Phoenix Unbound

by Grace Draven

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Gilene dreamed of fire and awakened to rain. Cold droplets splashed onto her face. She blinked her eyes open to watery splashes of gray and green. The deep smell of dirt and new leaves filled her nose, and an unpleasant wetness ran the length of her body, chilling her to the bone.

  She shivered and curled in on herself, gasping as every muscle screamed a protest at her movements. Rain sheeted down on her, serenaded by faraway thunder. That she was outside in the elements was obvious, but where was outside?

  As her vision cleared, the gray became a stormy sky above her and the green a cluster of bushes and small trees, their leaves bedecked in jewels of rain droplets. She lay in the mud, saturated to the skin, with a lone snail sheltering under a leaf to keep her company. More shivers racked her, and she sneezed. The exhalation made her cry out, and tears of pain joined the rain sliding down her cheeks.

  Her memories were hardly more than blurry images and remnants of emotion—mostly fear. Two, though, emerged clear as the water droplets decorating the surrounding foliage: Azarion kneeling at the edge of the battlefield, his face red and blistered; and the goddess he worshipped, vast and powerful, her quicksilver visage both terrifying and glorious to behold.

  “Agna,” she whispered, and the thunder answered with a distant rumble.

  She held up a trembling hand, surprised to see that, except for streaks of mud and a few broken fingernails, it was unchanged. Agna had been merciful to her handmaiden. Gilene had been sure when she walked into the arena alone, she would die. When she became the goddess’s avatar, that certainty hadn’t wavered. She was, after all, a frail human holding the power of a deity inside her for a brief time. That her body didn’t burst and her bones didn’t shatter from acting as Agna’s vessel was nothing short of extraordinary.

  She still felt as if she’d been trampled by a team of oxen and then run over by the wagon they pulled, but she was alive. Not for long if she stayed here, wet, cold, and hiding under a clump of bushes.

  Standing was a grueling affair, accomplished with a slow ascension from her side to all fours, then to her knees, and finally to her feet, where she yawed from side to side like the ships that docked at Manoret. She embraced the trunk of a young tree next to her with the zeal of a lover and took in her surroundings.

  Nothing looked familiar, but with the cobwebs clouding her mind and a veil of rain covering the landscape, she could easily be standing in her brother’s garden and not recognize it. How she had even gotten here was a mystery.

  She wiped more rainwater from her eyes. A muddy road stretched not far from where she stood, leading toward a cluster of buildings in the distance, their rooftops almost indiscernible in the steady deluge. A town or village. Shelter.

  She glanced down at herself. The frock she wore was tattered and stained, with burn holes dotting the skirt and sleeves. Mud caked her entire back and right side, and somehow she’d lost one shoe. Agna might have carried her handmaiden from the ruin of Kraelag, but she hadn’t exactly dropped her into the lap of luxury.

  Gilene plucked at her soiled skirt and took a cautious step away from the tree, then another, until she tottered onto the road.

  She made it a dozen steps before she fell. Weak, disoriented, and sick to her stomach, she didn’t move. Hours might have passed as she lay there and let the rain wash over her. She slept, only opening her eyes at the sound of a donkey’s bray and the rolling of wagon wheels.

  A face, solemn and pretty, hovered over her. “My gods, Gilene?”

  Gilene blinked. She knew this face. The free trader’s niece. Halani of the soothing hands and magical potions that stopped pain. She smiled, drifting away on welcome warmth as Halani lifted her head out of the mud.

  “Uncle, come quick! Help me!”

  She woke briefly when someone held a cup to her lips. “Drink,” they said, spilling a trickle of cold water into her mouth. She winced as she swallowed, certain glass splinters lined her throat. She fell back against a pillow, exhausted by that small effort, and fell asleep.

  Images plagued her dreams. A bear trapped in a cage, Kraelag swallowed up in an inferno of god-fire, Azarion’s desolate gaze as she bade him farewell. These and more flashed through her mind’s eye, wraiths no more substantial than the ghosts of Midrigar, and just as miserable.

  The next time she wakened, the sky above her was domed, painted, and familiar. She’d been here before, in similar circumstances.

  “How do you feel, Gilene?”

  Gilene sought the source of the voice and discovered Halani sitting cross-legged next to her feet. “Halani?” The word came out as a croak, but the other girl smiled, pleased.

  “You remember me. That’s good.” She tucked away the ball of yarn she’d been winding and stood. “Don’t say anything else. You’ve been down with fever and a cough for almost a week. I’ve a warm pot of tea waiting for just this moment. I’ll be right back.”

  Good as her word, she returned with a cup filled nearly to the brim with tea flavored with herbs and honey. She helped Gilene sit up and propped the pillows behind her so she could drink. “Do you need help holding the cup?”

  Gilene shook her head, determined to hold her trembling hands steady and manage the cup herself. Why fate had determined that this particular woman would end up being her nurse, not once but twice, she couldn’t fathom. “I’m sorry you’re playing nursemaid again. I promise I didn’t plan it that way.” She sipped the tea, closing her eyes in delight at the flavor.

  Halani laughed. “I physic everyone in this caravan, Gilene. One more makes no difference.” She brushed a hand across Gilene’s arm. “Besides, I’m so pleased to see you again, even if it was under such strange circumstances.”

  That was putting it lightly. Gilene sipped more of her tea before speaking. “Where did you find me?”

  “On the trade road outside Wellspring Holt. What happened to you?”

  That was an answer requiring more energy and discretion than Gilene currently possessed. She handed the cup back to Halani. “I will tell you,” she said as she slumped back under the blankets. Her eyelids felt weighted with stones, and the trader woman faded in her vision. “I promise.”

  It was a promise easier made than kept, and the story she told was as much fabrication as truth. “I ended up a Flower of Spring, taken by the slavers and separated from Valdan. I don’t know where he is now, or if he’s dead or alive.” Tears welled in her eyes, honest ones that made that particular lie sincere.

  Halani’s mother, Asil, patted her shoulder in sympathy. “But you got out of the city before it burned! Did you see it burn?”

  “Wait, Mama,” Halani said. “In good time.”

  Gilene smiled. The childlike Asil remained as sweet-natured and enthusiastic as ever. “Another tithed woman knew of a way out of the catacombs. We managed to overpower our guard and escape.” Applause greeted Gilene’s statement. “I still have no idea how I ended up outside Wellspring Holt.” That was partly true. Her memories after she told Azarion goodbye were a blank wall.

  Hamod blew a perfect smoke ring into the air. It floated toward one of the trader children, who laughed and slipped her hand through its center like a bracelet. He pointed the pipe stem at Gilene. “Your husband was a capable sort. A good hunter, and I suspect an even better fighter. You’ll find him again. Or he’ll find you.”

  Gilene very much hoped he was right.

  Spring passed into the first days of summer as she regained her strength. The caravan plied their wares on the trade roads and the Golden Serpent as well. She remained with the trader band through her convalescence and, at Hamod’s gruff invitation, after that.

  “You’re welcome to stay. You do your part and help the other women,” he said. “We have enough to feed you.”

  Beroe was no longer home, and her obligation to it and her family finished, at least in her opinion. She had lived her li
fe in service to them, a service inherited instead of chosen. Gilene had accepted her lot and did her best to fulfill the role, even as the resentment ate her up from the inside.

  Now, she had no reason to stay, no duty to embrace. Kraelag had been obliterated, a city turned into a char heap by a deity who had burned every building to the ground and turned the sands of the arena floor into glass. There would be no more gruesome Rites of Spring.

  While she was grateful to Hamod for his offer, she didn’t plan to stay with the caravan permanently. As soon as she was well enough to travel on her own, she’d find a way to return to the Sky Below and seek out the man who had made her see there was more to life than dreary sacrifice.

  Gilene shared Halani and Asil’s wagon, though like most in the caravan, she slept outside on clear nights. One night, when the ache of missing Azarion gnawed at her, she had a particularly vivid dream. Agna of the changing faces loomed over her as she slept. Lightning danced down her hands to her fingers, illuminating the spiderwork of veins under the skin. Gilene caught her breath as the goddess pressed her palm to the spot just above Gilene’s navel.

  “No more pain for my name’s sake, handmaiden. No punishment for summoning fire. We see each other now, you and I. You and yours have my protection.”

  Gilene woke with a gasp loud enough to startle half the camp awake. She apologized, citing a dream as the culprit. Her hand fluttered over her belly. Was it a dream? Or a memory of that time between time, after she walked as Agna’s avatar and before she woke up in the mud in a woodland outside Wellspring Holt?

  She pondered the dream memory every day after that but, like her magic, kept it to herself. The traders welcomed her among them, accepting her as one of their own. She didn’t want to compromise that acceptance with stories of visitations from goddesses.

  One early-summer evening, Hamod made an announcement that set free a horde of butterflies in Gilene’s belly.

  “The Goban have invited all traders, Guild and free, to their solstice market. Since the Trade Guild no longer controls the Golden Serpent, we’ll have access to the Goban tribes and the Savatar clans they’re allied with, which means access to their silver as well.” He grinned as the other traders cheered.

  Busy with the task of washing the supper dishes, Gilene swayed on her feet, made light-headed by Hamod’s announcement. Could it be? Had fate finally decided to show her some small favor and put her on a path that might intersect with Azarion’s?

  There was no guarantee the Kestrel clan would be there, but she refused to relinquish the hope bursting inside her. It would take longer to reach the Sky Below by traveling the trade route, but she wouldn’t have to choose the more dangerous option of traveling it alone to reach her goal.

  “Gilene, are you well? You’ve gone pale. Do you need to sit down?” Even after weeks of recuperation and assurances from Gilene that she was now fine, Halani still hovered over her.

  She was alive and whole and bore no additional scars from her summoning that last fire. Agna had been merciful to her apostate handmaiden.

  Gilene put away the last dried dish in its chest and flipped the towel over her shoulder. The smile she gave Halani felt like it stretched from one ear to the other.

  “I feel good. Just happy with your uncle’s news. I’ve always wanted to visit the east beyond the Gamir Mountains.”

  Halani nodded. “I as well. With the Trade Guild’s hold on the Serpent now broken, we can trade beyond the usual routes.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “And I hope the Savatar are at the market. I’ve always wanted to see the steppe nomads firsthand. I hear they’re beautiful to behold on horseback.”

  An image of Azarion chasing the wild mares across the pastures of plume grass rose up in Gilene’s mind. They are, she replied silently. They are glorious.

  * * *

  • • •

  Summer in the lands of the Goban was a gentler season than what it was in the Stara Dragana to the west. The barrier of the Gamir Mountains blocked the fierce winds and kept the temperatures warm but not scorching along the populated territories that hugged the great trade road known as the Golden Serpent.

  The high holy day of the summer solstice had brought traders of every kind to peddle their wares at the vast market set up in the tumbled remains of a Kraelian garrison. People flooded in from every town and city in a ten-league radius, while others had traveled for weeks from the western hinterlands to attend the market. A sprawling tent town, ringed by caravan wagons, had sprung up overnight, surrounding the market.

  It was the first of its kind, the creation of an opportunistic group of traders, both free and ex-Guild who saw a chance to make a sizable profit without the restrictions of the Guild or the stranglehold the Empire had once placed on the trade route.

  Hamod stood next to the makeshift shop his caravan had erected, surveying the tide of humanity parading past him with a satisfied smile.

  He turned to the two women nearby, busy with restocking their tables and quoting prices to curious browsers. There were teas and furs to sell, carvings and small knives, silk ribbons and purses, and hats stitched with feathers and jewels.

  “What do you think, eh? We’ve never done so well in a day when we were banned from trading on the Serpent.”

  Halani nodded. “I suspect many free traders think the same thing, though you’ve made no friends with the Guild traders.”

  He snorted. “I won’t lose any sleep over that one.” He eyed Gilene, who stood next to Halani. She carefully measured dried tea into linen pouches before marking them with a quill dipped in ink. “The east all what you hoped it would be, Gilene?”

  Gilene didn’t shift her gaze from her task, but she did smile at the caravan leader. Not yet, she thought. Not quite yet. Since their arrival, she’d given herself a neck ache and blurry vision as she searched the crowds for any hint of a Savatar clansman or clanswoman. She’d even walked the entire market twice without any luck. “It’s very promising so far,” she replied out loud.

  The sight of an acquaintance caught Hamod’s attention and he was off, striding through the crowd to make himself known and likely do his best to swindle the person out of a purse of coins.

  “I think all of the Empire and the lands beyond are here,” Halani said. “I’ve never seen so many people in one place.”

  Gilene filled the last bag with tea, made her mark, and set down her quill. She grasped Halani’s hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. “Or so many thieves either.” She snatched back a canister of tea leaves from a boy with quick fingers. He moved on to his next mark with only a brief shrug her way.

  The Krael Empire convulsed at the loss of its physical and spiritual capital. The Savatar who attacked it had returned to the steppe without further fighting. There had been no looting or pillaging of Kraelag. Everything of value had been burned or melted. The Empire itself had not fallen, but the cracks in its armor were widening as vassal territories reclaimed their autonomy once they realized their master wasn’t invulnerable.

  Everyone assumed the emperor had died in Kraelag’s inferno, though there were more than a few conjectures that his wife might have taken that golden opportunity to rid herself of her co-ruler.

  Empress Dalvila had been wounded by a Savatar arrow but survived and currently hid behind the walls of her summer palace while her empire teetered on the brink of collapse. Gilene had no doubt a wake of vulturous Kraelian nobles gathered to swoop in and take control.

  As the caravan trundled its way toward Goban, Gilene had thought of Azarion constantly and prayed to Agna that he would be at the market.

  Halani interrupted her contemplations with a tap on her arm. “Can you watch the tables? I’ve started negotiating with a trader out of Palizi for a shawl I know Mama will love.”

  Gilene shooed her off. “Of course. Go on, and good luck!”

  She was in the middle of a transaction with a cus
tomer when Halani raced back to their booth, eyes shining with excitement. “I just heard. Several of the Savatar clans have arrived.”

  Gilene’s heart instantly took up the hard beat of a war drum. She blinked at Halani, afraid to believe the news. “Are you sure?”

  The other woman nodded so hard, the pin holding her braid coiled at her nape fell out, and the braid tumbled down her back. “They’re roaming through the market now. Word is their chieftains are honored guests of the Goban chief who controls this territory.” She stood on tiptoe and craned her neck to stare above the crowd, as if a Savatar might suddenly pop up amid the crowd, astride their horse.

  A loud whistle made both women look to where Hamod motioned for Halani to join him and a group of traders surrounding an item covered by a square of indigo silk.

  Halani groaned. “Probably another statue Uncle wants me to look at. I’m better than he is at spotting a fake. I’ll have to leave you again for a moment.”

  “It’s all right. See to your uncle. We’ll switch places when you return.”

  The moment Halani came back, Gilene planned to escape the trade stall she worked and find the Savatar encampment. Was Azarion here? Did he walk these crowded streets? Would she sense his presence even if she couldn’t see him in the throng of people? Her heart raced and her hands shook so hard, she abandoned the task of measuring tea.

  He thought her dead, consumed by Agna’s possession. Did he mourn her? The thought made her cringe.

  An odd prickling along her back warned her she was being watched. She made a show of straightening the tables, all the while casting quick glances into the crowd to find the source of that regard.

  Her gaze lit and stayed on a dark-haired woman with a dour face. The woman’s eyes went wide when Gilene met her gaze, and she mouthed Gilene’s name as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing.

  “Tamura,” Gilene said.

  Azarion’s sister was too far away to hear her, but judging by her reaction, she’d read Gilene’s lips.