The Flame of Wrath (38 page)

             
As Lucas fled, Zahara shook her head. “Not here, Soren. We must retreat to the tunnels.”

             
Soren reluctantly slipped from his entanglement with Nicodemus. He lingered in the cellar for a moment longer.

             
The sinewy line of one of the Guardians danced around him purposely. She held a broom in her hand. She swept its end over the loose surface of the earth, blurring away their footprints in the soil. When any trace of their arrival was gone, she backed into the tunnel. She ushered Soren inside as well, sweeping after them. She dropped the broom dejectedly to the tunnel floor. Her hand patted Soren's shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. Then she moved around him to follow after the others.

             
Soren was left alone in the darkness with the sounds of his party's footsteps growing more distant within the tunnel. It was not their footfalls alone which left him. The sealed door had also placed an end to softly uttered words of forgiveness.

********

              Howls of lament were released into the bitter cold of the desert night. The small province of Endless Sun shook with grief. One of their brothers was dead. He had been stabbed by a villain who had emerged from the depths of their greatest nightmares only to return to them without a trace.

             
The priests had discovered Nicodemus at the very moment that others found Autumn missing.

********

              Cries of sorrow traveled across a vast land until they were echoed soon after by the ringing chime of a crystal dish.

             
Aurea gazed over her shoulder in the direction of the signaling bowl. She motioned for her servants to wait in their preparations for her departure. Curiously, she drew nearer to the waters. The confusion written plainly across her face shimmered with her dancing reflection. She tapped the ringing dish with her small silver hammer.              

             
The Prince of Virtue awkwardly shifted. “Empress,” he stammered.

             
The Empress arched her brow slowly. Something ominous seized her spine.

             
News of the murder came with a downcast head, but it was the report on Autumn's disappearance which was uttered scarcely above a whisper.

             
Sapphire eyes widened. The flames they housed rose high. Each flame whipped as white hot rage which spread across her iris. “Find her!” Aurea snapped.

             
“Yes, Empress,” the High Prince stuttered. Quickly, he fled.

             
With silence ringing inside her ears louder than the alarm ever could, Aurea scoured her surroundings with wild eyes. Her breathing was erratic and wild. She staggered out of her chambers.

             
A blooming swell gathered force inside her abdomen. It made her body shake in anticipation. Then like the ancient peaks whose wrath erupted upon the lands, Aurea's cry burst from her body. Her frightening voice sent life throughout the palace. All those souls who once had slept were snatched from peacefulness to inhabit her world of chaos.

             
“Wake!” she demanded. “Wake!”

             
Servants trembling with fear hurried from their beds.

             
“Bring me my bride!” she roared.

             
A flurry of people raced around her in every direction. All were readying an excursion to the temple of Endless Sun.

             
As the Empress stood panting angrily among them so many thoughts swirled throughout Aurea's mind. Autumn was missing. Missing! Where could she have gone? Was she taken from the temple? Or did she wake and leave of her own volition? A priest was dead. Who could have killed him? Had she awoke to a place she did not know, surrounded by men who were strangers only to defend herself? Was she the murderer?

             
The Empress shuddered violently. “No,” she muttered. Autumn did not have it in her to be a murderer. Her brother perhaps, but never Autumn.

             
There was only one possible conclusion. Someone had taken her. But who, she wondered, and how?

             
Hands coiled over her shoulders, gripping them with a gentle firmness. “My Empress,” came a soft voice.

             
Aurea shifted her eyes until their gaze met brilliant green. She found Maven watching her closely through the mirror-like surface of the windows.

             
“It would seem,” Maven said, “that what we've feared for so long has finally come to pass.”

             
The shoulders beneath her touch tensed dramatically. The statuesque Queen released the petite Empress from her grasp.

             
Rage gathered in strength as it coursed wildly through her limbs. Aurea turned until she could clearly stare into the face of the beautiful Queen. “You think that this is the rebellion,” she husked. “You think that this is the work of Angelos III?”

             
Maven nodded her head slowly as if its weight was too much for her long neck. “Would a father not scour the ends of the earth to find his lost child?” she mused aloud.

             
Aurea did not have time to waste upon wondering how Angelos III had finally learned of his daughter's whereabouts. All that mattered now was trying to stop him before he could get Autumn back to Angels' ground, where Aurea no longer had power. “Redirect the Knights from Endless Sun.”

             
“Where would you have us focus our attention, my Empress?”

             
“I want my forces lining the border between what is mine and what is cursed by Angels.”

             
Maven paused before the doors. She held her lithe fingers against the cool surface. Her eyes twinkled with indiscernible emotion. “You think they will try to pass the border?” she asked curiously.

             
Aurea's flames dimmed to a chilling cold. “There is nothing else for them to do,” she glowered. “Getting Autumn to Angels is their only hope.”

********

              Even from the cold confines of the tunnel, they could clearly hear the storm raging.

             
The temple was being turned completely upside-down in an effort to discover the means of escape used by those who had dared to take Autumn.

             
As the madness of chaos emerged so too did the dark truths about the brotherhood within the temple. Many men among the priests' ranks removed their robes to don the armor they were truly at home within. These men had taken up the faith, yes, but they were soldiers first. It had been their lives to pass the days gathering information on their brothers, but now, now they would interrogate them. They questioned their brothers with the brutality of their words, but also with their tightly-closed fists.

             
“The temple will burn!” a soldier vowed. He searched the priests' frightened faces, waiting for the one who might crack beneath the pressure of his threats. “All of you will die for your betrayal!”

             
Still no answers came.

             
The conspiracy which the soldiers had been desperately searching to uncover did not appear to exist. The more they questioned the priests, the more they realized that they were in fact as innocent as they had claimed. Still, innocence would not be enough to save them. Aurea would require blood to appease her furies. Unfortunately for the men of Endless Sun, it was they who would be fed to the beast.

********

              “Search the oasis!”

             
A weary man gave a growled command. He and his brothers had scoured the area surrounding the temple for days. They had searched for any clues as to where their enemy might have gone. Yet, they could find nothing.

             
If they could not find them among the comforts of the oasis
, he thought.
Then frankly, he would not know where else to look.

             
The land offered so little. There was nothing in every harsh direction, but endless desert with the exception of a small jewel of green. It was the last remaining haven which housed his team now.

             
They had reached the oasis beneath the light of an inviting moon. They welcomed the cool reprieve if only for a moment.

             
Tranquility was broken by a rustling sound. Its sound caused the men to tense. Apprehensively, they drew their swords. The rustling had stopped. Could it be the rebellion's forces struggling to avoid further detection?

             
They cautiously began closing in upon the once quivering thicket.

             
Both, captain and priest, he commanded his men by example. He was exhausted just as his men were exhausted, but their mission was not yet complete. They had to rescue Autumn from the resistance.

             
The captain extended his hand. Pressing his fingertips to the leaves, he carefully swept back the curtain of foliage.

             
As one, the soldiers held their breaths. Their eyes peered heavily into the shaded darkness.

             
A low growl made boiling blood thicken with frost.

             
“It's a nesting ground,” he screamed. “Run!” But it was too late.

             
An enormous lizard leapt from the darkness. As its tongue whipped across the air, it tasted the darkness in these men's souls. Innocent blood stained their hearts and hands. The lizard's jaws frothed with the same menace that these men had attacked innocents.

             
The carnivorous creature pinned the captain between its powerful claws. Its head lifted to look around it. The trees were wild and alive with its brothers who were encircling their prey.

             
Screams rang out into the night. They voiced a resounding truth. The soldiers were dead. The serene oasis was now a peaceful place to no one.

             
From the distance, a smoldering fire rose up to blaze against the night. Once it had been a beautiful temple, but now, it was the kindling meant to feed insatiable fires. It was a tomb. The priests inside were dead. As their ghosts rose into the air as loudly popping ash, their haunted voices demanded the answer to their consuming question: Where was Autumn of Angels?

********

              It was in the consuming darkness that Autumn rested within the arms of her old friend, Soren. It was no longer the sleep of a woman whose soul was in desperate need of mending. This sleep belonged to a woman who was on the cocoon-like verge of reawakening as something far more beautiful, something far stronger.

             
Soren had yet to tell her the horrors she would need to know. Instead, he ---perhaps foolishly--- allowed her to know the peace of vivid dreaming before those dreams turned to nightmares. Soon, she would carry the full weight of her beloved's sins. What that meant for Autumn no one knew. Not even the wisest of the druids.

             
He held her closer, resting his cheek atop the soft pillow of her hair.

             
The silence of the tunnel grew lost beneath the sputtered coughs afflicting his companions.

             
Zahara's voice rose up to beckon to those of her command. “Move,” she said quietly. “They're burning the temple.”

             
Soren swallowed his tears as he carried Autumn away from her former tomb. At their backs, a wispy smoke curled out its hand in an attempt to claim them.

             
The stones groaned a grainy song. They slid apart to reveal the disheveled beauty of mystical gloom. It lingered over the oasis floor as fog. That vaporous blanket curled into the tunnel tugging at their feet, possessing them to move.

             
One by one the warriors left the darkness lingering upon their clothes like cobwebs. They breathed deeply in a desire to enjoy the fresh air, but found that the air was tainted by the coppery-headiness of blood and the scent of distant fires.

             
Zahara motioned two of her soldiers forward to scout the area.

             
A quick search upon the grounds found the scattered remains of Aurea's fallen.

             
The silent excursion set up camp for the night on the opposite side of the oasis. They did not fear the lizards calmly sleeping within the emerald density. Instead they took comfort in the strength of their presence.

             
Beneath the moon, the ghost's shrouds were peeled away from their bodies. The sweaty stickiness of their skins made that task difficult, but the air rushing to greet their skin was its own reward. Together, they silently bathed in the cool waters. Such a simple act, bathing, and yet it provided such a sense of lightness in the sheer normalcy of it all.