Chapter Three
PROGENY
THERE WAS NO TITLE, no author, and two other large volumes to look through, eventually. The Mother Superior told him to read the last entries from the manuscript lying on the table before trying the writing. You were born with the talent of enuncio, she told him. All language is within your grasp. She smiled and closed the heavy door behind her. Dayfid was alone in the immense pillared library, where the early morning sun cast rectangular beams of light through high narrow windows, illuminating the motes of dust in the air. Surrounding him were shelved rows of polished oak filled with bound books and thick tomes and treatises rolled in parchment.
He felt a little prickle just touching the old book with his left hand. Something faintly stirred in him a second time when he opened the crispy binding and read through the entries. A flush coursed gently through him, tingling all the way to his extremities. Just as before, the quill took his hand and dipped itself in ink, and in handwriting that was not his own, more words scribbled themselves:
I am the eye in a storm of curious mystery, the answer that spurs infinite questions. Do not doubt me, or the savage evil of those who went before. The Sisterhood made us; their memory is our memory, their deeds are our deeds, their flesh is our flesh. Yes, I am still flesh. I am also the shadow that stalks their darkest dreams. But even as their enemy, I strengthen them, and bring revelation.
Once again Dayfid marveled at how the haunting voice in his mind had unbelievably become coherent words on paper. Although he didn’t entirely understand them, they were lucid words, at least more than they had ever been before. The Mother Superior said they were the words of his father.
But the hushed breeze that channeled such words and thoughts suddenly swirled like a storm inside his brain. It became difficult to focus and he closed eyes that threatened to roll back into his head. He began breathing slowly and deeply . . .
It was a warning sign.
The library door swung open and Sorer Tamarane entered with another cup of the bitter tea. She helped Dayfid sip the steaming concoction that helped calm him. The convulsion slowly receded into the background, lingering, but not taking him into its grasp. He was new to the Sisterhood and uncertain of what to expect, but the Sorers had shown him there was hope, perhaps even a cure for his affliction. That was why he had accompanied them to this strange place they called Saorsa, and the tiered city of stone walls and towers and glittering crystals known as New Cathonia, which seemed like a medieval fortress lost somewhere in time.
Yet Dayfid had lingering doubts. He recalled only bits and pieces from the domain of Talus Arna―the only world he knew to exist up until a few days ago―and the hazy memories of his troubled life there seemed to be fading away. Even the uncanny events that brought him from that world to this one were becoming murky, although the last of it remained vivid and replayed in his mind. He remembered the sun going down in the hills beyond a ramshackle fuel station somewhere in the badlands, and a neon sign with an arrow and just one letter flashing. An old dark skinned man with deep age lines creasing his face sat on a bench outside, vibrant blue eyes watching him, long silver hair gathered beneath a bandana of green silk. Dayfid had been compelled to keep looking back at the man even after the two Sorers, who somehow held him in thrall with their voices, ushered him into their vehicle and drove away.
Down the broken tar highway and into the lingering sunset they sped, until the road abruptly came to an end. An unmarked dirt track, narrow and rugged and increasingly difficult to navigate, led them to a half-buried ruin deep in the wind-swept desert. Off in the distance, hawks cried and coyotes yipped as twilight finally suffused the sky. A priestess dressed in a dusty black habit, who the Sorers coolly greeted as dark sister, showed the way down into the candle-lit remains. They came to stand hand in hand at the center of a vault with symbols and glyphs and cryptic patterns ingeniously inlaid into the floor in the fashion of a dial. Stone grated upon stone and the intricate construct began rotating as the dark sister raised her glowing wand and traced the circle around them. Her tongue danced in silky intones and half-whispered invocations as a roiling anti-force was invoked in the very fabric of reality, an inward spinning torus of eerie light and sound and vibration that drew them forth. For a few moments Dayfid felt a deathly cold and became fearful and disoriented, but then the Sorers, whose names were Marta and Lorene, gave him a reassuring squeeze and informed him they were through the wormhole.
A vast swamp, dark and entangled and forbidding, waited on the other side. There was no chamber or alchemic focus point for negotiating the wormhole here; it simply existed, swirling and pulsating like some anomalous rent in the marshland. The muddy ground surrounding it was guarded by hideous reptilian creatures, large and muscular and man-like, that bore pikes, swords and war-hammers and hissed menacingly, but were quickly hushed by the dark sister. Still another strange figure, this one appearing more human than beast although his face remained hidden within the cowl of a woolen cloak, deftly poled a narrow wooden boat close enough to shore for them to board without wading into the water. The dark sister stayed behind, yet she and the Sorers shared surprised nods and an amiable parting, for it seemed unexpected that the Boatman had come.
Their silent and mysterious guide then steered them through the treacherous and green misted bayou, which was illuminated by a strange glow rising from the depths. Scattered through the trees and low-lying fields along the way, Dayfid caught glimpses of corroded armaments in broken cases mingled beside scraps of rusty sheet metal, twisted iron beams, shards of broken glass and shredded rubber, failed vehicles for transport and earthmoving, as well as crashed flying machines―some that even contained skeletal remains. All of this wreckage was entrapped by foul smelling ponds and pools of mud and the dizzying network of waterways, and struck him as out of place somehow.
They sighted several boats crewed by the hulking reptilian creatures, but the Horks and Trolls, as they were called, seemed wary and kept their distance. Eventually the Boatman left them at the dock of a safehouse where armored swordsmen with shields and another Sorer, her habit crisp and white, stood waiting for them. Dayfid learned that the armed men were Outriders, soldiers and peacekeepers of the Cathonian Church, and that the foul marshes were known as the Nah Kenna Swamp. After donning a spare set of riding leathers and being reminded of his intuition for horsemanship, six of the fierce Outriders and Sorers Marta and Lorene had escorted him from the safehouse all the way to New Cathonia on horseback over the next several days. Once there, he had been delivered into the care of the expectant Mother Superior and her practitioner, Sorer Tamarane, dazed and a bit saddle sore.
Dayfid concentrated again on his present surroundings, testing his equilibrium. The wooden table where he sat was on a stone dais and at his back was a dark mirror framed in finished wood, standing nearly as tall as he. The tint was deeper at the edges, which were slightly beveled, and faint ripples shimmered across its curved surface. Somehow, he knew the Sorers watched him through this glass; in fact, he was more aware of it than anything else in the room.
The dais occupied the center of the immense, roundish chamber. The floor was a carefully laid pattern of cut flagstone and torches burned in sconces set into walls of intricate brickwork, while more light came from brilliant crystals mounted into the four pillars supporting the ceiling. The area marked by the pillars was ringed by a carved wooden railing, with more tables and benches arranged around the outside. Each aisle of books converged upon this point.
Perhaps half an hour passed before the Mother Superior returned. “Sorer Tamarane said that you had another little episode?”
“It was milder this time. It’s almost gone now.”
She looked into his eyes. “I am informed that someone has followed you here, Dayfid, someone you know. It is likely he will be coming to visit you soon.”
“Who could that be, Mother Superior?”
“Do you remember the one named Jaernyth, from the desert hospice on the domain of Talus Arna?”
Something in her lulling voice triggered his recall and suddenly, Dayfid did remember! He had been sent to the hospice for treatments of his seizures with rare herbs and spider venoms. An old tribesman had regularly visited the terminal patients there―it was the same man who had been at the fuel station, beneath the neon sign!
“The others called him the Medicine Man.” Dayfid looked at her quizzically. “But why did he follow me here, Mother Superior?”
“He is your kinsman and has been watching over you for years, Dayfid. He is a Shaman and hails from Rhangoria in the western region of this very island. Along with you and your father and brother, he shares a rare and unique pedigree found only among certain Rhangorian clans, which is how the Prophecy of the Sacred Flesh began, many centuries ago.”
“You mean I was born here, Mother Superior, in this ‘world?’”
“Yes Dayfid. This is your home.”
♦♦♦
Mother Superior Shyla-Cann held her exhilaration in check. She would be forever grateful to Sorers Marta and Lorene for delivering young Dayfid safely back into the hands of the priestesses of the New Order. She was determined to keep her impassioned promise to the prophet, made at the devotion of his ritual sacrifice before the priestesshood attending the ceremony at Mission’s Cross―his final apotheosis. Indeed, she would do everything in her considerable power to keep Dayfid Cruz from suffering the same dark fate as his brother, Crystian.
Shyla-Cann examined the words he had written while she was away. She then looked at him for a few moments, studying the oracular character of his crimson eyes to make certain they were tracking properly. Satisfied, she smiled. “Shall we begin your lesson?”
Dayfid nodded. “What was my father’s name?”
She ignored the question. “He was a great Shaman and could readily pass between the membranes of worlds, the boundaries of perception and consciousness that separate realities. In his lifetimes of study and tutelage in the combined alchemies of magic and sorcery, he mastered the mysteries of these temporal structures, how they change from boundaries to barriers.”
“If he can write with my mind and my hands, why not tell me his name?”
“His name was Davada Cruz.”
Shyla-Cann observed as her carefully chosen words echoed through Dayfid’s mind, noting the startled vestiges of his awakening. Especially after the strange writing, the revelation clearly scared him, but still he did not comprehend. He mouthed what amounted to his own name back at her.
“You mean the great magician . . . was my father?”
She nodded, but didn’t let him dwell on it. “The combined alchemies transcend the mere prestidigitation employed by most practitioners of magic. Your father’s sublime abilities allowed him to execute daring and miraculous stunts without the use of staging or props, affording him infamy as an escapist and illusionist. In other words, his was not trickery or sleight of hand, but real magic. He was greatly aided by the facility of prescient vision.”
“But Mother Superior,” Dayfid interrupted, “if the Sisterhood trains me, like my father, will I also become a great and famous magician?”
Shyla-Cann held up an index finger and continued. “The chemistry of this magical perception and intuition included a large spectrum of elements, from the reincarnation of his soul, which traced back ten generations of the Cathonian Sisterhood, to the daily nourishment of his acute senses and all points in between. Davada Cruz was trained and tutored by us in each childhood, and during times when he struggled with vanity and ego to maintain and control the uncontrollable, we tried to make sure it was the Sisterhood he leaned on.”
“What do you mean by the reincarnation of his soul?”
“The Prophecy of the Sacred Flesh is the consummation of the Cathonian doctrine of divine birth and involves a kind of genetic sorcery. Your father was not only a great magician, he was a prophet and lived and died many times.”
Dayfid now stirred on his bench. “He was more . . . is more, than a prophet of the Cathonian Church,” he stammered. “Davada Cruz is, is a god!”
“Very good,” replied Shyla-Cann. The enuncio was taking effect. The oral history, delivered in the proper tone, inflection and emphasis, was beginning to arouse his innate memory and ability to assimilate.
“In his lifetimes,” she pressed on, “your father became a savant at the polar equations of light and dark energy, and grew to understand the fragile and reckless order with which they manifest in the material world. He learned not to fight against what was beyond him to defeat, or to try and comprehend the incomprehensible. In each incarnation, he simply relaxed and let more of life’s mystery surge through him. This surrender was how he achieved mastery. You must learn to do the same.”
“Like with the writings.”
“Precisely, Dayfid,” she replied. “You are doing very well with those.”
“And the last entries in the manuscript, they were channeled through my brother, Crystian?”
“Almost ten years ago. But it took a long time for him to learn how to do what you have already done.”
“What happened to him?”
“I’m afraid the question of your brother and his destiny is best left for another day.”
“Does being born of the sacred flesh . . . of our father,” he squirmed and stammered again, “also make, make us gods?”
Mother Superior Shyla-Cann smiled at him, content with the lesson but concerned nonetheless. Dayfid wasn’t as scattered as Crystian had been, but still, the soulsickness had manifested deeply. She knew it was only a matter of time before her practitioners could control his fits, but until then, he would have to be kept under a close watch. Still, the young progeny was bright and eager.
“That remains to be seen.”
♦♦♦
The Mother Superior came for him again later that afternoon. She and Dayfid descended from his tower rooms above the pillared orchards and gardens, crossing causeways and crystal crowned courtyards and winding down stairways until they finally reached a thick, guarded doorway in a remote area on the ground level. Wordlessly the sentries allowed them to pass. Waiting below was a series of candle-lit stone stepways, dim passages reinforced with masonry and wooden-beamed ceilings, and archways barred by iron grates leading to sizable wings with rows of heavy, tight-fitting doors. Dayfid realized he was being ushered through a massive keep that had been adeptly forged into the maze of underground caverns beneath the city of New Cathonia.
“Each incarnation of the sacred flesh is preserved,” offered the Mother Superior, “and used in sacred rituals that have come to redefine the doctrine of divine birth.”
“But how did my father die?”
Dayfid followed the folds of her white habit deeper into the stronghold, his words echoing back at him. The Mother Superior did not answer his question.
She led him down a long passageway and into a dusky ante-chamber where strange, medicinal smells permeated the air. Illuminated by the glow of her crystal wand, they came to stand before a low doorway framed by a dense wall of stonework. A circular bronze device for levering aside the iron grate was set above the opening. Many names were inscribed upon it and as the Mother Superior stood before the bronze plate, she carefully traced the etched letters with her fingertips. All at once a faint light began to emanate from within and she grasped the hand grips tightly; gears creaked and moaned as she turned the device and the heavy door opened.
They stepped through the threshold into a seven-sided crypt with rectangular mirrors mounted into each wall and elaborate symbols and characters graven into talismanic seals across the floor. The ceiling was framed in slabs of shimmering obsidian and centered by an inlaid cross enclosed within a circle, both constructed of brilliantly clear crystals.
“This is the Vault of the Circled Cross,” the Reverend Mother spoke softly. “It is one of the Cathonian Sisterhood’s supreme achievements in the combined alchemies of magic and sorcery, and one of our greatest secrets.”
In the middle of the chamber was a stone casket, also adorned with sigils and cyphers. Another circled cross of glittering crystal was inlaid into the heavy lid. Stone grated against stone as she slowly opened it.
“This is the answer to your questions, Dayfid.” She stood aside.
In the faintly glowing vault of alchemic concatenation, death suddenly appeared a foul reality. The headless remains of a dismembered body lie packed in salt, each severed piece carefully wrapped in thin gauze and crusted only slightly with dried blood. Dayfid Cruz beheld the macabre specter and knew at once it was his dead father; the gruesome sight was both terrifying and exhilarating.
With dry mouth and lips, he nodded when the Mother Superior asked him to touch one of the wrapped pieces of flesh, which was surprisingly supple, substantive in his grasp. Something again fluttered inside him, faintly at first, then stronger, and the familiar tingle began emanating through his fingers and hands.
“Do you feel it?” she whispered.
His heart pounded. “Where is his head, Mother Superior?”
Holding her now flaming wand high above her, slashing a circle and leaving trails of smoke in the air, she touched the wand to several small, round crystals that were mounted on either side of the door; they cracked and popped and then lit up, illuminating the vault.
“His head is used in the first of the sacred rituals, Dayfid. As you are about to witness, the sacred flesh does not die.”
The Mother Superior began consecrating and anointing her shiny implements and crystals, then carefully unwrapped and touched each of the severed body parts. Tears dried to hot anticipation on her wrinkled face, the pain and effort seeming to give her fresh resolve. Then she stood up and rubbed her hands together with renewed purpose and vigor. Once again she beckoned; one arm first and then the other, the legs and feet . . . piece by piece handing him the sacred flesh of his dead father. Though he was repulsed, Dayfid Cruz was also enthralled, for little by little he became charged with a force, a power that was his keeper, a power reawakened.
♦♦♦
The sun began to set across the Cairn’s meridian of jagged peaks. Like any other evening, save for those when the winds blew storms in from the Boreal Seas and dusk descended gray and angry, the last gilded rays were cast across the vast and numinous domain of Valaria, the old realm. From his towering vantage point, the vigilant wolf could see the fiery daystar sinking into the distant western horizon. Silently, he weaved along the narrow watch trail, alert for shifting stones, each step poised and delicate. Moving alone and unseen amongst the barren rocks and tall pines where pointed fingers of moss reached down from shadowed limbs, he ducked under low boughs and skirted lichen covered boulders, turning deeper into the trees. It was no longer necessary to follow the stranger who had come up into the mountains from the Nah Kenna Swamp; Issa knew where the man was going.
The great black wolf headed over the forested ridge into Echo Canyon, the place of the Old Stone Wheel, and nestled in to wait high in the rocky abutment at the canyon’s entrance. He had not visited this destination for several seasons and now took a few moments to reacquaint himself with its unique character. On the level ground below him was a series of stone rings, each smaller than the one preceding it, set at equal distances from each other to form the stone wheel; in the center stood a pile of rocks several feet high. The austere structure was elegant in its Fairie-rendered symmetry, covered by the verdant meadow grass of early spring but otherwise seemingly unaffected by the ravages of time. Along the far bluff and extending deep into the mountain were the openings to the Caves of the Longsleep, which Issa knew to be a hallowed place of rest and rejuvenation once used to prolong the lives of the revered Sea Kings and their Mages.
The wolf sat silently on his haunches as the wind touched his muzzle and stirred his thick coat. Though there were no burial mounds here, spirits of the deceased were nonetheless present, apparitions of noble champions of creation’s old magic whose flesh had long vanished from the land, but whose essences somehow remained by virtue of the dreams they shared while slumbering in the eldritch caves. One of these spirits now emerged from the shadows of the far opening, almost transparent in the thin light and only partially formed, yet tall and broad in stature and bearing a sword that it thrust firmly into the ground. The diaphanous figure, cloaked and booted and commanding, stood proud within one of the middle rings of the wheel, awaiting the stranger. The many memories of his forefathers whispered to Issa, and he knew that this was the shade of the mighty King Harek.
A twig snapped beneath the faint rustle of leaves, yet the stranger was nimble and quiet, and careful. There he came, a phantom cloaked in feathered gray, pale against the background of trees, rock and sky, scarcely more than a shadow in the twilight. This was a human, yet Issa instantly knew he possessed generations of memories woven with secrets of the old magic. And as the man came to enter this sacred place, the spirits of all who had come to rest here before him began stirring in the air, singing in voices the wolf heard clearly.
“Many times,” the man cried out suddenly, arms raised in the air, a look of wonder on his face. “Many times the wind, the snow and ice, the rumbling of the mountain . . . have changed this place. It has been shaped time and again over thousands of years, yet somehow the stones find the way back to their seats.
“I have returned to you now, to the old realm of Valaria, where age dallies, where flowers break the snow and fish leap like silver in icy mountain streams, where the secrets of ages past are guarded and not forgotten. And I have come to the Old Stone Wheel, where my fathers and forefathers, the Rhangorian Shamans and Mages of Awen, came before me. Alas, my purpose is ominous and the time grows short.”
From his feathered cloak the stranger now removed an implement. It was also a wheel, smaller than a man’s skull and made of finely worked wood and brass, with spoked blades that rotated back and forth in the breeze. He held it over his head, gripping the rounded handles that jutted out from either side. As a rush of wind emanated from it and swirled around the Old Stone Wheel, a thin pyre of blue flames ignited and shot skyward from the pile of stones.
The voices keened in the background and the curious wind buffeted the rocks as the stranger stood and faced the shade of King Harek. Much of what was spoken between them was drowned out, yet Issa heard enough to feel a deep unease within his blood and bones. Having discovered more of what might be in the new age to come, and why, he left the stranger beneath the wide sky of the Old Stone Wheel and went to tell his hunters what he had learned. The second of the volatile humans empowered by the blood magic of the Cathonian witches had returned from the Domains of the Archaeus. This one had yet to manifest the malign abilities possessed by his brother, but his latent facilities were pronounced and might prove even more fearsome in the end. He posed a dire threat to the ancient guardians and those who could still be counted as allies of the Sea Kings. His name was Dayfid Cruz.
♦♦♦
The man beheld the mountain’s impassable walls rising about him, his blue eyes sweeping across the ridges and sheer cliffs, aged and barren, chiseled by weather and time. He lowered his gaze to the swamp from which he had come, then to the Blood River valley and the lowlands beyond, once again contemplating the vast beauty of Saorsa. Despite the ill-fated reason that caused him to risk returning here, this most perilous of all places in the Domains of the Archaeus for one such as himself, and notwithstanding the dark omens passed the night before by the shade of King Harek at the Old Stone Wheel, Jaernyth found the sight most welcome; it had been too long since he had last visited his homeland.
As he stood on the high bluffs of this revered and storied place known as Echo Canyon, appearing barely visible, feathered gray cloak blending in with rock and the diffuse light of dawn, a wistful look seemed to melt away the creases on his rugged face. A sense of expectation rushed through him, for he had come home at last from many years of service on the world of Talus Arna. Yet it had always felt this way, he supposed, thinking back upon the centuries of his yesterlife and his many travels across the Archaeus.
The Cairn Mountains, covering most of the northeast quadrant of Saorsa and known as the old realm by those dwelling here and others wise in the ancient ways, were long ago a shared domain of the Sea Kings and the Mages of Awen. Nowhere else felt quite the same. This was the rare and cherished territory named Valaria by the Fair Folk, a place where time itself was languid and indolent. Days passed, and seasons and years, but somehow at a slower pace; one of the old realm’s many mysteries. And it was here in this very canyon that Jaernyth Gray-Hawk and his kind, those choice few Rhangorian Shamans who passed the rigorous years of training and joined the ranks of the Awen, once came to rest and renew their sacred life force. Indeed, this morning found him revitalized from just one night of blessed rest in the Caves of the Longsleep.
He tightened the strip of green silk around his long silver hair, then put on his ennenach, the headdress of the hawk, and spread his cloaked elbows wide, like wings, while holding the roth romach over his head. The two magical wheels, one wooden and fashioned by the shamanic spellcraft of his people, and one of eldritch stone constructed ages ago by the Fair Folk, had been calibrated; now, the roth romach, the oared wheel, would guide his flight. In moments he was soaring in the up-drafts swirling from the Cairn, the muscles in his arms and hands straining to hold on as he gained height.
Jaernyth adjusted the wheel’s angle, its sturdy blades capturing the wind and correcting his course, and further testing his grip. Soon enough, however, he and the ennenach became as one and the roth romach vanished altogether; the transformation into the hawk was complete. He tilted his wings, spilled some air, and with minute adjustments to the shifting winds, drifted south toward his target. In that direction the mountains angled in a long line; capped peaks thrust into the dawn sky, the snow covered fields and lakes above the treeline glittering like molten silver, with pine forests of somber green and rosy clouds hovering against monstrous masses of dark rock.
Passing now over wide lands bordering the inward portion of the Cairn’s southern rim, he soon spied the long out-wall that had been built with great labor many years ago. For ten leagues or more it ran along the foothills, fencing in the pastures and farmlands of Colaig County, which stood fair and fertile on the long slopes and terraces buttressing that stretch of Saorsa. There the fields were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards and great homesteads spread up through the highlands. But the herdsman, husbandmen and farmers weren’t many now, as it appeared most of Colaig had moved south, to the safe confines of New Cathonia. And Jaernyth knew those hardy few who remained to work the land were believers, reckoned in the eyes of the Church, yet they were men whose blood was mingled with short and swarthy folk whose sires came from the Borderlands to the west in the forgotten age, when the Lar Isles were still under the rule of the benevolent Sea Kings.
Flying high over the village of Colaig itself, silent and half-deserted, he scanned the horizon. The Cairn’s outer peaks and ridges to the south gradually gave way to the forested foothills of Cathonia, while the distant southern tip of the island descended toward rolling white-capped waves reaching up to buffet steep rocky cliffs. Arising along the coastline and bordering the icy seas for leagues loomed the dark mass of the Vermillion Plateau, its purple-shadowed clefts and glens still waiting for daylight.
On the landward side of this jagged tableland, rising upon great terraced layers of rock, stood the city of New Cathonia, an immense palace seemingly carved right out of the plateau. The white witches’ crystals were everywhere, glimmering faintly from atop massive pillars surrounding the orchards and gardens on the lowest level, to the smaller pillars in every courtyard and the pointed crowns adorning the towers. Yet the dazzle of the crystals and polished rock lay dormant, for much of the city was still cast in the half light of early morning. Still, the towers reaching above the highest cliffs shone out against the brightening sky like glimmering pikes of pearl and granite and glass. The New Order’s banners of white and black ankhs flapped in the breeze as ringing trumpets and the terse shouting of commands echoed from the battlements.
Once again, Jaernyth summoned his roth romach and used it to direct his landing in a wooded thicket near Shephard’s Road, the main thoroughfare into the city. Then, placing it and the ennenach within his feathered cloak, he began walking slowly toward the iron gate, which stood between massive, gleaming pillars, with armed warders stationed along the top of the wall.
“The pillars of lies and secrets,” he muttered to himself, refusing to be overawed. Yet the construction of New Cathonia had only just begun when he’d last seen it and he was compelled to stop and look.
The city was built on out-thrusting shelves of rock ascending the Vermillion Plateau, a distance of perhaps seven hundred feet. And Jaernyth estimated the highest tower, which rose above the western rim of the city, to be at least a thousand feet above the plains. Other towers and an intricate array of fortified structures were linked by great high causeways; the upper part of the city appeared to be floating in the sky.
Iron gates had been set into the walls and were met by stone stairways angled across the breadth of the city connected by a network of bridges and walkways. Standing alone without these inner walls or gates was the Oratory, its bell tower and stained glass windows angled to the northwest and the signature figurines of the Cathonian Church, hideous gargoyles and angelic cherubs, crowning the roof of the ornate structure.
The Shaman gazed in growing amazement at the stone city, vaster and more splendid than Old Cathonia had ever been, and far more beautiful. A man of truth, he was compelled to admit the priestesses of the New Order and their True Believers had accomplished more than he expected; perhaps more even than they expected of themselves.
It took several moments before he realized one of the warders was hailing him. “Declare yourself, stranger. What is your business in New Cathonia at this early hour?”
The man staring down at him was thickly muscled, his face stern, his eyes difficult to read. He bore the encircled black and white ankh on his breastplate, the insignia of the Aegis, the new and revered breed. The politics of his little quest flashed in Jaernyth’s mind; after all, he could have just landed inside the lower gate. But this was the proper way. He had to announce himself first.
“My name is Jaernyth Gray-Hawk. I am here seeking the counsel of Mother Superior Shyla-Cann.”
The Aegis hesitated, as if he wanted to laugh, and perhaps a vague smirk crossed his face. But when he spoke, his tone betrayed no sarcasm or mirth. “I’m afraid that is not possible, sir. One does not simply appear at the gate outside New Cathonia requesting an audience with the Mother Superior. Especially one who is, shall we say, not of the faith.”
“I am a Rhangorian Shaman,” he said calmly, “mage trained by the Awen. I have come from the Domains of the Archaeus to discuss matters of great importance to the Sisterhood.”
The big warder eyed him curiously for a moment and then shook his head in disbelief. “The Awen are no more, sir. They vanished long ago. And talk of the Domains of the Archaeus is forbidden by the Church.”
The pressing purpose which brought Jaernyth to attempt this unsavory task stirred deep within, pushing aside his waning patience. He removed the roth romach from the inner pocket of his cloak and held it over his head, leaping up to the parapet in a sudden whoosh of feathered wings. The Aegis stood there staring, an astonished look on his face.
Steel flashed as the Rhangorian Shaman deftly pulled the sword from the warder’s sheath and held it high, glinting in the morning light. The other warders on the wall drew their bows and pikestaffs, and a commotion began to spread as calls rang out across the lower battlement.
Jaernyth stepped forward, turning the blade in his fingers, slashing the air this way and that, fencing with the shadows as he spoke. “Now do you believe I am Awen trained, warder?”
“Yyyess. It’s just that—“
The next instant he held the blade to the man’s throat. “There is no time to waste, my friend. Now inform Mother Superior Shyla-Cann I await entrance at the gate and must speak with her at once. Tell her I know Dayfid Cruz is here. That is why I have come.”
♦♦♦
The old Shaman of the Vaheylacruz clan had risked coming here, just as Shyla-Cann anticipated he would. Naturally she granted him an audience, for Dayfid Cruz had been his charge for many years.
“The Waarwhel poses a grave peril for you, Jaernyth Gray-Hawk,” she offered, tentatively. “Sharing the clan blood of the prophet will not spare you.”
The Mother Superior contemplated the death curse that had banished the Mages of Awen centuries ago, a malefic legacy of the dark sisters and their Mischanter Priest that Jaernyth undoubtedly knew as well as anyone. The threat of the Shaman’s theurgic presence stirring the abomination of Haedeus, the undead remains—the hideous death mask and urn of ashes preserved by blood magic—resting only a few leagues away in the dungeons beneath Old Cathonia, was very real. Indeed, the Waarwhel, as folklore had come to call the ghastly phantasm of the Na Jao sorcerer, had arisen on countless occasions to maim and kill those loyal to the Awen, especially the adepts of their arcane magic.
“I appreciate the warning, Mother Superior,” said Jaernyth, smiling coolly. “And with all due respect, may I suggest that the onus of the Waarwhel, as well as the vicious killings that mimic the death curse, belongs not just to the dark sisters, but the Sisterhood as a whole.”
“You are correct, of course,” replied Shyla-Cann. “Some things are beyond rectification, even by the priestesses of the New Order and our True Believers.”
“I applaud your efforts. I sincerely hope they apply to the fate of young Dayfid Cruz.”
They set their empty tea cups aside and moved the conversation to a veranda overlooking the courtyard where the progeny sat on a stone bench, waiting for his visitor. The morning sun reflected from the crystals atop two stout pillars above the enclosure, and warders lurked in the shadows, keeping watch over the delicate meeting. The day’s work had begun in the crystal mines beneath the Vermillion Plateau and a steady, muted pounding arose from below.
Shyla-Cann studied Dayfid for a moment. He was boyish looking for his age, although appearance was deceiving with one not yet awakened to his manifest memories. His features were both intense and thoughtful, his figure lean but sturdy, his skin darkly complected like his father.
“Talus Arna is a world ruled by machines and technology,” said Jaernyth, “a place where his innate magic can do little harm. That is why his father took him there, Mother Superior.”
“Yet the prophet himself relented in the end and let us know where to find his second son,” she replied, calmly. “And Dayfid chose to come here.”
“Alas,” the Shaman sighed. “There were other priestesses of the Cathonian Sisterhood, some wearing veils and masks to hide their faces, who came looking for him at the hospice.”
“Sisters of the Shadow,” said Shyla-Cann. “Dayfid was in danger and we were fortunate to have reached him in time. You have our gratitude for not interfering.”
“Yes, well you are welcome, I suppose. But I would know, Mother Superior, how will you keep him from becoming a Morphling, a being of incomparable malice like his brother, Crystian? He is far more adept, even though his powers are yet unrealized.”
“What you mean, Jaernyth Gray-Hawk, is how will we prevent the Prophecy of the Sacred Flesh from inverting into the Black Covenant?”
“Indeed. That which the prophet warned against . . .”
She nodded matter of factly at his reference to the unfortunate fate of Crystian Cruz. “Dayfid will not become as his brother. For what it is worth, you have my word on that.”
“With all due respect, Mother Superior, to the Rhangorians and those who remain true to the old ways, the Sisterhood’s ‘honor’ is dubious, at best. Yours is a legacy of deceit that began even before the days of the Mischanter Priest and his vile blood magic.”
Matching his stern manner, Shyla-Cann showed little emotion and took her time between responses, playing the waiting game she was so skilled at. Nonetheless, she could feel the Shaman’s intense gaze. I may be younger than you, Jaernyth Gray-Hawk, but I am not Mother Superior of the New Order by way of politics or fortune.
“Though we have every reason to believe they will try, I can assure you, the dark sisters will not corrupt him like they did Crystian.”
“How can you make such an assurance?”
Shyla-Cann gave her attention once more to Dayfid Cruz, who looked up at them and said with his posture and expression that he knew they were discussing his future. A day will come when you are not so pitiful and afraid, lost one.
“As you know all too well,” she began, “the soul-catching of the Na Jao tribes ultimately became the Sisterhood’s Prophecy of the Sacred Flesh. The primitive rites introduced by the Mischanter Priest were eventually perfected into the rituals of Separating and Joining, the ultimate combination of alchemies necessary for the soul to be purified and reborn into the flesh, allowing us to breed divine beings. Our success with the Vaheylacruz bloodline was unprecedented, yet we recognized the divinity and followed it. We managed all this despite the taint of the dark sisters, who use variations of these rituals to propagate agents of corruption and evil. This is the legacy of the Cathonian Sorers, Shaman!”
“The doctrine of divine birth realized through blood magic,” Jaernyth mocked.
“How do you suppose we accomplished such a thing?” she challenged.
The deep lines around his eyes wrinkled into a squint. “You play a complex game of intrigue within the Sisterhood’s secret society, the Sisters of the Shadow.”
“We play that game of intrigue better than the dark sisters, Jaernyth Gray-Hawk. Because of that, we have staved off the Black Covenant through all these generations. The Sorers of the Cathonian Sisterhood still hold great hope for Dayfid Cruz, whom scripture names one of the Sarkotha, a god of the sacred flesh that shall deliver us from evil.”
Jaernyth turned and faced her. “You have given me your word, Mother Superior. If you keep it, the time will come when Dayfid must choose his own destiny, the same as his father. It is too bad Crystian never had that chance.”
She smiled evenly. “You may spend as much time with him as you wish. Tell him what you will of the history, the prophecy, the Church . . . anything you deem appropriate. We intend only to stimulate his awakening, not censor it.”
“Very well, Mother Superior, I think that is wise. There is one more thing upon which you could perhaps enlighten me.”
“What might that be?”
“I am curious to know what became of Elandon di Brehon, son of Sir Garrick and the last of the Paladins. When I left Saorsa to follow the prophet and his progeny into the Domains of the Archaeus, word had it that you were personally supervising treatment of the injuries he suffered quelling the insurrection of the dark sisters in Old Cathonia.”
Shyla Cann tried to check the flush that warmed her face but realized she had only partly succeeded. Her voice quavered slightly as she replied, further betraying her alarm. “His wounds were serious but he recovered admirably. The Sisterhood’s practitioners worked a crystal wonder to restore his eyesight. But I am worried about him now.”
“Why, Mother Superior?”
“The prophet foretold that the last Paladin, Elandon de Brehon, would seek passage through the Darkwall boundary into the Na Jao. Sir Elandon was last seen on the island of Dramhail weeks ago, heading into the rainforest west of Mission’s Cross. But there has been no news of his whereabouts since that time. I have begun to fear the worst.”
♦♦♦
Copyright © Shawn Quinlivan, 2019. Shawn Quinlivan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All original images used by permission. Digital artistry by Shawn Quinlivan.
