“Come on, you blackguards!” Piachras shouted, swinging his two glaives to ready over the side of the cart.
“Look out, the gates are shut!” warned Xaeland.
“Where’s the gatehouse?” Stuart demanded.
“Both sides!” Caelion shouted back. “They must both be taken to open it!”
“We’ll go,” Xaeland declared.
“You take the left, I’ll take the right,” Stuart directed. The cart pulled up, and before anyone could argue, Xaeland and Caelhuin jumped out toward the left, Stuart leapt out toward the right, brandishing his heavy sword into the face of the flocking enemies, and Sianna darted out after him with her two swords ablaze.
From all around the attackers reached the still-dark cart to be met by the remainder of the group. Heao seized a dagger and jumped to the ground with the others. There were too many! One of them rolled under a blow from Haleth and sprung into the cart. He didn’t see Heao, and Heao stabbed at him over the edge, taking him in the back of the shin. He screamed! Blood rushed everywhere! Then the man swung around, slashing with his sword over the rim of the cart and catching Heao full in the head—but too slow. Heao staggered back, tripped over his own feet, and fell. For a moment he thought himself dead. He could only hear Master Delossan’s voice calling out, “Heao! Heao!” and that other, smaller voice urging him to remember Jenna.
He got to his feet. A few swift strokes like a waved torch illuminated everything briefly. The attacker was standing, listing, peering after Heao as he tried to wrap his wound. Two other figures were wrapped together, wrestling precariously, and then one of them stumbled or was thrown off the cart. The wounded man saw Heao and leapt down after him.
A heavy grinding noise filled the air. Daeaean’s people had cemented the gears for the gate but the cement had not yet set. Heao rolled away from the wounded man’s first cut and readied himself for the next. He tried to remember everything Rigel had shown him about swords—but he had only a knife! The second strike came, and concentrating carefully, he parried it. The weight of the blow carried him over into Haleth’s feet. Haleth pushed away his current attacker, turned, and took down Heao’s attacker in one blow.
“Everyone ready! The gate is coming up!” Commander Caelion declared.
“Go through! Go through!” came Stuart’s voice. One of the attackers lit a torch and was struck down. Another attacker picked it up and Piachras slashed him down. Haleth picked up the torch and dashed it into the jaw of a third man.
Heao last of all scrambled to his knees and reached for the cart. The dim, waving fire of the torch gave him away to the attackers and made the world spin. The whole world seemed to jerk ten feet down and sideways. He hit his head on the side of the cart. Four hands grabbed him; he was pulled separate ways, then lifted into the air and onto soft, needly straw.
A wave of enemy soldiers scattered before the double front of Stuart and Sianna on the one side and Xaeland and Caelhuin on the other. Sianna leapt onto the front of the cart; then Caelhuin and Xaeland were on; then Stuart, with one last parry staggering back one final enemy, caught the back rail of the cart and leapt on.
“Is anyone hurt?” came Jevan’s voice from right over Heao.
“We left one of my soldiers,” Caelion said, glancing over the occupants of the cart. “Your boy?”
“Lucky,” said Jevan, feeling Heao’s head where the sword had hit. “Grazed and tired is all, I think.”
“Lucky indeed,” said Caelion; then to all of them he added, “I am glad your swords are on our side, friends. You fight exceptionally well.”
The cart rocked hurriedly on down the dark lane. They passed one regular checkpoint going into the nearest town, but the post was ransacked and its sparse contents strewn across the road. The town, however, was far from deserted; fires and shouting sprang out of the night toward the visitors.
“Master Delossan,” Heao murmured.
“Yes, Heao?”
“Where are we? Are we....”
“We are safe for now. There is a town ahead.”
“Are...is everyone...no one....”
“You were grazed, but the rest of us are fine. You must be more careful with your life.”
“We are...still on the islands?”
“Yes, Heao.”
Someone shouted out, “Death to the Anaerianites!” A shock went through the panes of the nearby windows.
“We have to leave, Master Delossan,” Heao murmured.
“We shall not be long,” Jevan replied.
“We have to...the islands are falling.”
“Do not fear, now, Heao. Rest. All will be well.”
“We have to....”
“All will be well.”
Two long-haired figures ran out into the street in front of the cart, the first grabbing onto the horses’ reigns to avoid getting trampled. The cart veered and pulled up, then the two figures bounced back into the dark. “Anaerianites,” Caelion remarked. “They had a strong presence in this town before.” He turned the cart down a side-street.
They had to stop once to disentangle the wheels from a mesh of steel bramble in the road, but they were not ambushed. Only the fearful eyes of a mother and her children watched them from inside the house at the corner. A few streets further down there had been a deadly struggle, and looters were prowling amidst the remaining corpses in the intersection. A few muted drake cries testified that the enemy was not yet gone.
They pulled up at the end of a line of dismantled and pillaged shops. “Go in, Lieutenant,” Caelion ordered Thenele. Not until then did Jevan and the others realize that there was torch-light coming from within the fastened building.
“I’ll take Windhunter and Sianna with me,” she retorted.
Caelion scoffed. “I’m not trying to rob you of your ‘treasure.’”
“I’ll take them anyway,” she said, turning to the elves. Stuart nodded. Sianna nodded and rose. They disembarked, waded through the wreckage of the shop-fronts, and disappeared into the entrance-way.
There was a small room inside the doorway, a strange mixture of light and darkness through the boarded-over windows and the cracked-open inner door mingling on dusty layers of glass-cased jewelry and wares. Stuart slid the handle of his sword free.
“Thaerron? Raphael?” Thenele called out. Sianna caught a reflection in the glass from her side and caught a daggered hand, slinging it out of the darkness into a death-hold. Thenele caught the flash of a silver moon pin and exclaimed, “Daeaeanite!”
“Hold!” came a voice. “It’s Thaerron, Thenele.” Out of the dark a second man, muscularly-built but ragged with a dirty, half-open Aerisian military jacket. “I thought you were below,” he said.
“I was. I’m not. These are Windhunter and Sianna. They’re friends of the shard-bearer. They will help us find him.”
“Things have changed, Thenele. That’s no longer the goal.”
“Things certainly have changed if Daeaeanites are admitted into the secret houses of Anaerias.”
“He’s no Daeaeanite, and there is no longer an Anaerias,” said Thaerron. “Some of us have gathered here who can no longer serve any house—who see the disaster the envy and violence of the houses has brought upon Aerisia, and who choose to act for liberation rather than continue in this path of blood. Jeden is one of those: he has rejected Daeaean to serve his own conscience. There are others within.”
“Who is in charge?” asked Thenele uneasily.
“No one is in charge, but Carriston is the spokesperson,” Thaerron said.
“Carriston?” exclaimed Thenele. “That half-ranked insubordinate? The same Carriston who was demoted for pilfering glass diamonds? The Anthirian exile Carriston?”
“The same,” said Thaerron.
Thenele scowled. “Let us in,” she finally said.
Thaerron glanced at Sianna and opened the door before them. Bright torch-light shone through the anteroom, reflecting from surface to surface, stone to stone, till the whole room was t
ranscendent in its glow. The main room was filled with people. The agitated torch-light glowed on them all in reflection, self-creating and self-lifting into the heart a spirit of revolution so pungent that at first the two elves could not move at all. “But this is no dragon, nor any army of monsters,” Stuart thought. Carriston was at the head of the room speaking. Clasping their sword hilts they strode into the room.
Carriston was exhorting, “We here are in the perfect position to end this disorder and restore peace to Aerisia. The plan I have shared with you will do this. As painful as it may be. It is not treason to raise your arms against your former houses because they have already betrayed you.”
Stuart and Sianna reached the foot of the platform, Thenele following as the crowd closed in behind them. “Carriston!” Thenele shouted.
Carriston glanced nervously down at them. “Guards...someone, apprehend these people.”
“You’re a cowardly beast and no son of Aerisia,” Thenele declared, stepping up. “Why don’t you come down and apprehend us yourself? Or do you remember our last encounter too well?”
“I remember you well enough,” Carriston replied. “You’re Thenele the Tomerian, and your name is banished from Aerisia for treason.”
“Do you call it treason for one to faithfully serve those one has pledged their allegiance to? Yet you don’t seem to believe it’s treason to betray them. Who exactly are you serving?”
“We who have gathered here have raised our thoughts above the petty ideas of service. We are all free, serving the right and working for peace. That is where all true ideas of service originate to begin with. People believed they could gain mutual good by working together, only those they gave their service to betrayed them once they had their loyalty.”
“And how exactly did Anaerias betray you?” Thenele challenged him. “I don’t recall he ever ill-used you or delayed to pay you. And he spared your life when you tried to rob him.”
The crowd began murmuring but Carriston cut them off. “Anaerias betrayed the whole country by trying to hide the shard-bearer and use him to his own interests, the result of which is that the whole country is in upheaval now. And after his death, his wife follows in his footsteps.”
Thenele’s eyes turned icy. “Well,” she spoke. “Well...I have seen everything. Aerisia falls prostrate at a word from the dictator of the North, true servants are exiled and ridiculed, and foreigners teach like house rulers. When I returned to the isles, I expected prison, but I hardly dreamed I would be freed by an enemy house...and find the guardians of my own house not only unwilling to help, but entirely hostile.”
Stuart laid a cautionary hand on Thenele’s shoulder. “And who is this?” Carriston demanded. “Have you brought elf thugs to cut me down?”
“I’ll cut you down myself,” she growled—but Stuart prevented her.
“Master Carriston,” Stuart began, “the power is with you to do a great good or a great evil. Aerisia which you claim to love is already fallen, and it will not be long before whatever is left of it is devoured by the generals of the North. Those men have their promises and theirs is the power to take what is theirs. Those men will not respect whatever claims you may hope to exercise nor will they hesitate to cut you down with blades more bloodthirsty than these.” He drew his sword, the heavy talon of Ristoria’s scribes from generations past, adorned with gold gleaming like glass. “If you desire freedom, both for yourself and for your land, the land which has received you out of exile from your home, then you have no choice but to follow me now.” To the whole crowd he cried, “Citizens of Aerisia, I am Scribe Stuart Channethoth of Ristoria; this sword testifies to my name. This shard-bearer whom you seek in order to deliver him to those who will kill him is the only hope of all the world, for he bears two of the lost shards of the ancient talisman, the Wizards’ Stone, which has power over everything that has name and which the Emperor Morin desires with all his heart. I have come to find him, and I can help you find him if you choose the path of right. I make you no promises and I do not know what promises you have, but I tell you this: you have but little time left; all that you know is passing away. I offer you only to make your deeds in these the end times of our age be such as may be remembered well by those who come.”
With that he stepped down and sheathed his sword. Thenele and Sianna, the one no less surprised than the other, followed him. Carriston, seeing his crowd beginning to fall away, shouted out, “He is a liar, people! It was he who brought about the destruction of Anthirion, and now he wants Aerisia! If you follow him he will have it! He will destroy Aerisia!”
Stuart spun, his eyes suddenly agleam with fire. Carriston shrank back physically. In a flash Stuart’s sword flashed and Carriston dove to the ground, covering his head. “You are marked with the ‘X’ of a liar,” Stuart declared. Carriston raised his head, holding a bloody ‘X’ marked on his cheek. “Whoso will follow you still may do so at their own peril, but should you trouble our quest any longer, you will be marked a corpse.”
He turned away. One of the other Aerisians, a tan young man, came up to him. “Sir, what can we do?”
“Where do they say the shard of Aerisia lies?” Stuart asked him.
“No, nobody knows where it is,” the man told him.
“Where are the royal troops searching?” Stuart tried.
“Everywhere, as far as I know,” the man answered.
“This is a total waste,” sighed Stuart to himself. “If you find him, bring him only to us, if you can,” Stuart directed.
The ground rumbled as though struck by an avalanche. Then the whole building shook from floor to rafters, throwing people everywhere, all but Stuart, who calmly wiped clean his sword on a handkerchief.
“I trust not these flying isles, Stuart,” Sianna exclaimed over the cries and shouts. “From the beginning of creation there was no such thing.”
The trembling subsided, giving way to a confused uproar from the crowd. Stuart replied, “My Lady, Sianna, these isles were created by magic, and magic alone will undo them. They were created when the shards of the Stone were lost—by the shard that rules the element of earth were they created. Yet I share your presentiments: if either Alik or the enemy should have found the shard, I do not think the isles will stand.”
“This is not magic but deviltry,” Sianna declared. “Let us be quick; we’ll get no help from here.” Stuart nodded.
As the three of them thrust their way back into the chill night breeze a voice accosted them, “Thenele!”
They turned. A hearty, well-built man with a ragged Anaerian Aerisian uniform sprung out from behind the merchant counters. “Raphael!” exclaimed Thenele. They embraced.
“I thought when I saw you it must be a mistake—but no, I knew I could not mistake you. But then you went in to Carriston’s mob and...but you can’t have gone over to that fool, could you?”
Stuart addressed Raphael, “We are here to find the shard-bearer and save him if we may. If you would hinder us, brace yourself.”
“Oh, he will not! He will help us! He can lead us to Anaerias,” Thenele interjected.
“I surely will!” Raphael agreed.
Xaeland came up. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.
“Raphael?” Stuart asked.
“Yes, Sir?”
“We have new help,” Stuart told Xaeland.
“We don’t have enough already?” Xaeland asked.
“Where are we going, Master Raphael?” Stuart asked.
“Please, just Raphael. I’m no one’s master. Anaerias’ widow, the Lady Reiaena, has retreated to her estate on Lower Aerin. She is the only one who could tell us what has happened to the boy. The fastest way to get there is by way of the glider manufactory, assuming it hasn’t been torn to shreds by the looters. Are these others with you?”
“They are,” said Stuart. “Let us join them.” He and Sianna and Xaeland hurried toward the cart. For a moment more Thenele and Raphael lingered together.
“Raphael, t
here is one of the Aeat’s officers with us,” Thenele said.
“Yet you do not say it is all right,” he observed.
“Windhunter—I mean Stuart the Scribe—I mean the elf—he has promised the Aeat to deliver the shard-bearer to her. But I do not believe he will do it. He will not let her destroy us.”
“No one can destroy us now, Thenele,” Raphael replied. “Thenele, I thought I’d never see you again.” He kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Once more,” she asked. He complied, this time longer. “Now let us go.”
They vaulted into the cart and Caelion lashed the horses to life with a bitter crack. Almost at once the ground began to tilt in crazy lurches. One of the horses stumbled. Heao, who had fallen asleep between Jevan and Jenna while the others had been inside, woke with a start and cried, “What’s happening?”
“Be still, youth,” said Jevan. “Your prophecy has come true.”
Laboriously Caelion regained control of the horses. The ground stopped lurching, but worse, began to steadily tilt downward beneath them. “What is this?” Caelion cried.
“Drive on, Sir! Drive like the wind!” Stuart shouted back.
Caelion took off. The night was already beginning to streak on the frontiers of the east, as though the ghosts of Labrion, made phosphorescent in the coming dawn, were soaring aloft upon their trail. Confusion echoed in adjacent streets but as yet their way was clear. Muffled voices came from behind locked doors and shutters.
“The islands?” Heao asked. “What prophecy?”
“The king—you remember? In the court,” said Jevan.
“The king? I remember....” He glanced around suddenly, finding Jenna right there beside him, silently gripping the rails of the cart. “It was all a dream, though,” Heao murmured.
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