by T. A. Miles
Xu Liang felt compelled to glance at his hands. He noticed nothing especially worthy of attention about them, except that they hurt less usual, particularly after exertion. Of course, that was nothing Shirisae would have been able to see. In response to her question, he said, “The Empress will choose.”
Six Celestial Swords
Beneath the Temple of Divine Tranquility, Han Quan was beyond the woes of the court. While he had not planned to execute this stage of his plan so immediately, now that events had passed, he felt it for the best. He had exhausted many of his resources within the Imperial City. Since Xu Liang’s return, he had made a last effort to move quicker than his young rival, but to no avail. When it leaped into his mind to simply kill him, he acted. In that moment, he wanted every member of the court to drop to their deaths. But he could only choose one. Of course, Xu Liang had been chosen. That it ended in failure was of little consequence, since he had possibly killed one of the Imperial Tutor’s precious outsiders. Let them debate about that for a while. If that didn’t create enough tumult to keep them occupied, Han Quan knew what surely would.
For forty years, he had planned this. For forty years, he had nurtured her growth.
Han Quan stood in the mouth of a cave—one of several that existed naturally by now beneath the temple. He held a lantern up against the tapestry of shadow and light, a low glowing off the rocks, rising up from narrow yet deep trenches that contoured the underground. In his other hand, he held a sack. The size of it and his lacking strength would permit him to take only a few of what he had come for, perhaps less than six. It would depend on their size.
He crept forward in the cave’s gloom, bending forward and sweeping the lantern low in order to see the floor in front of him. What he wanted would be in a deep recess, but not out of reach.
His foot slipped across a loose stone, causing him to lurch. He managed to keep his balance, but the stone rattled across the floor. A flurry of sound followed, as if the bats depicted on his robes had suddenly come to life. But it was not so near as that. Swiftly, he dropped the sack and raised his hand in front of him, reciting quick prayers that brought a sheet of smaller rocks and dust off the floor and around him. He cycled the small dust storm high, enough that the many small, winged forms in the darkness were dissuaded from diving at him.
“Not yet,” he said to them, looking up at the funnel of erratically lit dirt and the suggestion of forms beyond it. “Not yet!”
The forms fluttered about in reckless and frantic passes for some time before retreating to their shadows. In their absence, the greater darkness shifted and a low, rolling sound—like boulders tumbling over one another and simultaneously like the lions of the Heavens yawning at the arrival of the first men—filled the dimensionless space. Han Quan knew better than to harass this beast, and so he let his spell fall. Pebbles rained briefly onto the floor around him. There came a hint of light, dancing off a surface in the very near distance…an orb that may have been blind in the darkness, but its owner was far from ignorance.
“Soon,” he said soothingly to the living blackness.
Shirisae dreamed of her mother, and for some reason she awoke with the masculine form of the Phoenix’s name ebbing on her lips. She whispered the syllables, “D’Jenti…”
“What?” someone asked.
He who is born in the Flame…
“Shirisae,” the voice came again, this time with the nudging hands of the young dwarf it belonged to. “Time to rise and shine, like you always do…brighter than is required.”
The jibe went largely unnoticed while Shirisae propped herself up in the Fanese bed. Her hair was still somewhat damp from the previous night’s excursion and her robes…
They were his robes. They were Xu Liang’s. The notion quelled what feelings of missing home she might otherwise have awakened with. Above the notion of who the clothing belonged to, it was what had finally, fully dawned on her.
“He is the Phoenix,” she whispered, looking at Taya, though the young dwarf seemed to not know what she meant. Shirisae didn’t explain. She further sat up, sliding her hands out from the overlong sleeves of dual-layered night clothing. Her hands felt cold immediately afterward, and not entirely because of the cooler air suddenly surrounding them.
“Who’s the Phoenix?” Taya asked next.
Shirisae shook her head. “Never mind. I…”
The girl dwarf put her fists on her hips. “I was going to let by the fact that you came back last night without telling me what happened, but now I’m going to insist that you tell me just what in the name of the Heartstone is making you practically tremble.”
“Am I?” Shirisae wondered, finding herself unable to fully transform the question into one of confidence—a tone that might otherwise have dismissed whatever it was Taya was implying with her observation.
“Yes, you are,” Taya said, and though she frowned, a note of concern edged into her voice. “Did something bad happen to Xu Liang? Did he collapse from strain…or have an attack of weakness…or—”
“No,” Shirisae interrupted. She took light hold of the dwarf’s arm, and in the process she startled herself with realization yet again. “He was strong, Taya.”
Taya appeared to be growing increasingly confused, and worried. “What do you mean? What happened?”
“Something that I myself have only just begun to fully understand,” Shirisae told her. “My mother transferred the Phoenix, via Firestorm, to Xu Liang.”
“Right…because it resurrected him…”
While Taya failed to commit to her conclusion, Shirisae said, “It has done more than that. It has cycled. When the Phoenix cycles, it takes earthly form through the body of one it has chosen.”
“I thought that was your mother.”
“A priestess of the Flame is a vessel, but for the waning period. Through Firestorm, the priestess keeps the Flame and guides by its wisdom. When a waning period is coming to an end, Firestorm is passed to her heiress, who will wield it in her name…the name of the Phoenix. At the start of a waxing phase, it is the blade that the Phoenix communicates through, choosing who will be the consort of the next incarnation. But we’ve arrived at a full cycle…an Awakening that will inspire the Phoenix to reach outside of its normal range in order to affect change. I thought that meant that it would travel outside of its realm, but through Firestorm, as Xu Liang’s cause seemed to require. Later, I believed that it had freed itself from the blade altogether and was merely traveling alongside the path of the one it had chosen to resurrect, to assist him on his path…but I see now that it’s more even than that. The Phoenix has chosen not who will help provide the next heiress, but an heir for itself…a male incarnation; D’Jenti.”
“So, that’s what that means,” Taya said, hazel eyes wide with both wonder and concern. A frown slowly formed. “But what…does that mean?”
“It means that Xu Liang has the strength of the Phoenix literally within him,” Shirisae answered. “I do not know what else that means—a cycle occurs so rarely that it’s possible that it will not be witnessed twice within the lifetime of any elf of the Flame.”
“But…he’s still Xu Liang. Isn’t he?”
“He could not be otherwise. The Phoenix does not take over, but augments all that is the person it travels within. It is a creature of rebirth. It exists in no constant form, but lives through the forms it takes.”
“Should we tell this to Xu Liang?”
“In his way, he knows,” Shirisae felt assured in saying.
“Well…should we do anything? I mean, what if it doesn’t work for some reason? Remember, it wasn’t his idea that he be resurrected.”
“If it could not work, Xu Liang would have died already. He has been chosen, and it is my duty, as the next Priestess of the Flame, to stay by him.”
“I’m not surprised by this,” Alere expressed, in his typical mounta
in elf fashion, when Taya and Shirisae brought the morning’s epiphany to the others—all, but Xu Liang, who had not joined them yet.
“No?” Shirisae challenged, and Taya believed it was simply for the sake of challenge at this point, since the elf didn’t seem to believe there was ever room for even the most modest of doubts where her god came in.
“No,” Alere answered. “You and your brother were also both witness to the movement of the mystic’s spirit when he attempted to pin down Ilnon, after the god of vengeance went for the Swords. Your god, without question, noticed the opportunity before it.”
The look on Shirisae’s lovely face was not at all lovely in that moment. Taya wanted to cover her eyes before the two elves made another demonstration like the one that had started all of this back in Yvaria.
It was Tristus who spared them, saying, “Now, look, both of you. I’m not going to let you carry on at odds with each other like this, over powers that have clearly acted and events that are passed.”
Taya had never heard him speak in quite that tone. Apparently, her uncle hadn’t either; he raised his brow and looked from one elf to the other, like a witness to a pair of adolescents getting scolded. Both elves ignored Tarfan, but they were willing to pause on Tristus’ insistence, perhaps owed to his injury…or maybe the actions that caused it. Either way, Taya felt tremendous relief.
In the calmer air that followed, Tristus exhaled carefully. In a more familiar and gentle tone, he said, “I scarcely believe any of what’s happened leading us here. I would be lying to say that my instinct at first wasn’t to disbelieve anything about Shirisae’s god. But I was witness to it, and by now all of us have been in one way or another, even if it’s only through the simple fact that Xu Liang lived, when he should have died. If Shirisae believes that the Phoenix now moves with—or within—Xu Liang, then I must accept her claim and take it as seriously as the angel which passed Dawnfire to me.”
Tarfan opened his mouth, but was promptly silenced by the knight.
“No, Master Fairwind. Not a further word of doubt or argument will be accepted on the matter. There are greater powers at work in all that has been happening, and all of us are aware of it. I have a demon to bind me, if I let it and—if I let it—I have an angel to guide me. Shirisae has the Phoenix and now it would seem that Xu Liang does as well, along with his faith in his ancestors. The power of ancestral wisdom also inspires Guang Ci. Both of you dwarves have the strength of your Heartstone. And Alere has the tangible memory of his family, as well as his own gods to give him ballast in this terrific maelstrom of events. With all of that power, we cannot forget the one that all of us share, and that is each other. We’ve already proven what we can accomplish united. Let us not discover what may befall us and this world if we pull apart.
“We gave our oaths. Please, let’s keep them. Better than keep them, let us cherish them, and each other. How nearly could events have had us pass one another by?”
“We have not even seen the whole of our strength,” Shirisae pointed out, more easily drawn from argument than was Alere. “We’ve been without the Sun Blade.”
“We are without it no longer.”
All eyes went to the entryway, and to the mystic standing within it. “The Empress has selected a champion, and has requested that we face the enemy beneath the temple at once.”
Tristus realized that he had made a fantastic speech, particularly when Xu Liang arrived and he felt some of his boldness begin to drain. He’d meant every word, but being in the presence of Xu Liang had always challenged him. In all honesty, he had no idea what to make of Shirisae’s claim regarding her god. He’d seen the Phoenix dive into Xu Liang’s lifeless form, so he understood that it was more than a mere claim. He’d been witness to the power she spoke of. What may have amazed him in actuality was not the realization she’d spoken of, so much as the apparent fact that she had not anticipated the magic to manifest in the way it had. He would have assumed that she would have known straight away, but perhaps such knowledge was sacred, even from her, and only for the high priestess of her people to truly keep with any understanding. Such was the role of the High Order Master as well. He was the one among all of them—the other Order Masters, the temple priests, field clerics, and knights—who was supposed to have a privileged relationship with God, that he might guide and mediate all those beneath his wing, the extension of the wings of the Prince of Angels.
Tristus shuttled the bitter sentiments that followed such thoughts away with renewed faith in what he had discovered away from the citadel. He’d found his calling.
As they returned to the throne room of the Imperial City, he drew in a deep breath. Some dull pain radiated outward from the bruising around his injury. It remained bandaged. A tight wrap had been put around his upper torso, which held a packet of folded cloth and something medicinal against the wound. He’d layered his own clothing over it and strapped on his armor. He felt secure that the injury could not be made worse unless he sustained further injury directly over it.
They were all of them in the clothes they had brought with them into Sheng Fan. Xu Liang yet wore robes, but they were in the less ornate, more functionally layered style he had worn during their travels. The time for ceremony had passed, and each of them required functional attire in which to investigate what may have been an underground cavern and to potentially come to conflict with a sorcerer of noted prowess, or a dragon.
Tarfan had expressed that he would prefer the former. His niece was the only member of their company who would not be venturing below the temple. As Xu Liang explained it, many of the people of the court who had witnessed her, viewed her as virtually a child. On top of that, she was female, which apparently was not a customary gender for a combat environment. Tristus couldn’t say that he was unfamiliar with that point of view, though witnessing Shirisae had certainly enlightened his perspective on what a woman could accomplish with the proper skill, training, and resolve. Thankfully, Xu Liang had found some way to explain her to his people, else there might have been a conflict over her suiting up in her phoenix armor with the clear intent to take on whatever challenge awaited them. If Xu Liang had insinuated that she herself were some manner of blessed being, Tristus might not have questioned it himself. She was certainly an invaluable member of their company—sacred weapons or no; both of the elves were. Tristus felt graced to be in their presence on any battlefield.
And now they would welcome a new member. As any queen, the Empress of Sheng Fan would not be taking up arms herself. Rather, she would have a champion to perform the duty in her name and with her blessing. During the assembly, Tristus had no way of telling who such an honor might fall upon and it was difficult to descry candidates among the gathering of court officers, palace guards, and even Xu Liang’s own bodyguards. Tristus imagined that it could be one of them. After all, each of Xu Liang’s men had participated nobly in the mystic’s quest and were quite familiar with the Blades by now. He suspected any one of them could be as worthy as Guang Ci.
The guard whom fate had already selected stood before the pillared alcove that held the Empress’ throne beneath the framing bodies of two serpentine beasts—of two dragons of the region, Tristus suspected. Alongside Guang Ci stood Alere. Just in front of their end of the line was Xu Liang. Tristus and Shirisae were aligned to the other side of Alere. Tristus realized that the arrangement had them modeling the spectrum of night and day. The moon, the sky that held it aloft, and the gateway to that sky on one end. Aptly beside that at center, the element that lit the night and darkened the day, followed by the prelude to day’s brightest light. The sun would complete them. Tristus felt both anticipation and a humbling sense of purpose.
When Empress Song Da-Xiao began to speak, he could only focus on the melodic tones of her young voice. She was a beautiful girl with a majestic presence, as poised as any queen or lady of station Tristus had witnessed. The culture of Sheng Fan gave it a more uniq
ue element of grace, befitting the divinity her people placed upon her throne. He only wished he could understand what it was she had been speaking to them, though he had to admit that the mystery made it more ethereal to his senses.
He was able to follow better when the empress herself was handed the Moon Blade by Lord Huang Shang-san. The elder performed the gesture with little ritual beyond what Tristus perceived as customary court etiquette, and the Empress walked the Sword to its bearer. Xu Liang received it by bowing at the waist. His cloak of hair fell around his shoulders, concealing the sheathed sword from view, along with the face that Tristus would always find gloriously handsome. The enigmatic elegance of it was only slightly downplayed in the presence of the extreme gentleness of his empress’ features. The Fanese people were lovely for their uniqueness, much in the same way that elves were.
Huang Shang-san and five guardsmen—each with one of the Swords—had followed the Empress distantly, and when she had finished presenting the Moon Blade, the elder received and passed along the Night Blade. The Empress appeared to take a moment of pause with the heavier sword, though she handled it without strain, in the manner of one trained to hide strain and to make spontaneous adjustment for the unexpected. Guang Ci bowed as Xu Liang had done, and received Behel. In dignified succession, Aerkiren and Firestorm were also delivered. It was through observing that Tristus realized that the heavenly blades had been arranged not only by spectrum, but by type as well; there were three swords of varying length and breadth and likewise, there were three spears, presumably all of a different style. The Storm Blade had its heavy, sweeping serrated blade mounted atop its keen black shaft with silver edging and the Dawn Blade was more an impaling weapon, long enough to be a short sword without its shaft and slightly creased leading to an ornate sun design at its connecting point. A span of gold adjoined the platinum blade with a silvery-white shaft. Tristus noticed its construct even more acutely under the circumstances, as a lady of such authority placed the weapon within his hands. He bowed while his fingers closed around the remarkable weapon, first given to him by an angel—perhaps forged by angels. The Empress’ voice spoke to him in syllables he couldn’t begin to decipher, though he had come to detect a certain pattern to the speech.