They rode west for two days. On the morning of the third, the people from Psalter’s Point introduced them to a novelty: cake for breakfast. Scarlet and Philip watched the production with fascination.
She watched two women pour batter on cast iron skillets. The batter did not cook long before the cakes were expertly flipped. The overall cooking time was quite short. Once they took the cakes off the skillets, they added a generous slab of butter.
“I think,” Philip said, surveying Scarlet’s army, “that you might have just put an unofficial end to the war with the Urukesh.”
“You think?”
“Probably not immediately, but once they are trained, they’ll be an overwhelming force. I would be happy to volunteer my services to train your army, my lady,” Philip said.
“I was hoping you would say that,” she said.
“We’ve been skirmishing by the dozens for months now, I get the sense that Krang Haddagan is about done with war, but he’s not their only chief. With a legion of fighters, we should be able to take the land back quickly and just put an end to it.”
“You’ve been fighting mostly in the south of the land, but in the north, I am told that we hold ancestral tribal lands that truly belong to the Urukesh,” Scarlet said.
“We do?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “In fact, there is a good argument that the entire war was started when the Ashcrofts encroached on that land to mine for gold. We might be the ones who started this.”
The cooking women produced jars with a golden liquid inside.
“What is that?” Scarlet asked them.
“The thickened sap of a maple tree, my lady.”
“Tree sap?” Philip asked.
“It’s delicious,” the woman said.
They watched as the women carried the jars carefully, as if they were hoarding gold.
Plates, forks, and three layers of cake were handed out.
Philip took a bite and then raised an eyebrow.
“Wow!” he said.
Scarlet couldn’t finish hers, but she delighted in feeding the last bits to Philip with her fork, which he was more than happy to accept. There was even a sticky kiss mixed in. It tasted of maple, which wasn’t exactly an improvement, but was far from unpleasant.
Philip needed to wash his beard from a basin of heated water to remove the stickiness from his face. Scarlet washed her hands as well, standing close to him.
“So you’d like to control the fighting, sue for peace, and ask the Urukesh to come redraw the lines with you?” he asked.
“Exactly,” she said. “Marcus has the history with the original lines.”
“Maybe Haddagan will see the sense of it. Your army might not need to serve three years.”
“We’ll keep them in service even if there is no war,” she said. “The land’s been fought over for fifty years. Reconstruction will be needed—and they’ll want to, since they will be improving their own lands.”
Philip nodded, then gazed off to the north.
“What is it?”
“Huh?”
“I can sense you are thinking about something,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Which is?”
“I’m going to have to leave you.”
“What? Why?”
“I need to return to the mountain.”
“Helios,” she said.
He turned to look at her, shocked. “What do you know of Helios?”
“The name is in my mind,” she said, “since the moment at the pool when Epherion healed you. Somehow I knew you would need to go there.”
“You did?”
“I’ve been thinking about it, too, over the last couple of days, and I think we should accompany you there.”
“It’s not a climb that horses, carts, and wagons can make. The last mile is a stone stair through cold snowpack.”
“Is there no place for us to camp near there?”
“Actually,” he said. “There is a flat spot just at the foot of the stairs. The problem is that I don’t know how long I’ll be. I could be weeks. I could be—I don’t know. I don’t want you hanging out on a mountainside freezing to death when you could be at Kestrelmont in your own bed, with your family again.”
“I am with family,” she said. “I do have Wentworths around me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do,” she confessed. “How about this? We come stay on the mountain with you in case your stay is short. We’ll camp there for a few days and then you can come tell me what the outlook is. After that I can decide whether or not to move on to Stormrest.”
Philip nodded, but looked up towards the mountains with a troubled look on his face.
“What is it?”
“The dead aren’t just wanderers,” he said. “Something is controlling them.”
“Who?” she asked. “It’s not Ashcroft. He’s dead.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But Epherion has called us to remember our purpose. I fear it involves the undead, but more than that, against whoever or whatever is controlling them.”
“Haddagan mentioned to me that there were creatures that feed on conflict,” she said. “I didn’t know he meant the undead. I should like to see him.”
He nodded and stopped his horse.
“We turn here,” Philip said, indicating an inclining path toward the mountains.
Helios.
An involuntary warmth spread through her at the word, which she could not explain and did not try to.
“What is there?” she asked.
“The Sun Citadel,” he said. “The true home of the Knights Celestial. Hidden for centuries.”
“Hidden? Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“We’ll go as far as the stairs,” she said. “And we’ll wait for you.”
Chenguer met him first when he entered through the gate into Helios, the outer courtyard.
“Constellation,” he said, by way of introduction, holding the blade out so Philip could see the seven jade inlays in the grip. “Hold it, Captain.”
Philip did. It was cool in his hand.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“Do you see anything though?”
“What do you mean?” Philip asked, examining the blade.
“When it’s in my hand, I can see a web. A pattern of some kind. I haven’t worked out what yet.”
Philip handed the blade back to Chenguer, who clearly cherished it.
Drogoth emerged from the citadel next.
“He’s confused about his sword,” Chenguer whispered.
“Why?”
“He’s the most even-keeled member of our company. He has spent years sitting in monasteries, waiting a half hour in silence just to speak to anyone. Sunfury just seems so different from his personality.”
Drogoth came to stand next to Philip, but waited.
Finally Philip looked at him. “You don’t need to wait to speak, Drogoth. Just speak when it comes to your mind.”
“Two others have come in your absence,” Drogoth said.
“Two?”
“Yes, we are eight.”
“One of us is delayed then,” Philip said.
Drogoth nodded.
The rest came to greet him. First, Senna, carrying Sunflare. Then, Aldric, who carried a sword called Darksbane. Krang Haddagan introduced himself anew. “I am now called Wardyn Holt, and I carry Shadowbreaker.”
“You chose Wardyn?” Philip asked. “The guardian of your people. It makes sense.”
“The guardian of all people, now,” Wardyn said.
“There are two others,” Senna said. “Women, both.”
The two emerged from the citadel, as diverse a pair as you might find.
The first was a woman whose age he could not read — somewhere between forty and timeless. Olive skin, unbound grey-streaked hair, a blade that glowed like the last light before dark. She raised it to him, and he had the distinct sense she had been expecting him specifically for a very long time. It seemed as if she glided wherever she moved. “I am called Amira.” A pause. “The vault has been waiting a very long time. I am glad we are finally here.”
The second looked like a child, carrying a short sword with a fourteen-inch blade, emanating darkness. Philip remembered the weapon. Drogoth had read the name on their first day here: Eclipse. “I am Yselle,” she said in a quick manner of speech. She was no taller than three and a half feet, had blonde hair not dissimilar to Scarlet’s long locks, but she possessed amber eyes that shone with brightness from time to time.
“You’re an Aelf,” Philip said, wide-eyed.
“And you’re a human,” she smiled.
“I did not know that aelves had wings,” he said as he watched her fly and flit around the courtyard.
“Only air aelves,” she said. “And only some of us.” She paused, looking behind him. “We hoped you might have brought the ninth.”
“No, I did not meet another member of the Knights on the road.”
“Did you find who you were looking for?” she asked in her musical voice.
“I did,” he said.
“Well, the last sword has been moving all day,” she said.
“Lifegiver?”
“Kind of rattling in its holder, like the ninth is close.”
“That sounds like good news,” Philip offered. “Maybe we will be able to open the vault soon. I wonder if they all did this as we approached? Did all of the swords move?”
“Did anyone see Eclipse move in its stand while I was flying here?” Yselle asked.
Nobody had.
But two days went by with no new arrival.
On the morning of the third day, Lifegiver leapt from its holder as if wielded by an invisible hand.
Yselle was the first to notice it.
She called to the others as they watched the blade float across the room and out the door.
They followed it, but it sped up as it left the citadel and became a flash of light as it hurtled toward the gate.
Philip was already moving. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.
Scarlet lost her patience after two days and decided to climb the stairs to see what was taking Philip and the Knights Celestial so long.
“You’re going to go up?” Marcus asked her.
“I just want to see what’s going on. I feel like I need to be there for him.”
“I am loath to let you go alone,” he said. “We should send a company with you.”
“I feel like I need to do this alone. Give me twelve hours. Then come find me.”
“As you wish, my lady.”
Scarlet climbed the stairs.
Twice she stopped. It was an exhausting climb. She considered going back each time.
But she felt compelled to continue. Philip was still there, and she wanted to be there for him. Besides, secretly, she really wanted to see the Sun Citadel — even if it was something private for the Knights Celestial. She wouldn’t try to sneak in or anything. But just peek in. Peeking wasn’t sneaking, right?
The closer she got to the top, the more excited she became.
And then, as she approached the last rise, she began to see golden roofs emerge from the snowy mountaintop, and she hesitated for a third time.
Perhaps she should not intrude on this.
It felt holy.
And she felt wholly unworthy to be there.
She sat on a step, feeling the chill around her, uncertain whether her next step should be up or down. The cold worked through her coat. Below her the stairs fell away into mist. Above her the gold roofs caught a light that didn’t quite belong to the sun — warmer, steadier, the light of something that had been burning longer than the mountain it sat on.
She thought about the girl who had slammed her bedroom door. She thought about the woman who had stood in a theater in Psalter’s Point and asked sixteen hundred strangers to trust her name. She thought about Edmund, grey at his temples, standing in a pool of warm water reaching out to her.
She took another step.
And then another.
And then there was a gate.
She stepped through.
She reached a shaking hand toward the citadel before her, and the sword came.
The saber crossed the courtyard in a flash and arrived pommel-first in her outstretched hand as though it had been falling toward her since it was made.
She was not surprised at all.
She had always expected this.
She had always been seeking it without knowing.
She was the Lifegiver.
She wept tears of joy.
Philip had been moving before the sword left the armory, some knowledge arriving before its explanation, and he was in the courtyard when Lifegiver flew past him toward the gate, and he was at the gate when it landed in her hand.
He stood there and looked at her.
Eight people behind him. An ancient citadel behind him. Two thousand years of waiting behind him. And Scarlet Esmerelda Wentworth standing at the gate of Helios with tears on her face and a saber in her hand, looking at him with the expression of a woman who is not even slightly surprised by what has just happened.
He had left Helios to find her. He had found her. He had brought her home without knowing that was what he was doing.
He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything that needed saying.
A small flying figure with feathered wings landed beside her, sword sheathed, and looked up at her with the frank appraisal of someone who has been waiting far too long.
“Welcome, Number Nine.”
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible.