The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

III

The Star Dragon’s

Warning

In which the seers share a vision and Edana shares a plan

Smoke. Tendrils of it curled up into the sky, vanishing into the night. That was all Bessa saw at first as she raced for the courtyard in the center of her family’s compound. When she caught the glow of a fire she nearly screamed in grief and terror, until her mind caught up with what she was seeing: light of a bonfire, not a conflagration.

On warm nights her family would gather in the courtyard and light a bonfire to repel mosquitoes. When Bessa burst in on them, her uncles were making sport over a board game, and her aunts were taking bets on the probable winner.

A part of Bessa was dismayed, for the giants would have caught her family completely unawares. The other part of her rejoiced, for she had arrived in time to warn them. She spared only a moment to call the household staff to their circle.

“How much time do we have?” Grandmother demanded.

“None,” Edana replied. “The guards patrolling the vinedressers’ compound are already dead; the ones you have left are not equal to this fight. If we could all ride we might make for the garrison—if it’s not under attack already. Are your caves still accessible?”

The Philomelos family aged their wine in amphorae and barrels they kept in the caves on the estate.

“Yes,” Bessa’s eldest uncle, Hedrek, answered. “But we could easily be trapped if—”

“Someone needs to alert the watchmen. Why do you think the garrison may have been taken, Edana?” Grandmother cut in.

“This is not the first attack of these raiders. I had hoped to have beaten them to Silura. I’m sorry.”

Bessa stared at her. She had hoped to beat them? And she knew about the raiders? How?

“I delivered a dispatch to the commander of the Watch when I arrived,” Edana went on. “She seemed not to believe me, but promised she would keep a look out. Silura is supposed to be safe.”

Over two hundred years had passed since Silura had been conquered and absorbed into the empire. The tribes had all either been pacified or assimilated. No one in living memory had known anything other than life under Emperor Tarkhana. Was someone attempting to change that?

“I’ll ride,” Pippa volunteered. “I’ll alert the Watch.”

Her father, Linos, grabbed her arm and held tight. “No you won’t,” he insisted. “You heard Edana, if the Watch is overrun you’ll be riding into a trap.”

To underscore his order, her mother, Vesper, immobilized Pippa with an embrace from behind.

“But the giants don’t know this land like we do,” Pippa countered, squirming in her mother’s arms. “We can spot them before they spot us, and stick to routes they wouldn’t think of. If they’re only burning and looting—”

“They’re killing,” Edana cut in. Pointing to Bessa’s lightning shooter she asked, “Do you know how to use that?”

“No. But you used it, didn’t you? To kill the other two giants?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, and held up the strange weapon. “These shoot lightning, as far as the eye can see, and even the giants can be felled with them. Their armor does not yield to swords, arrows, or slings—unlike the kind our soldiers wear. Enough talk. Someone must alert the neighbors and the watchmen, and the rest of you must hide or flee.”

Uncle Morivassus turned and clasped Aunt Nerissa’s hands in his own. “Our horses are the fastest, love—”

Though her eyes grew large, Aunt Nerissa made no protest. Part of her dowry included the race horses she’d brought to Silura, and they were indeed the fastest.

Thus they decided Uncle Morivassus would take two of Aurelia’s house guards and ride for help and raise the alarm.

Uncle Linos proposed having them hide in the hypocaust beneath the floors until help arrived, an idea Edana tersely shot down on the grounds they could be trapped. Better to go to the caves, she insisted, which led to the riverside and the barge docked there. Via the barge they could escape to the shore fort along the coast.

Suddenly, the household’s master smith rushed in from his forge. Huffing and puffing behind him were his wife and sons, loaded with weapons and shields. Now he armed the Philomelos men and several of the slaves; the guards kept their own weapons at the ready.

After a quick debate, Edana decreed Morivassus could more effectively show what they were up against if he took a lightning mace. When she put it in his hands he yelped in surprise.

“Are you sure this is a weapon? It feels like a toy! So light,” he observed, turning it over and over.

“Yet it’s so deadly,” Edana replied. Quickly, she instructed him in its use.

They rushed for the trap door which led to the cellar, and the caves. Two of the remaining guards went first, and the others followed. Before Uncle Morivassus shut the door, he assured them he’d conceal the entrance from inside the house.

“What about the rest of our people?” Grandmother asked, as they moved down the passageway to the caves.

“I sent survivors to the coast, my lady. But as it stands, the giants were thorough,” Edana said flatly.

Bessa reeled. There was nothing they could do to fight the giants. In the dark, with no means to effectively counter the lightning, running was their best option. If only she had sorcerers amongst her guards … or the animachina her father had created in his days in the legion. However, Grandmother disapproved of soulless, animated machines.

At least the garrison had sorcerers. That would even the odds…maybe? She sneaked a glance at Edana. Surely if the garrison was completely useless Edana wouldn’t have bothered suggesting it. That Edana seemed hopeful made Bessa feel hopeful. And confused. What did Edana know, and why did she know it?

Pippa slipped in beside Bessa. “How did you get one of the weapons? How did Edana get one?”

The mixture of awe and respect on her face struck Bessa as strangely amusing. Her shoulders shook in silent laughter when she considered what Pippa must be imagining.

Pippa looked up at her in the glow of the rushlights. No enchanted lights lit the way here, only elemental ones. Bessa’s amusement died down as she stared long and hard at the younger girl, whom she loved as a sister.

As the eldest of Aurelia’s grandchildren, the only child of her firstborn son, Bessa took precedence even over her uncles where the estate was concerned. Grandmother carefully groomed her to be her successor, an education Bessa had found exacting at times. For their part, Bessa’s uncles taught her cousins to respect her. Any word she gave must be heeded, and her every order obeyed, for she was the eldest.

This conditioning placed a wall between Bessa and her younger cousins. A wall, Bessa often thought wistfully, that would not have been there had her father lived to carry the weight placed on her shoulders in his stead. To her surprise, and great joy, Pippa always treated Bessa like a beloved big sister.

Bessa took the other girl into her arms and held her close, resting her cheek against the girl’s head. So close, she thought, her shoulders shaking for a different reason this time. She had come so close to losing her family. But still they all of them lived, and Bessa could not help kissing Pippa’s forehead in gratitude.

Gradually, she became aware of Edana, who was sitting on a stool against one of the barrels Grandmother had imported from Sirônasse.

Strands of Edana’s hair were plastered against her face. Her head was bent low, and her face expressionless as she concentrated on untying the knot she’d made when she’d bound up her dress in order to run. Bessa’s knot had already come undone sometime during her sprint through the vines.

Bessa moved in front of Edana, whose shapely legs had attracted several furtive glances from the adolescent male faction of the Philomelos family. At least the eldest, Pippa’s brother Gavin, had the decency to cuff their brother Deverell’s ear when the boy outright gaped at Edana. Uncle Hedrek’s daughter, Dacia and her mother, Aunt Kalyna, pointedly stationed themselves next to Bessa. Like a phalanx, the women shielded Edana from the boys’ sight.

Chastened, Gavin herded his brother and the slave boys to Grandmother. They redeemed themselves by offering their services to Grandmother, who promptly ordered them to assist in barricading the passage they had just come from.

Bessa sighed inwardly, for the little episode underscored to her that Edana was technically a stranger now. Her younger cousins didn’t remember her as Bessa’s foster sister, or as someone whose father shared a blood bond with one of their own. At least her uncles did not shame her, for they carefully kept their gazes away from Edana.

At last Edana finished. Once the folds of silk cascaded to her sandals, Edana stood, and faced Bessa.

“You have questions,” she said matter-of-factly.

This was all the prompting Bessa needed. She let loose her volley: how had Edana known about the raiders? What were they? Where did they come from? How did she have any intelligence on them to even give a ‘dispatch’ for the commander of the Watch?

And how did she overcome the giants?

The last question in particular troubled her. Only now did Bessa consider that Edana must have killed a giant to take its weapon. Killed it. And she had been prepared to do so. What did that mean?

Edana glanced over at Grandmother and Bessa’s aunts and uncles, who obviously overheard Bessa’s questions. Their expressions brooked no opposition as they came forward.

To their surprise, Edana’s explanation had an unexpected beginning: After the massacre of her caravan. Days, weeks after the massacre, Edana made it to an outpost, where she met a seer who was traveling to Kyanopolis. A Seeker’s Own, Nensela of Ta-Seti. For her own reasons she took in Edana.

“Almost two years ago, on the night of the harvest equinox, an unusual thing happened: she and others of her order happened to have the same vision. Not only on one night, but two more nights after, the exact same vision. Normally when seers share a vision they each only see parts of a whole, a particular tree out of a forest, related to whatever task the seer is meant to undertake. But not in this case.”

“Did all of them see the giants?” Bessa asked.

Indeed, thus the seers traveled across the empire last spring for a conclave.

“One of the seers was stationed in the Aerie; the imperial fortress in the Cloudwalk Mountains. She reported an attack on some farms near the fortress. If you guess the giants were similar to the ones who have attacked this vineyard, you would be correct.”

“The Cloudwalk? But that’s on the other side of Rasena Valentis from here!” Bessa protested.

Silura marked the western edge of the empire, much as the Terebinth was nearly the eastern edge, and Kyanopolis its southern fringe. The Cloudwalk Mountains marked the boundary to the northeast, beyond which were said to be a strange, barbarian people living in a vast no man’s land.

Bessa never took that last part seriously. After all, Silurans had once been thought to be such people, by others from within the empire, until they were ‘discovered.’

“There was something else unusual,” Edana continued. “The seers did not know what the vision meant. And they are all the Seeker’s Own.”

A disquieting revelation. Some seers primarily saw visions, and other seers primarily interpreted them. And some seers were so abundantly blessed they could reliably do both. Their pinnacle was known as the Seeker’s Own.

“Nothing about this situation was typical,” Edana said. “The seeress from the Aerie said the imperial echomancers confirmed the attack. Then they disappeared three days later. And the emperor sent investigators, who also disappeared. For this reason Lady Nensela and the other prophets hired mercenary arcana from the Star Dragon company to gather information.”

Uncle Hedrek whistled, and the others glanced at him. As the only one who held a political post in town, he kept them abreast of intrigues. “I’ve only heard legends about the Star Dragons. The emperor himself is said to turn to them on occasion. I never expected to meet anyone who had met them.” He glanced at Edana, a question in his eyes, and she nodded her confirmation.

“What did they find out?” Bessa asked.

“The Star Dragons sent five arcani to investigate at first, and all five of those men were killed. Only one managed to send back a preliminary dispatch before we got word he was slain.”

Silence.

Uncle Hedrek’s jaw dropped, and his reaction made Bessa unsure if she wanted Edana to continue. If the Star Dragons were as formidable as Uncle Hedrek implied, then anyone good enough to have killed their arcani had to be perilous.

Perilous, and working against the citizens of the empire.

Bessa shuddered.

With every word Edana said, a singular dread began to grow in the pit of Bessa’s stomach. Though she clutched Pippa’s shoulders a little tighter, the girl made no protest or movement. Likely she didn’t want to be noticed by her parents or the other adults, and thus banished from their conference.

The fifth Star Dragon’s dispatch revealed the raiders weren’t appearing at random. The raiders had a plan—unknown to the arcanus—and it was clear that all corners of the empire were to have a taste of the raiders, and their lightning attacks.

“Where are our cohorts? The legions? Why aren’t the raiders meeting any opposition?” Uncle Linos demanded. Like Bessa’s father, he had also served in the legions.

“Survivors are rare,” Edana said flatly. “The giants strike with lightning and like it: they are gone as quickly as they appear. From what we can tell, they only attack farmers and villages in isolated areas. All anyone hears about them are outlandish rumors. Officially, their kills are always attributed to rogue sorcerers and bandits. Giants have never existed in Rasena Valentis, so they couldn’t possibly exist here now.”

Uncle Linos pursued, “So who took down the Star Dragon spies?”

“That answer revealed a weak link, believe it or not,” Edana said. “From what we can tell, all five arcani were killed by a mysterious company of mercenaries. Their signature is…not subtle.”

Just in time, Bessa stopped herself from asking the obvious follow up. Tonight’s events were sufficient fuel for nightmares, why add more?

Grandmother wondered, “Why did the Watch not believe you? You had the visions of five of the Seeker’s Own, and the Cloudwalk fortress attack, and the mercenaries. What else did they need to believe you?”

The pit in Bessa’s stomach grew deeper when Edana hesitated.

“Five. Mark that: only five official seers. No other prophets have foreseen the giants in any capacity. None of the imperial seers are claiming to foresee any danger at all.”

“You make that sound unusual,” Bessa said, trying to swallow her dread.

“To me it’s not, but I am Terabinthian and our god does not care what political office you hold. But the political seers—and those who put faith in them—assume these five must be wrong. However—no other prophet has reported a vision since the final night that the five saw their vision.”

Hmm. The chosen seers were absolutely right about the giants: they were indeed in Rasena Valentis. So why were only a handful aware of them?

“There’s a question you haven’t asked,” Edana pointed out, her tone careful. “Who hired the mercenaries who went after our arcani? I volunteered to come here not only to see you. We suspect the enemy’s paymaster is here, in Silura. I should not say yet who it might be.” Turning to Grandmother she added, “I will say that if your son finds the garrison prepared to help us, all is not lost.”

Grandmother inhaled. “And if the Watch is not prepared?”

“If he catches them flat footed and in disarray, with key people unexpectedly absent, and precisely the wrong people in their stead, then that doesn’t bode well for the rest of Silura. I’m sorry.”

Bessa put a hand over her heart, counting its beats as it hammered beneath her breast. The counting calmed her enough to allow her to ask her next question.

“We have a traitor in our midst, don’t we? Why else would it be significant who is and isn’t at the Watch tonight? It only matters if someone can arrange the schedules and assignments, and would do so to our detriment. They would have to know that we would be attacked tonight.”

Before Edana could reply, Uncle Linos asked, “Wouldn’t that make it obvious who is to blame?”

“You are supposed to be dead,” Edana pointed out. “And had you been murdered tonight there are many believable lies such a person could utter. No”—she held up a hand, quelling his next question—“Do not ask for a name. If Uncle Morivassus reaches the Watch then there is no point in killing you, for you’re merely innocent victims, and the Watch will back your story.

“I have risked your lives and my mission by telling you even as much as I have. I can go no further. Love and honor compel me to keep silent on the very matter of the name and its bearer. But if you are questioned by anyone: I never said there is a traitor. On your honor, Uncle Linos, I never told you there is a traitor, and none of you suspect anyone.”

Uncle Linos did a double take, but met her unwavering gaze with a forthright stare of his own.

Grandmother found her voice before he did. “Your father was bloodbonded to my firstborn. Now I call upon the spirits of my firstborn and your father as witness: I swear we none of us will betray your counsel. May Aletheia the Oathkeeper claim my blood if it happens otherwise.”

Another shudder rippled through Bessa as she glanced back. The boys and the servants were too preoccupied with the barricades to overhear them, and thus they did not need to be taken into the oath.

“So say I,” Uncle Linos quickly concurred, and the others followed suit. Pippa quietly echoed her father in unison with the others, and again Bessa suspected she was trying to avoid attention. Bessa squeezed her shoulders in gratitude.

“Let my father’s spirit witness, and stand against me before the Speaker if I dishonor his bond with Nikandros Bessus Philomelos, firstborn to you, Matrona Aurelia,” Edana said solemnly. “Believe that I have taken you into my counsel as far as I am able. Because you must not let down your guard if we survive, I will tell you this: you were not chosen at random.”

The giants showed a clear pattern of attacks, Edana explained. Initially they targeted outlying farmers and minor villages, in the east and the south.

As they moved west and north they grew more ambitious.

“Analyzing the Star Dragon’s papers led us to believe that first, Silura would be targeted. Second, the raiders would choose prominent people for their latest victims and openly reveal themselves at that point.”

“Prominent people?” Bessa asked.

The Philomelos family stood out among Silurans, for their land gave them wealth to allow Hedrek to participate in local government—and by Grandmother’s will their philanthropic spirit matched their wealth.

“Your family put up the bath house in town. That makes you a visible target—and a visible victim. The Star Dragons concluded you were next.”

A muscle spasmed in Grandmother’s left cheek, a familiar sign she was overcome with emotion. The town’s bath house came courtesy of Papouli—Bessa’s grandfather—the late Nikolaos Bessus Philomelos. He wanted to show his appreciation for the place where he had prospered after finally winning his freedom from slavery.

As a Restorite sorcerer he had also established a healer’s school in Falcon’s Hollow, and his alumni served all over Silura and the empire. Most Siluran towns lacked such amenities, even when the elite classes had the means to offer them.

Aurelia had eagerly matched her husband’s efforts. She saw it as part of a larger duty to advance the prestige of Silurans, and to put her nation on equal footing with those who viewed them as barbarians.

As she intended, her efforts paid off both for the Philomelos family and Falcon’s Hollow. After three generations she had opened the way for prime opportunities for her grandchildren that would have been impossible to consider for herself in her youth.

And now per Edana, her works had made them a target, ironically not as Silurans, but as Rasena Valentians.

Compassion tinged Edana’s voice as she said, “You must be prepared to defend yourselves. You are people of influence, which can save Silura. The guards may not all be trusted, so don’t rely on them. Gather your neighbors and form a pact of mutual defense. That’s all you can do if you survive this night.”

“Shouldn’t we deal with the traitor?” Linos reminded her.

Edana’s expression hardened. “The traitor is my job.”