The Redstar Rising Trilogy

by Rhett C. Bruno

“A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “I am not being dramatic,” he said. “It is why we do not sleep. We upyr are already dead. When we allow ourselves to drift, we find ourselves in this very place. It is how I know our guide. It is how I know the beast.”

  “So, we’re in your dream?”

  “No. Dead men don’t dream.”

  Kazimir lay back and closed his eyes regardless. Whitney tried to get him to keep talking a few times, but if the upyr couldn’t sleep, he was an excellent actor. With his arms folded over his chest, Whitney wished he’d place them lower.

  An indeterminable amount of time passed as he rowed, no end in sight. There was no sun or moons to track the day or night. The sky remained dark red, same as the water only still. There were no gulls or spouting whales, just the gentle song of the spirits. Whitney’s eyelids grew heavy. His head fell off to the side a few times as he struggled to stay awake. He leaned on the oar and finally gave in.

  “You can’t sleep in a dream,” he told himself. “Sora’s going to wake me up with a bucket of water back on the sea.” He blinked a few times, minutes passing each time as he dozed off. Then, suddenly, they reopened, and he noticed a few bumps sticking out from the endless seascape through a layer of fog.

  “Hey,” Whitney said.

  No answer.

  He extended his leg and kicked Kazimir in the foot without looking over at his disgustingly pale, naked body. The upyr didn’t argue or respond, just sat up.

  “What’s that?” Whitney asked. “Is that land?”

  Kazimir peeked over. “Looks like mountains.”

  “Yes! They are, aren’t they! Oh, gods, get me off this boat, and I’ll worship all of you for the rest of my life.” Whitney started rowing harder, the resistance of the spirits growing stronger.

  He kept at it. His arms burned with soreness even though he’d hoped Kazimir had been wrong and he wouldn’t feel pain here. Nobody gets hurt in dreams after all.

  “Uh, why are those mountains moving?” Whitney asked.

  The more he rowed, the more land appeared on either side of the mountains, extending to the horizon in either direction. The land drew closer, gaining shape through the fog, but the hills never seemed to grow no matter how close they got. Then, they vanished beneath the sea. Whitney’s brow furrowed. A break in the land, the mouth of a narrow river, appeared. Whitney felt the current pulling on the oar and stopped rowing, but it was like no river entry he’d ever seen. The water drained in front of them as it towed the boat forward.

  “Those were no mountains,” Kazimir said, eyes snapping all the way open. “He’s returned.” He hopped to his feet just as a massive tentacle, missing its tip, shot up into the air and slammed down in front of their boat. Whitney soared back as the water swelled, but Kazimir caught him and tossed him down. He pried the oar out of Whitney’s grasp which had tightened out of reflex.

  Kazimir stabbed it out over the bow and struck the beast in an eye, eliciting a roar that would have stopped Whitney’s heart if adrenaline didn’t have it thumping against its rib cage.

  “I thought you said it didn’t want to hurt me!” Whitney said.

  “The ferryman is gone. Now you’re just in the way.” A tentacle lashed at him, and he sprawled out to duck under it. Whitney stayed on the floor of the boat and dared not rise. He considered kicking the upyr overboard to save his own skin—it was the least the upyr deserved for all he’d done—but Whitney’s muscles had seized.

  A tentacle burst through the bottom of the boat, rising like a disgusting column of lumpy skin and suction cups. They soared into the air, Kazimir nearly flipping over the side of the boat and doing Whitney’s work for him. The vessel tilted forward, and they both slid toward the bow.

  Whitney found himself staring down into the face of a creature larger than a dozen zhulong. Its many tentacular appendages waved around beneath and above the surface like so many snakes preparing to strike. Its two large eyes stared back at him, wider than any wagon wheel in Yarrington, and both of them as dark and soulless as Kazimir’s, like they were related somehow.

  It let out a primal scream—something Whitney would have never considered possible from any sea creature. With its giant maw open, rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth could be seen, hunks of flesh lodged between them, and they were being lowered into it.

  “I’m dreaming,” Whitney told himself. “I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming.”

  “It is not time yet, beast!” Kazimir shouted. He snapped the oar in half with his foot. The wianu shook the boat, and Kazimir flipped over the side, falling straight toward its mouth. He grabbed onto a tentacle before being carved to pieces. Swinging, broken end of the oar in hand, he stabbed it into one of the beast’s eyes.

  The wianu cried out, the sound so primordial it snapped Whitney back to attention. Its tentacles thrashed, and the boat went with them, snapping in half at the stern. Whitney held onto the front half as it flew through the air over the beast, then slammed into the mouth of the river.

  Kazimir leaped from tentacle to tentacle as it tried to grab him. He didn’t move lightning fast as he had back in Winde Port, but Whitney had never seen such precision.

  The beast’s head exploded from the surface behind him, blood black as pitch leaking from its eye. Its teeth gnashed, and it caught Kazimir on the back with one last desperate swipe of a tentacle, knocking him into the river ahead of the half-a-boat Whitney clung to.

  Whitney stuck a leg out as the boat went by, now caught in the river's current. Kazimir grabbed hold of it, and Whitney reeled him in.

  The wianu crawled up onto the land, a mess of tentacles allowing it to stand. Its screeches filled the air, but it didn’t follow. Whitney didn’t know if it was because the river grew too narrow, or Kazimir’s blow had hurt it too badly, but he wouldn’t complain.

  “What the hell did you do to piss that thing off!” Whitney yelled.

  “Only what I had to,” Kazimir said through a series of coughs.

  The swift current whipped them around a bend in the river which got thinner and thinner. They hit a rock, and the front of the boat broke open before it started spinning. Now Whitney and Kazimir held onto what was essentially a piece of debris.

  The rapids whipped them until Whitney could feel his fingers beginning to give way. He cursed himself for rowing so hard toward mountains that turned out to be a giant octopus monster. Brackish water filled his mouth, beat against his eyes.

  Then he let go.

  He tumbled through the water, blind, terrified. His shoulder hit a rock, lucky it wasn’t his head, and he flipped around. He screamed, though only bubbles came out. He found himself so dizzy he wasn’t sure which way was up. Then something squeezed the back of his neck and heaved him out of the water. Whitney looked from side to side, in shock. Gone was the raging river carrying them in from the sea. Gone were the echoes of the crying wianu. He wasn’t sure how he’d been drowning, because now they were within a gentle stream. Kazimir stood in the chest-high water, holding Whitney up, allowing him to cough up water. The remnants of the boat floated on ahead.

  Kazimir gazed back, eyes still bright with adrenaline. Then he drew a long, tired breath. “We’re safe from it here, I think.”

  “You mean you’re safe.” Whitney shook himself free and fell back into the water again. His head dipped, but his feet found purchase in the soft river-bed.

  “Do not think the beast innocent. It hungers for souls and would not hesitate to devour yours.”

  “Maybe I should have left you back there so we could test that.”

  Kazimir didn’t reply, but he didn’t have to. Now that things had calmed Whitney couldn’t help but wonder more about what he was thinking saving the upyr who’d only just threatened to kill him back with Sora. He imagined Kazimir wondered the same.

  He cursed his talent for acting first and thinking later.

  “So where is here?” Whitney asked once he waded through the water enough for it to be at his waist,
where he finally felt like he could breathe. Whether the air around him was real or imagined, he was desperate for it.

  “The boat's destination is different for all who arrive in this realm.”

  “Are your answers to everything so vague?”

  “It is the nature of this place.”

  Whitney stifled a groan. Hills rose and fell, there was a forest downriver, and smokestacks billowing from beyond the river's crest. He put a hand through his hair, grimacing from his sore shoulder. “Shog in a barrel,” he said as he took another look from side to side.

  “What is it now?” Kazimir questioned.

  “Shog. In. A. Barrel.”

  “What is wrong?” Kazimir asked more directly.

  Before Whitney could answer, a young boy came jogging down a path toward them through the brush.

  “Greetings travelers!” he exclaimed. “Welcome to Troborough!”

  IV

  THE KNIGHT

  Torsten’s dirty, bloodstained hands wrapped the rusty bars of his own personal cell in the deepest dungeon beneath the Glass Castle. From there, he imagined how many wrongdoers and miscreants had stood in that very spot—how many of them he’d put there. Cultists, murderers, and thieves, like Whitney.

  Now, he was stuck on the same side as all of them. Damned to hear the eternal grousing of those in the dark, dank cells around him who proclaimed their innocence as if they’d forgotten how to say anything else.

  If Elsewhere was as legends described—a place where one was cursed to endure their greatest fear over and over for the rest of eternity—Torsten couldn’t imagine worse. His only solace was knowing he wouldn’t be one of the prisoners left to decay, forgotten. Redstar wouldn’t have that. One morning, Torsten would be dragged outside and hanged before his people as a traitor.

  And that was what broke his heart the most, even though he knew it was wrong. He knew his only concern should be the Glass Kingdom, left in the hands of those with unclear motives, but if Redstar had proven anything, it was how weak Torsten truly was.

  His fingers slipped from the cold metal, and he fell back against the stone floor. Cobwebs in the corner were his only company, gathered around a stick-shaped object which he dared not get closer to observe. Some cells had port-holes, but not his. His had chain-links hanging from the ceiling and more on the floor. Attached to one was a solid, iron mask with only a few holes poked in for air.

  Redstar was a cruel and spiteful bastard, putting Torsten in the very cell he himself had occupied after Torsten brought him back from the Webbed Woods. The very cell he’d been chained in, accused of cursing the then-Prince and purporting himself as Uriah Davies, before suddenly, nobody seemed to care anymore.

  Torsten fought the urge to pound his fists into the stone. Instead, he used them to prop himself up onto his knees. He regarded the moldy ceiling and closed his eyes.

  “Iam,” he said.

  “Ain’t no gods down here!” an old coot in the adjacent cell cackled.

  Torsten ignored him, sliding further into the cell and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Iam, I cannot say if You have abandoned me, though I would not question it if You have. I have failed You, mind and body. I have sinned beyond forgiveness in the murder of a brother of the Shield, Sir Havel Tralen. And I have failed to bring to justice a rebel responsible for so much death.”

  He paused to gather his breath. For so long, when he spoke with Iam, he could feel his God around him, as if wrapped in His loving embrace. Now, Torsten felt hollow.

  “Forget me if You must,” he said. “Let me rot down here, but do not forget about them. A devil wearing human flesh walks amongst Your most devout, plying them with a silver tongue. Perhaps we have allowed Your light to wane in this past years, but You mustn’t abandon them. They need You now more than ever.”

  “You think your god can hear you all the way down here?” Redstar said, his voice like needles stabbing Torsten’s brain. He leaned against the bars of the cell, the light of a torch illuminating him so that the mark covering half his face was like pooling blood.

  Torsten didn’t answer.

  Redstar picked something from his teeth, probably leftovers from some great feast had in honor of the ‘Hero of Winde Port.’

  “The realm of the buried belongs to a different deity,” he said. “Perhaps you appeal to her?”

  “Did you come here to gloat, Redstar?”

  “Gloat? Why ever would I do that?”

  “Because you’ve stolen everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  “Oh, Torsten. You have me all wrong. It pains me so to see you like this. Pains me to have been forced to do what I did for the good of the kingdom.”

  “Then walk upstairs and tell the King of your lies. Tell him exactly how you cursed him, and not all the fiction of you helping him see the truth. But how you wanted revenge for being shunned by your sister and left behind in the tundra by Liam. Tell him how you stole the face of Sir Uriah Davies.”

  Redstar sighed. “I can do all of that, and you’ll still be the only one of us whose hands claimed the life of a fellow King’s Shieldsman.”

  “Just leave me to exile!” Torsten barked, his fist pounding the wall. His knuckles split open against the immovable stone.

  “Oh, but I have come to like you so much. After everything that’s happened between us, it’s almost as if… as if I created this version of you. As if I’m writing your story.”

  “You’re no god, Redstar.”

  “Now that we agree on, but I do know one thing. This, in here, is not where or how your story ends. The Buried Goddess promises so much more.”

  “Do you truly believe all the lies you spout? You foretold her glorious return back in the Webbed Woods, but where is she?”

  “Sitting on the throne you so cherish, in the ears of your king.”

  Torsten scoffed. “Face it, Redstar. She remains buried as she ever was. I looked into Pi’s eyes; I saw no all-powerful goddess in them. I saw his father.”

  Redstar allowed a grimace to show just for a second before he regained his infamous, shog-eating grin. “Nesilia’s time is coming. She lies just beyond the veil, waiting to step back into the world she helped create at Iam’s side.”

  “But she isn’t here.” Torsten leaned forward, realizing that he finally had the upper hand in one of their spats. “You didn’t expect that, did you? All this scheming is just you biding time.”

  “Preparing her domain for her true arrival.”

  “Just admit it. You’re as lost as the rest of us.”

  “Do you remember the hymn I recited in the Woods? ‘Eye always wary and never known fear—'”

  “Not this drivel again.” Torsten rolled his eyes.

  “’Abruptly disrupted by a single shed tear,’” Redstar continued. “'Beneath soil and stone, the Lady awaits. The heart of her lover shall ne'er abate.’”

  “Enough. I remember the damn song.”

  “Then perhaps you can help me.” Redstar sat and folded his legs. “I’ve studied those ancient etchings of the God Feud endlessly alongside the hymn inscribed around its border. It was supposed to bring her back from Elsewhere, you see. The blood of Bliss spilled by a servant of both Iam and Nesilia. We killed the Spider Queen together. You buried her blood with Pi’s orepul beneath Mount Lister. Yet all that rose was the boy and her whispers. My Lady’s true essence remains trapped in the prison made by Iam.”

  Torsten’s throat went dry. The orepul? He’d been so busy with the kingdom; he never examined the night Pi was reborn in detail. He’d believed it was Iam’s hand, or Redstar’s curse finally wearing off. But now he knew why the boy king was so unpredictable and disconnected. If it wasn’t a miracle of Iam that brought him back, it was unnatural, dark magic that should never have been trifled with.

  He’s a liar, Torsten reminded himself. Every word from his mouth is poison.

  “You didn’t put all that together yet?” Redstar remarked, clearly noticing the shock written all over Torsten
face. “Yes, my thick-headed friend. Pi lives again thanks to blood magic.”

  “He died from it too,” Torsten snapped.

  “That was never my intention, but I can’t say it’s been bad for me.” He raised his arms, gesturing to the fact that he was free.

  “Yet your goddess remains buried.”

  “Not for long.” He scooted closer like he was listening to a lecture from Holy Wren. “There’s something in all the signs that I’m missing or ignoring. Something forgotten.”

  Then she will arise, in glorious day

  Through will and through fire, her enemies slain

  Forgotten, abandoned, but no longer bound

  From Elsewhere and exile, she’ll receive her crown

  “She will arise,” Redstar said. “But when? How? Something is missing.”

  “Well, I hope you search forever.”

  “If that is what it takes. But I hear her, even now, telling me the answers I seek are somehow connected to you.”

  “I’ll die before I help you.”

  “Oh, please. A few days down here, you’ll be looking forward to my visits. Don’t worry, dear Torsten. Together we’ll find out what was missing, and by the time this year's Dawning comes, our Lord and Lady will be reunited in this realm again.”

  “Leave him be, brother.”

  Torsten was ready to drive his fists even harder into the stone from frustration when he heard Oleander’s familiar voice, somehow both soothing and authoritative at the same time.

  “Sister!” Redstar exclaimed. He pulled himself to his feet. “What a delightful surprise. Come to visit your favorite knight?”

  “What I’ve come for is none of your business,” she replied.

  “Of course. The former Wearer and I were merely discussing his responsibilities in this transition of power. It will be so difficult deciding on a new Wearer who can finally live up to the reputation of Sir Uriah Davies. I’d take on the mantle myself but, Arch Warlock, dradinengor, Prime Minister; my responsibilities are endless these days.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way. Now leave us.”