“The hot water is good for me,” Ana countered. “It cleanses away all my cares.”
“Ah, yes. So many cares for such a young one. Well, wash away your care for Captain Teofil, at least for the time being. It’s part of being young to be passionate and then to be at ease.”
Ana sat up in the tub. “I wasn’t speaking of him, Mother! I don’t care about him at all!”
“No?”
“No! Not a bit. He’s—he’s not my type. I’m a poet. A thinker. You know that better than anyone.” Ana thought about it some more. “But Teofil—he’s a rough man, a physical man of action. I doubt he’s ever opened a book in his life. He’s too busy riding horses or shooting arrows with his dull soldier friends. Or perhaps chasing his brainless ‘companions,’” she added with a tsk.
“Would it surprise you to learn the captain is also a scholar at the University?”
Ana’s head snapped around in her mother’s direction. “You’re joking!”
“I’m not. Your father knows the man’s reputation very well. While I was heating your water, Stratetix told me all about him. When Captain Teofil isn’t deployed to the field, he gives lectures at Lekovil. His specialty is old scripts. In fact, he’s one of the foremost experts in the Fluid Tongue of the Ancients. He can read the words of those long-lost people.”
Ana glanced around her room. Its familiar furniture provided reassurance in an ever-shifting world. She sighed.
“I’ll leave you now,” Helena said. “When you’re done with your bath, your meal will be ready. Even if the captain can’t enjoy those pork ribs, at least you can. Your father has them over the grillfire now. And he said to thank you for bringing home the liver.”
“I’m grateful for you, Mother. Your words are always the wisest and best.”
When the door was shut, Ana lowered herself into the steaming tub until all but her face was submerged. She relaxed her mind, letting it drift. There was too much to sort through in the day’s events, so she simply closed her eyes and let the hot water work its therapy on her soul.
“Lieutenant, meet me in the map room immediately!” Teo’s tone was sharp. The smooth-faced young man spun on his heel and headed up the hill.
Teo turned toward the shipmaster standing beside him on the dock. “Prepare your rowers for a night voyage. We leave for Toon and on to the Citadel within the hour. I’ve just been attacked by outsiders, and the Warlord will want to hear about it.” The man snapped a salute and retreated toward the boathouse.
Normally Teo would have hiked to the headquarters building, but tonight his knee prevented him from making the trek, so he ordered a horse to be brought. The hilltop command center was a perfect location from which to keep an eye on the area, and it also provided easy access to the transit route of the Farm River. Teo rode up and tied the horse to the railing.
In the map room, the lieutenant stood at attention. Teo looked with satisfaction at the great map spread before him on a table. It wasn’t a flat map on parchment, but a three-dimensional relief map, painted to show field and forest, moraine and glacier, river and lake.
Teo’s eyes drifted to the three massive peaks at the heart of Chiveis. Each peak belonged to a god of the divine triad, while the sky belonged to the overlord, Astrebril. Chiveis was a mountain kingdom by design. If outsiders threatened, the people could find safety in the sheltered valleys. Teo admired how the mountain range presented an unbroken wall that no army could penetrate—except in one place, where the wall was breached by a cleft that led into a double-branched valley.
Past the cleft, the vales opened to the south and east, providing a suitable home for many a dairyman and goatherd. Because the two valleys were surrounded by high peaks, the only way in was through the cleft. And there, at that one vulnerable point, stood Chiveis’s greatest genius. A mighty wall spanned the gap, with a single gate and imposing towers on either side to guard the entrance. The kingdom’s most important buildings clung to the mountainsides behind the wall, forming a capital city known as the Citadel. No enemy had ever set foot in the Citadel; the wall was far too strong. “Our shortest wall,” the people affectionately called it, for they knew their true walls were the mountains of Chiveis. Together the wall and the mountains sealed off the double valley at the heart of the realm.
Teo was well acquainted with the safe, pastoral valleys behind the Citadel’s wall. When he wasn’t deployed on field assignment, he spent his time at the charming academic village of Lekovil with its prestigious University. As the kingdom’s primary institution of higher learning, the University stood in a dramatic location—at the foot of a waterfall that plunged down a cliff on one side of the valley.
Although Teo respected that cozy world and its snug people, he admired even more the hardy Chiveisi who dared to live beyond the Citadel’s imminent protection. Teo’s eyes moved from the map’s mountain ramparts to the frontlands. Two lakes dominated the foreground beneath the mountain range. In the flat space between the lakes lay the upscale town of Entrelac. The lake to the west of Entrelac was the Tooner Sea, which Teo expected to cross later that night on his way to the Citadel. But first he would have to travel up the Farm River, past the fertile fields cultivated by farmers who lived in isolated villages. The last of these farm settlements was Edgeton, truly a frontier town. And beyond Edgeton was . . . the Beyond.
“Lieutenant, listen up! I want my orders followed exactly. There has been an encounter with outsiders.” The young man swallowed and nodded. Teo pointed to the map in the vicinity of the river bend. “You will take a detachment at dawn to this region here. Guard these approaches here, here, and here. Watch for any signs of trouble, and await further instructions from the Citadel. The Warlord will be concerned about this. He’ll send a carrier pigeon in the morning with specific orders.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, Captain.”
“I have one more task.” Teo gestured to the meadow where he had started his day. “My horse and gear are here. Retrieve them and have a man return my things to my room.”
“It will be done as you command, Captain.” The lieutenant saluted and walked out.
Teo left the map room and returned to the dock. The riverboat was moored in the pale light of a rising full moon. The craft was no mere canoe, but an oaken-keeled vessel with a bank of twelve oars per side and a crew of well-muscled rowers. The men weren’t happy at the prospect of an all-night row, though they were certainly capable of doing the job.
“The vessel is ready to depart when you are, Captain,” said the shipmaster.
“Very good. Let’s cast off.”
Teo found a spot in the stern where he wouldn’t be in the way of the rudderman on the starboard side. There, with a pile of ropes for a pillow, he let sleep come to him under the familiar stars of Chiveis.
From the topmost windows of her temple’s spire, the High Priestess could look down on all Chiveis. So high was she that even the icy summits lay within her grasp. The lands of the ignorant masses spread below her, bowing to her majesty. All the splendors of the known world were hers, the unholy queen of this earthly realm. Such glory had been granted to her by the sovereign lord: the Beautiful One, the Brilliant Star, Astrebril of the Dawn.
The room was round and barren except for a table beneath the northern window. Three other windows faced the High Priestess’s realm, one in each direction of the compass. From here, everything she could see belonged to her. Astrebril had said so. But on this day, as the new dawn smeared blood across the god’s great dome, the High Priestess did not look outward. What she sought could only be found within.
She gazed at the red elixir in her goblet. Light sparkled in its ruby depths. She drained it, including the dregs, in a single swallow. Then she cast the empty glass into a pit in the middle of the room. There was a soundless pause before she heard it shatter far below. Thin smoke wafted up from the fire that smoldered in the recesses of the tower’s shaft. It rose into her upper room and exited through a smoke hole in the ceiling.
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“It is time,” said the High Priestess. “Bring me the implements.”
A handsome blond eunuch glided over to the table with a leather bag. He removed four items and daintily placed them on the table: a razor, a gold saucer, a blank parchment, and an unused quill.
The High Priestess walked to the pit and stood close to its edge, her shoulders thrust forward, her arms held out behind. Wisps of smoke drifted up from the tower’s belly to curl around hers. As she began to feel the elixir take effect, she swayed over the edge of the pit, experiencing a sudden desire to tumble into it, yet knowing it would be her end.
“I am ready to descend.”
The eunuch turned a windlass on the wall. It lowered a horizontal iron bar from the ceiling directly over the pit. Leather stirrups hung from a chain at each end of the bar. The eunuch reached over the abyss with a hooked pole, snagged the contraption, and brought it close. He gathered the two chains and held the stirrups near the stone lip of the pit.
The High Priestess placed one foot in each stirrup and stood for a moment on the edge of death. A smile came to her lips at the expectation of ecstasy. She swung her body over the pit, standing tall in the stirrups and grasping the iron bar above her head. For a moment, she swayed there, and then the eunuch lowered her into the smoky depths.
As the world of the living disappeared, the High Priestess inhaled deeply. “Come to me, little one,” she said. Soon the swirling colors and fantastic images in her mind coalesced into the form of a little imp with a deformed body and a grotesque face.
“Lead me to the one above you,” instructed the priestess. In her mind’s eye, the imp took her by the hand and led her to a slightly larger being. Each time she met the new and greater creature, she commanded it to lead her to the one above it.
The tenth time this happened, the High Priestess began to shake in terror. Her muscles quivered under the strain of holding herself erect in her chains. Despite the pain, the quivering in her heart terrified her even more. The being she now faced was an angel of great power.
“Who summons me?” it asked in a voice thunderous like a waterfall, beautiful and deadly.
“It is the High Priestess of Chiveis. I come—I come as a sibyl, seeking unearthly wisdom!” Her words fell out in breathy gasps as she struggled in the frame. Looking down between her legs, she could see the flicker of orange light.
The demon screamed at her. It opened its mouth wide, and a howl like all the tortured souls in hell poured into her brain. She yelled too—a bloodcurdling shriek of madness and despair and exaltation. Waves of euphoria coursed over her, convulsing her body in spasms for several seconds. At last it ended.
The High Priestess felt herself being raised from the pit. She could see no distinct images. From what seemed to be a great distance, she imagined she heard the eunuch grunting as he hooked her framework, then drew her body to the edge of the pit. She collapsed out of the stirrups onto the stone floor, where she lay inert for a long time. Her breath came in fast, shallow pants. Her ribs heaved. Her diaphragm contracted violently. Finally she gathered enough strength to crawl to the table.
The steel razor slit the priestess’s palm smoothly, and she squeezed her fist. Blood seeped from her clenched fingers into the gold saucer. She dipped the new feather quill into the crimson ink and wrote unsteadily on the parchment with her eyes closed.
When her hand stopped moving, the High Priestess opened her eyes, trying to discern what she had written. In her stupor, she couldn’t focus on the words. She blinked and looked again. Finally she made out the divine message: “He who comes with the sword will proclaim the god of the cross.”
The words assaulted the core of her being. She let out a hiss and bolted from the room. Stumbling down a spiral staircase, the High Priestess emerged from behind a tapestry into her private chapel. The walls were adorned with idols, and an altar stood at the center of the room. Two candles burned on it, their flames adding to the red light of the dawn outside.
The High Priestess retrieved a book from a locked chest and laid it on the altar between the brass candlesticks. Deliberately, she licked her bloody palm, then gathered saliva to her pursed lips and let it fall onto the book’s leather cover. The act of desecration was followed by a chanted curse. Still disoriented from her descent into the pit, the words of her liturgy came more from instinct than from conscious thought. The anathema rolled off her tongue as she denounced the god of the cross and the book that spoke of his ways. Astrebril grinned at her from an idol niche as the High Priestess stared at his magnificent, leering face.
“I will not allow it, O Beautiful One,” she vowed to him. “I will not allow the Enemy to return to the world.” Her heart raced at the mention of the ancient god who had been expunged from Chiveis, forgotten by its people. She glanced down at the pink gob of spittle on the book’s cover. Her eyes narrowed. “On my life, my lord, I will not allow it.”
The High Priestess removed three vials of yellow, white, and black powder from beneath her altar—brimstone, salt-stone, and charcoal. Though each powder was manufactured by the priests of the divine triad, only the High Priestess of Astrebril knew how to make explosive fire from all three. The mixture was her greatest secret—the awesome weapon by which the enemy god would be defeated. After pouring the finely ground powders into a mortar, she mixed them with a pestle, then struck a Vulkain stick and dropped it on the pile. Immediately a violent blaze flared up. Closing her eyes, she inhaled the acrid white smoke. A smile came to her lips.
“You smell good to me, Astrebril, my lord,” she breathed.
As morning dawned, Teo awoke to the sensation of rowers slowing their pace. The ship had crossed the Tooner Sea and was approaching Entrelac. Though the hour was still early, the day was shaping up into another hot one. Teo could see why the farmers were talking about drought. The grass was withering, and the vibrant colors of the flowers were fading in the midsummer heat.
Now that it was bright morning, the dazzling mountains of Chiveis had made their glorious appearance. They lifted their snow-crowned heads to the clouds, reaching into the divine heights where none but the gods Vulkain and Pon and Elzebul dared to tread. Their domination was indisputable. Only fearsome Astrebril loomed higher than these—the capricious god of the sky, the seductive god of the dawn.
The riverboat navigated into a canal built by the Ancients, then docked at a pier in the harbor at Entrelac. Teo disembarked and obtained a horse at the local army barracks. He wound his way past the upscale shops and fine chalets toward the edge of town. At last he left Entrelac and proceeded along the grand avenue that led toward the Citadel.
The fortified capital of Chiveis never failed to inspire Teo with a sense of patriotic awe. Its towering wall stretched across the cleft, linking the forested slopes that rose to become great mountains. All the important buildings of Chiveis—the opulent temples, sumptuous mansions, government offices, and even the king’s own palace—lay in the flat area behind the wall or in tiers on either side. The wall was constructed of granite, and it ran for a league across the valley’s narrow mouth. A churning river flowed underneath the wall through a culvert. The flow had been dammed downstream, so its water backfilled into a wide moat that lapped against the wall’s mossy foundations. Traffic crossed the moat by means of a wooden causeway, guarded by a gatehouse at its outer end and by an even more imposing barbican where the causeway met the wall. The spires, ramparts, and towers of the Citadel loomed on the left and right, clinging to the hillsides and commanding a complete field of fire for the catapults and ballistae. A square flag flew from the Citadel’s highest pinnacle atop the royal palace. As Teo noticed the flag’s emblem of a white sword against a field of red, he was momentarily caught up in the grandeur of the kingdom he loved. “By the sword, Chiveis lives!” he exclaimed, echoing the national motto.
Teo crossed the causeway and approached the barbican in the Citadel’s wall. As he passed under the portcullis, its points hanging over his head like the f
angs of some giant wolf, he crossed a threshold into a less martial but no less intimidating environment. He entered a wide plaza edged with colonnades and adorned with fountains. Despite their austere beauty, Teo hardly noticed these decorative touches. Instead, like every visitor to the Citadel’s majestic vestibule, he focused his gaze on the grand statue that demanded attention at the center of the square—a monumental depiction of Jonluc Beaumont.
Teo winced as he recalled his boyhood lessons in the orphanage—drilled into him with the reminder of the cane lest he forget any details—about Beaumont, the noble founder of the Kingdom of Chiveis. The latest historical scholarship suggested that about 325 years ago, Beaumont and a group of refugees came sailing down the Farm River. His earlier kingdom had been destroyed by evildoers, but with the aid of the supreme god Astrebril, Beaumont founded a new kingdom that came to be called Chiveis. It was Beaumont who envisioned the great wall across the cleft, though it was actually constructed by the succeeding generations. He also established the cult of Astrebril under a high priestess. Along with Astrebril, the Star of the Morning, Beaumont introduced the Chiveisi to the lesser triad of gods: Vulkain, the sulfurous god of the underworld; Pon, the debauched god of the forest; and Elzebul, the filthy god of dung. Historians believed Beaumont had learned the ways of these gods from the religions of the Ancients and transmitted them to the Chiveisi for pious reverence forever.
After passing through Beaumont Plaza, Teo guided his horse up the many levels of the Citadel’s streets to the Warlord’s Bureau. When he limped inside and informed the clerk he had come to report the presence of outsiders on the edge of the kingdom—outsiders who had attacked him—the office fell into a stir like a beehive clawed open by a foraging bear. Teo filled out the appropriate documentation and endured several inquests before bureaucrats of various ranks. Each time he told the same story: how he met Anastasia of Edgeton in the woods, found the unknown footprint, took fire from the enemy, responded with fire arrows, and made good his escape.
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