Rafen (The Fledgling Account Book 1)

by Y. K. Willemse

  The moonlight left a pale, spidery path on the mossy floor. He was on his hands and knees. Everything smelled moist. Rafen felt cautiously up the wall to find the roof. There seemed to be none, even though the stone wall had only been Rafen’s height in the clearing.

  Ahead, an explosion of light twirled into the form of a bird his size, dispelling the black further on in the cave. Rafen cried out and covered his eyes. In his mind, he saw the shapeless, bloodied form of a guard he had killed. He remembered screaming hate at Phil and despising this Presence before him. He hadn’t anticipated getting this close to the Phoenix.

  “Nuclum bou lii nia, Rafen... don’t hide from me.”

  Slowly Rafen removed his hands from his eyes. A pale red haze floated around the Phoenix. The lustrous waterfall wings and cascading tail flashed both smoky black and fiery gold on Rafen’s exhausted eyes. Blood red, like the red of exposed flesh, outlined the neck and spine. The eyes of flame and ash penetrated him.

  Zion’s light expanded around and within Rafen. He breathed feverishly, wanting to run.

  “Cere inwurm ma, Rafen.”

  I will change you.

  The ivory beak didn’t move at all when Zion spoke. Rafen trembled at the words. Lowering himself into a sitting position, he drew his knees up to his chin and looked at the Phoenix, while the Phoenix studied at him.

  Gradually, Rafen’s memories went further and further back. He heard a calming voice in his dreams when he was a forgotten infant in Tarhia. He recalled waking to the call of Zion in a malleable red womb, and before that, spinning through the air toward a woman Zion had told him to find.

  “Ketulm turma ma miikai mwah cere os uki d ma.”

  See with your eyes what I have to give you.

  Zion turned his gleaming head, drawing a shining feather from his wing with his beak. Rafen leaned forward, his breathing a rasp.

  Then he remembered the sixteen-year-old had become the Lashki Mirah and attacked.

  With an effort, Rafen pulled back. He wanted it, but he would die if he took it.

  “Lur, Rafen. Ma nàyenishalo nia mwah ma ra – mwah cere osuma ma.”

  You can’t fight who you are… who I have made you.

  The Phoenix approached on calloused talons.

  Rafen stared at the feather, tears in his eyes. The Phoenix placed one talon on his hand. Rapid tingling passed through Rafen’s muscles, and the Phoenix extended the feather in his beak to him. Rafen had, after all, said: “I will be yours.”

  His other hand closed around the gift…

  There was a flash of light, and Rafen’s head was thrown back against the cave wall, black veiling his senses.

  For the first time, he saw; he felt; he heard.

  He remembered the sweet embryo of the Phoenix’s song in the beginning. It had splintered into the eleven great spirits that balanced the world. Zion’s Eleven were composed of seven and four. The seven had dominion over the living things, while the four represented the four main principles of the world: water, earth, air, and fire.

  Rafen was fire.

  After Zion had made them, he went on to create the world and the mortals who lived in it. In those moments, Rafen glided past all his fellows except one. Their transparent wreathed forms, hanging in the air above the nothingness that preceded everything, permeated the atmosphere with their individual characters. Rafen had the unique love for them that brother has for sibling, though none of them drew him like she did: she who watched as Zion unfurled the world beneath them from the fragments of a diaphanous eggshell, she who awaited the chance to take charge of all greenery he might create, because she reigned over all living plants. Looking ahead, Rafen at last understood his perplexing love for the woods. It was a love for Etana.

  Is that you, Rafen? she whispered.

  Together they took the ecstatic plunge toward the growing, pulsing world, the other nine not far behind. And in the days to come after the completed creation, Rafen and Etana moved together in the heights and depths of the world, until Nazt came.

  Zion had given some of his mortals the ability to do kesmal, and eleven of them created Nazt from the free spirits of the air, attempting to use its power for themselves. But Nazt turned against the mortals and poisoned all men, promising everything and giving nothing. Its invisible force drew many hearts from contentment. Everything fell apart… even the world. It split in two.

  Soon to rise, Zion the Phoenix surrendered to the flame and shed his own skin and power, making the sacrifice necessary to incarnate his Eleven. In the flesh, Rafen forgot his past. He forgot what he was born to do. He forgot the wonderful thing he had shared with Etana thousands of years ago, when they had been free from everything polluted.

  Years later, as a man, the truth hit him again. He was standing on a cliff’s edge before a thundering wall of black spirits that bulged against their chains of kesmal and screamed his name. Etana was by his side, the other nine behind them. Destruction lay ahead, and Rafen grasped Etana’s hand, knowing he had made his decision long ago when he had taken that phoenix feather…

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Fledgling

  Rafen stirred. He realized he must have been in a trance for some time. The Phoenix was gone, and the nighttime darkness was not so thick as before. His phoenix feather warmed his hand.

  Rafen’s shirt hem was large, yet tight where each button was sewn. He tucked the feather securely there, right above his heart.

  He pressed his hands to his temples. In his trance, he had seen something, understood something, and now it was gone. He remembered standing with Etana before a chain of something black that screamed. Why? He felt cold in the pit of his stomach.

  Scrambling up, Rafen walked out of the cave entrance. The clearing was still, its wispy trees bowed in the pale morning light. He realized then that without the Phoenix guiding him, he was lost.

  He decided he wouldn’t be afraid. He raised his hand to the feather above his heart. He was the Fledgling.

  Leaving the clearing behind, Rafen broke into the surrounding boxwood trees. His hand on his phoenix feather, he wandered the tangled paths for what felt like hours. The darkness paled further. Rafen was sweating with impatience. Etana was the one thing he could remember from the vision he’d had, and he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He was now certain something was wrong at the palace.

  The branches before him stirred. Rafen paused, then pushed through foliage. Annette stood by a black horse. She looked up from where she stroked the silky mane.

  “Rafen,” she murmured. “Thank Zion. We were so worried. Why in the world did you go into the Cursed Woods?”

  “Why were you watching me?”

  “I wasn’t,” Annette said coolly. She straightened.

  “The branches moved.”

  “It was a bird.”

  Rafen narrowed his eyes.

  “Rafen,” Annette said, visibly trying to be maternal, “you must come home with me. Father will be beside himself, I assure you.” She grasped the horse’s reigns and hissed something in its ear. Whinnying, the horse snapped its head upright. “Come, Rafen.”

  “You will take me back to the palace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because I must go there.”

  Rafen walked forward. Annette twisted her face into an unconvincing smile and helped Rafen mount the tall horse. Clambering onto the saddle behind him, she put her arms around Rafen to reach the reigns. Rafen’s muscles tightened at her touch. Yet Zion had saved him from Roger. Annette was not going to harm him tonight.

  She clicked her tongue, and the horse started trotting through the woods.

  The trip felt like it took an age. Rafen’s eyes were sandy with drowsiness, and his head kept falling forward. He would jerk it upright again impatiently. Throughout the journey, Annette mutely gripped the reigns so hard her knuckles turned white. Rafen heard her fast, shallow breathing above the steady plod of the horse.

  At last, the palace was in sight, a dark mas
s on top of a slight incline, its flags fluttering like huge bats in the pale purple sky above. Dawn was not far away.

  Annette coaxed the horse up the sloping path toward the same door Rafen had run out of. The palace was quiet.

  “We dismount here,” Annette said shakily.

  Rafen’s stomach clenched for no reason at all. Annette slipped left off the horse and hit the ground with a soft thud. When Rafen made to slide off the horse on the same side, Annette held out her arms to help him. In the moonlight, they were bare and glistening with sweat.

  “I’m fine,” Rafen said. “I do not need help.”

  “Please,” Annette said, her eyes orb like.

  “No.”

  Rearranging himself, Rafen dropped off the horse on the right side, landing in a squat. There was the sssching of a weapon being drawn behind him. Rafen straightened, whirling around. Annette pointed a long, thin dagger at him beneath the horse’s belly.

  With a whip crack, black cords exploded from the end of Annette’s dagger and shot toward Rafen, twisting in anticipation of binding him. Rafen scampered toward the door, the kesmalic ropes slicing through the air at his back. Fumbling with the heavy handle, Rafen flung the door open and slammed it behind him. He rushed down the pitch black corridor, heart thundering. Behind him, the kesmal collided with the door with a smack, cracking the wood. Terrified, Rafen ran faster. With a sickening thud, he crashed into the door at the other end of the corridor. Scrabbling at the handle, he flew through it and sent it flying back into its frame as Annette’s kesmal burst completely through the first door with an ear-splitting splintering.

  Chest heaving, Rafen halted momentarily in the vacated courtyard beyond the corridor. The Princess Annette was working with the Tarhians, which meant anyone could have gotten into the palace.

  “I have to find King Robert,” he said to himself.

  He dashed out of the courtyard and into the corridor beyond.

  It took Rafen some time to find his way through the inner wall and the gardens and back into the keep. It felt like the hours were flying, and he still didn’t know where King Robert’s bedchambers were. He kept hiding from people in long robes who swept through the halls. They all held weapons: swords, daggers, long scepters, short knives. The torches on the walls were all out, and Rafen couldn’t see any of the standard guards.

  He paused in one of the red-carpeted corridors, leaning against a wall in despair. Annette was probably catching up.

  If no one else was on his side, Zion was. And Rafen had the feather now! No more dreaming, no more hunger pangs. He felt at last the completeness he’d always sought. Zion was forever with him now.

  Rafen reached up the wall to where a short, unsheathed broadsword had been hung for display. He lifted it off the hooks, gripping the hilt with his left hand. The sword became warm at his touch. Though it wasn’t sharp, it would perhaps work as a heavy metal club. He continued down the corridor.

  Turning a corner, he was relieved to see a torch still burning on the right wall, illuminating the red carpet. An ornamental table stood against the left wall, and a large painting depicting an historical battle hung above it. In the flickering light, a thin man with a pinhead approached, bearing a naked rapier. Roger’s icy blue eyes met Rafen’s. Whatever color was once in Roger’s pale face drained from it. He halted five steps from Rafen.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Journey

  to the King

  “But you’re dead.” Roger’s voice was tight.

  “I don’t think so,” Rafen replied.

  “How did you survive?” Roger whispered.

  Rafen held his peace, Roger’s nervous twitching gratifying him.

  “Answer me, two-three-seven!” Roger shouted.

  “I’m not two-three-seven,” Rafen said.

  “Then-then who are you?” Roger stammered, horrified.

  A smile spread over Rafen’s face. “I am the Fledgling of the Phoenix,” he said, his phoenix feather comfortingly warm against his beating heart. “And I’m going to fight you.”

  Roger twisted his face into a Tarhian leer. “Are you?”

  The blood in Rafen’s veins felt like fire. Raising his sword, he directed it at Roger, who was rearranging himself into guarde, the sweat on his face glistening.

  Now, something in Rafen hissed. He lunged toward Roger, thrusting at his abdomen. Roger leapt backward in alarm but recovered himself beautifully, swiping at Rafen’s shoulder with his glittering sword. Rafen jumped backward, parrying and aiming for Roger’s sternum. Finding his rhythm, Roger delivered a series of thrusts. Rafen backed into the right wall. He knew Roger’s sword was sharp, and his own was blunt. However, he had been thrown out a very high window and survived. Zion wasn’t about to kill him now.

  He made a savage lunge and hit Roger’s thighs with the flat of his sword. With a cry, Roger stumbled back into the table against the left wall. His lips curled into a nasty smile when he glanced down and realized he was not bleeding. His attack was blinding now: a thrust for the head, heart, lungs, abdomen, head – Rafen had backed into the right wall again, and now Roger’s sword went for his eyes, and Rafen was not going to be fast enough to block it. He rushed sideways, his sword arm aching. Seizing the table Roger had stumbled against, he shoved it between himself and his attacker. Simultaneously, Roger darted toward him with a thrust aimed at Rafen’s abdomen. Roger’s sword tip hit the edge of the table; the sword bowed spectacularly and then sprang back, sending Roger staggering away briefly. Rafen made to edge along the wall past the table to attack Roger again. His opponent shot forward to meet him. The painting on the wall was above Rafen, and Roger flicked his rapier behind it and cut the cord holding it there.

  The painting slid down, its frame hitting Rafen’s head with the impact of a hammer. Rafen found himself on his knees, still clutching his sword, the painting leaning against his right shoulder. Little white lights popped before his eyes. Groaning, he shuffled backward on the floor, allowing the painting to fall flat as Roger’s rapier flashed beneath it toward his heart. The painting swung onto the sword, and Roger cursed when his blade was knocked from his hand and obscured beneath the frame.

  With a tremendous effort, Rafen rose. He had had enough of this. Roger hurled himself over the frame and landed bodily on him. Rafen crashed down, striking his throbbing head against the wall. His sight darkened, and a pair of long-fingered hands found his neck and started to squeeze. Rafen kicked wildly. Roger lay fully on top of him, pinning his legs and right arm, his demented face snarling in Rafen’s. Rafen could feel his eyes popping; he choked. Something like burning liquid rushed down his left arm, and with the last of his strength, Rafen lifted his sword and swung it into Roger’s back. Flames burst into visibility – Roger’s coat was on fire. Screeching, Roger turned to see the mini inferno that had exploded from Rafen’s sword, his grip slackening.

  Footsteps pounded toward them.

  “Rafen!” someone shouted.

  A huge broadsword swept into view, knocking Roger off Rafen. Roger rolled sideways, lighting the red carpet on the floor. Still burning and shrieking and now flapping blood everywhere, he scrambled to his feet and fled down the opposite end of the corridor, Alexander charging after him like a rampaging giant.

  “Alexander!” Rafen called. “Alexander!”

  He struggled to his feet, grasping the blunt sword in his left hand. The blade now glowed molten red. Alexander was at his side again. He felt over Rafen’s torso for any wounds, his weathered face concerned.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Rafen pushed away the admiral’s hands. His head was still thundering. “I have to speak to King Robert.”

  “I can see that,” Alexander said, glancing at the table, the painting, and the flaming carpet. “Thank Zion I came back from the Harbor tonight. I heard rumors of illegal stowaways in ships and came to warn the king. That man looked familiar.”

  “He was the old Tarhian general,” Rafen said.

  “The w
hat?”

  “Please, I have to see King Robert!”

  “And I know where his chambers are,” Alexander said. “Let’s go, Rafen.”

  Alexander stamped out the flames on the carpet and grabbed Rafen’s right arm, running down the corridor. After five minutes of sprinting, Alexander paused in an unusually wide hall, decorated with a series of portraits depicting famous Sartian dukes. Engraved, arched double doors stood to the right. Torches hung on both walls. Alexander stepped toward the doors, and an olive-skinned man with brown dreadlocks rushed toward him from the opposite end of the corridor, brandishing a long knife. Alexander leapt into guarde just before the man directed his knife at the admiral and shot a murky beam toward him. Alexander dodged the kesmal, and behind him, Rafen felt it whiz past his ear. Now standing sideways, Alexander twisted his sword sharply, an earth-colored strand flying from its end toward the philosopher, who was now joined by a thin man with braided hair.

  “Rafen!” Alexander shouted, aiming more weak kesmal at the second philosopher. “Get in the chamber! Now!”

  A kaleidoscope exploded in the air and swept toward Alexander, who was struggling to erect some sort of supernatural shield. Rafen raced toward the double doors and shook the curving handles, only to discover the room was locked. From within, he thought he heard King Robert let out a long wail. Alexander was losing his battle against the philosophers. He grunted when some kesmal hit him beneath the ribs. Rafen raised his sword with his left hand, preparing to bring it down on the handles in a mad attempt to break into the room. Just before the blade hit its object, a spark flew from it, and the lock clicked. Rafen brought the sword to a halt a hairsbreadth from the handles. With a bang, some kesmal narrowly missed Alexander, and Rafen flattened himself against the double doors to avoid getting hit. Then he flung both of them open.