The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 30
Shared Blood
“In honor of Cavain’s divine call
Of Aes the cloud-veiled Sky-Dancer
White Kingdom was named the new land
To Cavain was given lordship over all.”
– The Lay of Cavain (9,333 MA)
“No!”
The cry rang across the high-ceilinged chamber, freezing everyone in place. Coldhand thought for a moment that it was him who had shouted, but the voice was high, clear and feminine. Xartasia took Gavriel by the shoulder. He shoved her hand away, but the fairy in white would not be so easily dismissed. She held Gavriel’s arm and fixed him with her violet eyes.
“No,” she said. “Please.”
Every eye in the chamber was riveted on the hill. Slowly, Gavriel stepped back, but he didn’t remove the knife. It jutted from Maeve’s pale skin like a slender glass tombstone. Blood welled up around the blade and ran down her ribs.
“Maeve?” Xartasia asked.
Her soft, musical voice carried through the hushed room. Even the baby in her arms was no longer crying. Baliend stared down at Maeve with wide black eyes.
“By all the gods, Maeve… is that you?” Xartasia asked. “What have you done to your hair?”
Maeve coughed and blood ran from the corner of her mouth. “Give… give me the child. Give me Baliend.”
Xartasia held Baliend in one arm and pushed back her white hood, freeing long black braids of hair. Her eyes were a shockingly vivid violet and wide with shock.
Coldhand blinked. It was like seeing Maeve in front of a mirror. The two Arcadians had the same cheekbones, the same sharp chin and full lips. Maeve and Xartasia could have been sisters… Or maybe mother and daughter. There wasn’t a single wrinkle on her face or strand of gray in her hair, but Xartasia appeared somehow older, her features more refined.
“Titania?” Maeve gasped. “Cousin… you live? But the Devourers killed the entire royal family when the White Kingdom fell! All of them except… except me…”
“Not all, blood of my blood.”
Xartasia stood over the fallen princess, regal and poised in a way that Maeve had never been, not in the year that Coldhand had known her.
“While you flew to Orindell, the House of Cavain fought to protect our people as they retreated into the core,” said Xartasia.
“I know,” Maeve wheezed. “Your father… the king… charged our family to fight for Arcadia.”
“And so I do. I followed our people through the Waygates and to the worlds of the core,” Xartasia said in a gentle voice. “Someone must protect them.”
“Protect them?” Maeve asked. “This does not protect anyone…”
“How did you survive, cousin? You, too, were ordered to fight for the White Kingdom. To the last.”
Maeve’s skin was chalky white, her lips pale and bloodless as she spoke. “I flew to the Tamlin Waygate. Orthain died holding the Devourers at bay as I closed the gate that had summoned them.”
“You… banished them back to whatever dark place they came from,” Xartasia said. “But you were a knight, cousin. How did you know the songs to close the Waygate?”
“Because I… I am the one who opened it,” Maeve answered in a voice thick with tears and blood. “Titania, it was me. My brother and I were bound for Tamlin, where I would stand guard while he sang open the Waygate there. As we had so many times. But Caith begged to see his lover. And I… let him go. I went to the gate and sang the spells, but I did not know what I was doing.”
Xartasia nodded slowly. “That was the spell. The twisted spell that summoned the Devourers.”
“I did it,” Maeve whispered. “It was all my fault. I brought them into our world, Titania. I destroyed Arcadia.”
Genocide. Coldhand understood the final charge listed on her bounty posting. The dryads and nyads were all gone, two entire species of fairies dead in the rubble of the White Kingdom. Nine out of ten Arcadians dead in the battle with the Devourers, thirty million deaths… and Maeve claimed guilt for it all.
A strange sound filled the underground chamber, rising in pitch and volume until the rotting ceiling seemed to shake with it.
Xartasia was laughing.
“You? You destroyed the kingdom of my father? One knight with one song?” the princess sang in her sweet voice. “You are arrogant, cousin. The Devourers killed our people! Those monsters destroyed our home and when we ran, the Alliance turned us away. They cast us into their gutters to suffer and die all over again!”
“You cannot think to forgive my sins,” Maeve said. Blood pooled beneath her in the dirt. “I am… I have…”
She drew a shuddering breath and Xartasia smiled beautifully, holding her hand out to Maeve.
“I can absolve your guilt,” she said. “I can end this pain.”
“Titania… Xartasia,” Maeve whispered. She plucked weakly at the glass knife buried in her chest. “Why do you call yourself by that cursed name? Why do you hide here under the graves of the dead and serve the Church of Nihil?”
“We can yet repair what has been broken, cousin,” Xartasia said. “Join me, Maeve. Join Gavriel as he brings death to the worlds that turned their backs on us. I did not think I had any family left, but you are here. Help me return beauty to the universe. There is so much to do.”
Maeve stared up at her, a feverish light in her eyes. She let go of the knife and held out her trembling hand to Xartasia. In the older princess’ arms, Baliend squealed and reached toward Maeve.
“Just let me take the baby back to his parents,” Maeve said. “And then I will do whatever you ask, Titania.”
Xartasia glanced at the infant Dailon and shrugged her slender shoulders. “Very well, cousin. It does not matter, we shall find another baby.”
Maeve blinked slowly and her hand lowered to the knife again. “What? Titania, no! Whatever it is you are doing, it cannot be worth killing an innocent child!”
“How little you understand,” Xartasia said. “Maeve, do not stand against me. Do not stand against the Church of Nihil.”
“Titania, there must be another way!” Maeve cried.
“My name is Xartasia! I am your queen, cousin, and I command your obedience!”
Screaming in pain, Maeve wrenched the knife from her ribs and lurched to her feet. She pressed the bloody point against Xartasia’s white gown, leaving a smear of shockingly bright red against the pristine cloth. Xartasia gasped as Maeve dropped the dagger and snatched Baliend from her arms.
“This is wrong,” Maeve said. “I am taking Baliend home to his family.”
She staggered a step and grabbed her spear from where it had fallen on the mound. Maeve leaned on the weapon like a cane as she struggled to remain upright.
“You have betrayed your people yet again,” Xartasia told Maeve. She turned away to face Gavriel. “Kill her and then we may finish this.”
“Your debt to me will deepen for this,” Gavriel said.
Xartasia nodded and Gavriel’s Emberguard advanced on Maeve again. She clutched Baliend against her and angled the point of her spear out at the Nihilists, but she couldn’t lift the weapon. There was more of her blood on the ground than in her body. Maeve was dying, and quickly.
Coldhand raised his Talon up over his head. “Maeve!”
He couldn’t just call her Cavainna anymore, not with two of the Arcadian princesses.
Maeve spun toward the cry and launched herself up into the air. She flew crookedly and low over the Nihilists as they shouted and tried to shoot her down. Maeve banked and landed in front of Coldhand so hard that the impact snapped the haft of her spear like a twig and the broken pieces fell into the dirt.
Coldhand put his cybernetic arm around Maeve to support her and she leaned heavily against him. Her blood ran hot and wet over his hand. Baliend gurgled as Maeve held him close.
“You will live for this!” Gavriel shouted. “Take them both!”
Emberguard and black-robed Nihilists alike charged at Coldhand. The bounty hunter kept his Talon-9 pointed at the chamber’s rotten ceiling, pulled the trigger and held it down. The laser sliced into the crumbling sand and rotting bodies. A few rocks fell, but not enough. Coldhand raked the red beam across the roof and the whole huge room shuddered with a low, grumbling groan. Stone grated on stone, screaming as dirt gave way and decaying flesh tore apart.
“Move!” Coldhand shouted.
He heaved Maeve upright and hauled her toward the closest tunnel. She staggered and Coldhand had to hold her up. The river of red pouring down her side was growing weaker by the second. They were running out of time. Maeve stumbled along beside Coldhand as fast as she could. She tripped with every other step, but her grip on Baliend was sure and she ran.
The chamber lurched and grated with another deafening roar. Sand and stone and decaying corpses collapsed onto the Nihilists, pouring down from the ceiling. Huge rocks boomed as they fell, crushing bodies beneath them and throwing up great clouds of choking dust. Nihilists wailed in a chorus of rage and fear as they flooded out into the star of tunnels, fleeing the destruction. Gavriel and Xartasia stood in the center of it all, and then vanished under sand and stone.
The catacombs were coming down, burying the Nihilists alive, but not as quickly as Coldhand had hoped. All too many of them ran down the tunnels behind him. Most of them only wanted to escape, but plenty more were still trying to carry out Gavriel’s last order to catch Maeve and Baliend.
The tunnels were plunged into darkness and the Nihilists were running too hard to make effective use of their guns. They fired off a few shots, but most just burned or buried themselves in the sides of the sand. Coldhand ducked them easily and Maeve came away with only a few singed feathers, but the cultists were closing in fast on the hunter and his swiftly fading mark.
“If you don’t run faster, Maeve, you won’t have to try to trick me into killing you,” Coldhand grunted, pulling the fairy along with him. “They’ll do it for me.”
A faint, furious blaze kindled in Maeve’s eyes, but faded quickly. She hugged Baliend to her chest and nodded mutely.
They ran together through the tunnels, the crowd of Nihilists close on their heels. A hurled stone whistled toward Maeve’s head. Coldhand swiped the rock from the air. It shattered against the illonium and fell to the ground in pieces.
There! The tunnel bent around one of the angles of the star and angled slightly up toward the surface.
“Faster, Maeve!” Coldhand told her. “We’re nearly out!”
But Maeve’s eyes were falling closed and the blood from her wound had slowed to a trickle. There wasn’t enough left to keep up the pressure. Her heart would begin skipping soon, its last spasms before death. Coldhand remembered the feeling all too well.
He rounded the sharp bend in the passage, supporting Maeve’s negligible weight with his left arm. There was the dusty ramp that led back into the cathedral. Light flooded through the hole above, but how? Up on the surface, his Raptor was powered down.
Coldhand nearly missed the three shadows that reared up like ghosts behind him. He had to drop Maeve to get his metal arm up in time and turn the Nihilist’s nanosword aside. It flung sparks into the darkness and across Maeve on the ground, wings and body curled protectively around Baliend.
“Titania…” she whimpered. “Stop…”
A pair of humans and an Ixthian surrounded Maeve and Coldhand. The shadows had hidden them and their black robes until almost too late. Coldhand stood over Maeve, firing off rapid laser shots, but the power warning was flashing on the side of his Talon. The weapon wasn’t meant for the kind of sustained fire he had used to collapse the main chamber and with a quiet whine, the gun went dark in his hand.
The Nihilists lost no time leaping on their prey. Hissing and spitting in fury, the Ixthian pounced on Maeve. The fairy opened her dim eyes and raised her wings to ward off the heavy club in the cultist’s hand. The cudgel cracked hard and feathers flew into the air. Maeve groaned weakly. She was managing to defend herself and the baby, but she wouldn’t be able to keep it up for more than a few seconds.
The two human Nihilists circled Coldhand and he shoved the Talon away into its holster. The gun would do him no good now — all of his spare battery packs were still on the Raptor. One of the Nihilists swung his nanosword at Coldhand. He jumped aside and smashed his cybernetic forearm down across the blade. The blow sent the sword skidding back down the tunnel and the man staggered away, holding his hand against his chest.
The other Nihilist leapt at Coldhand with a chunk of stone held high. He grabbed and twisted her arm until the woman screeched, then pitched her at the first cultist, who was scrambling to retrieve his sword. They sprawled together into the dirt, but more Nihilists streamed up the tunnel toward them. There were too many, and Maeve could barely move. All Coldhand could do was run.
He jumped up over Maeve, lashing out with his legs. His boot smashed the Ixthian in the shoulder, not really hurting her, but Coldhand succeeded in shoving her away from Maeve. He rolled to his feet, scooped up the Arcadian and held her tight against his chest. Baliend lay still in her arms, his black eyes huge and trusting. He giggled as one of Maeve’s feathers drifted down to land on his tiny blue face.
Coldhand ran toward the light.
“I’m detecting a tunnel that leads to the surface, but it’s full of people,” Duaal said, frowning at his readouts. The Blue Phoenix’s spotlight turned the Church of Nihil into a slab of blinding yellow radiance.
“Is one of them Maeve?” Tiberius asked.
“I don’t know. There are a few Arcadians down there, but I have no idea if any of them is Maeve. Our sensors aren’t that accurate.” Duaal pointed out at the Raptor, grounded not far from where the Phoenix hovered. “At least we know Logan’s here.”
“Who?”
“Coldhand.”
“I hope they kill that honorless son of a… cat!” Tiberius ranted. “I swear, if I ever see Coldhand again, I’ll…”
Tiberius wasn’t quite sure what he would do, but Duaal stood suddenly, pointing through the ports at the ground below. A man was bolting out from the cathedral. He held something cradled against his chest, something with long, drooping white wings.
“There he is!” Duaal shouted. “That’s Logan!”
“He’s got Maeve!” Tiberius snarled.
Nihilists poured out behind the hunter, most robed in black, but Tiberius saw at least one spot of blood red.
“We don’t have the time to land,” Duaal said. “They’ll be all over him in a second!”
Tiberius searched wildly for something, anything they could do to help Maeve. If only he had put some kind of weapons on the Blue Phoenix… That Nihilist church looked about ready to fall in on itself at the slightest nudge. Tiberius stared at the control yolk in his hand, then turned on the ship-wide intercom.
“Everyone get strapped in,” he said. “We’re making an unscheduled landing and it’s going to be a rough one!”
“Why? Is Shimmer flying?” Gripper asked, his voice sounding very small and scared from the speakers.
“No. If something’s going to happen to my bird, I want to be the one flying her,” Tiberius said.
“What’s going to–?” Gripper began, but the captain turned off the sound.
“What are you doing? We don’t have any weapons!” Duaal cried.
Tiberius reached up and flipped the ignition switches. “I told everyone to get strapped in and that includes you, Duaal. I’m taking the old lady down and that church is coming with us!”
He pushed the ship’s nose down, hit the throttle and gunned the engines. Duaal shouted as the cathedral rushed up at them and scrambled for his safety harness, snapping the buckles in place just as the black stone eclipsed the ports and filled the world with stone and thunder.
The Blue Phoenix smashed into the base of one of the steeples with a deafening noise. The nose crumpled with a shriek of metal, but wreaked equal destruction on the cathedral. Stone and fibersteel crumbled, falling over the ship and through the ceiling of the church. All across the Blue Phoenix, lights blinked, warnings flaring in bright reds and oranges.
Tiberius’ head cracked against one of the panels and blood ran down his face. He fumbled blindly until he felt the ignition switch under his fingers again. Tiberius cut the engines and the Phoenix creaked, and then the scream of tearing metal reverberated through the ship as it fell. Suddenly unsupported by the engines, the cargo ship’s aft end crashed through the ceiling of the Nihilist church, sending tons of rock and steel tumbling down to the ground.
Finally, the whole world stopped falling. Tiberius grunted and unbuckled his harness, then grabbed Duaal’s shoulder.
“Duaal!” he shouted.
The boy groaned and opened his eyes. “That… was awful.”
Duaal stood up, a little shaky but unhurt. Tiberius switched on the intercom again.
“Everyone who can still fight, get down into the hold,” he said. “We need to get Maeve back on this bird and she’ll probably be bringing uninvited guests.”
Tiberius made sure his NI pistol was still in its rig and turned to leave the cockpit, but Duaal moved to follow him. Tiberius stopped, scowling.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.
“To fight. You told everyone…!” Duaal protested.
“Not you.”
“What? That’s not what you said when you were busy crashing our ship into a church!” Duaal shouted.
“Forget what I said and listen to what I’m saying,” Tiberius told him. “I need you to make sure those engines still work. As soon as we get Maeve back on board, we have to be ready to fly the hells out of here!”
“Check the engines?” Duaal asked. “That’s Gripper’s job! Let me help you!”
“No,” Tiberius said. “You stay here and that’s an order!”
Duaal’s eyes filled up with tears and he choked on his answer, slumping into the copilot’s chair as Tiberius left the cockpit.
