Phoenix in Shadow - eARC (12 page)

After another quick check with all Its agents—especially Kalshae and Ermirinovas, who should be having new visitors soon—the creature felt that it would have to make another trip and hope that everything continued on course. It could not neglect the
other
game, already in progress, on a far more distant playing field.

But time enough for
that
game when said time came; the last skirmish had been surprisingly painful, if instructive, and thus well worth continuing. For now, however, It had plenty of things to do here. It sat down and placed the golden scroll in its holder, and smiled.

So
very
many things to do here.

Chapter 14

Kyri forced herself to step forward, belatedly following Miri as the much smaller woman strode quickly in the direction of the beautiful city below them. She exchanged a disbelieving glance with Tobimar, and could see even Poplock’s eyes wider than usual.

This...makes no sense at all. Yet I can sense nothing dark. My powers may be reduced here, but they are not
gone
, and the only darkness I can sense at all is the forest that lies behind us, barricaded on the other side of that wall.

It was more than that, she admitted. It was not merely the absence of darkness;
that
was the way of the world on the other side of the mountains, of Evanwyl and most parts of Zarathan not immediately under the sway of something demonic or otherwise corruptive. This “Kaizatenzei,” or at least the part of it they were now in,
shone
to her senses. Everything—from the armor on Miri’s shoulders to the grasses bordering the pathway down which they walked to the great trees that grew like sentinels throughout the city—glittered with promise and strength, a
rightness
that she had only felt in moments before, when Myrionar Itself touched upon her, as though this entire
city
was holy ground, infused with the essence of the divine.

As they approached the town, a tall young man with a long yet handsome face, dark brown skin, and ebony hair, in armor which seemed as ceremonially delicate as Miri’s but less brightly colored, in muted shades of green and brown rather than Miri’s brilliantly shining sapphire and emerald, stepped forward and waved, performing a perfunctory bow which Miri returned. “Light Miri, welcome back! We had not expected your hunt to end so soon!” His voice was strong and clear, reminding Kyri somehow of Rion’s when he had become a Justiciar.

“No more had I,” Miri said with a laugh. “But that is the least of surprises today. Shade Danrall, allow me to present Tobimar and Phoenix, who saw me facing a
nalloshoth
and thought me endangered, and so came magnificently to my rescue.”

“Truly?” Danrall looked curiously at them. “Well, courageously done, even if unneeded. From which
Sha
do you hail?”

“Ah, there is the true wonder,” Miri answered. “For they say they come from beyond the mountains, and I believe them.”

Kyri saw Danrall’s jaw drop, stretching his already-long face into comic disbelief. “From the—”

“Yes,” Kyri said, unable to keep from smiling herself. “And allow me to say that for us, this is just as much a surprise. We thought all of this great valley was like the forest outside your walls.”

Danrall recovered quickly. “Then I am doubly surprised that you dared even enter!” he said with a smile.

“Truly said,” Miri agreed. “Now, Shade, I want you to keep this quiet. I cannot avoid some attention, of course, but I don’t want our newcomers bothered until they have had an opportunity to rest; they have traveled through the Pass of Night and the belt of corrupted forest twixt there and here, and surely they need some time to recover and refresh themselves.”

Kyri couldn’t argue, though a part of her was still concerned about just what the whole impossible situation
meant
.

“I understand, Light. What would you have me do?”

“Tell the current Color—it is still Kerrim, is it not? Yes, I thought so. Tell Kerrim that we have two visitors, heroes I think, from beyond the mountains, and that we should have a proper welcome and council with them upon the morrow; I expect he’ll have you notify his Hues and the other Shades of the city. I will inform the Lady of Lights myself, once I am done here.”

“As you will, Light.”

Miri turned to them as Danrall jogged off. “I hope I am correct in thinking you need some rest—and perhaps time to readjust your expectations and thoughts, yes?”

Tobimar laughed. “You are certainly correct, Miri. This is completely opposite to our expectations, and we have indeed been exhausted by our journey through what you call the Pass of Night and what we call Rivendream Pass. If you have only sent scouts up that place before, I do not wonder that you believe nothing good exists outside.”

“Good. Then I’ll guide you to the Sunlight Rest—the best lodging house here—and you may take your ease until the meeting is arranged, probably tomorrow at this same time.” She turned and led them past the small, open shelter that Danrall had been sitting in—obviously a guard post—and down the path which was now becoming a paved street running straight into the center of the wooded city.

“So your title is that of Light, and from what I heard you have your other...what, military ranks?...of Colors, Hues, and Shades, yes?” Kyri asked.

“Military is a bit grandiose,” Miri answered with another smile. “The
Tenzeitalacor
are more guardians of the
Sha
, or cities. We resolve any arguments, investigate crimes, deal with monsters and such problems.”

That at least provided an opening. “More police than soldiers then. But crimes and monsters? Those seem hardly imaginable here, from what I see,” Kyri said. They were now passing one of the great trees, a massive red-brown trunk wider across than two wagons placed end-to-end holding aloft branches that stretched hundreds of feet wide and high. Beneath, multiple buildings—houses and shops—were arranged along the streets that branched off from the main roadway they walked along. Multiple people—mostly human, though Kyri saw at least one or two that appeared to be
Artan
and possibly one Child of Odin—waved or nodded to Miri, who returned their greetings cheerfully but showed no tendency to pause or talk, leaving the various people to stare curiously at the two figures walking just behind the Light.

Miri shook her head. “Kaizatenzei is beautiful and peaceful, but people are still people. And in the regions between the seven great cities and the Unity, there are wilder areas, not nearly so hideous as that jungle we met within, but still not places without danger.”

Tobimar pointed to some other figures Kyri had noticed, ones that had not waved, bowed, or even stared. “Who are those?” he asked. “I notice they are doing the more menial tasks.” The nearest of the figures, clad in a simple gray tunic and apparently bald of head, was sweeping up dust from the street; that explained, at least partially, the cleanliness of the city.

Miri looked where he pointed. “Oh, now, say not who, but
what
,” she said with a laugh. “Come, I will show you.”

The diminuitive warrior quickened her steps to bring her in front of the working figure, which straightened up as it noticed her. At this range, Kyri could see that it was indeed not a living creature. The body appeared to be made of something like fine pottery, with glints of metal at the joints; there was a face, but mostly just painted or inlaid, with only bright green crystal eyes and a mouth that could move. It bowed to Miri. “I recognize you, Light,” it said, in a calm, even voice. “Do you require a service?”

“Merely that you tell these strangers of yourself, then you may return to work.”

It repeated the bow; Kyri found it somewhat eerie to watch, because unlike a living being, the repetition was absolutely exact, yet the fluidity of the thing’s movement was nearly equal to that of a human being; even its hands were detailed and fine enough for the most delicate operations, while their material hinted at the potential for immense strength. “I am an Eternal Servant, number fifty-seven of those assigned to
Sha Murnitenzei
, named Patina for my finish.” It held out an arm, so they could see the patina of fine cracks in the glaze of its body. “I was created one hundred twenty-two years ago by Master Wieran and assigned to this city one year following. My primary duties in the time since have been maintaining the cleanliness of the streets and building exteriors.”

Having completed this description, Patina returned to sweeping up the dust of the street.

Kyri noticed Poplock’s tense posture, the pose that generally showed that he was bursting with the desire to ask questions but knew he couldn’t. Still, she’d studied enough basic magical theory to guess what he wanted to ask. “Hundreds of automata, all running for hundreds of years? How? Building such things is extremely difficult, as I understand it. Where we come from, people still do most such work.”

Miri shrugged. “
How
is a question for Master Wieran, for he was the one who designed them and produces the Servants for us, a few every year, but over the years he has dwelt with us that has added up to considerable numbers indeed; I think there are about one hundred and eighty in each of the seven cities, and somewhat more than that in Kaiza itself.”

She looked up. “Ah, here we are.”

Sunlight Rest was an imposing building, stone-fronted with support beams of deep reddish-brown wood and a large double door in front made of a lighter, amber wood, carven with a complex pattern of twining vines across a setting sun; currently both doors stood open, splitting the carved sun down the center, half on each. Miri led them inside, ignoring the curious stares of the various patrons within and walking straight up to a white-haired older woman who was just finishing giving instructions to two youths and one of the Servants.

The woman glanced up as the small group approached her, and rose from her desk smoothly. “Light Miri, a pleasure as always.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be so formal.”

“Miri, then,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Something simple enough, Dania,” Miri said. Gesturing to Kyri and Tobimar, she continued, “These two are to be guests of the Lady of the Lights herself.”

“And does the Lady know this yet?”

Miri laughed, a cheerful ringing sound that brightened the shaded interior of the inn. “You know me awfully well, I see. She
will
know. But true, for now, they are my guests.”

“Well enough,” Dania said. “Two rooms, then?”

“Adjoining, if you can,” Tobimar said quickly.

“Of course,” the older woman said. “You can leave it to me, Miri.”

“I knew I could,” Miri said with another bow that caused the ribbon in her hair to bounce. “Phoenix, Tobimar, I have other duties now, but you’ll be as comfortable here as anywhere in the city, and I’ll send word later when the meeting is all arranged.”

“Just a moment, Miri,” Kyri said. “We’re still trying to understand exactly where we are. Do you have anything about these seven cities, your Unity, and so on?”

Ignoring Dania’s sharp, startled glance, Miri nodded and dug into a tiny pouch at her side—a pouch that allowed her to insert at least half her arm inside.
Neverfull pouch
, at least. “Umm...here! This is a simple map we make...oh, there are a few notations on the back.... Ah yes, I don’t need those, so it’s fine, you can have it.” She handed the folded paper to Kyri.

“What about tomorrow?” Tobimar asked. “Do we stay in our rooms until—”

“Oh, no, no, you don’t have to do that!” Miri said, an apologetic look on her face. “I didn’t want us all bothered on the way here, but you don’t
have
to be some kind of a secret! If you want to, by all means, look around, see whatever you wish. Just check back here every so often so you will get my message.”

“All right, then,” Kyri said. “Please don’t let us detain you any longer; sorry for the trouble.”

“Oh, it was no trouble at all,” Miri said, and then with a rather girlish squeal said “Oh, this is going to be so
exciting!
”

She recovered her poise instantly, looking slightly embarrassed, and bowed with the uplifted arm again. They returned the bow as best they could, and Miri left with a wave and a spring in her step.

Dania, studying them more intensely than before, led them upstairs, where two doors at the end of the hall opened into a pair of high, clean, fresh-smelling rooms.

Now...we need to talk!

Chapter 15

“I have absolutely
no
idea what is going on now,” Tobimar said bluntly. He rubbed his temples, in the vain hope that the pressure might force the ridiculous situation to align into something he could understand.

Poplock, who had finished checking the rooms to make sure there were neither magical nor mundane spies, bounced his agreement. “This makes
no
sense.”

Kyri sank into a chair as her Raiment flowed off, leaving her clad in simple pants and shirt. “I wish I could explain it. Your people were
driven
out of here, by demons that hounded you all the way across the continent, right?”

“And whose curse
still
follows us; Xavier, Poplock and I found that out the hard way, yes. So you’re sensing the same thing I am?”

Kyri nodded in disbelief. “This...place. It practically
sings
. You don’t think it’s the effect of getting out of that vileness that was in the forest into a place that isn’t vile?”

“You mean, like stepping out of a cave into sunlight? The way it dazzles you for a bit, seems brighter than normal sunlight?” Poplock said. “No, don’t think so. I think it’d be almost as shocking going just from Evanwyl to here. This place...it even
tastes
different.”

“I agree,” Tobimar said, and forced his brain to start working on the problem. “There’s a purity here, something way beyond the ordinary.”

Kyri reached into her pack, sitting next to the chair where she was sitting, and got out a bottle of water. “Let’s test that, anyway. This is perfectly good water, in a preservation bottle I bought in Zarathanton; filled it just before we left Evanwyl, and it should be just as good now as the day I left. They have running water here, yes?”

Poplock bounced into the bathroom which adjoined both rooms. “Hmmm...there’s a spigot with red and blue gems on the sides...yep, I touch them and get water at different temperatures.”

“All right, come back out and I’ll do a little test.”

Kyri came out a moment later carrying two of their water cups, both filled with water. “Here, Tobimar. Taste them.”

He reached out and took the cups. “Which is which?”

“Not telling you. That’s the point. I want to know if you can tell the difference.”

“Right.” He took a sip of the lefthand cup. Cool, sweet water, very nice, just as he remembered from the Vantage estate. He swallowed that, then took a sip of the righthand cup.

The cool flow danced through his mouth, invigorating, replenishing, as though he had gone half a week without drinking and now, finally, was given the chance. The water washed away some of the tiredness of the road, the fear and tension of their journey through the savage jungles of Rivendream Pass and the exterior of Moonshade Hollow, and lifted his spirits as though he knew his homeland lay just outside the window. He stood stock-still, astounded, then put both cups down. “It was the one in my right hand.”

“Yes. So it isn’t an illusion of our perceptions.”

“Most definitely not,” Tobimar said emphatically, then considered. “I suppose it
could
be an illusion of a more sinister sort. We have heard of spirits and monsters—and especially demons—which can construct a pleasing illusion, even a seeming paradise, for unwary travelers, and as they think they’re sitting down to a great feast or bedding down in a fine inn for the night, they’re actually approaching their own destruction.”

The little Toad gave a bounce-shrug. “Well, we weren’t exactly unwary. But a powerful illusion can catch even the wary. Still, I haven’t noticed anything that tells me this is illusion.”

“How could we tell?” Kyri asked reasonably. “If the illusion’s good enough...”

That’s a scary thought. How
can
we tell?

“Creepy,” Poplock said, almost as though reading his mind. “And while I’ve got magic, it’s...well,
mundane
magic, if you know what I mean. It’s not something unique and special.”

Tobimar caught the hint. “Meaning that the two of us
do
have something unusual. You’re right. Kyri should see if Myrionar will grant her the Eyes of Truth, and I will see if the High Center will reveal anything to me.”

“Fooling a god should be pretty hard,” Kyri agreed. She began a quiet prayer.

Tobimar closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Even if it is illusion, the illusion leaves me my
self
, and it is the
self
that gives me the power of my skill, the martial art that Xavier and Khoros call
Tor
. If I can meditate, it matters not where my body truly is; my mind will find the truth of it
.

What Khoros—and his friend Xavier—called “High Center” was the key. It was challenging to reach in combat, but here—surrounded by friends and, at least as far as he could tell, safety—there was no threat to distract him, nothing to interrupt his inner peace. He rose through the Centers and Visions until he stood above himself, feeling the web of probability, the possibility and certainty of the universe’s connection to him, his connection to it.

Tobimar opened his eyes, and he could
see
. The room fairly
blazed
in his sight, a solidity of essence that was almost as tangible as steel, as warm as sunlight, as certain as his mother’s love—and almost, almost
familiar
in a way. He couldn’t be certain, but there was indeed something about this feeling that tugged faintly but insistently on threads of memory.

But more; the song of the world stretched beyond. He could sense the possibility of danger away to the south, beyond the wall, but nothing here. There might—possibly—be a hint of danger to the north or east, but he could not be sure.

Most important was the absolute conviction of solidity. This was no trick or illusion. He was as certain of this as he could be of anything. If this
was
an illusion, it would be something so powerful that he could do nothing at all against it, so he would assume it was, in fact, real. He released High Center and leaned back. “Real. Exactly as we perceive. As far as I could sense, everything is as it seems to be. If there is anything dark here, it is hiding itself behind a very real cloak of light.”

Kyri opened her eyes and nodded. “I feel the same thing, Tobimar. This is
Truth
. Enemies could be here—
must
be here, I think—but they are well-hidden.”

“Hm,” Poplock grunted. “Maybe even using the light of this place almost literally, like shining a light in someone’s eyes so they can’t see what’s behind it.”

Tobimar didn’t like that thought, but it fit all too well with the situation. “You’re probably right, Poplock. We’ll have to be even more on our guard. On the positive side, at least we don’t need to worry about the local environment killing us.”

“I suppose—to be just,” Kyri said, with a smile, “I should look at the other side. Aside from what we
assumed
coming here, do we have any reason to believe there
is
something...wrong here?”

Tobimar was taken somewhat aback by the question, but he thought about it. Instead of assuming, based on what they knew coming through the pass, that there
had
to be something wrong, did he have any actual
evidence
for that?

“Yep, we do,” Poplock said after a few minutes.

Tobimar felt there
was
something, but he couldn’t quite figure this out, either, so he shrugged. “All right, Poplock, what have you got for us?”

“They can
talk
to us.”

Kyri looked askance at the little Toad. “And? I can and have talked to people from Evanwyl all the way along the Great Road and off it, and so have you.”

“Ahh,” Poplock said, lifting a finger in such a scholarly way that Tobimar couldn’t repress a small snort of laughter, “but
those
places are all connected. Remember that Miri said that as far as they knew, nowhere outside of this ‘Kaizatenzei’ was habitable. The Chaoswar was about twelve
thousand
years ago.”

Now
the Prince of Skysand understood, and he could see that Kyri was starting to grasp it. “Language
changes
,” Tobimar said slowly. “It’s said that after the Chaoswar, when the peoples emerged from the catastrophe and started to find their neighbors, the farther they went, the harder it was to understand them. It took centuries for language to re-stabilize. There’s enough contact all through the Empire of the Mountain and the State of the Dragon King so that we all keep roughly the same language...but there’s no
way
these people just happened to keep the same language. All I hear from Miri is an accent, no worse than Kyri’s or yours.”

“Or yours,” Kyri pointed out, “from our point of view.” She nodded. “So they
should
have developed their own language—”

“They
did
,” Poplock said. “Let’s look at that map, shall we?”

Kyri spread the map out on the table and Poplock hopped up to get a better look.

“Sure, look at this. Name of this country is ‘Kaizatenzei,’ and they asked what
Sha
we were from. These things are all labeled
Sha
, so I’m guessing that means ‘city,’ or something like that. And the city names...Murnitenzei, Vomatenzei, Alatenzei, Ruratenzei...all with a theme. Not sure what “tenzei” means, though...she said
Kaizatenzei
meant, um, Unity of the Seven Lights, so Tenzei could be Unity or Light, or even Seven I guess.”

“Seven? That wouldn’t make sense.”

Tobimar snorted again. “Wouldn’t it? It would make sense for
us
, you know. That is, Skysand. Now if—”

Suddenly he broke off, staring, thinking.
Can’t be...but it fits. It fits so well.

He became aware that Kyri was poking him. “Tobimar? Tobimar, what
is
it?”

Tobimar Silverun felt dizzy, lightheaded at the thoughts chasing through his mind, but the thoughts didn’t just make sense, they felt
right
. “Seven, Kyri, Poplock. Seven Stars and a Single Sun.”

“What...Oh. You mean there’s seven cities plus the big one—”

“More! More than that! By Terian Himself, it’s right here! The Stars were lost! But look on this map!
Seven Stars and a Single Sun hold the Starlight that I do own.
What if the Stars are
here
, somewhere? What would a place be like, where the artifacts of the Light in the Darkness were left to themselves? Like this place, maybe?” He reached out and touched the cities marked on the map. “And look. Four cities here. Three here. The capital, Sha Kaizatenzei Valatar, here, between the groups.” His finger traced a slow curve, going around the four, passing through the capital, then around the other three, back through the capital. “
These Eight combine and form the One...form the Sign by which I’m known...
”

Kyri gasped. “It is. It’s Terian’s symbol!”

“The symbol of the Infinite. They’re
here
, Kyri! The lost treasures of the Silverun, of the Lords of the Sky! The Seven Stars, and the Sun itself, are
here!
”