White Star Phase: Book One of the Ascendants Chronicle

by Scott Beckman

  "Some vacation," Malquin said. "Hunting therill. How many couples would spend their vacations that way?"

  "We are an unusual couple," Ahlaha sang. "Valkil told me he would be coming here for you. I wanted to see you. To reconcile our history. To make sure you and Valkil reconcile yours."

  "I would prefer to forget," Malquin said.

  "Seconded," Valkil said. "If the past is truly behind us, forgotten, then you have no reason not to come along. And besides, wouldn't you like to see Aioni?"

  "Not so much as I'd like to see what she does to you when she sees you," Malquin said with a smirk.

  "You don't want to stay here, do you?" Valkil gestured to the refuse corner with a condemning raise of his eyebrow. "This isn't like you, Mal. You're a scrapper. A fighter. Get out of this cage you've made for yourself and help us win this fight."

  "You can quit trying to convince me," Malquin said. "I'll go. I'll help you with Aioni and the therill, if there really is one."

  "I'm glad to hear it." Valkil's smile seemed authentic, though Malquin knew how deceiving his brother could be.

  "As am I," Ahlaha said.

  "It's tempting to wait out the storm here," Erona said, "but that smell really is unbearable."

  "Sorry," Malquin said. "Let me get my things and we can be off."

  He dressed in rugged leathers and an iron breastplate, armed himself with a broadsword, and strapped on knee-high boots. He stuffed all the food from his meager stores and extra cloth for bandages into a leather pack. Finally, he took down the tattered flag of red and yellow stripes from over the table, folded it with reverence, and slipped into the pack's side pocket.

  "You've kept your Camarein standard all this time?" Valkil asked.

  "I couldn't part with it."

  "If we are to forget the past," Valkil said, "perhaps it's best to leave it behind."

  Malquin drew the pack over his shoulder. "That's not a part of my past I ever intend to forget. Now let's go. I'm suddenly anxious to be gone from this place."

  Skor-Adal IV

  Training

  Krudah woke to find Arvad kneeling over him.

  “Aelida has returned,” the caliph said.

  The General rose and dressed. Slither leaned against a nearby tree, biting her nails, one eye purple and bruised. Krudah had struck her the night before, driven into a blind rage when she had offered him jannir. “Ain’t no thing, General,” she said. “I’m behind you til I find some way to make things up to you, is all.”

  Aelida sat near the fire, chewing on a sachrosact leg. Meon and Zethyr slept. Just outside the camp, three young caliphs stood like statues, heads back and hands firmly by their sides.

  “They are new,” Aelida said as Krudah sat beside her. “Just back from their cycles of missionary service. It’s the best I could do.”

  Krudah considered the young caliphs, then nodded. Arvad spoke for him. “You are worthy. Heads down.” The caliphs lowered their heads and beheld their General even though it was Arvad who spoke. “In the north, a cult that calls itself Zor forcibly recruits entire villages of our people. We go to find its leader and kill him. We will face their soldiers. Perhaps even the Elite, who are known to call down lightning from empty skies. We will survive by the grace of our gods and the strength of our camaraderie. As missionaries, you survived on your own. You endured because you were strong enough. Here, that will not be enough. You no longer serve yourself. None of us serve ourselves as individuals. Rather, your companion's life is your highest priority. Protect each other. Guard each other. Be prepared to give your life so that another in this company might live. Do so and you will bring the pride of Skor upon you, now and in the afterlife. Fail and Skor will behold your weakness. You do not want that, caliphs, believe me. Do you understand?”

  “Aye!” the young caliphs shouted in unison, startling Zethyr awake.

  “Do you accept this charge?” Arvad asked.

  “Aye!”

  “Very well.” Arvad thrust out his chin in salute. The caliphs returned it. “Now get yourselves something to eat. Prepare. We leave soon.”

  Aelida noted Krudah’s sigh. “It is the best I could do,” she repeated with a shrug.

  They made their own path through towering acovet, following their compasses due north. They slipped past Skor-Rek on its eastern side and managed to pass through various military checkpoints without being recognized. Only Krudah’s face and copper sword were known among the guardsmen so they were all that needed to be kept hidden.

  The White Star sat still in the sky as miles passed under their feet and Skor-Adal’s many rivers kept them well-supplied with water to fight the heat. Zethyr took the junior caliphs hunting and Krudah would sometimes follow at a distance, watching. None impressed him.

  One rest-time, as the others ate a robust meal of avi and queresh, Krudah waved Arvad over. He drew three circles in the red dirt and nodded to the three junior caliphs, then drew lines from each circle into the center. With his knuckles, he scrabbled at the dirt.

  Arvad tapped his heart. Krudah nodded.

  Arvad rose and shouted to the young caliphs, “You three! To the center of camp. Bring your weapons.”

  The caliphs rushed to follow his commands. Arvad went to the first and asked, “Have you trained with that spear, caliph?”

  “Aye!” she responded.

  “With that spear?”

  She hesitated. “No. With practice spears.”

  Arvad went to the next caliph. “You?”

  “Only with the practice spears,” he said.

  “And what are they like?”

  “Sir?”

  “Describe them to me.”

  “They are the same, only blunted at the end.”

  Arvad went to the next caliph. “Have you bled on the practice yard?”

  “Aye!”

  “From a grave wound?”

  “No.”

  “Scraped knees and elbows? A bloodied nose?”

  “Yes.”

  Addressing all three, Arvad said, “You have never truly fought. You do not know what it is to stand on a battlefield. You do not know what it is to cut your enemy open, nor to close the distance to get them within range of your blade at the expense of putting yourself within range of theirs. You do not know fear. Not the kind we will soon face.” He gestured to the ground between them. “You will experience it for the first time here.”

  The caliphs stared straight ahead, unmoving. “Wield your spears, caliphs,” Arvad continued. “Face each other. War with one another until you are all beaten and bloodied and bruised. Fight until I give you the order to stop, however long that may be. Show each other no mercy. None at all. Show your determination, your will to survive.”

  The caliphs cried out and hefted their spears. They circled each other cautiously, recognizing that an attack against one opponent made the attacker vulnerable to the other. They lashed out with wide strikes, easily dodged or blocked. The veterans shouted, urging the recruits to fight, but none would.

  Finally, Arvad took up his own spear and approached the recruits, who did their best to watch him without taking their eyes off each other. “On the battlefield,” he said, “there is no time for patience.” He thrust his spear at the nearest caliph, who contorted her body to avoid being impaled. The other caliphs backed away and trained their spears on Arvad, but he kept his distance. “Your only enemies in this circle are each other. Become Ji-Adal and you die. Act. Fight!”

  The recruits closed the distance between each other, thrusting and striking. Aelida and Zethyr circled them, shouting encouragement or admonishment. Krudah and Slither stayed back; the former watched the fight and the latter watched the General.

  As the caliphs tired, they became desperate. At last, one landed a solid blow against his peer’s shoulder. The injured recruit cried out and went down to one knee, dropping his spear. The others hesitated, faces contorting with concern.

  Arvad bellowed wordlessly and charged forward, face red. H
e swung his spear wide and landed a blow on the wounded recruit’s neck. The crack resounded through the camp, and the recruit pitched forward face first into the sea of insects. Arvad didn't stop, however; he kept coming, slashing at the other recruits until both had suffered their own injuries and fallen to their knees.

  Arvad stamped his spear into the ground and stood tall over the recruits. “He is the weakest among you,” he said. “I gave you orders to face each other like enemies, but you hesitated. You should have run him through the moment he dropped his defenses. Why didn’t you?”

  “He is our brother,” one recruit said, holding her bleeding arm close to her chest.

  “Our friend,” the other said, clutching a bruised knee and grimacing.

  Arvad took up his spear and went to the first wounded recruit's side. The recruit lay still, and the insects swarming over him made it impossible to tell if he was still breathing. Impassive, Arvad raised his spear over his head and then plunged it down, impaling the recruit and sticking him to the ground. The other recruits gasped, but the veteran caliphs only looked bored.

  Arvad faced the surviving recruits. “His weakness doomed him to this end. Be glad that you survived. You are stronger now than you were before. But you must know what it is to plunge that spear into the body of your enemy, so come and do it.”

  The recruits stared, jaws agape. “Do what?”

  “Take up your spears,” Arvad said. “Thrust them through him into the earth. You must know what it feels like. How hard and yet how easy it is.” They didn’t move. “Don’t force me to make another example.”

  As the recruits went to do as commanded, pale and sick, Arvad shrugged in Krudah's direction. The General nodded. Slither laughed.

  Mourisiel IV

  Manipulating the Demon

  The labyrinth walls were wet and mossy, the floors slippery. Fiskahn muttered as he went, watching his feet. The roar of the waterfall outside drowned out all other sound and shook the stones.

  He passed the entrance to what he and his co-conspirators called The Slope, a slick shaft that disappeared into an abyss. It had no guardrail, nothing to keep someone from falling, so he slid by with short, shuffling steps, back against the damp wall.

  When the roar of the waterfall lessened, a different kind of roar replaced it, something incontrovertibly animal. Neither Fiskahn nor any of the other conspirators had yet encountered whatever beast stalked the labyrinth's halls, snarling and growling, and they held on to hope that it resided in some part of the labyrinth that had been blocked off.

  He passed the Great-Iron, a massive gate before a marbled hall that ascended into the darkness above, with carvings that lined the walls and pillars of a design different from the rest of Harivaz. Razhier had an obsession with the Great-Iron but hadn’t yet found a way through. The others thought him crazy. The undercity was dangerous enough without opening new areas.

  In the cold, dark room that had long been the headquarters of their resistance, Fiskahn found Razhier sitting in the corner, head bowed. The room was a perfect cube, sparse and windowless. A square shaft in the floor glowed with an orange light from Havok flames far below. Otherwise, the room was barren.

  Fiskahn set his torch on the floor by the door, the flames spitting and twisting. He took a seat in a corner, grumbling at the grinding in his knees and hips. Razhier remained still and didn’t look up. “Eh, boy. What’s the matter with you? Did you swallow the night?”

  “My mother sent a message,“ Razhier whispered. “Aris is coming.”

  “Coming here?”

  "She only said he was coming to kill us. Actually, she said he was coming to kill you specifically. She asked me not to see you again."

  “Well, then" Fiskahn said. "It sounds dramatic when you put it that way but she didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know. That he is coming does not worry me.”

  “What does?”

  “That he might stab me in the back, in the dark, before I’ve had a chance to fill his ear. That he might do the same to you.” Fiskahn brushed his long eyebrows out of his eyes. “But really, there’s not much we can do about that. If the Villain wants us dead, we’re dead, boy. We knew that might very likely be how all this ended. Agreed we’d face our deaths with courage, didn’t we? So don’t let it frighten you to stillness now. We aren’t dead yet. If I can help it, we aren’t going to be.”

  “What will you tell him?”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “No, I’d like to hear your answer, yes, your response to that myself,” a voice said from the doorway. A bald, mouse-like face peered into the room, a younger feminine face just behind it, framed by curls of auburn hair.

  Fiskahn waved them inside. “Come on, come on in. No need to dwell in the entry.” He nodded to the bald man and the redhead as they entered. “Jeppo. And Vella, too. Good to have you. Good you’ve come.”

  Jeppo flung his torch into an unoccupied corner. Vella leaned against the wall by the entry, scowling at Fiskahn. The old man returned her gaze with mock innocence. “You’ve the countenance of my mother when you look at me like that. I feel as though I’m in trouble. Are you going to strike my bottom, dear?”

  “I wouldn’t sully my hand,” she spat.

  Jeppo trembled, limbs moving fluid as if boneless. “Fisk. I do indeed prefer, yes quite indeed prefer, that you, ah, consider your words more cautiously, more carefully, ah, when you talk, or rather speak, indeed, to my daughter. She is not, no I daresay she is most certainly not a common thing, nay not a trivial, ah, person, no, to be spoken to with such words, no sir.”

  Fiskahn sighed. “I forget myself. Forgive me, lord and master Jeppo.”

  “You rotten old man” Vella spat.

  “I have little more incentive to feign respect for you or your father, my dear,” Fiskahn said. “And truth be told, I’m quite glad for it. There is no longer a campaign to finance. You and your father are no more important to our efforts than Razhier or myself now, I’m unashamed to say.” He paused to enjoy the way the father and daughter bristled. “Now, if you’re quite done giving me lessons in honor and respectable social behavior, maybe we can begin anew our conversation on how we might best go about murdering the Mourisiel family?”

  Jeppo sniffed. “You will not disrespect, no, I daresay you will never again disrespect myself or my daughter, nay, not my entire family, no, once we are the new royalty.”

  “Must we have another lesson on the difference between representative government and royalty? You may participate in our new democracy if the people choose you, yes, but it is your actions that will be deserving of respect, not your name. If nothing else, I will see to it that much changes when the Mourisiel family is gone, I promise you.”

  “There won’t be a democracy,” Razhier said. “Not after Aris finds us.”

  “Don’t be such a stank pool, boy,” Fiskahn said. “Keep your eyes on the White Star so long as you can.”

  “What will you, ah, say to him? Hm?” Jeppo shook again, an anxious tick that seemed to indicate the Court Clerk rarely enjoyed an un-anxious moment. “If you get the chance, that is.”

  “I will feed to his ears a truth that he cannot help but be comforted by," Fiskahn said. "I'll tell him that his very purpose for desiring our death is a sham. If I get the chance, gentlemen and lady, I'll tell the Villain that Theina lives, kept prisoner by the Mourisiel.”

  “Wait,” Razhier said, eyes wide. “Is that true?”

  Fiskahn shrugged. “It might be. He certainly doesn’t know. If we can just prod him in that direction, he might make himself useful to our cause.”

  “What’s saying he won’t kill you anyway?” Vella asked. "He is not known for his mercy."

  “Why, my dear,” Fiskahn said with a smile. “I’ll be the one telling him his daughter is still alive. Nobody kills a messenger bearing such beautiful news. Not even the Villain.”

  “Unless,” a gravelly voice spoke from the darkness in the hall, “he ov
erhears your plotting.”

  When Aris stepped into the entry, his form backlit by the glow of the Kovah blades sheathed on his back, the room suddenly seemed to turn cold and the torchlight seemed to dim. Jeppo and Vella took cautious steps toward the room's back wall, and Razhier cowered, but Fiskahn remained still, scowling.

  “Well,” Fiskahn said. “That does put a boulder in my brook, I can't deny.”

  Aris crouched, bringing his face closer to the Havok light rising up from the room's center shaft. “Tell me, old man,” he said to Fiskahn. “Is this everyone?”

  “You know I’m going to tell you that it is, whether it’s the truth or not.”

  Aris slowly drew one of his swords. The edge sliding across the sheath sang a sinister song. Aris touched the blue-hued blade to Fiskahn’s neck, but the old man refused to blink. “If you lie to me," Aris said, "I’ll know. And I can make your death very long and very painful.”

  “This is everyone," Fiskahn said. "In truth, it is."

  Aris tilted his head, considering, then rose to his full height and addressed the room. “You are guilty of my daughter’s death.”

  “The Mourisiel are guiltier…” Fiskahn began.

  “Shades of guilt do not matter to me."

  “Cava had a daughter,” Fiskahn said bitterly. “She lives without a father now, caring for a sick mother. Madryn had children, now orphaned. Sawen’s parents are younger than I am, stricken with grief for the loss of their child. You are not alone in your pain, Aris. We have all lost something or someone. It is what brought us here. Surely you've seen that there is a lack of justice throughout Mourisiel. It gets darker every day. Your daughter saw it. She strove to change it. If you would like her death to be not in vain, you will help us complete her quest. In her memory.”

  Aris scowled but said nothing. Fiskahn watched the fire in the Villain's eyes as it smoldered and flared, a beast straining against its chains and stretching the steel. He thought of what else he might say to convince Aris of their righteousness but came up with nothing. He had said all he could.