A Rage in the Heavens (The Paladin Trilogy Book 1)

by James A. Hillebrecht

  Ahead at the very center of the copse was a low-built structure covered with vines to which the aged oaks gave way, as if it predated even them, an edifice as old as the stone on which it stood. Darius approached it reverently, though some part of him still held back, resisting the memories of the past and what they promised of the future, the sword he carried becoming heavier in his hands. The building was a sturdy blockhouse wrapped in long green vines that seemed almost an adornment, as if nature itself were reaching out to hide it, to protect it. To embrace it. There was white visible between the leaves, the gleam of unblemished marble that bore no mark of time or weather, and vines formed a narrow tunnel to the building’s sole entrance.

  Clearly, no one had been here for many seasons. Nor would any come again for many seasons yet to come.

  Barely visible through the leaves above the door was an embossed legend, and even though much of it was hidden, Darius knew the words well. “Elis an den Sortus pal Coera e Glorium et.” Only the Pure of Soul shall Embrace the Arms of Mirna.

  “You are long from this place, Darius,” came a voice seemingly from within the building. “I had not thought to see you here again.”

  A small, reluctant smile came to Darius’ face. “I am not come by my choice, Old One. I would most gladly have allowed you to slumber undisturbed in the greenwood throughout the long ages. But I am called, and I cannot but choose to answer.”

  “Thus is the fate of the Paladin,” the voice said, though there was no trace of sympathy in that calm tone. “Yet I await the required proof of your quest.”

  Slowly, Darius approached the stone door, brushing away the ivy, and placed Sarinian fully against the surface. The sword began to glow with a warm light, and the illumination spread to the door, the entire portal gleaming in answer, the stone as one with the weapon. There was a soft snap, and the door opened silently, acknowledging the traveler’s right to enter.

  Inside, the interior of the building seemed bathed in a soft white radiance. It was constructed of the same marble as the exterior, the white stone reflecting what light there was to illuminate even the far corners. The room was completely empty, save for a single figure standing quietly in the very center of the area, an armored form that looked like a guardian of the room, a sentinel to its purity.

  “The armor has awaited you, Darius,” said the voice. “It is now as the day you placed it here.”

  Darius walked slowly forward and put his hand gently on the breastplate, the metal cool to his touch. The armor was silvered steel with an intricate design etched delicately into the surface of the metal, a pattern of whirling lines most pleasing to the eye. To the heathen, the imagery was nothing but an artist’s rendering to impress; to the casual observer, the lines seemed to form leaves and flowers within the pattern; but Darius saw there the Tree of Life, the symbol of Mirna the Glorious and a declaration of who he was to all with the vision to see. His fingers followed the pattern, sensing it as would a blind man, forgetting its purpose for a moment as he reveled in the simple artistry of the craftsman. Then the memories flashed back, the images of when this beautiful surface had been dripping with human blood, and his hand withdrew.

  “If another warrior had passed that door in my place, Old One, would he have found this same suit of armor?” Darius asked quietly, not really expecting an answer.

  “The armor serves the needs of the Messenger of Mirna the Glorious,” replied the voice. “As Bilan-Ra commands, so shall the armaments be arrayed.”

  Darius’ eyebrow rose at that, realizing that had he not accepted this quest, the burden would have fallen upon another. There was some cold comfort in that thought. He lifted the armor from the podium on which it stood, the metal weightless, the surface flawless, showing none of the scars that traced his own body. The armor could heal itself, closing all rents and dents inflicted upon it with time, and it did not retain any record of those blows. Perhaps a man’s body is the better, mused Darius. It is well to remember the wounds that nearly cost a warrior his life. For are not scars at the very root of wisdom?

  Armor yourself swiftly, Inglorion, said Sarinian. Andros has already been summoned. We must not tarry.

  Andros. Darius’ heart stirred at the name of his beloved warhorse, the companion that had born him over endless leagues and through countless hardships, and he could actually see the great stallion in his mind’s eye charging over the land, closing the distance between them, answering a need in Darius’ mind even before it became a call. The means that would carry him once more to war.

  “We shall tarry for one night at least, sword,” Darius answered as he placed Sarinian in its old scabbard on the armor’s back, effectively silencing it. “I will speak with my daughter this evening, even if all the world be put at risk.”

  *

  Shannon paused as she carried the last of the platters towards the washing tubs and frowned at the forest into which her Father had vanished more than an hour ago now. She had no fear for his physical safety. Darius had the strength of any three men, and he knew the forest well, his quiet wisdom putting him at peace with the beasts and serpents of the woodlands. No, the opponent that troubled her heart was nothing as simple or as solid as a bear or a wolf or a viper.

  Oddly, her eyes went from the forest to the green hill that stood above the village, its grassy slopes a favorite picnic site for the villagers, the near one for children, the far one for teenagers who wished a little privacy from parental oversight. But now, there was a cloud of some sort touching the crest of the hill, a cloud descending out of a clear blue sky on a bright sunny day.

  “What in the name of wonder?” she said to a couple of the girls who were scrubbing the platters. “How can there be fog at the top of the hill, and at such a time of day?”

  “Fa, there’s naught there but sunshine on grass,” the one girl answered after a glance. “The fog is only in your own head, Shannon!”

  “Snitched a taste or two of the woodland wine?” asked the other with a giggle. “You best clear the cloud from your wits before your Father returns!”

  “No,” she answered faintly, dropping the platters in the washing trough. “No, it is there.”

  Shannon started walking slowly towards the hill, squinting to try to see more clearly. Were those the tops of branches at the very fringe of the fog bank? Could there be a copse of trees hidden within the mist? That was crazy, crazier even than an afternoon fog on a clear spring day, this idea that trees could just appear on the crest of a grassy hill. Yet craziest of all was the odd feeling that it had been there all along, invisible for all these years to the eyes of the villagers, now just flickering into sight for her alone.

  This was the Spring of her 17th year, and Shannon had been feeling a building anticipation over the slow months of the winter melt, a sense that her life would take a new turn with the coming of Summer, and she had tried to dismiss it as just the natural anxiety of any teenager nearing adulthood. But now as she stood and watched that spectral forest behind the mist, she had the oddest thought that the anticipated change had already begun. For better or for worse.

  He will be leaving, she thought suddenly. Today, tomorrow at the latest, my Father will take the Eastern Road and leave our village behind both in thought and in distance.

  That thought was like sunlight breaking through a bank of rainclouds, spreading illumination as if to enable her to see clearly the shadowy shapes that had surrounded her. Her Father had been distracted for days now, his mind elsewhere, a vague frown replacing the good humor which always seemed to mark his face, his eyes looking beyond the bounds of the village. She could even see how the incident with the Priest now fit the pattern.

  “It’s as if he has been hearing a voice in the distance,” she whispered to herself. “A voice too faint and far to discern the words. And now, today, that voice is speaking clear at last.”

  Shannon swallowed hard and almost wished she had a cup of the woodland wine to wash away the sudden fear. The thought was distu
rbing because it was no mere fantasy, no fancy flight of words. It broke upon her as a cold reality as solid as the ground on which she stood, and more, far more, she knew that her certainly came because she, too, could now hear some distant sound, too indistinct for any clarity, like a far off trumpet sounding bravely…summoning…her.

  Shannon’s body actually shivered for a moment at that thought, a physical revulsion at losing him, at being left behind, at…being denied.

  Denied? Denied what?

  Shannon looked again at the shadowy copse of woods standing high on the hill above the village, the trees now discernible as oaks spreading their branches to the sky above, and she sensed for just a moment all the things she could not see, the trappings of a distant power that had always existed invisibly on the edges of her life, the distant hints of glory. A glory that had always been clear to Darius, a glory that was summoning him once again.

  The tremble returned, shaking her body from ankles to the crown of her head, a quiver that had nothing to do with revulsion. Her eyes stayed on the grove of oaks, her heart surging for reasons she did not know. For reasons she did not need to know.

  “One thing is certain, Father,” she promised him softly. “You are not going to make this journey alone.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Hasty Journeys

  “No current pass, no entry, woman,” the guard snapped. “Next!”

  “But I don’t understand, Sir,” Adella said in her sweetest voice, still blocking the old woman who stood, waiting impatiently, behind her. “There’s never been a problem before.”

  “Orders,” the guard said, the gentle voice taking some of the edge off his own. His gaze wandered for just a moment from the rich, full lips to the flowing black hair and the fine figure wrapped in the peasant’s smock, then back to the high cheek-bones and the lovely sky blue eyes, flanking a prominent nose, the one feature that kept her from being a dazzling beauty. Then he blinked and focused again, his expression telling Adella she would not be able to wheedle her way through the gate. “We’ve increased security to keep out smugglers. Don’t you know how many thieves are about?”

  “I’ve heard something of it,” Adella answered faintly.

  “You’ll have to go to the main gate to apply for a new pass,” the guard replied, reaching past her for the old woman’s papers.

  Adella let out a long sigh, stepped aside and leaned against the stout outermost wall of Jalan’s Drift, eyeing the long line of people waiting to gain entrance. It was no more than the usual daily crowd: local farmers carrying their goods to market, peddlers looking to sell their wares in the richest bazaar in all the region, travelers simply trying to pass through to the Southlands beyond. That line will wind out of sight, she knew, when rumor of the barbarian invasion comes to the Drift.

  She was tired and sore, grimy beneath the smock, having made the journey from the ruins of Carthix Castle to the gates of Jalan’s Drift (a distance of some 250 leagues) in the phenomenal time of only two days, thanks to the aid of the mercenary pegasus who had been intended to help her escape the outraged lord of Carthix Castle rather than Regnar’s murdering hordes. The pegasus had carried her nearly three quarters of the length of the continent, though at an exorbitant price, for as he was quick to point out, their original arrangement had been to elude a few guards, not an invading army. Her eyes went back for a moment to the morning sky with its spots of white clouds. Walking did seem such an awkward and slow means of travel after soaring through the heavens on silver wings, and it helped her understand the snobbish superiority that aerial creatures so often showed to their earth-bound counterparts.

  She shook her head. The pegasus had put her down a few miles from the Drift where she had changed from armor to a peasant girl’s smock in the morning darkness, and then she had quietly joined the small daily groups converging on the Drift. Through the walls of Carthix Castle, through the slaughtering Northings, through all the long leagues in between, only to be denied entry by a slip of paper. One of life’s hurdles, Adella told herself philosophically as she let the expired pass fly away on the wind. We’re judged by the hurdles we clear.

  She glanced up the wall to the parapet where several red-cloaked Magistrates, the highly-respected policemen of the Drift, were visible and immediately rejected any thought of trying that path, at least in full daylight. She was dressed as a young woman going to market and was thus limited to that disguise, Bloodseeker and her leather armor carefully hidden away in the magical “bottomless pouch” which was one of Adella’s most useful items. The pouch was about the size of a coin purse and never weighed more than a few golden dinars, but it opened into a space the size of a large traveling trunk. It could act as a secret treasure chest, a convenient cache for disguises, or a hidden scabbard for Bloodseeker. At the moment, it was serving as all three.

  She turned back to studying the immediate problem of gaining access to the Drift. It would be child’s play to relieve one of the people in line of their papers, but unless she took the time to assume a new disguise, the guards were likely to remember her. Walk the two miles to the main gate and apply for a new pass? Not wise since all her papers were forgeries.

  Enough, she thought. She reached into her coin purse and produced a dozen golden dinars, glancing at the front group waiting to enter the gate. She chose a small boy of about seven years.

  “Here, Youngster,” she called, and with a flick of her thumb and finger, she sent one of the gleaming coins spinning through the air towards him. As she hoped, the surprised child grabbed at the coin and missed, knocking it into the middle of the group, its brightness catching every eye. One person dove for it, then a second, the orderly line beginning to dissolve.

  “Try again!” she said, sending another and then another coin into the excited crowd. People from farther down the line caught sight of the rolling coins and rushed forward, the crowd becoming a mob at the promise of quick gold.

  “There’s enough for all!” she laughed, throwing a handful into the air directly before the gate. Every person in the line saw those coins, and the riot was on.

  “Stand back there!” cried the guard in alarm. “Stand back!”

  Half a dozen guards rushed forward, and Adella charged into the fray as well, but only for a moment. She quickly and easily spun to the edge of the crowd and rolled through the open gate, while the guards struggled to restore order. Once inside, she slipped rapidly along the inside wall for a distance before stepping calmly out, straightening her hair and assuming the air of a housewife on a shopping trip.

  Nearly a mile away stood the second great wall of the Drift, and whereas the first ended against the sharp peaks of the Mountains of the Winds, the second was anchored at each end against the great fortresses of Stonehold and Rockwall, standing directly against the sheer mountain cliffs and still blocking the entire gap. Adella was paying more attention to the defenses than usual, knowing the first real test in their long history was likely to come within the next few weeks. All the armies of the Southlands would be required to man and hold the great outerwall, and it was generally believed that no enemy could breach even that first line if it were stoutly defended. Adella’s eyes narrowed. The walls of the Drift might be thicker than those of Carthix Castle, but the monstrosity she had seen looming out of the morning mist three days ago would have no greater trouble smashing through this stone.

  The wide sweep of the area between the two outer walls was known as the Smoking Fields, the place where any activities requiring fire were conducted. Off to one side were a host of smithies and stables where the horses of the Drift were housed and cared for, while further off were the fumes and sparks of the ironworks and forges, their stench and flames kept as far from the Drift’s center as possible. To the other side was the Butcher’s market, a dozen shabby lanes of open-air booths where every kind of meat, fish, and poultry was sold, supported by the pens and slaughterhouses kept discretely in the distance. Closer in were the cooking pits and smokehouses where some o
f the meat was cooked or cured, and the morning air was already heavy with the rich aroma of roast beef and pork.

  Adella headed into this busy market, listening to the lively bargaining as the city dwellers tried to drive down the price and the butchers steadily resisted. She let herself wander through the various stalls, arguing prices along with everyone else, and by the time she approached the next gate, she had a dozen eggs, a small haunch of pork, and a brand-new pass that gave her access even through the fourth wall of the Drift. The guards on duty at the second wall smiled at her and the pass, waving her through without a question.

  The area between the second and third walls was covered by the Green Fields, the place slightly smaller and more crowded than the Smoking Fields. Here the farmers from the surrounding countryside brought their daily produce to offer to the people from the Inner Walls, and the booths showed a fine selection of fruits and vegetables. Most of the produce was still from the winter stores, the spring crops a long way yet from yielding, but that simply made the bargaining even livelier. Still, as she made her way past the various stalls, Adella realized that even this bounty could not feed the city for long, especially if it were crowded with a mob of refugees flocking down from the north.

  There was real pleasure to be back among the well-remembered sights and smells, the swirling, chaotic energy of the Drift, a place unique in all the land. It was a city founded entirely on trade, unlike the Southlands and the newer Provinces of the Plains where a landed aristocracy took most of its money from crops and grazing animals, and that difference affected the culture, the atmosphere, and even the politics of the city.

  Adella was experiencing some odd pangs as she made her way through the busy markets. The streets of the Drift were among her first memories, a homeless orphan befriended and nurtured by thieves who found their mothering instincts stirred by this large-eyed waif, and it was here where she learned to gingerly lift a coin pursue from a fat merchant’s pocket and to vanish into thin air at the approach of the magistrates. She had been here when the Red Plague had marched through the streets, killing one in three, and she had robbed the dead and cared for the living, nursing paupers, beggars and fellow thieves back to life. And it had been here as a young woman she had run afoul of Anthar the Black, a murderous and feared warrior who swore to make an example of this upstart thief. She had lured him beneath the catacombs of the city, goaded his rage in the echoing maze, and led him into a deadly trap that drowned him. And from his cold, wet hands, she had taken the silver sword called Bloodseeker.