Exiles & Empire

by Cheryl S Mackey

  Ivo followed at a slower pace. His barely healed muscles and flesh protested each step, but pure determination kept Emaranthe and Gabaran within sight as they led the way down a long corridor. His borrowed boots clunked on stone instead of ice after a few paces and he frowned as the pair vanished around a corner. The ice block walls, sculpted to blend into the surrounding stone perfectly, had given way to rock without him even noticing. He shuffled faster, the strain on his hip and leg now much more than a dull throb of pain. He ignored it and made his way around the corner only to halt abruptly before he could collide with his little brother.

  “Jaeger!” Ivo hid a wince with his brother’s name as they traded hugs and grins.

  “By The Four, Ivo, you are a mess,” Jaeger muttered.

  Ivo backed far enough away to study his younger brother in the faint light filtering through small round windows cut into the unusual stone walls. Pained blue eyes studied him back from heavily shadowed and hollow eye sockets. His dirty blond hair, usually bound beneath a helm, tangled in wild strands to his shoulders. Days of scruff shadowed his strong jaw. He looked as bad as Ivo felt.

  Jaeger added, “They wouldn’t tell me anything of you or the others.”

  Ivo grimaced. “Well said, brother. I only just woke and know nothing of the events save what a shivering mage could recount and a glare a she-elf more brittle than the ice could stab me with.”

  “You’ve met Sesti, I take it?”

  “Met her. Barely survived her.”

  ***

  “How did you get it?” Ivo asked. He reached for the tattered scrap of parchment with shaking hands. In the cold white light it looked even more fragile than he’d imagined. Bleached by the glare, the brief scribble of writing on its surface was illegible, in a language he did not know. His fingers halted before they could touch it. “What happened out there?”

  Ivo struggled to hold back the trembling rage that threaded into his voice and turned it curt and rusty. He felt everyone’s gazes as if they’d been weighted by guilt. Maybe they were. He glanced up and met the sea of eyes, moving from one to another until he faced the spy who had supposedly died.

  “You.”

  Dehil stiffened. “Yes, I’m back.”

  “How? You are here unchanged in form. You did not die.” Ivo’s hand slammed down onto the table. The parchment shivered on a gust of wind. Everyone jumped but the spy and the small figure perched atop the too tall table, all but hidden in the folds of her cloak. “You lied to us.”

  “I lied to none of you. Nor did I expect what happened,” Dehil said. His soft voice ended on a steely hiss. “I asked for none of this, and I did not have a choice.”

  “Once a spy always a spy,” Ivo grunted. “My ears don’t hear truth in your words, elf .”

  “Then you do not listen, Ivo!” Jadeth snapped. She leaned across the massive stone table and jabbed a finger at him. “You hear nothing but the voice of your own guilt and despair. You have carried that for so long that others are now painted with it!”

  ***

  “Jadeth, please.” Dehil dragged scarred fingers through his long, dark hair. It sifted like the black water that so long ago claimed Ivo and Jaeger.

  “Enough.” Gabaran glared at the arguing pair. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Peace spoken and returned, Gabaran,” Ivo said. “What now?”

  “Now I must tell my story,” Dehil replied. He hesitated before moving closer to the table.

  The silence thickened when he leaned over the table, bringing his face into the bright light. Ivo and Jaeger’s sharp inhales were expected. They had not yet noted the ravages of both time and war that had left their marks on him. He resisted the urge to hide in the shadows again, to disappear. Instead he continued, his voice hoarse, his hands braced on the stone, his fingers white with the effort it took to keep them from digging into the carved surface.

  “My story never ended, it merely shifted.”

  Dehil glanced at the brothers, then the red headed elf he stood beside. Her wide, jewel bright gaze never wavered from his. Her full lips trembled and tears dampened her lashes.

  “I fully expected to die. I wished so. I feared my trust in my people had failed not only me, but you,” he said to Jadeth. His lean body shuddered. His chin dropped to his chest. “Instead of being crushed by the counterweight, a portal appeared beneath me. I fell through it. It was one of Her portals and she was there, waiting. With a quest I could not refuse.”

  “Hers?” Gabaran’s voice hitched. His face contorted with the effort to remain stoic.

  “Yes. She bade me to protect a pair of children. I promised.”

  “What?” Jadeth’s frown matched everybody else’s. “Children? Why would she be with children?”

  “I cannot say.”

  Jadeth’s frown steered into a scowl and her sapphire gaze sharpened. “Why not?”

  “Because she told me not to.” Dehil pushed himself away from the table and paced away from the pool of light. He flung his arms wide in frustration. “Because if I do I will ruin an already ruined future.”

  “Light?” Ivo asked the elf as he passed by. Dehil’s pacing grew frenetic, his gaze haunted.

  “Yes. She traded places with me for a mere moment in time, in a future too worrisome and strange to define. She asked me where the map was. I told her. In turn I had to watch a pair of young children nearly die because I could not protect them. There was a war going on, a minor skirmish between local tribes. I was over-run.” He flicked a finger at his scar and turned to face the shadow filled corners of the room. They beckoned.

  “Oh no,” Jadeth gasped. She reached for his arm as he stalked past, but missed when he jerked it out of her range. “Dehil. Dead children are too high a cost for such a thing.”

  “Are they?” Dehil snapped over his shoulder at her. “She returned with the map and I left her with the two half dead children. She only said that this future, her world, would be saved if we save the past. This past. I returned, older of heart and weary of soul only minutes after I left. Scarred, aged by time, but determined, I sought help of Atil and my brethren.”

  “She gave you no reason other than it was some kind of fate?” Gabaran asked. Starlit eyes faded until they nearly diminished. Grim lines etched the corners with pain. “How long were you there? In her world?”

  Dehil could see that Gabaran’s need to know more about the lost god was driving him.

  “No. I was there for a manner of days. It felt like years. It was so different than our here and now.”

  Emaranthe’s indigo hood shifted. Silent and still all this time, shadows chased the quick movements of thin, gloved, fingers peeling it back. Her pale hair nearly glowed in the sunlight pouring through the oculus, but the light did not ignite the fire in her eyes.

  “Who were the children, Dehil?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But they were young and beautiful, perhaps four summers of age. Twins. A boy and a girl. Fair hair, fair skin. She’d said something about their mother being dead. I never heard of a father.”

  He glanced down at his own dark skin as if seeing it for the first time. His fingers curled into fists. His head came up with a jerk and his gaze bored into Emaranthe’s.

  “They looked like you. Their hair was as if spun with gold or fire, but their eyes were not like yours. They were gray, as if a stormy sea was held within.”

  Emaranthe’s gaze dropped. Trembling fingers replaced the hood and her body stilled once more. Her soft words rang in the silent hall.

  “What were their names, Dehil?”

  Dehil raked shaking fingers through his hair. Pain etched ashen grooves at the corners of his eyes and the savage scar felt like it stood out white against his brown skin.

  “I never caught their names. Neither ever spoke. The girl was wounded, severely, and I think Tanari had to do something grave to save her. She took the child elsewhere, through a portal, and then returned without her. I promised to wat
ch over the boy, but she bade me return here to you first, and told me that he would be waiting for me upon my return when the time was right.”

  “That’s all,” Dehil added. He backed away from the table, deeper into the shadows that hugged the walls. He didn’t look anyone in the eye. He didn’t want to see the sad and regretful gazes.

  “So Light was the one to have ransacked the main tent and had retrieved the map before we even got there. And then you returned after promising to care for a child in a future we fear to come to pass?” Jaeger broke the silence. “Why? Why go through all of that? I see no purpose to it.”

  Dehil halted, half in the light and half in shadow. He knew the stark contrast highlighted the twisted scar that raced across his face. The puckered, reddened skin tightened when his lips curled in self disgust. “I don’t know. I don’t know what my place is in all of this.”

  Emaranthe turned to face him. “You will know your purpose, and the boy’s, when She deems it necessary. Take heart, Dehil, Light has shown you your path even if you do not understand it yet.”

  Dehil’s jaw worked and pained frustration tightened his mouth. He bowed to Emaranthe and backed into the comfortable shadows.

  ***

  Gabaran grunted. He straightened to his full height. Broad of frame and far more muscular than the Eideili race of Elves, the Tevu were born to winter and mountains. Just not these mountains. These halls carved into stone and ice had been made by another race, one long lost to the common enemy, the Dro-Aconi.

  “Dehil’s story ends and mine begins on its heels.” Gabaran’s voice ground like rock crushing beneath a heel, a sound weighed by pain. “The world froze before me and my friends and enemy with it. At a loss and helpless, I had all but given in to despair when a portal appeared.”

  “Within this portal I saw a world ravaged by war and a figure dying in a pool of her own blood. I ran to her,” Gabaran’s voice broke. For a long moment only the struggle of ragged breathing filled the room. “But I could not save her. She gave me the map and died in my arms. I returned to our world, my heart left behind, but victorious. I had the map, but no answers. No hope.”

  Dehil took up the tale again with a grimace. He paced in the shadows out of reach of the puddle of light.

  “I returned just moments after I vanished, and instead of coming directly to your aid I sought allies I knew to be true. Of them only a handful was found unruined by Rodon’s twisted evil. Atil, the Last Windwalker, was leading a group of survivors west, and upon my entreaty he used his powers to do what he could.”

  Emaranthe’s voice sliced the cold room with a brittle edge. “We have to stop Rodon. We have our quest, we have the map. We must do what we are meant to now.”

  “We are not enough to stop a madman made of shadow and evil,” Jadeth whispered. “We were nearly ruined by our own people. We were never meant to fight against our own kind like this. There must be some way to defeat Rodon.”

  “Maybe we have what he does not. Perhaps we can do what he cannot.” Ivo slammed his fist on the table. It rocked and split beneath the blow, blasting dust into the air. It shimmered in the vibrant beam of light, highlighting the mage perched upon it. “But what?”

  “The map tells us little,” Sesti spoke from the shadows in the doorway. Everyone twisted to face her, startled. They’d not heard her enter. “We need to be able to read it or all of this is pointless talk. Rodon obviously wants the Crown of Gods, but we don’t even know what it is. This talk is a waste of time we don’t have.”

  Ivo crossed his arms and regarded the dark haired female with a frown. Her words rang true, but he wasn’t sure why. Uneasiness settled low in his stomach when she approached. Her clothing, much like Emaranthe’s and Gabaran’s, nearly swallowed her tall, lean frame. Jet black hair slipped like water down her back. Her long ears flicked with each passing second the room remained silent.

  “So how do we decipher the writing of a language we can’t read?” Jadeth asked. Gazes clashed at her words, then pinned on Gabaran.

  Instead of answering right away, Gabaran pushed away from the table and circled it. Large, calloused fingers twitched with each step he drew closer to the map.

  He halted. “Back at the plateau, before Atil froze time, Rodon made a big deal about remembering your past lives.”

  Jadeth’s full lips tightened. “I remember.”

  Starlit eyes scanned the room before halting on the redheaded elf. “Why? Why would Rodon, of all people, bring it up if it wasn’t important? Important to who?”

  “He was trying to break us,” Jaeger said. “He failed.”

  Gabaran spun to face the large Earthlander. “No he didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” Jadeth frowned.

  “He knew exactly what to use against you. Jadeth, he knew exactly how many lives you had lived, didn’t he? How?”

  Jadeth paled, her fair skin nearly translucent in the dusty, cold light. “Six reincarnations. This… soul is reckless. He was right, but how? Why?”

  Sesti stepped into the light, her gaze hard on the shorter Eideili female. “Do you remember them? All of them? What about languages? Perhaps that is the key we are missing. Your past lives may have been of any of the races, Jadeth.”

  “Sometimes. Flickers. Of… images. Sounds. Feelings,” Jadeth whispered. She hugged her arms around her waist tight enough to bend the tunic’s chain links, sending them shivering like silver water. “But they feel out of order. As if my memories are crushed together and incomplete. I don’t remember any other languages other than Common Arali and Eideili.”

  “What about you?” Sesti stalked past Jaeger and confronted both him and Ivo as one. “You died together in this lifetime. What about your previous lifetimes? Were you always together?”

  Ivo exchanged wary glances with Jaeger. “We remember little, like Jadeth, mere impressions and I don’t know how many times, or what races, or even if we knew each other in our past lives.”

  “Earthlander memories only last as long as a single lifetime. The immortal soul is over powering them,” Sesti mused. She felt the tiny mage’s burning gaze like twin points of heat on her back. “We elves live for so much longer than Earthlanders that our ability to remember is greater as well. Twenty five thousand years is the average lifespan for both Eideili and Tevu. A hundred years is perhaps yours, right warrior?”

  Ivo frowned. “I think so. I’ve not known what it is to live so short a life.”

  “And Emaranthe remembers none at all?”

  Silence fell like a death knell.

  “Niece, I’d really like to know how you’ve come about this turn of thought.” Gabaran glared at the younger female. “Where are these words leading us?”

  “This. This book may be what you seek.” Sesti spun around to face the table and wrestled a large object from beneath her tunic A massive tome slammed onto the cracked stone, blasting another bout of dust into the beam of light. The resounding thump echoed Gabaran’s heart where it crashed into his ribs.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked. Awe and suspicion turned his voice rough. The written word was rare. An ancient art lost with time. And death.

  “The Windwalkers had some sort of study, a Lore master’s Hall, a Library.” Sesti pointed to the book, not caring that everyone else but Emaranthe was eyeing it askance. “Where it was found there was what intrigued me before I realized there was something off about it.”

  “Where?” Gabaran frowned at the object. “Off?”

  Bound books were forever linked to the myth that was the Windwalker race. Long dead or fallen to the permanent spells of their enemy, the winged warriors had been an ancient, advanced, and powerful race. They had been the first to be decimated by the Dro-Aconi when an unheralded attack came several thousand years before The Fall. Enslaved to this new, powerful enemy, or killed outright, their advanced knowledge died with them. It had been in their final hours when the Immortals had been created by desperate gods. Here now was a relic of the old ag
es.

  Sesti shook her head. “It’s completely blank when I touch it. Yet when I returned it to its resting place, I saw something. All I know is that it was…waiting for us.”

  “Waiting? For us? I don’t understand, how does this tome help us?” Jaeger frowned at the suspiciously immobile object. He preferred it to outright attack instead of sitting so deceivingly still on the shattered table top.

  Sesti rounded on the Earthlander with a scowl. “Are you eastern borne not Learned? A Lore master is a master of the word and spells they invoke. The Windwalkers were a Learned race. They mastered spells long before your pitiful gods threw you mortals to the wolves. This book is spelled!”

  “Sesti!” Gabaran barked her name. His face flushed. “Enough!”

  “No! Enough has long come and gone uncle! We hide in halls made by the first race to fall to evil. Do you not see why they fell first among all races?” Sesti hissed, her ears laid so far back that they vanished into her hair. “Because they had been the biggest threat to the Dro-Aconi. A race with magic and knowledge! Magic that might have stopped the invasion before it got this far. Your precious gods had come to our world and led an evil to our homes. Your precious gods realized too late what they had done! You don’t even know what The Crown of Gods is, and without knowledge you will never find it, nor its purpose, or be able to defeat your enemy!”

  Gabaran stilled. “Why do you say this, niece? I have no love for the old gods. Nor do I lay blame at their feet.”

  Sesti’s upper lip curled. “I read the old tomes, the old accounts of the world before. The Four were no saviors. This was their doing, uncle.”

  “They did what they had to,” Jadeth interrupted. Her face flushed redder than her braids. “They had no choice!”

  “They chose to let evil into our world and do nothing for many years while letting the Windwalker race perish! Why?”

  “Enough!” Gabaran roared. Dust shook from the walls and ceiling, turning the bleached white air cloudy. The room fell silent. “That is enough, Sesti.”