Shadow of the Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  Shay shifted her weight from foot to foot. If she took off running, the Cressian nivasi would no doubt pursue. Half the city might be destroyed in the process.

  Offhandedly, she wondered when she started caring about whether or not Storm’s Quarry was destroyed.

  Her blades of light flared, and she charged toward the nivasi.

  Shay dodged the first barrage of stone, weaving her way around the oncoming boulders. She kept her stance light and mobile, pausing on the ground gave the nivasi a chance to trap her in its embrace.

  Three steps. Three steps before her blades could pierce the thin leather armor the nivasi wore and burn her to cinders. Three steps from victory against Wintercress, Shay failed.

  A shield of stone sprang up in front of the nivasi. Shay’s blades carved it like hot butter, but she lost her momentum. In the few moments it took her to reduce the shield to smoldering gravel, the nivasi got her chance.

  The earth rose up on either side of her. Shay jumped back to avoid being crushed between the two slabs. Another stone slammed into her legs, knocking her to the ground and extinguishing her blades. Shay tried to get her feet underneath her when she saw the largest rock yet floating over her. It landed with a sickening crunch.

  Less than a minute after the battle had begun, she was trapped beneath a boulder. Its weight pressed down upon her lungs until Shay saw stars.

  Nadya…

  A thousand thoughts flashed through her mind of the future they would never have together, here in Storm’s Quarry or out on the road, and suddenly it didn’t matter if Nadya insisted upon staying in this city, because she was enough for Shay. She would always be enough.

  Forgive me for leaving you.

  The edges of her vision began to blur. Shay kept her gaze steady despite the tears that began leaking from the corners of her eyes. No one was going to say that Shay Rissalo died with her eyes closed.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said through gritted teeth. “I can feel the stars calling me. Can’t you hear them singing? Does whatever twisted abomination you are give you Nomori blood too?”

  A pause, and Shay’s vision swam with darkness, fading away as the pain in her chest receded and she embraced the void.

  Except she wasn’t dead. Again. Jeta’s rare and deep laugh echoed in her mind as Shay’s breath came back to her. Once, twice. Her chest throbbed in pain as it rose to fill her lungs, but she clamped on to that pain. It meant she still lived.

  The rock that had been crushing her hovered above the ground, less than a pace from the bridge of her nose.

  Shay stared at the death that hung over her. The nivasi fire in her chest, as burned-out as it was, raged against her inevitable fate, a tiny dragon against the darkness of the night sky.

  Slowly, the boulder rose.

  Hardly daring to believe it, Shay took her chance. She rolled to the side, screaming as her ribs cracked and threatened to suffocate her once more. But she was out from under the shadow of earth.

  She scrambled to her feet. Gravel and dust fell from her armor. She glanced down, and saw a perfect silhouette of herself, sprawled out, seared black into the cobblestoned street. The tired and low flame within her sputtered out into her hands, and she turned toward the nivasi with the barest outline of daggers grasped in each palm.

  “Come on, then!” Shay shouted, voice hoarse. “Fight me!”

  The Cressian nivasi raised a hand, and a tremor ran through the ground. Shay steadied herself, praying to any of the gods that might listen for some kind of miracle.

  The large chunk of stone that had nearly crushed Shay levitated and, as if carried on a gust of wind, settled into the large pit whence it had come. It scraped against the ragged edges of the indentation in the street. All of a sudden the grinding noise stopped and there was only silence.

  The Cressian nivasi nodded once and turned away.

  Shay wondered if she really had died and was currently drifting through some impossible future.

  “You’re just going to walk away? Leave me here?” Shay couldn’t hide the incredulity in her voice. Even as her better sense screamed at her to seize the opportunity and run away, she couldn’t bring herself to move.

  “They did not tell me to kill you.” The Cressian nivasi’s Erevo was accented with the familiar lilt of the northerner race. She stared at Shay, her face devoid of any emotion.

  Shay swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “That’s it, then? You will let me walk away because Trillium didn’t give you an explicit order to kill me?”

  “Yes.”

  Her matter-of-fact tone staggered Shay. “How can you do that? You don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “I was told to patrol this area and halt any insurgent activity. I have done that. My Prince asked nothing more of me, and so I will do nothing more.” Something sparked in her searing blue eyes, but it faded back to placid obedience so quickly that Shay doubted she had even seen it.

  The Cressian nivasi turned and began walking away. Debris drifted out of her way, and the street knitted itself back together as she passed. When she turned the far corner of the block, the scene looked as if nothing had taken place, except for the blood that trickled down Shay’s forehead and her silhouette seared into the cobblestones.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The ancient Nomori landing site was located on the coast, north of Brome. It took several hours to reach, as Nadya and Levka had to travel on foot. Despite his grumblings, Levka agreed that stealing horses again was too risky. It meant that Nadya had to drag him up and over some of the rougher coastal terrain, but soon enough they reached their destination.

  It was entirely nondescript. The rocky beach disappeared, and the gentle blue-black waves of the Brine of Lazuli drifted inward, vanishing in the darkness of the overhanging cave. Vines draped its edge, and moss, from dark forest-green to brilliant emerald, covered the rocky face of the cave. If not for the regiment of Wintercress soldiers that patrolled along each side of the cave carrying lanterns, and the small wooden boats tethered to rocks near its entrance, it would have been completely unremarkable, just another natural feature of this part of the world.

  Nadya was sure her ancestors had intended it that way.

  She and Levka stood several hundred paces from the entrance, hidden from view by the large, jagged rocks.

  “Aren’t you glad I insisted we find another way in?” Levka asked, his face smug as ever in the night’s darkness.

  “Forgetting that I’m the one who found us the secondary way in.” Nadya scanned the coast. “There,” she said, pointing. “See those upright rocks? The moss has been scraped off them. They were moved. Probably to seal up the back entrance to the temple.”

  Levka didn’t argue as she led him through the maze of boulders, sand, and gravel, out of sight of the Cressian troops who guarded whatever lay within the temple.

  The boulders at the hidden entrance stood higher than her shoulder, and their surfaces bore the gouges of a lever and rope, no doubt what the Cressian forces had used to maneuver them into place.

  “Keep a lookout,” Nadya told her companion. She stretched her arms around the first rock, barely encircling half. She lifted and staggered backward.

  A dark tunnel emerged from behind the stone. Beside her, Levka muttered, “Gods, it’s true.”

  Without another word, they headed inside. Nadya pulled one of the large rocks back to cover their tracks lest a Cressian patrol come to investigate.

  The tunnel’s height grew as they ventured farther in, and Nadya went from brushing her head against the rough stone to barely reaching it with her fingertips. They trudged through mud. Tiny rivulets of water ran past them, escaping to the coast behind. Intertwined with the scents of salt water and crisp aquatic plants, a cloying tinge of decay colored the air. Nadya hoped it came from long ago, but her nose twitched.

  “What do you suppose these tunnels were for?” Nadya asked.

  “Runoff.” Levka traced the smooth tunnel
floor with a boot. “See how worn away it is compared to the walls? My guess is this place was once, centuries ago, an inlet of the Brine of Lazuli. The Nomori took their rafts in through the main entrance. These tunnels provided an outlet for the water to run off, to avoid flooding the temple.”

  It was, perhaps, the most civil exchange they had ever had, but Nadya did not stop to dwell upon it. Ahead, the tunnels opened up, and as she approached, Nadya’s chest tightened.

  It was as if she was walking into the counterpart of the cavern beneath Storm’s Quarry. The ragged tunnel walls gave way to a cave. It rivaled the size of the Nomori square back home. Its center held a deep pool of salt water, so black that Nadya could not see into its depths. Surrounding the pool, an immense stone wall rose up, covered in etchings. Several openings led to mysteries farther inside the temple. Above them, stalactites hung with pointed grace just as they did in the cavern of the resistance back home. The night sky just barely came through the arched opening, and in the distance, Nadya heard the low chatter of the Cressian regiment stationed outside the entrance to the temple.

  The etchings, upon a closer look, were deep grooves carved into the natural dark stone of the cave’s walls. They started just beyond where Nadya and Levka entered and continued on around the full circumference of the cave. Nearest to her, she picked out illustrations of people and boats, of lightning in the flat gray skies, and of blades and death.

  “Fascinating,” Levka muttered behind her. He ran his hand over one of the wall’s intricate carvings.

  She felt as if she had walked back into another time, before muskets and rapiers, steam pumps and printing presses, back to an age where stories were told by voice and inscribed in stone. Where her people spent their lives on bamboo rafts, following the stars and the currents, chanting in their ancient tongue.

  “These tell the story of how the Nomori came to be.” Levka traced a spiral carved into the dark stone of the cave walls. “A great gust of wind parted the waters of the World River, and from the silt, people emerged.”

  “You can read it?” Nadya couldn’t hold the awe from her voice.

  “Of course. Why do you think I let you drag me across the land?” His voice lacked its usual smugness, and his gaze was fixated upon the carvings. “I studied ancient texts under the Head Cleric. I have enough knowledge to interpret it generally.”

  “Go on,” Nadya said, eager to hear more. “I know the story from Nomori gatherings. The Elders sing it, but I want to hear what my ancestors wrote.”

  “The people of the river,” Levka continued, walking slowly along the wall as he pointed to each subsequent carving, “wandered aimlessly for many generations. They knew not where they traveled, or why. Only that the river sang in their blood.”

  He stopped in front of a large, intricate scene. Nadya stood only a pace behind him. The weathered gouges in the walls took the shape of a great sky dragon. Swirls of flame billowed out of its mouth onto the crouching figures below. Next to it, the same dragon flapped its wings and breathed flame, but a woman stood between the Nomori and its destruction. She stood as tall as the mountains and carried a five-petaled flower.

  Levka’s voice grew quieter. “A great beast came down from the sky and threatened to destroy the world. Wherever its fiery breath touched, water burned away and became land. The Nomori could not escape its hunger and found themselves trapped before the terrible creature.”

  Nadya held her breath even though she knew what was coming.

  “A lady of the stars took pity on the Nomori and came down from the sky upon a trailing comet. She fought the dragon, overcoming its flame, and saved the Nomori from certain death. Then she offered them a path, guidance by the stars as they wandered the waterways of the world. In return for following her stars, she bestowed upon them gifts, gifts of the mind for Nomori women and gifts of the flesh for Nomori men. The nomadic people accepted her offer. Thus, the Nomori found their Protectress.”

  Her seal burned hot as Nadya reached out and gently trailed her fingers over the flower that the carved Protectress held. “A pact we still honor,” she whispered.

  Levka stepped back. “Yes, well, those stories won’t give us any way to deal with the Cressian nivasi. We should keep moving. Dawn will come all too soon, and we cannot be here when the scientists return.”

  After walking a few more paces along the wall, he stopped and pointed to the multitude of footprints on the muddy cave floor. “This is where Wintercress’s studies began, do you see? They weren’t concerned with fairy stories of a Protectress.”

  As they moved forward into the temple, its serenity was displaced by clear evidence of Cressian presence. Fresh boot prints covered the muddy ground, along with tools that had been left behind: compasses and scrapers, measuring sticks and charcoal pens. A table was erected in one area, and Levka bent over it and studied the cramped Cressian handwriting that covered the notes that lay there.

  “From what I can tell,” he said after several minutes, “Wintercress has been researching the origin of the nivasi.”

  “Great,” Nadya muttered. “Why are they so interested in us?”

  Levka sighed dramatically. “Other than having two nivasi uncover their plot to poison the city’s water and throw their councillor out on her hindquarters? I can’t imagine.” He peered closer at the instruments. “This is a thorough and vast operation. It is hard to believe that it’s only been up and running for the past ten months.”

  Nadya swallowed hard. “You think it started when I started going out as the Phoenix?”

  He leveled an even stare at her. “Could have been. It’s likely, at least, that they already had their sights set on Storm’s Quarry. The Blood Sun Solstice simply provided them an opening. If that’s the case, then it stands to reason they would seek to understand, and copy, the power that ran loose in the city.”

  Silence stretched between them as Levka cleared his throat and looked away, as if realizing what he had just said.

  “Do you regret it?” Nadya asked quietly.

  Levka was still for a long moment. “Would it comfort you more to hear that I do, or that I do not?”

  She considered for a moment. Of course, she wanted him to regret it; it was the least he could do after the devastation he had caused. But, she thought as her gaze traveled along the temple’s carvings, would his regret be for the Nomori that had died? Would it be because he had realized that not all nivasi were monsters? Or simply because of the ill-timing of the massacre he had enabled?

  In the end, she didn’t have an answer, so she moved past him and continued to follow the carvings on the cave wall. After a moment, he joined her.

  Ahead, another collection of Cressian instrumentation was strewn about. Tools and charts, books of notes, charcoal rubbings of the carvings: the clutter covered the wooden pallets laid out against the wall. Nadya resisted a strong urge to kick them away. This was a sacred place, and Wintercress had defiled it with their studies.

  “Here. You should find something familiar.”

  She looked to where Levka pointed, and the awe that bubbled up in her chest at the majesty of the temple began to fizzle and shrink as she examined the wall. It depicted two groups of figures separated by a river. On the left, the Nomori stood in a close-knit group, rapiers drawn. And the other side…

  The figures carved into the wall emerged out of a circle and bore grotesque expressions, with wild eyes and serrated teeth. Some had large curved horns sprouting from their heads. Others were wreathed in flames, or had talons for fingers.

  Levka gestured to the monstrous figures. “Nivasi,” he said. “The first, I would guess.”

  Nadya shifted uncomfortably beside him. She gazed at the carving and her stomach turned sour. Finally she tore her gaze away and looked at the tools and notes underneath. “Why would Wintercress care how nivasi come to be?”

  Levka raised an eyebrow. “To recreate them?”

  “But…” The words faded in her throat. The former magistra
te wouldn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. Nivasi weren’t an alchemical formula to be unlocked. They were…more than that. Nadya fingered her seal. The Protectress gave her these powers so she could in turn protect Storm’s Quarry. Her family. Shay. Kesali.

  Wintercress could not replicate that, not if they had a hundred years and all the knowledge of this world.

  Levka frowned. “This is strange. See this circle here? It looks like it might be an impact crater.”

  “Like where the Kyanite Sea is now?” Nadya asked, thinking of the perfectly round inland sea and the city that sat at its center.

  “Exactly.” Levka pointed to the horned figures that arose out of the carved crater. “This seems to be saying that the origin of the nivasi is connected somehow to falling stars.”

  “Could it be another myth? The Nomori revere the power of the stars,” Nadya said, uneasy.

  “Could be anything. Your ancestors weren’t exactly being articulate when they created this temple.” He looked away from the wall and nodded. “We should keep moving. There’s another station set up there. Maybe the scientists left something a bit more indicative about their purposes.”

  Ahead, a boxy white tent took up the entirety of an overhanging ledge that looked out over the still waters of the inlet. Nadya’s fingers tingled with anger as she saw the broken shards of what might have been pots in a pile near the carved stairs that ascended to the ledge, as if the Cressians had just dumped them off without thinking of the history they destroyed in the process.

  As she climbed the natural steps up the overhang, she heard an even breath coming from within the tent. They were not alone. With a swift wave of her hand, Nadya signaled to Levka to wait behind her as she approached the tent’s open flap.

  A single Cressian soldier, no doubt a night guard left behind to protect what lay in the ornate wooden case that stood within the tent, leaned back against one of the tent poles. He stiffened as Nadya’s shadow fell across his field of vision.