Phoenix Rising (10 page)

But
, he reminded himself,
my patron is quite different from the others
. The King of Hell undoubtedly would be suspicious of an underling amassing a power base. Voorith, likewise. Most of the beings of this dangerously unstable alliance would feel similarly. But his patron . . . no. As he thought on it, he realized that his patron would
expect
him to build his own power base, the better to be effective—and to be able to act outside of the brotherhood he still belonged to.

Then it is time to gather my own forces, my own allies,
he thought.
Getting them here . . . concealing them . . . these will be challenging, as will this most difficult masquerade I must play.
He sat down and leaned back in the seat, his smile broadening.
But ahh, the rewards when the last curtain comes down!

9

Kyri set her brush to a slow dry, brushing the long black waves into place as the simple enchantment gradually reduced the heavy dampness from her bath to the lighter flow of cascading black.
Victoria says she managed to do this while on adventure, I suppose I should at least do it while I’m at home.

She pulled on a houserobe and continued to brush the hair dry as she walked down the wide stone steps of Vantage Fortress. Kyri paused on the first landing and looked out of the wide, high north window, a habit any of the Eyes would have.

The first thing she could see was Evanwyl, the city, itself.
Not,
she admitted to herself,
really a
city
from the point of view of the other countries
. The Vantage estate was almost due south of Evanwyl, with the Watchland’s castle-fortress directly opposite to the north-northwest on a corresponding ridge of the Evaryll’s valley. The Evaryll, moderately wide but swift-flowing, was the focus of the town, three bridges crossing it at different points.

The buildings below contrasted starkly with the fortresses; they were open, airy, with light, strong doors almost the width of the walls that could be closed against wind and rain but were usually open. She could see the Monn, Jessir, and Tukal farms in the distance, the layered leaf roofs distinctive green-touched gold in the middle of the wide fields—
Oh, I think Tukal’s got a crop of gravelseed almost ready to bring in; that gray-blue color’s so distinctive.
The town buildings were roofed with split zuna wood but were still mostly open. When the night temperature never got below “cool,” you didn’t need to exclude the air.

Of course, they were still made of the strongest, lightest woods, and there were heavy bars for every door and window, and the reason lay beyond.

The immense spires of the Khalal range loomed in the distance, a wall of mountains that cut across the entire continent, ranging from the comparatively low peaks she could see—Harlock’s Spire at twenty-seven thousand feet, Urudani at twenty-three thousand feet, a few others—to the incomprehensibly high Mount Scimitar, sixty thousand feet in height, throne of Idinus of Scimitar, God-Emperor of the Empire of the Mountain, a wall of stone and peril unbroken for over three thousand miles.

Unbroken save for one narrow passage, directly in the center of the view from the north window, the reason even the smallest house could lock its doors, the reason every man, woman, or child knew how to swing some sort of weapon from the time they could stand, the reason she, as one of the Watchland’s Eyes, always took a moment to look to the threatening north. Even from here, the dark green of that gap looked different, the color shadowed and at the same time somehow more virulent, a green that only faded to normalcy a short distance from the Watchland’s Fortress. The Riven Forest was not a safe place, no, and it was merely a hint of the horrors on the other side of Rivendream Pass.

She shivered slightly, then turned away.
Almost impossible to believe that was once called Heavenbridge Way, before the Chaoswar.

She shook off the concern.
There hasn’t been much of anything out of there in years
, she reminded herself. The Eyes of the Watch—the Vantages, the Hightowers, the Thalindes, and others—had not relaxed their vigilance on the Pass, and with the help of the Watchland, his Arms and their Armsmen, and of course the Justiciars anything that tried to escape was driven back or killed.

At the bottom of the stairs she turned and started for the breakfast room, when she noticed the door to the underfortress open.
That’s odd
. With only her aunt, herself, and Urelle living here full time—Rion now spent most of his time with the Justiciars—there wasn’t any need to make use of the underfortress. Even Victoria’s servants rarely had to go there.

The lightglobes glowed with soft, clear light, showing that someone had gone down deliberately. “Hello?”

“It’s me, sis.”

“Urelle?” She went down the steps quickly, putting the brush in the robe pocket. Cooler air greeted her like slowly wading into a sunlit pool. “What are
you
doing down here?”

At the bottom of the stairs the underfortress continued back beneath the rest of Vantage Fortress; she knew there was at least one level below this one, but she’d never actually seen it and she seemed to remember Victoria saying they’d locked it off years back. “I’m in here,” came Urelle’s voice, and Kyri could see light from the open door at the far end of the hallway, a hundred and fifty feet down.

Even Kyri’s bare footsteps caused faint echoes to chase themselves down the corridor and back; the polished marble was chill enough to send a hint of gooseflesh up the backs of Kyri’s legs. She paid scant attention to that, because of the sheer surprise at where her little sister
was
.

“I don’t think you’ve
ever
been in this room before,” Kiri said as she reached the doorway.

It was a huge room, extending another seventy feet from the doorway, and thirty feet on either side of the doorway Kyri stood in. Lightglobes shone brightly at each corner and one, larger globe illuminated the center of the chamber, which was carved of the native gold-speckled granite and floored with the same light pink marble as the corridors.

“No . . . no, I never was.” Urelle looked nervous, a little afraid. “But . . . it’s been long enough. I’m still a
Vantage
, aren’t I?”

At the proud yet uncertain question, Kyri felt a sting of tears, bent and hugged her little sister. “You are most
definitely
a Vantage,” she said.

The room was cluttered around most of its perimeter with an assortment of what looked like the most worthless junk imaginable; pieces of half-burned timbers, twisted, blackened metal, crates with objects so melted or burned you could barely discern their original shape as cups or knives or shelves. There were stones covered with soot and broken by heat; a piece of what looked like clay with half a bootprint in it; a scorched length of wood with savage cuts through it, clearly one half of a similar piece that lay next to it, the middle splintered and broken.

In the center of the room, two doors of metal and wood, untouched by fire, a broken bar across their center. And on one wall were two shelves, and beneath the shelves, a small altar to Myrionar: the Balanced Sword, a sword held upright as the point of balance between a pair of scales. On the lower shelf, seven ornate jars; above them, two simple marble containers carven with the Vantage symbol of a tree and a hill.

Even after all these years, even being moved down here, it all still smells like smoke and iron.

“You are a Vantage,” she repeated. “And this . . . is our heritage. What’s left of it.”

Urelle shivered, looking at the one wall. “That’s . . . Mother and Father. And Garrick . . . and Toll. I remember Camberi . . .”

“They’ve all gone to the Balance, yes.”

Urelle bit her lip, then gazed at the mass of wreckage. “And . . . well, I can understand why we’re keeping
that
,” she pointed to a crate with half-melted but still glittering gold cups, “but . . . why all the rest?”

“Because,” Kyri said, and her voice was suddenly hard, “we still don’t know
who
, or
why
, and we are
not
destroying the evidence we have. Maybe we’ve missed something. We couldn’t preserve the whole house, but we all searched for anything that might tell us something about what happened.”

“I . . .” Urelle looked down. She didn’t speak for a moment, then looked back up. “Kyri, can I tell you something?”

“Of
course
you can.”

“I guess . . .” she hesitated, then like a swimmer nerving herself to dive into icy water, took a breath and plunged ahead, “. . . I guess I didn’t want to think about it. And I was awfully young. Anyway, I can’t remember really
anything
from the weeks afterward. I . . .” her voice trembled, “I remember we were so happy, me, you, and Rion, walking home, and then seeing the fire and you screaming. And . . . nothing really after that, until, oh, I don’t know, it must have been a long time, because I was in Auntie’s coach and I looked out the window and saw that the house was all gone and the black, dead spot in the grass and I started crying.” Urelle’s face crumpled and she sounded like she was going to cry again.

Kyri knelt down and hugged her little sister.
Myrionar’s Justice, I’d never realized she’d
forgotten
everything.

“Is it true,” Urelle said, voice wavering but obviously trying to move on, “that we had an
Adjudicator
here?”

“What? Sword and
Balance
, Urelle, you
can’t
have forgotten meeting
him
!”

But her sister’s gaze showed that, somehow, she had.

Kyri shook her head. “I . . . yes, we did. An old adventuring companion of Auntie’s, she called him ‘Bridgebreaker.’ You really don’t remember?”

“No, really, I don’t. ‘Bridgebreaker’?” Urelle giggled. “Why would she call
anyone
that?”

“Because a small bridge literally
did
break under him, when they were running for their lives. Get her to tell you the story, it’s both very funny and very scary at the same time. His real name is . . . let me see if I can get it right . . . T’Oroning’Oltharamnon
^h
GHEK,” the last sound sort of an inhaled choke or cough, “R’arshe Ness.”

Urelle’s expression of disbelief set her laughing. “I know, a ludicrous name, isn’t it? He let us use the very shortened form of ‘Toron,’ though.”

But Urelle’s next words showed she
had
kept up on her studies, because she recognized the
meaning
of a name like that. “Oh my
gods
, Kyri, he was a
Sauran
?”

“More than that, an
Ancient
Sauran, Master of the Marshaled Hosts and cousin to the Sauran King.”

Urelle looked mortified. “And he was a companion to
Auntie
when she was young? And I met him and
forgot
?”

“I’m sorry, Urelle. But you were . . . very unwell. And very upset.” She laughed again. “Not so unwell you refused to shout at him about his failure, though. He took it well, even apologized.”

Embarrassment and thoughtfulness chased each other across Urelle’s face. “You know . . . I think I vaguely remember that, now. Being very mad and shouting at something that looked as tall as the Fortress.”

“That was exactly it.”

“And the Justiciars and the Adjudicator Sauran, they couldn’t find
anything
?”

“Oh, they found
some
things. Enough to scare everyone concerned. But not anything that told us what we really
needed
to know.” She walked over, picked up a twisted black metal shape that broke even as she lifted it. “Oops. Well, this was part of the dining-room door. Had fire enchantments on it, you know, but it
burned
anyway. That told us whoever did this used fire essence, not just ordinary torches and oil or even a simple magic spell.” She dropped the piece back into the box. “And for the frightening . . . there’s the front door.” She pointed to the twin doors in the center of the room. “The wards and seals were
removed
. Not broken, not dispelled, but
removed
as though they had never been. Toron said the doors felt as though they had never been enchanted.”

“But . . . I thought that wasn’t possible, sis,” Urelle said after a moment. “Every spell, every mystical conflict, every act of the gods leaves its mark, or so my teachers always say. According to them, someone like an Adjudicator can read the truth of history in almost any shard or fragment that has been present at the events you seek.”

“Toron,” she said, remembering, “pointed out that almost nothing was actually
impossible
, just very, very hard. But he didn’t know exactly
how
this was done, but it was something very powerful and dangerous; the Chaoswars do that to everyone, even the gods, but to target something like this . . . well, that was what worried us. And that’s what we learned from Toron and the Justiciars and anyone else. Things like that. We learned how most of it was done, but nothing that really told us anything that we could
use.
But maybe . . . maybe one day something here
will
tell us something.”

She turned away, took Urelle’s hand. “Come on. It’s way past breakfast time, I’m not dressed for down here, and if you don’t even remember everything, I think Auntie Victoria should be talking to you, not me.”

The strain of having just admitted to a secret she must have been keeping for a long time, and of the discussion itself, was enough to make Urelle less argumentative than she might have been; it didn’t take more than another few minutes to get her upstairs.

But Kyri found she couldn’t forget that storeroom—or the heart-wrenching discovery that her little sister had blotted out the events of half a year from her mind. The images and questions crowded her mind, nagging her as she ate her breakfast, continuing as she did her quick patrol of the nearby neighborhood, and refusing to go away even as she faced Lythos in the training field. She saw Lythos’ narrow gaze, the
Artan
weaponsmaster’s disapproval clear in the deep violet eyes, as she made a novice’s mistakes.