by J Glen Percy
“Two farmers can’t sow the same field. Your capital-born husband would tether us to Rosemount’s yoke and offer to crawl on all four besides. You will see. Your son will see.” The man’s intentions were growing less murky and more frightening by the minute. His knowing smirk was too much.
“It was you who spread news of the alley fight,” she said, disbelief clinging to every word. “If not for you, nobody would have known.”
“We mongers have an obligation to the king’s law,” he replied with flattering insincerity. In a flash, Meryam was out of her seat, a hidden blade pressed against the man’s throat. His imposing stature did not intimidate her. His wit did. It was too bad she could not sever that. “Though I’ll admit that power and authority can often be cultivated in unforeseen places,” he finished calmly.
“What do you know of power and authority?” she growled. “Entering my home, questioning my husband, insulting my family. What do you know of it?”
Lord Fairfield was unmoved, a mountain standing against a spring drizzle. “Power and authority, you sound like the priestesses of old. Are you speaking of the gods, Lady Starling, or ruling a people?”
“I am speaking of the power to spill your blood, my authority to do so be damned.” The metal dug further into the man’s neck, a drop of red liquid tracing down his windpipe. “It’s neither in your power nor your authority to undermine my family.”
“And to fulfill your wants? Information and fealty, that is?” He appeared slightly less comfortable. A mountain in a downpour perhaps. She removed the blade.
“You would swear to my husband even now? You’ve condemned his oldest son.”
“I would swear loyalty to a renewed and independent Braemar, whoever might lead. Your condemned son began something, hapless as his actions were, something every horse-blooded westerner should find in his gut to follow. Your Rosemarked husband included.”
Meryam could not believe her ears. The man wanted a war and was using her family to spark it. Worse, she found herself dreaming of the end result. Would she accept war, accept the loss of countless sons, so that hers might live? The longer she spoke with the oversized serpent, the more she began to believe, as did he, that war was unavoidable. The attempt on Breccyn’s life more than suggested so. If war was a reality, why not set independence as the outcome?
Cautious negotiations continued into the early morning hours, closing on the wide entrance steps as Meryam saw the lord out. A half-roused stable boy held Lord Fairfield’s fittingly large mount at the base of the steps.
“You’re certain your husband will agree to your end?” he inquired, mounting and making ready to leave.
“My oaths will hold,” Meryam replied more surely than she felt. One thing yet nagged at her. “A final question. Why tonight? Why not come to me sooner?”
“A direct answer requires further payment, my lady, and you have already promised much. As a matter of business, I do not tax my debtors beyond their means. Until next time.”
Meryam watched until the predawn blackness claimed lord and beast entirely. The man made her nauseous. Working with the man made her downright ill, and now she had the unenviable task of convincing Ryecard of her actions. First, however, she would have to convince herself of her actions.
CHAPTER 11
“We’ll be back by lantern hour.”
“Father said to stay inside,” Gabryel replied dully to his nagging sister. Both had seen enough of the inner walls over the past week to begin conversing with portraits, but Gabryel was determined to obey. Aryella sat against the wall, tugging periodically at her blonde braid. She would have preferred a shorter style like Gabryel’s - if less messy - yet if her parents were going to insist on a lady’s length, an over-shoulder weave was the least clumsy. Gabryel lay with his feet against the same wall, tossing a ball of yarn to himself. Insanity was near.
“He said the same to Mum and she left,” Aryella argued.
“She said to stay inside too,” came Gabryel’s unmoved response. Their mother had departed the morning prior, and in a hurry it seemed. Her instructions had come through more than one interfering yawn at the time but they were clear; do not leave, and do not tell their father should he return first.
Aryella’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not really Mykel, are you? Switching places to fool me once again?” A mischievous grin crossed Gabryel’s face but he shook his head. “Just when did you grow a conscience, then? Mykel is more daring than this.”
“Then go bother him.”
“I tried. I couldn’t find him. Probably roaming the countryside, battling brigands and seeking vengeance on Breccyn’s conspirators.”
Gabryel belted out a laugh over the thought of his twin brother off having adventures. “In books maybe. Mykel wouldn’t squash a bug without asking its permission let alone hunt down an assassin. Did you check the hayloft?” He caught the yarn ball and tossed it up again.
“Everywhere short of the Forgotten,” Aryella said. “Oh, and the cells.” To two bored children, the news that their brother’s assailant was being held captive had them on a bloodhound’s line to the jail. Unfortunately the jailor informed that the dungeons weren’t a menagerie exhibit and promptly turned them away. If Mykel snuck past that toothless grimling of a man, he had grown daring indeed. Aryella gave her braid another hard tug. “And to think this is the life expected of a lady. The king can turn the law on its head, give the Rosemark to every monger this side of the sea, and I will still be stuck in a skirt for it. I’ll throw myself from a window before committing to this existence.”
Desperation ran thick in her voice, so much so that Gabryel actually felt sorry for her. There was a daily limit on the number of stones moved or dice tossed that could still be called entertaining. Walls crept-in with every passing hour; Aryella’s fate as the housewife of some lord would see her crushed in no time. Despite his pity - for the present and his sister’s future - for once in his life Gabryel was determined to behave precisely how his curiously missing twin would. He wanted to obey.
“Please, Gabryel,” she pleaded. “When’s the last time you shot your bow at anything other than straw?”
The yarn ball dropped, forgotten instantly as it rolled across the floor. “I can hunt?”
“Who’s going to stop you?” she replied, matching his mischievous grin tooth for tooth.
* * *
Osage bow strung crosswise from his shoulder and hood pulled forward, Gabryel followed his similarly cloaked sister out of town. Delighted by her freedom, Aryella refrained from galloping Poet through the dirt streets but took every open stretch between keep and outer wall as an opportunity to garishly trot the young gelding. Poet was Lore’s firstborn. Half as dark as his bay mother and preserving all of her spirit, he was a prince among horses. Gabryel’s chestnut colt, Rudder, was less majestic yet equally loved. Both animals had been presents from a well-loving father. A father that would be most unpleased to see his gifts exercised this day.
In the end the boredom proved too much for young Gabryel, the temptation too great. Idle minds found trouble before use, Gabryel’s mother had often said. At least he could bring back some wild game for the kitchens this way. The thought did not stop him from peering around guardedly as if any one of the townspeople might be his father.
His anxiety wasn’t solely for his thinly rationalized disobedience. Safety was the very reason his parents had confined their children - the tedium was merely a satisfactory side-effect for months of misbehavior – and as another life first, it weighed heavily on his mind. Who knew what a Rosemarked zealot would do to a Starling in retribution? Then again, danger had slipped inside the walls as well in the form of a Grayskin assassin.
“I wish Breccyn or Wyn were here,” Gabryel muttered, passing through the outer gates behind his sister. The two immediately left the road, making cross-country for the distant white-capped peaks.
“Breccyn is looking after things while Mum travels, and Wyn went with,” Aryella replied dis
missively. “Do you think either would approve of this anyhow? You sneak out all of the time. What’s the big deal? It’s not like I’m taking you to the Old Ward to stuff you full of ale.”
“I half wish you were. I’m familiar with the peril there. The baffling flavor too.”
“Ah, you’re simply not old enough to appreciate the gods’ drink.”
“I thought wine was the gods’ drink?”
“No. The gods drink wine. Ale is the gods’ drink.”
“However it is, the Five are as confusing as the taste,” Gabryel remarked exasperatedly. “How do you know so much about the gods anyhow?”
“Mykel’s not the only one who can open a book,” Aryella replied. “Something you should try occasionally before you stunt your wits like Breccyn.”
“I’d rather study something useful. Father says the gods are a dated pile of nonsense.”
“As do most,” she agreed. “He also says women are independent, yet that worm-rotting men get to determine what a lady is, what she can and can’t do, without actually consulting one.” Gabryel flinched at the coarse language. He doubted very much that that had come from books or a lady. “Father is a good man, and contradictory nonetheless. I enjoy the idea that there are mystical forces more powerful than a dung-stained, chest-thumping man.”
Coarse language, she’d have Old Ward idlers blushing! “What forces? Reading minds? Conversing with birds? Shadesayers are nothing more than scammers fit for a carnival.”
Well free of the city’s many eyes, Aryella lowered her hood. “They’re not scammers. The shadesayers hold to as much of the Five as they know after the priesthood was lost during the Feral Wars. Besides, the power of the priesthood wasn’t solely in manipulating nature.” Gabryel guided Rudder next to his sister, raising a curious eyebrow. She continued. “Like a ladder, men step and claw at each other for every self-serving advantage, and the lot of them will trample anything just to reach the bottom rung. The priesthood was different. Men and women were equal, motivated by the common good and not personal gain. That is true power.”
Gabryel scratched his unkempt hair. At twelve years of age, he wasn’t old enough to understand everything of men and women, or of the old gods, but he knew contradiction when he saw it. At the moment, it looked more like his sister than his father. “You know, you’re awfully hard on boys to be cozying with one.” The remark clearly caught his sister off guard, and Gabryel offered his best impish grin.
Aryella jerked Poet’s reins and stretched across the gap, grabbing her brother by the cloak. “What do you know about it?” she asked aggressively. His grin was gone in a flash.
“N-n-nothing,” Gabryel stammered. “A rumor that you’ve been seen holding hands and passing kisses is all.”
“Did anyone say who?” she threatened.
“I didn’t even hear if it was a boy.” Aryella released her grip. “It is a boy, isn’t it?”
“Yes he’s a boy. A man,” she quickly corrected, nudging Poet to a walk once more.
“And...?”
“He’s different. He understands being different. That my dreams are worth chasing too.”
Gabryel released a soft whistle, both for the praise – the first he’d ever heard his sister pay a man besides their father - and for the fact that her tone had turned instantly to honey. “Do our parents know?”
“I didn’t know that anyone knew,” Aryella replied, shaking her head in dismay.
“A secret, huh? Then there’s not much point in asking who the lucky man is?” Aryella’s silence confirmed the boy’s guess. “Well they will find out eventually. We all will.”
Aryella buttoned up after that, offering little in the way of conversation as the day matured, and the lack of company had Gabryel once again regretting his presence on this supposed adventure. Three rabbits and a squirrel hung from his saddle - pinned to the earth from horseback - but the shots had not been especially difficult. A ride to King’s Fork would have been more entertaining. Curse his persuasive sister, a book would have been more entertaining.
Skirting several tiny villages and navigating eastwards through great free-roaming herds, the rolling flatlands waited until the last possible moment before beginning their transition to the mountains beyond. Storms carried ashore in Western Province often passed the arid plains by entirely, and finding themselves trapped by the suddenly vertical terrain, dumped their contents on the west-facing slopes of the Stallion Spine’s foothills. Lush vegetation and old growth trees thrived as a result, and not many people did.
Several hours past the sun’s peak, it was here that Aryella abruptly turned onto a deserted game trail. The forest was dense, the aroma of decaying logs palpable. Shallow roots bulged like raised veins and ferns straddled much of the pathway beneath the light-blotting canopy. Gabryel grimaced. They would not beat the moon home. Turning back now, they might not make it before the midnight lamps were extinguished.
“Where are you taking me?” Gabryel demanded. The longstanding silence was all the more potent within the oppressive forest, the environment muffling his voice to his own ears.
“The shadesayer said.... Ah, I think this is it.” Aryella dismounted and a pace or so off the path, reached her arms through a curtain of overgrown ivy that hung from the steep hillside.
“Wait, we were following the instructions of those forked-tongued phonies?”
Before Gabryel could begin venting a day’s worth of frustrations, Aryella was tugging at the vines, clearing them away. What remained was an enormous iron disc protruding from the sharp rise, half again as tall as himself atop Rudder. Rust covered much of the disc’s surface, as did countless unreadable symbols and ruins. Five equally spaced rings arranged at the points of an invisible star contained stamped images that made as much sense to Gabryel as the seemingly random symbols. Astonishment forced his lips into a circle of their own.
“Forked-tongued phonies, was it?” Aryella replied with more than a little satisfaction.
The longer they stared, the more intricate it appeared. Like the metal was alive, adding detail to details before their very eyes.
“What is it?” Gabryel asked.
“It’s a door,” Aryella said, placing her hands on one of the large rings.
Gabryel peeled his eyes away long enough to reexamine their surroundings and he instantly knew what he was staring at. This was no game trail. It was a road. An old road. A forgotten road. “Should you be touching it like that?” His voice quivered.
“What are you afraid of, Mykel?” Aryella taunted, fingers delicately tracing the various patterns. “The priesthood sealed it. Only the priesthood can open it.”
As if in defiance to her words, a deep reverberation coursed outwards from the massive gateway. So deep in fact, Gabryel was uncertain whether he heard the wave or purely felt it pulsing through. Like ripples on a pond, plants swayed and leaves rustled in a rapidly expanding perimeter. A flock of nearby songbirds took to the air. The forest certainly felt it.
Aryella took a step backwards and a second beat rippled through the air. Poet danced against her tied-off reins while Gabryel fought Rudder from the saddle. A third beat sent Gabryel to the spongy earth where he fought for dislodged air while simultaneously rolling to avoid his colt’s flailing hooves. Poet’s tie broke under the strain of his powerful neck. A fourth beat. Rudder bolted back down the path, Poet chasing on his heels. A fifth beat.
Gabryel rolled towards his sister, ready to release a rant for the ages, yet unable to do so because of his fire-engulfed lungs. What he then witnessed took his breath anew.
* * *
Aryella stood transfixed before the iron disc, and not for the five eerily illuminated rings. Unseen forces pinned her limbs in place. She attempted to fight, attempted to call her brother. A snaking mist of light beginning at the rings and intertwining into a single glowing ribbon meandered towards her with a life of its own. Scream. Nothing. Struggle. Nothing. The ribbon made contact with her chest and her vision wa
s instantly overcome.
She could see, though the view was not her own. It was no one’s. Or perhaps it was everyone’s, like a dream where you knew more than you alone could account for. An omniscient view. A god’s view.
She saw strangely garbed men and women gathered round the body of some grotesque creature, breathing life into the beast through the same glowing mist that imprisoned her distant body. She saw the same men and women sailing across a wide channel, a host of despairing people following in their wake. An even larger host – armed and menacing – lined the shore from whence they came. She saw everything. She saw the First King and great armies of men gathered against the innumerable ghastly descendants of that first beast. An iron door of the same forged pedigree as the one controlling her. The priesthood bearers sealing away the last menacing nightmares of an entire continent. She saw King Erick, not yet a king, watching over. Then, shattering her detached emotions, she saw her father.
Aryella watched as Ryecard Starling, the brightest specimen in a world of deplorable beings, lowered himself to that wretchedly predictable level. She watched as he purged the world of good men and women. Of the priesthood. Men and women melting as their violent screams competed with the raging flames. The Ferals hadn’t consumed the priesthood as tales of the war told; her father had. Distant though they were, she felt her eyes shutter more tightly than the iron doors, a dam against the onrushing torrent. Moments later, streams of liquid that no seal could prevent flowed freely over her cheeks.
Hours or years, when at last the revelations ended, Aryella was left exhausted and numb. One at a time, the five threads withdrew. Null, Eather, Manalla, Malia, Terra. Her body was returned, and as the iron door’s aura winked out, so too did her consciousness.
* * *
Gabryel rushed to the motionless form of his sister, trading every sliver of anger for a brother’s concern. Shaking her shoulders, he cried for her to wake. After several unsuccessful attempts, he hesitantly placed his ear over her heart.