“Yes, my Lady,” Galen nodded. He quickly followed Aurea into the lush gardens. As Aurea was aided atop her ivory owl, he anxiously informed her of what they knew.
“The farmers said that she emerged from some kind of unnatural fog, but no one knows where the fog came from or where it went after the soldiers arrived,” he said. “It just seemed to shrink back into itself.
“When the local house of Virtue was notified, they immediately took charge of the situation. They demanded that all the soldiers be treated within their infirmary.”
“And Maven's condition?” Aurea asked.
Galen shook his head. “I can't say, Empress,” he answered. “What I can tell you is that your Knights were in the area on a mission. They have since been informed of the situation and have altered course. My siblings wait for us to join them just outside Emerald territory while Angelos led a team of his best men ahead to act as protection for Queen Maven.”
Inwardly Aurea acknowledged Angelos' quick-thinking. Still, she was not yet ready to place her trust in him. Angelos IV had let her down before. Should this act be repeated again, it would most certainly mean his life. She was certain of that fact.
With an impassioned ascent, the Empress and her entourage took flight into the evening sky.
********
Row upon row of bodies groaned beneath white linen. The protective sheets had been drawn close to prevent fever's chill, but as diligent priests moved between the patients, the sheets appeared more as death shrouds.
The priests looked about the room with worrisome eyes. It was hard to believe that the thin soldiers were not in fact lingering at death's door. Many of the patients were languid with waxen skin. Their eyes were dark and haunted, clouded by a faceless fear. Their very being was brittle from the exertion of their journey.
Angelos IV walked down the center aisle of the room. He stopped directly in its center, surveying the Pyrosian soldiers in every direction. A sickening feeling rose within his stomach. These were once good strong men. Now, they were ghosts of their former selves.
Beneath the priests' watchful gazes, they had witnessed time rushing to greet the soldiers. The changes varied in intensity. Why, the priest wondered.
Upon further investigation, weakened lips spoke of Logos. In the minds of the soldiers, they had inhabited Logos for a matter of weeks. Those weeks had rambled on into two excruciating months. Or at least that is how it had seemed. They understood that their method of time-keeping was not exact, but it was all that they had had.
The priests stood stunned by disbelief. Two months? This was all that it had seemed to them?
The actuality was that these suffering men and women had been gone a year’s time.
As the soldiers remained in the real world, the real world began to approach as the rushing hand of Change. The more seasoned men and women who had once only shown the slightest peppering of white within their hair now possessed a much more distinctive ivory. The youthful soldiers whose faces had not known the wears of age before their endeavor now wore the subtle lines of wisdom.
The milestones which others had had a year to gradually collect came as a mighty force to Maven's weakened men. Still, those physical aspects were nothing to the mental and emotional wake, they now found themselves within.
The mind struggled to process the knowledge it had attained.
Logos refused to truly release its hold upon any of them. Such beauty and such hardship were not meant for mere mortals. It was a place for gods and demigods. No one within their forces claimed to be either. They wished only to forget, to return to a life of normalcy, but that was beyond them now.
Their journey to Logos united each and every soldier within the infirmary. They had survived something no one else could ever understand unless they had witnessed it firsthand. They had acted as the supportive hand which steered one another from a devastating destruction upon failure's rocks. And yet, it had not come without its price.
Their numbers had once belonged to that of a great battalion. Now lying in their beds, they might meekly claim to be a small company.
Angelos IV sighed. “What happened?” he wondered.
As the first rays of dawn began to break through the windows, he heard a piercing scream. It rattled his core. The doors slamming closed announced that someone had entered. He turned with wide eyes to peer in the direction of the oncoming footsteps.
Immediately, Angelos IV bowed. “Empress,” he greeted flatly.
“What is that sound?” Aurea demanded hoarsely.
Angelos IV lifted his head. He gazed sadly to the far end of the room. Behind two doors, another more private area was where the priests were attending to the highest ranking officer of this doomed expedition. “It’s Lady Maven.”
Aurea looked from his saddened expression to the direction of the soul-ripping screams. Unable to stand the sound any longer, she rushed past him. She hurried toward the doors. When she shoved the doors apart, she lost all color from her alluring face.
Could Maven have ever existed as anything less than a covetous dream? It had been a question which Aurea wondered from the very instant she first saw Maven. The woman moved as if birthed of fantasies. And yet, even dreams it would seem could spoil. They warp into nightmares.
For Maven, she had left the mystical Land of Logos to find herself trapped within the purgatories of hell. Her men were dead or dying. Rapier was gone, but the memory of her refused to ebb from Maven's mind.
To make Rapier's loss that much crueler to swallow, the mission Rapier had died for, the mission they had barely survived was left unfinished. What had it been for? What good had come of it? The truths the survivors carried with them were so muddled and obscured by pain and ancient myth that it condemned their minds to always walk in darkness. Never would they know the brightness of enlightenment because it would always elude them.
They were doomed to exist between worlds. They could never be at home within the Land of Logos. And yet as they attempted to acclimate themselves within the world they had once belonged to, they found themselves feeling as outsiders. Who could understand the things they had seen? How could they return to their old lives? How could they live as they once had, when they were not the people they had once been?
Beneath the weight of her failed responsibilities, Maven's chest concaved. It felt large and hollow, but nothing was more clearly felt than her breathing. With each labored breath she took, she felt a disheveled rattling. Inside her chest, the broken remnants of her heart stirred beneath life's winds.
As her screaming grew more pained, fearful attendants rushed forward. They held down the Queen's arms and legs. The women looked from one to the other as they tried to suppress Maven's panicked flailing.
In the chaos, the Empress standing inside the threshold went unnoticed. She struggled to breathe, but her breath came as ragged gasps. “Not again,” she whispered.
Aurea's mind flashed to the palace. She could so clearly see Autumn lying as the picture of death upon an ornate bed. Her nightmares transformed Maven's face to Autumn's death mask. That stillness changed as Autumn's face twisted to release an agonizing cry. Aurea could so clearly see the dark-haired woman screaming in absolute torment.
A voice suddenly called the Empress away from her fearful daydream. It brought her with timid strength to the moment at hand.
“Empress,” came a murmur over her shoulder.
Dazed, Aurea looked to Angelos IV with glistening eyes.
The dark haired knight slipped his fingers into a small leather pouch affixed to his belt. He withdrew a Djidjiga bloom. It was fragile in its dried state. “I keep this,” he explained, “to remind me of home.” Carefully he offered the bloom to the Pyrosian ruler.
Aurea's eyes softened with a stricken understanding. She gratefully accepted the bloom then hurried into the room with it. She ignored the gasps by the attendants as they took notice of her arrival for the first time.
The Empress moved to stand at a table lad
en with tools and herbs. Her fingers clasped around the porous stone of a mortar which sat on the shelf above. She placed it on the table.
Methodically, Aurea plucked the petals from their stem. She dropped the petals into the gray-black bowl. Her hand reached out to the array of herbs awaiting nearby. She carefully searched over them, finding just the ones Autumn had once combined to treat her on the night of Aurea's coronation ball. When she discovered each ingredient, she threw them into the stone mortar. She grasped the heavy pestle within her right hand then ground its end into the dried contents. With a soft crunching sound rising up to her ears, she ground the herbs.
As she breathed shakily, the scents of the bloom rose up to caress her face. It reminded her of better times. It reminded her of Autumn when Autumn was healthy, beautiful and strong.
Aurea motioned to the kettle boiling water over the fireplace. A nervous young attendant immediately brought it to the Empress.
The blond Empress spooned a medley of crushed herbs into the small bowl. She then poured the water into it, allowing the fragrant mixture to steep. It was not long before the beautiful perfume cast its soothing spell throughout the room.
Maven breathed deeply. Her chest swelled with the healing fragrance of the Djidjiga bloom. With a gripping suddenness, peace came to her dreams. Her nightmarish sleep was banished by the comforting memories of one lost.
The Empress carried the bowl inside her hand. She moved onto the bed. Her arm wrapped around Maven, lifting her gently. The weight of the woman's weakened body came to rest against her petite form. She hefted its burden all too willingly. As she cradled her in her embrace, she tenderly brought the edge of the bowl to Maven's lips.
In Maven's dreams, she knelt before the wondrous splendors of sheer radiance. Her face upturned to the light. A jolt of the divine tapped against her bottom lip. Her tongue timidly swept it away. She swooned in rapture.
Aurea watched over Maven closely. She did not see the others staring to her in surprise and awe. She used her cheek to smooth away disheveled blond locks. Her hand was steady as Maven sipped from the bowl.
Beneath the watchful flames, she studied a weary face. She noted the differences in Maven's features. The stressful year had thinned her face while darkness reigned as half-moons beneath her closed eyes.
Aurea could not look away from the Queen of Whispering Winds. She wondered for the first time in a year's life if she had made a poor decision. With something inside of her steeling, she pushed that thought away. She could not doubt herself. She could not regret. She had a destiny which was beyond the lives of lost armies. She was going to transcend the things others before her had known in order to usher in the glories which the future held. Somehow, she was certain that Logos was the key, the key to it all.
A flash of Autumn blinded her of ambition's face. She shivered then shook her mind free of her.
Autumn was all but dead now. She was a husk, a ghost which haunted her. With Autumn gone, Aurea had come to realize a peculiar truth. The mind and heart cling to other things in another cherished thing's absence. For Aurea, that new obsession had become having what could not be had since the last thing which had held that mantle was taken from her.
Aurea regarded Maven closely. Desperately, she wished to know what she had learned, what she had seen. “Leave us,” she commanded quietly.
At her decree, the others in the room filed out in soundless order. Her voice called to only one of the departing. “Angelos---”
He stopped, instantly alert with her words. “Yes, my Empress?”
“You have done well,” she added with her trademark firmness though her voice had stammered with a bout of awkwardness.
Angelos IV smiled. It was faint and tinged by sadness. He dipped his head respectfully to both royals within the room. “It is my honor to serve,” he said before he too left the room.
When the doors were closed, Aurea leaned forward. She softly touched her lips to Maven's forehead. Beneath her lips, she could feel a fever breaking like so many hopes for the excursion to Logos. A frown touched her brows as she thought of the reports given to her by the priests. The briefing had been given within the halls of monastery as she hurried to reach Maven's bedside. For every horror recounted, there was something magical and grand. But still, these things were secondhand knowledge. She wanted to hear it for herself, directly from someone who had lived it.
As the Empress withdrew her lips, she found that emerald eyes were blearily focusing on her. “Maven,” she soothed.
Maven's chin crumpled with the tears she longed to unleash. “Highness,” she croaked. “I failed.”
Aurea's face betrayed her surprise. “Maven, please,” she began, but Maven's voice silenced her with its pain.
“Logos was never meant-----” She stopped then struggled to try again. “It is beyond what any man can take.” Maven's tears fell like fathomless rain. “We lost so much.” A flash of Rapier screaming from the portal rippled throughout her every fiber. “----so very much.”
The Empress heard something far more pained than any regret Maven might have had as a mere leader. She centered on its life, wondering what had birthed it.
Only after some time, did the Empress speak. “What you have endured,” she rasped, “no one will ever face again.”
Maven sighed deeply while consumed by waves of relief.
“We now possess the tools to make the next excursion so much easier for---”
The Queen lurched upright. Her eyes were wild with rage and fear. “Next excursion,” she shouted. “Did you not hear what I said?”
Aurea tempered the anger caused Maven's tone. She reminded herself that the woman had been through something traumatic and that it was her stress which had caused her to forget with whom she spoke.
“Whatever plans you have for Logos,” Maven warned. Her words were cut off by the cool sound of Aurea speaking.
“Are my own,” Aurea interrupted. Each word was clearly enunciated with a slow-drawn sting.
“Even at the expense of others?” Maven asked with a threatening air which rivaled the Empress.
Aurea's silence answered when words did not.
Maven pulled away from Aurea's arms. She leaned instead against her pillows. As she withdrew into herself, her expression hardened. She understood now. She understood the true extent of Aurea's quest for power. Maven also understood that though once that power had meant everything to her, it no longer possessed its covetous shine. That kind of power was tarnished by heartache and she wanted nothing to do with it.
The Empress stood fluidly. She took a place near the windows, gazing out into the night. “What did you find on Wrath?” she asked with a calculating calm.
“Another piece to the puzzle,” the Queen whispered.
“What does that mean?”
Maven schooled her voice to show a patience which she did not feel. “It means that another expedition will need to be sent into the jungles.”
“Which jungles and for what purpose?”
Maven no longer felt like indulging the Empress. Instead, she sat quietly. Her arms were crossed over her body as she stared forward into nothingness.
Aurea's flames rose furiously inside her eyes. Maven was holding tightly to her secrets. It was an insubordinate fact which would usually be dealt with in the most severe form of correction. After all, Aurea could not allow those beneath her to remain too willful. And yet, the Empress knew that she could not deal with Maven in the same manner she would others. This situation was one which she knew must be handled with care. As long as Maven possessed the information she required, Maven had to be kept as an ally. Maven was of the utmost importance because inside of Maven dwelt Aurea's only connection to the druids' destruction.
The Empress sighed sadly. “All right, Maven,” she breathed. “I don't want to fight with you. You fought so long and so hard while you were away. I couldn't bear for you to endure that a moment longer.” She turned to look over her shoulder at the weary Queen
. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight with the onset of tears. “For now, just rest. Perhaps when you are feeling stronger, I can convince you why this is so important.”
The young ruler turned. She went to Maven's side then gently urged the woman to rest against the bed. She pulled the blankets close to swaddle the Queen. Her lips lovingly kissed away the troubles throbbing behind Maven's temple.
Maven's eyes closed. A hot tear trickled down the bridge of her nose before falling with a muted thud against her pillow. The Djidjiga bloom tea was beckoning her to dream. She surrendered to it completely.
Without another word, the Empress slipped from Maven's room. She gently closed the doors behind her. She stood outside the doors with so many thoughts swirling throughout her mind. She sighed wearily.
Aurea had grown to hate sickness. She had grown to hate the stench of medicines. Even the Djidjiga bloom's entrancing scent had grown to fill her with an odd sort of revulsion. It represented the onset of death more than the fragrance of healing life.
The sickly soldiers lining the beds made Aurea's insides quiver with disdain. Her resentment swelled. Tentatively, she drew in a long breath. It lingered inside her lungs as she took a moment to summon her resolve.
The Empress donned her most empathetic expression before she turned to face the others.
With tenderness in her every step, she immersed herself within the infirmary. She moved to the row of beds on the left. Taking a seat at a soldier's bedside, she began her work for the night.
Aurea offered encouraging words to each soldier, spending time at each bedside. It was well within the reign of the witching hour before she rose to leave the triage center.
The Empress' eyes had dulled to a weary blue. Her flames were weak. Her head tottered forward, sending her golden curls in disarray. She gave an attendant a tired smile as the woman gushed their gratitude for her help.
“It was my honor to help my people,” Aurea said gently.
She passed through the doors as they were opened for her. It was only when they had tightly sealed at her back that her face transformed to show the truest depths of her feelings. Her eyes were wild. Her flaming eyes sparked in angry intensity. She hurried to an empty room where fresh clothes awaited her. Violently, she stripped out of her garments. She threw them to their dejection against the furthermost corner. Furiously, she thrust her hands into hot soapy water. She scrubbed bitterly at what she felt stained her skin's perfection, but as much as she scrubbed, she simply could not make herself clean. She groaned sickly. She could still smell it wafting into her senses. It permeated everything. She could not rid herself of sickness and death.
The Flame of Wrath Page 19