The Gardens of Almhain

by Laura Mallory

  The last words were vengeful, rage-filled, and Luther Viccole screamed.

  “Why did he have our priestesses raped, our priests slaughtered?” demanded Anshar, and the candles’ flames burned several feet high.

  “Why did he order genocide on our line?” he roared, and the stained glass windows shattered.

  “WHY, ISTAR!” screamed the God.

  And the Goddess was suddenly there, materializing just before the altar. Her long, dark hair swung unbound down her slim back, curling against bare calves. A thin, midnight blue robe revealed a willowy, coltish figure. The skin of her arms was so crystalline white it was tinged blue. All about her hung sparkling currents of air, glittering constellations of magic.

  Her voice was oddly deep for her stature, emerging in a sensuous burr, “Because all that begins must end, brother. Only, in this ending there will be no beginnings.”

  Anshar turned sharply, revealing his face. The obscuring light was gone from his features, which were very human and cut in weary lines. “You loved them, once. Didn’t you? More, even, than I.”

  “It was a long time ago,” said the Goddess. “Our bloodline grew too diluted. It was time to sever it.”

  “But what of them?” Anshar asked, flinging his hand toward the aisle.

  Istar glanced back and Isidora was stuck by her eyes, unbelievably large and black in a small, delicately boned face. Universes spun through void of her dilated pupils. “They are nothing,” she spat. “A weak priestess and a bastard child of your lions.”

  Isidora choked on sudden, consuming rage. “You burned Alesia!” she cried. She felt Arturo’s arms lock around her torso as she screamed. “We honored you, worshipped you! We tended to your shrines, kept pure the Gardens of Almhain for your pleasure!”

  “Isidora,” Arturo hissed, “Quiet.”

  “They raped children!” she screamed. “They tortured my parents!”

  Istar observed her tirade unblinking. The pale lips twitched at one corner, and then a rough, ugly sound emerged. The Goddess was still laughing as she turned to the God. “As I said, brother. Weak.”

  Anshar’s golden gaze searched his sister’s pitiless face. He sighed, stirring the flames, the altar-cloth. “I am sorry, so terribly sorry,” he said aimlessly. He lifted his hand and power moved inward at his call, mist and light and shadow flowing through the blown-out windows. The wind wailed against the pews, threw shards of glass into the air.

  Through the rush of debris and an increasing din of sound, Isidora and Arturo stood in a shielded space. Slivers of glass as long as arms and as sharp as knives zipped passed them just inches from their skin. The Goddess snarled, her hands weaving patterns, deflecting the weapons that hurtled toward her. A section of pews tore from their mounting with a moan and a loud crack. Arturo dragged Isidora to the ground, his arms tight around her.

  Through the tumult, the God’s voice reached them, “We laid the path, narrow and high. They walked the Long Road we set before them. They, and all the others. You made a blood oath to me should they succeed. Now, sister, you will honor your end of the bargain.”

  Istar, standing shielded by her own powers in the chaos, flung her arms above her head. The altar sailed backward, a ton of rock aimed at the God. But it was his House they stood in. He was there, directly in the path of the stone slab, and then he was not. The altar crashed against the floor, on top of the cowering Luther Viccole.

  The God reappeared on the scorched, broken ground. “You have become that which we loathed, that from which we sought escape so long ago. I was foolish to believe your grief when Alesia fell, to let my heart be swayed by false tears. I have recalled the army of Beyond.”

  Istar spun in the aisle, pale face stretched in a rictus of hate. Her black eyes fixed on Isidora, snapping with fury. As she spoke, the glow of her body grew brighter, “You…should not… have survived,” she growled.

  The God renewed his assault. The dome of the Church cracked and the ground heaved. The walls shattered and huge slabs of sharpened rock sailed at Istar. Somehow, she avoided each projectile, drawing inexorably nearer.

  “What good is power if I cannot use it?” Arturo asked tightly.

  Some questions had no answers, but Isidora felt this one did. “We are not like them, to battle with power,” she stammered. “Once, they were not able to do this. Their love for the land was too great to cause its destruction. Time has changed them.”

  “So we cannot stop her?” he growled.

  “I think not,” she whispered.

  What finally stopped Istar, as she was less than five steps from them, was a small black figure. The slip of shadow moved with unnatural agility down a row of pews still attached to the buckling floor. A cowl hid the person’s features, but not the chain of ivory beads swinging from one bony, clenched hand.

  The Goddess sensed the threat too late. So intent was she on Isidora that her sweeping arm did not deter the flight of the ivory necklace, which hit her head and dropped around her neck. The shock of it drove the Goddess to her knees, contorted her body, turned her mouth in a scream of agony. Her nails tore through the tiles of the floor. Her screams turned to thick gasps as dark fluid bubbled on her lips.

  It was dreams that undid Istar’s bloody vengeance. Millions upon millions of dreams, each one stored carefully and lovingly over an unnaturally long span of life. The Nameless stood still for a moment, a soft smile on her wrinkled face, then exhaled softly and fell dead to the ground.

  Just as Shenlith had fulfilled his greatest potential, so did the last changeling woman of his line. All of herself was stored in the misshapen ivory beads, and the Nameless gave everything to undo the life of the Goddess.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Istar’s death was terrible, more terrible than Isidora or Arturo would ever say. They, and the God, were the only witnesses to the excruciating dissolution of her essence. When it was done, and all that remained of Istar was smoldering hair, Anshar did not hide his pain but wept openly before them.

  Their journey on the unicorn and their time in the God’s House were events they would never retell in detail except to the one man they trusted to keep the tale locked safely in Time’s Vault. Only on his deathbed, many years into the future, would Adept Scholar Lucero Tuturro pass on a key to his son, High Cleric Hadrian Visconte.

  It wasn’t until months after his father’s death that Hadrian gathered courage enough to face the locked chest in his father’s study. It was more weeks still before he opened it, carefully unwinding the supple scroll inside to view his father’s thick script. His fingers passed gently down the page, feeling each small bump of the raised, horizontal lines that had guided Lucero’s hand.

  The Scholar had learned to write again, thanks to the joint healing efforts of Isidora Fiannan and Arturo Bellamont. But although his hands had been restored to their former, graceful contours, over the years he had repeatedly refused the gift of sight, always maintaining that without it he saw more clearly. Only Isidora seemed to understand what Lucero saw through dead eyes, but she never spoke of it, only accepted the Scholar’s decision.

  Hadrian’s own journal, old now and brittle, lay in the bottom of the chest. Its absence had troubled him for decades, but upon seeing it, he smiled softly in comprehension. It took him a full day and night to read the entire tale, from the first page of his journal to the last words in his father’s hand.

  When the reading of the scroll was done, he reclined in his father’s favorite chair and rubbed his sore eyes. His shoulders were in painful knots and he thought longingly of his wife, waiting for him at their home in the city. Her name was Olivia, and she was the younger sister of the Duchess Tuscena. His heart was heavy from the long tale, but he smiled as he pictured Olivia holding their six year old son, Diego. Never had he imagined to find such fulfillment and peace in his life. Yet it had come, in his work rebuilding the faith of a natio
n, in the lasting friendships forged so many years ago, and above all, in his heart.

  A tear fell to the scroll in his lap, spread open on the page that wrote of the end of an era, and a new era’s beginning.

  When the Goddess had perished and the God’s grief was spent, Anshar spoke to his son.

  “The Long Road is finished and the horizon is clear. Remember what you have witnessed so that it may never again come to pass. All that begins must end, but in every ending there is a beginning. In one year’s time I will come to the eyrie above Avosilea and teach you all of what was taught to me.”

  The God turned then to Isidora Fiannan, who was now Calabria, Priestess of the Root.

  “Rebuild the Gardens of Almhain, fair Calabria, but let them have a new ground and name for this new time. Let there be no shrines to powers Beyond except for two memorials. One in memory of the Serpent of the Root, our father and savior. Let Shenlith be honored and remembered always. The second you will erect nearby so that she may rest close to the fountainhead of her bloodline. She will be Nameless no longer, but given the title Soñadora, the Dreamer.”

  In the ruin of his House, the God lifted his golden arms and upturned his face. Sunlight streamed through the rubble of walls, hit upon the broken halves of the once beautiful dome.

  “It is well that the old be renewed,” said Anshar.

  “What of the army of Beyond?” Arturo asked.

  The God smiled, face at once radiantly sad and wise. “Istar’s deceptions were well laid. Their spirits were never given a chance to heal, not in the long years between their deaths and now. It will take time, of course, but there is always Time. There is much healing to be done here, as well, and I am sorry for it.” The smile faltered and fell. “I did not know what would happen to the people of this city, to that foreign army. The pain Istar’s rage inflicted before I could stop it…” His voice trailed off.

  “What of the other amulet, the first?” questioned Isidora.

  Anshar looked back toward the rubble that had been his altar, and the body that was concealed beneath it. “It is well,” he said again. “The cleric was Istar’s child, perverted as he in turn perverted his own offspring. I would not have known—did not know—but the amulet drew me to him and he confessed all. Justice is done for Alesia. The Stone of Ending was aptly named and is no more.”

  The God’s gaze bathed them in golden warmth. He lifted a hand in farewell and called softly, “Pandion, dear boy, come.”

  The Child of Time rose from behind the remains of a pew. The change in him was dramatic and unquestionable. He was no longer a child but a young man. In the space of time since his mother’s death, his shoulders had broadened, his eternal adolescence finally conquered.

  He glanced between the God and the two who stared at him in wonderment.

  “I would stay, father,” said Pandion.

  Anshar smiled. “You would leave the forests at last for the company of men?”

  Pandion returned the gesture, a dimple creasing one cheek. “I have already left.”

  “And so you grow at last,” said the God proudly. “Very well. Stay and become that which you were always meant to be.”

  “And what is that?” asked Pandion.

  “Human,” said Anshar gently. “Farewell, children. My love stays with you.”

  There was no thunder to mark the God’s passing to Beyond, no noise or effect at all. He was just gone, and dust swirled through the air, and a fresh breeze moved through the nave.

  That same day in the city of Vianalon, the army of the Church was at last defeated. Thousands of men defected, throwing down their weapons at the sight of veiled-ones, Argentans, and especially the three formidable figures of Duke Damáskenos’ honor guard. Thousands more lay dead before the fighting even began, victims of Istar’s rage. Still, full companies rallied under corrupt commanders and rogue clerics, their minds tainted beyond reason by Luther Viccole.

  The battle was fought in allies and courtyards, in the palace halls and finally ended where it all began, in the decrepit, abandoned blocks of Thieves’ Alley. Six regiments of Church soldiers made a final stand and were summarily defeated.

  Rodrigo Vasquez led the charge and ultimately found justice for his family and friends. His courage and leadership was such that Queen Serephina later bestowed upon him a duchy. When asked where he wished to reside, he requested a southern land, warm and lush, where he would feel close to his late wife. He became Duke Rodrigo of Fiannan, named for the Lady Isidora, and set about constructing a modest farming estate a mere fifteen miles southeast of Avosilea. His son Eduardo, the surviving refugees of Vallejo, and fifty of the men who had fought under his command went with him to build new lives.

  The years following what became known as the Day of Death were ones of great hardship and great joy for Tanalon’s capital. Serephina was a firm and just queen, her husband Ezekiel her most stalwart supporter. The thirteen Noble Houses, so disheartened by Luther Viccole’s bloody rule, became for the first time in the nation’s history a united force behind the crown.

  King Manuel di Lucía of Argenta, a fixture of support and levelheaded counsel in the first months of Vianalon’s rebuilding, returned finally to his mountain home. Upon his departure a great banquet was held, the culmination of which a public, unprompted pledge of loyalty from Manual to Tanalon’s rightful queen and eventual heirs. Witnesses in the greater city proclaimed that the cheering from the palace could be heard miles away.

  With the blessing of their king, several hundred Argentan soldiers and their families chose to emigrate to Vianalon. Those men, and many of Damáskenos’ esteemed guard, became the land’s first peacekeeper knights. They named themselves Calabria’s Guard and their standard—to Serephina’s delight and Isidora’s embarrassment—was the Fiannan hawk and scepters.

  As knights patrolled the city’s streets, in the palace much of Armando’s antiquated policies were being rewritten and set to vote. Peasants whose lives had depended on the generosity of their patrons suddenly found themselves with salaries and civil rights. Within months, the slums were torn down and rebuilt, its inhabitants offered honest labor and new homes. Wood salvaged from Viccole’s gallows went to build new schools and hospitals. Crime and poverty were drastically, almost miraculously diminished.

  The Viana became swollen with trade and Vianalon’s gates stayed open day and night to all manner of traffic. The river town L’Sere became a city in its own right under the leadership of a new mayor, former dock manager Elazar Laroque. To embrace the new era, the Academe des Viana opened its doors and its priceless Vault to domestic and foreign students. Hundreds of new novices flocked to the restored Church of the God and its newly elected High Cleric. Among the devotees was a healthy share of women.

  Within five years, the known world echoed with news of Tanalon’s shining city.

  Borgetza was not to share Vianalon’s swift rebirth. The nation’s wounds were more deeply rooted than those of Tanalon and had been left festering too long. In the years following the perishing of their king and entire army, the country fractured into several warring states. Fields were left fallow and trade in the port city Siezo faltered and finally plummeted, driving Borgetza’s economy to the brink of ruin.

  With matters in Tanalon underhand, Serephina and Ezekiel turned at last to their fallen neighbors. Famine had decimated much of the population; other, more insidious diseases had polluted the overcrowded capital. There were no hospitals to treat the sick, no crops to feed the hungry. For all the sins of the past, Serephina could not turn her back on Borgetza. They were Calabrians, after all.

  The man elected as Regent of Borgetza by unanimous vote of the Houses argued passionately against his appointment. It was, in fact, his continued refusal that solidified him in Serephina’s mind as the only worthy candidate.

  Astin di Salvatoré finally relented, on the condition that he have Dieg
o Roldan as his chancellor. Diego, a favorite of the Queen and King, conferred with the royal couple and ultimately sought the decision from his wife, Gertrude. Having never before traveled beyond Tanalon, Gertrude offered heartfelt endorsement. With them went a regiment of Calabria’s Guard, a fifth of the royal treasury, and the three surviving members of Alvar Damáskenos’ personal guard. Released from their oath to the duke, Mufahti and his men did much to secure Astin’s Regency, both as fearsome soldiers and trusted companions.

  It was more than seven years, twelve since the Day of Death, before Borgetza climbed from its savage fall. The warlords were brought to heel and given the choice of alliance or execution. The government, such as it was, was gutted. Terrin’s palaces, the private residences of his most debauched chancellors, every slavery den, each brothel and alley-whorehouse was razed to the ground. In time, Astin di Salvatoré was elected king through the overwhelming support of the common people.

  Slowly, the land, its people—its very culture—was rebuilt into something new.

  There was a great festival on the day Siezo’s docks opened again to trade. In the wide, glittering bay were anchored hundreds of merchant vessels, each captain holding a purse of coin and note of thanks from Vianalon’s benevolent queen.

  Lenora di Salvatoré stood beside her brother on the docks, and it was she who lifted cupped hands to release a dove. The cheering was deafening. Fireworks exploded from the hillside above the port. In the bay, anchors were lifted, sails billowed, and hands grasped tight to oars as small vessels raced massive galleys, each wanting the pride of being the first to reach the Siezo’s refurbished docks. Catastrophe was many times averted in that mad dash due to the careful attention of a woman standing amongst the royalty on the pier. A scarf held her fiery hair in place as her hands made deft movements, pulling air from the sails of the most aggressive crafts, saving lives and the new docks alike.