Solace Arisen

by Anna Steffl

  He ripped his robe open and cast it off. His arms and torso were perfectly muscled, but there was something ghastly wrong with his chest. On the side where his heart should be, the skin stretched over an egg-shaped mound. With one heave, he pushed the box with the broken glass top from its pedestal. It crashed to its side and a corpse fell partially out. The body was wrapped in a woman’s robes, but they were cut up the back and had fallen away to reveal a skeleton with pads for flesh. Its blonde wig was half off the skull and the nose of a wax mask was gone. “You have broken your promise, Alenius, as I knew you would,” the voice screeched. “You can’t deliver the world to me.” The round muscles on his arms and chest began to shrivel, his hair shed from his scalp, and the skin on his face sagged into an old man’s wrinkles.

  A feeble voice came from the man’s withered lips. “I was divine, the ruler—”

  “The ruler of nothing,” said the other voice. The beautiful silver aura around Alenius lost its luster and became pale green, the color of frozen pond water. The flesh around the egg shape turned dark purple. The skin over Alenius’s body split and peeled. The flesh beneath was blackened, as if it had been charred. The Gherian features sloughed from his face, leaving an open nasal cavity and a lipless mouth. As if every blood vessel in them had ruptured, the whites of his eyes went red. The egg shape could only be the Beckoner, the relic that brought death to life.

  On one hand and knees, Arvana held out the Blue Eye. So Alenius had tried to bring back to life the body of a dead lover named Breena, but failed, so shared his own body with her. Breena was what the ancients called The Scyon. Arvana willed The Scyon’s pale green aura to her, but like the draeden’s, it would not come. “Nan, you must wound it,” she called.

  Nan was already flying toward The Scyon. It cowered and crossed its arms over its face. Thank the Maker it was once a woman, unused to the threat of the blade.

  The instant Assaea touched the blackened flesh, the Beckoner in The Scyon’s chest lit up brighter than a moon seen through a spyglass. A crackling light bolted from the creature’s chest. It flashed to Nan, burst, and he flew backward into a table crisscrossed by a twisted section of the roof’s metal framework. He hit the table with the back of his legs and flailed onto it. Dear Maker, had one of the jagged lengths of metal pierced him? He groaned, but by some miracle, he curled his torso and slid to his feet. He’d landed between the beams. He took a step, but his hand went to his chest where the flash struck him, and he faltered. There was a black, burned spot on his coat and a gray area deadened a part of the splendid golden aura of his life.

  The egg in The Scyon’s chest again grew bright.

  “Don’t hurt him,” Arvana cried and rose. She held out the Blue Eye, and from the wound in the creature’s side sucked a huge portion of the icy-green spirit into it. In Hell, The Scyon’s spirit separated into long, thin frozen blades of sharp, serrated cord grass. They lashed at Arvana’s soul’s hands, covering them with thousands of small, wickedly burning cuts. From each cut ran a rivulet of spirit, each carrying a small portion of the reservoir of loneliness in her soul.

  She was a small girl wearing her favorite frock, the one with yellow flowers embroidered on the hem. She’d wandered into the tall grass on the far side of the pasture. In the wind, the tops of the grass wavered over her head. The more she tried to find her way out of it, the deeper into the dense blades she seemed to be. They nicked her arms with stinging cuts. She’d shouted and shouted until her throat was sore, but no one came. The sun was setting and the hum of a million insects was rising. She curled in the grass, her knees drawn up under the frock, and gave over to crying. Then she heard her mother call her name. She jumped up. “Mama! Mama!”

  “Ari?”

  “Mama!”

  Finally, the grass parted, and she reached to be plucked from the terrible grass. Her mother yanked Ari’s outstretched hand and in a shrill voice said, “What did I tell you? Never go in the grass. I’ll have your father whip you for it.” Ari cowered and pulled away her hand. Her mother became all the shriller, yelling for her to quit crying and to come along.

  Arvana looked up. She’d let go of The Scyon’s spirit. Claws erupted from its white gloves, and then expanding flesh burst through the fabric. Its limbs elongated, and it grew taller until it seemed an immense skeleton covered in skin the color of burned paper. The creature in the world was doubly large now and wings had sprouted from its back.

  The spirit shot toward her hand and through the Blue Eye, but when it came out in Hell, it took the form of a shard of gray ice and flew at her. She cowered into a ball, but the shard pierced her shoulder with a cold, stabbing pain.

  She stretched upright, arching her back as if that could somehow diffuse the hurt. She glanced to her shoulder. The dress was untouched, but refocusing to the Hell, she saw her soul run through with The Scyon’s icy spirit. It flowed through, mingling with her life threads. Suddenly, the gray-green thread shot from her, bringing out a bit of her golden being with it. As it pulled from her, a memory inflamed her mind. It was so real, she could smell the scent of winter on her brother as he walked, stony-faced, into the house four days after their father died. He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t look at her. He just went to the table, sat down, and asked what was for dinner. Rage rose in her. She grasped the coffeepot. Her hand holding it trembled with all the hatred she felt toward him.

  “Get out of my house,” Allasan said.

  As in her memory, Arvana drew her hand to her shoulder to throw.

  “Ari!” Nan shouted.

  No, it was the relic in Arvana’s hand, not the coffeepot handle. It was The Scyon, not Allasan before her.

  Nan was again charging it with Assaea. He was within striking distance.

  The Scyon reared and the Beckoner went white. This time it wasn’t afraid, didn’t flinch.

  Nan thrust Assaea straight upward into the Beckoner. It made a flat, cracking sound, and Nan stood as if transfixed. His hair eerily floated out from his head.

  Assaea glowed brighter in this world than it did in Hell. The bolt of light connecting Nan and The Scyon abruptly stopped and Nan’s hair fell limp, then so did the rest of his body and he slumped to the ground.

  Disbelief froze Arvana. It seemed an eternity before a realization broke the shell of shock: though Nan didn’t move, he still glowed with life and his hand still gripped the sword.

  “You spent your sword to destroy what does not matter.” The Scyon’s lipless mouth sneered at Nan. The Beckoner’s case was broken. Inside were a green plate and a tangle of wires that popped and fizzled. White, bitter-smelling smoke drifted from it. “I don’t need the Beckoner. I have escaped death.” It raised a claw to score Nan’s motionless body.

  Without thought, Arvana launched herself between them and hitting The Scyon’s arm, deflected the claw from Nan. The Blue Eye popped from her hand and landed faceup in the snow. As she reached for it, The Scyon swept her to it as easily as if she were a small child. It clutched her to its chest, pressing Arvana’s face to the stinking hole where the Beckoner used to be.

  The air stirred wildly, whipping the snow into a storm. Arvana’s feet lifted from the ground. She pressed away from The Scyon until there was a small space between their bodies through which she could see the ground. There was Nan, his hand kneading the snow. Life still glowed around him, but he was growing more distant and so was the Blue Eye’s light. The Scyon was rising to the opening in the atrium. Soon she would be beyond helping Nan. She had been so close to defeating The Scyon, but had let it fight her with her own weaknesses—weaknesses she’d endured.

  This time The Scyon wouldn’t escape her. She looked to the Blue Eye.

  The beast’s icy-green spirit spun downward to the relic.

  As The Scyon’s spirit whooshed through the relic, its bodily wings slowed. It struggled to stay at the opening in the atrium roof. In Hell, Arvana watched The Scyon’s spirit emerge from the Blue Eye. It jetted upward. The foremost part of it
took the form of a coyote’s head.

  Teeth bared, the coyote hurled toward them. It circled behind The Scyon, and she lost sight of it.

  Pain punctured Arvana’s thigh. The coyote had come up behind her and gnashed her exposed upper thigh. With a wrench of its jaws, it ripped a deep gouge in her spirit, releasing in a flood all the regret she felt over her father. Engulfed by it, she forgot about The Scyon. The coyote dissolved into a green vapor, and then a barrage of feelings, but no vision, registered with her mind.

  She should never have desired Payter, never gone on the sleigh ride. Maker, why hadn’t it been her instead of her father? She could have seen it coming and escaped. The rest of her life she would have spent at home with her father. They would have been happy. She’d never have gone to Solace. At this moment, the Solacians would be kneeling for evening prayer. Chane would be carrying his boys on his shoulders. Nan would be wearing his fine general’s coat.

  Layered over the regret was the thought that at last, this was her penance. Everything would be changed. She could be happy now. The terrible hurt would stop. But it didn’t. The wound throbbed. Each pulse ebbed with regret.

  Even if she could relive that day, staying home instead of sledding, it wouldn’t fix anything. Though Arvana saw the spirit coyote coming, she was unable to escape it. The mad coyote would have killed her. What joy would her father have had at burying her? If she had evaded the mad coyote, how happy would she have been living with her father? She had desired Payter. Soon or later, she would have felt that desire again and would have become bitter at her duty to remain home.

  Even her guilt wasn’t a pure thing.

  The Scyon’s grasp around her loosened.

  Yes, drop her. End this. Nothing else had ended it.

  The teetering sensation of being barely suspended in the air stunned Arvana from the pain of the guilt. She looked down from the dizzying height. Through snow clouds whipped up by The Scyon’s beating wings, she saw Nan lying in the snow. Dear Nan. How near she had come to forsaking him to nurse the worthless grief in her soul. She wouldn’t leave him to The Scyon.

  She bent forward, threw her arms around The Scyon’s neck, and then craned to see the ground. The Blue Eye was a small glowing spot in the snow. She fixed her gaze on the relic and her heart on The Scyon’s soul.

  “Go to Hell,” she cried.

  The Blue Eye sucked a torrent of green vapor.

  The Scyon screeched.

  The Blue Eye stopped glowing.

  A fierce wind gathered up The Scyon’s spirit in its vortex and tore through Hell. Arvana closed her eyes to break her connection with the Blue Eye. The warmth of life bloomed within her, but still she felt the rush of wind. Was she still in Hell?

  She opened her eyes. The Scyon’s body was twisted around hers.

  They weren’t in Hell.

  They were falling.

  HOLLOW VICTORY

  The forward lob of his head jerked Degarius to his senses. He was being hauled up by his arms. Instinctively, he tightened his grip on his sword.

  Gherians.

  Where was Ari? At a stand, he spit snow from his lips and said in Gherian, “Let me go, you bastards,” and to his surprise, they released him.

  The Scyon’s body was lying on its back in a broken heap in the middle of the floor. A bearish Gherian soldier with a full red beard and a commander’s peacock feather in his hat was heaving off one of the creature’s wings that was folded over its corpse. The wing fell with a dead thump into the snow and glass.

  Ari was atop the creature, still embraced by The Scyon’s sinewy arms. The commander walked over the wing, peeled The Scyon’s arms from her, and helped her to her feet.

  Degarius’s head went fuzzy with relief and trying to make sense of it. For all love, his Ari must have killed The Scyon with the Blue Eye. She looked shaken but was alive. Joy welled in him until he noted the dozen men standing behind the overturned table that had been inside the pavilion. Half of the men were clerics or generals, the other half Fortress Guards with their swords drawn—except one. His right coat sleeve was empty, pinned across the front of his general’s coat, as if his hand was to his heart. He looked vaguely familiar.

  “Execute them,” said the young man with one arm.

  Ari had to use the Blue Eye. Degarius squinted. It wasn’t in her hands. Damn it all. What was a sword against a dozen men? Telling himself he had to go down fighting, he raised his blade, but then felt one at his back and heard a Gherian tell him not to move.

  As Degarius stiffened at the sensation of the blade at his back, the Fortress Guards thrust their swords into what looked to be two generals and four clerics. The big Gherian commander with Ari had wrapped his thick arms around her and turned her away from the brutality.

  The young man who’d given the execution order didn’t bother to watch. He went to The Scyon’s corpse and twisted the sovereign’s ring from its claw of a finger. The rule of Gheria was now open for the taking, and this young man was making his claim, evidently with the backing of the Fortress Guards. One-handed, he worked the ring upon his finger and held his hand aloft. The Guards raised their bloody swords in tribute and cried, “Sovereign Sibelian.”

  Sibelian. He was Alenius’s adopted son and heir.

  “Move the beast,” Sibelian shouted. “I want to find it.”

  The soldiers gathered around the corpse and between pulling the wing and pushing the shoulders, rolled the body. They fell to their knees and combed through snow until one rose and presented Sibelian with something metal. The Blue Eye.

  Sibelian, turning the relic over in his fingers, approached Degarius. Its cover was bent back and the lens broken. Inside was a cracked green plate covered with silver wires and odd small silver dots. To one of the generals he said, “Rorke never came. Go find him and tell him his generals are dead and his Blue Eye destroyed. Then kill him.” He slipped the broken relic into the pocket of his fur coat, then drew his sword and raised it to Degarius’s chin. “Looks familiar, doesn’t it Stellansonson.”

  How did Sibelian know who he was? Degarius looked down his nose at the sword. It was his captain’s sword. “Where did you get it?”

  “Lake Sandela. You must have lost it there, after you cut off my arm.”

  Degarius began to shake to head, but Sibelian added, “It was at Two Days Gorge.”

  He was a dead man.

  “Perhaps you didn’t know that Alenius sent his son to stop you.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “And would that have stopped your blade, had you known.”

  “No.”

  Sibelian laughed and lowered the sword point to Degarius’s neck. “Then why should I spare you?”

  Spare him? It dawned on Degarius that if Sibelian didn’t execute him, the coup might save more than their lives. Sibelian wasn’t Alenius’s blood son, and the general in charge of the army on the front was Alenius’s brother. Sibelian’s claim to the throne was by no means settled, especially if Alenius’s brother won a great battle against Sarapost and swayed the military to his side; several other generals were sure to side with the brother. “If you kill us, enjoy wearing the sovereign’s ring. It won’t be on your finger for long.”

  “What do you mean?” Sibelian drew his shoulders back as if he was already adjusting the mantle of his power.

  “While in Acadia, I negotiated the treaty securing troops for the campaign. Acadia is entitled to territory as well as spoils. If our alliance wins, Sarapost could be surrounded by Acadian-held lands, and with an Acadian queen, our independence might not last with a half-Acadian heir. A victory over the Gherians would be bittersweet for Sarapost. We would rather not fight this war. Some of your generals share the sentiment. They don’t want to lose their tenants to promises of free Sarapostan land. Do you want to fight when your time might now be better spent securing the loyalty of your generals?” Degarius nodded to the bodies of the generals who had already been executed.

  “But how am I to tr
ust you that Sarapost doesn’t wish this fight? What reassurance do I have that what you propose isn’t a trick to lure me into killing the generals? With our army distracted with the question of allegiance, Sarapost would gain an advantage and attack. What authority do you have to negotiate treaties?”

  “I came without Sarapost’s sanction or knowledge. Prince Fassal, however, is my friend. If you guarantee our safe passage through Gheria, you have my word the war will be called off.”

  “I heard you are wanted, Stellansonson, by the Acadians for the murder of Lerouge. Should I trust a murderer? How good can your word be?”

  With a glance to the dead clerics and generals, Degarius said, “As good as yours, but I will give you more than my word if you promise me, too, that no harm will come to her.” He nodded to Ari and then held out his sword. “Do you know what it is?”

  “Assaea. I could have killed you for it.”

  “I know. It’s why I thought I might trust you.”

  Sibelian regarded Degarius through narrowed, astute eyes. “Standing orders are to begin battle tomorrow at sunrise.”

  “If we ride all night—” Degarius began.

  “If I ride all night, I may be able to take care of the generals,” Sibelian finished.

  Degarius knew what Sibelian meant by “take care of”—he would kill the generals before the border troops learned of Alenius’s death.

  One of the guards who had acted as executioner asked permission to speak. “If we took Megreth’s head, if they thought you killed it after it turned on Alenius and the clerics, the army would be yours.”