by Brandon Barr
“It’s alright,” she tapped into his hand, gently.
Aven opened his eyes wide, then rose awkwardly to his feet, in a panic. He took in the strange scene silently.
“They’re sleeping,” said Winter softly. “The Guardians made us all sleep. Do you see the starship?”
Aven stared at it, his face unreadable.
Winter watched Alael follow Karience and Rueik toward the stage, leaving her alone with her brother.
“This feels like a dream.” Aven touched the corners of his mouth and probed them with his fingers. “It’s as if the sword was never there.”
“Like a taste of the Makers’ realm,” tapped Winter. She lifted the jar up through the neck of her tunic to have a look at Whisper, her beautiful butterfly.
Aven glanced at the jar, and from the corner of her eye she saw a scowl form on his face.
It was a silent reminder he didn’t approve of her actions today, even though everything seemed to have worked out for their good.
A strong hand squeezed Winter’s shoulder and spun her around. A giant stood there, and instantly any fear she had melted away. She knew only one giant and he was remarkably good and kind. Grey Bear took her in his arms and lifted her from the ground, emptying her lungs of air as he clutched her.
“You shouldn’t have,” he said. “Damn brave girl you are.” Tears were in his eyes. He held her suspended above the ground in one arm as he reached out with the other and cupped the back of Aven’s head, drawing him into their embrace. “I owe you both my life for what you did.” He finally let her down and she tried not to gasp.
“What charm is this?” continued Grey Bear as he looked out upon the sea of bodies.
“The Guardians have done it,” said Winter, she pointed to the starship.
The Guardians. Winter wanted to dance and throw her arms up in the air. It was like the vision she had, when the Baron threw her from the stage; falling off a precipice, racing toward the deadly waters below, or like drowning in the river, sinking down, down, death opening its gates and, just before passing through, in sweeps the impossible. Only this time, it was the Guardians instead of Leaf, the Maker.
“Have you seen Rabbit?” asked Grey Bear. “She was in that tree there when she throated the Baron with an arrow.”
Winter remembered her vision again. Rabbit drawing back an arrow, but she hadn’t seen what happened after that. She looked up at where the Baron had stood on the platform, then down at the grass beneath. She saw only guards and a few farmers, lying still, Rose among them, thrown from her horse and lying face up, arms spread in the grass. Winter surveyed the entire scene, realizing the only people yet awake were the three of them. The Guardians were waking whom they chose.
“We weren’t expecting this,” said a voice behind her. She turned, along with Grey Bear and Aven. The youngest Guardian, Rueik, was squatting down, picking at the grass. He looked up at them. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Twenty-eight years the Guardians have been here, on this planet, and not once have we used any of our peacekeeping tools. We aren’t supposed to. You’re not yet a protected world. If Karience had followed her directives, we would have left without anyone knowing we were here.” He stood and tossed the grass in his hand to the wind. “But because of you, Winter,” he smirked at her, “she just couldn’t help herself. She was set on saving you. I’ve never seen her so determined. All of you can count yourselves fortunate to still be breathing right now.”
Winter’s mind turned to the Makers. Did they know the Guardians were here? Did the Maker, Leaf, the one who had given her the gift, did he know Karience also seemed to be watching over her? A sense of power washed over her. She was being protected. And in Rueik’s words she sensed the call of destiny. She said to him, and herself, “The Makers want me alive.”
Rueik’s eyes met hers. He seemed so calm, and she couldn’t read his face. What did he think of her? She waited for him to speak, but he said nothing.
“There was a girl in that tree,” interrupted Grey Bear, pointing to the tall bulge oak beside the platform. “…I can’t find her.”
“Dark hair, bow and arrows, shot the pudgy man through the neck—that one?”
Grey Bear nodded.
“She’s in the ship. Broke her neck falling from the tree. Alael already mended her.”
Grey Bear’s face paled. “Can I see her now?”
“She’ll be brought out, it won’t be long.”
A fourth Guardian, a woman, approached them from the direction of the ship. Each new face fascinated Winter, for they were so unlike those of her own world.
“Everything’s ready,” said the woman, stopping beside Rueik. She was dressed in the white of the Guardians, and looked perhaps thirty years, maybe younger. She had a petite face—short nose, small mouth—with sharp blue eyes that studied the three of them. The line of her lips remained grimly straight until finally loosening into a precise half-smile.
“Rueik, you’ve forgotten polite protocol again. This is where you’re supposed to introduce me.”
“This is Arentiss,” said Rueik, with a hint of annoyance. “A Missionary, like myself.” He gave Arentiss their names, and as he did, she studied each of them with an unreadable expression that was neither cold nor warm. Winter noticed now that the color pattern beneath Rueik’s sigil was the same as Arentiss’s. White-red-black.
So, these two had the same color arrangements, but were different from the first two Guardians. Perhaps this identified them as Missionaries? Whatever that meant.
“It’s time to negotiate,” said Karience, weaving her way back to them, through the maze of sleeping horses and riders. “I won’t be leaving here only to have the bloodshed continue.”
The two Missionaries looked at each other, in what seemed to be surprise, then turned to follow.
Behind Karience was Alael, and then a third person, the sight of whom was like a dagger in her heart.
Why had they awakened Pike?
CHAPTER 2
AVEN
“I want the farm girl dead!” roared Baron Rhaudius from underneath the shadow of the Guardian starship. His face was layered with dirt and sweat. “I’ll not have outsiders overruling the sword of justice on my own land.”
Aven felt his stomach churn, sickened by the Baron’s intent for his sister. He watched the sweat bead upon the Baron’s lips as he spewed the same visceral rage he’d been loosing ever since they brought him out of the starship. Aven couldn’t understand how they had made his throat new again? By what miracle? There was a slight redness where the arrow had pierced both sides of his neck, but that was all.
Pike stood beside him, his face stolid except for the hint of distress in his eyes. Karience stood with Rueik and Arentiss at her side, the three of them forming a wall between himself and Winter.
Grey Bear stood solemnly beside Winter, Rabbit tucked protectively within his large arms, as if they were a defensive wall.
“I came for Winter,” said Karience. “I will bring her back with me. Your insistence on aggression over negotiation earned a knife at your back. The hostility was your creation.”
Her eyes never wavered from the Baron, as if making clear her words were an iron gate and her agenda would rule the day. Other than Grey Bear, Aven had never seen anyone stand up against Rhaudius, but the Guardian leader had fought for an entire farm community, and had already drawn out a promise from the Baron not to harm any of the farmers. That included the men who’d come forward with Grey Bear, making the Baron swear to issue them pardons.
Now she was fighting for his sister.
“You have charge of the portal, and that is all. The charter forbids you from intervening in our world’s affairs.”
“Would you like it if I reversed my intervention? You could be back on the grass where you fell, lying in a reservoir of your own fluids. You were two teckamils from death when we found you, windpipe torn, asphyxiating on your own blood.”
The Baron looked as if he were be
ing forced to swallow live maggots. “Take the impudent farm girl!” said Rhaudius with fire. “I didn’t realize the Guardians were in the business of acquiring women of such treacherous nature.”
Winter squeezed Aven’s fingers. He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. The relief he felt was immense.
“It’s not over,” tapped Winter.
Aven felt a tinge of annoyance. It was essentially over—they were both safe and that’s what mattered.
“Why did you leave your horse?” tapped Aven.
“A vision.”
“You can control yourself, can’t you? What you did today was suicidal.”
“I’m using my gift.”
“Gift? You still don’t know how it works.”
“I trusted it and it led me.”
Winter’s hand was in his but her touch felt distant. Aven found himself assaulted by the memory of his sister putting a knife to the Baron’s back, throwing her life to the wind. The Baron had called her actions treacherous. Aven found that an apt word.
By that act, she had betrayed her brother, too.
Aven felt cold, like a snow covered field forcing its precious seeds to move inward, to the deep down places where everything tender and raw could hide away from sight. But try as he did to hide his heart, his sister could plunder it at will. He loved her. She was all he had. Too much of what shined inside him was because of her.
Didn’t she know this? Did she not feel the same? How was it she could put herself in such danger and risk the very thing that he found immeasurably precious, the thing he found himself clutching to most fiercely—life.
One’s life was not entirely their own. And he and Winter were so close.
The bond of the womb, as she used to say—to the point of annoyance.
Now he wanted to hear her say those words again.
But she had changed.
And he sensed what had happened. Her strength no longer rested in him, or any human, but in the Makers, and in the visions they gave her. She trusted them fully now, and that made her bold and reckless.
Aven saw a fork in the road looming before him. Pursue Winter down a road of visions and follow the unpredictable whim of the Makers, or turn onto a new path. Escape the gods and leave the sister he loved to her fate.
He feared the choice as it pressed down upon him. If he did not part from his sister, his love for her could mean his death.
He had a decision to make.
_____
KARIENCE
“Piss on the Guardians!” shouted Rhaudius. “Dare you abuse your charter and tell me what to do?”
“This is called negotiation,” said Karience with an impatient edge. “I am not abusing the charter, I am using the leverage I have to get the results I want. The Guardians promote peace. And as you can see, there are many ways to get what you want without resorting to violence. If you want violence and death, I will make it cost you.”
“That girl—whatever her name—shot me with an arrow, and that oaf, Grey Bear, was leading a rebellion. You would have me spare my assassin and the loudest voice of dissension in my lands?”
Karience noted Grey Bear and Rabbit’s grave expressions. They stood there listening as their lives were bartered for as if they were livestock to be killed for meat.
“But as I’ve said,” continued Karience, “you can have Grey Bear and that girl’s deaths without killing them. Let them leave on horseback for a life elsewhere, and the farmers won’t know what’s happened. When they wake, you can say what you wish.”
Karience despised the thought of the farmers thinking the Baron had come out victorious, and that these two brave resistors had been killed, but she had grown desperate.
“If I’m to keep the rule of law on my land,” said Rhaudius, “then someone deserving must die. I’m talking about blood stains on the ground and heads impaled on spikes.”
Karience felt the last trace of warmth drain from her face. It had been a long while since she’d dealt with such a ruthless and primitive tyrant. If it wasn’t a flagrant violation of the charter, she’d be tempted to simply board the ship, then disintegrate the soulless bastard with one of a dozen shipboard weapons.
But this was not like her. It was a rare individual who could truly get under her skin. Leave it to a backwoods baron to run his farmland as if those under his employ were animals, not humans.
Karience had one last offer to give him, but now it felt weak on the tip of her tongue. “If I leave those two behind, I leave Pike behind as well.”
The Baron locked eyes with her and each stared as if frozen, testing the determination of the other. To Karience’s surprise, this last effort seemed to have struck a discordant note with the Baron. Suddenly, she felt certain she’d won the battle. It was obvious in the Baron’s hesitation that his true reason for wanting Pike to come along was because he wanted a set of eyes and ears inside the Guardian order. Perhaps he figured Pike would gain him access to privileged information. Or more than that, a way to gain influence among the Royals on his planet.
If this is what he thought, he couldn’t have been more wrong. Pike wouldn’t say a peep after Alael was through with him. But she would never tell him that.
The Baron’s cold stare eased into a diffident expression. “Fine,” said Rhaudius. “Pike, go on with the Guardians.”
Karience stared a moment longer at the Baron. “I’m glad we’ve come to a peaceful resolution.”
“As am I,” said the Baron, a calmness having come over him.
Karience kept a coolness of her own, masking her unease. She called for Alael to wake two of the horses. The Physician soon had the farm animals standing and alert. Grey Bear and Rabbit thanked her then hugged Aven and Winter. They mounted the horses quickly and rode off into the woods.
Baron Rhaudius stood there, alone. His eyes bore into hers, calm and deadly.
Karience nodded to the Baron as she called for her party to enter the ship.
It was a nod acknowledging they were now enemies for life.
_____
WINTER
As Winter passed through the strange egg-shaped doors into the starship, she felt as if she were experiencing it from a distance, as if in a dream. Inside, a circular hallway was lined with more oval doors like the one she’d just walked through. She reached out and touched the smooth interior wall. It felt cool and metallic, like a newly forged set of shears.
An overwhelming sense of strangeness assaulted her. The silvery perfection of rounded edges, and sleek, shining walls, the unplaceable smells, so unnatural to the earthy scents she’d known all her life—it was beyond her imagination, so otherworldly.
She glanced behind and caught Pike’s eyes on her brother.
She tapped to Aven, “We have to tell them about Pike…that he’s violent. And that he’s likely here to be the Baron’s spy.”
Aven gave a slight nod, but didn’t send her any message in reply. He, too, seemed in a state of shock, but she could tell something beyond the curious starship’s interior was bothering him. And it struck her how strange it was that Pike was even allowed to come with them, considering that he had only hours ago threatened her brother’s life…they knew he was violent. Rueik had made it clear that Karience had witnessed everything that had happened.
So why was he here?
Karience stopped just inside the starship door, and the two massive metal frames rushed inward and closed with a sigh.
Beyond the events of that day, what else did the Guardians know about them?
“Welcome aboard The Relic,” said Karience. “It has been a long, tiresome morning—not at all what I had hoped for. I know each of you have many questions, but before we go any further, there is a procedure we must perform if you are to join us in a new way of life, as Guardians. It is the first step of initiation.
“Pike, you’ll accompany me and Alael. Winter and Aven, you’ve met Rueik and Arentiss. They will take you to medical room three and I will be with you shortly.”
Winter watched Karience walk away and immediately felt unprotected, though the Guardians beside her were not threatening.
Rueik and Arentiss led them through an oval door that silently slid open without a touch. It revealed a new hallway with purple lights glowing from the floor.
“The Relic is like an octopus,” said Rueik. “Only she has corridors instead of tentacles.”
Winter wondered what an octopus looked like, or tentacles for that matter.
“It’s strangely beautiful,” said Winter. “I could never have imagined such perfectly smooth walls. I feel like I’m inside a metal snake.”
“I’m curious,” said Arentiss, with a serious face that seemed permanently settled onto her features. “What do farmers such as yourselves know of our order?”
Another door opened and they passed through.
“You guard the portals,” said Aven. “You keep peace on other worlds.”
They entered a fourth door that opened into an empty room. The door closed with a breath of air the moment Winter followed Aven through.
“What else?” said Arentiss, turning to face them. Rueik stood beside her, hands held behind his back.
Winter said, “I’ve heard the Guardians protect a universe they believe the Makers have abandoned.”
Arentiss’s eyes narrowed. “At present, I do not care to speculate about the Makers, but you are wrong about the reach of our influence. We do not currently protect even a fraction of the worlds within our own galaxy, not to mention the universe. Do you know how many galaxies comprise our universe?”
Winter shook her head.
“Seven. Ours is called the Silver Hand Galaxy.” Her head turned sharply to face Aven. “What else do you know or not know?”
Aven answered, “You have an army of starships to protect the worlds under your care.”
“How many worlds do we protect and what are they being protected from?”
Aven shrugged. “Beasts. Whatever those are?”