it, and the air here isn’t stagnant like it is in the other rooms. There has to be an exit down that way.”
“For the urchins, you mean.” I nodded solemnly. I didn’t like what I was saying any more than she did, but we both knew what was at stake.
“We’re all that’s left, Jade. We’ve got to make sure that, if nothing else, the little ones get out. It’s better that than let them starve behind the dining room fireplace.” She nodded slowly.
“We have to find them first.”
*~*
One of the exits from the maze was serviceable, and it led to a dry storage cellar near the kitchen. It was almost empty, having been raided by first the Croeli and later by the few Faoii who had risked the completely exposed hallway outside its door. I hauled on a burlap sack filled with potatoes, pulling out what I could easily carry and motioning
for Jade to do the same.
“I did not know there was a passage in this room.” Jade whispered as she gathered a few of the vegetables that dotted the floor.
“Why would you? There aren’t any hidden passages off this corridor. Or at least, no one thought there was.”
“It will be difficult to get back to the urchins without a passage.” Jade’s voice showed no fear, but I knew it was there, lurking beneath that porcelain exterior. I gave my most reassuring smile.
“We’re Faoii, Jade. We’ll be fine.”
*~*
Together we slunk through the deep shadows of the hallway, oozing like water through sand. Twice we had to freeze, holding our breath and willing the Croeli in the hall to look in a different direction. When they did, we sighed in relief and continued on. By the time we finally reached the rat tunnel that led to the fireplace, we were aching with the strain of fear and clenched muscles.
The urchins were huddled in the dingy closet, waiting anxiously for our return. They almost cried with joy when we pulled ourselves through the wall and into the small sanctuary. Kim-Cleroii actually did begin to cry when Jade and I passed out those few meager potatoes that we were able to smuggle into the monastery’s last haven.
“Where are Faoii-Ming and Cleroii-Sung?” Mei’s quiet question broke the silence left after the children finished guzzling the slightly squished crops. Jade stopped chewing at the question, and I swallowed with difficulty.
“They didn’t make it.” I hated the way the words tasted in my mouth, but I forced my eyes to meet Mei’s. “We’re all that’s left.” Her shocked gaze ripped into my heart.
“What do we do?” Mimiko and Keiko spoke in unison, trying not to let their voices quaver. I forced myself to smile and kept my voice even as I spoke, but I know those girls saw the heaviness in my heart.
“We’re going to retreat.”
16
We spent one more night behind the dining hall fireplace, and in the morning our stomachs rumbled incessantly as the rich smell of meat pies and porridge wafted into the hidden room. We tried to ignore the enticing scents as well as the Croeli’s raucous laughter as we gathered what was left of our meager belongings. Jade and I went over the directions a dozen times before we sent the girls to the dry cellar, two at a time. They kept to the shadows and prayed all the way. We were lucky. The Croeli had evidently grown used to the ever-decreasing frequency of our attacks, and the corridors weren’t heavily guarded anymore. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe the Goddess was watching over her last little ragtag band, because we made it to the hidden maze without incident. Bless Her blade, somehow we made it.
Then . . . then we just waited. Day after day, I couldn’t bring myself to lead those girls away from our monastery—our home. We hid like damned kittens in that maze for weeks, and all I could do was make up excuses for staying put. Every day I’d turn to the girls and say that we needed to recuperate from the mental torment of the monastery’s fall or recover our strength from our involuntary fast. And they never argued; they just went through their daily rituals like we were still above ground. Jade stayed quiet too, but I saw the questions in her crystalline eyes. I knew how she looked at me from beneath her heavy lashes. But I had no answers, no words. So eventually I just stopped meeting her gaze.
We hid in the maze for two months, never attacking the Croeli or giving away our presence. But we never plotted our escape, either. Never tried to get away or start fresh. The younger girls continued their training in secret. We only risked the wrath of the Croeli by resupplying when we had no other choice. None of us, not even Jade, was willing to admit out loud that we needed to leave. I don’t think any of us truly wanted to.
And all that time I just bit down on the doubt that wormed its way into my heart, unsure of why I was still so reluctant. I’d never been reluctant about anything before. I always had a plan, a comeback, a way of doing things. But now . . . now I was just lost. I prayed to the Goddess for strength to do what had to be done— to guide the girls away from that place of death and sorrow, and then at night I still gave the same stupid reasons to stay.
“We can’t leave today. The twins said they smelled rain when they went to the orangery. We’ll have to wait until after the storm passes.”
The girls agreed and went on with their daily routines, never questioning my judgment. Sometimes I wished they would.
I don’t know how many nights I sat in the silence that surrounded the Goddess’s broken statue, watching the urchins and Jade. The truth gnawed at my insides. We were all that was left. Six girls. Four of us at least had a sword ceremony under our belts, but that was it. Not a single one had even a fantoii to our still-unascended names. And yet we remained in enemy territory. Was it willingly? Or was it because I was afraid to go?
“What’s wrong, Lyn?” Jade finally ventured one night, fading from out of the shadows behind me in order to lay a hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t help but smile.
“You’re getting better at sneaking, Jade.”
“You taught me well.” Jade folded her legs to kneel next to me. We sat in silence, watching the urchins sleep at Illindria’s broken feet. Their faces were soft in the firelight.
I felt Jade’s original question hang in the air between us, but she did not force the issue. She never did. The fire crackled quietly in the chilled air.
“Why are we still here, Jade?” I finally released the question with an angry sigh. The fury bubbled up inside of me, and I stabbed the ground in front of me repeatedly, frustrated. “I’m keeping us here, and I don’t know why. We could have run by now. We could be in one of the cities, safe and making lives for ourselves. I could have ensured the urchins’ safety, rather than keeping them here. But I keep coming up with excuses. I keep finding reasons to stay. Why?”
Jade’s smooth answer came immediately, without anger or passion. Just a statement: “You are Faoii.”
I brought my head up to snarl at the obvious, unhelpful reply, but Jade raised a hand, and I fell silent. Then, with a tune that I more felt than heard, her mind reached out, using that perfect, silver cord that had tied us together for as long as I could remember. And it clicked. All the things that I had felt and believed but had been afraid to say out loud filled the cold shadows of my heart and soul in a way that only Jade could understand.
You are Faoii. You do not run. You have never run before and the Goddess would not have you run now.
As the thoughts came to me, unbidden, the air of those musty caverns suddenly smelled of freshly cut grass and jasmine flowers. It was like the cave was lit by a midsummer sun, though the firelight barely illuminated the worked stone and broken remnants of the Goddess’s smiling face. Jade’s unspoken words filled my heart. It was like feeling the Tapestry through my shield sister; a feeling that I’d gotten many times before from Jade but never with such clarity.
At the sound of that beautiful Cleroii’s—no, not Cleroii; Preoii, as she should have always been—at her silent words, the Faoii Oath tumbled unrestrained from my beaming, unresisting lips. It was during those whispered phrases that I realized that I had not spoken the Oath since the Croeli occupation. And my new understanding of the Goddess and of Jade filled the unspoken gaps between the vows.
“I am Faoii. I am the harbinger of justice and truth.”
You do not go to seek outside help because the Faoii fight alone. We have always worked alone. We shall finish this alone, because there are no others to wage this war.
“I am the strength of the weak and the voice of the silent.”
We do not disappear into the night like dogs kicked by their masters. The Croeli have taken from us, and we shall fight back until we have nothing left to fight with.
“My blade is my arm, and as such is the arm of all people. Wherever I am, there will a weapon against injustice always be.”
Running will not rid this plague from the world. You cannot allow it to spread behind you. You must act against it while you are near its source.
“And with this weapon, I will protect the weak and purge all evil in the land. I will be ready to perform my duty for the weak at all times.”
We will not leave the sacred monastery and our fallen sisters’ bodies and fantoii in the hands of our Croeli foe. Such beauty is not to be tarnished further by being in their control rather than our own.
“And through this, I shall remember that all things are sacred and all souls worthwhile.”
It is that strength that kept you here. It is that desire to strike back against the Croeli in any manner available to you that kept you from retreating. That fire in your heart.
“But my blade will be held above all, for it protects all, and shall be part of me.”
You are the last to teach those that will follow. You are the voice that will educate the future, that will show these young ones what a Faoii is and what it means.
The Last Faoii Page 13