by Terah Edun
Bridged as if it had never been there in the first place. And it felt good, oh so good to be back on amiable terms. To know that if she turned to her left now, that she would see unquestioning understanding and camaraderie.
“Ciardis!” Terris exclaimed.
Ciardis turned to her left, still enmeshed in her happy reverie, expecting Terris to point out the funniest part of Christian's shocked face or tell her what a great couple she thought the shaman and the koreschie would make.
Terris lived for that sort of thing, after all.
When she’d discovered Vana was more apt to date women over men, she’d found numerous women to thrust into her mentor’s empty arms.
Vana hadn’t been interested in her machinations, however, and had promptly threatened to leave Terris tied to the palace gates for a week if she didn’t stop.
That had stopped that in its tracks.
Now Terris would have a new couple to ruminate about.
Ciardis was just glad it wasn't her.
But to her surprise, her friend's face wasn't turned toward hers, prepared to spill juicy secrets or squeal over a minute detail in the interaction between Christian and Rachael.
The companion who was Ciardis's debut sister as well as friend was trembling with her finger pointed straight out, toward a particular creature beyond the dome.
Ciardis paused and followed Terris's finger. Her eyes scanned the creatures howling and scrabbling at the protective dome like demented bats.
None of them look promising, Ciardis thought.
None of them were even distinguishable from the others as far as antics went. They all howled. They all cried tears of blood. They all were as filthy as pigs in a pen.
“No, not them,” exclaimed Terris as she physically grabbed Ciardis's head and reoriented her gaze upward. Beyond the crowd converged on the bubble.
To a single point in the distance where a lone person stood in wait.
“Oh my word,” Ciardis breathed with a ghostly voice.
“Do you see it?”
“Yes, I see him.”
Ciardis was quiet as she contemplated the man who had to be fifty yards in the distance.
He stood silent and still. Watching her as she watched him.
He was clean, was the first thing she noticed.
The second was that he was tall and well clothed.
He wore a normal pair of pants, a shirt, and gemstones on his wrists that glittered even from here.
“Oh my word,” Ciardis said again, at a loss for anything else to say.
“We should say something,” said Terris frantically. “We should do something.”
“Do?” said Ciardis distractedly.
She couldn't take her eyes off the man. He was older. Older than Sebastian, but not quite the age of the emperor. With the seasoned age of one who had seen almost a half-century and remembered it all.
He stood with his head cocked as if waiting for something. Or someone.
Ciardis couldn't even blink. She was afraid he would disappear like an apparition on the wind if she moved even a smidge.
“We need to do something,” Terris repeated in a slightly more frantic tone. “If we don't, they'll devour them.”
“Who?” Ciardis said, barely processing the conversation.
Terris squeezed her head slightly, as if she wanted to shake Ciardis and only barely managed to refrain from doing so.
“Oh, I don't know, how about the dozens of thralls that encircle like ravenous wolves?” Terris asked.
“Oh, them,” Ciardis said.
“Yes,” snapped Terris. “Them!”
“Can you let me go, please?” Ciardis asked. “You're giving me a headache.”
Terris paused and then said, “Oh, right. Yes, sorry about that.”
“No problem,” murmured Ciardis as she crossed her arms and tilted her now free head just a smidge. “Can you get the others?”
“Can I—?” Terris stuttered.
“Get the others,” Ciardis repeated as she tried to take in more of the stranger in the distance. She couldn't see much beyond his attire, and she certainly couldn't read his intentions from so far away. But at least he didn't seem interested in moving. He stood stock-still at the entrance to an alley like a statue frozen in the heavy sunlight.
“What am I, your maid?” she heard Terris say in her ear.
Ciardis didn't respond. She knew Terris wasn't really mad.
There's just something about him, Ciardis thought.
The weathered face spoke of a long, full life. The thick head of graying hair reminded her of the village elders back home. The stance was one that a proud noble in Sandrin would bear.
Yet here he stood in the center of a dying city just behind a raging mob.
A conundrum indeed, Ciardis thought as she bit her lip.
What's a conundrum? she heard Sebastian ask inside her head as he rested light fingertips on her left shoulder.
He had probably noted that she hadn't moved even when he approached, and deduced that there was a good reason why. Talking mind to mind when she was as focused as she was tended to be easier, and for that she was grateful.
Ciardis said, “Where's Thanar?”
There was shuffling behind her.
Finally he said, “Here.”
“I have an idea,” Ciardis said as she reached out and covered Sebastian's hand on her left shoulder with her right. “But I think we'll need to work together to see what it is.”
“What what is?” Sebastian asked in sheer confusion.
Ciardis nodded toward the bubble. “Do you see him? The lone man in the distance off the alleyway.”
People moved closer to the bubble, jostling Terris from her place to Ciardis's immediate left, but exclamations all around confirmed that the Kithwalker's original find was indeed true.
“And what is that you want us to do?” Thanar asked.
Ciardis raised her left hand and held it so that it was visible over her right shoulder. “Take my hand.”
There was a distinct pause. So long that she wondered if he would even do it.
Then she heard someone kick someone else's shin. She wasn't sure who it was, and she was fairly sure Thanar didn't know either. There were standing so close together, and his wings, though beneficial, blocked his line of sight in close quarters. Besides, if he had, there would have been one more pile of dust at their feet, but this one would have been the pure black ash of mortal remains.
Ciardis cleared her throat and wiggled her fingers in anticipation.
She felt Thanar's hand join her own, and their fingers interlocked as she dropped his hand to her right shoulder in a mirror of her grip of Sebastian’s on the left and then she smiled.
She didn't know why she was so giddy.
It was a silly emotion.
A vain concept.
One that didn't belong while one was surrounded by ravenous, mindless creatures.
But she couldn't help it. As soon as she had both of their hands in her own grip, she felt a wave of contentment that she hadn't felt in too long.
She had the presence of mind to keep that emotion to herself. It was hers and hers alone. She didn't want to hear Sebastian's griping about the soul bond, or Thanar's sniping about making choices.
Here, now, was all that she had.
She lifted her chin and opened up her power.
Behind her and to either side, the two males bonded to her did the same.
The black swirl of Thanar's gift smashed into her golden powers like a wave.
Sebastian's dark blue aura was more circumspect but no less powerful as it danced in his grip and twined around her magic, careful not to intersect with Thanar's.
They wove around each other like two dancing snakes supporting her column of power.
Before the unified stance could descend into anarchy, Ciardis called on her gift and sent her own wave of power, bolstered by Sebastian and Thanar, not through the protective bubble that surrounded them
but into it.
She formed a shield of unmatched power that completely melded itself to the underside of the dome.
And as careful as a glassmaker blowing out a sculpture through a long metal pipe, she pushed more and more power into their shield.
And as it expanded, so did the outer bubble.
It didn't burst.
It didn't dissipate.
It grew.
Ciardis smiled, because that was exactly what she wanted it to do.
“Do you get it now?” she asked Thanar and Sebastian softly with a squeeze of their hands.
They didn't say a word.
But both, simultaneously, increased the feed of their power into her own.
Individually their male gifts were devastating and useful for assertive attacks.
But it was her more subdued gift, a natural Weathervane gift, that boosted the power of her benefactors that was most useful at this time.
With the neutral magic that could be used to enhance almost anything, it acted as a base that any other magic could be played off.
Combine that with the fact that now that her own very magic was completely intertwined and bound with the magic of Sebastian's and Thanar's gifts, and it meant that she could do things that they could not alone.
And in this case…that was a good thing. A very good thing.
Still Ciardis held her breath as she pushed the bubble further out, until the creatures surrounding them starting stumbling away in confusion. A first it just made them back up. But they soon found they had few places to go as they hit buildings and the bubble kept coming.
So they did the only thing they could: they fled down alleys.
The only creature that stayed still in the advance of the dome was the one she was most interested in.
“Christian?” Ciardis called out. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Christian said as he came to stand just off to Thanar's right and a few feet ahead of him, “that you've found the most interesting lot of the bunch, Ciardis Weathervane.”
Ciardis laughed in delight and said, “Don't thank me. Thank Terris; it was her keen eyes that spotted him in the first place.”
Christian turned to Terris with a smile and nodded his thanks.
Terris clasped her hands together and ducked her head.
Then Ciardis said, “Shall we? I believe our welcoming party awaits.”
Over her left shoulder, Sebastian said softly, “I don't know if I'd call him welcoming.”
Thanar said, “Well, he's a much better welcoming party than what was here when we got here.”
“That I cannot deny,” Ciardis heard Sebastian say as she dropped both of their hands and began to walk forward to see who or what this new creature was.
He looked human, but that was no guarantee of anything, as Ciardis well knew.
She had the temptation to draw a knife out of her waist belt to be ready for anything. But she knew that in order to attack any of them, he'd have to get through the protective dome first and the triad's own shielding second.
It would take him some time—time enough for them to arm themselves.
For now, Ciardis decided, I'll do the ladylike thing and welcome him with open arms.
Sebastian gave a dry laugh. Let's not get too carried away.
Well, I only meant that I wasn't going to carry an open weapon over to him and brandish it in his face, she thought back. She wiggled her bare fingers for emphasis.
Thanar chimed in: Don't worry, the both of us are carrying more than enough for you.
Ciardis sniffed. You certainly are.
Before she could say more, the two males sidestepped her, unsheathed a sword and knife respectively, and stepped forward to receive the city of Kifar's chosen representative.
The only man who, as far as they could see, was neither living dead nor dead, which in Ciardis Weathervane's eyes was a vast improvement over what they had first come across.
“Oh, how my standards have fallen,” she said as she crossed her arms and stopped just behind Sebastian and Thanar, eyeing the stranger keenly.
Up close, her appraisal of him from afar ran true.
He was older, with graying hair.
He was human. And what’s more, he was familiar. Not physically. Not mentally.
But magically. He was more.
Ciardis recalled the miasma she’d felt earlier and she felt like it came from him now. The thin tendrils of darkness in the wind that had called to her so lightly that she couldn’t even tell where the magic was coming from before. They were coming from him. But the magic wasn’t quite of him.
Not natural, she decided as she searched his body for some sort of magical object or power source. But if it was there, she couldn’t see it.
He wore jewelry in his earlobes and on his wrists as well, but that magic wasn’t coming from there.
Perhaps it was his magic, not tied to the trinkets. But somehow she didn’t think so.
She kept scanning his body.
What she hadn't been able to see from further away was that he was pure white.
Not the white of a human who spent too many winters indoors.
But the white of a bunny in the snow.
Or a bloodsucker from the stories of old, Ciardis thought as the man dropped the inner membrane that protected his irises and all she saw was red.
17
As the future wife of an emperor-in-waiting, a lady in her own right, and a grown woman, Ciardis had to keep her composure.
She couldn't cry out in fright. She couldn't jerk back in amazement. And she certainly couldn't let out the same string of words that Terris uttered in sheer surprise, like she wanted to.
She stood tall and strong, but once…just once, she wondered, Why can't they be normal?
Opponents or allies, it didn't matter.
They were always weird. The quirkier ones, as she found out, had even turned out to be the most dangerous. And on a scale of one to ten, this was pretty much a seven.
She counted shapeshifters, which she'd yet to encounter, but had heard were deviously fascinating, as a level nine.
Her heart was beating so fast that Ciardis was sure the bloodsucker could see her pulse fluttering rapidly in her throat.
She nervously reached up to cover her most vulnerable flesh.
“Sebastian?” said Ciardis.
“Oh, I see it,” he said grimly.
She didn't have to completely her query; he saw the unexpected, just as she did.
Even safe behind the double shield of the dome and the triad magic, she no longer felt as confident as she had minutes before.
The man had eyes that were bloodshot red. Though they were more orbs than typical eyes. There was no pupil, just brilliant red across the entire sphere.
She couldn't tell who exactly he was looking at now that she saw this particular feature up close.
But fortunately, he decided to close the outer lid that revealed red, and in its place descended a film that gave his irises a red-tinged white and left the center pupils bright red.
“Oh, thank goodness,” said the shaman in a whisper to herself.
Ciardis wasn't sure if she was referring to the fact that he could conceal those disturbing eyes or what the concealment meant in the first place.
“Who are you?” Thanar finally asked.
The man turned his red pupils to Thanar with an unnervingly direct gaze.
“I am the one called Seven,” the bloodsucker replied.
“Do you have a proper name?” Ciardis asked.
“It is Seven,” he replied.
She sighed and nodded, suddenly desperate for something to fan herself with. She was overwhelmingly hot, like she was being cooked from the inside, and for some reason she didn't think it had anything to do with nature itself.
“What is your purpose?” Sebastian said.
“What is yours?” the man countered.
Ciardis raised her eyebrows and stepped forward so that she stood
on equal footing with the two princes to either side. “We are here on a mission of peace and of mercy.”
Seven tilted his head and looked at her with the same unreadable gaze. “Mercy for whom?”
“The denizens of this fine city,” Ciardis said while spreading her hands, gesturing to the still-grand set of buildings that rose around her.
“You must be mistaken…or lost,” Seven said with a disturbing smile. “This is Kifar, and it has been a very long time since anyone could describe it as fine.”
Ciardis swallowed in the face of his remark. It was calculating and just short of cutting. And yet she couldn't reprimand him, because everything he had said was just an inch short of being impolite…and, quite frankly, all of it was true.
“Nevertheless,” she said while pasting a bright smile on her face, “as you can see, we are here, and we require…information.”
“What sort of information?” asked Seven smoothly.
Thanar openly growled at him. “Why don't we ask the questions and you proceed to answer them?”
Seven laughed a little. “Because you are guests here.”
“As far I can remember,” Sebastian said, “guests are generally accommodated in their wishes, Sir Seven.”
The smile on Seven's face disappeared.
“And as you can see, we're in a bit of predicament,” Ciardis added quickly. She waved at the howling individuals that still waited on the perimeter. “We didn't quite expect…”
“For them to be alive?” Seven asked with a mild taunt in his voice.
Ciardis opened and shut her mouth, deciding that answering in the affirmative or the negative would bring problems either way. That was one question that was impossible to answer diplomatically.
“For them to be so ravenous,” said Sebastian.
Seven switched his unsettling eyes to Sebastian. “And why is that?”
Sebastian's voice hardened. “We can speak all day about these hordes or you can tell us who you are and what you want.”
Ciardis froze as the cold smile disappeared from Seven's face.