A Single Candle (Cerah of Quadar Book 3)

by S. J. Varengo

  “Yes, of course,” said Lycantra, yet quaking as she sat on the hard floor of the cave. “But still, Opatta, many thousands of the Light are sure to fall.”

  “So it would seem. But I must add this: Zenk grows ever more conflicted as Surok’s army rapes the Green Lands. He still bears a great hatred for your son, and harbors no love for the human race. However, the actions of Surok and his minions repulse him more each day. There may yet be a part for him to play. There may yet be a modicum of Light still within a spark that his long been shrouded in Dark. So, do you see? Even though I sit at Ma’uzzi’s feet, I do not claim to understand His ways. I have merely come to a place of trust.”

  A warm realization fell upon her as suddenly as her horror had arisen. She knew it for what it was at once. Though she was a being of flesh, and walked upon the Green Lands, she was at that instant wrapped within the embrace of the Creator. Ma’uzzi Himself was touching her spark.

  “Then I will trust as well,” she said when she was again able to speak.

  “It is well,” said Opatta.

  Lycantra touched her hand to her forehead, a gesture of respect and of farewell.

  “Go in the blessings of our Father,” said Opatta as she stood to her feet.

  “Remain in the same,” she replied.

  As she exited Onesperus and climbed back down to the waiting Gue, the full-body flush that she had felt in the Hall of Whispers remained. It lingered long into the night, after she returned to the Elders Village.

  And it greeted her anew when she awoke in the morning. And again the next, and the next.

  On the eighth day after her visit to the sacred cave, she began to think that this new sensation might be permanent, and she smiled. But at the same moment, in her heart there arose a clarion call. She sensed this would be a day of great moment in the history of Quadar. Indeed, in the history of the universe.

  She left her cottage and walked to the Central Flame. She poked the ashes, and threw several dry logs upon it. Then she sat and prayed, for the life of her son, of the Chosen One, and of each of the thousands who would stand this day for the Light.

  19

  Too Slow!

  Cerah walked beside Slurr. For the past six days, she had allowed Ban and Preena to ride upon Tressida’s back. For Tressida it was a somewhat difficult duty. She adored Cerah, and would do anything she asked of her, but at the same time knowing she was near but not being able to feel her weight upon her back was trying.

  Tress had long come to love young Ban, and had quickly grown fond of Preena as well, so she did not resent carrying them. But Cerah had also insisted that Tress remain at the absolute rear of the flight, behind even the riderless, and this was something to which she was wholly unaccustomed. Since the day they had first left Melsa, she and Cerah had ever been on point. Tressida’s eyes were always the first to spot trouble, and her fire was always the first weapon to counter it.

  Now, she could not even see the place where Slurr and Cerah marched. She maintained her constant mental connection with her match-mate. That never changed, and it made the physical separation at least somewhat bearable. When Cerah had been snatched into the nether regions and she could not feel her spark, Tressida had felt a despair darker than anything she’d experienced in her short life.

  Tressida flew smoothly, keeping the comfort of her two passengers at the forefront of her consciousness. She couldn’t think about playing little tricks, as she did when Cerah was her rider.

  Perhaps the second most difficult part of her assignment was not being able to fly near Szalmi. As the weeks and months had gone by, Tressida had come to view his presence nearby as a welcome anchor. Now she could not even make his form out through the cloud of dragons in front of her.

  This was not the only cloud that concerned her, however.

  Since dawn it had been clear that the aberrant storm of Surok was nearly upon them. Although it was late summer, the air had grown quite cold. The bulk of the evil cloudbank was still some way off to the south, but already the edge of the maelstrom made the day gloomy as well as frigid. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and often the southern sky became momentarily brightened by lightening. It was beginning to feel eerily like they were marching across the Frozen South once more.

  “How are Ban and Preena?” Cerah’s voice said in Tressida’s mind.

  “They are quiet,” the dragon replied. “I think they are cold, in spite of the layers in which you bundled them.”

  “We are all cold, darling,”

  “Of course,” Tress said. “I sometimes forget that not everyone has the advantage of a thick hide.”

  “Silly girl,” said Cerah.

  “How is Slurr?” Tressida asked.

  At the head of the vast column Cerah turned and looked at her husband’s handsome face. His cheeks were red from the cold, but his blue eyes were clear. His mouth was set with a hint of smile at the edges. He’d not stopped smiling since he had met his mother. To her dismay, his floppy green felt hat had reappeared. When she’d teased him about it, he countered that it kept his head warm and that meant he could think more clearly. She didn’t believe a word of it, but had laughed and accepted his explanation.

  “Tressida wants to know how you’re doing,” she said to him.

  Slurr took a moment to answer. “I’m well,” he said at length. “Again I say that to be this happy at such a dire time seems wrong, but I’m dealing with that contradiction.” He looked down at his beautiful wife and saw that she looked somewhat pale. He wanted to say something about that, but decided against it. These days are straining all of us, he thought. Cerah most of all. Her burden is the greatest.

  “I will say one thing, though. I’m beginning to understand a little better how you must have felt since we left Kamara. Time after time you were put through changes that altered every aspect of your life. It was not just that your circumstances changed. You’re very identity was transmuted again and again. I guess that’s happening to me now, a little.”

  “A little? I’d say more than a little!” Cerah exclaimed. “You’ve gone from being a parentless babe, abandoned in the trash heap, to meeting your brother and learning that your mother still lived. And then you met her as well! How heady that must all be, to wake one day to a family you had no idea existed.”

  “I already had a family,” Slurr countered. “You were all the family I required. This is like some mad sweepstakes bonus!”

  Cerah laughed and leaned against her husband as they continued to walk. “He’s fine, Tress,” she told the dragon.

  Upon the golden dragon’s back, Ban and Preena had been mostly silent, but now the boy turned to look at his mother’s face. He saw something in it that was new, something that had been absent for his entire life.

  “Mother,” he said, “what is different in you now? On your face a light shines that I have never seen. Is it Slurr? Does having your son back warm your soul so much that it shows in your countenance?”

  Preena looked down at him and smiled. “Of course I am happy to know that your brother lives, and to have this chance to be with him. But that is not what you are seeing when you look at me.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s funny really,” she answered, in a distant, almost dreamy voice. “For essentially all of my life I have walked in under a pernicious shadow. First in wealth, then in poverty I have known little happiness. Yours was the only love I knew, and we struggled so much that even that was but a single candle in an ocean of darkness. But now, as we move toward a darkness that is quite literal, quite real, I see only light.”

  “I trust Cerah and Slurr and the wizards,” said Ban, “but I do not see much light.”

  “The light I see is the eternal glow of Ma’uzzi’s love, Ban darling.”

  “Ma’uzzi! You too? It is all Cerah talks about. The same with the wizards. They see Him in very grain of sand. But you never spoke of Him to me. You don’t really believe in Him, do you?”

  “I can no longer
afford the luxury of disbelief,” Preena said. “For on the day that the spirit of Cerah’s mother came to me, she brought with her a gift far greater than any I’d ever received, far greater than any I’d ever given. She had appeared to me as shimmering golden light, and when she took her leave of me, that light touched me. It entered through my body and it found my heart. All my pain was gone, Ban. All gone in an instant. And I knew. It was not a matter of belief, but of absolute surety.”

  The boy did not respond. He turned to look forward once more, and as he did he thought on everything his mother had said. It was getting harder and harder for him to resist accepting that everything the wizard Yarren had said to him might be true. And though he’d met and talked with many of the warriors, and though he knew that there were some among them from dubious backgrounds, not altogether dissimilar to his own, they were willing to a man, to a woman, to fight and die for something that he’d never truly considered in his short life. And now his mother spoke of a first-hand experience with this God of Light.

  Still, he thought, I will have to see for myself before I admit there is a great Spirit in the sky who cares for me.

  After another few hours Loar Pilta left his unit and jogged up to Slurr and Cerah.

  “How goes it, Smooth?” Slurr asked.

  “Your army is strong, general,” Loar said.

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “They are well rested and very strong.”

  “You just said that,” Slurr chuckled.

  “They are extremely refreshed and exuberantly strong.”

  “Smooth, are you having a stroke?”

  “Damn it man, I’m trying to tell you we’re going too slow! You’ve been most gracious in the pace you’ve set and it’s allowed us to get our wind back. Your warriors are ready to haul ass once more and meet these damn dirty monsters head on. I mean, Kier’s a lovely place to visit, but frankly I’ve seen enough of it. Let’s run. Let’s find the demon and hurt him!”

  Slurr looked at Cerah. “Can you manage it?” he asked her, not coming out and saying he was concerned about her pale complexion, but addressing it in what he thought was a brilliantly tactful manner.

  “Can I manage it? I’ll outrun you, you big lug!” Cerah’s reply held more bravado than her current well-being should have allowed. She was on the down slope of yet another wave of nausea, and she was not feeling well-rested. But she wasn’t about to appear anything less than fit, especially now that she was on the ground among the troops and not afforded the seclusion that she could enjoy on Tressida’s back. And, she reasoned, if she threw up she could just attribute it to the run.

  “Alright, Smooth,” Slurr said. “Give the order. Double pace.”

  “My pleasure!” the huge man roared. As Slurr and Cerah broke into a run, Loar turned to face the column and running backwards himself shouted, “Double pace! Let’s run down a demon!”

  The units at the head of the column cheered in response and began to match his speed. Gradually the order made its way through the entire army and as Kern and Parnasus looked down from the head of the dragon flight, they saw the foot soldiers begin to gain ground on them.

  “Well this will never do,” said Parnasus.

  “What?” asked Kern.

  “We can’t very well have the groundlings going faster than us!” the First Elder replied, giving Dardaan a slight nudge with his knees. The black dragon responded immediately, moving once more level with the head of the column. Cerah had been adamant that the riders not fly ahead of the warriors, but there was no way the proud beasts would lag behind!

  Szalmi let out a happy trumpet as he caught up with Dardaan, and Slurr looked up at him and waved. The red dragon bobbed his head in response.

  As the miles raced by, the ominous vortex grew ever closer. After two more days of fast march the temperature dropped further, and the first traces of icy rain began to fall. Slurr was concerned that these changes might dampen, literally and figuratively, the morale of his army.

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  As the conditions continued to deteriorate, the warriors grew more and more animated. Various units began to break out into marching chants. Slurr listened as they called out:

  Surok’s army, dark and dire,

  Watch them fall to dragon fire!

  Swords of Light grow black with blood,

  Monsters drowning in the flood!

  Demon thinks his rule’s begun

  Falls before the Chosen One!

  “Do you hear them, Cerah?” he asked his panting wife as she ran by his side.

  “I do. There is not a weak heart among them,” she answered.

  “I marvel!” Slurr said. “The vast majority have met the enemy before. They know that the battle will be hard fought. They know that many of them will fall to the dark beasts. But they rally! They cheer!”

  “They see their general at their head, brave and ready to fight,” Cerah said, smiling at him.

  “And for these past days they have seen the Chosen One walk and run with them. It is your presence, Cerah, which buttresses them.”

  “It is the hand of Ma’uzzi upon us all, Slurr. That’s the source of our strength.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And when they look to you, they see His fire burn.” As he said this he saw a shadow fall across her brow. “What is it?” he asked. “What troubles you?”

  “The self-same thing, love.”

  “Ah,” he said, understanding at once. “You have faith in me and the army and the wizards and the dragons, yet you still doubt yourself.”

  “I have yet to understand how I will defeat him, Slurr. When I faced him Between I was able to hurt him, but I will need to find a much more effective attack to actually kill him. Until you stand in front of him you do not realize how utterly colossal he is. In our meeting my magic was little more than a nuisance to him.”

  “Sweet Cerah,” her husband said, moving closer to her and resting his hand on the small of her back. “You answered your own concerns only a moment ago!”

  She looked up to his strong face, confusion washing over her. “What? What did I say?”

  “You said Ma’uzzi’s hand is upon us all. I do not think He will have brought us this far only to abandon us now. Do you?”

  The question struck her like a slap across the face. How many times had she invoked Ma’uzzi’s name to bolster the spirits of those around her? And she remembered clearly that day, in her deep despair at the news that Slurr was lost upon the Frozen south, when she first heard Him speak to her in an audible voice. “I will never leave you or forsake you!” he had said.

  “Of course He will not. He literally promised me that He wouldn’t.”

  “Alright then. No more doubt. No more faltering. You are the Chosen One, and I am your Rock. And together, along with these brave souls, we will defeat Surok.”

  Cerah smiled at him as they continued to run. At that moment she felt a strange sensation. Although the babies within were still far too tiny for her to feel them move, she felt a warmth where they were growing inside her. It was as if they were confirming their father’s words. She wanted so much to tell Slurr that she was carrying his children, but knew that this was not the right time. Soon, she told herself. Soon, when the evil has been wiped clean from the Green Lands, the time will have come for joyous news. Soon.

  But not yet.

  That night the army rested long enough to take nourishment and to let the fire in their legs and chests die down slightly. They drank their fill of water. They told each other jokes. They sang more songs.

  And then they got up and began running once more.

  As they rode at the rear of the army, Ban and Preena looked down upon them.

  “How do they go on like this?” Preena asked. “They have been running without stop for days. How do their hearts not burst within them?”

  “I’ve had the opportunity to spend a little time among these warriors,” Ban said. “And I can tell you that I did n
ot know men and women such as these existed among us common folk. Even though many came from Tarteel, and walked the same streets that you and I moved down, they have shown themselves to be far more than I suspect they even believed possible. One late evening, when we were camped outside of Trakkas, I saw a young woman warrior. She was probably about twenty-five years old. She sat on a small box in front of a campfire and she was working her sword with a whetstone. When she saw me approach she smiled and motioned for me to sit with her.

  “She asked me about myself, and told me that she had a son too, though he was only two. I asked her how she could bear to be away from one so young, how she could risk her life when her child was so far away. I do not think I will ever forget her answer.

  “’I am here so that he will never have to be. I would have him grow up on a Quadar void of evil, even if it means he will do so without me to nurture him. I will not wait and watch the darkness come to him. I will meet it, and keep it away.’”

  “I cannot even imagine,” his mother said.

  “I can,” said Ban. “I feel the same way. I would rather die fighting evil, than become enslaved by it.”

  Preena looked down at her young son. She knew he was an exceptional human being. Though she had never approved of his stealing, she had always admired his determination to help her stave off starvation and homelessness. While it was true that they had lived in a room that was little more than a hole and that they did not eat fine food, they never slept out in the cold, and they never went hungry. But now she was seeing a depth to his character that went beyond this. He had the same spirit within him that she’d sensed burned in the heart of her elder son. Although she’d been with Slurr for a very short time, she knew he was an amazing, mighty man. A mother knows, she had said to herself. Now she said it once more about Ban. In this small body beat the heart of a warrior.

  Still, she had no intention of seeing him face the monsters that Cerah had told her about. During the brief rest, she’d sought out her daughter in law.