Sky Lands: The Gift Stones

by TL Rese

The next morning, Audrey rode away after a late breakfast.

  Her beast had flown her back to her room the night before. She’d pulled the curtains all the way around so the circle of windows was completely covered. She fell asleep behind the bed drapes. A cold tray of dinner sat untouched on a stand beside her.

  The white fire still burned from its hollow in the floor. Her beast curled itself by the warmth and dozed like a common house dog. With a yawn, I lay down beside the animal, covering myself with its wing like a blanket. I could feel the rhythm of its slumbering breaths heaving from its belly and the smoothness of its skin against my face. Between the arches of the ceiling, the night stars shone through curves of glass.

  Morning seemed to come too quickly. After meeting with the councilors, Audrey retired to an oval hall that she called ‘the breakfast room’. Outside, a waterfall fell clear over the room’s glass panes, washing them in a watery veil. At the center was a table; otherwise, the room was bare in the light that seeped through the glass walls.

  Audrey sat with Cerhared and Satinah. A custard with a golden crust was soon set before each of them, placed alongside a drink topped with red cherries. The meal was eaten in silence.

  Afterwards, Audrey opened a window, calling to her beast. Audrey bid her family farewell before she leapt from the balcony and rode away on the white wings of her creature.

  Cerhared and Satinah stood at the glass, watching her fade into the distance.

  “She looks more like your mother each time I see her,” Cerhared remarked. He sighed and closed the glass. “But as much as I miss your mother, I know she is lucky not to have seen such times.” He paused, his hand still on the glass. “How is Hallain?”

  “He is well,” Satinah replied.

  “You don’t think that the punishment will be –” Cerhared turned so the length of his hair fell across his face and I could not see his expression.

  “Too harsh?” Satinah finished for him. “We cannot be more lenient.”

  “I know.”

  “The people will cry injustice. And is it not so? Were he a commoner, he would already be dead for treason.”

  “I know.”

  “Let him have the public punishment and then be confined. He will be alright, Father.” Although Cerhared said nothing, Satinah seemed to speak in response, “He must be confined. It would be dangerous to free him. And no, he cannot be forgiven. There is enough favoritism. His offences are serious – thievery, sacrilege, treachery. We cannot tolerate such things, not even from a prince.”

  The king moved to his seat at the table. “I know. But Hallain, he is young. He has never known the touch of pain. He may not know how to bear it.”

  “All who feel pain learn how to bear it. And he will not feel that pain forever.”

  “He will carry the pain of its memory forever.” His face twisted into a frown. He cursed beneath his breath and dropped his utensil with a clatter onto the plate. The sound reverberated against the glass walls.

  Satinah was looking over her shoulder. I followed her gaze past the waters of the window, to a line of hooded figures below. They wove across the castle grounds, curving along the pale earth, like ants on white sand.

  “Pilgrims,” Satinah remarked.

  “Coming to pay homage to the Stones,” Cerhared said. “And there they go to spread word of the missing Stone. Every day for all my years I’ve seen countless pilgrims journey here. But never have they looked more foreboding. Perhaps, we should have closed the Stone Room.”

  “Father, the Stone Room has never been closed to its pilgrims. It is better the people know the truth than rumors spread wild.”

  I thought he would simply say ‘I know’ again, but he leaned forward as though with a great weight. His words were soft, “Satinah, I’ve made a decision from which even you cannot bend my will. It is something that I’ve been thinking for a while, and recent events have convinced me that I should. I will go to war with my people.”

  The morning light bled through the waters of the window and lined Satinah’s features with ripples of shadow. She stared at the hooded pilgrims far below. Through the falling waters, the figures were cast into wavering images, as though seen through the blur of tears.

  “Without the Stone, the knights will be disheartened,” Cerhared continued. “If a king rides to war with his people, you know the fortune it is said to bring.”

  “That’s but a superstition.”

  “The belief is more important than the truth. If they believe their strength is gone, how could they win a war? It is not what the knight wields in the hand, but what the knight feels in the heart, that determines the outcome of battle.”

  Satinah’s reply was cold and even, like the blade of a knife, “Our culture writhes with foolish beliefs, the minds of our nation bathed in the folly of myth.”

  “If not for these myths, what would our people believe? There is beauty in such beliefs that you have never appreciated, Satinah.”

  “If you go, you only endanger your life.”

  “Ryloha goes every day.”

  “She is a kyrie, Father.”

  “Kyries too can die.”

  “But not as easily.”

  Cerhared’s expression was patient as he looked on her. “A king’s place is where his people need him.”

  “And what of where his daughter needs him?”

  “Satinah, all three of you are grown, and you most of all. You do not need an old man like me anymore.”

  In the quiet, Satinah folded over, her face in her hand, bowing like a winter branch beneath the weight of snow. Tears fell from her lashes, running in a path down her pallid cheek.

  The breakfast room began to change. The curved wall of glass dissolved into trees laden with pink blossoms. The marble of the floor crumbled into an earth of flowers. And the arched ceiling broke into an open sky. The castle gardens unfolded around me. White spires rose in the distance beyond the leaves. Birds turned through the clouds of a nascent morning. The warmth of summer was gone, and the air was fresh with the winds of spring.

  Satinah stood amidst the florals of the garden, her slender figure straight and tall, robed in a dress of white, a pristine figure of winter in a garden of spring. Her features were impassive, cold and austere, but her cheeks were stained with the clear polish of tears. I would have thought she’d just finished weeping in the breakfast room, had her surroundings not changed through the length of nearly a year.

  Behind her was an assembly of men and women cloaked in white. Their covered heads were bowed and their hands folded before them. A choir stood veiled in pallor; from them lifted a clear song, sad and pristine. Satinah stood before them all. On the lengths of her hair was the white crown of the king.

  In the center of the garden was the body of Cerhared, laid high on a marble platform. Satinah was the only one whose face tilted to look on it. A breeze ran over the mourners and released a rain of tree blossoms from the boughs. The flowers descended over Cerhared, falling to the garden ground and pooling in petals of violet and cerise.

  A priest stood chanting beside Satinah, his voice low against the high clarity of the choir, “Hal made a great temple from His place of exile, that the souls of the brave may rest with Him and never perish, that they may dwell in peace in His hallowed halls from forever to forever to forever to forever…” Satinah walked forward in the fading sounds of the word. She raised her arm and a white flame leapt from the palm of her hand. The flame grew vibrant, round in a sphere of pale fire. She ascended the steps of the platform, the fire held before her. The entire assembly began to chant softly, “From forever to forever to forever to forever. Blessed be the Angel Hal, blessed be His gift to man, blessed are the souls who rest with Him, blessed from forever to forever to forever to forever.”

  When Satinah stood beside her father, she whispered a prayer, moving the flame over his body. As dust through a sieve, the fire scattered through her fingers, alighting across Cerhared’s body in embers, shining as stars upo
n him. The embers grew, until the entire platform was enveloped in billows of flame.

  The choir’s song rose in a crescendo. All tilted their faces to look at the smoke rising into the hues of morning. It was Satinah whose figure was bowed now, the great light from the flames illuminating her into an unearthly glow. Below, I saw Audrey’s upturned face, stoic beneath the white rim of her hood. I scanned the faces for Hallain, but I did not see him.

  The fires began to die. Petals blown by the wind alighted on the embers and melted into the heat, disintegrating in colors of rose. When the last of the flames had gone, the smoke parted to reveal only the bare marble beneath. Satinah stood, a lone figure on the steps, her dress flowing in the wind.

  The choir’s song ended. All bent into the silence, their white hoods shielding their faces once more. The priest moved away across the gardens, the figures in white following him in a single line, the assembly unraveling like a thread. The veiled choir followed at the end. I felt myself drawn away with the departing assembly. When I turned, I saw Satinah alone, standing before an empty pyre.

  Chapter 14