Exiles & Empire

by Cheryl S Mackey

  “So now what Sesti? What are we here for?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, a quick glance at the group showed him why. She was not among them. He studied the shadows covertly, looking for any movement that would betray her presence. An avalanche of gritty sand peppered him. He peered up through the cloud of dust in time to see a dark linen trouser leg curl out of sight behind the raised arm of the nearest statue.

  He called up to the figure gracefully scaling the massive statues. “Sesti? What are you doing?”

  “Uncle,” Sesti’s voice echoed in the vast chamber. “I think this is it!”

  Dehil moved to join Gabaran and caught sight of her. His short bark of laughter earned him a glare from his friend.

  Gabaran buried a groan of frustration behind a palm.

  Dehil smirked and backed out of punching range.

  “What are you talking about?” Gabaran asked. He felt, rather than heard Ivo, Jaeger, Emaranthe, and Jadeth join them.

  Her narrow face peered down at them, this time from around a massive stone thumb. Her head barely cleared the giant metal orb perched above her. If they didn’t know better the usually curt elf was grinning.

  “It’s a map! A larger one, the whole of Ein-Aral!” Sesti said.

  The words slammed into Gabaran like a punch to the chest. He fought to hide the recoil of pain. Another map?

  “I don’t understand, how is that a map?” Dehil asked. The scar halving his face puckered in confusion, and his form wavered between solid and invisible for a split second.

  Sesti jammed her left boot between the giant thumb and the first finger of the statue and climbed higher. The orb now within reach, she jabbed it with a finger. It clanked within the statues’ grasp and wobbled with a grinding screech. They could now see large, uneven shapes curling around the orb. There appeared to only be a few and the rest of the orb was nothing but the bent metal bands curving to form its round shape. They stared at it, baffled.

  “Here, look.” She shoved both hands against the giant metal ball and it shifted again, spinning it on an unseen axis. She halted it by gripping a visible spine of points that raced in a seemingly random line from the top of one of the flattened blobs of the orb to the bottom. “These are mountains. These are specifically the western mountains. I’d know them anywhere, uncle. This is a map of our world. Our whole world. We can use this to compare your map to.”

  Gabaran tore his gaze from his niece and stared at the iron globe. “How is this possible? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Here. This was our home.” She gasped. She pointed to a particular set of peaks a third of the way down on the left hand side of the continent. “Tevu-Isid. I would know those ridges anywhere. Our mountains to the west. I wish we’d never left.”

  “You know why we left, Sesti.” Gabaran looked away, unable to meet her dark blue gaze when it landed on him. “We had no choice. That home no longer exists for us.”

  “She knew it would happen,” Sesti added. Her lips flattened. “She knew what would happen and she still forced our hand.”

  “Enough,” Gabaran whispered. “It wasn’t her fault.”

  “Neither was it yours, uncle.” Sesti turned away from the guilt on his face.

  “Fault for what?” Jadeth asked. She prowled around the statue and halted beside the giant elf with the slumped shoulders. The naked pain on his face made her heart skip. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Everything. I need to get up there. I need to see,” Gabaran muttered. He dragged shaking fingers through his white streaked hair and paced between the statue and the shelves at the edge of the light.

  Jadeth frowned at the old elf and dropped the subject. Dehil’s gaze met hers across the way and her ears flicked back in concern. Worry lined his face as much as the scar did.

  “We all want to see, Gabaran,” Emaranthe said. She circled the massive stone statue with a frown. She jumped to reach a crevice to wedge her gloved fingers into, but she was far too short. There was no way she could climb it, but the others could. There just wasn’t room for all of them up there. “But we can’t all get up there and see at the same time.”

  Jaeger stepped into the light and peered up at the tunnel bored straight into the mountain above them. Daylight, flat and gray, poured in, but chilled by the cold stone tunnel, the heat didn’t reach the fragile library. “I can fix that. Step back.”

  Ivo grimaced. “Jaeger, what are you doing?”

  Jaeger shot a glare at his brother. “What I can. I may not be able to read ancient maps, but I can to do something. Now watch out.”

  Ivo opened his mouth to argue, but snapped it shut when Emaranthe’s gloved hand crept into his. He gripped it tightly and let her lead him back into the deep shadows behind the shelves.

  Jaeger moved directly beneath Sesti. The female was still intently studying that particular part of the metal map.

  “Sesti, hold on to something tight. Don’t let go. It might get a little cold.”

  Sesti sank down between a giant thumb and forefinger and wrapped long limbs around it. She shivered and her breath frosted the icy air.

  Jaeger waited until the others backed into the shadows before reaching for the storm of icy energy balled somewhere between his heart and soul. He shifted his weight, using his solid body to shape and direct the energy. The cold, controlled, motions pulled on the icy web that entangled within. It wrapped around his heart and beat with it. He forced the guilt and pain into the ball of ice where they met…then released it.

  Frost crept over his still body and along the floor. The temperature in the massive room plunged. His breath clouded the air. Far above in the vertical shaft, a rumble shook the room. The booming rush grew louder and closer.

  Everyone shivered as the first snowflakes drifted through the oculus and danced on the icy breeze. A flurry of snow followed, but instead of falling gracefully, it spun around the base of the stone figures, melting into rivers of water and freezing as it arced and curved upwards around it in a tight spiral. Steps of ice solidified into a staircase curving around the statues, and then flattened at the top to form a platform encircling the hands holding the iron ball. The flurry calmed and when the last block of ice settled with a crackle, it stopped altogether.

  Jaeger dropped his hands. He stepped into the shadows to calm down. Frosty blue eyes regained their damp sheen and the thin blanket of ice layered over his simple tunic and trousers evaporated. The frigid water ate into his blood and bones. It didn’t want to return its dormant state. It tore at him, bit hard. It wanted to be released, but like Emaranthe’s fire, was deadly even under control. He ignored the lure, the greed that came with his gift, and the temptation to use it.

  Jaeger swore to never use it for anything but defense, and in nearly four hundred years he hadn’t caved yet. He swallowed the lump in his throat. Accidents, however…

  “There.” He leaned against a shelf and fought a shiver. The cold didn’t bother him. It never would, but his thin clothing was now soaking wet. His legs folded and he sat heavily on the damp stone floor. “You’re welcome.”

  “Gabaran, bring the map. We will go up first and make sure it’s stable,” Ivo said. He gestured for the giant elf to go first. Lines etched the corners of his eyes at the sight of his brother weakened. Seeing Emaranthe huddled at the far reaches of the library well away from Jaeger deepened them. Fire and ice did not mix well, a lesson they’d learned the hard way a long time ago. She would avoid contact with Jaeger’s magic if possible.

  “Look, it’s not breaking!” Sesti called down to them. She jumped and stomped her boots along the platform. “Let’s see if it will hold us all.”

  “It will,” Jaeger muttered. He spared her a half hearted glare before his eyes slipped shut again.

  “Good enough for me,” Gabaran grumbled. He climbed, convinced the blocks of ice wouldn’t crumble beneath his large frame. Ivo followed. Trust in his brother was absolute.

  “Are you coming, water boy?” Gabaran asked with a smirk. T
he prod would have roused Jaeger had he the energy left. He flipped the elf a rude gesture without opening his eyes.

  An answering bark of laughter echoed in the ice riddled chamber. “Fair enough, warrior. My thanks for your help, friend.”

  Jaeger shuddered. His lips thinned into a white line. A solid weight bumped his left shoulder, then slid to the floor beside him. A faint buzz of energy prodded his newly healed wounds.

  “Are you all right?” Jadeth asked. Her sharp blue gaze searched his drawn face.

  “I’m fine,” Jaeger muttered. “You don’t have to babysit me.”

  Silence reigned for a moment as the distant conversations of the others faded into the background.

  “I’m not worried,” she said. “Should I be? You’ve never tried to do that much before have you?”

  She set the hammer down at their feet. The giant weapon clanked on the wet stone, startling Jaeger out of his half daze. He glared at it from behind a ragged strand of wet hair. A faint green sheen warped the air around it and he realized that he’d never asked about it. She’d always had it. It had saved their lives. No questions necessary. Except, why would a healer carry a weapon of war?

  “Where did you get it?” He flicked a finger at the weapon and avoided her question. His voice scraped the dull background noise away as his curiosity overrode his natural sense of self preservation. For all of them, their lives prior to banding together had become a taboo subject. The past had always remained so, and secrets were left unsaid unless offered willingly. Her sharp breath told him that he braved treacherous ground, but something pushed his tongue onward. “You mentioned your mother had it, once before.”

  Jadeth exhaled raggedly, her eyes downcast. She stared at the sole remaining object of her mortal life. Jaeger asking didn’t bother her, in fact she wondered herself why she had been destined to heal the broken souls of immortals with a weapon designed to kill.

  “My mother had it. Said she’d been given it for safekeeping. Refused to say who for or from,” she said. The drone of voices buzzed above them, but she was so intent on the weapon and its past that she heard nothing. “She’d hid it in a chest in our home. I’d known it was there for a while, of course. When the Tainted attacked our village I grabbed it and made my first mistake.”

  Jaeger stared at the female elf slumped on the floor beside him. Her long braids dragged in a dirty puddle.

  “What mistake?”

  “I thought I could fight,” Jadeth said. She ran a shaking hand over face. “I was wrong. I spent the next three centuries hunting the things that destroyed my village and killed my mother. I died alone, and returned to be this.” She gestured to herself, the hammer.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Jadeth.” Jaeger frowned at the female he had trusted more than once with his life. He would have been dead, this version of him, permanently long ago without her gifts.

  Jadeth’s full lips thinned. “Then why can’t you believe that of yourself, Jaeger?” she asked. “Why do you torture yourself every day over a past you couldn’t have foreseen?”

  “Why do you do it?” he countered.

  She looked away. “Because I know it was my fault. I was there. I made rash decisions. Poor choices.”

  “At least you had the chance to fight for your loved ones. I never had that chance,” Jaeger said. His head dropped back against the stone shelf propping them up. “And that is what I can’t forgive myself for. I wasn’t there for them when they needed me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Emaranthe inched closer to Jaeger’s position. The quiet conversation between the bitter warrior and the reluctant healer drew her in. Ivo’s familiar baritone echoed from somewhere above where he and the others consulted on the strange round metal map.

  She didn’t dare get within reach of Jaeger just yet. Of all Immortals in The Unknown Sun they were the only two whose gazes burned with energy. Ice and fire. That they were opposing elements made their relationship one of distant fondness. Usually. The last time they’d touched she had saved his life nearly at the cost of hers. It had happened before of course, unintended, but with dire consequences, more than once over the years. She would never regret it either.

  It was his last whispered words that turned her gaze damp for once, however, and guilt burned deep within. She shouldn’t be listening in on family, especially the only family you had.

  Emaranthe stumbled to her feet and made her way back across the room along the dark rows of bookshelves. She tugged a glove off her left hand and studied it as she stepped into the pool of frosty light at the center of the room.

  Scars. Puckered, smeared skin. Reddened and always raw looking, she had hidden her hands in gloves for centuries. She closed her fingers, keenly aware of the tight, raw flesh pulling over mangled bones, but feeling nothing.

  A glint of light caught her eye. The tome, nestled in the stone hand, shimmered with a faint pulse of energy. Emaranthe pulled the glove on and watched the energy fade.

  Interesting. She jerked the glove off once more and the ancient book gleamed again. It seemed to want her to touch it. She slipped across the room to stand beneath the oculus before the giant hand.

  “Maybe it can show me who I am. Or maybe it can show us what we need to do,” she whispered. She curled her thin fingers into her palms. The scarred tissue flexed and pulled on her undamaged forearms, but it was a constant pain that she could deal with. The pain of not knowing her real name, or that of her people, was a bitter one.

  Her hand shook but her fingers stretched out.

  She stared at the plain brown cover and asked the one question she had never found an answer for. “Who am I?”

  A brown hand whipped out and captured hers in a grip of gentle iron.

  “Stop,” Dehil said. He released her quickly, his frown for the slightly shimmering tome.

  What color there was in her face leached out as it became painfully clear that the room was now silent and everyone was staring. They had heard and seen.

  She jerked away from Dehil and couldn’t make herself look up to where Ivo perched atop the ice platform, watching.

  “What are you hoping to see, Emaranthe?” Dehil spoke as if the rest of the audience mattered little. He kept his gaze on her pinched face. Her hair brushed her shoulders in waves of pale gold, but no ghostly fire clung to the wind tossed strands. “That book is spelled, by who we know not, nor why. It is dangerous.”

  She stared up at Dehil, and then searched out each carefully blank face of her friends. Most struggled to hide their shock, uncertainty, and Ivo didn’t even try. The worry on his tanned face added lines to the edges of his eyes and turned their clear green muddy in the stark light.

  Emaranthe’s gaze dropped to the book.

  “I want to know who I am.”

  “What if what you see is not what you expect?” Dehil asked. He backed away from the female and the book, trusting her to hear him out at the very least before acting.

  “I feel like I need to. I don’t know why, but it is calling to me.” She shook her head and the ragged ends of her hair danced on the cool draft that sharpened as Ivo appeared at the bottom of the steps. His fear and heartache became a tangible thing in the wind. It didn’t caress the skin, but raked.

  “Emaranthe, are you sure?” Ivo asked. He gained the bottom of the steps but didn’t move closer. “We love you as you are now, you know. I love you more than you can imagine. I always have. You don’t have to do this.”

  Tears stung her eyes.

  “If you love me you will let me find myself, Ivo,” she whispered. “Wouldn’t you do the same?”

  “No. I don’t need a spelled book to tell me my past,” he said. “I live with those regrets every day of my life.”

  “But what if there is more to it? More that you don’t know. Other memories.”

  Ivo shook his head.

  “What do you mean?” Jadeth asked. She stepped into the light on Emaranthe’s other side, but kept her distance. A sharp breeze pluc
ked a braid from Jadeth’s shoulder and tossed it, punctuating the uneasy tension in the room.

  Emaranthe glanced over her shoulder at Jadeth, her face a mask of tears and pain.

  “He remembered me. He’d known me, from before. I saw that look on his face, the one that you have when you know the truth that no others do.”

  Jadeth sucked in a ragged breath and nodded, fighting tears. “I saw. I know that look well.”

  “What do I do?” Emaranthe pleaded to Jadeth before turning to Ivo and Dehil. Jaeger stepped into the light, a slight limp all that remained of his injuries, and she swung to face the man who was also like a brother.

  They were the same, though opposite. Fire and ice battled in their wide gazes, their souls not only controlling their powers, but displaying it for all to see. Jaeger’s gaze drilled into hers, shifting pools of ice blue that reflected the fiery gold of hers. She blinked when the frost faded, leaving his naked gaze infinitely sad.

  He swallowed and turned away. “Do it. You are far braver than I, Emaranthe. I fear I would never have the strength to look back and face my past. It would kill me.”

  She nodded, her gaze now on Gabaran.

  Gabaran studied the girl he loved as a sister. He had named her. Had shown her the ways of his people, but she never belonged. She was always different. Too short. Too thin. Too powerful. He and Sesti had accepted her, but few others had. The cold halls of Tevu-Anat had been her home, but not her homeland and its people not hers to claim kinship to. A heavy weight settled in his gut. Guilt battled with honesty and even though he personally discounted such thoughts, they were true.

  “We have no right to stop her,” Gabaran stated. His emotionless voice seemed to suck the air from the room. “Her past may be a key to the future. If Rodon knows something more about her, any of you, then we must do everything in our power to find what it is and use it to our advantage before he does.”

  Scarred fingers brushed the spine. The papery hide rasped beneath damaged nerves, unfelt. Emaranthe ignored the lack of touch. She hadn’t been able to feel in over three hundred years. Instead she watched the thread of light trace the path her fingers took.