by John Marco
Fiona couldn’t answer. Jorian and his centaurs watched, astounded as Skyhigh’s dragonfly screamed overhead. Rendor pointed toward the mountains, toward another object, slower than the dragonfly but much, much larger.
“That’s a cloud horse,” said Donnar.
Fiona squinted for a better look. Something was riding the creature, barely visible through the sparkling mists. She knew the rider in an instant.
“Unbelievable . . .”
THE BATTLE OF RHOON FALLS
“MERCERON IS GONE.”
Fiona could still hear Moth’s voice in her head, telling her the news. She would remember the sound of it forever, how he struggled to speak the words, and how a tear dropped from his cheek right onto his shirt. In that moment, all the amazement about his cloud horse evaporated. Even Fiona’s grandfather staggered.
Maybe she had known he would die. Maybe she just didn’t want to admit it. Without the Starfinder, the old dragon had nothing else to trade, but Fiona had never let herself wonder about that, pretending instead to believe in miracles, stupidly sure that not only Moth and Skyhigh would return, but Merceron with them.
Only he didn’t. Just like her parents, Merceron had gone away for good.
To Fiona, there didn’t seem much reason to remain with the others. Rendor and Jorian and Skyhigh all had so much to discuss. Even Moth had the cloud horse to tell them about. After endless hours of debate and arguing, Fiona had simply left their “war council,” as Jorian called it. Stealing a pen and sheets of paper from Donnar’s notepad, she found herself a quiet place away from the heated, pointless talk of battle, deep enough in the woods not to be seen from the village.
Fiona looked up through the trees and saw the moon, anxiously appearing in the dusky sky. Soon, Jorian or Moth or someone else would start to worry and come looking for her.
She shook the pen to start the ink running, and began to write.
“There,” whispered Alis, pointing through the trees.
Moth hunched down so Fiona wouldn’t see him. Her back was turned against the village as she leaned against a giant, half-dead trunk. Moth hesitated. Fiona had excused herself from the meeting and never come back, but Alis had easily sniffed her out.
“Okay,” said Moth softly, “I’ll talk to her. Go back to the others, Alis.”
The Redeemer looked disappointed. “Let me talk, too. She is afraid of me, perhaps. That is why she hides.”
“I don’t think so. It’s Merceron.” Moth gave a wan smile. So far, no one really trusted Alis but him. “Go back to the meeting. They need you. Just tell them we found Fiona and that we’ll come soon.”
Alisaundra hooked her claws into the silver chain around her waist, thinking. “Merceron offered his life blood for his friend. Within Mistress Esme, Merceron lives on. You should explain that to Fiona.”
“Yeah,” sighed Moth, himself still stinging from Merceron’s death. “It’s just . . . that’s not how things are where we come from, Alis. Don’t you remember? It’s hard for humans to believe in magic.”
Alis struggled with the notion. “When I am all human again, then I will remember,” she said. “I’ll remember everything soon.”
“You will,” Moth promised. “I’ll help you. But right now . . .”
Alis put up her hand. “I know. No more talking.”
She turned and headed quietly back to the village. Moth considered the distance between him and Fiona. Strewn with dead leaves, there was no way for him to sneak up on her.
“Well?” Fiona called suddenly. “You coming or what?”
She barely raised her head as she spoke, even as Moth approached through the trees. When he reached her, he saw a wrinkled sheet of paper in her lap and a pen moving in her hand.
“Fiona?” He loomed over her. “We were expecting you back. What happened? What are you doing out here?”
“Writing a letter,” Fiona replied.
Moth knelt down next to her, realizing why she hid her face. Her usually white cheeks were speckled with red blotches, her eyes puffy from crying. He reached out and touched her shoulder.
“Hey . . .”
Fiona tensed. “I just couldn’t stay back there, Moth. All that talk about fighting and death. All those things out there waiting for us. Ogilorns! Whoever heard of a flying jellyfish?”
Moth tried to be gentle. “Fiona, we have to get ready. We can’t run and hide.” He looked at her. “You know that, right?”
“You mean my castle?” scoffed Fiona. “Yeah, some castle! All I did was bring the centaurs trouble by coming here. That’s all any of us did, Moth—we just made trouble for everyone. If we had stayed in Calio . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she looked down at her paper, but Moth knew what she meant.
“Merceron would still be alive.”
Fiona swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
Moth sat down next to Fiona, getting close as he shared her tree trunk. “Merceron did what he wanted to do, you know. He gave Esme back her life. She’s back with her own people now. And Alis says he’s still alive in a way, because his life is part of Esme’s now.”
“She’s a Redeemer, Moth. I still can’t believe you brought her back here with you.”
“She can help us. She knows more about the Skylords than any of us, and she’s strong as a dragon! She’s the one that put that hole in the Avatar.”
“And the cloud horse?” asked Fiona. “What are you gonna do with that thing?”
Moth flushed. “Yeah, that was kind of stupid,” he admitted. Comet, despite having taken Moth to Pandera, had already disappeared into the mountains. “Maybe she’s gone to back to the Skylords. I was hoping she’d stay with me, but that was dumb.”
“You could have ridden her out of here, Moth,” said Fiona. “You should have ridden her out of here, gotten home while you had the chance.”
“I am going to get home, Fiona,” Moth insisted, “and so are you and Skyhigh and your grandfather—”
“No,” said Fiona, shaking her head. “Not my grandfather.” Again she couldn’t look at him. “He didn’t talk about this in the meeting, but he’s got a plan, Moth. If we can’t beat the Skylords on our own, he’s gonna blow up the Avatar.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Moth. “That’s what they were talking about when I left.”
“Just when I thought I had a family again!” Fiona raised her face to the moon. “Now he’s gonna kill himself.”
Moth wasn’t sure how to comfort her. “An explosion that big . . . it might destroy the Starfinder too. That’s what he said, Fiona. He doesn’t want the Skylords to get it.”
“Crazy! Everyone on the Avatar will be dead!”
“He’s doing it to save everyone, Fiona. To save you.”
“I don’t want him to!” cried Fiona. “I want him to be alive!”
She thrust down her pen and let the paper tumble from her lap. Moth picked up the letter she’d been writing and read the first few lines.
“What’s this?”
Fiona snatched it back. “I told you, it’s a letter.”
“To whom?”
“To my family.”
“Uhm, you don’t have a family, Fiona.”
Fiona looked exasperated. “Just pretend then, okay? Jorian said we’re soldiers now. It’s what soldiers do before battle; they write to their families.”
Moth didn’t understand, but didn’t want to embarrass her either. “Who will you send it to when you’re done?”
“No one,” said Fiona. She picked up her pen again. “Maybe someone will find it someday after this is all over.”
“You mean when you’re dead?”
“Yeah,” said Fiona. “When we’re both dead.”
Suddenly, Moth remembered something Rendor had told him. “You have no faith, Fiona,” he said. “You don’t believe in anything, and if you don’t believe, we’ve got no chance at all.”
“That’s right, Moth, we have no chance,” Fiona snorted. “You were at the meeting. Weren’t you listening
? The Skylords are coming, and all we have is a broken down ship to try and stop them.”
“Really?” snapped Moth. “What about Jorian? What about Skyhigh and Alis, even? You don’t have faith in any of them!”
Fiona sighed as if talking to a child. “Moth, we’re going to die here, just like Merceron. That’s why I have to write this letter, to tell people so they know what happened to us.”
“Oh,” said Moth scornfully. “You think that’s what your family would want to hear? That you’re scared? That you’re about to die? That’s not what soldiers write in their letters, Fiona. I know, because Leroux told me stories about them.”
“Leroux told a lot of stories.”
Moth took the pen from Fiona. “This is a story about an Eldrin Knight at the battle of Rhoon Falls.”
“Everyone died at Rhoon Falls.”
“Right,” said Moth, “but there was this one Eldrin Knight that wrote a letter to his mother right before the battle. He told her not to worry, because they had so many men and weapons that their enemies would be crazy to attack them. He told her about the good friends he had in the company, and how he was safe. His mother got the letter a whole day before she found out he’d been killed.”
Fiona went blank. “So?”
“Don’t you see? His mother had a whole day of happiness. It was like a gift!”
“Moth, he died.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t tell his mother that! He could have written her a letter saying how scared he was, but he didn’t. He didn’t want her to worry. That’s the kind of letter soldiers really write home, Fiona. If you weren’t just pretending—if you really had a family to write to—that’s the kind of letter you’d write, I bet.” Moth handed Fiona back her pen. “I have to get back now,” he said. “Don’t stay here too long, okay?”
When Moth was finally out of sight, Fiona took her letter and tore it into tiny bits, showering the ground with them. Then, on a second piece of paper, she began again. She wrote for nearly an hour, pausing when her hand cramped, telling her mother and father not to be afraid for her. She wasn’t alone, she told them, because she had friends to help her fight. She had a magical centaur named Jorian who could shoot an arrow clear to heaven, and a boy named Moth who wasn’t afraid of anything.
Grandfather’s here too, she wrote. He told me he misses you, Mom. I know he won’t let anything happen to me.
When Fiona was finished, she folded the letter neatly one time and placed it under a rock near the tree for anyone to find. Then she stood up, brushed the dirt and grass from her backside, and headed for the village.
SEVEN SOULS
THE TWO-HUNDRED-FOOT OGILORN guarding Mount Oronor blinked its fifty eyes when it spotted Artaios’ chariot. Engulfed in the mists crowning the mountain, the monster floated like a massive pink orb before the fortress, its barbed tentacles twisting in the cold air. Six keepers tended the beast—five Redeemers and a single, youthful Skylord. On the far side of Mount Oronor, Artaios could see another ogilorn on guard, it too surrounded by tenders. Culled from the darkest corner of the known world, the ogilorns had come at the order of Artaios himself, joining his thousand-strong army.
Artaios slowly guided his chariot past the massive ogilorn, disturbed by the way its many eyes tracked him through the sky. Ogilorns were violent, unpredictable beasts, known mostly for the way they hunted breeching whales with their blood-sucking tentacles. Artaios’ father had used ogilorns, too. Artaios could still remember seeing one peel the skin from a dead dragon.
He arced his fiery chariot wide around the beast, toward its young, flying keeper. The Skylord pointed toward the fortress.
“Great Artaios,” he greeted, shouting above the wind. “Rakuiss awaits you!”
Below, the ancient fortress was a hive of activity, with Skylords and Redeemers moving through the avenues, training with weapons and corralling the hordes of cloud horses. Fires belched smoke into the air and tiny, sparkling fairies darted through the foul air. The coming battle had brought the long-dead fortress back to life.
Over his shoulder, Artaios spotted Pandera, defiant behind its wall of mountains. Jorian’s own army was on the march. Redeemer spies had been keeping watch over the valley. Rendor and his airship remained in Pandera, and the Starfinder with him. Artaios cast a cool glance toward the valley as his chariot descended. Despite his hopes, Moth was still in Pandera, too.
The chariot settled into a clearing near the main keep. Towers jutted up like teeth from the mountain, spiked with ragged stones. Skylords fluttered around the chariot instantly, each one greeting Artaios. Then, out of the mist another figure approached, his sandaled feet crunching the pebbly ground. He paused near the chariot, crossing an arm over his bent knee as he bowed.
“Magnificence,” he greeted. “We are ready.”
They were the only words Artaios wanted to hear. He let the reins drop from his hands, and with a flutter of wings vaulted from the chariot to land before his subject, stooping to put a hand on his shoulder.
“Rise, old friend,” said Artaios. “Your lord is pleased.” Rakuiss rose, his left eye covered with an eye patch, his right wing bent awkwardly against his back. A veteran of the dragon wars, he was nearly as old as Korace himself, but had managed to stave off time’s ravages. His experience and loyalty made him the perfect choice to lead Artaios’ army.
“How fares your father?” asked Rakuiss. It was the same question the old warrior always posed, always with genuine concern. If Korace had ever truly had a friend, Rakuiss was it.
“Not well,” confessed Artaios. “There aren’t many days left for him, my friend. This matter of the Starfinder . . .” Artaios sighed. “It breaks his heart to see the realm at war again.”
Rakuiss’ good eye twitched. “To be so troubled, after all he has done. We will make Jorian and his abominations pay for this, Artaios. The humans too.”
Artaios sagged, offering only a nod.
“What saddens you, Magnificence?” asked Rakuiss. “I promise you, the centaurs have no chance at all. Soon you’ll have the Starfinder, I swear it.”
Artaios smiled. His troubles had nothing to do with the Starfinder. “Everything you’ve done here pleases me, Rakuiss.”
“What then? You are distressed, my friend, I can tell.”
“No,” Artaios lied. “Just anxious to have this over.”
“Tell me to and I will end it,” said Rakuiss. “All we await is your order.”
Suddenly it seemed like all the Skylords and Redeemers stopped what they were doing. Artaios glanced around, impressed by the fortress, sure that Rendor and the Starfinder couldn’t escape. Oddly, the notion saddened him.
“Soon,” he told Rakuiss. “Now, though, let me go and speak with Ivokor.”
Artaios picked his way through the giant, filthy cavern, his eyes tearing as he approached Ivokor’s workshop. The sound of hammers and chains rattled his skull as he passed bare-chested gargoyles sweating over anvils and urns of liquid metal. Tiny, soot-covered fairies darted through the sulfurous air, their tattered wings barely able to sustain them. Through the haze of smoke Artaios spotted Ivokor across the foundry, hunched over his giant workbench. Pincers and clamps hung from pegs driven into the rock wall. Flecks of metal covered his hairy arms and sparkled in his mane. Dirty-faced fairies fluttered around him, handing off tiny tools. Ivokor growled as he ordered them about, barely missing them with swipes of his meaty paw.
“Ivokor,” bellowed Artaios. As he approached, he kept his wings tucked carefully against his back, afraid to brush or damage them against anything. Ivokor raised his feline head in surprise, letting a jeweler’s loupe drop from his eye.
“Artaios,” he said, wiping his grimy paws against his heavy apron. “Why didn’t anyone tell me you were here?” he griped, batting at the fairies.
“You’re getting old, Ivokor,” said Artaios. “You should have been able to smell me.”
“Who can smell anything down here?” Ivokor tossed aside his tiny
hammer and waved Artaios closer. “Come. It is done.”
The fairies scattered as Artaios approached. Ivokor stooped and pulled a large metal chest from beneath his workbench, squatting down beside it, his tail swaying excitedly. Ivokor had the head of a lion and the strength of one too. His golden arms bulged with muscles, the same arms that had hammered out Artaios’ magic sword.
“I finished it just last night,” he said proudly. He waited until Artaios was hovering over the chest. “This time, I know I got it right.”
“Open it,” said Artaios impatiently.
A flick of Ivokor’s fingernail snapped the latch. Slowly, he opened the lid, revealing its dazzling contents. Artaios drew back, his eyes stabbed by escaping light. A golden glow poured from the chest, bathing Ivokor’s feline face.
“Seven souls,” he said, his voice crackling with pride. “Seven lives, just for you.”
Artaios beheld the golden armor, his fingers reaching for it through the shimmering. The breastplate pulsed with life. He could feel its soft heat, like breath against his hand. As his fingers touched the enchanted metal, the seven souls encased within it called out to him, singing in his mind.
“I feel them,” he whispered. He closed his eyes as he listened to the ghostly chorus. “So strong . . .”
“They will protect you, Artaios,” said Ivokor. “Seven times. That’s all. Seven shots from Jorian’s bow is all you can withstand.”
Artaios held the breastplate up to his face, studying himself in its polished surface. The metal swirled with golden hues, the very essence of the sacrificed Redeemers. They were loyal, he realized, and none of them had been forced to give their lives for him. They had done so willingly.
Loyal, thought Artaios. Not like Alisaundra.
“Seven souls,” he said softly. “Seven shots.”
“That’s right, and not a single one more,” said Ivokor. “Let the others do the fighting for you, Artaios. Stay as far away from Jorian as you can.”
“What?” Artaios glared at Ivokor. “Perhaps I should just go home to the palace. Would that be cowardly enough for you?”