Chapter 1
1380 AWM (After the War of Mars)
PROLOGUE
The Tempest
Novo Regus - Mercure
The Temple of Illumination, built to venerate the twin goddesses Henas and Lunas who ruled the moons and created artificial light, seemed more like a monument to the Queen’s own ego. A meter square gold relief of Devina’s face hung over the entrance. Many thought this was brazen and disrespectful, but none spoke it.
Devina had commissioned the edifice within months of her ascension. After a full year of planning, the temple grew to cover three hectares of land. Her vanity cost ten thousand auric and at least an equal number of slaves’ lives. Towering over the trees, flanked by massive stone buttresses, with its narthex guarded by twin towers, the Temple had a star-shaped footprint. Meter-thick blocks of gold-veined marble from the mines of Venus formed the walls, and artisans from Saturne created the leaded, colored windows.
Above the narthex, a suite, with an office and a bedroom, provided for Devina’s comfort when duty demanded her presence away from her castle. Her inherited responsibilities were many; however, power acquisition and preservation were paramount. Messina had neglected to mention all of the hidden perils that came with power. She was alone, and everyone could be an enemy.
Experience had taught her that holding power was like grasping at eels. Slippery always, shocking often. Some mornings she startled awake, sheets damp with the sweat of angry dreams; her guts clutched by the faint, disturbing images of drowning in a barrel full of viscous, elongated fish.
This morning, an extra hour in her bath soothed her distress. She soaked in silence, waving to the water bearers when more hot water was required. Afterwards, she breakfasted on apples, cheese and wine, observing from the balcony while the dignitaries and lesser queens arrived. The carriages arrived without guards, and only a handful of acolytes trailed each.
For security, four Draugrs patrolled the forests and approaches. From time to time, one of the reptilian creatures emerged in the tree line, silent, then retreated into the shadows. The two-footed monsters, as large and powerful as rhinos, were as stealthy as cats. Big cats, cats armed with clawed forelimbs, a spiked tail, and a complete lack of fear of any living creature.
An acolyte, her primary task being keeping the glass in the Queen’s hand filled with wine, waited at a discreet distance from her Majesty’s view.
Devina watched the clouds from the west drift over the trees as the morning progressed. Their shadows wandered over the treetops and across the fields. For a time, the clouds remained few, wispy, inconsequential, albeit stubborn, but by afternoon the leading few had tethered themselves, piling up those following, until a thick mass had gathered, gravid and heavy with misfortune.
Should the overcast not dissipate by midnight, the forecast for the year ahead would be bleak. She stood, hands grasping the railing, noting that the attendees hurried now, holding their cloaks tight as a downdraft blasted against the trees, ripping away leaves and twigs and nuts that hurled across the courtyard. The wind tugged at the sleeves of her blood-red gown, reminding her that some forces were beyond her control.
Very few of her people knew they had purloined this festival, perhaps their most important, centuries ago from the Virdi, nor would they understand the implications even if they did. However, the people understood the ill portents when neither of the full moons appeared during the ceremony. Tonight, the two moons should align, Lux sliding behind Lunar, a once in a year event.
Without warning, a cannonade of rain and hail pounded through the trees and onto the roadway. Rivulets developed from the intensity of the downpour, flowing over the pavers and making pools in the low spots. Visitors scampered, splashing as they sought cover.
She found the sight humorous, but she noted wryly that the storm would ruin any crops not yet gathered. So much for the wisdom of the council, which had advised against early harvesting. She surmised that some of her subjects would not survive this storm. Fortunately, replacing the peasants and their hovels was easy. Far more easily handled than the temperament of a frightened conclave of her underling queens.
Her mood turned foul and rooted her to the balcony. The wind cut in a circular path around the pavilion; small waves carried the debris from the trees, chopping at the ankles of the unfortunate few yet to find shelter. Rain and ice pelted her.
Lightning set a nearby tree afire, followed by salvos of coin-sized hailstones slashing across the courtyard. Should she choose, she could divert the elements away from her person, she could even shelter the girl standing beside her, but no mere mortal’s power could shield an entire plane, nor even a city, against this storm.
Annoyed yet composed, the merest smile crossed her lips. A storm this nasty might also claim the lives of a few of the bothersome Virdi.
As quickly as it started, the hail abated; although neither the clouds nor the wind had receded, Devina fixed in place her most upbeat face and assembled a retinue of awaiting novices whom she led down the marble stairs to the sanctuary. A muscle twitched under her eye, threatening to fracture her mask.
As she entered, apprehension vibrated in the air, pulsing as the wind buffeted the windows, a constant rattle melding into an abrasive hum. Without a doubt, the storm would disrupt celebrations across all of Mercure.
Devina floated an undercurrent spell into the air, designed to prevent the mood from diving into despair. Her necklace of Mercuri, the indicia of her rank, writhed around her neck. The twisting metal had a tendency to unsettle observers. Those few Argenti who advanced to a Mercuri indicia were well wary of its effects.
A calm spell was mere child’s play for her. But that simple spell couldn’t ease the burden of her isolated position. Tonight’s omens reeked like the opened bowels of a sacrificed bull, she didn’t need a diviner to know that. Her teeth gritted. Her heartbeat drummed too fast and too hard.
She quelled an urge to throw her most powerful bolt into the clouds. Who knew what god might be behind the storm?
The windows rattled again, drowning out the whispered litanies being read by two young priestesses. A blast struck the walls hard enough to shake the building. Rain and hail again scoured the exterior, bashing against the doors and windows like an angry banshee seeking entrance.
At the altar, a nemesis, cloaked in red, sacrificed two newborn female sheep, their blood leaked like water over the stone. Following the sacrifice, the wind died, and the hail ceased pounding, fading back to a muffled drumming on the slates, almost soothing, lethargic.
A sound, faint enough to be dismissed as a projection of her mind, should have warned her. She rose to take her place at the altar, hesitated, silver eyes mere slits, tried to catch whatever had . . . had what? Admonished her? Indecision paused her step for the first time since her childhood. Not fear. She had feared her mother once, only because she had been young and less powerful (than she), but already possessed with an intense desire to rule.
To take the Argenti in a direction that would contravene her mother’s teaching. The little fear born in Devina had vaporized in the merry flames of her mother’s funeral pyre. Those fears were as far from her as was her mother, who existed in Pluto’s far reaches (that point being mere conjecture).
From behind the altar, Caitlyn tossed the limp bodies of the sacrifices into the basket used to transport them to the forest edge to be consumed by eagles, or wolves, or worms.
Despite the sacrifice, the dread festered in the room, like a flatus over-masked by too much perfume.
Fear gripped the priestesses, acolytes, queens, and guests gathered at the most crucial event of the year in the primary temple of the principal city. A noisome withering of courage, augmented with the redolence of damp silk and wet wool.
Smoke from the incense spread across the floor. Unable to rise in the humidity it rasped at eyes and noses.
Caitlyn, bloody to her elbows, stood silent, waiting for her leader to complete the journey around the altar and conduct the proceedings. Their eyes met. Caitlyn’s bright but darting, wrestling with the angst reflected from the congregation. Devina hastened her steps, determined to prevent the ceremony from turning into a complete disaster, considering that things were already bad enough.
Blood from the sacrifices soaked the hem of her robes. She cursed under her breath, “Ara’s shriveled tits.”
Raised arms, palms outwards, signaled that she was about to complete the ritual. As quickly as possible, she thought, so they could all return to the castle for drinking, feasting, and fornicating. Serene in the safety of its thick granite walls. For now, she just hoped to quiet the murmurs, as well as to resolve the sense of foreboding that threatened the procedures.
“Enir’s yarde,” she upped the stakes from her first curse and suppressed a shiver. Haunted eyes in the pews flitted about, some trying to avoid hers, some unable to conceal their desire to flee. At her signal, some heads bowed, but she detected whispers, and whimpers.
She evoked a pale fire between her fingers, fed it power until it expanded into a bolus of flame, and then loosed it above their heads. A reminder of her own power. Better feared than loved, she thought. The storm still raged outside, but the silence inside grew unbearable.
In the first pews her sister Elphias had turned toward something at the rear of the building. Many others followed her lead. The gale hit once more, shaking one side of the building and then the other. Windows burst, shards of glass and splinters of oak mullion exploding across the temple. Those nearest the windows suffered the worst from the shrapnel, but few in the building escaped unscathed.
Outright panic seized the congregation, inciting the women to scramble over each other to escape the pews. Devina wondered, almost idly, just where in Pluto everyone thought they were escaping to? The storm outside intensified, if that was even possible. She was certain they did not all want to rush outside?
She noticed that Elphias, indifferent to the shrapnel but bleeding from a wound on her forehead, stood as if waiting for some signal. The storm slammed the great oaken doors asunder, smashing them against the massive granite gargoyles guarding the interior portals. A fresh volley of splinters shredded the congregation. Renewed screams soon reduced to sobs as the women realized they had nowhere to run.
“Enough.” People had always described Devina’s voice as throaty, but when she angered, or in this case, became uneasy, it more resembled a growl. Hail and rain bombarded the roof and smashed the remaining windows, a few pieces at a time, creating a merry tinkling noise inappropriate for the circumstances.
The storm had likely driven her Draugrs to shelter somewhere nearby. Whatever Elphias had heard, it would not have been from them. But nothing could pass them, not even in this storm. This included humans, rumored to be on the Draugrs’ preferred menu in the wilderness.
“Did you hear it?” Elphias asked.
“Nay,” Devina’s first notion was to deny that she had heard anything. Whatever she had thought she had heard; it was not possible.
Elphias moved toward the sagging doors.
Devina willed a command into the minds of two acolytes near the doors. Both bled from brutal injuries caused by the flying debris, and both were shaking. They moved toward the doors as if to close them, but stopped short. Elphias had passed by them and lifted something from the stoop.
