Sworn to Vengeance

by Terah Edun

  “I know, but—” Christian said.

  “Oh, for heaven's sake, man,” snapped Terris. “He's curious, that's all.”

  Sebastian turned his eyes from Terris to Christian. “Is this true?”

  “He's like one of those carrion birds that eyes desert creatures long before they perish,” the shaman said with a chuckle.

  Christian sniffed. “I'm not a bloody vulture, thank you very much. I'm a scientist first and foremost, and a conjuring of a residual object of this magnitude has never been seen firsthand before.”

  Ciardis felt a bit embarrassed on behalf of Christian. There was no call for the shaman's words. Ciardis put her firmly back in the unfriendly category again.

  One that seems to be growing, Ciardis thought with a side-glance at Terris. Though she wasn't quite so willing to believe her best friend belonged in that territory just yet.

  “All right, all right,” Sebastian said hastily. “You can watch. Just don't…interfere.”

  Christian nodded placidly and walked a bit further back and more parallel to Sebastian so that he could take in his whole body, the placement of his hands, and see his mouth as he spoke whatever enchantments he was about to invoke.

  Sebastian tilted his head back to take in the wall, raised a hand so that it rested on the stone a foot above his own head, opened his mouth, and spoke in the tongues of the old court.

  Here me, stones of Kifar, I am a prince of the realm.

  I claim my birthright as an Algardis son.

  I ask that you open your home to me. Open and submit.

  Nothing happened. But then again, Ciardis thought, he hadn't emitted any magic yet.

  Raisa hummed pointedly.

  “All right, all right,” Sebastian said in disgust. “It was worth a try. Why is nothing ever easy about these quests?”

  Ciardis stifled a giggle, both at his honest frustration and the amused look the dragon ambassador sent the prince heir from behind.

  “If you think this quest is hard, prince heir,” Raisa said smoothly, “wait till you get to Sahalia.”

  “I don't believe I'll ever have the opportunity,” said Sebastian in a semi-distracted tone as he called up his gifts.

  It wasn't an impolite dismissal. It was common knowledge that no one in the Algardis line, since the founding centuries ago, had traveled back across the seas to Sahalia. By mutual agreement, it was forbidden.

  “You never know,” said the Sahalian ambassador in a soft, almost unheard voice.

  Ciardis gave her a narrow look. She didn't like the speculation in Raisa's eyes.

  She's planning something, the Weathervane thought as she looked back and forth between the dragon and her fiancé.

  Ciardis bit her lip and filed it away as something to pursue later. She couldn't investigate it right now.

  She watched as Sebastian called up gifts to the visible plane where anyone, with or without magic, could see its use.

  It was like watching an aura emerge around him in a halo of blue. It surrounded him in a softly glowing cloud from head to toe, but the greatest concentration was in his hands.

  She watched with patience as he poured his gift out into the wall.

  The white stone began to take on an eerie glow, not unlike the colors in the crystal walls of the tunnels below.

  But this was distinctively Sebastian's work as it radiated through him and surrounded his form.

  She waited, they all waited with bated breath for something to happen, and when it did you could have heard a bird call, the desert was so quiet.

  Slowly, so slowly that at first she thought her eyes deceived her, the wall in front of them began to crumble. First where Sebastian's hand touched it.

  Like powder it dropped away.

  Then, softly, the surrounding stone disappeared until a human-sized and -shaped hole appeared in the wall itself.

  Ciardis raised an eyebrow.

  It wasn't precisely a hole. It was an impression in the stone.

  She was about to say something as she frowned and raised her hand, but Christian waved his own hand at her for silence without taking his rapt gaze off the prince heir.

  Sebastian didn't disappoint his audience.

  He reached forward and pushed into the stone impression itself.

  His hand disappeared for a few seconds, and then the stone surrounding it fell away too, like soft dirt, to clump in a gray pile of dust at his feet.

  But this time the soft dissolution of the wall didn't end there.

  Ciardis watched, mouth agape, as the stone impression widened until it was about seven feet tall and four feet wide.

  The impression then began to grow deeper into the wall itself.

  She walked up behind Sebastian and saw, to her astonishment, that the stone had dissolved for a depth of at least ten feet into the wall. And on the other end of the new hole was…sunlight.

  They couldn't see any of the human forms that Thanar had reported, but they finally had their opening.

  They all gathered as close as they could around the prince heir and peered into the new entrance into the city of Kifar.

  Terris was the first to speak: “Well, should we go in?”

  Sebastian said, “I don't think we have much of choice.”

  “Oh, we always have a choice, prince heir,” said the shaman in a calculated tone.

  “Well, I don't,” Sebastian said.

  And without another word, he set off down the tunnel.

  Alone.

  14

  They all stood stock-still, frozen in time as they watched the retreating form of the prince heir walk off alone in the tunnel made of stone and carved from dreams.

  Shock, Ciardis thought dispassionately, that's what everyone is feeling.

  “What got into him?” she heard Terris mutter in wonder.

  The soldiers were the first to come to their senses. Yelling “Sire!” they raced off after the errant prince heir.

  Ciardis couldn't help but shake her head at the comical scene of two grown men running hell for leather to catch up to a man barely half their ages.

  Like goslings follow their mama, she thought as she looked down at the silvery-gray dirt that littered the floor of the tunnel.

  You literally couldn't see the ground for all the accumulation of pulverized stone on the path.

  “It'll be like walking in snow,” Christian said with an encouraging shove.

  Ciardis stumbled forward, windmilling her arms to keep her balance, before managing to turn and glare over her shoulder at the “helpful” koreschie.

  “Well, someone had to test it out,” Christian said with an innocent air.

  “And the prince heir was doing what exactly?” Ciardis said.

  “Sucking up special-person air,” Thanar said as he casually squeezed behind her.

  Unfortunately, the tunnel was barely wide enough for two normal-sized people to walk next to each other. With Thanar's wingspan in the way, it made for some contortions that Ciardis hadn't thought she'd ever put on display in front of a crowd again.

  She turned to push herself against the stone wall, ignoring for the moment that it was a potentially hazardous and unstable entity, in order to let Thanar swing by.

  As her back touched firm cool stone cool, she let out an audible sigh of relief.

  Her chest area, however, expanded with her next breath, and Thanar had no compunction about brushing things he shouldn't have as he made his way by finally.

  “Get off!” snapped Ciardis, scandalized.

  Thanar shot her a dark look over his shoulder. Not a look of evil or concern. But one of passion.

  “You only wish, Weathervane,” he said. “You only wish.”

  She scrunched up her face at him in a sneer that came out instinctively.

  She only realized how childish it looked when the shaman walked past in the clear path and gave her an odd look on the way forward.

  Ciardis immediately flushed red down to her toes. She scrambled into a more
respectful position as she started to walk behind the woman. Ciardis had an eyeful of the shaman as they moved forward and she had to admit that she made even the dreariest tunnel look like it was fit for a queen’s hall.

  Ciardis sighed and muttered to herself, “Why me?”

  She felt a companionable hand slide over her shoulders as Christian slid into a walk next to her. They were flush hip to head, and he was walking just a bit behind her in order to not brush up against the walls, but they made it work.

  He didn't say anything immediately.

  Neither did she.

  But for an absurdly long minute, she felt better than she had in a long time.

  “Your empathic powers?” she guessed as they got closer and closer to the light in the tunnel.

  “You looked like you needed some calm,” he said quietly.

  She snorted as she watched Rachael emerge into the sunlight ahead of her.

  “I felt like tearing her hair out from the roots of her pretty head, slapping Thanar silly, and shaking Sebastian until his teeth rattle,” she said through gritted teeth. “I don't understand any of them.”

  “You don't have to understand them,” the koreschie said gravely. “You just have to work with them.”

  “And how do I do that?” Ciardis asked as she looked down into the gray dust where a clear path had been trodden before her.

  Like the lakefront in the north after a fresh dusting of snow and half a dozen of the village kids had waded one after the other to its shorefront to go ice-fishing.

  She heard a light note in koreschie's voice: “By trusting in them as I trust in you.”

  “That'll be harder than it looks,” Ciardis grumbled as she took a deep breath and prepared to step out into the glaring sunlight.

  She paused just before they stepped out of the tunnel.

  “I don't hear anything,” she said with some concern.

  There was nothing but bright light in front of her. No individuals milling about the entrance. No sounds of people talking. No words from Sebastian to assure her that everything beyond this tunnel was all right.

  “Neither do I,” said Christian, “but we cannot let our friends down. We can't go back after they made the choice to go forward.”

  “We could go back,” Ciardis said with an anxious glance over her shoulder back the way they came. “We could re-form. We could regroup.”

  Christian's grip tightened on her shoulder. “Steady there. We'd never get into this city alone. Besides, Sebastian, Thanar, and, yes, even Rachael made a conscious decision to put themselves in harm's way. To go first and assess the situation before you came through yourself just behind the prince heir.”

  Ciardis stiffened. Her mouth formed an O.

  “I didn't know,” she whispered, almost to herself.

  “No,” Christian said. “Because you saw what you wanted to see. A lecherous daemoni prince and a calculating shaman. Instead of seeing them for what they are, loyal friends.”

  Ciardis squared her shoulders as her insides squirmed in misery.

  “You're right,” she said as she shrugged off his hand.

  Her voice was firm. Her eyes clear.

  “Let's go,” Ciardis said.

  “That's the Weathervane I know,” Christian said with a hint of pride in his voice as he took two full steps back and let her take her place, as was her right. Alone.

  Ciardis walked straight forward with her head held high.

  She didn't know what was coming in the sunlight, but she knew she could do no less honor to her friends than they had to her.

  As she passed into the light, she felt a curious sensation.

  Like a protective bubble that hit her face and spread along her body like a second skin. It stretched and stretched as she walked forward.

  It didn't feel unpleasant. Just warm and elastic.

  One final step, and it popped. It was gone as if never there.

  And then the overwhelmingly white, bright light that showed her nothing was gone.

  In its place a normal sky, normal light, more sights and sounds than she could comprehend in a moment of total confusion.

  Then Sebastian was there.

  And Samuel.

  And Tobias.

  They stood in front of her in a pointed shield, while Sebastian angled his face to the side and said to her in a stressed tone, “I think we have a problem.”

  Thanar materialized to her left and Rachael to her right.

  Behind her Ciardis heard the others emerge from the stone tunnel one by one with distinctive pops.

  “I'll say we do,” Ciardis murmured to herself as she peeked between her friends' bodies, which were shielding her like armor on a soldier.

  There were surrounded by a frenzied crowd.

  Not dead.

  But not alive either.

  Ciardis shuddered and wondered what exactly it was that was holding them back. She knew that when she had walked through the white light before she had exited one shielded area. But it seemed that at the same time she had walked into another larger version. And it was this that protected their group from the creatures. They clawed at the bubble-like surface that stood firm under their attacks, and they howled for blood.

  In rags that spoke of years of disuse, with rivulets of blood running down their distorted faces, and dirt caking their every surface.

  They looked worse than what she had imagined of the living dead. They looked possessed.

  Ciardis turned around and around, and then pushed out of the inner circle to stand next to Rachael. Her side pressed into the shaman's as she tried to process what she was seeing.

  “What are they?” Ciardis asked in dismay.

  “Human,” said Raisa.

  “Demons,” said Terris with a shudder.

  “They are Kifar,” said the Muareg in a smug tone. “I told you I would open the gates of Kifar to you. By making you aware of the tunnels, I did. What you found inside its walls is what we have warned you of since you came to these sands.”

  “No one asked you,” said a soldier.

  The Muareg gave him a look that said that no matter what they said, he had been right.

  The other soldier, Tobias, muttered, “Little chatterbox has gotten awfully chatty lately.”

  “Shall I shut him up, prince?” Samuel asked.

  “No,” said Sebastian with a hard glare at the Muareg. “He'll be quiet himself if he knows what's good for him.”

  The Muareg gave a baleful look to everyone around him.

  Ciardis bit her lip as she stepped out from the circle of her friends and walked along the perimeter of the half-circle they had formed in front of the stone wall's entrance. A barrier kept the screaming…creatures from clawing out the individuals inside the dome, but that was all.

  They couldn't touch, but they could clearly see their prey.

  And Ciardis Weathervane could see them. Clearly for the first time.

  She catalogued their faces and their condition with a detachment that she didn't feel.

  She could see that their eyes bulged out of the containing sockets. They were black.

  No, red, Ciardis thought with a shudder. No, black.

  Shaking her head, she refocused her gaze before she could get lost in the souls of the individuals that threatened to drown her from the outside in.

  Their faces had all swelled like their skin wanted to slough off, but their hands were a ghastly white, like they'd pushed them into chalk and hadn't thought to rinse it off.

  Ciardis shuddered again as she shifted her gaze to their clothes. Rags that hung off their bodies and were wretched. These were the individuals, racked with pestilence and infested with grime, who looked upon the people encircled inside the dome.

  “I thought you said they were gathering at the entrance,” Ciardis said in desperation as she reached Thanar.

  “They are,” Thanar said placidly as he kept an evil eye on the people who surrounded them.

  Ciardis turned and faced him fu
lly with her hands on her hips. “You left out the part where they were mindless zombies!”

  Thanar shrugged with a rustle of his wings. “I was miles above them in the sky. There's a dome in the sky that prevented me from getting any closer.”

  Raisa gave a world-weary sigh. “In other words, he could no more see and distinguish their features than we could the ants on the kitchen floor.”

  “Great, just great,” Ciardis said as she turned away and paced back along the perimeter.

  She didn't focus too long on any one of the screaming faces; they gave her the creeps, after all.

  As she walked, the others looked around.

  Soon she saw Christian focused on one spot in particular.

  He was kneeling down and balancing as he leaned forward to look at one of the creatures just beyond his reach on the outside of the bubble.

  As Ciardis walked up to him and knelt by his side, he said, “Look at this one, Ciardis.”

  She turned her gaze to whatever had fascinated him so.

  This one did not claw at the barrier like a maddened dog. Instead it sat on the ground with its hands locked around its knees.

  Almost as if it was…scared.

  Ciardis stared at it some more.

  “It can't be,” she said with a quiet breath.

  “Why can't it?” Christian asked in a faraway voice as he stood.

  Ciardis scrambled to her feet, and Rachael joined them.

  “What is it?” the shaman asked.

  “What is what?” Terris asked as she tried peeking over Ciardis's shoulder.

  The Weathervane moved aside without taking her eyes off their prey.

  “It is a boy,” said Christian.

  “But that's impossible,” stammered Ciardis.

  Christian finally peeled his eyes away from the child. “No, it's not.”

  “But a child,” Ciardis said with her hands to her mouth in horror. “An undead child.”

  Christian shrugged. “The Aerdivus spares no one. Old and young. Weak and strong. Man and woman. Kith and mundane. None were spared its scourge.”

  Ciardis shook her head. “I just didn't expect it.”

  The shaman said, “None of us did.”

  With that, Rachael turned away from the child with a brush of her hand on Ciardis's arm.