Halcyon Rising_Shadow of Life

by Stone Thomas

  “Thank you,” I said. “I may have destroyed your prison farm complex though.”

  She nodded. “Our city will find other ways to generate funds. Ways that are less cruel. The prisoners, however, do well to remain in their cells until this is sorted out.” She shot a hard glance at the prison colony.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Our city was overrun with the undead,” the elf queen said. “The Great Mother long ago promised that her imperial daggers would be vigilant to ensure all accords were upheld. This was always double-sided. It was a threat, should the elf lands take up arms and begin training in combat classes. It was also a promise. We had no need of weapons; the empire would protect us against any incursions.

  “A legion of forty women with swords erupted at the moment we needed them most and saved us from a scourge which should have been the empire’s to stop. Yet, there was not a single dagger to help us. I hereby consider the Disarmament Clause null and void with respect to Mournglory. Zid and her swordswomen are well trained and shall henceforth serve as my honor guard.”

  “What about their other jobs?” I asked.

  “Someone else can sell soap,” Zid said, pulling off her hood.

  “Zid!” I yelled. “Where’s Cindra?”

  Zid motioned for someone behind her to come forward. An elf swordswoman held Cindra across her arms. The slime woman’s body was limp, her eyes closed.

  “I’m sorry, Arden,” Zid said. “She doesn’t have much time left. I’ve seen slime pets at their weakest, and she’s nearly gone.”

  “No,” I said. I stepped forward and took Cindra in my own arms. “Cindra, I need you to wake up now. We’ll get you back to Halcyon. You can stay in the mine, you love that cave now. It’s dark, and safe. Safer than this doomed trip I led you on.

  “You can’t watch the stars with your eyes closed.” I kissed her forehead. “Whose going to keep me in line if you’re gone? Gods, Cindra, I’m so sorry.”

  I had failed her. She came all this way, despite the risks, in the hope that her creator would help her. I wasn’t the negotiator she was. I couldn’t convince him to care, or act.

  “Perhaps,” a man said behind me, “I might be of assistance.”

  Mercifer stepped out from the caged prison, his hands in the air. The queenette eyed him with suspicion.

  “My crime was creating the vessel that brought this woman’s soul a new beginning,” he said. “My intentions were impure. I wanted to drag my daughter’s soul back from the netherworld. It didn’t work. My spell failed so badly that this woman arrived with no memory of who she once was.”

  “If I judge her by the company she keeps, I judge her well,” the queenette said, smiling at me for a moment before returning to Mercifer, her face stone-cold. “There has been enough death for one day. Revive her.”

  Mercifer rubbed his hands together, then pulled them apart. He repeated this a few times until a thin string of green stretched between his hands, glowing the same emerald as Cindra at her healthiest. He continued this process, conjuring slime in his hands until it grew in droplets, and blobs. He rolled it between his palms until it formed a sphere the size of my own head.

  He approached us, resting that globe of slime in one hand while he used the other like a paintbrush, dipping into the primordial magic substance and spreading it on Cindra’s body.

  She began to glow in the places he touched, vibrancy returning to her once-dull skin. He painted her face with it, then her arms. With the last droplet of life-giving slime, he pressed his palm against her chest.

  She gasped and bolted upright in my arms. She slung her arms around my neck and began to cry.

  “I heard all of it,” she said. “Thank you, Arden. And you, Mercifer and Zid and Queenette Glory. Thank you all.” The elves in the prison camp behind us all cheered. The guards were unenthusiastic.

  “This will lack permanency,” Mercifer said, “I’ll need time to prepare more ether, properly.”

  “Then you will accompany her until such time as she no longer depends on your benevolence for her continued breath,” Queenette Glory said.

  Mercifer looked surprised, but nodded vigorously.

  “Thank you, your majesty,” I said.

  “We say ‘petite majesty’ here,” she replied.

  “Your majesty is too large for that,” I said. “I’ll tell the Great Mother myself next time I speak with her.”

  The woman’s yellow cheeks took up a hint of pink as she smiled.

  “Before we leave,” I said, “Cindra and I have business at the temple. With the wake and coronation behind us…”

  “I will escort you personally,” the monarch said.

  I put a hand on Mercifer’s shoulder as we followed the elven ruler. “I know seeing Cindra is hard for you. Thank you for saving her life.”

  “I told you before,” he said, his eyes glistening, “I’m not a monster.”

  +43

  We walked the wooden bridge that led from Mournglory’s elevated boardwalk toward a suspended wooden platform in the middle of its central tree. A gray stone dais covered the round platform, surrounded by seven gray tablets that rose eight feet high. Each was carved with the same image: a small person covered head to toe in thin strips of some kind of cloth or bandage. Only the mouth was uncovered, a thin slit that stretched across an emotionless face.

  If I didn’t know better, I would say this was Valona’s temple, yet in the center of the platform ringed by dull gray tablets sat a plush seat like a giant pillow. It was cherry red, in sharp contrast to the drab décor surrounding it, and entirely out of place in a temple that was otherwise dark and foreboding.

  Two familiars stood patiently beside that cushion. Snoozers, with long elephant trunks. Their yellow-green color was uniform across their short, stout bodies. Their eyeless faces held small closed mouths below their trunks and their long curved tusks.

  “The goddess Hipna will be with you shortly,” Queenette Glory said. She hesitated a moment. “I’m saddened by the tragedy that befell our city today, but I am pleased for the opportunity for your acquaintance.”

  “I hope it’s more than that,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this was pressing too hard, but battle lines were drawing themselves across the world, and the netherworld, with each moment. “Today’s attack was part of a larger plan. There’s a war on and—”

  “His name is Klimog,” she said. “He was an acolyte of Duul, long thought dead. This is known to me. I don’t know how he snuck into our city, but I am not unaware of the war between Duul and the Great Mother.”

  “Then you’ll help us,” I said. “We can’t defeat him alone. We need allies in every corner of the world.”

  “What would my people do,” she asked, “if I committed their lives to a war whose heart lies in the human lands?

  “There was a time, in the distant past, when our people came together with several beastkin and one human. Despite our long rivalries, one team of warriors recovered an ancient elven artifact from a legendary tower full of beasts and traps.

  “It was the human we placed our faith in. He captured the sword to end all war. Then he vanished from the world, and left us all to fight ten years more until the Great Mother put a stop to Duul’s crusade.

  “We built a statue to him as a reminder that the strength of human men is diluted by their fickleness. We won’t trust humans again so easily, and my people would revolt if I forced it. They still believe Duul will destroy the Great Mother and that the empire, under his rule, will be no more harsh or unfair than hers has been.”

  “Could you at least call a mailrunner for me?” I asked. “There’s a package I need to send.”

  “The mailrunners have their own schedule,” she said. “We’re not due for one until tomorrow.” And with that, she crossed the wooden bridge and returned to the city she now ruled.

  “How do you feel?” I asked Cindra.

  “I’m a full basin with a small crack down the side,” she said. “My en
ergy is brimming, but I can feel it draining slowly. I’ll be fine for now though, thanks to you.”

  The space above the red cushion — quite possibly this temple’s altar — twinkled with small pinpricks of light that fell from nowhere. The image of a small elf woman with yellow-green skin shimmered into view, floating from the sky and wafting gently toward us. As the last few illusions of her flourish blinked out, she was left reclining on that pillow’s velvety surface.

  “Your grace,” I said, “I am Arden Hochbright, leader of Halcyon in the human lands and head priest to the goddess Nola. This is Cindra.”

  The goddess smiled at us both, still lying on her side, propping her head up with one arm so that her elbow dug into the pillow beneath her. I tried not to gawk, but I had never seen a goddess like her before. Her lips were full, and her eyelashes long, but she looked like an elf. Her skin was yellow-green, barely lighter in color than her familiars, but her height couldn’t be more than three and a half feet. Her long ears rose well beyond the top of her head where long, full hair parted on the side.

  “Hochbright,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “With three H’s.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said. Her voice was singsong, wistful. “Yours is a name I know well.”

  She wasn’t just a goddess. She was also gorgeous. High cheekbones and half-closed eyes gave her a smoky, sultry appearance. It was hard to focus on her words. Her aura washed me in a half-dazed energy that was equal parts nostalgic and erotic.

  “Really?” I asked. “It’s a name I didn’t know at all until like a month ago.”

  “And you haven’t learned its import since?” Hipna asked. “Perhaps the truth, like a ring of smoke on a young girl’s lips, will waft your way with the sweet scent of revelation.”

  “Or,” I said, “perhaps you could just, ya know, tell me.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes. I was starting to wonder if she was high.

  “I am intrigued,” Savange whispered. She didn’t bother to shape herself into shadows for this. “She hints at a secret even I don’t know. Are you a secret, my Arden? Are you a delicious truth waiting to be unraveled?”

  Hipna’s familiars stood with their arms at their sides, but their trunk-noses curled and uncurled occasionally, reminding us that the elephantine guards were not idle statues.

  “I’ve spoken with Reyna,” I said. “Valona’s daughter. She’s under the impression this is her mother’s temple.” This got Hipna’s attention. She pulled her legs underneath her, then stood. Her bare feet sank into the plush throne, but she kept her balance just fine. Her hands were clenched into fists, though not tightly.

  “And?” she asked.

  “Valona needs her temple back,” I said. “She’s starving. She has no head priest, no worshippers, and she’s trapped in the underworld. If we can revive her, she can stem the tide of ghostly warriors and—”

  “There is nothing here for her,” Hipna said. “It was her temple, yes, but that was ages ago. Valona sank into the netherworld and did not return, and while I long suspected our divine matriarch had a devious hand in it all, I was young and the world was fresh off the heels of war. I had no power then.

  “The Great Mother demanded that I take over this temple shortly after Valona disappeared. If Valona had returned then, her followers would have rejoiced. There is not a soul alive today that once pledged fealty to her though. Even if I left the temple this moment, nothing would change. They cannot pledge to her from afar.

  “My position here was always uncomfortable, a squatter in another woman’s home. I left her pillars in place as an ode to the goddess that built this temple, and a silent protest against the Great Mother.

  “I was a tall and luscious woman once, a young goddess aspiring to the human or beastkin lands. I love my worshippers and I have found peace in the forest, but I miss my old form.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “How did coming here change your form?”

  “You are what you eat,” she said. “A steady diet of elven souls has shaped me into the woman I am today.”

  “What if we could feed you human souls?” I asked. “And beastkin, and…” Well, I wasn’t sure if goblin souls were much of a selling point.

  “In what way?” she asked.

  “We’re building shrines,” I said. “They’ll siphon off a portion of Halcyon’s soul energy and beam it over to you.”

  Hipna shook her head. “A shrine requires a permanent psychic connection between deities. As I’m sure you know, Duul and the Great Mother are both psychically adept. I cannot risk opening a direct line to my mind that Duul might hijack and that the Great Mother would certainly disapprove of.”

  I sighed. Mercifer would help Cindra now, so that was a win, but I had hoped for a bunch of wins. For an elven army at my disposal without concern for racial tension or the empire’s reprisal; a goddess with a legion of familiars to cut down our enemies, unafraid of the Great Mother’s retribution; a new shrine to increase Nola’s power without the fear of Duul’s intrusion. I needed people to take risks and support us.

  If everyone could just do exactly what I wanted them to all the time, things would be a whole lot easier. For me at least.

  “Let us build a shrine to you anyway,” I said. “You don’t have to accept it now. I’ll just hold out hope that you’ll change your mind.”

  “I can appreciate that hope,” she said. “A hope is a dream of the waking mind. For my part, however, I’ll need to sleep on it.”

  A snoozer shot its nose out straight and snorted a gust of magical energy that, thankfully, had no target. I wasn’t interested in another forced nap just yet.

  “Do your familiars all specialize in sleep?” I asked.

  “These do,” she said.

  “And why do the gypsies have one of them under their control?”

  “Blast them,” she said. Now her fists tightened. “I knew one was far, but I didn’t realize the gypsies had gotten ahold of it. They steal familiars all the world over. The ones they don’t sell for nefarious purposes are killed for sport.”

  “You can still sense your familiar, even that far away?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” Hipna replied, rubbing her eyes with balled up fists. She yawned before continuing. “I sense all of my familiars uniquely. Even at their time of death.”

  So much for sending a battalion of seraph guardians to fight this war for us. Nola would still feel the loss of each little warrior.

  “Now what?” I asked. “We came all this way to revive Valona, and now she’ll die anyway. We wanted to ally with the elves, but the best we have is bemused neutrality. Kāya is coming for Nola, and we’re no closer to stopping her than we were before we got here.”

  “You plan to kill the young daughter of Sicord and Lonne?” Hipna asked. Her eyes fell on the Vile Lance in my hands.

  “No,” I said. “Nola forbids it.”

  “Sajia raised her well,” Hipna said. “Here, take this.” She held out one hand and, for the first time, opened it. Inside her palm was a small mound of sand. “I cannot commit an army of familiars to your cause, or return this temple to Valona, but I can grant you a dose of sleep dust. It will work against a deity as well as any other.”

  She pulled a small pouch from her pocket and let the sand fill it. After cinching it closed, she handed the pouch to Cindra.

  “Why were you holding it in your fist this whole time?” I asked.

  “In case you misbehaved,” she said. “I would have tossed it in your eyes and sedated you for a century. You’re still young, so you don’t have a century’s worth of memories to replay in your dreams. You’d just keep dream-remembering your entire life on loop five or six times before you came out of it.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t say anything out of turn,” I said.

  Hipna didn’t reply. Instead, she leaned back against her pillowed altar. She turned her attention back toward Cindra.

  “Cindra,” she said. “A mysterious name in a land
where names used to mean things. Does yours?”

  “I’m not sure,” Cindra said. “I have no memories of my early life.”

  “Did you invent this name?” Hipna said.

  Cindra seemed taken aback. “I did not invent it. I know it’s my name. I’ve never stopped to wonder how.”

  “Because you remembered it,” Hipna said. “You have memory, it’s just deeply, deeply buried. Perhaps you’ll join me for a nap to restore your sense of self?”

  “Is that why you didn’t intervene in Klimog’s attack on the city?” I asked. “Were you sleeping?”

  “I was,” she said. “But make no mistake. I have power over sleep; it only takes me when I will it. I slipped away into a dreamy reverie to avoid taking actions the world would regret.

  “You came into my city looking for a goddess no one has prayed to for centuries, with a vile ore weapon, a brothel madam, and a sentient slime, all the while claiming to be a head priest. What I did was stay out of it. I sensed a benevolent purpose, even if your methods had criminal written all over them.

  “I’m glad I was right about you,” she continued. “I’d like to offer you some boons as thanks for saving the city. Lie down.” She patted the plush red pillow behind her.

  Cindra and I climbed up. If my head felt light before, it was airborne now. Here, at the center of Hipna’s temple, the power of sleep and dreams and old forgotten memories welled up inside me. It was mystic and hypnotic. The goddess climbed up next and lay between us.

  “How does this work?” I asked. “Because if I get to control what I dream about, there’s a dream I started earlier and I’d really like to finish it off. There was sort of a hot tub…”

  “Sounds like a drippy dream,” she said. “But no, you don’t get to choose. You’ll see what you need to, not what you want to. This is a dream of lost memories rising to the surface. I hope you didn’t bury anything traumatic, because I take offense to nightmares.”