Vulture (28 page)
Authors: Rhiannon Paille
Tags: #juvenile fiction, #Legends; Myths; Fables, #Norse
The Vultures started screeching. Krishani watched as the sky plucked them from the ground and seemingly flung them into the stars. One moment they were feeding on the wispy smoke of fresh souls and the next they were drawn up by the sky itself and tossed into the black abyss. His head swirled with dizziness as he clutched the stone and thought hard about home.
* * *
32 - The Watchtower
Kaliel didn’t need Pux to sleep with her to ward off the nightmares anymore. What she had done buzzed in her ears and sang through her veins like wasps in the jars Cassareece kept handy. She clutched the pillow tight and tangled the blanket around her feet, cocooning her in its heavy warmth. Everything was growing. When she returned to castle Tavesin, warmer temperatures budded and green, nascent apples formed on the boughs of trees in the village. She never thought of them as apple trees, mostly because they didn’t look anything like the apple trees in Avristar, but there they were, bearing fruit like it was something they were used to. She didn’t share the good news with Pux, keeping the secret to herself, even if it killed her.
Pux was too busy with Jack anyway. She found them lounging in the barn soon after she returned, not touching, but sitting in the loft, their backs pressed against the hay. Jack had a strand sticking out of his mouth, and Pux rested his hands on his breeches, gazing intently at the boy about the same age as him. Kaliel announced that she was heading to bed and lied about the fact she left the village a second time and hadn’t been caught. The second trip was much shorter than the first, and Pux hadn’t noticed she was gone.
She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for sleep, but titillation laced through her veins, making it impossible to drift off. There was so much danger. She had no idea how Cassareece’s dust was going to defeat the Horsemen, keep the Valtanyana at bay, and change Krishani. But those things would have to happen if he were to come home. Cassareece couldn’t double cross her and let the Valtanyana attack head-on, could she? Tremors washed over her, ending in little bursts at the edges of her fingertips. She sat abruptly and went over to the bureau, took the birthstone, the last piece of Avristar she owned, and cradled it in her palms. The familiar violet color erupted from the stone and she fell back into the bed with a sigh, staring at its luminescent light. She wasn’t a flower or a weed; she was a Flame.
Guilt triumphed over excitement as she clamped her hands around the crystal, hiding the light and dropping her clasped hands on her chest. She’d have to leave before Tor came for the Flames–not back to Avristar, but somewhere safe. Nimphalls maybe. Clamose could conceal her and Krishani in the catacombs. Cassareece may have told her to decline Tor, but Kaliel didn’t want to know what he was like when angered.
The staggering truth was that he was one of them, and while most respected him, she didn’t want to underestimate him. When Tor came and asked for the Flames, she wouldn’t tell him she handed them to the Valtanyana. The price for treason was high; Kaliel was aware of the consequences that might fall on her. But Cassareece was clear: she was bound by her words, Krishani wouldn’t be a Ferryman anymore, and the lands would be restored. In return, the Valtanyana were given the Flames. The fight with Tor wasn’t her fight. She didn’t remember enough about the First Era to understand the wrath of the Valtanyana. She saw their darkness in the white lightning of Crestaos’s eyes, in the blue sapphires of Cassareece’s eyes, and in the murky blackness of Morgana’s eyes. They had the power to defeat Tor; she wasn’t going to stand in the way.
She took a shaky breath and remembered what Mallorn had said on Avristar.
Crestaos will not stop until every last living thing on Avristar is dead.
She believed him because of her dreams, because of the way Crestaos captured, tortured, and killed the Flames without remorse or regret. He turned them into his pawns, trapping them in orbs like they weren’t beings but things, weapons to be used at his disposal. He never had any intention of giving them lives.
Kaliel let the guilt burn its way through her, knowing even though they’d spent most of their time locked in orbs under Talina’s floorboards, Tor taking them to the Great Hall was the best choice. He couldn’t give their lives back when the Valtanyana were mounting an attack. Forfeiting them to stop the attack seemed like the only solution.
Kaliel rolled onto her side and let the birthstone slip from her hands. Cool air touched her shoulders and she was suddenly asleep.
In the dream she pawed through a field of rose bushes without roses. The brambles pricked her skin and drew blood, bright red drops appearing on her palms. She swiveled, ducking under the brush, thorns scraping across her back. She found herself in the ivory maiden’s gown she was so used to wearing. An eerie, high-pitched laugh hit the air. Something hissed and slithered across the ground. A garden snake traveled over her slippers, leading the way. She glanced at the night-covered sky and followed.
They walked for a long time. The brambles didn’t let up, but the snake knew where to go that caused less damage to Kaliel’s fair skin. She let out deep gulps of air as the sky filled with mottled sand clouds, haze hanging over the sky in a big, rusty orange bubble. Kaliel couldn’t make sense of her surroundings as the snake finally broke through the rose bushes and her feet landed on soft plushy grass. A four foot tall stone wall with a spiraling cobblestone sidewalk led into the ground.
The snake disappeared around the corner and she followed it, down, down, down into the depths of the earth until she heard voices speaking in hushed tones and a blue light flickered off the walls, trailing up the tunnel as far as it could go. She paused at the mouth of the chamber, her mouth hanging open. Morgana stood in front of a stone pillar, a blue flame floating on top of it. Morgana had her head down, and her arms were covered in thick red blood from the elbow down. It was like she reached into a barrel of blood and came out sticky. Blood smeared her cheeks, wet her lips, and caked her hair.
Morgana didn’t look at Kaliel as she whispered the incantation and sprinkled bloodied herbs into the flame. There was a loud crack and scarab beetles erupted from the pillar, pouring out in hoards like parasites, crawling up the walls. They conglomerated in spikes like the spires of the sun. The scarab beetles melted into a sticky paste, shaping and forming until each spire was no longer a scarab beetle but a being. Four of them were beasts, humanoid in shape but resembling a spider, griffin, kraken, and dragon. Two of them were Immortals with tall, elongated ears and pristine, unbreakable faces. Morgana and the other three were human, but their grayish skin and lightning eyes didn’t fail. Kaliel had trouble focusing with all the shadows in the room. They cracked out of the dirt walls one by one and landed on the smooth stone floor. Morgana smiled at each of them, her teeth outlined by rot. The dragon-like beast took her bloodied hand and kissed it, pulling the little girl to her feet.
Kaliel didn’t need to see more to know what this was. Cassareece wasn’t lying when she said they returned; she wasn’t lying at all because she was there, standing on the opposite end of the room, glaring at Kaliel with her lightning sapphire eyes.
Kaliel fled up the spiraling sidewalk but it never ended. She couldn’t escape the Valtanyana, not if she sold the Flames to help Krishani, not if she sacrificed herself, not if she promised to be their pawn–never.
She would never have a life of her own, no matter how much she wanted it.
• • •
Crunching footsteps crossed the sand near the cabin, near the lake. Dilapidated clouds painted the sky, the sun hiding behind them. Tor came this way to avoid the wind, but it picked up, whistling against shale rock and smacking him in the face. He didn’t like it when the land didn’t obey him. With a hand up, he silenced it.
He flexed his gloved fingers as he approached the streak of blue dust. It was too out of place to be inconspicuous. He twirled his cane once and kicked up the wind enough to make it cut through the sand dune, spreading grains along the ground and out of the way. He lifted a lip and it curled into a frown. He crouched, his gloved hand brushing off the remaining sand.
He recognized the box.
He hummed to himself and picked it up, pressing the latch and letting it fall open. Six orbs rested comfortably against the velvet, glowing a faint red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, and pink. He snapped it shut, turned on his heel, and vanished, the box tucked neatly under his arm.
* * *
33 - Small Triumphs
Kaliel sat across from Klavotesi as he shuffled the cards. The entire table was covered in what Klavotesi called ‘divination tools.’ Whittled sticks, painted dasavatara chips, bones, runes, crystals, seashells, dehydrated body parts, candles, and incense stretched from one end of the table to the other. Klavotesi shuffled what he called ‘the tarot.’ He set the stack of cards on the table and motioned for her to cut the deck. She raised an eyebrow. She spent the afternoon throwing bones, crystals, and runes and touching or arranging other items into patterns. It was exhausting. Days had passed since she’d cast the dust, and while the land responded better to her touch, summer dwindled towards autumn.
Klavotesi explained that even if she wanted to invoke the land, during winter it would be nearly impossible to get a response. That’s why most humans turned to divination. When the land couldn’t give them the answers they sought, the charged items assisted.
Kaliel’s thoughts wandered to Krishani every time she touched the cards. Klavotesi seemed disappointed. She reluctantly cut the deck and watched him lay out the cards in a pyramid pattern. He flipped them over, showing images drawn on the back. They had numbers at the top and names at the bottom but were in a foreign language. She kept trying to find correlations between Terra and the things in the Tavesin village, but Terra was underdeveloped as far as the Lands of Men were concerned. Most of the things Elwen owned and taught the villagers came from one of the other six lands. Klavotesi kept saying that one day it would become one of the most powerful civilizations across the stars. He also kept referring to the land as Scotland, though the name sounded awkward on her tongue. She yawned as he turned over a card with a young girl on it dangling a scale from her hand.
Kaliel perked up. “What does that card mean?” She pointed at the little girl, unnerved at the striking resemblance to Morgana and the scales.
Klavotesi exhaled. “It’s the Justice card. In this case it’s showing us an act of injustice has been committed and it must be brought into balance.” He smiled under the heavy hood. Kaliel had grown accustomed to feeling him smile rather than actually seeing it. They kept what happened in the cave a secret but she didn’t want a repeat of the incident. Her stomach filled with knots at the mention of justice. She had been really careful around Klavotesi, blocking her thoughts, making sure to project other thought patterns. He was a master at reading minds and knowing the future, among other skills like combat and mind manipulation. She didn’t want him to see what she had done. She was still waiting for the final effects of the magic to take shape.
She pointed at another card with a young boy on it. “And this one?”
“It’s inconsequential. This is the Page of Staves, and in this case it represents a young and foolish friend.”
Pux.
Kaliel smiled. Things had been really good with him again. They did chores together, had lessons separately with Klavotesi because Pux was learning different things. She and Pux often sat by the lake and talked about little things, funny things Jack had done, or stories Bethula told him. He talked about other villagers but Kaliel didn’t pay attention to them. There were so many names and thoughts floating around her head she found it hard to concentrate on anything but Krishani coming home.
“You think this is boring,” Klavotesi said.
Kaliel glanced at him, pulled out of her mass amount of thoughts. She chewed on her lip and laughed out loud. Klavotesi didn’t move but she could imagine him pulling his eyebrows together. She swept a hand across the stuff on the table, indicating everything, even the stuff she couldn’t reach. “Why do I need any of this? I’m made of magic, aren’t I?”
Klavotesi cleared his throat. “You can instill your energy in these items. Store it there for later.”
Kaliel thought about the birthstone, every time she held it, every time it glowed. She never thought about the potential of her Flame, what it could do. The things she was used to were benign or destructive. Curiously she picked up the dasavatara chips to her left. They were circular, red, some type of thick parchment, almost like wood but softer. On the back they were plain, but on the front they were hand painted in gold, silver, black, red, and green. She thumbed through them, pushing the vast majority of the five hundred pieces out of the way. She picked up one with a beautiful black horse and a rider with a golden crown on his head. The chips were too small for elaborate drawings, but they had dots in patterns on them, symbolizing different things. To Kaliel they looked like splotches of paint. She pushed the piece into her palm and let the Flame flare. There was so much energy in her hand that the piece vibrated and levitated, surrounded in the Flame’s light. She pressed more and more of her energy into it, wondering what would happen if she tried to pour herself entirely into the piece. Could she be trapped in something so small? So inanimate? She closed her amethyst eyes and focused harder, wanting to instill the piece with as much energy as she could.
A bone white hand gripped her wrist hard, and she dropped the piece into the pile. She went to pick it up again but Klavotesi held her tightly.
“I don’t think you should be creating charms or talismans yet,” he warned, his voice shaking slightly.
Kaliel let the Flame dissipate. It was always dangerous like this; the Obsidian Flame mixing with the Amethyst Flame made her nauseous. Klavotesi let go and the wisps of energy stopped. She widened her eyes. “I wasn’t trying.…”
“You need to be more careful. I’ve avoided telling you how precious what you possess is. You don’t see it, but humans can’t generate the kind of energy you have naturally.” He sucked in a heavy breath and let it out slowly. Kaliel noted the disappointment in his tone; she didn’t want him to continue.
“It’s not wise to go around leaving pieces of your energy everywhere. It can be used for anything. Energy can be manipulated, guided towards the intentions of the caster or invoker.” He gestured to the chips. “Any human can pick up that chip you instilled and use it to destroy an entire land.”
Kaliel self-consciously began picking through the chips, trying to find the one she instilled with energy, but they all looked the same to her. Some had three black horses, others two, others six; it was confusing. She couldn’t find the one with the one black horse. She’d have to go through the entire pile.
“What’s done is done. Your energy will stay dormant in the item until it’s invoked. The point is to leave it hidden. The Flames have always been like that—hidden. It’s not a lie that greed will always follow, no matter where we go.”
Kaliel didn’t want to hear the lecture. She didn’t want to be told that, no matter where she was or what body she occupied, she would always be hunted. The only person who wasn’t greedy about possessing her was Krishani, but she wanted him to possess her from the beginning. There was nothing wrong with belonging to him; he had her heart, Flame, soul, everything. He had it because he was the only one who didn’t want to use it for his own good fortune. She took in a deep breath and pushed up from the table.
“You said something about fire manipulation the other day,” she said breathlessly, surprised at how airy her voice sounded. She braced herself on the edge of the table in an attempt not to wobble and fall over while Klavotesi rose to his feet and nodded.
“I did. We should head further into the village, it’s the only place that has a hearth big enough for what I want to show you.” He didn’t bother to clean up the items as he stalked out of the hall, Kaliel on his heels.
Her eyes traced patterns on the ground as they passed the stables and descended into the clusters of cabins. The village was a simple place, even though streets stretched out in spokes. Once past the mess hall, it was easy to navigate, and fields stretched out endlessly to the edge of the stone walls. They grew everything themselves, enough to feed the hundreds in the village. Klavotesi picked up the pace as he dodged younger children in dresses and breeches. They had a thing for playing with sticks. Kaliel listened to the soft clattering of wood against wood and glanced at the clear blue sky. There hadn’t been a drop of rain since the dust, and the air smelled like apples. Klavotesi reached the village center, a small circle of cabins facing the giant pile of stones. This was where the village dignitaries lived. Kaliel had no interest in meeting them. Technically they were part of the Tavesin lineage and related to Krishani, despite him being born decades before them.
She sighed and kicked a stray rock on the ground. It wasn’t getting any easier waiting for him to come back. She hoped he defeated the Horsemen and was free of being the Ferryman.
Klavotesi stood in front of the hearth, his arms raised above the stones. It was hollow in the center, which seconds later was ablaze. She joined him when he beckoned and watched the flames worry at the dry wood. The fire was a vibrant orange with wisps of white and yellow flickering through the centerpiece. She half smiled at it. Krishani could make fire like that. It was one of the things the Brotherhood of Amersil taught him, one of the things that stuck even though he was exiled from their ranks.
Klavotesi shot her a sideways glance. “It’s not that hard. Rub your hands together, think about flames, release a spark.”
“And things burn?” Kaliel asked, though she wanted to stuff the words back into her mouth. A lump formed in her throat as she thought about what Cassareece said about Kaliel making the stars fall. She didn’t mean to trigger something from the past. Klavotesi tensed considerably and she dropped her hands to her sides.
“You need to think about fire, specifically
want
things to burn. Otherwise the Flame would burn right through you. You wouldn’t be able to hold a physical form if you wanted to.”
Kaliel wished she had kept her mouth shut because when Klavotesi began ranting he had a hard time stopping. She was tired of enduring long afternoon lessons and was hungry and needed to sit in the loft with Pux, talking about nonessential things.
“The Flame is a light. It can burn, yes, but it can also give light without burning. If you knew Isadora, you’d know her Flame is cold. The Flame is pure energy, it can be anything, do anything, but your will must guide it.”
Kaliel raised her eyebrows. It was like he was speaking another language. “You’ve spent a long time trying to sort this?”
Klavotesi let out an exasperated sigh. “Clamose helped. Being only nine of us makes drawing similarities among us almost impossible.” He seemed more agitated than usual, which was new for him. She wondered if he knew about the Valtanyana, if he knew they were mounting another attack. If he had a plan, she didn’t expect him to tell her. It was a subject they didn’t bring up, along with the Flames. She still felt awkward in his presence, like there was some combustible boundary line she shouldn’t cross. “What do the Flames have in common?”
Klavotesi let his hands hang out of his cloak and began moving them in circles, not answering her but creating whirlpools in the fire. She glanced at it, noticing the way the flames mimicked water. An intense weight landed on her chest from the energy he exerted and again, the same way it always was when he was near, she felt sick. It wasn’t the same sickness she felt near Crestaos, but it was unnerving. Klavotesi told her briefly about Tiki, about how she wasn’t in a human form and how that made her more dangerous than the others. He warned her to stay away from the box, not to touch them at all because of the volatile effects of trying to merge the Flames. It was the only thing that seemed to scare him.
Klavotesi stopped messing with the fire. After a long silence he groaned. “You. We had you in common because … you were the one who …” he faltered and she raised her hand, letting it hover over his, careful not to actually touch him. After what Cassareece told her about the past, she didn’t want to hear more of it. Klavotesi seemed conflicted about the disaster. She knew everything she wanted to know about the First Era, about her existence and part in the first war. She was with Krishani, she made the stars fall, and everyone burned. That was enough guilt to put on her shoulders, not to mention that any second the Valtanyana could attack. At least Clamose was safe in Nimphalls. She didn’t have the heart to let him be a part of the fray. In the end this was going to be her fight.
“Don’t talk about it. Show me what you can do with the fire.” She let go, unwilling to admit there was a fire raging inside her body, her bones feeling the Flame whispering off her, trying to escape from the crevasses of her soul. Klavotesi lifted his hands. The fire turned black and Kaliel dropped her jaw. It was such a sudden change there was no time for shock to register. She had gone all the way to awe and clung to some form of her sanity when she found herself sink to the ground.
“I don’t think I can do that,” she muttered, hoping Klavotesi hadn’t heard.
He crossed his arms. “Your turn to try. Project the Flame. The way it turns your eye color, it can turn the fire the same color.”
Kaliel eased up and brought herself back to her feet. “Okay,” she said, standing in front of the fire. She let the Flame loose and felt her eyes change color. In an instant her irises were burning and her hands felt like they were on fire, and when she clicked her eyes open the fire was amethyst. Her heart rate slowed and she let out a breath. It was actually anticlimactic. She could do the same thing with the birthstone.
She spun, Klavotesi staring at her. He looked satisfied, perplexed, and amused. “I see you’ve already mastered this skill.”
Kaliel thought of Mallorn and the night she showed him she could talk to trees and bloom flowers. “It’s not the same thing.” She stalked away, not caring if he followed her.
“You need to stop hiding your gifts from us, Kaliel!” Klavotesi called after her, a mocking tone in his voice.
She shook her head, smiling to herself about the small triumph.
* * *
