by H. A. Harvey
Karen’s mind sprinted through an elaborate plan. Tyvus had flown out of the rear wing, so there had to be windows or a balcony higher up. If she climbed out and got the sword, she could fight her way back into the cursed wing. She knew one of the guards had taken a rough blow from the baroness, so she’d be slower than her partner. Take the healthy one down with surprise, then deal with the slower one. Then jimmy the lock and smash the magic prison. From there, it would be tricky, but possible.
Not one of the soldiers could yet ride like she could, and a charger could easily bear the two of them without any real strain. She’d make for the tunnel exit of the city and be beyond the Baedite’s reach before they could get a saddle decently lashed to a horse.
“Kelly, I’m getting you out of here, tonight.” Karen locked eyes with the feral girl, hoping that somewhere behind the hateful glare, the real Kelly could hear her and hold onto Hope. “I have to get something that will help us, and then we’re leaving.”
Karen started bolting back down the hall, running several steps before tearing her gaze from Kelly’s cell door. She stumbled to a halt as she nearly ran headlong into Captain Gerizim’s chest. Reacting more on instinct than anything else, Karen brought the small dining knife up, driving it into the Dracis’ side. Gerizim snarled and caught Karen around the throat with one hand, lifting her entirely off the ground as his other hand grasped her knife hand and tore it from his side. He wrenched her wrist cruelly until she let the blade fall with a cry of pain.
“You fool!” The captain growled angrily and Karen felt his grip tighten as his palm grew uncomfortably hot around her throat even as she squirmed and strained to draw a breath. “You choose tonight, under the general’s very nose? This forces my hand, little Raven.”
19
Dragon’s Song and Faerie Fire
In the beginning, she thought it was black and empty, but it wasn’t. Her surroundings were not empty, but filled, yet with nothing specific. Nothing wasn’t the right term either. It was more like everything, but without form. The substance about her churned and roiled. It was solid, but flowed like water and floated like a cloud. What she’d taken for darkness was light and color, but hues she had never seen, and felt had no names. There were others there, all about through the churning stillness of the everything. She didn’t recognize them, but felt they were somehow old friends.
She started to wonder if she would drown, or perhaps be crushed by all the everything swimming about her. Then she realized she had no body to crush, no lungs to drown. She should be comforted that she wasn’t in danger after all, but it somehow seemed unnatural to be without a body. Then, because she wished it, she had one. Part of the everything collected about her and served as arms, legs, mouth, lungs, and every other part of her body. She tried to breath, and found she could. Some of the others seemed to think it was a clever idea, and made bodies too. Their forms were strange and varied widely from hers and from each other’s. They used their new limbs, some having only one while others had dozens, to embrace her and welcome her back. She thought that was odd. One would remember having been here before, and where was she back from?
Suddenly, a golden light flashed through the everything and tore it away. It brought a surge of sensation with it; unbearable pain and unspeakable joy. She realized, without being particularly certain it mattered, that the everything and the others weren’t torn away. It was she that was being carried off. But she didn’t want to leave. She’d only just gotten there and still had so many questions for the others.
She tried to call out, but found she had no voice. Her new body was left behind as well. There were no more nameless colors or formless mass. Only the blindingly bright, golden light and the agony and laughter it brought with it remained.
. . .
Autumn gasped as her eyes shot open. Bent before her was a glowing equine creature close to the build of the ember stallion Nian rode. Its coat and mane at first appeared to be brilliantly white, but as the creature shifted slightly, the ripples in its silky mane revealed a wild array of varied hues that finally blended back into white as the hair stilled itself. The creature’s lion-like tail whipped energetically behind its rump, and it’s long, sleek neck was bent down to rest it’s forehead against her chest with its long, narrow ears, more like a rabbit’s or even a furred elf’s than a horse’s flitted in front of her vision.
Looking down, Autumn realized with horror that the beast’s head was not resting on her chest, but hanging just before it. The golden spiral of a horn jutted from its forehead and was driven nearly to the hilt into her left breast, pinning her to the tree at her back. She watched in stunned shock as the unicorn withdrew its horn, two full feet of it, from Autumn’s chest, leaving what looked like a golden birthmark in the shape of a star rather than a hole.
The moment the golden horn was free from her chest, Autumn’s weight dropped onto her legs, which gave a moment’s wobbling protest before depositing her on the grass beneath her. The unicorn pranced back several steps, her cloven hooves sparkling with the same polished gold as her horn while it regarded her with its uncanny eyes. The strange mare’s large eyes held bright green retinae surrounding golden, shimmering lights in place of the typical black depths of pupils.
A woman with glistening ebony skin and long, flowing hair the same radiant hue as the unicorn’s coat walked next to the beast’s powerfully muscled chest, reaching out to stroke the graceful curve of the mare’s neck lovingly. The woman’s glowing white eyes regarded Autumn the entire time. The strange, regal lady wore a sheer gown and long, floating cloak of translucent white, and carried a drape of dark green silk over her arm.
Autumn tried to ask the lady her name, but found herself only able to manage a coarse croak. The woman smiled benevolently and approached without her footfalls so much as stirring a leaf or blade of grass. She laid her bundle of green fabric at the Dryad’s feet and produced a small crystal chalice of silver fluid. The woman’s lips parted and sweet music washed over Autumn, leaving the impression that the drink would help life return to her limbs more quickly. The realization that she was in the presence of the fairy queen was overwritten by the disturbing way she termed the ‘revival’. Autumn’s eyes fell on the tattered remnants of her discarded armor. Her leather bodice was little more than strips of ruined hide, soaked in blood and muck and tethered to each other with thin fibers at best. Autumn fumbled with clumsy hands to feel along her torso and limbs. There were no wounds, or even scars. The marks from the fighting in Broadstone and even those from older injuries were gone.
While the Dryad sat in confusion, the queen tipped the glass for Autumn to get a sip of the savory alcohol. Immediately, the Dryad felt an almost painful tingling running through her whole body. It hurt for only a moment, but she was able to sit forward from the tree and take the glass from the queen. As Autumn greedily sipped at the delicious nectar, the queen placed a tender kiss on her brow then stood and floated off the ground. Her floating cloak separated into six parts and flitted behind the queen, looking half like gossamer wings and half like ghostly banners each caught in their own spirited wind. The queen pointed through the wood.
Autumn turned to look at what the queen was pointing out. She saw only darkened forest surrounding her little patch of noon light, likely trickling through an opening in the thick canopy. Suddenly, the light around her was gone as well. Turning quickly back, Autumn saw no sign of the unicorn or her royal escort. Starting to feel much better, Autumn tried her legs and found them strong enough to hold her steadily. She walked through the dim woods a few yards until she could see the sky, which was just now picking up the first sparks of color as the Gates of Dawn began to open.
Returning to the tree where she had awakened was easier than Autumn had expected. The tree also bore a small star of slightly luminescent gold where the unicorn’s horn had pierced its thick trunk. She traced the outline of the gilded tattoo on the tree with the finge
rs of one hand while she felt the mirrored mark on her own chest. Both spots were smooth and radiated a warmth. Her fingers caught the bark at the edge of the ancient tree’s wound and it crumbled away like a sculpture of ash. Beneath, young, new bark covered smooth, green wood more like to a tree in its first few years beyond breaking seed than a titan already centuries old.
As her nerves finally settled their tingling and burning, Autumn became aware that the morning air held a sharp chill to it. While it wasn’t harmful, it was also far from comfortable. Autumn remembered the bundle left by the queen and searched through it to find a thick, hooded robe of pine green wrapped around several accessories died dark brown. There were tall bark-soled boots, elbow-length gloves, and a satchel filled with fruit, bread, and nuts. Donning the provided garb that seemed to be made almost entirely of spider’s silk, Autumn finished her glass of silvery alcohol and reverently set the chalice upon a root of her tree. Then she drew her hood up and set out in the direction the queen had pointed.
The light grew steadily in the sky as Autumn picked her way along what her best guess was a straight line where she had been directed. The Dryad seemed to be skirting the Spireward edge of the bog she roughly remembered crossing. At first, she could remember almost nothing about the last few days, but kept thinking about the strange vision from which she had been woken by the unicorn. However, as she picked her way along, the vision became less and less clear, and she remembered more of the horrific bout with the dragon. Sorting through her thoughts kept Autumn occupied as she worked her way through the trees and climbed increasingly difficult slopes. She was so successfully preoccupied that she only barely noticed the trees becoming sparse and was altogether surprised when she stepped onto a cobbled road.
To her left, the road forked, one branch turning Spireward while the other made its way gradually Gateward. Autumn was just deciding which fork to take, guessing the Gateward road would stay closest to the valley and give her the best chance to catch up with Nian, when a snort came from behind her. She turned to find a heavy wagon stopped behind her. A lone, bent old man sat on the driver’s seat and the wagon’s sole laborer, as well as the likely source of the snort, was a large, one-eyed ox. The beast stood with its head leveled and its one good eye trained on her face.
Autumn stepped back off the road to let the wagon pass. The wizened driver shook the reins oddly and muttered ‘get on’, but the ox only looked irritably over his shoulder at the old man and snorted again. Turning back to look at Autumn, the ox turned and walked over toward her, hauling the wagon into a hard turn as it did so. Autumn started to retreat a bit more, but paused when the ox gave an annoyed snort and leveled its good eye at her angrily. The ox trundled over to her and lowered its velveteen muzzle to lightly butt the crown of its head against her stomach. The ‘light’ bump still nearly took her off her feet, but Autumn was always a little hard to dislodge in that department. Still the beast’s odd behavior gave her cause to look a bit closer at the situation.
“Ol’ Axe dere seems ta loike yer perfume, Miss.” The old man croaked apologetically from his seat, “Turrible sorry, we’ll be outta the way quick ‘nuff.”
Something about the old man gave Autumn pause as well. She reached out a gloved hand to lightly touch a small, oddly shaped scar below the ox’s blind eye. The creature remained uncharacteristically still as she reached toward its blind side, and slightly leaned into the touch of her fingers. Suddenly, she pieced it all together.
“He knows me, and I him.” Autumn said, giving the ox an intentional grin as she drew back her hood. “As for you, Malor, your accent is less Baedite, and more fisherman from the Tyrian coast. And you obviously know nothing about driving a wagon.”
“By the Twelve! Autumn!” The old man blinked in surprise for a moment then rapidly adopted a more dignified air. “If you have a better way to move an ogre through a countryside that kills orcs of any kind on sight and happens to be looking for this specific ogre with a good bit of fervor, I should be happy to hear about it. And perhaps I will advise the imperial academy to add wagoneering and other menial tasks to the sixteen year course of study that wizards already have to endure.”
Autumn ignored the wizard’s snooty retort and flung her arms around Axios’ broad head in a relieved embrace. The ox froze a moment before shaking Autumn off of him, nearly goring her with his horns in the process. Axios looked almost apologetic afterwards, and Autumn guessed he was still getting used to having horns.
“What are you two doing this deep in Baeden?” Autumn asked Malor as she patted Axios on the shoulder and clambered up onto the wagon bench. “Did Captain Kaiden return to Tyre for reinforcements?”
Malor slouched a bit in his old man guise, “Kaiden fell at Broadstone, at the hands of their Dracis general. As for what we are doing, I told Axios that I would help him strike back at the baron of Kadis, though I still think it foolish as last requests go. Yet, a wizard must be careful to never let his word go unfulfilled, so we are sneaking to the shadowed city where Axios hopes to do enough damage to restore his name, however that is supposed to work.”
Autumn thought a moment, then nodded to herself. She pointed toward the left-hand fork in the road.
“Go that way.”
“I studied Earl Cirrus’ tactical maps extensively, Autumn.” Malor countered, “We need to turn Spireward to reach Kadis City.”
“Nian is that way, provided he survived the bout with the dragon.” Autumn replied with certainty, “Alone, the two of you aren’t likely to even get through the main gate, but with the Emissary of Hope, Axios will get his legendary fight.”
“I don’t see how a farm boy-“
Malor was cut off as Axios took off at a trot toward the Gateward road. The sudden lurch of the wagon deposited the wizard on his back in the bed. Autumn was concerned for a moment that he might be injured, but then remembered that the old man was actually a fairly athletic man about her own age. She turned back to face Axios and gave him an approving nod.
Autumn spent the next few hours recounting her journey with Nian since she last saw the wizard in Broadstone Keep. The Dryad was careful to include detail with her report, not just to acquaint Axios and Malor with their encounters along the road, but she also hoped moving aloud through the events from a familiar origin might help her recall numerous portions that were still a bit spotty and jumbled. At points where Autumn had to pause to try and collect her thoughts, Malor joined in with his own trail from the battlefield. It seemed that, aside from a brief, but key role in the escape from Broadstone, the wizard’s trip had been much less eventful.
Most of the rainstorm and the following evening, the two mismatched companions had spent sheltering in a cave while Malor recovered from shock and devised some sort of plan. He had ventured down into the valley in the morning with himself disguised as a sparrow, while Axios had been a bear. They’d had a hard time keeping close enough to each other for Malor to maintain both enchantments, so when they’d happened upon an overturned but undamaged cargo wagon, he had devised their alternative guises. From there, it had been slow but steady progress along the roads. They had passed military checkpoints claiming to be on their way to retrieve supplies for the front.
Autumn omitted her discussions with Nian and Rowan, those weren’t really important for others to know. She’d reached the trip through the bog, but was again struggling to piece together more than momentary images and flashes of anger or terror. Her thought process was further disrupted when she spied a lone rider on a tall, white horse making his way down the road ahead of them. She recognized the steed as Nian’s stallion, but the rider’s cloak of green wool indicated it was one of the others riding slouched forward in the saddle. Being too tall to be Xain and too bulky to be Riona, Autumn guessed it must be David or Rowan.
“There!” Autumn called out and pointed to the distant rider, “That’s Nian’s horse, and I think one of his friends riding. Axios,
can you-“
The ogre-ox lurched forward at a run unnaturally fast for an ox, bumping the wagon along behind with little regard for its weight or the comfort of its passengers. As they neared the rider, their racket drew his attention. A runaway wagon with two passengers hardly looked like a military patrol, so the rider reigned his mount off the road to let them pass. Axios had no intent on passing, but either underestimated the momentum of the heavy wagon or overestimated the grip of hooves on cobbled stone. The resulting near-catastrophe would have likely left a normal ox with at least one broken leg, but ended with Axios in a rather undignified heap, hopelessly coiled in his harness and the reins of the wagon. David sat on Gatefyre, stunned by the fiasco. When his gaze finally left the grunting ox and fell on Autumn, he nearly fell off the horse.
“Autumn!?” David blinked and looked over his shoulder at the hills that sheltered the Brogan Vale. “B-but they said you died.”
Autumn was hopping down to help untangle Axios, but paused a moment at David’s statement. She suddenly remembered her heated argument with Nian in the mouth of the dragon’s lair. She also remembered chasing after him while the battle seemed to be turning against him. The ox’s struggles to free itself snapped her back to the present and she hurried to help before he grew angry.
“I don’t . . .” Autumn tried to remember more while she helped Axios right himself, “They might not have been wrong. I can’t remember much of what happened. I remember seeing Nian with the dragon, then I woke up in the forest with a unicorn and the fairy queen. It feels like there’s more between, but I can’t summon any of it to my head. Why are you out here with Nian’s horse?”