Griffin's Daughter (28 page)

“
Jelena, have you seen Kami? She was supposed to report back here after everything was finished.” The older woman looked as if she had just come from the bath house. Her dark hair hung wet and sleek to the middle of her muscular back, shining like an otter’s pelt in the sunlight. Her face wore a look of mild annoyance, as if a harmless but none too amusing practical joke had just been played upon her.

“
Kami is with Gendan. She told me tell you so you would not look. They went off…uh, to old circle stones.”

“
Ai, Goddess, that girl! She promised she’d take my shift if I traded with her so she could watch the bridal party,” Aneko grumbled. “I can’t very well complain to Gendan, now can I? She’s going to get herself knocked up long before her wedding day if this keeps on.”

“
What is ‘knocked up’? Oh, yes. Pregnant?”

“
You are learning Siri-dar very fast,” Aneko said, nodding approvingly. “Soon, you’ll be able to curse with the best of us.”

“
Is pregnant before marriage bad thing here?” Jelena asked.

Aneko shrugged. “Uhhh, it’s not what most women would choose, but it happens. There’s no shame in it…not much, anyway. If it happens to you, Jelena, no one will think the worse of you.”

Jelena looked down at her dusty sandals, hoping that Aneko could not see her chagrin. “I…I was going to choose horse…for me, for riding as messenger.”

“
C’mon, then. I’ll help you.” Aneko smiled and started towards the stable doors. Jelena followed, still clenched a little inside.

Like a hidden message woven into the fabric of metaphors that made up a poem, the meaning behind Aneko’s words could be gleaned with just a bit of conscious thought.

If it happens to me. If I bear Ashinji a child, there won’t be any shame in it. No shame, perhaps, but no celebrations, either. 

Best for everyone if that never happens.

How long she lay in a swoon, she did not know, but when Syukoe regained her senses, she found herself still on the floor, eyes level with the hem of Master Iku’s robe. The sour taste of vomit filled her mouth. She gagged and spat, then levered herself up on one elbow and attempted to focus her eyes. Her head throbbed with pain. Looking up, she cried out in astonishment and climbed shakily to her feet in order to get a better view of the extraordinary phenomenon.

Hovering at eye level within the circle of the sorcerers, a window-like opening appeared through which Syukoe could look out and see a forest clearing.  Water drizzled from the dreary sky. Syukoe smelled the pungent odors of wet earth and rain, and felt the moisture-laden wind gusting coldly against her sweating face.

“
What…what is happening?” she whispered, but Master Iku seemed not to hear. All of his attention remained focused on the scene before him. Ominously, the chamber had stopped shaking, but the walls continued to ripple and flow. Syukoe, even without any trained Talent to speak of, could sense that her father now gathered his power for a final, cataclysmic assault.
Whatever the Kirians are going to do, they had better do it now,
she thought.

The sound of footsteps, squelching through mud and leaf litter, drifted through the open portal. Master Iku drew in a sharp breath. “The target is here,” he said softly. He raised his right hand, and the drifting sphere containing the Key settled gently into his palm. All eyes were riveted onto a path that snaked out of the forest and across the clearing towards the portal. A figure, swathed in a dark cloak, approached through the trees.

A hood obscured most of the face; even so, Syukoe still recognized the distinctive gait of a non-combat trained female. She walked with the deliberate step of one who knows the path well and is eager to arrive at its end. Abruptly, the woman stopped dead in her tracks and pushed back the hood of her cloak. She stared directly at the portal, her mouth forming an “O” of surprise. She seemed more puzzled than afraid.

The Kirians all gasped in dismay.

The woman was human!

“
Master, there must be some mistake!” cried Ankai Noemi, the most senior member of the Kirian Society after Master Iku. The murmured agreements from the rest of the group echoed the consternation in her voice.

“
The calculations were carefully checked and rechecked. They were completely accurate. There is no mistake. This... no, she...
is
the target. But how…” Master Iku’s voice trailed off in mid-sentence.

“
Master, look!” Syukoe pointed at the woman’s midsection. The pronounced swell of her shift told the tale of her condition.

“
Ahhh, I see now!” Master Iku exclaimed. “She is with child. Of course! It is not this human who is our target, but the child she carries. It must be so!”

“
But, you said the target was my direct descendent. How can a human child be the target, unless…” Suddenly, Syukoe understood. The child must be only half-human, sired on this woman by an elven man, a son of the House of Onjara.

The woman—a girl really—sidled closer to the portal. Her eyes held no fear, but rather an intense curiosity, coupled with a natural wariness. She was comely, for a human; a wild shock of black curls framed her smooth, heart-shaped face. She paused, close enough now for Master Iku to reach through and touch her, and peered into the portal as if she were looking through the window of a house. She spoke aloud in her own tongue—meaningless to Syukoe’s ears—but the upward inflection of her voice seemed to indicate a question. All within the chamber of the Black Tower held themselves in complete stillness.

At the same moment, Junko regained consciousness and let out a blood-curdling shriek. Simultaneously, the great stone doors of the chamber exploded inwards, sending rock shards hurtling through the air with deadly force. The lethal fusillade ricocheted off the energy shield surrounding the Kirians and the Time Portal. Junko, still outside the shield’s protection, was pulped in the space of an eye blink, reduced to tattered shreds of flesh and bone.

Within the doorway stood Shiura Onjara, King of Alasiri.

The Kirians were out of time.

“
Master Iku, I believe you and your fellows have something that belongs to me,” the king said, his voice satin-smooth and full of the dark promise of torture and death. Even so, in this direst of moments, Syukoe still felt a pang of guilt, for was she not part of the betrayal that had brought them all to this terrible place?

The king glided into the room on silent feet, carefully avoiding the gobbets of meat that had once been his favorite concubine. Syukoe thought him magnificent, garbed as he was in full court dress—an elaborate layering of richly decorated robes, belted at the waist with a jeweled girdle. His long black hair—so like her own—was bound back with a gold clip. Upon his brow sat the Crown of Alasiri, a simple circlet of gold set about with blood-red rubies. He approached the energy shield that protected his enemies and raised his right hand. A single tear leaked from Syukoe’s eye at the sight of her father’s mutilated hand, the stump of his ring finger bound with a strip of bloodstained linen.

A startled yelp tore Syukoe’s attention away from the advancing menace of her father. She looked up in time to see Master Iku lunge through the portal, and with his free hand, seize the human girl by the wrist.

“
Someone help me!” he cried, as the terrified human struggled wildly to escape, clawing and slapping at the old sorcerer’s face and hand, all the while screaming out a steady barrage of gibberish. Syukoe dove in and grabbed the girl’s flailing free arm and together, princess and sorcerer hauled the heavily pregnant human up off her feet and part way through the portal, where she dangled, her body straddling the boundary between the two worlds.

The energy sphere of the Key, still balanced on Master Iku’s right palm, began to pulsate in time to a heartbeat; whether to the king’s or the unborn Onjara’s, Syukoe did not know. Using her warrior’s strength, Syukoe had successfully pinned the human girl’s arms behind her and now held her steady. The girl had gone quiescent, her face slack, eyes half closed.

“
Hurry, Master! Do whatever it is you’re going to do, while this girl is still in a swoon!” Syukoe urged.

What happened next took only a few heartbeats, but to Syukoe, time seemed strangely expanded, each moment drawn out and rolling before her eyes in excruciatingly slow motion.

A sunburst erupted overhead, sending a sheet of flame roaring downwards to engulf the group of fiercely concentrating mages. Several of them cried aloud as they strained to maintain the integrity of the energy shield—the only thing that stood between them and the devastating power of the king’s magical attack. Despite their combined strengths, Syukoe could feel the shield failing as the air around them began to heat up.

Master Iku appeared oblivious to the king’s presence, so focused was he on his task. Muttering rapidly in a singsong chant, he traced a sigil upon the human girl’s belly, then to Syukoe’s amazement, he plunged his hand containing the Key deep into her body. The girl convulsed and let out a strangled cry, then collapsed back into a stupor. The Master withdrew his hand and Syukoe saw that no trace of blood stained it. The Key had disappeared.

Needing no prompting, Syukoe shoved the unconscious human back through the portal where she lay sprawled in the wet grass, her unruly mane of dark curls spread about her head like a tangled bush. She moaned softly as the rain pattered down upon her upturned face.

“
Ai, get back, Princess!” she heard Master Iku shout. Syukoe barely got her arms out of the way in time as the portal slammed shut with a blast of air and a noise like a thunderclap. The air within the chamber shimmered, superheated now to the point of combustion. The Kirians had clearly reached their limits of endurance. Hair and clothing began to smoke, just moments away from igniting.

“
Get down behind me, Princess,” Master Iku gasped. He raised his hands towards the ceiling. Syukoe did as the Master bade, curling herself into a tight ball and covering her head. She began to pray to The One for deliverance and an end to all of their suffering. She prayed for her father’s soul, that it be washed clean of the foulness and corruption that had warped it into something so unspeakably evil.

The Key lay safely in the future now, locked away from Shiura Onjara, hidden in the body of a half-elven child. Syukoe prayed for the Goddess’s protection for that child, for as a half-blood, its life would surely be a difficult one, filled with hardship and uncertainty. What was to become of the Key, no one, not even the great and powerful Kirian Society, had been able to divine.

“
Kirians! To me!” shouted Master Iku. Twin bolts of blue-white energy exploded from his fingertips. The resulting blast hammered Syukoe’s senses into tatters. She tumbled down into darkness and knew no more.

Homecoming

The slowly dying sun set the ancient stones of Amsara Castle ablaze with crimson light. Long, dark shadows of towers and walls stretched like questing fingers across the plain below.

Magnes looked skyward to where the fortress squatted atop its rocky perch and felt a sharp twinge of anxiety deep in his gut. The first lamps of evening flared to life on the walls above, shining like stars drawn down from the heavens. Below, at the base of the hill, people made their way home to Amsara village after a long day in the fields. Herdsmen drove cattle into milking sheds and sheep into pens. Their shouts and whistled signals to their dogs pierced the still, sweet air.

Magnes drummed his heels against the flanks of his horse but the animal—weary from the trek south out of Alasiri—stubbornly refused to walk any faster. And so, slowly, but steadily, the elf-bred horse carried Magnes back to his father’s house.

He knew the castle guard would have already spotted him some time ago, before the light of day had failed completely, but in the twilight of evening, they would be unable to identify him until he arrived at the gates. He had changed back into the clothes he had worn out of Amsara, so as to give no clue to where he had been these past weeks. Castle folk would be curious enough about his sudden return.

After riding up a series of switchbacks, Magnes reined in the horse at the main gates, which were shut tight for the night. The animal blew noisily and shook its head, then heaved a sigh. Magnes patted its sweat-darkened neck and waited.

A few moments passed before a small square hole opened up in the center of a door set within the gate itself. A pale blur flashed across the opening, and Magnes heard a startled exclamation, followed by loud exhortations to open the door and be quick about it.

The portal swung inward. Magnes dismounted and led the horse through, only to find himself surrounded by excited guardsmen, all talking at once. Someone took the reins from his hand and led the horse away. Another man asked if he wanted a drink. All welcomed him home, and none asked where he had been. They knew better.

“
I think I should go to my father now,” he said, and the men respectfully fell back.

~~~

At the entrance to the keep, Magnes paused for a moment, then pushed open the door and stepped over the threshold. His eyes immediately swung left to scan the great hearth. The flickering light of the lamps cast dancing shadows across the cold stones of the dead fireplace. The hearth lay bare.

Ghost was not in his usual place.

Magnes swallowed hard and decided that he would deal with that later. For now, he had to stay totally focused on how he planned to handle his father.