It was a simple room with a hearth of chipped brick. A pot for bodily refuse in one corner, their bedrolls along the far wall, their packs and supplies nearby. The door bolted shut and wood slats covered two of the three windows. Only the balcony window had bits of glass still clinging to the sill.
Cyan made toward the wall opposite their bedrolls. Sitting cross-legged, he positioned the small aerescreen they’d brought for communications with the Conclave atop a broken vegetable crate. He pressed a sequence of buttons on the device while Harlequin sat nearby. The runes on the buttons flashed as the spells of aether bound within the small device came alive. The aethecite along both foot-high uprights of the device flared with Aere and the aerescreen between them moved from a blank black to an image of five steel chairs that stood three feet above the ground, their legs embedded within the stone of the earth. A person sat upon each, wearing various colored cassocks. From left to right was: Zaffre, Mindaro the Blind, Icterine the Unfettered, Randol, and Tarpaulin.
The Conclave of the Scattered Shards in Kalderim.
An augur, Zaffre had light blonde hair streaked with grey, middle-aged and was a cool-headed humir. Cyan always knew him to be kind and calm for an augur. He wore a white cassock and toyed with the Beads of Bliss wrapped around his wrist.
Mindaro was ancient, blind and a bikromi seer. She was also the longest serving vicar in the history of the Scattered Shards, the elfir born centuries before the Fall. Her midnight blue cassock seemed to encase her like a thick blanket.
Icterine the Unfettered was the highest rank in all the Scattered Shards, second only to the Pentax Themselves. Strong and stone-cold, her shoulder-length grey hair coiled around her stern elfirish face, blue irised, yellow pupiled eyes wrinkled and alert.
Randol was a modest dvergir from the kingdoms under the Forgemistress’ Blades. As he was an ingeniator, he wore an emerald cassock. His flat face was craggy under bushy brows, his beard and braided hair curly-grey.
Tarpaulin was a feisty, hot-tempered giantess from northern Kanja and her hair was a short wispy white and was the same pallor and desiccated flesh of a quaestor, which meant she looked like a massive, angry zombie in a red cassock.
Cyan gave a curt nod of fealty to each member of the Conclave in turn, while his gaze settled upon Icterine. “Why have my prayers been disrupted, Icterine? I already sent word ahead that we will be returning with the runaway on the morn.”
As he spoke, runes of Aere upon the four corners of the screen oscillated as the spells of air communicated his words thousands of leagues via aether to Kalderim where similar connector runes adorned the screen in the Conclave’s Proving Chamber.
“Cyan the Defiant, the name is ever apt,” Icterine said, the runes on his screen glowing brighter. The woman sat with a straight back, hands in her lap. Her older face was wrinkled around the eyes, stern yet compassionate. Even for an elfir, Icterine seemed old these days, even though she was maybe fifteen centuries in age. Older appearing even since Cyan had left Kalderim to hunt Lilia. “It seems your prayers have been answered.”
“How’s that?”
Icterine motioned toward the ancient bikrome. “Mindaro the Blind, if you please.”
“The time has come,” the ancient bikrome said, her voice naught but a whisper. The runes of Aere amplified her voice so that Cyan could hear it clearly. “The Seals to Eminence are in danger. The Godsblood has been officially named the chosen. Come will the fires of the Fallen. Come will the rise of the Golden Sword. Eminence will be reborn. And will shatter.”
Cyan was silent, nearly aghast at the prophecy revealed. “Is this true?”
The Conclave leader nodded solemnly. “The Godsblood will reap destruction upon this world and will reform it in their manner. Godsblood becometh the Godslayer. The time of Eminence’s slumber is now over. The veil will be lifted and the Pentax will be waiting. The war of faith will commence, we must be prepared. The Divine’s fell warriors will spare no time, neither can we.”
For the first time in his life, Cyan was speechless. Since the Fall of Eminence, none dared breach its aetheric walls, none could. The Seals to Eminence were the only things keeping the horrors of the Fall at bay. The people of the Mistlands knew nothing of which resides in the ancient city, for if they did, they would all be at risk. The cold realization of what stood before them troubled his very soul. If the Seals were in danger of being broken, the end battle was nigh.
Icterine smiled in a grandmotherly way. “The Godsblood must be brought to the Proving Chamber in all haste, Cyan the Defiant. And you must guide the Golden Sword back to his rightful place upon the Golden Throne. It is the wish of the Peridot. The two must wage this war, stand upon the battlefield hand in hand. Of most import is this quest. We all know the consequences should you fail. May Justice shine His peace upon you.”
Giddiness surged into him, so much so, he couldn’t stop the laugh escaping his lips.
XXI
Ashe
“FATHER?”
Ashe’s legs gave out as a pulmo cough burst free. She smeared the accompanying blood across the runes tattooed into her forearm. Her head began to shake near as much as her entire body, it quivered, perhaps in rage, perhaps in shock. “No… it… you can’t be.”
Emre Benld, the supposedly dead scion of the Regents Benld, crouched beside her, reaching for her bangled hand. Her father. The sheer notion of it being true consumed her. It wasn’t possible. Was it?
Lost at the crossroads of her past and her present.
She resisted his touch at first, glaring at him because she didn’t know this man. But she relented for some reason she couldn’t explain. A rightness because his aura was an ever-shifting tint of the four main colors borne of the Shards. From cherry to azure, from jade to daffodil. All telling her his innermost emotions without him knowing it. His hand dwarfed hers, as a father’s should.
“I’ve wanted to seek you out,” he started, his finger tracing the diamond eye in the center of her palm, “but I couldn’t risk it.”
“Risk it?” Ashe jerked her hand back. If there had been any mist in the prison, it would be roiling like a thundercloud. “Your own godsdamned daughter!” She hurled the flask she’d been clutching for support. He ducked the projectile, the small container clanking against the prison door.
“I know.” His voice dripped regret. His aura shifted to a darkened mustard laced with shaded blue. “It’s not that I did—”
“Left me an orphan,” she cut him off, her anger roaring like a drake. “Not knowing who I was. Who I am.”
“Brynn.”
“Brynn?”
“Your name. Brynn Benld.” He reached for her hand again, but she kept it balled into a fist. He smiled wistfully, sitting back on his haunches. “It was your mother’s favorite. That first moment, first held you to her breast, she knew your name would be Brynn.”
Brynn. The name tested across the landscape of her thoughts; the name felt real. For the first time in her life, she had an answer to the only question that ever mattered. And yet, she didn’t know how to feel about it. Confused was a good way to describe it all.
“Where is she? My mother. Is she alive? With you?” O Zenith, dare she call him Father so soon? It felt right, but she also felt hesitant.
His aura darkened with blue sadness as his hand briefly touched the scar at his neck. “You were but a babe, still suckling upon your mother’s breast when they took her. My Cadrianna. Your mother’s name was Cadrianna Nightingale. She was a beautiful woman. They killed me, after.” His aura radiated royal and crimson, the memories taking him down a dark void.
Her past laid out before her in a single, swift revelation. Eighteen years wanting to know the truth. And here she was, smacked in the face with it. “How is that possible? To be brought back to life?”
The Gutter King smirked, although there was a sorrow in it. “The Pentax had other designs on my soul that day. If not for her change of heart, I would be in the Meadows. Perhaps even the Pit of the Damned for my betrayal to your mother. But she saved me.” His face hardened as he looked at her. The man was steel. “And she saved you.”
Tundra irises flicked up to stare deeply into his, gauging and reaching for the truth of it all. Zenith, she had to know it. “She who?” But before he could answer, “A bikrome?”
