by Anna Steffl
evenSO Press
Prairie Village, Kansas
Copyright © 2014 Anna Steffl
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Inquiries should be addressed to evenSO Press, LLC, 3965 West 83rd Street #267, Prairie Village, KS 66208, www.evensopress.com.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013958466
Kindle: 978-0-9911587-5-1
ePub: 978-0-9911587-4-4
Print: 978-0-9911587-3-7
First Edition
Cover design by The Killion Group, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design and Interior format by The Killion Group http://thekilliongroupinc.com
DEDICATION
To JMS and JEK
Contents
Solacians
Map
You, in Whom All Is Possible
First Flight
Dusk
Joined and Asunder
Burning
Effigy
Moon Blood
Life and Death
Talisman
Lily Girl
Of This Place
More Relics
One Room
Snow
Chosen
Weightless
A Prayer for Absolution
Winter Garden
A Terrible Mercy
Jole, Year 0
Hollow Victory
Solace
Epilogue
About the Author
Solacians
Superior Madra Cassandra—head of the Solacian order
Hera Arvana Nazar (Hera Solace)—tasked with finding a champion to wield the Blue Eye
Hera Musette—spiritual advisor to Lady Martise in Acadia
Heran Kieran—a Solacian brother
Sarapostans
Prince Gregory Fassal—heir of Sarapost
Captain Myronan Degarius—leader of the Frontiersmen who carries Assaea, a blessed sword
Sergeant Jamis Micah
Corporal Salim
Corporal Nat
Chancellor Degarius—Degarius’s father
Lina—Degarius’s deceased grandmother
Stellan—Degarius’s deceased grandfather
Acadians
King Dontyre Lerouge
Prince Chane Lerouge—by inheritance carries Artell, a blessed sword
Princess Jesquin Lerouge—Hera Arvana’s student
Lady Martise—widow of the king’s brother, hostess to Solacians in Acadia
Attaché Honor Keithan—assistant to the prince
Lord Sebastion—an impoverished nobleman
Miss Gallivere—a friend of the princess
Gherians
Sovereign Alenius
Breena—the sovereign’s beloved
General Sibelian Aleniusson—adopted son of the sovereign
Cleric Nils—the sovereign’s former advisor
Cleric Rorke—chief cleric of the Worship Hall
Captain Juvenot—keeper of Seraph
The asher—a newly made eunuch
Captain Berlson—of the Fortress Guard
Creatures
The Scyon—a spirit recalled from Hell
Seraph—the poison draeden
Megreth—the fire draeden
Ancient Heroes
Lukis—ended Reckoning with the blessed sword Artell
Paulus—ended Reckoning with the Blue Eye and the sword Assaea
Mariel—founder of Solace
Relics
Assaea—a blessed sword thought lost
Artell—a blessed sword kept by the Acadians
The Beckoner—a device that resurrects dead spirits into a new body
The Blue Eye—a device that can kill by drawing souls into Hell
YOU, IN WHOM ALL IS POSSIBLE
Solace
Pale light crept into the bottoms of the gathering room’s east windows and into Superior Madra Cassandra’s consciousness. It would be a fine day for travel. In a moment of amused reflection before calling the sisters sitting behind her from their meditation, she noted that the high windows were designed to let in light but not the distractions of the courtyard outside. They did little, however, to deter inward distractions. But today, perhaps, it was allowable to be distracted. Last night was Princess Lerouge’s Coming of Age Ceremony and today Musette and Arvana would be coming home. The duty with the relic was over. Hera Arvana’s letter, announcing she’d made Lerouge champion, had come two days ago. What a mercy that Hera Arvana had fulfilled the Founder’s duty within the time allotted and before the draeden made any show of force.
Madra Cassandra lifted the small bell that rested on the wide arm of the Prioress’s Seat, a heavy chair whose back was to the assembly so that she, as the other sisters, could face the Founder’s icon during meditation. She rang the bell once, and it chimed so pure and clear in the confines of the room’s stone walls. The sound would be lost in the wider world. So was the case with her soul. It had found within these walls its place to sound most pure and clear. She folded her hands and began to say aloud the closing prayer she had said thousands of times. Knowing it by rote, she ceased to hear her own chanting as she strove to feel the harmony made by the voices of the hundred women with her in the gathering room.
Illuminate our souls with Your Light,
You, in whom all is possible,
Dark and Light.
Judge and Forgiver,
Mother and Father,
Pour upon us that which in you is Love.
Use us for the purpose that your Wisdom chooses.
Draw us closer to you every moment of our life
Until in us is reflected your Joy and Peace
As it was in the Founder and the shacras.
In the silence after the prayer, the superior made her own petition for Prince Lerouge. She raised her gaze to the Founder’s icon, and her heart went out to Hera Arvana. This duty had been a trial upon her protégé, but surely, by fulfilling her purpose, she was closer to joy and peace.
Over the muffled rustling of a hundred women trying to rise quietly, came the creak of the gathering room door, breaking the superior’s concentration. An unsettling feeling overtook her as she gripped the arms of the chair, pushed up, and took the cane resting against the seat edge. Over the back of the Prioress’s Seat, she saw a frazzled Hera Musette and the unsettled feeling turned to dread. What was so urgent to bring Hera Musette back so early in the day...and to violate the solemnity of the morning meditation?
“Please, you must come.” Hera Musette’s usually forceful voice came out in a plea so thin it nearly died in the air before it reached the superior.
In the hall, before the superior had time to ask why she had come at such an hour, Hera Musette blurted, “Forgive me, I know he shouldn’t have been admitted beyond your offices, but I had him take Hera Arvana to her cell.”
“Him?” the superior asked. “The prince?”
“Maker have mercy,” Hera Musette said, then sighed. As they went through the halls, Musette alternately answered questions and told a story that brought the superior lower with each word until it ended with, “I pray we aren’t too late for the last blessing. Surely she’ll be far from the Maker without it.”
The superior stopped, wobbled on her cane, and clutched Hera Muset
te’s forearm. “Where is the relic?”
Sharp cold panged through Arvana’s shoulder. She fluttered her eyes open. It was Lina’s ghost, pinching her shoulder. Arvana wondered how long she had been drifting in the strange sleeplike state. The last thing she remembered was Nan lifting her into Lady Martise’s carriage. Nan. She wanted to see him, but everything beyond Lina, beyond Assaea’s glow, was murky gray. She concentrated, tried to bring the world into focus. Still, everything was gray. Was she dead? Was this to be her doom for forsaking her vows? Being trapped in this place, unable to see anything except the sword of the man she loved. “Lina, am I dead?”
“No. I still see life in you, but some of your spirit is drifting away.”
Drifting away? A knot of dread tightened in Arvana’s stomach. When she died, her sins would pull her deeper into Hell, away from even this small connection to Nan. She wouldn’t deserve that mercy. “I only—”
Lina held a hushing finger to her lips. “Someone is coming. Look.”
A small blue light, the size of crown coin, shone above them. From it, a rush of life threads twisted and spun into the life-size form of a gaunt-cheeked old woman with sunken but bright eyes. The superior! She didn’t wear her veil and the blue light emanated from her hand. It was the relic. For a moment, the superior was awestruck by Assaea’s light, saying, “How amazing.” But when she looked to Arvana, the lines about her mouth grew as grim and aged as a weathered fence post. With a kindly smile, she tried to cloak her initial expression.
“It’s too late, isn’t it?” Arvana asked.
“You’ve been here a long time.”
“Cover it,” Arvana said of the relic. She wanted to confess. Perhaps it would spare her from falling away from Nan completely.
Madra Cassandra nodded and shut the locket lid almost closed so The Scyon would not see them.
Arvana would’ve kissed the ground long and hard if she could. “I have failed in so many ways. I chose Prince Lerouge to take the Blue Eye, and now he’s dead. And I broke my promise of constancy of heart. Take my ring. I don’t want to die false to my vows.”
“False?”
“I loved him. I put him before the Maker in my heart.”
“And you do not repent this?”
“My repentance is never enough.”
Arvana watched, but felt nothing, as the superior removed the ring from her finger. It was as if she was watching it happen to someone else.
The superior closed the ring in her hand. “What use is the Maker’s forgiveness if you won’t accept it?”
“Madra?”
“When your brother brought you here, he told me how your father died and how he blamed you. In his heart, he had to know he was wrong, but he was weak, couldn’t bear to blame himself. It was easier to blame you, who would bear anything. And you, you look upon what you endured as a punishment, as if you deserved it. You won’t accept mercy. Not for that. Not for forsaking your vows.”
Though Arvana’s living body seemed so distant, the past was as close as ever.
She was driving the sleigh. In the back sat her brother Allasan, his fiancé, Payter and Elizabetta. They were in the open country. The road ran in a long, straight stretch. With a flick of the reins, she urged the horses to go faster. She didn’t know why she wanted to fly over the snow. It just was necessary to feel something, anything other than Payter’s betrayal. How could he love Elizabetta? She cracked the reins. Snow stung her face and the wind whistled.
“What are you doing?” her brother shouted. “You’ll put us in the ditch.”
What was she doing? They could go in the ditch. With a tug on the reins, she slowed the horses to a trot. She’d never forgive herself if she hurt the horses...or anyone else. Even Payter or Elizabetta.
Their lane was ahead. She would go home and let Allasan drive. As she made the turn, something by the stable bounded from behind a snowdrift. She couldn’t see it clearly through the snow. A dog? She halted the horses. They stamped and snorted restlessly. The animal loped into the lane. No, it wasn’t a dog; it was a coyote. Why was it out in the middle of the day and why didn’t it shy away as they always did?
It burst into a run toward them.
“Allasan,” she screamed, but he was already beside her, grabbing the ax from under the front seat. He jumped from the sleigh. The spooked horses threw their heads up and began to retreat. The sleigh slid backward. They were angling toward the ditch. She sawed the reins, trying to steady them.
The coyote launched at Allasan.
One of the horses jerked in the harness. The rims of his eyes were white with terror. His front legs left the ground and circled in the air. The sleigh heaved to the side. They were going to overturn into the ditch.
She dropped the reins and leaped into the snow. She ran to the front of the team and grabbed their headstalls in either hand to hold them. “Easy, boys, easy.” But the panicked horse threw his head back and his teeth flashed. He was going to rear. Her right arm snapped straight and her feet left the ground. The other horse’s headstall ripped from her grip. She was dangling in air. Not weightless. All the weight in the world was pulling on her arm. She couldn’t let go, couldn’t fall beneath those frantic hooves, couldn’t let the sleigh overturn.
“Whoa!”
Her feet sank back into the snow and she pulled the horse’s head down by the headstall. “Good boy. That’s my boy.”
Allasan’s hand joined hers on the wild horse’s headstall. Steaming breath huffed from her brother’s mouth. He gave a reassuring nod to his fiancée, then whispered, “That coyote was mad. I’m sure. Its eyes...its mouth...Ari...it had the mad disease.”
“Allasan?”
“No, it didn’t bite me. Now, let’s get them away from this.”
And then she saw it. This was bright red snow. This was the coyote, dead of a shattered skull. Her brother had been brave, then.
As they guided the skittish horses up the lane, she looked to the sleigh. Payter’s cold-rosy cheeks had gone pale. Though the grain merchant’s daughter was sobbing, he hadn’t put his arm around her, wasn’t holding her hand. He was a coward.
“Ari. Look.” There was something brittle in Allasan’s voice. It cracked as thin ice over a stream did underfoot.
Blotches of blood stained the trampled snow between the stable and the house. Blood streaked her father’s guide rope. The coyote had been here first.
“Dear Maker, no,” she said.
Allasan started running toward the house.
Then, everything disappeared into a blur of snow.
“If I had stayed home and done my chores, I would have seen the coyote,” Arvana said to the superior.
“And perhaps died instead of your father? What would that have done to him, a man whose responsibility it is to protect his child? You dishonor him and the Maker.”
Arvana knew, had always known, what the superior said was true, but it couldn’t stop her from feeling that everything would have been different, good, if she hadn’t chased after Payter, insisted on being a part of the sleigh ride her brother didn’t want his younger sister tagging along on.
“The Maker sorrows over your father and your loss of him,” the superior said. “Let that be your comfort, just as you let the Maker prop your strength when you stayed beside your father through the mad disease.”
“Strength? I hated Allasan for leaving.” Inwardly, she admitted why she loathed herself. It was something that couldn’t be spoken: she’d wished over and over again that her father would just die when he thrashed with the mad disease, when he begged for water but couldn’t bear to drink it. She had caused him this suffering and then couldn’t even abide it. It was the worst selfishness.
“Would you have left your father if Allasan stayed?”
“It was my punishment.” And she hadn’t been able to willingly abide it. Just as she now didn’t want to abide slipping farther away from Nan.
“But you stayed. Now, try to stay with us.”
&nb
sp; The superior went to reopen the relic when Lina flew to Arvana and said, “Promise me you’ll take the relic.” To the superior she added, “In my journals is the way to Alenius, the one with the Beckoner. I told my grandson to read them. They are in my trunk at Ferne Clyffe. What I revealed is worth more than a hundred thousand men.”
The superior’s widened eyes looked from Lina to Arvana. “You wish this task?”
“Madra, do you remember the translation of the book I sent you?”
“Of course.”
“You can see the future. Look into the threads of my life and see if it possible. Ask with your heart.”
“The glow of your life is weak, but I will try.” Madra’s brow knit while she peered into the possible paths of Arvana’s life. Finally, she shook her head. “It is impossible to tell. There are too many possibilities. It isn’t a simple yes-or-no question.”
The glow of Assaea was still near. He was here. Up through the sorrow of her father’s death welled a feeling of love. “I can’t leave it to him alone. He has no chance against The Scyon without the Blue Eye.”
Lina splayed her hands between them. “Take her back before it is too late. What is the sense in this?” Her ring, a cluster of sapphires and diamonds, seemed to flash with the woman’s impatience.
The superior opened the relic’s cover and curled a finger to Arvana. “Come home.”
An excruciating pain, as if her whole body was being torturously squeezed, clenched Arvana. She screamed. The startling sound of it, coming from so far within her, dulled the pain for a moment.
From a distance came the sound of a door flying open. In a panic, Hera Musette shouted, “Madra Cassandra?”
“Out,” the superior barked and snapped the locket closed.
Another wave compressed Arvana from head to foot. She scrunched her eyes shut and tensed. Waves of pain kept coming. Even Hell was better than this agony. “Stop, stop it.” Her back arched from the bed. Her arms and legs burned. Involuntarily, she screamed again and wanted to thrash her limbs from her body.
“Soldier, help me,” the superior said.
Arvana felt warmth around her shaking ankles, calming them. Gradually, the pain faded to an ache, and she relaxed into the lavender scent of the pillow. Was she home? She opened her eyes. It was dark but not gray. A slender column of light was breaking in though the gap between the drawn heavy drapes and fell across a familiar patterned stone floor. She was in her old cell. While bracing for another onslaught, she glanced to the superior, who was sitting in a chair beside the bed. She didn’t glow with life as seen from Hell; she was pale and covered with a clammy sweat. Arvana marshaled her strength to raise her head. At the foot of the bed stood Nan, bent over and still holding her feet. Half of his hair had worked loose from its binding and obscured his face. “Madra, this is General Degarius.”