Last in our Heroes series, by Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Electra Wilson.

In the White Garden are many mirrors and many pools. She wanders among them in the unfailing daylight, watching as glass and water open on the crossroads of distant lives.

In an ivy-framed mirror, a shepherd girl weeps, unable to touch her oldest friend, bound in a tomb of ensorcelled ice. In one pool a young emperor stands at the edge of desert and ruined highway, choosing knowledge above all the pleasures of his world; while in one beside it, a queen becomes a beggar girl, and a servant becomes a queen, so that one might seek her husband’s fate, the balm for her shattered heart.

An old man teaches a boy to read. A young woman rides away from the only father she has known. A man of myriad voices gently sings, in his true one, and holds the hand of his silent sister. A lean woman, her golden hair silvered by moonlight, with eyes like a falcon’s, dashes through rain-slicked streets, preparing for her prey.

She sees them all, as their lives flower and fade, the most rich and rare of all the Garden’s blossoms. And when she must, she whispers through the shadows of their minds.

Hold fast. Fear not.

Most do not see themselves as heroes. Fewer still wished to take every step on their uphill paths.

Onward. You do not walk alone.

But in the grip of darkness, their light endures – endures and brightens the world around them, and glass and water, and the tear-filled eyes of the lady in the White Garden.

Go and live. Go and love!

Now!

The Lady © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Beyond the Gate” by Electra Wilson

Author’s note: This marks the end of the “20 Heroes” series and a point of departure for my writing career. First, I’d like to thank Kat and FanLit for graciously featuring my work here. I’ve enjoyed writing these and, on the whole, am quite happy with the end result. Rest assured that some of these heroes have more stories awaiting them. Second, I’d like to thank the various artists whose contributions helped bring the series to life.

It’s been a busy year for me, but a good one, and “20 Heroes” and the positive comments you’ve left have played no small part in making it good. (I have a full retrospective on my blog.) I wish you a new year that’s fantastic in every sense of the word.

Cheers, RR
(Follow Rob at Twitter.)

Nineteenth in our Heroes series, by Robert Rhodes, this is part 2 of “Love & Winter: Yelena’s Story” which was a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Art is courtesy of Lialia.

Continued from part one

She slammed the palace doors behind her and threw herself against the seam. The wood shuddered, and snarls and barking echoed inside. Teeth snapped, then nothingness.

With her back to the doors, Yelena panted from the chase and squinted into the vale’s clouded light. The snowstorm had passed. Above her the white mountains loomed in silence. Her earlier tracks led away from the palace, toward a shape—

“O Ivanir — Ivanir, no!”

Her boots sunk and burst through the snow. The shape resolved, shimmering, large as her hut, and she threw herself beside it, crushing fistfuls of snow. She howled at the sky and, in her heart, cursed the tsar to a grave of unquenchable fire.

A grave to match the tomb of solid ice in which Ivanir slept, imprisoned above the earth. His arms lay crossed upon his breast, and his cloak spread beneath him like the cloth of an invisible bier.

“You will be free,” she said and drew her knife. She thrust it seven times against the ice, imagining the tsar’s bare throat, yet the point blunted and left no mark. She shoved it into her belt and pawed through the snow for a stone. Her fingers pried one from the earth and drove it into the gray-white wall.

One crystal broke away from the tomb.

She screamed and raised the stone again and pounded it into the ice. Again — she grunted and clenched her teeth. Again, again, till sweat dampened her furs, and her arm fell like a flayed beast, the stone falling from her deadened hand.

Her fury had left a blot of roughened crystals, like the ghost of a raindrop on long-dried earth. She groaned and fell weeping to the snow. Soon she straightened to peel her crusted lashes apart. She laid her forearm against the tomb and shut her mind to the mountains encircling her like monstrous wolves. The sky was blackening to char and iron, and she feared to stay once the long night fell.

She faced the palace and spat into the snow. I will return.

*  *  *

When she saw smoke above her hut, she lengthened her stride. She whistled as she drew near, and Banoch, a wild and welcome shadow, burst from the doorway. Snow flew behind him, and Yelena crouched to hug him, rocking backward from his charge. But she had barely ruffled his fur before he sniffed and surged from her arms. He edged away, throat rumbling, hackles high and sharp.

“I know, my friend. I know.” She held out a bare hand, rubbed his muzzle and chest. “But they have not harmed me. Not so much.” She glanced up as Dmitri appeared in the doorway. The hearth-fire bronzed one side of his face and wove copper into his hair. He looked older now, standing between light and twilight, and she searched his fine-boned features for the ancient one who would bury her with stones.

She stood and walked toward him. “A fair evening, Dmitri.”

He shook his head. “You … came back.” He lowered his eyes and smiled. “I found your larder and cauldron. I don’t know if you like stew, but Banoch seemed to enjoy it.”

“Banoch ate his own dung when he was little. But I trust your own good taste.” She almost laughed at the widening of his eyes and lips, but her hand ached in the cold, and the image of Ivanir’s tomb returned. Her knees buckled, and she leaned against the doorway as firelight washed over her eyes.

“O gods, I’m a fool. Such a fool to think …” She swayed toward the light, but Dmitri caught her arm. He led her to the hearth, where birch logs crackled under the hanging cauldron. Steam wafted over the rim of tarnished copper — salt and garlic, barley and meat — and her mouth watered.

“You’re so pale,” Dmitri said. “Sit — please. There’s nothing to talk of till you’ve eaten.” He shut the door and, behind it, its flaps of hide. He ladled the stew into her largest wooden bowl and set it in her palms. It was as if he had given her the sun.

For a time, she simply let the warmth seep into her bones. She raised the bowl to her lips and drank it dry and, when she looked again, found beside her a plate of cheese and black bread. Dmitri took the bowl, filled it again, returned it to her hands. He removed a skin from his belt and poured its clear liquid into a cup, setting it beside her plate.

“Thank you,” she said.

He patted the skin. “I just hope my father doesn’t miss it.” He joined her near the hearth, and Banoch, sniffing, eased himself down beside them. Yelena cradled the bowl and stared into the flames as words of Ivanir, her promise to help him, and the sorcerer scattered like fallen leaves.

When she finished, her mouth was cold and dry. She sipped the stew and the vodka’s false fire as the hearth crackled and Dmitri drew up his knees, embracing them with his arms.

“Gods, Yelena … to do this, to set your face against the sorcerer …”

She looked into her emptied cup. “Surely there is a madness in the women of my family. Why else would my mother leave her forest? Why else would a rusalka become mortal and bind her life to a man’s?” She lifted her eyes and stared into the flames; she avoided the shadowed corner where the autumn-gold of her mother’s hair had faded to chaff in the season of her father’s death.

Dmitri lifted his hand from Banoch’s side. “For love.”

She nodded. “I know.” The fire blurred as a small, warm tear slid from her eye. “I know well. Yet their love blossomed in the summer — when life was magical, when the world was green. But now … there is no love in winter.”

Dmitri shook his head. “You should sleep, Yelena. The morning is wiser than the evening. And come morning, I’ll help you as I can.”

“No!” She blinked at the sharpness of her voice, his flinching away. “Dmitri, no. Even now he may be watching us in his mirror. You mustn’t earn his hatred, too.”

“But I—”

“No.” She set down the cup. “I won’t have you or your family in such danger.” In a trick of firelight gleamed the tsar’s circlet of ice and narrowing eyes. “Nor can I trust him, Dmitri. If you help me, he might say I broke our pact and then refuse to free Ivanir. Perhaps he’ll refuse even if I succeed alone, but I have to try. Alone, Dmitri. For Ivanir’s sake, if not yours.”

His jaw shifted as he stroked Banoch’s back. “I can stay here, though. I can tend your herd and cook for you? If I do nothing for Ivanir, only for you … at least I can do that much.”

She shook her head and smiled. “Your family and I are the most stubborn of a stubborn folk to live here still. Aye, stay if you like.”

He banked the fire, and they lay back to back on her pallet while the wind howled outside. Though Yelena ached, her ears strained for the cry of wolves, and she searched the shadows for the gleam of purple eyes.

I saw her, my lord. And myself. I watched us when we were children, running to the forest …

Tonight, shepherd girl, the moon begins its gentle dying. Touch him, merely touch him before it dies …

O child, your father is dead …

She breathed the scent of her home and clenched her fists. When they fell open, she dreamed of fire.

*  *  *

Five nights later, the moon had thinned to a sickle of bone. At dawn Yelena entered the vale with a torch crackling in her bruised and blistered hand. In the days before, she wept as her axe felled pines and birches—trees in whose shade her mother, as a spirit of the forest, had danced and sung. She vowed to weep no more.

But as she walked between the mountains, a wind roared from the North, driving gray clouds before it, battering her flame. She shielded it with her body and trudged backward through the snow. Smoke swirled into her face, and her eyes watered as she coughed.

At last Ivanir’s tomb appeared over her shoulder. The ice rose above the wood she had split and piled against two of its sides. Beyond it loomed the palace, and — she gasped — upon a balcony beneath a minaret stood the tsar, his pale hands raised. Above him the sky roiled like a cauldron of filthy water.

The wind howled, and her torch guttered. She neared the tomb and lurched toward the wood. She knelt and fumbled in her pouch for a flask of oil as the wind pounced, snuffing her flame.

“No!” She dropped the flask and drew a shard of flint from her pouch. But no sooner did she lift it than droplets of sleet pelted her cheek and fingers. She screamed as it soaked her hair and furs, glazed the logs and tomb. In moments all lay wet and glistening; in minutes all would freeze.

She stood and dashed water and ice from her eyes. On his balcony, the tsar turned and vanished into the stone.

*  *  *

Eight nights later, the moon had thinned to a shaving of wool. At dawn Yelena, with aid from Banoch, drove her reindeer to the far side of the forest. There, with leather and coils of rope fetched from the land’s northernmost fortress, at the price of her mother’s ring, she yoked the beasts together. To them she fastened a wide, crude sled of pines that no longer dreamed.

Her beasts shied as they neared the vale, but she drove them on, the logs rolling and sliding across the frozen ground. Beside Ivanir’s tomb she halted, saw the tsar again on his balcony, and fought to calm her mind.

She had cleared away the frozen logs from her first attempt. If she could move the tomb into the forest, its power would shelter her, she prayed, from the tsar’s storms. She could then kindle a fire to free Ivanir. No other course or time remained.

Yelena shut her eyes and let her thoughts sink like roots into the living earth. Gentle Mother, giver of life, please shun this thing of death. I beg you, my grandmother. I beg you …

Her reindeer stamped and snorted. A rock broke loose and tumbled from a mountainside above, but no warmth or power gathered within her. A cry of despair filled her throat but died at a nearby whisper from the snow. She opened her eyes.

As if the ice had become steam, Ivanir’s tomb began to rise. In moments, it hovered above the snow, lightly as a cloud.

Thank you, my grandmother, Yelena thought. She urged the reindeer forward until the sled waited underneath the ice. Thank you, she thought again, and the tomb descended onto the logs.

Yelena smiled. But even as she lifted her thoughts from the earth, she sensed a trembling in the hoarfrost, low and terrible as thunder.

“No,” she whispered, but then Banoch was beside her, barking and snarling, his hackles like thorns. She screamed and drew her knife, hurried to cut her reindeer loose. She hacked one rope, then another—but already she could see the eyes of the tsar’s wolves, cruel as lightning, as they charged.

Yelena screamed like her beasts in the heart of the storm, for its rain on the snow fell red.

*  *  *

When Banoch was a pup, Yelena would sleep with him on her chest. Her neighbors had given him to her after her mother’s death, and in the night, she would stroke his fur and smell his new breath and know she was not alone.

Now his breath came in gasps of steam, and he whimpered as blood from his ravaged belly melted the snow. He lay on his side, staring drowsily, and Yelena ran her hand over his muzzle, his eyes, his ears. The wolves had evaded her and attacked only her reindeer before returning to the palace. Banoch had fought them nonetheless, and the black wolf had rewarded his valor with a slow and painful death.

“My friend, my friend,” Yelena whispered as she stroked his face, as she left her hand on his eyes, drew a stilling breath and plunged her knife into his throat. His body spasmed, then was still. She flung the knife away and sobbed into the darkness of his still-warm fur.

For a time, she knelt in the bloodied snow and prayed she would wake in her hut, with Banoch dreaming beside the hearth. But her reindeer lay brokenly, tangled in her foolish ropes, their throats torn out; and with their deaths, though Ivanir’s tomb now lay on her sled, it may as well have rested on a mountaintop.

On his balcony, the tsar turned and vanished into the stone.

Yelena bent and lifted Banoch’s body across her shoulders. It was so still, so heavy, and its weight — with the stench and slickness of entrails on her nape — buried her last embers of hope. When the moon vanished that night, Ivanir would be lost to the tsar, and more than ever she would be alone.

She had failed.

She left the ruin of her promise and trudged into the forest. The sky and snow were empty of life and color; skeletal branches creaked in the wind. Between two birches, beside a frozen streambed lined with rocks, she found a smooth place and laid Banoch’s body there. She gripped a large rock with her bloodstained hands, and setting it by his head, she wept.

Yet in the midst of building his cairn, the air trembled from a lamentation, and Yelena realized it had come unbidden from her lips. At first she chanted her village’s deep hymns of loss as she laid stone on stone — so many even for a shepherd’s dog — but soon found herself moving more quickly, more wisely, as if the stones themselves called her to arrange them. Then followed songs of her childhood from the village green — The White Sword of Morning, The Firebird’s Flight — and as she laid the last stone on Banoch’s cairn, she did not hold back her tears but raised her reddened hands like wings.

When life was magical, when the world was green.

And as she turned to the North, her song grew high and wordless, for she had left the dominion of words. Her song quickened, quickened her stride, making her bones like skirling pipes and her heart a war-maddened drum.

She broke from the forest at a hunter’s sprint, swift beyond dreaming. Her song rushed forth like a wild summer wind and lifted her as she leapt toward Ivanir’s tomb. She landed by one of its corners, striking it with her bare hands. Again. Again.

Her knuckles split open. The ice bit into the sides of her hands and palms, drawing her lifeblood. And Yelena sang — she sang! — as the stained tomb cracked and melted at its touch, for the gift of life was magical in the world’s green dawn. And still it was.

The ice became more jagged as she hammered it. It sliced open her fingers and wrists, only to dissolve more quickly from the outpouring of her blood. Her head grew light, her throat hot and parched. She no longer felt her hands, only an agony held at bay by her song.

Which suddenly echoed in the air of the vale, its spirit warped, so loud and harsh as to be music no longer. Yelena turned and beheld the tsar on his balcony, his arms writhing like serpents as he whipped the discordant sound between the mountainsides above her. She closed her lips and ended her song, then cried out at the pain in her hands. Black stars swarmed in her sight, but she was close to Ivanir now, so close, and lifted her hands again — just as the slopes above her cracked.

Plumes of frost erupted from the mountainsides like smoke. Vast sheets of snow and ice slid and fell like cataracts, melded into a frothing white wave that swept away boulders like pebbles and dust. It roared toward the floor of the vale, faster than a storm-angered stream.

She opened her lips, but the avalanche drowned out her cry. Her boots slipped on the remnant of the tomb underneath her. The edges of her sight dimmed, but with a last surge, Yelena lunged and slammed her hand onto a spike of ice over Ivanir’s face, gasping as the tip burst through the back of her hand.

The floor of the vale shuddered as the avalanche struck. Against its devouring whiteness, a ruby droplet of her blood fell onto Ivanir’s cheek.

His eyes opened. His hands left his breast, scattering shards of ice. The world faded to twilight before her and then, whether in the maw of the avalanche or the shelter of Ivanir’s cloak, the blackest of nights.

In the cold and silence, in the lightless heart of winter, she drifted.

Alone.

*  *  *

Shadows and firelight danced above her, above her on the thatched roof of her hut. Dmitri and Ivanir sat near the glowing hearth, talking softly. But Banoch was gone.

Grief touched Yelena’s throat like a knife of smoke, and she drew a sharp breath that deepened at the aching and strange moistness of her hands. She thought to lift them, but the lush blackness of Ivanir’s cloak covered her, and by then he and Dmitri were kneeling beside her pallet.

“Stubborn, stubborn woman,” Ivanir said. “Had a snow tigress lost as much blood as you …” He shook his head and let a gentle smile end his words.

“How?” she whispered. “Why aren’t we dead?” Her temples throbbed, and she shut her eyes. Her tongue felt like a dried leaf, and she did not voice the remainder of her thought. I should not be here. I chose to free you and die.

“When my master — no, his name is Yoris. He imprisoned my body, but I remained free. I solved the thirtieth riddle and am a true sorcerer now.” With her eyes closed, Yelena heard both the pride and anger in Ivanir’s voice. “That is how — but better to ask why we are alive. And as to that, the answer, bright heart, is you.” His lips brushed her forehead, and he murmured words that wove themselves together like flowering vines … vines that parted before her hands to reveal a forest in high summer, its branches laden with ripe red fruit and its streams running sweet and cool.

Yelena woke and ate and dreamed again, and the cold days passed. Each dawn and dusk, Ivanir rubbed a fragrant green ointment into her hands, murmuring as he worked. They would bear scars, he told her, and ache when storms approached, but they would serve her well. With his hands and power, he also built larger pens for her longhaired sheep, cleansed and deepened the village well, and stacked rows of firewood beside her hut.

Dmitri, for his part, cared for both her and her sheep and, when Ivanir left from time to time, asked her more than once to tell him of the tsar’s palace and how she freed Ivanir. As they sat by the hearth, she shared with him her memories of Banoch and, later, her mother and father.

One morning Ivanir hurried into the hut with a handful of raw gold. “The ice of the stream spoke of it,” he said. “I’ll tell you where …” In the evening he returned with jars of salt and honey and a gray stallion whose hooves did not sink into the snow. He wore a new cloak of rich sky-blue wool, and from its folds he lifted a white-furred pup and laid her in Yelena’s arms.

They sat together that night while the pup nibbled Yelena’s fingers, and Ivanir said at last, “My friends, I fear I must go in the morning. There are three others like Yoris in the world, and three apprentices who are as I was. I do not know if I can free them” — he bowed his head to Yelena — “but I must try.”

At daybreak Yelena embraced him, and he and Dmitri clasped forearms like brothers. He leapt onto his stallion, which climbed as if the air were a gently sloping hill and soon galloped across the windswept sky. As Ivanir faded from her sight, Yelena looked down and saw she had taken Dmitri’s hand. A startling warmth rushed through her, and she met his eyes.

Dmitri blushed but did not look away. “You were wrong, I think. There is love in winter, but it cloaks itself in courage. Yelena … how brave you are.”

She smiled, taking his other hand, and kissed his beautiful cheek. The sun was rising, each day growing longer than the last.

Despite all, hers would be a glorious spring.

*  *  *

One-and-twenty years later, they gathered in the iron tower once more, though none had returned with an apprentice. “It matters not,” said the sorcerer, thin and pale as frost, who had flown to the mountains of the North, “for the people of this land are unworthy of our power.”

But the one who had flown to the East had listened well to the living woodland, and his eyes shone with the green of its trees and the gold of the rising sun. “Nay, brother,” said he. “Say rather that, until this time, our power has been unworthy of them.” And for his answer, he was named the greatest of the four …

Love & Winter © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “If I Had a Heart” by Lialia

Author’s note: “Love & Winter” is a story that placed in the finals of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. I’d like to offer its publication here as a Christmas gift to Kat Hooper and all the dedicated, insightful reviewers at Fantasy Literature. Cheers, RR

Eighteenth in our Heroes series, by Robert Rhodes, this is part 1 of “Love & Winter: Yelena’s Story” which was a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Art is courtesy of Lialia.

The four sorcerers gathered that night in the iron tower by the river Dnal. “Brothers,” they said, “this day has proven us equal in power. Let us depart then, one to each end of the world. Let each hone his craft, take an apprentice, and return in one-and-twenty years, and on that day let the greatest be decided.”

At daybreak they departed, soaring among the clouds: one to the dry grasslands of the West; one to the East, in the woodland of mist; one to South, beyond the burning desert; and one to the North, in the shadow of the white mountains.

The Vodrina, the ninth tale

* * *

The lamb cried when Yelena lifted him from the hillside rocks. His fleece was snow-dampened and cold; one foreleg was gashed and bloodstained, but he was otherwise unharmed.

“Fortunate, little one,” she said. “Fortunate to be found after climbing so high.” She cradled the shivering body to her chest, then slipped a hand free to rub Banoch’s gray muzzle. “Come, Banoch and I are hungry now. That fox will bother us no more, and your mother is waiting.”

Yelena bent and settled the lamb across her shoulders. She balanced herself and gripped his legs; his blood was like warm sap on her palm. She clicked her tongue, and Banoch, tail high, trotted ahead to the trail.

The sky was ashen and still, the sun a white blur beyond the hills. In the forest below the hillside, a brightness caught her eye. Firelight on autumn’s grain, she thought — but it was a man’s hair. He was hurrying toward a frozen pool, and his hair shone between the thatching of branches and the blanket of snow, in the emptiness where he moved alone.

Now who can you be? she thought. And then, You cannot be!

She knelt and tumbled the lamb onto the iron-cold ground. She brushed pale strands of hair from her eyes and, with rope from her belt, looped a shepherd’s knot around his throat. The other end she tied to a jagged rock on the hillside.

O gods, is it him? The memory of her promise warmed her face as if she knelt by a roaring fire. Is it you? She had to go closer. She had to know.

“Stay,” she told Banoch. “Guard.” He cocked his ears; his thick tail bristled. She padded over snow and earth, following her earlier tracks as they wound to the bottom of the hill.

As she descended into the forest, she slowed and crept behind a birch trunk. Clad in white furs, the man now knelt beside the pool. His gloved hand gripped a knife — the blade steel, the pommel a gemstone dark as midnight — which etched lines in the ice. Yelena willed his face to turn, to show the color of his eyes. Her fingers tightened on the cold bark as she sensed, so faintly, the tree’s dream of sunlight and summer rain … then her boot shifting on fallen leaves.

The leaves whispered. The man lifted the blade, tilted his head toward her. Listened. He stood before she could find her voice, and snow sprayed the ice as he fled.

“Wait!” she yelled. “Wait — I’m Yelena!” She pushed away from the birch and followed. On the hillside, Banoch barked at being kept from the chase. But soon his voice faded, for the man darted through the trees, leaping like a hare over snow-buried roots and silenced streams. Yet Yelena almost smiled, for though he fled like the wind, she ran like lightning that burns through the wind, and she thrilled at both pleasures of the hunt — the course was swift and clever, and her victory in it was assured.

But then he cut sharply to the North, toward the white mountains, the Last Mountains as others named them, and soon broke from the forest. He bounded across a snow-shrouded meadow, toward the mouth of a vale, narrow and steeped in shadow. Dread caught her like a net, and she halted at the forest edge, resting her hand on an ancient pine. Behind the steam of her breath, he faded into the one place where, though the tracks of all her herd led within, she feared to follow. She watched until a raven cried from the branches above, then returned. But before she climbed the hillside again, she knelt beside the frozen pool.

In her hut that night, while her fingers stroked Banoch’s tawny fur, the man’s etching shone in her mind, clean and lightning-white: a woman with hair as long as her own, standing before a palace. Yelena stared into the hearth, seeing his bright hair between branches and snow, and blotted a tear before it left her eye.

“O Banoch,” she whispered to the sleeping dog. “O mother,” she whispered to the fire, “he’s still alive — taken but not murdered. He calls now, and my promise to help him has come due. O gods, please guard me in the sorcerer’s home.”

* * *

Long before her piebald rooster hailed the sun, Yelena walked to the stream behind her hut. She cracked its shell of ice with her heel and washed her face, her heart pounding from the water’s chill. Inside, she worked tangles from her hair with a comb of horn and drew on her palest furs, her doeskin boots, and from its nest beneath her pallet, the silver ring her mother had loved. Lastly, into her belt she slid her long bronze knife.

In the first hours of morning, Yelena crossed the white hills and meadows. She passed huts and cottages darkened and crumbling in the wind, thatched roofs rotting from years of snow and human silence. In her childhood, the hearth-smoke of her village had curled skyward, and its herds had covered the hills. The long evenings of summer had brought sweetcakes and dances, pipes and drums, a ring of firelit faces beneath the stars. Songs, she recalled, of warriors and bejeweled maidens from the world’s dawn, tales of riddling foxes, stories wherein the Firebird soared so brightly that the light of its wings, red-golden, warmed Yelena’s dreams like a second sun.

But ten years past, whispers arose of a dark cloud scudding from the South, against the wind, and into the mountains. Within a turning of the moon, a snowstorm more brutal than even the widow Vlana could recall engulfed doorways, stiffened beasts in their dens. The howling of wolves grew louder, drew nearer. One night a child vanished from his home — a clever boy with hair bright and soft as eiderdown, who delighted in racing before her, wild-laughing, into the forest. The men of the village gathered, her father among them, and searched …

But she banished her thoughts. She had far to walk, and the northern clouds had darkened like clumps of sodden wool.

“That is the past,” she said into the wind. “All that remains is my promise.”

By mid-morning she reached the farmstead of her closest neighbors. Gregor was too fond of his vodka, and Marya had a scornful eye, but they were honest folk with able, kindhearted sons. At midday Yelena returned with the younger, Dmitri, and gave him charge over Banoch and her herd of reindeer and longhaired sheep. Dmitri did not ask where she was going; she was two winters older, and his downcast eyes betrayed his fear. Where else could she walk in the wild North once the snows had come?

She knelt and nuzzled Banoch’s black ears. “Guard,” she told him before striding away.

Snowflakes tumbled as she walked through the forest. When she neared the vale, the wind rose and howled. Between the mountainsides, it whipped the snow into a stinging torrent. Her eyes watered, and she blinked and knuckled them so they would not crust shut. Once she stumbled on ice-glazed rocks and fell, biting her tongue and tasting the salt of her blood, the air’s bitterness. She struggled up and trudged deeper into the vale, blind to all but the steepness of the mountains around her — how their burdens of snow, ice, and stone shuddered in the wind.

Her hands and feet grew numb. Her blood seemed to thicken, and she thought of running back to the forest, if run she could in the deepening snow. But in a twist of the wind, a vast shadow loomed up in the blowing white world.

Yelena shielded her eyes. Before her stood the palace whose image had been etched on the pool — gray and black stone now, smooth beyond any chisel’s work. On its rounded towers glimmered minarets of ice, too slick and sharp for any crow or raven to find a perch. Yelena had never seen a crafted thing so great. Or so cold.

No wall or courtyard encircled the palace, only the barren floor of the vale. She leaned into the driving snow, stumbling till the windshadow of the walls protected her. When she uncovered her eyes, the palace doors towered over her—an arch of bone-colored wood, banded with iron.

The doors parted at her touch. As they shut behind her, a last flurry of snow swirled past her shoulders, and a torch flared in its sconce. Yet its flame glowed purple, dim as crushed lavender and the sun’s dying light, filling the chamber with shadows. The air, though windless, was cold as in the vale. She ran her fingers through her hair, scattering ice and snow on the flagstones—then stopped.

A fresh shiver raked her spine as the largest wolf she had ever seen stepped from the shadows. His fur was black, flowing over muscle and haunch, and his eyes mirrored the torch’s chilling glow. Memories howled, of wailing across the hills and her mother’s tears. O child, your father is dead, and the others who went with him. The sorcerer unleashed his wolves in the vale ….

She reached for her knife. The black wolf growled and walked toward a dark corridor, looked back at her once. She shook her hair and followed. I am no fool, she thought, letting go of the hilt, and my promise is not of vengeance.

The first torch dimmed as she passed it, but another flared in the corridor ahead. The darkened mouths of other passages appeared between doors, narrow and closed, their lintels slashed with runes. The wall glinted as she passed the second torch — its sconce was carved of ice.

Torch after torch, she followed the wolf. Each one flickered with the sun’s last light; each sconce was unmelting ice. As the glow of one torch gave way to another, her nape prickled and she turned. From within two shadowed corridors, two wolves like nightfall and smoke took up her trail. Their eyes gleamed in the torchlight; nails clicked on the stones. The black wolf turned to bare his teeth before vanishing around a corner, and Yelena hurried to follow him. At once, the click of nails quickened behind her.

The sound grew louder as she passed new corridors, and other gazes pressed upon her back. At last the passage opened into a pillared hall, and more than twenty wolves flowed into a crescent behind her, shepherding her toward a shadowed throne. The black wolf lay proudly by its side, two torches flared above it, and for the first time beyond her nightmares, Yelena faced the Tsar of Winter.

“You,” he whispered. “I know you.” He lifted his hands from the frosted silver of the throne, laced long fingers before his throat. His skin was smooth and pallid as snow hardening at dusk. His robe, cloud-gray and sleek, parted above his breastbone, and a circlet of ice glistened on his shaven head. “The shepherd girl, daughter of the forest, our closest neighbor.” On the last word, his mouth tightened to a slim scar in his tapered cheekbones. His eyes narrowed and gleamed. “You should not have come here, girl. You smell of dogs and fire.”

She slid her thumb across her ring before unclenching her fist. “I have come only at your son’s request.” But he is not truly your son, is he, sorcerer-thief?

“My … son. In truth, he is my apprentice — yet why come at all?”

“To ask for his life.” The tang of blood burned on her tongue. “To ask for his freedom … and if he would have me as his wife, or if you require it, I will not refuse.”

The tsar’s lips curled. Darkness hid his teeth, but Yelena guessed their sharpness. He laughed — a knife of ice twisting to scrape bone. “No, this will not be, for I have seen your fate.” He raised his hand, and a glittering fog billowed up from the stones before her. “Behold.”

Fog swirled and hardened into silver, into ice — a rounded mirror bright as the midwinter moon. In it, as if from the hillside, she saw the forest dreaming in the snow. Yet the snow was deeper than she remembered, the pines and birches strange — some taller, others fallen or dead. Into the vision she glided like a raven lighting on a branch. Below her a man, old by his stooped shoulders and ragged breath, hefted the last stone atop a cairn. Slowly, bundled in furs, he turned. The flesh of his face sagged; his whiskers were thin and white — yet she knew him.

“Dmitri!” she gasped.

The old man clutched a gnarled staff and limped away from the cairn. Blackness enclosed the forest and, at last, the heap of lichen-scabbed stones. The mirror, a ring of silver and ice stained with torchlight, remained before her.

“There,” said the tsar, “lies your future and your fate. A neighbor to find your withered body in its hut. A grave in the cold forest. An ending unloved and soon forgotten.” His lips curved. “Alone …”

Yelena bowed her head. Her eyes watered from the cold, and she pinched them shut before looking to him, a shadow in the wavering light.

“So be it,” she said. “For the world and the sky are beautiful, and I do not fear my life of dogs and fire. I ask only to hear, from his lips, his desire to stay.”

“A useless wish, but so be it.” The tsar tilted his head as if hearing distant thunder and barked a name — Ivanir — that splintered the gloom like a crack through a frozen lake. Yelena glanced behind her. The wolves had settled onto their haunches, watching her. Then came footsteps in the dark.

The young man strode out of the darkness between two pillars, slowing as he approached the throne. A sable cloak covered his shoulders and all but a forelock of bright hair. His gloved hands drew back its cowl, and his eyes flickered toward her, then away as he bowed before the tsar.

Ivanir, she thought. Then you have kept your given name ….

“How may I serve, my lord?” he asked, his voice soft and sheltering as his cloak.

The tsar’s fingers curled on the throne. His eyes held Yelena, piercing layers of fur and cloth until her limbs ached with cold. “This … girl, a peasant who dwells with beasts, has come into our home. And she has come — upon your calling, she claims — to take you as her mate.” He shook his head, and his gaze shifted to Ivanir. “Your tutelage in power is far from complete; you have yet to solve the thirtieth riddle. And if in time you desire a wife, Baba Yaza has seven granddaughters with hair like the sweet, black night. Thus have I denied this girl, and yet” — his eyes narrowed — “she would have a denial from your own lips. How do you answer her?”

Ivanir’s gloved hands twisted and pulled at one another before falling, slowly, to his sides. “I — ” His shoulders straightened. He drew a deep breath and raised his eyes to the tsar.

“I say she runs like a living fire, my lord, and her voice is the first breath of spring.”

“And thus,” the tsar whispered, “she has no place here. Is that not your answer?” Beside the throne, the black wolf flattened his ears. The torches flickered, and the last warmth fled Yelena’s breast.

Ivanir swallowed and shook his head. “My lord, in your palace I have discovered the speech of wolves and ravens, the hushed music of snowfalls … the endless dreaming of ice. And … I have looked into your mirror, my lord, while you were away, taking flight across the frozen seas, and the wolves hunted in the night—”

“Despite my forbidding it …”

Ivanir bowed. “Aye.”

“And what did you see in my mirror?”

Ivanir nodded to Yelena. “I saw her, my lord. And myself. I watched us when we were children, running to the forest beyond our village. She chased me in the twilight, and we ran, laughing, while the stars glittered in the summer sky, and around us the fireflies drifted like stars …”

Yelena clasped her hands. O gods, you remember!

“And I thank you, my lord,” Ivanir said. He fell to one knee before the throne. “I thank you for teaching me all that you have. Yet I was not born a sorcerer but a peasant myself, a shepherd’s son, and what I desire—”

Yelena blinked at the emptiness where he knelt no longer. The echo of his voice faded into the vaulted darkness.

She whirled toward the tsar. “Ah! What have you done?”

The sorcerer stared into the emptiness, along the length of his outstretched hand. Slowly, his long fingers descended to the throne. He met her glare and smiled.

“Tonight, shepherd girl, the moon begins its gentle dying. Touch him, merely touch him before it dies, and his freedom is yours. Now take your stench from my home.”

“What — where shall I go? Where is he?”

Beside the throne, the black wolf stood and growled. The tsar stroked his hackles. “Tell me, girl … do you know how to count?”

Anger flashed through her despair like lightning in a rain-soaked night. She tasted blood and scoffed. “I’ve two and twenty longhairs and twelve reindeer in my care. Yet the day you stole him from our village, hundreds more grazed across the hills and meadows.”

His smile vanished, could never have been. “I remember well. And in honor of your witless beasts and my apprentice, I will count to five and thirty before I send my own herd” — his hand traced the arc of wolves behind her — “to bring you down if you linger in my home.” He pointed a long-nailed finger at her heart, then to the corridor through which she had come. The wolves shifted behind her, capturing her scent.

“Go,” the tsar said. “You will find him in the vale. One. Two. Thr—”

She spun and broke through the barrier of gleaming eyes. Jaws snapped at her thighs. No torches flared as she entered the corridor. The air shivered with baying from the hall, echoes of hunger …

In the darkness, she closed her eyes and lifted her face for the scent of wind and snow. Like living fire chased by a storm, she ran.

To be concluded next Monday…

Love & Winter © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “If I Had a Heart” by Lialia.

Author’s note: “Love & Winter” is a story that placed in the finals of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. I’d like to offer its publication here as a Christmas gift to Kat Hooper and all the dedicated, insightful reviewers at Fantasy Literature. Cheers, RR

Seventeenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Anders Finér.

One of the baron’s guardsmen grunted and pressed a candle into her hand. No sooner had she grasped it than another shoved her through the shadowed doorway. The door slammed behind her, snuffing the candle, and its iron bar thudded into place.

“Jackwits,” Morrigan snapped under her breath. The garments they’d given her, such as they were, were ridiculously inadequate in the keep’s dank catacombs, and the door-gust had chilled her skin to gooseflesh. She closed her eyes and calmed her thoughts, focusing on the aether around her. A heartbeat later, she summoned her grim-cloak from it, sighing as the sleek fabric settled around her like a living shadow. Then she held out her hands, tossing the candle aside, and called her arc-staff.

The bronze-banded shaft materialized in her palms, and light, pale and blue as a winter sky, blazed from its crystalline spike. Worn stairs began a few strides ahead of her, twisting downward. She dimmed the staff’s light to that of a candle and began the descent.

Presently the stairs ended in a short corridor. A door stood open at the far end, occupying the corner of a torchlit room. She could not see inside, but she guessed what, or rather whom, she’d find. The queen had dispatched her after the niece of a prominent sword-captain vanished from the baron’s keep en route to her wedding in Mavonry. The baron’s steward had sworn to the otherwise sensible girl’s entourage that the girl had renounced her betrothal and fled southward on the new highway with a stolen horse; but when pursuing riders met a reputable merchant on the highway the next afternoon, he reported no sign of the girl.

Now Morrigan knew better. She’d arrived in the guise of a courtesan, escaping some debacle at court, and her conversations with the keep’s scullions and maidservants — an unrefined and skittish bunch — raised the specter of ten to twelve vanished women since the autumnal equinox. Two evenings later, after avoiding or transmuting several goblets of laced wine, she’d blithely gone alone for a moonlit walk on the ramparts  — interrupted by three guardsmen, whom she allowed to seize her and drag her inside.

She gripped the staff and stalked toward the room. Already she imagined the leering faces of the baron, his steward, and his wine-sodden cohorts, arranged around a makeshift pile of cloaks or pillows. She crossed the threshold.

She was wrong.

The baron, his steward, and five other men were indeed present, but their faces were sober and twisted with something more than lust. Each bore a smeared mark on his brow, and they knelt in a line before the farthest wall, facing her, and made no attempt to rise at her entrance.

Instead, as she took a second step into the room, dozens of crude runes on the floor began to pulse with the darkest radiance that could exist and yet be light. Morrigan braced her staff before her in a defensive position, clenching her teeth against a wave of nausea.

With a stench of charred flesh and a defiant howl, the demon appeared—no pustulant minion, but a Dread Punisher, a tower of mottled scarlet fur and rippling muscle. The eyes of its wolfish head smoldered with malice.

“An Aetherian,” it purred, cocking its head and glancing at the baron. “What a delicious surprise! Think not to share the taste of her death throes, however. This one is mine.” It licked its long, black fangs.

The men’s faces darkened, and the baron tried to stand before the steward grabbed his shoulders. “You—you are bound!” the baron yelled. “By our bloody pact!”

“I am the pact!” the punisher barked. “You are curs beneath my table, and the savor of this one’s soul, even the crumbs, belongs to me.” It turned and strode toward Morrigan. Her staff dimmed as the demon’s aura began suppressing its arcane energy, but from it she fired a bolt of absolute cold — which shrank even as it streaked toward the demon. The demon hissed, and a patch of frost coated one of its chest muscles, blackening the fur around it.

Damnation, I’m outranked, she thought. Images of her sister and her friends in the Order — and Royce — cascaded through her mind. With a shout, she whirled and swung the staff, lunging at the last instant to jab its spike into the fiend’s throat.

Instead, one of its clawed hands caught the staff in mid-swing and yanked it from her grasp. Instantly the staff dissolved into the aether, and the punisher yipped with pleasure.

“Bitch! Now I’ll ravish you, devour your heart, and let you live until the last!” It lunged and grabbed for her arm, but her cloak shifted, and the punisher’s claws glanced from the fabric. Morrigan leapt and drove her bare foot into the side of the demon’s knee, with no more effect than if she’d kicked a cornerstone. As she stumbled back, the demon snarled and hurled itself upon her. Together, they crashed to the floor.

Her cloak absorbed the impact to her head and spine, and the fabric shifted constantly, denying the punisher’s raking claws. The demon’s weight and power were undeniable, though, and a burning droplet of saliva kissed her cheek.

But as the demon fought to part her cloak, she placed her open hands to either side of its throat and called her arc-staff. It appeared between them, and the punisher gave a strangled cry as the shaft impaled its throat. Fetid blood sprayed from the wounds, and she released the staff with one hand and pulled with the other, jerking the crystalline spike to the wound. Into it she drew as much raw energy as she could. Seven men screamed, and the punisher shivered violently, limbs pummeling her cloak, until at last it stilled.

She dismissed her staff and squirmed free of the corpse, glancing at the other seven on the floor, their brows smoking.

“Jackwits, you deserved no less.” She shook her head and sighed. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly in the darkness—a moment for herself before she assumed control, for the time, of a barony and composed a letter, truthful yet tactful, for the eyes of her young and pure-hearted queen.

Morrigan © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Blue” by Anders Finér

Author’s note: Morrigan and I had no prior relationship until I happened upon this amazing work of art by Anders Finér while hunting for other images for this series. I wrote the piece entirely from the image, attempting to answer questions about the woman and her possessions and circumstances. I hope you’ve had as much fun reading something with an “old-school sword-and-sorcery” flavor as I had writing it.  RR

Sixteenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Andreea Ifteni.

Shadows always covered the entrance to the Grotto, and the black muslin of her veil made it doubly hard to see. She easily recognized, though, two of the beggars gathered before it. The first was an old man, thin and handless — a twice-caught thief who seemed to live beneath a particular willow and never failed to greet her. He bowed his head and called, “Hail, your majesty. I am sorry for your loss.” She went to him and carefully placed a coin between his toes.

“Thank you,” she whispered and, straightening, turned to another beggar, a wild-haired young woman with a dirty face, who sat and clutched a stained rucksack to her chest, swaying and humming an unknown tune — Elisa, her former handmaiden in disguise, whom she’d recently pretended to banish.

She turned her profile to the two guardsmen behind her and raised a black-gloved hand. “Await me.” And to Elisa, “And you, girl, come and pray with your queen.”

Elisa dropped her jaw and stammered, “M-me, your m-majesty?”, before standing and creeping into the cavern behind her. Cate breathed deeply the smells of cold water, stone, and the smoke of countless candles, their flames adorning the walls in a delicately shifting mural of pale gold, gray-green, and shadow-black. She followed a lit path from the large, public pool to a smaller cavern, descending more deeply into the hillside.

A priestess knelt on the path, hands folded on the dark silk of her robe, before the entrance to the Royal Pool. She stood without a word at Cate’s approach and resumed her position once Cate and Elisa passed inside.

As she moved away from the path, circling the gray mirror of the pool, Cate pulled off her veil and embraced Elisa, kissing her on each cheek. “I’m so glad you’re well,” she whispered. “I’ve worried about you. Do you have everything?” she asked, touching the rucksack.

“I think so. And a horse is waiting at The Magician & Moon. A gelding, like you asked. Three years, reddish coat, buff mane. The merchant wondered about me, I know, but swore to its health — as he should’ve, for the price.” She shrugged then set the rucksack down. “And you? Are you well?” She paused and bit her lip before adding, “You do have it, don’t you?”

Cate shook her head as she used a slim shaft of heartwood to transfer the flame from a lit candle to two more, an ivory for Elisa, a dark purple for Martin. “As well as any young widow, I suppose.” Her lips quivered, and she jabbed the shaft into its bowl of sand. The flames blurred before her. “Gods, I miss him, Elli. And yes, of course. Of course I have it.”

Slowly, she pulled the cold weights of the Sword from underneath her gown. First, the greater part of the blade, its strange purple metal seeming to drink the candlelight, ending in a jagged line where it had broken. And then the silvered hilt with an impossibly smooth golden gem in the rounded pommel.

Seventeen days ago, in the dead of night, the Seraph of the Sword had appeared in her bedchamber. Silent and gray-robed, it had held out the broken Sword on palms the color of polished redwood, waiting for Cate to claim it.

Which, for many minutes, she did not. Seraph and still-broken Sword could mean only that Martin’s quest had failed. That Calinor had lost its king, and she her husband, the man who had chosen her as Calinor’s queen.

She laid the pieces beside the pool. “Are you still game?” she whispered.

Elisa nodded quickly. “Of course, Cate. I simply wish there were another—”

“There isn’t,” Cate said, beginning to unfasten her gown. “Quickly now.”

Soon they faced one another, regarding the clothing they had exchanged. Cate set the veil on Elisa’s head and smoothed it into place. Then she knelt and tugged an old cloak out of the rucksack, wrapping it around the Sword. Finally, she gave Elisa a silver key and her signet ring.

“I’ve left the letter in the coffer beside my bed. Though you won’t need it. You know me. You know what to do.”

Elisa’s shoulders shivered, but she nodded. “Mourn. Stay reclusive and veiled, even to the maids. Act oddly, but not so madly that the council thinks of taking power. Don’t let them know the Sword’s missing. Give you time.”

Cate clasped her shoulders and embraced her. “You’ve known me forever. You can do this. Remember—you are the queen. Let no one forget that.” She stepped back and smiled grimly. “And above all, do not marry anyone.”

“Cate! I’d never—”

Cate urged her to silence and turned her to leave. “I know. Hurry now.”

Cate fell behind as they left the Grotto. Elisa spread her arms as she approached the guards. “The gods have spoken! Come, we must return to the castle. I have much to do. First, to the Winter Garden …”

Cate sighed and marveled at her friend’s mimicry of her voice. I suppose I do sound like that, she thought. As soon as the guards turned, she slipped from the entrance, rucksack shouldered, cloak tucked under her arm, and hurried away.

The handless man coughed as she passed him. She met his gaze, and he winked. At the beggar girl? At me? She quickened her pace and skirted the hill, heading for the town below the castle.

She had a sword to reforge and a seraph to find. And if the seraph could not answer for Martin’s life, she would demand an answer from its masters.

Thunder rumbled in the darkening north. She lifted her face in a gust of wind. I am the queen of nothing now, she told the gods.

And I am coming to you.

Caterina © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Vicariously, I” by Andreea Ifteni

Author’s note: Caterina is the main character of a novel concept, tentatively titled The Fires of Calinor. RR

Fifteenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Emma Rose Paterson.

“Wake now, little sister,” she hears Eldest Sister say. She breathes and pearlescent light washes over her eyelids. Outside a woodpecker’s beak thrums against a tree trunk; a goldeneye duck calls on the pond. She smells silk and jasmine… and something more.

She lifts herself onto one elbow and finds Eldest Sister kneeling beside her. Never, outside of the temple, has she witnessed Eldest Sister kneel. But a smile illuminates her wrinkled face, and upon her outstretched palms, redolent of leather and steel, lays Takhara’s sword. The metal gleams like moonstruck water, with an edge sharper than a wild poet’s tongue.

“I … I am alive,” she says. She remembers stepping into the Spirit Garden to begin the trials, her feet bare on the damp cherry blossoms … then nothing more. She touches her breastbone and realizes how quick and shallow her breathing is, how hot she feels within, as if she has swallowed a steaming dumpling whole. There is no pain, though, not quite, and her limbs feel so light and strong that she might run to the First Mountain’s summit without tiring. “But something—what’s happened to me?”

Eldest Sister bows her snow-haired head, and the katana shimmers as she laughs. “Can you not guess, dear child? Your pardon—dear sister, now. Why, that is where the goddess touched your heart.”

*   *   *

That was only six mornings ago, and now she wonders if her first sanctioned service to the goddess will be her last. On the surface, a simple thing to escort a man —a saint—from one temple to another. But someone very much desires his physical death, even more than her sisters suspected.

Their pursuers, a knot of shadows in the faint moonlight, crest the nearest hill, and behind them, grunting and hefting a war-club almost as large as herself, lurches an oni.

She bites her lip and her fingers tremble on the rail of the forsaken watchtower on which she has chosen to make their stand. Her breathing is quick again, but her heart is heavy as a river stone. The saint remains in the same position, sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, hands open as if to catch the stars gleaming in the blackness above. He is barely older than she and carries no weapon. Why should I need one? he asked her when the pursuit began.

The pursuers ring the tower. Their hounds bark and snap at one another. The oni stomps its taloned feet and roars. Then a man begins speaking in a honeyed voice, asking them to come down, promising them safe passage to another place. The saint stands and goes to the rail.

“You should not lie,” he calls down softly. He grunts as Takhara jerks his robe backward, as the hiss of a thrown knife fades into the sky. In an instant, footsteps pound below them on the warped staircase, and she moves toward the landing.

She assumes the stance of the White Leopard, but her palms are moist on the katana’s hilt. She shakes her head as if waking from a dream. I am a young woman. Why should I die here?

She turns the blade—perhaps to sheathe it, perhaps to hurl it from the roof—and moonlight flashes, pearlescent, from the steel. She breathes the scent of jasmine, and a voice like Eldest Sister’s whispers in her ear.

Did I touch your heart with my finger? No. I marked it with my sword.

The first man bursts from the stairs, and at her command the night air, steel-slashed, begins to sing.

Takhara © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Sword Saint” by Emma Rose Paterson

Author’s note: My favorite musician is Loreena McKennitt, and one of her most beautiful songs is “Full Circle” from the album The Mask & the Mirror. The inspiration for this piece came from the opening lyrics: “Stars were falling, deep in the darkness, as prayers rose softly, petals at dawn. And as I listened, your voice seemed so clear, so calmly you were calling your god.” Sublime fantasy-writing music. RR

Fourteenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Tiziano Baracchi.

He wakes before the dawn bell. His hips and fingers ache, and the flagstones beside his cot send a shiver through his legs. He tugs his feet into his slippers, then stands with a soft grunt and pulls on his over-tunic. He takes a step toward the dim outline of the door and forces his fingers to search the shelf beside it until they grasp a shard from a broken urn. He cannot see the image there, a crescent moon in a bit of night, a bone-white curve on glazing long-faded to gray. His fingers feel its smoothness, though, and the roughness of the fractured sides and the edges sharp enough to draw blood.

“What is known cannot be lost,” he murmurs in words all but forgotten from the outer world. He sighs and replaces the shard, opens the door to his chamber. The hall is empty. He pauses beside the window at its end to see the last stars glimmer in the frost-pale sky. He passes through the kitchen and greets the young man baking the day’s loaves. Beside a scarred table he stands and eats a slice of yesterday’s rye bread with cheese and a bit of salt pork, sipping water from a wooden mug. Minutes later he descends, one worn step at a time, lantern in hand, and stands before the library door.

As he has done every day for forty-one years, he lifts one of the keys chained to a locked bracer on his left wrist and opens the door. The library is dark, and the cool arid odor is the scent of his home. In the antechamber, he uses the flame of his lantern to light six others, carefully locking each one before hanging them on their chains.

He pauses then on the mosaic floor and regards the shelves and cabinets revealed in the golden light. All are in order—all have been in order for decades—so he settles at the workbench, beside a few battered tomes, to copy and rebind. The light is no longer kind to his eyes, though, and his hands cramp soon after taking up his tools or quill. His age explains why the Grandmaster has appointed the newest boy as his apprentice, and though he misses the clear silences of his solitary days, he cannot disagree with the appointment.

The boy scrambles through the door an hour later, sputtering apologies which Torsten waves away. For the rest of the morning, they sit on the workbench as Torsten explains the Janlian alphabet, speaking softly of the original runes, the high letters of the Dynasty, and the hybrid scripts of the Dissolution. He traces them slowly on scraps of parchment, spells the boy’s name in each.

At midday, they lock the door and join the others for the midday meal. The talk is of the war churning in the South, the rumors of one side being captained by demons. The boy’s eyes grow wider until Torsten gestures to the stone walls around them, walls that have housed the Order, however small, and its vaults and books for more than seventeen centuries. “Wars do not touch us here,” he tells the boy as they descend the stairs.

Yet that afternoon, they enter the library unannounced, bearing a writ from the Grandmaster. The man is young, perhaps twenty-five summers, yet wears the indigo shawl of a Seer. The woman—he has not seen a woman in almost seven years—could have inspired the bronze sculpture of the Huntress, which graces an alcove of the upper vault. The boy gapes at the sword and daggers sheathed at her hips, cannot take his eyes from her face.

Fatigue marks each visitor’s eyes, and urgency. They decline to sit, and the man instantly begins speaking of tomes or scrolls written by Binders during the Dissolution. At some point, the boy dares to ask the woman if demons are coming. The woman glares down at him and nods. A moment later she bites her lower lip and lays a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “But not if we can help it,” she murmurs, an accent edging her voice like a fresh wild spice.

Into the evening, the Seer pores over the texts Torsten brings him while the woman paces behind him and between the shelves.

“This is a copy,” the man states after Torsten helps spread a scroll before him. “Are you certain of its accuracy?”

Torsten nods at the parchment, at the marks of ink that have formed the lines of his life. “Yes, milord. I copied them myself some years ago from the original. It had become too brittle to maintain.”

The Seer nods and reads on. At the evening bell, Torsten sends the boy to the kitchen, and for the first time in fifteen years, food and drink are consumed in the library. At nightfall, the boy fails to hide a yawn as he waits on the workbench, and the man and woman speak, softly at first, then arguing.

“But there’s no ‘shadow’ on that part of the mountain!” the woman snaps. “I’ve been there, remember? No trees, no outcrops, nothing to cause one. What if a cloud—”

The man pinches the bridge of his nose, shuts his eyes. “Impossible. It would be impossible to measure for the precision of a ritual. It would have to be something trustworthy or stable. Are you certain? What if there were a tree or monument there in the past?”

The woman turns away and raises her hand, almost slapping one of the lanterns on its chain. “Nothing grows in that rock! And a monument? With no one to see it except the sun? Are you certain you understand all of this?”

“Am I? Gods, Ekaterina, I’ve studied this since—” But his words trail off at Torsten’s approach.

“Your pardon, milord and milady. If I recall … yes, yes, I think that explains it.” He bends down over the parchment, and his keys jangle as he taps a particular word. “I recall this writer. Not an easy one to copy, you see, or follow the flow of his thoughts. I suspect this was a collection of notes for his personal use. I think he was low-born, too, and eager to embrace the hybrid script as a way of distancing himself from the Dynasty more rapidly. Therefore, in context—”

“In context what?” the Seer interrupts, folding his arms.

Torsten stands, resting his fingertips on the parchment. “The primary usage of the word is ‘shadow’. But I think it likely that, in context, the secondary usage—because he does not use hythil, you see?—is ‘sun-shadow’ or ‘eclipse.’”

The man’s eyes widen, and his empty mug shudders as his palm hits the table. “Yes! And there will be one in—” His lips move silently. ‘Four days. We have four days to get there.”

The woman is already turning toward the door. “It will be close. More than close—the horses may die, and I hope you can climb. Let’s go.” Below the lintel, she glances back and nods to Torsten and the boy. The Seer does not look back.

Torsten secures the scroll and sighs. “Let’s douse the lamps, lad. And pray them wings.”

Three months later, word reaches them that the war is over.

Six years later, the boy—a young man now, named Rainier—hovers beside a sickbed and closes his mentor’s eyes with his fingertips. From the wrinkled hands he slips a shard of pottery, one edge glistening with blood. The keys to the library are his now, and day after day, like his mentor, he will tend to it, become part of it, and silently await the world’s need.

Some heroes rise in a flash of steel. Others abide.

Torsten © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Merlin and Arthur” by Tiziano Baracchi

Author’s note: This one is for the faceless, nameless minor characters who have helped many a hero on their journeys. RR

Thirteenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Mates Laurentiu.

“Are you sure, then?” Mathias asked her. “I know this is the life I’ve led you to, lass.” He shifted his crutch, the wood slanting beside the ghost of his right leg. “Are you sure it’s the life you want?”

Scarlet finished buckling the saddlebags. She turned and took in his weathered face, the cottage and garrison wall behind him. Now or never. She looked down and smiled.

“Of course not,” she said. “But unless the world changed last night, and the Wardens will accept a woman, it’s the life I have. The life you gave me, captain.” And because it was time, her sight blurring with tears, she added, “Father.”

He nodded rapidly, lips trembling within his graying beard. “They’ll accept you,” he said, his voice choked. “You have the skills. Beyond mine at your age. Let you ride with them, hunt with—”

She clenched her jaw. How many nights had they spoken of her future? She had to end this. Now or never.

“Tolerate,” she said darkly. “Not accept. Always a follower, riding last in the wedge. Never captain or commander. And might I choose a husband one day? Come to stay here or in another garrison as wife, as a mother? Today? Tomorrow? I might. But is that why you raised me as you did? Is that why you found me by the rivers?”

“The gods know why I found you,” he said, closing his eyes for a long moment. “And how else should a leather-skinned rider raise a girl? You wouldn’t stay with any goodwife once you could run, let alone ride. When you were …”

She glanced away and let him remember, lifting her eyes to the East. Somewhere, leagues away beneath a massing froth of sunshot gray clouds, flowed the mighty Godriver and its countless branches.

Once before she’d touched its waters. Little before it — a blue and white spire, a caged raven, hooded faces — but she remembered that night, the swift loping flight of the darklings, the tangled hair of the one who bore her on its shoulder, scratching her face, reeking of rotten flowers. The furious chittering of their voices, then the pounding of hooves. Falling, wet to the waist, her garments cold and clinging and so heavy as to trap her legs. Then being lifted in the hands of the man before her, when his body was younger and whole.

The Wardens spread word of finding her, but no one laid claim. The half-cloak she wore was dark red linen, and Mathias called her Scarlet. So far from the allied cities, in the sweeping plains and hill countries patrolled by the Wardens, she hardly needed a surname. If anyone asked, it would be Rivers.

She stepped forward and touched Mathias’s arm. He swallowed and she kissed his cheek.

“I’m ready,” she told him.

“I know.” He slipped a folded square of parchment from his belt and pressed it into her palm. “The Ninth Southern Garrison, in the Shattered Hills. Give this to Captain Venedict, and he’ll tell you of the first one.”

She secured the parchment in a belt pouch and grinned. It was not never. It was now.

“I’ll send word when I arrive,” she said. “And when the first one’s done.”

Mathias nodded. “You’d better, lass. Ride with the gods.”

She placed her boot in the stirrup and rose easily onto Shade’s saddle. She adjusted her cloak and scabbard and, before taking the reins, looked into Mathias’s eyes and offered a sharp salute.

“I love you,” she said and shook the reins.

Shade leapt forward. The garrison shrank behind them, and she turned him to the South. A brisk spring wind blew from the West, and she faced it for a moment, just discerning the outline of Doss, the nearest allied city, and like oddly bloated birds, two of the new airships floating above its spires.

Like an arrow, the world raced on. She intended to ride the point. Five legends, treasures, or haunts. Five known to the Wardens but either outside the purview of their mission or allied lands. With all else, these were Mathias’s gift to her, to say nothing of the paths to which they might lead. Freedom. Honor. And, if the gods wished, a hint as to her origin.

She nudged the stallion with her boots, and the grasses below her blurred as if she were flying.

Now.

Scarlet © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Amrielle” by Mates Laurentiu based on a character concept by Brenna Loseke

Twelfth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Chenthooran Nambiarooran.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re here from desperation. Because, most likely, a loved one’s been kidnapped or cursed. Or because you — dabbing your brow with a cloth, clutching it like the end of a rope — are the one cursed. And you’ve come to this tower, beside the Plaza of Red Shadows, where the blazing daylight might reveal the blade drawn against you, but never deter its master. You’ve come with a bag of silver and turquoise beneath your clinging tunic and a honeyed plea on your tongue. You’ve come to beg the warlock Korentis Korh for aid.

But what do you find? Not a silver-haired presence, adorned with silk and shimmering tattoos, but a man large and slab-muscled enough to make blacksmiths seem sickly, ugly enough to forestall a blind courtesan. A brute who fixes you with the cruel, flat stare of a dune wyrm and, for his only answer, growls, “Sit. Wait.” And you do, on a worn cushion barely half the size of his, and regard one another through haze of dust-filled light until you look away.

Until the brute’s jeweled earring gleams and pulses. His head tilts slightly, his eyes shift toward the ceiling, and he nods. “The Master instructs you to lay your offer of payment here,” he says, placing a bronze bowl before you on the tasseled rug. Once you do, he waits until his earring flashes again, and then: “The Master instructs you to state your true name and your request.” And sweating, eyes darting from silver to dust motes to earring, you do.

Then, because you have spoken truly, you hear, “The Master will aid you. Go.” And after you ask how and when, you hear again, “Go.” And you do, blinking in the blinding light, hastening from the cutpurses who, though you know it not, would rather open their wrists than prey upon one who has enlisted the aid of Korentis Korh.

Who no longer exists, of course. Once he stepped through his conjured gate into the Rainbow Void, I wrapped his adamant ring, mortar and pestle, and journal in black linen and carried them myself to Varshoram Pahn, to Warlock Rock. The lorekeeper accepted them and marked Korh’s passing in the Book, and the Circle allowed me to remain through the following night while they chanted, oh an oh an ra, and drummed, taun taun tok, beneath the glittering, gods-flung stars.

They studied me as well but, like Korh, could see no way to break the residual curse upon me. Or, to be precise, the curse placed on my mother while I grew inside her womb. She wasted and died at my birth, but her vitality, Korh speculated, empowered my body and mind. I was born with my eyes open and my canine teeth jutting from the gums. And because a person can at any time be afflicted only by a single curse, though some are artfully braided, I’ve become uniquely suited to curse-breaking. To applying the unraveling arts Korh taught me, learning more each year, or else simply finding and slaying the originator.

Why hide in Korh’s shadow then? Why not say, “My name is Warrik, not Brute.”? Why not spend my evenings in the arched courtyards of the teahouses, with dominoes and candied dates, debating philosophical or geometric proofs?

Because, more than muscle and a spiked hammer, being misread is my greatest strength. And because this city, vast and old and elegiac in the purple twilight, is the haunt of thieves and warlocks and others to whom the life of a mother or child is less than a bit of silver or pulse of arcane might.

My mother could have used a Brute.

The Brute © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Orcy” by Chenthooran Nambiarooran

Eleventh in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Imogen Cane.

So many nights I simply wish I were normal. Almost every other young woman in Port Royal, rich or poor, is in bed now. Perhaps they are gossiping with a sister or friend, offering consolation for a day’s sorrow or whispering hopes and plans for the midsummer carnivals. Perhaps they are with a man. Or perhaps they dream.

I never remember my dreams. I did once, as a small girl in the crumbling orphanage on Barrel Lane. Often, I’d dream of my mum, of chasing her through the alleys behind the lane, from the city, into a field while the sky darkened and rumbled. Rain would pour, and my bare feet would slip and sink in mud. Always she’d run ahead of me, her bright hair like a banner, finally darting into a forest as wide as the sky. Goddess, it was dark. I’d scream for her yet have no voice, or my voice would drown in thunder. Briers would snag my tunic, scratch my legs, and in a blast of lightning, my mum would vanish. Sometimes then, if I were lucky, I’d wake. If not, the Black Wolf would come.

Dreams and dreams. The Lady of Blessed Darkness sends them to amuse and instruct, to illumine our hearts — so I was taught by my foster parents, ardent devotees of the Lady. But the truth is, once they plucked me from the orphanage, my dreams ceased. Perhaps it’s a blessing of the Lady. Or perhaps my heart is cloaked, or my mind can only endure so much. Certainly, if any of the other young women of this city were in my skin now, prowling these rooftops, they’d never doubt it was a dream.

How else would a lady explain her presence on a rooftop at midnight? Her rapier and dagger and familiarity with both? And of course there, arrogantly leaning against a chimney, the candied apple in the pig’s mouth, waits my bloody partner.

He can, Lady forgive me, be such an ass. If he were stupid, it would be so much easier to tolerate him. But he isn’t. In the two months since our investiture, we’ve answered each petition assigned to us, and only once have I felt compelled to draw steel. The fact that it was on him still pleases.

“Lord Joke,” I say, joining him beside the chimney.

“Lady Missed,” he replies with an elaborate bow. It’s become our traditional greeting. One night, he’ll deviate with a Never-Kissed or by switching a P for the M, only to have his words punctuated by the impact of my boot.

“Where shall we start?” I ask. I fold my arms and listen to music and laughter from a nearby tavern, breathe the cool salty air blowing inward from the sea. “The Cuts?” The alleys southwest of the Iron Market crawl with thieves and brokers, and at least three semi-skilled gem cutters. Besides, it would be refreshing to cross blades with someone outside of our temple.

“My thoughts exactly.” He winks and sweeps his cloak toward the southern edge of the rooftop, a rooftop under which a normal young woman likely sleeps. A confusing thought, but one at which, not facing my partner, I smile.

Perhaps my waking life is dream enough.

Author’s note: Phineas and Ophelia represent a tiny contribution to the tradition of the swords-against-sorcery duo, best epitomized perhaps by Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. As a lifelong Dungeons & Dragons player, I also see them as my attempt to create, in story, an elusively believable blend of the cleric and thief classes. (I recently played an avenger in my first 4^th edition game, though, and really enjoyed it; and as hinted in these sketches, retribution is not excluded from Lord Smoke and Lady Mist’s repertoire.)

Ophelia © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Thief” by Imogen Cane

Tenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Christine Martino.

Of course I understand my life is hardly normal. And yes, it’s perfectly fair to call me touched. Mad is a bit strong, I think, and deranged is simply offensive. But it’s not my fault. Not entirely. I suppose I am partially responsible now, since I rather enjoy how my life runs widdershins to almost everyone else’s. But if anyone is responsible, it’s the Lady Herself — and who am I to question a goddess?

True, to the teeming masses of Port Royal, the Lady of Blessed Darkness is all but forgotten. Of the countless merchants, sailors, fishwives and errand boys who smooth the cobbles of Ice Street each day, few could tell a stranger the significance of the crescent moon and stars carved above the doors of the ancient bluestone chapel abutting the Branscombe & Pratt Icehouse.

But some remember. Minstrels, of course. Merchants’ cuckolded wives. Youths pining for the slightest sign — a dropped handkerchief, a raised eyebrow, a smile! — from the ones who, like blindfolded archers, have unknowingly pierced their hearts. And remembering, they enter the chapel in the quiet hours between dusk and dawn. They bow or curtsy before the statue of the Lady — palest marble, black silk tunic, a cloak of cloth of silver, a harp and knife of gold, onyx fox beside her slim sandaled feet — before stepping into any of four lamplit alcoves and drawing a velvet curtain behind them.

In each alcove is an angled desk at which they may kneel. On each are strips of parchment, quill and ink, a handbell, and a small coffer of oak and iron, bolted to the desk and double-locked. The petitioner writes the reason for his or her visit and slips the parchment — and a number of coins befitting the petitioner’s status and urgency — into the coffer. (Those who cannot write ring the bell, summoning a masked priest or priestess to take up the quill.) The petitioner then departs the solace of the chapel with, perhaps, a new sense of peace or purpose.

A new shadow as well.

Enter myself and my brothers and sisters in the Lady’s service. There are now only six of us, only three duos to serve all of Port Royal, where once there were four times as many. When a petitioner departs the chapel, one of us follows to learn more of his or her identity and circumstances. (Indubitably, it would be so much simpler to require each petitioner to provide a name and street of lodging. But who would believe in a goddess ignorant of such trifles?) At dawn, our elders — the two arch-priestesses and arch-priest — recover the parchments and meet in the secret Chamber of Stars, deep in the chapel’s catacombs. They decide how each petition should be answered and which duo should answer it.

The thrill of a new challenge! Before my memories begin, I was orphaned in this city — one for which the word deranged, if offensive, is nonetheless precise. The elders chose my siblings and me for our promise, so they say, covertly adopting us and training us in all the skills needed to succeed as night-roaming angels of a goddess sublime.

We serve her in the defense of beauty, you see, of art and music, dancing and fair dreams, and all things which bless and refresh when a day’s work is done. Most of all, we strive for love. Love! For those who aspire to it — to truly give of themselves — we are their secret guardians and advocates. But those who betray or dishonor, slight or corrupt — they are, in essence, our prey.

I carry a saber and cudgel, you see, and when cloaked and masked in my guise as Lord Smoke, can wring my eyes and brow into a most fearsome scowl. My partner, Lady Mist, wields a parrying dagger and rapier as well as any guardsman I’ve ever seen — to say nothing of her forked and poisonous tongue.

And here we are. The bells are tolling midnight, and her cloaked form is gliding toward me on the nearest rooftop. Tonight we begin the fulfillment of a new petition, one involving the theft of wedding jewels. It is a good night, with both stars and swift-scudding clouds, and drunken laughter spilling from a tavern below.

I cannot imagine, thank the Lady, being normal.

Author’s note: In two weeks … a date with Lady Mist.

Phineas © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “The Brother” by Christine Martino

Ninth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Sabrina Moles.

He waits behind the curtain of crimson velvet, listening to the court’s gossip and chatter. At last, silvered trumpets blare — the least subtle of distractions — and he parts the curtain imperceptibly. Across the great ballroom, the Crown Prince and his wife appear in the broad doorway, their golden sashes seeming to glow beneath the gaslight sconces. Arm in arm, they proceed toward the wide curtained dais like pieces gliding on a chessboard of red and white marble. The members of the court — nobles, bureaucrats, officers of the Black Cavalry — having stood from their cushioned chairs, bow and curtsy as the couple passes, sit once the two are seated before the dais. He turns and nods to his four squires, black-clad, porcelain-masked.

The gaslights dim. He counts to ten, then snaps his fingers.

The lights wink out.

Ladies gasp. Men murmur. A handful of officers, he is sure, have gripped the hilts of their ceremonial sabers. He draws a deep breath, letting the tension build. These people are accustomed to power and control, to freedom and quick gratification; they delight in being seen. He makes them wait, blind and bound by invisible laces of courtesy. Most people desire entertainment, Master Dmitros had taught him, or think they do. But I am not training you to be a mindless juggler or acrobat. You will not entertain. You will awe.

They value titles and proper introductions; he does not. They know something of him, or believe they do, and of course most have seen The Knight of Mystery perform before, as recently as midsummer. But tonight’s tableau is new. He simply raises his voice — one of his fifty trained voices, masculine yet high, polite yet sinister — and begins.

“You sleep now, children. Or perhaps your eyes have failed, and neither sunlight nor mirrors will ever hold meaning again. Or perhaps, perhaps your hearts have failed, and your last heartbeat, the last sweet note of life’s anthem, is fading even now in the infinite void.” He steps out from the curtain and, in the darkness, moves to the middle of the dais.

“What do you see?” He tosses a bead of flash powder to one side of the dais, crooks his mouth at the intakes of breath and the hands raised against the burst of blue fire and smoke. Behind him, his squires open the curtain. He tosses a second bead to the other side. He strikes the first pose in which he wishes to be seen — his arms angular, his fingers splayed like claws — and prepares his voice.

“What do you — SEE?” he screams as several red-glassed gaslights around the dais flare to life. He tumbles and spins in the unnatural light, cavorting like a prince of nightmares. The time for thought ends; for the next hour he becomes a living vessel of his art.

He dances and juggles flaming knives that, in the end, take flight as doves. He signs an ancient ballad and plays a harp, plucks three blue roses from the shadows and descends to present them to the Crown Princess as the harp plays on. He conjures a live gray wolf. He lies down in a coffin, nailed shut and set aflame, reappearing minutes later in the chandelier above them. He lingers until they stir in their seats, murmur, lift their fingernails to their lips. As the coffin crumbles, he somersaults to the floor, flowing into an elaborate bow, and grins — not at their applause but at their faces, radiant with childish awe.

*   *   *

It is midnight when he closes the doors to his suite behind him. He shuts his eyes and leans against the carved panels, shivering from exhaustion and the cooling of his sweat. At the nurse’s footsteps, he looks up.

“Are you well, milord?” she asks. She smoothes her white apron, does not meet his eyes. Even after a handful of years, his costume and reputation unsettle her.

“Yes, Magda. Simply drained.” He nods toward the play of firelight emanating from the door of the sitting parlor. “How is she?”

“The same. Awaiting you, milord. I left a cold supper for you as well.”

“Thank you, Magda. Good night.” He locks the doors behind her and slips silently into the parlor.

His little sister sits in a chair beside a diamond-paned window, a blanket around her narrow shoulders, watching the fall of snow. Beautiful, fragile, and pale.

He takes up the plate of meats and cheeses, kisses her white-gold hair, sits on the tasseled rug beside her. He watches the rhythm of her breathing, the quick closing and opening of her eyelashes, the small treasures of life he has come to value in the absence of others.

“It went splendidly, Niki.” He traces the pattern of the plate rim with one finger. “A standing ovation. A handshake and glowing words from the prince. Of course, the princess still looks at me like I’m a ridiculous talking fox. But no matter. I’m comfortably retained for another year. Shall we stay?”

She does not answer. She has answered no questions, spoken no word for almost six years, since the night when, hidden behind a hanging fur cloak, she watched the murder of their parents. Their throats had been torn out, and black wisps of demonfire trailed from the wounds.

A man trained in the art of illusion, in disguise and sleight of hand, can do much for his patron. He can entertain, of course, as tonight, but he also excels at learning secrets, smuggling, spreading rumors, and theft. In extremis, with the sanction of the Crown Prince, he can kill. But for all his talents, he cannot solve the mystery of his parents’ death or, no matter how he performs or pleads, draw a word or smile from this precious girl.

So he eats and chatters, sings lullabies and holds her hand while the endless snow dances behind the glass.

In the darkness of midwinter, heroes still wait for the spring.

Cipher © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Jester” by Sabrina Moles

Eighth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Leonid Kozienko. Commenters are entered to win Changes by Jim Butcher.

The high grasses of the prairie thinned after he passed the final milestone. They grew shorter, sparser, before fading into cracked soil and dust. The desert began where the eroded stones of the road ended, and with them, the Empire that had been his.

Forty-five days ago, before dawn, he slipped through a false panel in his private library. In the dark and narrow passageway, he removed his silk robe and jeweled slippers. He donned the tunic, boots, saber, and cloak of an imperial herald and took up his pack. From the corridor, into a musty cellar, through a trapdoor, down rusted rungs into the sewers. He emerged near the Philosophers’ Arcade as the merchants were setting out their wares and exchanged a letter of credit, sealed with his own signet, signed by his own hand, for a young black mare and one-hundred coins bearing his grandfather’s countenance. Minutes later, he spurred the horse through the Diamond Gate, into the crystalline light of the rising sun, her hooves and his heart pounding with an anthem fierce and wild.

He left the Wreath of Empire on the cool marble of his reading desk, its gilded leaves resting on his simple letter: I hereby abdicate the True Throne and all honors, privileges, and possessions implicit in my birthright. I do this willfully and freely, without coercion, influence, or remorse. Do not seek me. Brynthia endures.

They sought him, of course. His archmages would have peered into their basins and burning crucibles and realized he still wore the black glass band of his veiling ring. Heralds, outriders, cavalry and mercenaries swarmed the roads and countryside. But he changed clothes and horses and traveled swiftly. Nineteen days ago, he crossed paths with an outrider near a ford and took time to study a charcoal sketch of his former self, which bore only a slight resemblance to the tanned and bearded traveler who now carried a minstrel’s harp, wore a leather eye-patch, and spoke with the lisping accent of the easternmost provinces.

Before galloping away, the outrider shared news that Emilian’s cousin, Karel, had been confirmed as his successor, though the coronation would await the summer solstice. Karel was a handsome youth, clever enough, and fond of attention and ceremony. He would suffice.

He would suffice and undoubtedly spend his days as Emilian had chosen not to.

*  *  *

He stands on the most distant stone of the Empire, and once again, he must choose. He has set free his last horse, but it is not too late to turn around, to return to the imperial city before the solstice and reclaim the Wreath. I had a vision, he could tell his counselors and subjects, in which seven cloaked servants of the Gods bid me leave the Throne and journey into the Cloudless Sea, to lay down my life for Brynthia’s lasting prosperity. But at the desert’s edge, for my obedience, they halted me and bade me return …

Most would believe this—none would dare deny it — and he could live out his days as the most powerful of men, celebrated perhaps as ‘The Blessed’ or ‘The Magnificent.’ He could wed Lady Marindel, or sun-haired Lady Llian, have children and the opportunity to raise them in such a way that they would never see him as an impediment to the Throne. The Empire will not fade in his lifetime — however long — or the lifetime of his children, who may never be.

But he stares at the sand-worn stones beneath his boots and knows this: the Empire can become no brighter. His grandfather and father assured this. It can only fade — even as the Empire of Nuros, which the desert before him drowned long ago. Yet its ruins must still exist, and perhaps within them its vaults and libraries. And if the legends hold any truth, beyond the desert lies the Perilous Lake and the Isles of Dawn. He has a river flask on his hip, one of Archmage Kobrin’s masterworks; if he dies, it will not be of thirst.

And if he dies, perhaps he never deserved the Wreath of Empire and a life of unsurpassed power and ease. The wind gusts, rippling his cloak, and sand stings his cheek. A life you still have, a voice whispers in his mind. It is not too late.

The voice of a God’s servant, or the voice of fear? He closes his eyes and faces the desert, then the Empire, then the blazing sun.

He takes a step.

Author’s note: I began with an image of a rider at the end of an ancient road and worked from there.

Now, for a chance to win a copy of Changes by Jim Butcher: The name of the empire (Brynthia) in the above tale is the name of one of the 4 kingdoms in a board game I loved playing years ago. For a chance to win Changes, please give us the name of one of the other 3 kingdoms from that game OR leave a comment about the Heroes series. Cheers, RR

Emilian IV © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Volkhv” by Leonid Kozienko

Seventh in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Barbara Brashier.

“You’re late, milady,” Aramis says even as she parts the silver curtain. He snaps shut his pocket watch and tucks it into his checkered vest, his white-tipped ginger tail swishing.

She shrugs and sits on the closest bench in the Armory. “My geology midterm’s tomorrow,” she says, unlacing her sneakers. (Did I forget to take them off? she wonders.) “It’s going to be hard. And besides,” she adds as her armor  — helm and breastplate, bracers and greaves — floats from the rack and hovers beside her, “there was a wreck on the interstate this afternoon — a van and a semi. Some people were airlifted. Some died. I think it’s going to be rough tonight. I didn’t really want to sleep.”

Aramis steps beside her, near enough that she smells the fish and pipe tobacco on his breath. His paw touches her elbow, prompting her to stand. “All the more reason to do so,” he murmurs. “I know, milady, you did not ask to become a Dream Knight, any more than I asked to become a Squire. But we play the parts the Noosphere gives us, yes?” In moments, after his claws scrape and whisper on her armor’s metal and leather fastenings, she is arrayed. She dons the helm, and when she turns, Aramis’s head is bowed, and her jeweled sword is resting on the palms of his extended paws, before the milk-white lace of his cuffs.

She nods in return and, as she accepts it, Aramis and the walls of the Armory dissolve into amber mist. A gust of night air whips it away, and she is standing in the Aerie beside her chestnut pegasus. He whickers, and she strokes his mane before climbing carefully onto the dragonhide saddle and anchoring her boots in the stirrups. (Why can’t I do this on a normal horse?)

She shakes the reins. “Let’s go, Sheffield. We’re late.”

He charges toward the mouth of the Aerie and for an instant plunges, filling her stomach with feathers of ice. Then his mighty wings rise and fall, rise and fall, and they climb.

She releases her breath, draws it in slowly as she beholds the Noosphere, layered like a crazy quilt of prismatic neon gas over the darkened world. Each building becomes like crystal to her sight, each sleeper like a slowly pulsating hologram, its luminescence drifting upward into the ever-shifting Noosphere. The dormitories below her resemble stacked glass trays spangled with fireflies.

She hears the whispered sounds of her peers’ dreams, watches the misted energy take shape to embody them, one after another. Some make her cock an eyebrow; others make her blush. None alarm her, though, and soon the campus is behind her, and she is flying above the city.

Pools of the Noosphere grow darker and more turbulent in places. As she flies over them, she reaches into her bottomless pouch and sows them with seeds of peace. On one family’s apartment, a pack of imps and darklings cavorts, their cloven feet hammering the roof above three twitching children. She guides Sheffield lower and shouts, and they scatter into the shadows, leaving a stench of rancid milk that dissipates under the stallion’s wings.

As the stallion climbs again, he turns his head and snorts, and she sees it — a place where the Noosphere flashes and roils like a lightning-wracked sea. She loosens her grip on the reins. “Go! Go!” she tells the stallion — and draws her sword.

She spots them as Sheffield dives. Two Terrors have dismounted from their night mares. The larger is a Dread Knight, a black-armored ogre with a flapping cloak like the wings of a monstrous bat. The other is a Guilt Rider, a hag in moth-shredded robes. They’ve cornered a boy in his front yard, transforming the lawn into a sheet of cracking ice, the driveway to hellish lava. She can hear their poisonous words:

It’s your fault your mother’s in the hospital, Jacob, the hag rasps. If you’d been ready for baseball practice on time, your van wouldn’t have been in the accident.

Tendrils of the Noosphere above them intertwine, taking the forms of a helicopter and a woman’s body on a stretcher. And when she dies, the ogre growls, who will take care of you and Cassie? Its wide clawed foot steps forward and the cracks in the ice spread, oozing pus and pushing the boy closer to the lava. No one!

“Enough!” Tasha yells as Sheffield bursts through the helicopter. She leaps from the saddle, interposing the pegasus between her back and the night mares.

Ooh, a Dream Knight! The hag cackles, and drool runs down its leprous chin. I haven’t sucked the marrow from one of those in centuries!

“That’s because you suck!” Tasha spins, batting away the hag’s staff with her sword and grasping its bony shoulder. She utters quickly,

The past is a stone, beyond alteration
And yet no tomb, but a ready foundation

The hag shrieks, exploding into burnt moths, and Tasha leaps back as the ogre’s axe smashes into the ice with a spray of shards and pus. You’ll fail your midterm, it roars, and spend your life waiting tables! Tasha swallows but lunges and nicks its bulging arm. She chants,

Dark futures are shadows that may never be
I banish you now to the depths of the sea

The ogre’s defiant roar ends in a distant gargle, and she turns to see the night mares fade as they gallop away. She sheathes her sword and waves at the boy.

‘So, Jacob. Jake?” He hesitantly nods. “What’s your favorite place to get ice cream? Think about it.” He frowns and the ice and lava blur, reforming into an air-conditioned room with marble-topped tables and a refrigerated case of cakes.

“Have some,” Tasha tells him. “And get some rest. Don’t worry about your mom. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

The boy slides his hand over one of the polished tables. “Are you an angel?”

Tasha laughs and cuffs him on the shoulder. “I’m a sophomore. And I promise I’m not all that cool. But I’ll keep an eye on things, OK? Good night, Jake.”

She takes a rabbit-shaped cake from the case (because dream calories don’t count) and vaults onto her pegasus without dropping it. She grins as she soars above the dreamscape, an abundance of mint chocolate chip in hand—

I did set my alarm, didn’t I?

Author’s note: Mature readers fond of dream-centered urban fantasy should, of course, check out the various Sandman graphic novels by the brilliant Neil Gaiman. (Volume 1 is entitled Preludes & Nocturnes.)

Tasha © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “It Won’t Happen Again” by Barbara Brashier

Sixth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Leela Wagner.

“You’re a trueborn child of Goldspire,” his mother once said while stroking his hair. He’d fought an older boy behind the Butchers’ Market that afternoon and lost. “Quick. Tough. Clever. You’ll be a lord someday, Tan, if you use your head before your hands and heart.”

Later — seven years ago, now — he found her in a snowdrift near their home, her throat cut from ear to ear. Quick, tough, clever. A whore’s bastard and, in the wall’s shadow, his eyelashes frozen, an orphan. A child of Goldspire in the truest sense.

*  *  *

He is twenty now and a soldier in the city guard, newly promoted to the night watch. Fair enough with sword and dagger, unrivaled with a crossbow or beside a Four Dragons board — yet careful to lose some coins from time to time, to buy ale and cake for his older comrades, and to laugh at their jests. They are rungs on the ladder he is climbing. He needs them solid and stable beneath his feet.

He plans to climb as high as the Lord’s Tower in the Citadel, and tonight he is doing just that — literally. He wonders why he’s never attempted it before, until his bare foot shifts on the death-cold stone and his breath fails. He refuses to look down, instead twisting his hips and, with a final effort, hoisting himself onto the ledge. He lets his feet swing freely in the air, high above balconies and the inner courtyard. He grins and turns to lay his hand upon it — wider than the most ancient of tree trunks is the cold smooth base of the Spire.

The night is perfect, bitingly frigid like all spring nights, but moonless and dry. Louder than usual, too — music and clapping from taverns, drunken singing in the streets, a playful shriek from a brothel. The city is still celebrating Lord Uthorin’s wedding the night before. The lord and his new bride are sleeping, perhaps, in the chamber beneath him. He takes care not to disturb them.

Another such night may be long in coming, so he slides the curved knife from his belt and angles it at the base of the Spire, just above the tower’s stone. He presses down and begins.

The soft gold peels away in a heavy curl. He grins and forces the blade deeper, until it grates on the stone underneath. The city’s people take the Spire for granted now, and even if they didn’t, they’d never see his handiwork from below. Even if someone could see him, or questioned his patrol route, he has a dozen street orphans, girls, and comrades who would swear to whatever he wished.

He has a plan for the gold, of course. He’ll cut it into smaller pieces and trade them to One-Eye Bannon, over weeks, for coin. Some coin he’ll spend when the next caravan arrives, to stock apple brandy and Sistarin wine that his comrades will gratefully buy for ridiculous prices in the dead of winter. Some will earn him a seat at the Four Dragons board in the private room of The White Forest, the preferred board among merchants, mining officers, and captains of the guard. He’ll win and lose in equal measure, accepting every outcome with a guileless smile, as he discerns their thoughts and desires, the cracks in their gilded armor, the next rungs of the ladder.

Sometimes, when the quickening of his plans denies him sleep, he feels the skeletal hand of Fear on his breast. How can one man climb so high, alone? But then two silver blades flash in the darkness, and he’s a boy again, standing on tiptoes in the Arena’s roaring crowd. Spellbound.

He remembers the Ghost Fox of Sistaré and such grace as he has never seen since. A youth like himself, neither tall nor stout, with hands like lightning and eyes of sparkling ice. One man, who danced untouched amid giants and murderers. Tanion would cheer for him until his throat grew raw, and he cried when the swordsman — like so many Sistarins — proved a lying thief and was sent to die in the mines.

A child — a man — of Goldspire learns from others’ ascensions and falls. He slides the knife along the Spire and frees another shaving of gold. In the months ahead, he will rise above the savage city. Tonight is simply a foretaste. A man climbs highest when he climbs unburdened and alone.

And neither tonight, nor ever, will he fall.

Author’s note: Author’s note: Andreas, the preceding hero, and Tanion (tan-yun) are the main characters of a novel in progress, tentatively titled Goldspire.

Tanion © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Jon Snow” by Leela Wagner

This the fifth installment in our Heroes series, written by our own Robert Rhodes. The art is courtesy of Ida Mary Walker Larsen.

He is free.

He simply stands as the wide gates of the mining barracks thud shut and a wave of cold air hits his nape. He lingers under the gatehouse arch, his boots uneasy on the icy muck, and lifts his eyes. Before the jagged white mountains, under the leaden sky, it remains.

The Spire.

He wishes, for a time beyond counting, he had never seen it. A fool’s wish, of course, but he has another — not foolish but chained like a wolf and goaded with spears, fed at nightfall with bloody morsels. Primed for slaughter.

The Spire is dull now, nothing more than a massive metal spike atop the Lord’s Citadel, for the sun can hide for weeks in the accursed North. It is, nonetheless, his guide. He dons the dirty hood of the cloak the guards have given him as one of his freedom gifts. He gathers the thin wool around himself and walks.

As every morning, his body aches as if it were more than twice its thirty years. The narrow streets of Goldspire, paved only with ice and stone-hard mud, seem to quiver beneath him. The numbing air should reek of smoke and dung, but it’s been months since he could breathe through his nose or taste the barracks’s black bread and salted meat. Weeks since his right ear lacked lancing pain. His eyes water from a shriek of wind, and the world blurs to a faded tapestry of ash-white, brown, black and — in an alley mouth — a crimson stain. He bows his head and walks on.

He finds an inn behind the Butchers’ Market. Before opening the door, he turns to see, closer now, the towers of the Citadel and the wide, sloping roof of the Arena. He coughs and spits at each, then goes inside.

The innkeeper is a woman, the sixth he has seen in the past ten years. He asks for a room, a bucket of hot water and wash rag, and a kettle of stonerot tea. He no longer shakes his head at the northern necessity of boiling lichen and moss. He pinches two coins from a pouch of five, the other of the guards’ gifts, and drops them on the innkeeper’s calloused palm.

Upstairs, he latches the crooked door of his room. It’s windowless, dark but for the orange glow of a small lamp, burning the fat of animals from Icebar Bay. An old copper plate hangs on the wall beside a rickety chair, intended as a mirror. He closes his eyes and lifts the plate from the wall, drops it facedown on the floor.

By now, his stomach is aching. He drinks the tea as quickly as he can, then waits. Minutes pass before he slides the chamber pot, a blackened wooden bowl, away from the narrow bed. An hour later, he sits beside it on the floor, staring at the small nuggets of raw gold he swallowed last night. He stares at his hands — calloused and scarred, split knuckles crusted with blood, the ragged nails filthy — the hands of a creature clawing open a grave. He rakes them through his hair and weeps.

He spends the remainder of the day in preparation. He tosses the soiled cloak into the inn’s gaping firepit. Finds a one-eyed merchant who trades the nuggets for useable coins, more than he’d hoped. Spends them on a barber, a bearskin cloak, a hot meal. And at the last, a sword.

A common broadsword, passably sharp and balanced — nothing resembling the first blades he wore in Goldspire, eleven years past. Of course, he notes darkly, even less does he resemble the man he was.

*   *   *

Eleven years ago, he arrived with a summer caravan, riding toward the city on a day of infinite light, and let the Spire dissolve his breath. He came, ignoring the understated advice of Master val Rassina, because he was — by Rassina’s own wine-hastened admission — the master’s finest pupil in twenty-odd years. Invincible, fearless, armed with a rapier and dagger of Sistaré’s matchless watermarked steel. How could he resist the challenge of the world’s most distant and deadly arena? The most gifted young swordsman in the City of Dancing Blades, he could fail only by failing to go.

He never failed. He fought guardsmen and shield-bashing soldiers, brawlers with spiked gauntlets and clubs, axemen. He fought a mute woman, tattooed and dreadlocked, green eyes smoldering behind her scimitars. He fought a giant whose hammer chipped the stones on which he’d stood. He fought all challengers, dozens to first blood or surrender, five to the death.

He worked the crowds to the cusp of riots. They called him Brightsteel and the Southern Star, the Cat of Sistaré, the Ghost Fox, the Prince of Death. The giant called him Snowflake, those who wagered against him ‘eunuch’ and ‘boy-whore’. He gained a coffer of ever-increasing coins, a private suite in the Lord’s Citadel, and the skilled attentions of a merchant’s flame-haired widow. The savage city, the primary source of the kingdom’s wealth, became a chalice in his hand.

How then could Rohn Uthorin, the city’s newly appointed lord, a patron and apparent friend, instruct him, before his long-negotiated duel against the champion of House Medorio, to lose? And, despite the roaring crowd, how could a pupil of Cosmo val Rassina be so foolish as to salute the lord with a bloodied rapier and defiant grin?

Within a fortnight, he stood accused of treason, slander, and theft. The statements of various guardsmen, elder merchants and his flame-haired lover were, Uthorin regretfully concluded, persuasive and damning, particularly in concert with the items recovered from his suite. The penalty for such crimes was beheading, but Uthorin, in a great show of mercy for his champion, instead ordered a decade of service in the mines.

“You’ll wish I’d simply killed you,” the lord whispered as Andreas was dragged from the hall in chains.

*   *   *

“So will you,” he whispers now, as snow and darkness fall upon the roofs of Goldspire. In an alley, he cinches the swordbelt around his waist and covers it with his cloak. Breath steaming, he begins a circuit of the Citadel’s walls.

Beyond the city, in the forest below the mountains, the first wolf howls.

Author’s note: The image above is reminiscent of Andreas shortly after his arrival in Goldspire. He is not so handsome now.

Andreas val Dhari © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Snowfall” by Ida Mary Walker Larsen

This the fourth installment in our Heroes series, written by our own Robert Rhodes. The art is courtesy of Allen Douglas.

On a brisk autumn day, Mad Batson went a-wandering.

He closed behind him the door of the forgotten shrine that was his home in Fair Forest and, clicking his tongue, finger-painted the lintel with a rune of sulfur and bean curd. Satisfied that any intruder would be whisked onto the pleasure barge of the Archduchess of Milph and bloated with nose-wrinkling gases, he brushed off his hands and departed.

Red-golden leaves crackled under his leathery feet. He stretched his bony legs into loping strides, letting the air swirl refreshingly underneath his woolen robes. In an oak grove, he interrupted three faeries arguing the virtues of peaseblossoms, declaring, with a stomp of his foot, the day too fine. A vixen challenged him to a staring contest — an immersion in fierce amber flame — which ceased with a nodded truce. He plucked scarlet camellias, wove them into a wreath, and silently clasped it beneath an ancient ash as a murder of crows cawed farewell to their dead historian.

By mid-afternoon he crested a ridge on the forest’s southern edge and peered down through the slanting light. The River Milph curved through the field-checkered valley like a highway of blue steel, crowded with the horseless carts of merchant vessels and — he stroked his bristling beard — the ludicrous gypsy wagon of the Archduchess’s pleasure barge.

He hiked up his robes and descended into the valley, guided at last by the scent of charcoal and the hum of bees. He found the graying hedge-witch in the garden behind her cottage, engulfed like a goddess in a haze of sunlight as she wafted smoke from an iron brazier into one of her hives. Her mouth opened at his approach, and she set down the brazier before folding her arms across her peasant’s blouse and queenly bosom.

He performed a double obeisance and, after clearing his throat, proffered the wreath of camellias. “Your servant, madam.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Welladay! Dip me in gravy and make me a werewolf’s bride. What brings the old ghoul of Fair Forest into the open?”

“Sweet Rose,” he said, twirling the wreath around one finger, “ghoul is a trifle harsh, methinks.”

With a pass of her hand, she waved away both smoke and his reply. “Fool, then, or tool. Whichever pleases. But my question—” She caught her breath and turned toward her cottage and the sun-drenched pasture before it.

A remarkably large black hare burst from the grasses. Mad Batson licked his lips and prepared to conjure a net, until it sat before Rose’s billowing green skirt. She stared at it, its ears and nose twitching fitfully, then unleashed a growl of contempt.

“Is this a bloody hostel now?” she asked the world, pointing at her cottage and then the saffron-colored sash around her waist. “Must I grow a paunch and answer to ‘innkeeper’?”

Mad Batson took two tentative steps forward, squinting at the pasture. “What is it?” he whispered. “Commandants of the Royal Legion? Tax collectors?”

“Fortune seekers,” Rose snapped. “And Blackguard says they’ll be here soon.” She snatched the wreath from him. “Come and make yourself useful — servant.”

*  *  *

Mad Batson forced them to knock twice before he opened the cottage door. There were three. Two men — a brute swordsman and a ferromancer — and a female sneak-thief. They were young, lean, and cocksure, with tousled hair and tattooed hands, and were redolent of horses and oiled metal. He suspected they shared a blanket. And like others who, once or twice each year, would bother the hedge-witch, they sought information about the Bloodstone Mage’s crypt in the nearby hills.

“Now see here,” he said, “I could simply pretend to be this fine lady’s mute servant while she murmurs over tea leaves and advises you to abandon your quest. However, the Bloodstone Mage happened to be my colleague at the Royal Arcanum West, before I absconded and he fell twelve hounds short of a fox hunt. Ergo, I have, so to speak, ‘the goods.’ Mind you, they are not free.”

In the end, after the three had handed over twelve coins, an ivory-handled razor and shaving brush, a flask of cherry cordial, and a lock of hair from each — this last, to inspire them never to return — Mad Batson whispered a word in the ferromancer’s studded ear and slammed the door.

“Are you utterly daft?” the hedge-witch asked as she pulled the stopper from the flask. She passed it under her nose and nodded approvingly — not at him. “A silly question, I know. Even so — they’ll be blasted into three heaps of lovely-smelling dust.”

“Tsk, tsk, tut, tut,” he answered, waggling his eyebrows. “A mirror, fair Rose?” She frowned but pointed to one hanging on the wall above the foot of her cot, its weathered cherry frame carved with vines, birds, and kittens. He touched it with his thumb and called, “Rupert? Rupert the Bloodstone Mage? Batson here. Do you have a moment?”

The glass swirled and clouded with chill blue light. In seconds it cleared to reveal a dank stone crypt, illuminated only by the glow of the scowling specter who glided into view. “Batson, you lush,” it rasped. “I have a moment. And a few rotting eons! The price of bollixing up the longevity rites — buggered ethereal fluxes! So… what do you want?”

“Some young fortune seekers will visit you in the next few days. If they speak the word nostab, kindly refrain from destroying them.”

The specter pulsed as if lightning-lit. “Why should I? No, I’ll tell you why! First, you’ll explain why you quit the Arcanum. We’d such hopes for you! Was it that to-do with the Archduchess?”

“Hardly,” Mad Batson sighed. “I was tired of seeking power. I wished to live.”

“How very wise.” The undead mage sneered. In a moment, his gaze turned to Rose. “And second, I want to see her wares.”

“Now see here, Rupert! This is—” He froze at the hedge-witch’s sudden grip on his arm.

“It’s all right,” she said, glaring at the mirror. “It’s for the children. Turn around.”

Soon, with the mirror darkened and the hedge-witch smoothing her blouse, Mad Batson went to the door. “Madam, I bid you a lovely and less eventful evening.”

Her mouth quirked, and she lifted the bottle of cherry cordial. “But who’ll help me drink this tonight?” she asked, her girlish grin more than overcome by the unmistakable huskiness of her voice. Then she shrugged. “It’s been over ten years since anyone brought flowers. Or anything at all.”

He took a moment to shut his jaw and lifted his hand from the knob. He pursed his lips and nodded. “I didn’t intend to bother you, you see. I had the wreath… just because. Then I heard your bees and felt like the oldest and loneliest of fools. All the magic in the world, my lady, but without someone to share…”

They looked at one another until he began to chuckle. And, in a heartbeat, he blessed leaves and faeries, eyes like amber flames, and the lamentation of crows. He blessed sunlight and smoke, the living and dead, young and old, and the magical world that changed with, and because of, every last one.

Mad Batson never again went a-wandering.

Mad Batson © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “An Air of Wizardry” by Allen Douglas

This the third installment in our Heroes series, written by our own Robert Rhodes. The art is courtesy of Aiko Rudell.

One night, when I was a child, the Red God walked into my dreams. He laid his burning hand on my shoulder and led me to the borderland where the world of men and beasts ends and the lush vale of his kingdom begins. Together, we stood beside the river of death – a mamba of swift, dark water scaled with countless stars, one for each soul who has crossed between the worlds.

Take your sandals and drum, he said. Gather three stones and a hollowed gourd.  Walk east until the water roars and you weep from the scent of blossoms. There you will find a magician who intends the greatest of blasphemies. Face him and command him to turn from his path.

“But how can I? Why cannot you, my king?”

His eyes and ears are scabbed with unbelief. Now go.

Know, little ones, that many leaves of papyrus could barely retell my journey. But I am no chieftain’s scribe and can say only, without the gourd and sandals, I would have died before the fourth day. And without the pounding drum, I faced a slavery I will not describe.

On the thirteenth evening, I found a pool in the jungle’s heart. A waterfall roared like a lion’s great ghost, and the flowers beneath the trees were like those that brightened my mother’s hair – and the earth of her grave. The glade blurred into a dim, green cloud. Then through the cloud fell a guttering star.

The phoenix landed beside the pool. He bowed his withered head, and his wings trembled, the feathers glowing red and silver, hissing a sweet white smoke. Wisps of flame kindled on his wingtips, and he raised his beak and cried with such yearning I feared the sky would crack.

Suddenly the flames engulfed him, and the magician crept from the trees. He wore a loincloth of jackal fur and a cloak of woven vines. To his mouth he raised a flute of bone, and as he played, a cold wind parted the trees behind him, sweeping toward the mound of glowing ash.

I shouted and ran forward, throwing the three stones as one. One disappeared into the trees and one within his cloak, but one struck the flute from his lips, and the wind stopped. He laughed and raised it again. I leapt between him and the ash.

And I burned then as the phoenix screamed, reborn. But though the fire of the gods consumes, it does not destroy, and as the young phoenix perched on my shoulder like the Red God’s burning hand, I found I could command the magician even as I had been commanded. He fled into the jungle with blood trickling from his ears and eyes, and the phoenix soared, shining, into the night.

Bright little ones, remember – we, like the phoenix, are children of ash. Those who burn throughout the long, dark years will one day shine like the stars.

Like the stars of the river we should not fear.

Author’s note:  This piece first appeared, with minor differences, in the e-zine Gryphonwood under the title “Fire, Ashes, Stars” in the summer of 2005.

Shaman  © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Shaman Portrait” by Aiko Rudell

This the second installment in our Heroes series, written by our own Robert Rhodes. The art is courtesy of Yoni Danziger.

It is not the first night he has waited on a rain-slick roof in the Lily Quarter, his chest braced on the knobby spine of a gargoyle, between whose curving horns he watches another mansion’s diamond-paned windows. It is cheap entertainment — after days when his long fingers have lightened purses or pockets, or evenings when the theaters offer nothing he does not know by rote — to espy Cassant’s lords in their paneled studies, its ladies in their curtained boudoirs, and to dream.

Dreaming is also comfort on damp nights such as this, when hunger cramps his belly and the truth — that he has neither family nor friends — grips his throat like a noose. He wishes, he wishes every night, that Nana were still alive. But it is enough — he reminds himself it is enough — that she led him by the hand from a rat-haunted orphanage nine years past. Nursed him through fevers and the bloody pox, whose pitted scars make him thankful for nightfall. Taught him to comprehend the voices of the distant or dead — and explained it so, that he might always marvel at his power to read.

It matters not that they lived hand to mouth near the Beggars’ Font, that he woke last month to find her cold, or that he sold her precious books — all but one — to buy a gravestone with her name. It matters not that he can no longer hear her voice. And yet, on nights such as this, her memory keeps him from the roof’s edge and a world-cursing dive. It holds him, above the city, in dreams.

* * *

It is the first night he has seen her. Of this he is certain as she slips, black-clad, from an octagonal attic window of the closest mansion. She is slim and graceful as any lord’s favored daughter; and yet, if both were standing on the roof, they would differ as starkly as a butter-knife and dagger.

Breathing no more than the gargoyle, he watches her as the wind gusts. It gusts again, and she is a marble-faced shadow in the sudden moonlight — until she pulls away a veil of black fabric and shakes free her gold-silver hair.

His mouth opens like the gargoyle’s; his fingers tighten on its folded wings. A Northerner! And no downtrodden ice-maiden, the lowest of Cassant’s servants — slaves with less freedom than their ladies’ lapdogs — but this. A woman, few years older than he, with the skill to have robbed the Lily Quarter and the gods-forged guts to risk being blinded, drawn and quartered for it.

He stares at her, a newfound heart of the moon-silvered city, until his body grows so warm and light it seems the gargoyle anchors him from drifting into the sky. He blinks twice before he notices she has leapt onto a stone balcony, descending to the lamplit street.

He shakes his head and scrambles toward the nearest drainpipe. He has no doubt following her will demand all his knowledge of the city and his quickness, and likely even more, but he would rather twist his ankles or plow into a patrol of red-cloaked gendarmes than fail to try. And even if he succeeds, what should he say?

His vision is a blur of shadows, his mind a torrent of words, as his worn boots hit the cobbles. His hunger is forgotten. He runs through the darkened streets, chasing ghostly footfalls and a flash of gold-silver hair, and dreams of a day — however distant — when, because of him, she smiles.

Author’s note: Siltanen (the first in this series and a character who has been with me for over ten years) and Remy are the main characters of a novel in progress, tentatively titled The Brightest Jewels.

Remy  © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “Moonlight” by Yoni Danziger

Today we begin a series of series of sketches of 20 original fantasy heroes who have been conceived in the mind of our own Robert Rhodes. Rob’s fiction has appeared in several venues and he has been named a finalist in The L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Learn more on our Heroes page. We’re proud of Rob and pleased to publish his work. We’ll also showcase several works of art which Rob has chosen to accompany his sketches. Be sure to visit the artists’ websites to see more of their portfolios.

We hope you’ll enjoy this series (please let us know by commenting).
And our first hero is…

The merchant lord’s library is deliciously quiet in the dead of night. She lifts the enameled coffer from his desk—an elegant piece, but stern cool steel nonetheless—and turns it until its lock rests in a window-twisted fall of amber from a streetlamp below. It is the chamber’s only illumination, as the cursed blessing of moonlight is rare in the cloud-cloaked skies above Cassant.

She draws two picks from a belt pouch, crouches, and begins. Slow waves of bronze roll through the darkness as a temple’s bells mark the hour. She could work the picks more forcefully now, trusting the bells to mask their rasping. Or she could wait, to ensure she notes the faintest footstep in the hall. Tonight she will not wait; she slides and twists the picks. In the echoing of the last bell, the lock clicks.

There are gold and silver coins, of course, and a velvet bag bulging pointedly with jewels. A quartet of keys. A stained signet. Papers and, bound in black ribbon, the lord’s will. But her fingers touch only the velvet bag, and that only long enough to remove the folded scrap of parchment hidden underneath. Hidden the night before by her mistress—mentor, taskmaster, savior—in the lovely confusion of the lord and lady’s elaborate supper. She unfolds the parchment and tilts it toward the window to reveal a single word in one of her mistress’s stark scripts.

Good.

She bows her head and smiles thinly. She crushes the parchment, tucks it beside her picks. In moments the coffer is repositioned, and she is stepping lightly through an attic toward the octagonal window that will return her to the night. But as always, she pauses to send her spirit down into the darkness, past bedrooms and parlors, into the servants’ quarters where—she knows with certainty, her heart a cold white flame—girls such as she was seven years before, thin girls with sleek golden hair, toss or cower in their sleep.

She does not know the names of the girls below, but she has also renounced her own. In the North, though, where her people thrived before a disastrous war, there soars a white falcon that dives like lightning upon its snowblind prey. Nor is it falcon, but a name unique to their tongue.

Siltanen.

It is her name now. And one day—soon—she will not merely practice ventures such as this. With ashes she will blacken her rapier and dagger, fasten them to her belt. She will unlock the secrets of as many lords, priests, and merchants as she must, in Cassant and beyond; she will hold them to their throats like blades. Those who will not waver, she will end by poison, ‘misfortune’, or steel. She will strike like a bird of lightning, time and again, until they annul the slave laws and free her kinsmen. Every last one. Until that day, she will sleep with no blanket or pillow, drink no liquor, consume no sweet, embrace no man. She will not rest easily, and—soon—neither will the powers of this splintered kingdom.

She climbs from the attic window and balances on the rain-slick roof. A gust of wind stirs the black silk with which she has veiled her bright hair. Another gust and moonlight silvers the vast city—around her, its balconies of stone and wrought-iron, its grinning gargoyles; in the distance its warehouses, towers and spires, rising on both sides of the misted river, its sluggish lifeblood. She pulls away the black silk, shaking free her hair. She lifts her face to the silvered darkness, breathes the rain-scented wind. Then she leaps, dropping onto a stone balcony, sliding down a drainpipe, as the clouds seal shut again. She dashes through the cobbled streets, skirting pools of lamplight and patrols of red-cloaked gendarmes.

The shadows, and the future, are hers.

Siltanen  © Robert Rhodes, 2010. All rights reserved.
art used with permission: “The Ascend” by Henning Ludvigsen