by J. A. Comley
Starla almost tripped over the last step in wide-eyed amazement. Up until now, she had been walking down corridors of smooth, black stone, dimly lit by their own eerie light. Now, she stood at the beginning of a seemingly never-ending corridor. Still of black stone, it was hung with bright tapestries and paintings, all illuminated by flaming torches placed at intervals down its length.
Starla moved forward cautiously, still awed by the corridor. Slowly, she took in each scene of foreign planets, strange animals and people. She stopped at a ripped painting.
It had been a portrait of Kyron and Ezira. They looked happy. Starla's heart gave a twinge as she remembered Ezira's sorrowful eyes and Kyron's cruel stare. There was no more happiness, now. Shaking her head, Starla picked up her pace as she carried on down the corridor, and walked right into a wall.
Dazed, Starla lifted her hand towards the obstruction. It felt as smooth and cold as the walls around it, but it was painted or enchanted to make it seem like the hallway continued on forever.
“Dead end,” Starla muttered, turning back towards the stairs.
The sound of heavy footsteps echoed up the stairs and down the corridor to Starla. Sucking in a startled breath, Starla dashed behind a floor-to-ceiling tapestry of Kyron on his alpha magmus. It was held a bit away from the wall by a wooden frame, which Starla climbed on to. As the footsteps reached the top of the stair, Starla hoped, desperately that the drodemion wouldn't sense the Star and come to investigate or that the wooden beam on which she stood wouldn't break under her weight, giving her away.
By the steady rhythm of its footfalls, Starla assumed the drodemion had resumed its pacing. She leaned her head back against the wall. How long would it take for the Sacrileons to find her? She no longer had Flek with her, and this place led nowhere. None of their passages would lead here, but if they made it back to where they left her, this was the only way forward.
Please let them find Larkel and the others, Starla thought, though she knew that, even if they did, they wouldn't be able to leave without her. She had the amulet.
Suddenly another two sets of footsteps echoed up the stairs. The drodemion stopped pacing.
Why are they making so much noise? Starla wondered, alarmed.
Careful of every movement, Starla peeked out from behind the tapestry, pressing her face against the wooden frame, looking through a gap between them. The drodemion's eyes were glowing red, now, and it was folded at the waist in a bow.
Starla recognised Captain Trent and Keeper Thorten as they entered the corridor. She laid herself flat against the wall. Through small holes in the fibres of the tapestry, she could just make out the tapestry hanging opposite.
Thorten was complaining, his oily voice petulant as they drew nearer.
“Watch yourself. Master Kyron sees and hears all in his fortress,” Trent advised, coming to a halt in front of the enchanted wall. Starla could see them now, through the tapestry.
She desperately hoped Trent was wrong.
“Right,” Thorten muttered, “but isn't checking on the prisoners Braxton's job?”
“Shut up,” Trent snapped, reaching behind the tapestry opposite Starla's. “The Master ordered us to check on Larkel. So that's exactly what we're going to do,” he finished, a black dagger suddenly in his hand.
Starla exerted all her self-control not to move or scream as Trent turned towards her tapestry. Her last coherent thought was that Trent somehow knew she was there as the long dagger soared towards her.
The dagger plunged deep into Kyron's crest on the magmus but instead of ripping through the fabric and slicing into Starla, it sounded like it had struck a gong. Captain Trent let go of the ornate black handle and Starla forced her teeth to stop biting into her bottom lip.
A deep, soul piercing howl tore through the passage and Trent and Thorten both stepped forward, towards the wall. Starla felt herself shiver as the sound seemed to rattle her bones, but she kept concentrating on the two men and the wall.
Slowly, the pictures on the wall faded, their colours swirling together, until finally all colour was gone and the wall looked translucent, although Starla could make out nothing beyond it.
The men stepped into the gently moving surface of the wall and were instantly swallowed up. The dagger flew out of Starla's tapestry and back to its own hiding place.
The howling ended as abruptly as it had started and the wall was suddenly back in its previous solid state, mirroring the short corridor on and on forever.
Starla glanced down towards the drodemion straightening up, its eyes blind and white once more. It resumed its monotonous shuffle.
Starla stilled a frustrated sigh.
I have to follow them, she thought desperately. They'll lead me straight to Larkel!
Just as she was about to throw herself out from behind the tapestry in a last ditch effort, a low horn blast reverberated through the walls.
The endless shuffling stopped and Starla's heart beat faster as she heard the drodemion's footfalls growing fainter as it descended the stairs.
She pushed thoughts of traps from her mind. Kyron didn't know the other half of the amulet was here. If he had, he would have taken it from Raoul, by now. Even if he was aware she was here, he didn't know how close she was to her full power. Starla darted out from her hiding place and snatched the black dagger.
She stabbed the crest with more force than was necessary in her haste to follow after Trent. She braced herself as the howling tore through the passage again and the wall began to transform. Not hesitating, Starla jumped through the warping wall as soon as it was translucent. A crunching noise behind her was her only indication that the wall was solid once more. From this side, she could clearly see down the passage to the stairs. The howling had disappeared as soon as she had crossed over.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim light again, Starla found herself in a small, circular chamber of black stone. In the centre was another circle of the deepest black, with the top of a metal ladder poking out of the hole in the ground.
She knew that the howling couldn't have gone unnoticed. Her time to save the others and unite the amulet was now very limited.
Shoving down Rya's warning that this was all too well-prepared, Starla moved to the edge of the hole. It didn't matter. She would unite the amulet and save everyone. Deep down, she knew that she wouldn't leave Larkel, regardless.
“They had to have gone this way,” Starla said to herself, sparing the small space one more glance.
Taking a deep breath, she lowered herself onto the first rung.
Then, Starla was screaming, slapping a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. The ladder had vanished beneath her and she was plunging into the utter darkness at the heart of Kyron's realm.
In the brightly lit corridor, the torches seemed to gutter and spit as if in a strong wind. Slowly, the flames grew and changed. Black scales appeared along their lengths. It was all over in seconds. Twelve juvenile magmi, no bigger than large dogs, stood in the space, their red eyes all on the wall through which the girl had vanished. With a satisfied hiss, they spat their fire against a tapestry of Kyron riding their alpha and glided out of the resulting portal in search of their Master.
Starla grunted as her rear came into contact with something hard. She wasn't falling, now, so much as sliding.
No sooner had she come to this conclusion than the slide ended and she spilled out of the darkness, landing heavily on a hard, rough stone floor.
She blinked a few times, clearing her head as she lay on the floor. Closest to her were the Sacred Stones. Starla recognised them from Larkel's mind, even bathed in orange light as they now were.
Slowly, she raised her head. Before her spread out the exact image from her vision, except that Larkel was no longer suspended above the lava. She was on her feet in seconds, barely taking the time to make sure that Trent and Thorten had moved on. Then she was running towards the cages, one empty now that the humans it had held were all in the other cage with Raoul,
Pierre, Father Joe and Larkel, barely being able to contain the urge to call out Larkel's name as soon she spotted his raven hair.
Everything happened at once. Starla saw the fear and dismay in Larkel's eyes as he turned towards the sound of her running. She spotted the gags and chains binding them all. A net swooped down on her as grobblers materialized from the rock walls.
Starla launched herself out of the way of the net, dodging past the first few grobblers. She just needed the other half of the amulet!
She wrenched her eyes from Larkel and started to form Raoul's name, wanting him to show her where the Blossom was. She dodged past another two grobblers.
Then, they seemed to be everywhere, their scaly hands grabbing her arms and legs, snagging handfuls of her shirt and hair. They secured her and spun her away from the cages to face the door, their short claws biting deeper as she struggled. Captain Trent entered through the door at the head of a group of drodemion shamans. Each pair held a limp Sacrileon between them.
Starla froze. Dead or unconscious?
She watched in mute horror as the drodemions moved towards the second, empty, cage. It had shining blue cuffs hanging at intervals along the inside. Starla sighed in relief as the drodemions began to secure the Sacrileons. There would be no need to chain someone who was dead.
“No!” Starla snarled, coming back to herself with the realisation that they weren't dead. She threw two grobblers to the ground and kicked another in the teeth before they managed to subdue her again, cursing as they did so. She heard her shirt rip as they pulled her down.
“Now, now,” Trent said, sauntering forward, chains in his hands, “I suggest you cooperate.”
Starla spat at him as he began to chain her wrists.
He wiped his face, then stared at her with pitiless eyes. “Stop fighting, or we start killing your earthling friends over there.”
“Did you really expect to be able to free them?” Ditte asked, stepping into the chamber. “You fooled the great Master Kyron once, escaping like you did. You'd never have been able to fool him twice. You didn't think he'd felt you using his Orb?” Ditte's voice was condescending and full of bitterness.
“Why?” Starla gasped as he waved his staff over her chains and murmured a spell. “Why did you betray your home to that monster?”
“Because King Eldos is an old fool who was going to get us all killed,” Ditte spat through his teeth, turning away from her and moving to the cage holding her friends, family and Larkel.
Starla snarled wordlessly as the reality of her capture began to sink in, leaving her feeling disorientated. “Just, just let the humans go,” she whispered, her voice clearly audible in the utter silence of the cavern. “They have nothing to do with this.”
Ditte looked over his shoulder with a smirk on his face. He turned back and murmured over their chains, too.
“They are connected to you. And you, Princess, have everything to do with it,” Ditte muttered over his shoulder, sneering her title as he moved over to the Sacrileons. Trent jerked around to face Ditte.
She shook her head in disbelief and felt the weight of failure slowly crush her. If she had never wished to come here, never summoned her Star, she would still be on Earth and this situation wouldn't be as bad as it now was. She had just made everything worse.
Then she caught Larkel's eye and it was as if she could hear his thoughts behind his intense gaze.
She straightened up. No. None of this was her fault. Kyron would have killed everybody on this planet, anyway. She was here and she would keep fighting. Her only regret was her human family that had been dragged into a war they didn't belong in.
Trent turned back to her, a strange look on his face as his eyes bored into hers.
“Why did you do it? Why would you stand by and let innocent people die?” she asked the young Captain, recognising the surprise in his eyes. He, at least, didn't seem to have had knowledge of her origins.
“This is the only way,” he whispered, for only her to hear. His voice surprisingly sincere. “This way, at least my wife and children will survive. And it's the same for Ditte. The same for just about everyone who has come here.”
Starla looked at him a moment longer. He truly seemed to believe that Kyron would spare his family, if he in turn betrayed Galatia.
“No, Captain. He is a Destroyer. Nothing will survive this except him and his slaves,” she murmured, her voice full of real sadness for this man.
At that moment a low hiss brought Starla's attention to the roof, where a magmus was just entering through an oculus.
With a heavy heart, Starla noticed that the day had already dawned. The blood-red sky glowed ominously outside as the magmus landed.
“Master Kyron is pleased with your information,” it hissed, gazing at Ditte. “You have put the Curse of Exchange on all their bindings?”
“Just finishing up, here,” Ditte confirmed, moving on to the next Sacrileon.
“You,” the magmus flicked its tail at Trent, “put her in the cage with the High Lord. A show of the Master's mercy. A gift to those who fought him so valiantly. Then locate the Baron and escort him to the Tower for the final briefing.”
Trent watched the magmus disappear back out through the oculus before he towed Starla to the appointed cage. Starla didn't fight. The only thing her body craved right now was to be near Larkel.
“It's the only way,” he mumbled again, shutting Starla in. He gave her one last, long look. “I am sorry, princess,” he said almost bowing. Then he raised his voice loud enough for Ditte to hear. “I'm going to find Braxton. I'll see you at the Tower.”
Ditte waved him off and then spoke loudly to those in the cages.
“Don't move. Don't touch each other. The Master doesn't want any accidental deaths. Larkel will explain,” he said, grinning as everyone froze. “Who is going to guard you?” he muttered, glancing around the shadowy chamber as he made their gags vanish with a wave of his staff.
“I am,” came a voice from the deeper shadows on the other side of the lava pit.
Starla cringed, wanting to plug her ears. It sounded like notes played on a broken instrument. She kept her eyes on the shadows.
Ditte nodded and hurried from the chamber, the door squealing shut behind him.
Larkel's cry of horror echoed Starla's own as the drodemion came from across the lava pit.
Starla had never seen a drodemion like this and she fervently prayed that she never would again.
Its skin was drodemion-grey, but it looked brittle rather than melted. Dark, diamond-shaped cracks formed a pattern all over it and it was clad in the remains of a short, glittering, blue dress. Although the eyes were slightly opaque, their original violet was still discernible. The dirty white hair hung in tangled clumps down to its waist.
She was staring at a turned Sacrileon. At Galatia's other Guardian: Beky.
Chapter 21
Allies and Traitors
Commander Medara and General Okano were standing together at the entrance to the Hall of Justice. Both had their eyes fixed on the sky as the sun neared its apex. Both had spent a sleepless night organising troops, making lists of weapons for the blacksmiths and trying to urge the common people to remain calm.
“A little over a day left,” D'Ordeley whispered, shaking her head and stifling a yawn.
Thanks to the Aurelians and their Guiding Stones, they had managed to evacuate everyone still left outside the walls of the Royal City. Soon, all would be brought here to hide in the magically enlarged and concealed bunker beneath the Hall while the armies fought, though already there was no one left outside the Tower Wall. All the common people were camping out in the palace gardens or on the lawns of the manors, the Imperial Circle turned into one huge refugee camp.
The Commander turned back to the Hall. Only one round table had been set at its centre. The King of Galatia and his family were already seated around it. They were all waiting for Naleiya, at which point, their final war meeting would begin, no doub
t running late into the night.
Another sleepless night, Medara thought, allowing her formal pose to slump back against the wall.
“We cannot wait for your wife much longer,” General Okano began, eyeing his own wife who had chosen to wait outside until the meeting began. Valana was taking on members of the Citizen Guard, her swords flashing about in lightning-fast strikes. He smiled proudly.
“She'll be here,” Medara said, swallowing a shared embarrassment as yet another Galatian lasted less than a minute against the Aurelian Queen.
General Okano eyed the dark circles under the Commander's eyes, then glanced over at the long table where Queen Zerina was taking her place beside Prince Niden.
“I also cannot imagine what problem it is that Zerina has found in our battle plans that we and all our captains have overlooked,” Okano said, readjusting his General's sash.
“Queen Zerina,” Commander Medara said, straightening up and turning to face the Aurelian. But her speech about proper respect was stopped before it began as Naleiya strode into the Hall, looking livid.
Both her hands held staves as she still insisted on carrying her brother's, despite the knowledge that he may yet be alive. Although, Medara knew, every hour that did not bring the Princess Starla and the others was further evidence of their failure.
She followed her wife to the table, shadowed by the Aurelian royalty.
“As you all know, my brother was right and Makhi Ditte abandoned the city just after midnight. I can now confirm that he took twenty others with him, including five more Makhi.” She ground her teeth together, cursing herself yet again for not following through on her brother's intuition. “These were found in his private safe box at the Order.” She tossed the bundle of scrolls on to the table beside a detailed map of the Imperial Circle. “They are proof of his, and many others', alliance with Kyron, all brokered by the former Baron. That sets the Makhi Order of Trianon down to just twelve hundred.”
Naleiya took a deep breath, steadying her rampant emotions as she sat at the table. The others were shaking their heads, whispering about the implications.