by Ember Lane
“The ruins of Rakesh.”
Morgan of Elderwood grunted. “So that’s where you’ve been hiding.”
Joss grinned. “I knew I could rely on you being scared of ghosts. You’ve got ten minutes. We all go, or I slit your throat now.”
He stood, walking to the door. “Alexa, Vassal, can you give a man a hand? You’re the least injured.”
I inspected myself. “Need a bath.”
“You’ll get one in Rakesh. For now, you’ll blend with the dark.”
Outside, night was drawing in. Joss began stripping the wagon, tossing anything and everything he didn’t need. The hidey-hole went first, ice shelves, the top and side walls, and soon it was little more than a cart. He pulled the ice store open. Turned out it had a dual purpose too—a weapons storage room. He filled the cart with bows, arrows, swords, and daggers. “My people steal a lot. Things go missing from Kyrie.” He had a glint to his eye, a spark, like this was what he lived for.
Putting his fingers between his lips, he let out a shrill whistle. A cloaked figure drove an empty cart up the small road, hopping off the bench, and jumping up onto the other, riding away without a word.
“There,” he said. “Much more suited to traveling with wounded. Come, Vassal, let’s get the traitor.”
“Why not just leave him?” I asked.
Roland shrugged as he walked toward the dwelling. “Traitor today, allies tomorrow. Selor will find his truth.”
Pog walked out, grabbing my hand and leading me away. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah, I know. Have your old powers been replaced?”
He shook his head. “If they have, I haven’t noticed. We need to talk manipulation. I was destined to come to this land. My instincts told me some stones were beyond the mists—looted by Ruse before the mists came down.”
“So? We’re here. What’s the problem?” But I knew the problem. The problem had already smacked me in the face. “We’re just pawns.” But then right in the middle of probably the single most important part of the riddle, I picked Pog up and swung him around. “And guess what? Let them. Let them fashion our path. Let them put the obstacles in our way.” I hugged him close. “And we’ll just keep knocking them down.”
It felt right. Pog and me felt right. Always.
Joss and Vassal came out carrying Morgan and dumping him in the cart. Melinka followed, with Mezzerain and Sutech lingering behind. A sudden rumble broke the still of the night. I tensed, putting Pog down and stepping in front of him. A group of riders came into view, hooded, menacing looking.
“Hold your magic, Alexa. These are mine. We have a small change of plans to discuss. You’re coming with me. The rest will follow by cart.”
“Why?” I asked.
Mezzerain grunted, standing in the doorway. “You need an answer to that? Melinka told me what happened. You’ve only destroyed one tower, one ring of priests. More will be looking. Caution is called for.”
“Fine. Pog comes with me. We have some catching up to do.”
We tore through the woodland like thieves in the night. Joss led. Pog and I were on the same mount, the wind whipping through our hair. It was sweet relief. No plotting or planning, no wild tangents to discuss, just heads down and on.
It gave me a chance to think and gave me a chance to try and recoup my manas. Having drained them earlier, they were both painfully low, a few thousand of each—no more than that. There was no doubt I was going to have to harvest it faster. If we ever got into a prolonged battle, I’d be useless in moments.
Joss rested the horses regularly. It was like he had rivers dotted exactly where he wanted them. He moved through the night effortlessly, like a ghost—a phantom rider with the moon over his shoulder. We barely talked while we rested, enjoying the silence, encouraging it.
I fell into myself, doing my meditations, coaxing the shy shadowmana away from its hides, from under leaves, shady gaps, burrows, and furrows. It slowly grew, but I had a long way to go. Melinka had told me it was possible to harvest on the fly, even while fighting, but I was so far away from that it was a mere speck on a distant horizon.
Pog appeared to retreat into himself too, no doubt seeking his next stone—Vengeance. I needed to think about where to place that stone. Once again, Sedge Prentice didn’t seem the right choice. Mezzerain had Warrior, Lincoln bore Unity, and Glenwyth wrestled Enmity into submission.
Who, out of all I knew here, could resist the call of Vengeance—who out of all I knew here—more to the point. Where Enmity wanted to wreak havoc, I had no doubt what poison Vengeance would feed into its bearer’s mind.
Before I could dwell further, Joss called time, and we were on our way once more. Pog held on hard, and we rode from morning’s rise. The thick trees thinned, the forest dwindling, and we suddenly burst free of its shade, skidding to a halt atop a long, gentle escarpment.
“Rakesh,” Joss announced, and he handed us two scarves, bringing out another for himself. He wrapped it around his head, indicating we should do the same. “It’s a dust bowl farther in, but at least you’ll be out of the range of the towers. They haven’t managed to construct any near, nor would they want to.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s nothing here—or so they think.”
He walked his horse down onto the slope as the sun finally breached the horizon. Though I knew we were now miles and miles inland, I was sure I could smell the sea. The slope soon turned from a fringe of grass to loose gravel and scree, wind whipping it up, strafing us. I sank farther into my scarf. We descended, taking a diagonal path, and more of the land became clear.
Rakesh was like a vast open-pit quarry, the type that had stained some of our most beautiful lands back home. Yet that description didn’t begin to describe it. The crafter, Jammer, had turned Partic Fair into such a place, his greed for raw materials driving him on to blister the fair land around. No, this place had a quality, like it was intentional, a great feat of natural architecture, a fantastic ruin—a wonder of the world.
And when we turned, I saw where the feeling came from. The escarpment suddenly ended, the land falling away like a vast mud plug had sunk into its bowels. Cracks crazed its base. Its scale was breathtaking.
A tinge of salt pervaded all around. Though glowing orange with the early sun, the whole place shimmered, the air dancing, gyrating. All the while, wind swirled around us, howling, moaning, trapped in this dusty arena.
Joss the Nine pointed to his ear. “Ignore her; she’ll drive you crazy.”
He walked his horse on, taking a path down, hooves scattering a dusting of sand. I followed, the song on the wind intensifying, calling me, flirting with me. Its draw enticed me, like a sprawling lament, and I appeared to be the only one, Joss the Nine meandering on, Pog as quiet as a mouse.
The first face rushed to me, swooping down like a starving gull, disintegrating before my eyes into a wash of sand. It was young, beautiful, just a shawl covered her hair. I’d caught a few words: love, time, and endless, before her likeness had turned to dust. It was a sad song, a song of defeat, of a love lost, perhaps.
Another formed, born of a twist of sand, filling out, the same woman but more of her—shoulders now, breasts and a waist. Her hands clasped a crown as if she hunted someone to wear it. She turned to dust too, scattering on the eddying breeze, and I caught some more words: betrayal, tricked, and hopeless.
Wailing then sounded, like a thousand mourners, a procession of them walked one plateau, falling, vanishing into a crack. We continued walking our horses, the ground rising either side of us: sandy, dusty, like a sun-dried mud. Now trapped by the ever-taller walls, the ghost of Rakesh began plaguing me like a thousand beggars. Each time she came, there was more and more of her, until she flew at me in her fullness.
Her own song rose above the wailing, turning from a gentle whisper to a raging torment, anguish at a chance lost, at a betrayal, at everyone, barring herself. Her specters came faster and faster, making me wince, making me duck.
We were in a narrow cut now, great walls a hundred feet high, blocking the sun, a red sky above like a gouged cut, and a very angry ghost below. Then I recognized a word, a word spat with vicious ferocity, and it was a word that was becoming familiar, namely Jester.
Why I was surprised by this, I did not know—this was feudal Valkyrie—wouldn’t jesters be commonplace? Yet since reading of the meddling jester in the auguries of the House of Mandrake, and suspecting Jester and Flip were one and the same, now my mind was attuned to the word.
The ghost’s anger plateaued, and suddenly I had a name. Her name was Elisha, and she heralded from Horn’s Isle.
“Now you know me, bitch,” Elisha spat at me, and a thousand of her came at me, screaming like banshees and swooping like bats. I made to fight them off, but Pog suddenly clamped my arms by my side, whispering in my ear. “It’s okay. She’s just upset that she made the wrong choice.”
As soon as the words left Pog’s lips, her chants stopped, replaced by echoing sobs. Joss the Nine looked around, shrugged, and turned back. Elisha began to wail, to beg forgiveness. “She’ll stop if you promise to understand her,” Pog told me.
“Will you? Will you seek the truth?” Elisha asked.
He’d once told me, you never turn down a quest in a game, and though I’d long stopped thinking of Barakdor as a game, my gut told me he was right.
“I will,” I said, and the wind stilled to naught, and the noises calmed.
“Thank you. Don’t think ill of me when you hear my story. There’s more behind the tale.”
“What story?” I asked but received no reply.
Joss unwrapped his headscarf, breathing in the clean air. “I’ve never known her to calm like that. If you’ve made any bargain, ask her to carry on howling. We’d hate to lose our finest guard.”
I closed up. “What is her story?”
Joss threw his head back and laughed. “One of… No, I shouldn’t—I definitely shouldn’t. There are better tellers than me in Rakesh.”
“Well, is it love? Greed? What?”
“Wait,” said Pog. “Wait, Alexa. It’ll be better around a campfire.”
Pog, I thought, little Pog, so brave, so old sometimes, but just a boy who likes a story. “Okay, I’ll wait.”
He hugged me hard and then let my arms go. “Good.”
We carried on riding, resting each time we came to a brook or river. Each time I smiled a little too. Where it could, grass, broad-leafed plants, even small trees, lined the watercourses, counter to the dusty gorges all around. It made them all the more special, magical, like they were our own oasis. Joss fed us dried meat, bread on the turn, and lukewarm water, yet that didn’t douse my pleasure. I’d learned to cherish respite. Barakdor had taught me that.
It was these little paradises that let me charge my mana. Just the appreciation of this little drop of beauty seemed to accelerate it exponentially, and soon I’d recovered what mana I’d used in Kyrie—just the shadowmana to go, and that was well over half the way to its previous best tally.
By late afternoon, we arrived in Rakesh itself, the city carved into the gorge’s sides, towering all around us like a million eclectic caves. There were balconies, stairways, terraces, and alleyways. Wary eyes looked out, welcoming Joss the Nine, but shying away from me and Pog.
Folks lined the gorge’s floor, welcoming a returning hero, and when Joss stopped, bending to talk to an elder, the mutters and rumors began.
“The first blow’s been struck. The Tower of Kyrie has fallen!”
“We have a new hero! Alexa Drey defeated the combinium!”
Then more, so many more stories, half truths and downright fabrications, all shouted from the sandstone dwellings of the lost City of Rakesh as I now knew it to be.
And as to why it was lost, I had an idea Elisha’s story would expand on that.
We were mobbed, heroes, steered to a terrace, pulled down, and carried aloft like kings, straight into the belly of Rakesh. A great hall spread away behind one façade, flickering lanterns lining its sides, bowls of fire in a file down its center.
“This!” Joss cried. “This is our feasting hall. The business of resistance is booming; your advent will only further those gains.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You mean you’re rich?”
“Raising coin to fund an army—feudal, remember—and feudal means bannermen, and bannermen require coin to get their militia to fight, and I intend to raise the biggest, damn army Valkyrie has ever seen. Mezzerain and Roland did, after all, steal a portion of my stock.”
We sat around a low, circular table, soon joined by two men and a woman. It was the woman who intrigued me. She had the brightest blue eyes with small black dots for pupils that drew you in. Her black hair was straight as an arrow, framing her high cheekbones that held a flat smile on her lips.
“Selor?” I asked.
“Alexa Drey, and you must be Pog—you are the thief. Tell me, Thief, is the stone you seek here?”
“Somewhere,” he said, but with a degree of uncertainty that was unlike him.
“Somewhere where?” she pressed, like she knew already.
“It hasn’t awoken like the others.”
Her flat smile curved upward. “Perhaps it has, but you can’t hear it.”
Pog cocked his head, confusion settling over him. “What could stop it?”
“Someone who doesn’t want the stone to be remade? Someone who knows how to stifle its cries.”
Pog retreated into himself, clearly trying to solve her riddle. Her gaze then fell on me.
“And you, Alexa Drey. Do you need a riddle or two?”
“I’d like a story,” I replied.
“Oh? Which…” But then she clapped her hands. “I know which one, but there is only one that can tell it.”
She leaned over, covering her mouth and whispering. One of the men got up, vanishing into the feasting hall’s throngs. Pog nudged me. “We’re going to hear her story.”
Joss the Nine served the wine, and a waiter spread a host of plates in front of us.
“When will the others get here?” I asked.
“If all goes well, they’ll be a day, or slightly more, behind, depending upon the way—a fallen tree, a bloated river. Roads can’t change direction according to whim. Rest up, Alexa. Make the most of it. Here”—he spread his arms wide—“you’ll find every trade, scholars for every subject imaginable, and a few more after. This, this city, is Valkyrie. We left a shell behind for Ruse to rule over, nothing more.”
“And Mezzerain and Roland Caine?”
He choked back a scowl.
“That was unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?”
A wry grin, a fast glance. “Mezzerain was supposed to get them away faster, but circumstances trapped them. The portal was the only option, so instead of fighting for Valkyrie, our greatest fighters are trapped in Mandrake.”
“Portal?”
“To travel between lands. We were unsure how well it would work, but it appears to have been successful.”
He had my complete interest. “So similar to what Pog used to appear in Starellion.”
Pog nodded hard. “The gnomes control them.”
“Not all,” Joss countered. “Not all.”
“And just where is Valkyrie’s portal room?”
“Striker Bay—Taric’s palace. Where else?”
Excitement welled up in me. Possibilities so distant now much closer. “Striker Bay,” I repeated.
We ate a spread of sumptuous foods that put all I’d had in Barakdor to shame. It was sweet, sour, spicy, full, a true feast, and I ate like I’d been starving for an age. We drank wine, and a comfortable silence reigned. Selor waited patiently while we finished and then stood.
“Sedgewold is waiting. Your tale is ready.”
We followed her toward the back of the feasting hall, taking a dozen steps up to a balcony that overlooked the spread of the tables. A single door led away, more upward steps and a shaft of lig
ht beaming down. We came out in a small courtyard, vines cladding its walls, and a man sitting cross-legged with a small tray of drinks in front of him.
“Sit,” he said. “Sit, sit, it is not an easy tale you wish to hear, but I shall strive to entertain.”
Pog sat right next to him, his face beaming.
Joss the Nine offered me a cushion. Selor sat too.
“Sedgewold, they call me, and that’s good enough.” His melodic voice spread evenly over us, already teasing me with what was to come. The teller appeared sage yet had the spark of youth. He sported a long beard, which rested on his crossed ankles.
“The story you seek is of a bygone age, yet not old enough to be deemed irrelevant today. At least one of its actors still roams lands, causing mischief and poking his nose where it doesn’t belong.”
He took a sip of his wine from a silver goblet.
“Horn’s Isle, a once magnificent castle, perched upon its rock, sitting defiant as it stares at Ruse. But what of those under its roof? What of time? Time has ravaged it, eating its mortar, pecking away at its roof. Yet its cumbersome fall from grace did not begin with ShadowDancer's arrival. It began before that.”
His hands reached out as if holding a ball. “Bats,” he declared. “Bats.” He slumped, letting his long hair fall over his eyes then tucking those strands behind his ears. He cackled, letting it peter to a sigh. “Periodically, bats from a near blocked louver screeched in annoyance as fat-laden smoke disturbed their daily slumber.” He gasped, drawing a great breath.
“That smoke rose from a central hearth over which five or six ill-kempt cooks did attempt to keep up the demand for pig, for grouse, and the odd cut of lamb. From that neglected louver, blackened timbers arched down, partly obscured by the accumulated swirls of smoke, to walls of mortared stone, to a stone-flagged floor of what used to be called a great hall.
“Sweat, the stench of it, emanated from six packed trestle tables, eager gannets gobbling their food despite being mere islands surrounded by seas of fat-soaked straw and trodden dog waste. Horn’s Island, its once-proud past, lost to harsh time and feeble lords.”
He paused, sucking his cheeks in and looking up to the skies. “From a raised platform, Elisha, the daughter of Lord Willard, toyed with her blonde braids while trying to waft the growing stench away with her once-white fan. Despite all, she held her head high, for this feast could possibly be her last.