The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

Chapter III

Negotiations

In which the flayer is confronted, and Alia receives a startling revelation

“Sheridan?” Alia stood at the top of the staircase to the dungeon, and called down. If Sheridan failed to answer, she would step aside and let Serafina ‘do her thing.’

Serafina stood next to her, glaring into the darkness. Rather than announcing herself to the flayer when she walked into Junius Fellrath’s house, she simply walked in, and stood at the doorway. Flayers possessed an acute sense of smell, Serafina explained, and the scent of Salamandra differed from the scent of humans.

“I’m still here,” Sheridan answered, in a small voice.

“Are you well?”

On the way back Alia’s heart leapt into her mouth when she realized she failed to spell out what ‘unharmed’ meant. What if the flayer thought it harmless to swipe off Sheridan’s ear or nose? What in the name of the Huntress made her forget that if humans didn’t share the same fundamental assumptions she did, the flayers certainly wouldn’t?

“I am well,” he assured her.

Serafina took to the stairs first, preceding Alia. Determined and resolute, the women strode downstairs, though Serafina declined to light the way. Not using her flames was Serafina’s way of saying she came in peace; therefore, Alia relied on her Ellura wand.

However, Alia openly carried Sheridan’s gun. When Serafina arrived at Fellrath’s house she brought Alia’s coat, but Alia opted to keep her own gun hidden in reserve in her coat’s holster.

The flayer met them at the foot of the stairwell.

Apparently the creature expected trouble, for its body was poised in a fighting stance, with its claws upraised. Alia remained on the third-to-last step, but Serafina stood before her on the dungeon floor. A mere arm’s length from the flayer. But Serafina loomed over the creature, and her stare obliged it to back up a step. As Serafina had vowed, the flayer would have to go through her to get to Alia.

Ignoring the flayer for the moment, Alia looked past the creature to Sheridan. The young man sat on the floor, of his cell, knees drawn up. He gingerly probed the thin red line on his neck, where the flayer had slashed him. His eyes were riveted on the flayer, and his mouth was pinched at the corners as his jaw was locked shut. Keeping his screams on the inside, Alia supposed.

“The Keeper of the Ebon Grove summons you,” Alia said without preamble.

Ebon Grove was the name humans used for her mother’s grove. But dryads classified their groves according to their own purposes, and for Samara and Alia’s aunts the forest’s true name translated to “Land of the Radiant Gate.”

But dryads did not permit humans to know of the Gate’s existence, and Alia had sworn a blood oath not to speak of it.

“The Keeper?”

Was it her imagination, or did the flayer suddenly stand taller?

“You know of the Keeper?” Alia asked.

“Your Gate Guardians. Yes. And there will be no hostilities in my passage?” Its eyes slid to Serafina.

Serafina made a sweeping gesture. “Strike, and be struck down. Refrain from violence, and you will be spared from violence. Come.”

The flayer’s lip curled. “Let us go.”

No ordinary conveyance would serve for transporting the flayer. Horses and gryphons did not tolerate the presence of a flayer, so carriages were out. Only dragons were unfazed by the creatures, so Captain Palamara arranged for a cloud ship to take Alia and her group to the grove.

In Lyrcania, only the ruling archons were permitted the use of cloud ships, for they were the only ones permitted to personally own dragons, which carried the ships on their backs. However, when informed the dryads intended to deal with the flayers, the chief archon offered his personal sky yacht. Even so, the beast master pilots controlling the drakes still required hazard pay, which Palamara readily offered.

To set everyone’s mind at ease, Serafina used special handcuffs coated with Salamandran acid to bind the flayer’s hands in front.

However, the pilots remained uneasy, on account of another matter: the airspace over the grove was inhospitable to anyone mounted on gryphons or dragons. The winds would always blow the mounts far from the grove, or sometimes a shield bubble would rise above the canopy of the trees. Anyone striking the shield would find themselves teleported. Fortunate travelers found themselves teleported to a different part of Lyrcania. Unfortunate travelers could be sent to another nation altogether, whether known—Xia or Funan — or to a land so utterly unknown no map could guide them back home.

However, once Alia reached adulthood, Rikka personally blessed and anointed her. Regardless of her means of arrival, Alia would always possess right of entry into the grove.

“So long as I am with you there’s no reason to worry. Just fly,” Alia assured the pilots.

Soon enough, the pilots marveled to discover that both the weather and the terrain cooperated in allowing them to land inside the grove.

“Handy to have you aboard,” noted the first pilot.

Once Alia’s group disembarked, they waited for the welcoming party of dryads to arrive. Singing sylphs and glowing wisps heralded their coming.

The dryads took Sheridan—and the flayer—in stride.

They reacted when they saw Serafina.

All of the dryads formed an honor guard around Rikka. Hackles raised and teeth bared, their wolves deliberately paced the perimeter.

Alia gave a start when she realized why they were on edge. She’d forgotten about the Edict of Kyra: Salamandra were forbidden to enter any grove without an express invitation from its keeper. A lump formed in her throat. Maybe she truly did not belong in the grove anymore; how could she forget something so basic?

“Peace,” Alia said quickly. “Serafina is oath-sworn to the Huntress, the same as I am. She’s been helping me to track down the Brotherhood.”

Serafina drew herself up to her full six feet and looked directly at Rikka. “I can speak for myself. I am Serafina, from Tiger Vale in the rain shadowed scrubs of the Jade Mountains. In the name of our Exalted Mother the Huntress, I salute you, Keeper.” She knelt, a gesture Alia only saw her make when addressing the chrysopteron, the high priest of the Huntress.

Our mother. Our. Alia noted that Rikka’s eyes narrowed at this.

“A Salamandra swears allegiance to the Mother? Such a wonder I did not think I would see,” Rikka replied, her tone as dry as the thorn forests Serafina hailed from.

Alia cocked her head. Why should it be remarkable that Serafina worshiped the Huntress?

Serafina raised her eyes. “Things are not as they were in your sapling days, Your Holiness. We the living adapt.”

A raised eyebrow from Rikka was the only hint of the wheels turning in her mind, but Alia long ago considered it futile to try and guess the dryad’s thoughts. Instead, she found herself fixated on Serafina’s reference to Rikka’s ‘childhood,’ from aeons past. While she never knew Serafina’s precise age, comments and asides she made in the past gave Alia the impression the Salamandran was not more than eighty years old. Not nearly old enough to play the ‘eldest of the eldest’ game that immortals loved so, and certainly not old enough for Serafina to have been present for the War of Thunder, Rain, & Fire.

Yet there were undercurrents in their talk that she would have to revisit. Later.

“Your servant has obeyed you, Keeper,” Alia cut in.

Rikka made a gesture, and her dryads stood down. They relaxed, but only enough to give Rikka room to maneuver if she wished it. However, Rikka remained where she stood, and only nodded at the flayer.

“Speak,” came her somber command.

“My people will perish,” the flayer began. “We know the cause is here. We compelled your sorcerers to come to our world, so that we may come to yours.”

Amazement jolted the nerves in Alia’s body, startling her out of the fatigue that had been gnawing at her. So this was how the flayers were arriving!

She clasped a hand around her mouth, horrified even as she admired the elegant practicality of a brutal loophole the flayers had found—and exploited—in the laws of the keepers. Serafina looked surprised, as Alia noted when she checked her friends’ reactions.

Sheridan demanded, “Why did you need the sorcerers? And how did you force them?”

A dangerous question, with a simple answer. Nevertheless the geis upon her obliged Alia to hold her tongue. She glanced at Rikka, curious to see how she would respond to Sheridan. To her surprise, Rikka was staring straight at her, with an expression of faint approval on her face. She nodded once, silently giving her consent, and Alia spoke up.

“The sorcerers are easier to abduct. To anyone who can see auras, sorcerers stand out. Just as sorcerers summon Erebossi, the flayers must be able to summon people. And if they summon one of our people, that opens a kind of portal for them, doesn’t it?”

She glanced from Rikka to the flayer. The flayer made no gesture or expression, but Rikka’s small shrug served as confirmation.

Continuing, Alia said, “This special portal lets the flayers come to our world, but in a limited number—a one to one exchange. Even if you kill a flayer here, another can take its place. Unless the sorcerers return here.”

The flayer looked long at her, its eyes contracting every so often as it sized her up. Swallowing hard, Alia stood her ground and returned the creature’s gaze.

“It is as you say,” the flayer said at last. “Kill me, and another will come. And another. And another. Until we have our answers. Until your people stop.”

At last Rikka moved, and the dryads parted to allow her to stand beside Alia, face to face with the flayer. “Your sufferings come by your hand.” Her eyes glittered coldly as she stared down at the creature.

Shocked, Alia and her companions stared in silence at Rikka. The flayer; however, rocked back on its heels.

“Those sorcerers you summoned, you may keep to do as you will,” Rikka continued in her pitiless tone. “Do also as you will with the sorcerers marked out for you, and your famine shall end. None other shall be your prey, only the ones we have marked for death at your hands.”

“You place the blame for our famine on us?” The flayer’s nostrils flared.

“Indeed. By your own disobedience you have brought your curse upon yourselves: which god gave you leave to disregard my call for aid?”

Alia whistled faintly, catching the import. A childhood spent in Rikka’s circle taught her there were consequences to forcing a dryad to make a request twice. Covenants with the children of the gods routinely included clauses about what divine curses would be visited on those who broke faith with them. That part she understood. What she didn’t understand was the idea of making a covenant with flayers.

“Do you purport to not know of the terms by which my Exalted Mother suffers your unnatural species to live? You are subject to the authority of myself and my sisters without exception, and this you surely know,” Rikka continued.

The creature astonished Alia by dropping to its knees and bowing its head low. “Correction accepted,” it snarled.

Rikka said nothing.

After a moment, the flayer added, “And your terms as well.”

The other dryads smiled. Samara caught Alia’s gaze, and winked at her.

Images flashed in Alia’s mind of all the dryads lost, all she was still pursuing. And this night, of all nights, she had come sooo close to finally making progress against the Brotherhood. This night had given her the best chance she had to reclaim her aunts and save her mother.

And it was all slipping away.

With Rikka’s sanction, no less.

Serafina beckoned, and Alia and Sheridan clustered next to her so that Serafina could safely whisper.

“We should let this go, Alia,” Serafina said. “If the Brotherhood is the target let the flayers do as they will, and keep everyone out of their way.”

Sheridan fingered his neck. “How do you know that no one innocent will get in their way?”

Alia frowned. Rikka’s scheme was a blunt instrument, and in Alia’s memory Rikka had a deft touch. Finesse. Where was her finesse now?

Alia could not help herself, her fear overrode the small voice in her head telling her to wait. “A point,” she said loudly. “Keeper, a word: whatever you will is whatever will be, but I remind you that my mission is not over. Aunt Nalini remains captive. As do the others. I need time. If the flayers kill everyone who knows everything, our people remain captive.”

What she hoped would lead to sanity instead earned her a cutting stare from Samara, as though she had said something foolish.

“Just because you don’t see the plan does not mean there is no plan,” Samara snapped. “You know better. Do not shame me by acting otherwise.”

Serafina jabbed her in the ribs and whispered, “My granny doesn’t like it when I try to teach her how to suck eggs. Yours can turn you into things …”

Stung, Alia took a deep breath and tried again. “Then I will ask, how much time do I have? Before the Brotherhood is killed, how much time do I have? If I take a prisoner, will the flayers leave him to me, or will they insist on claiming him for their own?”

The flayer hissed and Alia jumped.

“We are not carrion! Do not insult us so!”

She started to reply, then stopped. Flayers did not snatch away a rival’s prey? Now she saw the plan.

“Apologies,” she said to the flayer. “And to you, Keeper, for questioning your judgment.”

“All must be done within the next two days and two nights,” Rikka said. She stared meaningfully at the flayer, who dipped its head to her in turn.

Alia curtsied. “Two days, and two nights, Keeper.”