by Morgan Rice
“I know,” Sophia said, and held onto her.
Lucas joined her, and for what had to be the first time since she’d met him, Sophia saw tears falling down his cheeks.
“If I had never set out to find them, none of this would have happened,” he said. “The poison wouldn’t have gotten in here.”
“But we would never have met them, or you,” Sophia said. She couldn’t imagine that. A world where she had never met her brother seemed completely inconceivable to her.
Even so, she could feel what her brother and sister were feeling. In their grief, whatever protections they might normally have put around themselves came down and all of their grief wrapped together, in a tangle that held Kate’s anger, Lucas’ sense of mystery, and her own wishes that she could have known her parents years before this. Above all, there was the deep well of sadness that seemed to fill the world for them while they stood there.
They were still standing there when figures in rainbow silks stepped into their parents’ home and moved to the spot where they still sat curled against one another.
“Who are you?” Sophia demanded. Kate was more direct, moving between them and her parents.
“We mean no harm,” a woman with them said. She was shorter than Sophia, with dark hair and mid-brown skin. “I am Aia. Lady Christina and Lord Alfred foresaw this moment, and they made arrangements. If you need more time here, we will wait, but we were told to say…” She paused. “I was told to say that they loved you very much, but that your tasks cannot wait, even for grief. They believe… believed in you, and-” She stopped as Kate’s sword leapt from its scabbard.
“Kate,” Sophia said gently. “I’m hurting too, but she’s just trying to say what our parents couldn’t.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Kate shot back. Sophia could feel just how much she was hurting right then, but she saw Kate pull back, straighten up, prepare herself. “All right. Let’s do this. The sooner we start, the sooner I can kill the scum responsible for so much of all this.”
She gets angry so she doesn’t have to feel, Lucas sent to Sophia.
Sophia wished it were that simple. She suspected that Kate got angry because in the House of the Unclaimed, any feelings had been a weakness to be exploited. Anger filled the spaces where there weren’t other things.
“Preparations have been made for you,” Aia said. “If you are truly ready to go-”
“We are,” Kate said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement.
A part of Sophia wished that she could stay and take part in whatever funeral or remembrance there was, but she knew that Kate wouldn’t stay. More than that, her parents’ message had made it sound as though there was no time. Whatever was happening out in the world, it seemed that they had to act fast, whatever they felt.
The funeral for your parents will be a thing of great honor, Aia sent to Sophia, catching her a little by surprise.
“You have magic?” Sophia asked.
“Of course,” she said. “This is the Forgotten City. Please, all of you, follow me to the gate.”
She turned, and Sophia fell into step with her, Sienne padding along by her side. Sophia ran her hands through the forest cat’s fur, trying to hold back the sobs that threatened to overwhelm her even now. She needed to be strong, for her sister, for her brother, for the world.
Just remember that we are there for you too, Lucas sent to her.
“Not for long,” Sophia said, and that hurt almost as much as the loss of her parents had. They had finally come together for the journey to the Forgotten City, and now they would have to split apart to find the three heart stones.
Sophia followed Aia out through the city, to the spot where the gate stood. Crowds lined the way now, and they looked subdued, as though they had heard the news of her parents’ death. They stood with heads bowed for the procession, and it was all Sophia could do to keep going.
“At least we’ll have the journey back to Morgassa together,” Lucas said.
Aia shook her head. “The gate will take us where we need to go. There is no need to delay.”
Lucas’ hand on Sophia’s shoulder was the only thing that kept her from tears then. It meant that it took her a moment to realize what Aia had just said.
“Us?” Sophia said.
Aia nodded, and a series of figures came forward from the crowd. There were eleven of them, men and women both, all wearing armor that looked strangely old fashioned and that shone golden in the sun. The armor covered every inch of them, and they carried a strange assortment of weaponry, as if each had picked the one that they were most skilled in. There were spears and curved swords, straight blades, throwing knives and metal staffs, but curiously no muskets or bows.
One came forward with another set of golden armor, and Aia proceeded to lock each piece into place, until she was as heavily protected as the rest, a double ended spear now resting in her hand.
“Your parents told us what is happening in the world,” Aia said. “There are those who argued that it does not touch us, but some events are so great that they ripple through even here.”
She said it loudly enough that Sophia suspected that it was aimed at some of those still watching in the crowd.
Aia bowed. “We twelve are some of the Forgotten City’s strongest. We are warriors, and we have the magic of all here. We are at your service, Sophia. We will do all that is needed to protect you.”
Sophia wasn’t sure what to make of that. Too much was happening, too quickly.
Aia reached out a hand to place it on her shoulder. “You do not need to say anything to us. Say your farewells to your siblings. I will prepare the gate.”
Sophia turned to Lucas and Kate.
“I… I hadn’t expected any of this,” she said. “I don’t want to lose either of you, not now.”
“It’s what happens,” Kate said. “The world just rips us apart again and again.”
“But we will find each other once more,” Lucas promised. “I found you both once; I can do it again. I will go to this place of the spirit, and Kate, you will recover your strength in the place of shadows. We will do this.”
He hugged Sophia, then Kate, holding onto them for long seconds at a time.
“The gate is prepared for you,” Aia said, and Lucas stepped up to it. Sophia felt his nerves, and his grief, and his need to do all that was required of him. Then he stepped through and was gone.
“It will be ready for you in a moment,” Aia said to Kate. Kate didn’t reply.
“Kate,” Sophia said, taking her sister’s arms. “Are you ok?”
“No, I’m not ok,” Kate said. “My parents are dead, and Will is dead, and now we have to go off on some stupid quest to stop the big evil thing that’s going to kill the whole kingdom, and I just want it to stop!”
“You don’t have to do this,” Sophia said. “You could stay here, or come with me, or-”
“No,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I have to do this. I want to be useful, and there are people I’m going to kill for what they’ve done!”
She looked over to Aia, and barely waited for her to nod before leaping through the gateway.
That just left Sophia.
“The gateway will bring us out in Morgassa,” Aia said. “When you are ready, we will go, and seek the fire heart stone that was taken from our city.”
Ready. When would she be ready to leave behind the place where her parents had died? When would she be ready to do any of this? Since it all started, it had felt as though she had been struggling to catch up. The only way to get back to her child though was to finish this. She needed to find the stone in Morgassa just to make things safe for her daughter.
She looked down at Sienne. “Are you ready?” she asked the forest cat, who twined about her legs without answering. “I guess I’m ready.”
She stepped up in front of the gate. Through it, she could see a scene that she recognized as the marketplace of Morgassa. She could even make out the familiar features of Hig
h Merchant N’ka in one corner, talking to a selection of lesser merchants and porters.
“We will follow as soon as you step through,” Aia promised.
Sophia stood there a moment longer, then stepped through, into the sunlight of Morgassa. Dozens of pairs of eyes turned to look at her. Sienne stalked through beside her, drawing yet more stares. It was still easy to spot the moment when a dozen golden armored warriors stepped through behind her though, because everyone there stared in awe that Sophia could feel rolling from their minds.
She glanced around to see the gate disappearing, the archway there shimmering out of existence like a mirage. Sophia had half expected that to happen. It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting back to her daughter.
First though, she had to find the heart stone.
Sophia moved through the marketplace, following a familiar set of thoughts until she found High Merchant N’ka again. He was piling coins into a bag hurriedly, looking around as though trying to calculate just how quickly he could get out of there.
“High Merchant N’ka,” Sophia said, “it’s good to see you again.”
“And you too, Queen Sophia,” he said, with a smile that didn’t even try to look real.
“Especially good since I need your help,” Sophia continued. “Take me to see King Akar. Now.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sophia suspected that, while High Merchant N’ka’s hurried words to the palace guards might have played some role in them quickly stepping aside for her retinue, it probably had more to do with the golden armored figures who walked with her. With every step she took, servants stared at her and the others as though wondering what was happening, and whispers followed every step they took.
“They have heard legends of the warriors of the Forgotten City,” Aia murmured. “They think that our arrival means freedom for them, and the fall of King Akar.”
“I’m not here to start a fight,” Sophia said. Her fingers brushed Sienne’s fur. “We will defend ourselves if we’re attacked, but this isn’t the place for more.”
“Some of them are thinking that this is foretold,” Aia said.
Sophia shook her head. “What we decide still matters. Come on, N’ka is getting ahead of us.”
They kept marching through the palace, until they reached the throne room that Sophia recognized from her last visit. The scene she saw there shocked her into immobility.
Bodies sat atop spikes, some so recently impaled that Sophia could still see them moving, the people there dying even as she watched. They weren’t capable of crying for help anymore, but Sophia could still hear their pleas in her mind, slowly fading as their lives did. The worst part of it was that Sophia recognized the people there. She had seen their faces and felt their minds before, on the journey to the Forgotten City. It made no sense though. That had only been hours ago.
Time runs differently on each side of the gate, Aia sent. It has been longer than you think.
Even so, they must have turned around straight away when they realized that she and her siblings had gone off on their own, and their reward for reporting back had been… this. So many had been killed there, and Sophia could see Lani the interpreter held between two guards, waiting for the next stake. She seemed to be one of the last still living.
King Akar sat at the heart of it all, seeming to be enjoying the cruelty of it. Sophia’s heart fell at just how much she had misjudged him.
“You tricked me,” she said as she came forward.
Almost as soon as her dozen warriors stepped into the throne room, soldiers armed with spears and muskets came into the room from every side. There must have been thirty of them, easily enough to overwhelm twelve warriors.
King Akar spoke, and Aia translated beside Sophia.
“I acted to protect my kingdom,” King Akar said. “I am the king here, and you thought that you could go through my lands, taking what you wanted?”
“Why have you killed all of these people?” Sophia demanded, gesturing to the gallery of corpses arranged around the throne room. “They were your subjects.”
“As you say, they were mine, and they failed me,” King Akar said, through Aia. “They were to keep you from wandering, show you the ruins of our Forgotten City safely, and make sure that you stole nothing.”
“You weren’t even going to show us the true Forgotten City, were you?” Sophia demanded.
“I am not sure that he knows where it is,” Aia said beside her. “It wasn’t this king who took the heart stone from us. Perhaps one of his ancestors. He’d have shown you the spot where a trader city ran before our old gates, I imagine, pretended it was real.”
“What do you know of our kingdom’s Forgotten City?” King Akar demanded.
Sophia answered that. “Aia and the others are from it; from the place where my parents actually hid. You’ve tried to stop me at every turn, King Akar. You tried to deny me, and divert me, and spy on me. I was willing to forgive that when I thought that you genuinely cared about your kingdom, but this?”
She returned her attention to the massacre there. She couldn’t imagine how a ruler could do that to his own people, and the fact that he’d done it here in the hall made it seem as though he enjoyed it. Had Sophia misjudged him that much?
King Akar said something that made Aia pause. “I am the king here; no one stands higher. No one decides life or death here but me, appointed by the gods! Who are you to judge me?”
Sophia paused, trying to be diplomatic about it. This was a different land, with different ways.
“I am still the queen of my own kingdom,” she said. “I would hate for there to be anything but friendship between our two lands. We have much to offer one another.”
“Perhaps,” King Akar said.
It wasn’t much, but it was at least a starting point.
“And I would like this to stop, as a gesture of friendship,” Sophia said, waiting for Aia to translate. “Your people did not fail you; my siblings and I slipped away from them. We are hard to stop.”
“I have heard stories of some of the things you did on the way,” King Akar said. “They seemed fanciful. You claim that you found the Forgotten City?”
“The true Forgotten City,” Sophia said, mindful of what Aia had said.
“And you found your parents?” he asked, through Aia.
That brought a fresh wave of hurt. It was all too recent, the wounds of their deaths too fresh. Sophia wished that they could have stayed longer, seen them buried with honor.
You honor them by being here, Aia sent.
“My parents died while I was in the city,” Sophia said.
“I am sorry to hear that,” King Akar said. Sophia doubted that he was sincere.
“Not before they gave me and my siblings a task,” Sophia said. “They said that a great evil is coming, and that to protect against it, we must gather stones from five homes of the elements. The Forgotten City once possessed the heart stone of fire, but now, I’m told that it is in your hands.”
King Akar looked shocked for a moment, then reached up onto his crown, among the diamonds there, drawing a ruby-like stone. It seemed to have been carved with scenes of the desert, so intricately that Sophia suspected someone could spend hours looking at them and still not see them all.
He and Aia had a brief exchange that Sophia couldn’t understand. King Akar laughed and stood, towering over her and Sophia.
“And how do I know that these dozen are what they claim to be?” Aia translated when he spoke. “I think it wouldn’t take much to paint some armor gold. I’m supposed to give away my kingdom’s greatest treasure because of that?”
King Akar fell silent for several seconds. In them, Sophia reached out for his mind. What she saw made her fists clench. This was a man who had anger about the past, and pride about keeping his kingdom free, whose kingdom had been attacked by the Dowager’s kingdom, and others like it. At the same time, there was no denying that this was a cruel man, who ruled his people with an iron fist.
He was picturing what it would be like to take Sophia as his captive, and to watch the deaths of the others.
“For the sake of friendship between our kingdoms,” Sophia said, “I am not asking for you to give me a ruby; I am asking you to play your part in staving off what is to come. Come with us to do it. Place the stone where it should be. Bring your army, and help us to fight.”
He paused for a moment, and then spoke in the language of the Dowager’s kingdom, with no need for a translator.
“You have asked me two things for the sake of friendship today,” he said. “I will grant you one. In return for trading rights in your kingdom, I will travel with you, and use my stone as it must be used. My people will see me as the hero that I am.”
Sophia’s brief moment of elation was cut short by the memory of what the other thing she had asked was.
“I asked you to stop the killing; to spare Lani,” she said.
“Is that the girl’s name?” King Akar said. She saw him shrug. “She failed me. You will stand by and watch her execution, and then we will be allies, yes?”
Sophia could see his eyes tracking hers. Looking into his mind, she could see that he was waiting for her to acquiesce, or to be soft hearted enough to give up the stone for the sake of one servant. Or, better yet, to give him an excuse to seize her and her followers, confident in his thirty hardened and trained royal guards…
If she hadn’t been grieving, Sophia might have thought of some subtle way around it all; she might have found a way to persuade the king with words or with magic. She might have been able to push down her own disgust at the things he planned to do if she and her followers offered any resistance. She might have been able to ignore the fact that he was enjoying this.
“I’m going to give you one chance,” she said. She held out a hand. “Hand over the stone. Release Lani. Do that, right now, and you get to live.”
He laughed at that, laughed long and loud. “I’m going to enjoy keeping you in chains.”
Sophia looked down at Sienne. “Kill him.”
The forest cat leapt forward with a snarl, fangs and claws tearing at the ruler. The thirty men surrounding them leapt to the attack, but the dozen golden armored warriors moved to meet them, faster than any normal person could have moved. Their armor looked weak and ornamental, heavy and unwieldly, but it deflected musket shots and seemed to leave them free to dance around sword strokes.