Fallen Warrior (Fallen Trilogy book 3) Read online

  "Yes, well, I can hardly believe they agreed to help the Ghaundians," Lucian replied. "I was surprised enough when they said they would fight Akadia. Even though the Vermillion Birds are small, if they could help carry supplies over the pass, it could mean all the difference."

  I nodded. These words were quite true. Since the war with Akadia, all of the eastern kingdoms were in distress, but Ghaund was farthest from Yanartas, and thus far we'd been able to do little to help them. Even with the armies pulled back, the Akadian presence in Karatel made trade difficult, and the goblins were still attacking Ghaund in periodic skirmishes. No matter what, the coming winter would be difficult for the Ghaundians, but help from Echren was wonderful news that Lucian and I would deliver on our way back to Yanartas.

  This subject had taken up the largest part of our meeting with Carceron and the reason we'd been so long inside, but I hadn't forgotten our true purpose in coming to Echren, and the response the Zuque had given.

  "I suppose I misjudged them in part," Lucian admitted, "though I still can't say that I understand their behavior." He shrugged his jacket tighter over his body, leaning back against Arrin. "I noticed Carceron said something to you before we left. Was it about the Constellation Animals?"

  I hid a swallow, and immediately shook my head, but before I could reply a sharp wind rushed past us, drowning out any sound I could make with the crackling it drew from the city. Sparks danced up around the ember-wood, filling the sky with light. I shivered, but not from the cold. Luffie was watching me, reading the thoughts that had come at the mention of Carceron's words. I forced her off the subject, then answered Lucian. "Just a courtesy to Shaundakul. Nothing important."

  "Hmm," he remarked. "Amazing what a difference your position makes to these Constellation Animals."

  "You don't think Byako—"

  He scoffed. "I was there, Ellia, remember? You won't fool me into believing they would have agreed otherwise. Though they seem keen enough to test their metal when given the chance..." By this he likely referred to the White Tigers' fancy for battling—greater than any Granted Animal I'd known of before them. The trick of his words, whether realized by him or not, that metal was the element of the White Tigers, wasn't lost on my myth-filled mind. Neither was the significance of the season belonging to the Black Tortoises, which seemed to be constantly taunting me.

  "Do you think it will be enough?" I asked uncertainly, "The myths, I mean. When we go to Genbu?"

  "Them, and you, they'll have to be," he replied.

  I smiled. This was a rather positive response for Lucian. The two chimera had finished eating. Lucian picked up their empty sacks and stuffed them into his. Then he handed me the extra jacket he'd been holding.

  "I wish we were going there now," I said honestly.

  "Even I'd admit, it would be nice to be done with all this waiting," he said, holding out his hand for my satchel, which he tethered to the back of Arrin, "But the truth is, there's no reason to be in a rush. We have time now. All the time we need to be careful.... The Akadians are the ones that should be in a frenzy."

  "Only it doesn't seem as if they are, does it?"

  "Well, they still have a lot of soldiers."

  "More than the rest of the lands combined," I retorted. "Plus the chimera weapons."

  "Those don't do any good for them so long as we don't use our fire-breath," he reminded me. Then he glanced at Arrin, as if his bonded friend must have had a specific opinion on the topic. But what chimera didn't? "Akadia may still be powerful, but at least for now, they're not harming the other kingdoms. And they're not going to increase their ranks, not while they're keeping their armies in the city."

  "In other words, they're not doing anything," I followed.

  Lucian narrowed. He let out a short breath. "That's a strange way to put it."

  "Is it?" Another wind rushed by and the city flamed up once again with sparks. Luffie nudged her head against my leg, watching it as I was.

  "Well, I'm sure Lox has some sort of plan," Lucian said, "We'll just have to hope ours plays out better than his. But for now, in any way that matters, I suppose you're right..."

  I looked back to see Lucian had already mounted, and he shrugged when he finished his statement.

  "He's not doing anything."

  Chapter Two

  CYRIC:

  I swung my sword up and around in arc, landing it with my blade pointed to the ground. Sun glinted off the metal, half-blinding me and likely anyone else close by of which there were hundreds available. I was at the center of the largest cavern of the training grounds, surrounded by the larger part of a battalion, just one of the three I rotated between training these days.

  Two men, Slark, and another Sergeant, Marx, mirrored my movements at either end of the cavern—since there was no way all the recruits would be able to see just me. When they did, the soldiers followed, arcing their swords up then down, in perfect synchronization. This was a new form Lox had us learning, something from the far east—even farther than Democedes. He was very exact about how many hours we spent on it each day, and we'd already gone three on through the hottest part of the day. Even my grip on my sword was getting sloppy, so I wasn't surprised when in the midst of their next synchronized strike, I heard a cry from one of the soldiers.

  I looked over my shoulder, my torso straining too much for the grade of work we'd been doing. I saw one of the men, hunched into the dirt, over his leg, the soldiers around him averting their eyes, likely for fear of punishment. I raised my sword high in the air. Slark shouted an order and in an instant, all of the soldiers had straightened to attention, their swords at their sides, a space of a foot or two between each of them.

  The fallen soldier leaned on his sword and tried to stand, but before he could I took it from him. "Don't be an idiot," I said, helping him back to his knees. He tried to reply, but only hissed a wince. "What's hurt?" I asked, discarding his weapon. I'd already checked to find that it didn't have blood on it.

  "I don't know," he finally managed, "my leg..." his voice cut out again. He pulled at the edge of his leather pants. I bent down beside him, expecting to find a sprained or broken ankle, but then I saw a grey mark around the rim of his boot. Almost as if his skin had been stained. My mind flashed to a different sort of leg, much wider and darker, not human; but now I wasn't sure the mark hadn't just been my eyes playing tricks on me.

  I didn't check again to find out. I stood and waited for Slark—who'd already been headed our direction. Unlike most the soldiers, he wasn't wearing upper body armor, or any shirt at all. His black hair had grown some, but his blue eyes made him stand out more than anything. Few in Akadia had eyes like that; they were something native to Shaundakul. Particularly Shaundakul nobility, like he'd once been.

  He took in the scene very quickly, then made to call the nearest soldier—reading my intention, as he usually did. Only this time he was wrong. "No. He needs to go to Silos."

  Slark blinked. "The Kanthian?" His face was skeptic; but that was all. Whether I made sense or not, he usually didn't make it a habit of questioning me.

  "Go and take him," I ordered, knowing well that he was one of the only ones here that knew who or where Silos was, "And make sure he can walk before you come back." I picked up the injured soldier's sword, then made to return to the front of the men, but Slark stopped me first.

  "Maybe you should go," he said. His hand was on my arm. I looked from it to him. "You've been here since dawn," he added. "And we still have the patrol tonight."

  "Trying to take my place already?" I guessed with a half-smile. "Your promotion really must be going to your head."

  "It's not just the patrol, Silos was asking after you anyways. Earlier today.... I thought you may just as well take both trips at once."

  He held out his hand for the extra sword. I spared a glance for the fallen soldier, who had managed to get himself to his feet, muttering something about feeling well enough to train.

  I handed Slark the s
word. "Run them back through the course after this. They should go another hour."

  He nodded. Then he raised his arm, calling loud enough to address the cavern as he walked to the front of the group.

  I tipped my head back to the injured soldier as I sheathed my own sword; the same one Lox had given me so long ago. "Can you walk on your own?" I asked him.

  He got a nod off. I wasn't about to argue, when I didn't feel particularly capable of walking steadily myself. I had a knot in my gut. And I didn't want to admit that I'd been glad Slark had relieved me. There was something both worse and better about training; the better part included being preoccupied enough not to notice all of it at once. When I stopped, though, that went away fast.

  The injured soldier made it out of the group before they started up with their maneuvers again, but there were no handmaidens waiting along the edge near the fountain to crowd us. There wasn't room for them anymore. They still spotted the viewing platforms, but the training grounds were completely filled up with soldiers.

  They weren't all mine to train. Commander Venoc was back in Akadia to watch over his own, and Scanth had Lieutenants to train his while he was away in Karatel. Less than half of his battalion was there with him, perhaps a thousand, something like a sixth of the entire Akadian force. The fact that all but this of the Akadian army was back in the city showed.

  We entered the main street outside of the training grounds only to run into almost just as many soldiers. They dotted the streets, the guard towers, the squares of Akadia, like ants, particularly leading up towards the palace district, which was a view that I still hadn't become accustomed to.

  The bright golden spiraling palace that had once risen high above the city, was gone. The tallest buildings in Akadia were now the barracks, or the citadels containing the war-rooms. Lox's was the largest of these. I could see it from where I was now, resting at the top of the red-rock wall that was part of the cavern I'd just been training in. Sunlight reflected off the building's tall glass window, beyond that hung the blue dragon tapestry that had once lived in the great hall of Shaundakul.

  It may just as well have been entitled Akadia's new palace.

  What had followed the destruction of the real palace, the death of Molec, and most of the nobles of Akadia, was very quick action. Some councilmembers, Lords, and Ladies had survived, demanding the rights of the council to lead in the crisis, or claims were made by certain Lords to stand in until a new King could be chosen. Even some had testified to an heir that resided on the Isle of Yanartas, and those had been silenced first, though not quickly enough that even the most common of Akadians knew that the city's once-favored captain had been a prince, that his famed "ghost" was no ghost at all, and that the Lady Amalia Denathar had been much more to King Molec than an acquaintance. The news of such conspiracies within the King's innermost circle had only eased the transition of power away from the nobles—though there was never much of a promise for struggle to begin with. Soldiers outnumbered laymen in Akadia two to one, and (as I'd been told by Lox many times before) soldiers followed the orders of their commanders. And Commanders Venoc and Scanth followed Commander Lox.

  So, once Lox had declared the dispersion of the council, the council had been dispersed. And once he'd deemed no Lords fit to rule in Molec's place, no Lords had ruled. He'd ordered the total leveling of the half-ruined palace in the same breath he'd welcomed the soldiers back from the eastern lands. Then he'd explained the tactical necessity for the break in warring on the other kingdoms, and the permanent occupancy of the soldiers in Akadia—which had made the men only too pleased.

  Then the other changes had started.

  The injured soldier and I had to wind away from the palace district to reach our destination. Since he didn't know where we were going any longer, I led—though before long he could probably have ventured a guess.

  Busier even than the training grounds, was the district that had just a few months ago been abandoned. The one that took up the westernmost part of Akadia, that had housed, and still did, the Granted Temple, though now it had been leveled into a pavilion known as High Hill. The largest pillars of the old temple still stood, surrounding the space, and even from this distance I could see the huddle of bright color marking the attire of those who frequented Akadia's newest and most popular location.

  My soldier and I took a route that bypassed it and made straight for the western wall. Men and women—workers mostly—went on ahead of us, carrying bags or wagons full of tools, or jewels, or food. They walked, what seemed to be, right off the edge of the city, into the air where they would halt and then slowly descend until they'd disappeared. When it was my soldier and I's turn to take the lift, I hesitated to look at the scene below.

  Back in Shaundakul, out by the old ruins, there'd been a lake that I'd used to skip rocks across. It had been wide enough that, for no lack of trying, I'd never managed to get a stone to its far side, and my oft-times companion hadn't even ever got one a quarter of the way. Well, if that lake had been drained of all its water, it would have been something like what now resided just outside the walls of Akadia.

  Without taking into account that it was already a thousand feet from the walls of Akadia down to the dessert, the hole that had been dug into the earth was at least that much further down, wide and gaping, smoking, leaving the cavern which housed the Behemoths open to the sky. The very same cavern that had once been underground. The river of coals and fire still cut directly down its middle, and closest to the northernmost side were the furnaces that fed power to the city. Snaking around its edges, were new paths and lifts that led from the desert or the city to the cavern-bed. These roads were all full up with workers, diggers, soldiers; and down below, smiths who worked faster than ever in the light of the sun. Outside the south end of the hole was the red Granted Mountain, its largest platform gaping high over the cavern. It was here that I paused to stare the longest, while the sound of the Behemoth's steps drummed in my head.

  Someone knocked into the soldier beside me, drawing my attention back to what I was doing. I gave him a nod, and followed him onto the lift.

  Chapter Three

  ELLIA:

  To describe the change that had come over the Isle of Yanartas in the months since the war's end, I could have filled an entire book; the sort I'd once spent hours reading in the scholars' library while imagining the legendary Isle for myself.

  What things were the same?...

  The ocean, almost completely surrounding it, vicious and roiling around the clefts, but serene in the coves with bright lapping waves. The fires, flaming up in the rocky places of the isle, out from within the ground itself, like warm and golden wisps. The volcano at the top of the mountain, its largest cavern open to the air, home to the chimera, glowing deepest orange. The jungle, taking up the western half of the isle, too treacherous to be habitable, or even survivable by anyone but the Warriors, but lush enough with fruit and game to feed the chimera when they tired of fish.

  What was changed?...

  The treetop complex of huts, platforms, bridges, ladders, and pavilions, should have been able to be called the same—it hadn't actually shifted in style. It was still made of ropes and wood, still ranging hundreds of feet off the ground. The change had come in the number of people that now occupied the city, and of what sort. Foreigners, refuges, from Karatel and Selket, some Democedians and even some Ghaundians. They'd resided in the ground buildings until room had run out, now the space between the tree-top complex and below was meeting as more buildings were being put up between them. Tree-hugging huts, spiraling staircases, extra dining pavilions, extra training platforms.

  —Because the rescued refuges had just been the start of it.

  Once I'd brought up going to Byako, and we'd realized just how close their swamplands resided to the place that Yanartas touched the continents; once I'd gone there and they'd so fully pledged their help and had proved it by fighting with us in Selket, driving out the occupied Akadians; aft
er all this, the first-order Warriors had decided to open up routes between our land and theirs.

  We didn't use the actual land, it was too narrow in places, too unlevel and prone to attack by waves, but there were ferries, and fresh docks. The ride took little more than a few hours, and ever since this news had become known to our allies, foreigners from all around the lands had come, drawn by the infamy of the chimera, but promising themselves irresistibly to join the fight against Akadia. New pledges came every week, some Byakoans, those who didn't have their own White Tigers, and then from the eastern lands, and even other places I'd rarely heard of. For this reason, especially since the reclaiming of Selket, we Cirali Warriors trained more than we fought.

  Yanartas had been lively before, but now there was never a moment of silence, almost always there was music, or the sound of training, or constructing; even merchants had come to peddle wares down below, adding to the bedlam. On days like today, I envied them their nearness to the Yanartian fires.

  "Could it get any colder?" I shouted to Lucian, who flew just beside me on Arrin. The expression he wore was a mix of concern and restrained excitement, neither of which I thought pertained to the weather.

  "Much colder in winter," he answered, "Enough to freeze you to death in flight."

  "It seems everyone neglected to warn me."

  He laughed. "You're from Shaundakul—aren't you used to worse than this?"

  "There's a difference, we had walls. We had stone that warms up, and fire-places, and protection from the—" I shivered "Wind."

  "Well that wouldn't be so bad if Luffie didn't swoop around so much." He eyed her, this was something that he'd been trying to work with her on the entire flight back—with little success. She dove down to the southern platform now in a way that said that hadn't changed. Arrin dropped in much more composure, though I didn't miss the way his gaze was scanning the complex.