Chapter 2
“Child, awaken.” I heard the voice filtering through my nightmares as I lay upon the grassy earth. I felt someone gently shaking me by the shoulders and slowly my senses adjusted as I crossed back through the veil from the land of sleep and darker subconscious. The night before came crashing back down upon me as though it were the entire weight of the world and I was Atlas threatening to crumble beneath the pressure. My eyes flung open and they met a pair of dark brown sparkling orbs and creased flesh staring intently back. I gasped, sitting up in a sudden movement, causing the woman who had wakened me to sit back on her heels unsteadily. “Are you lost, girl?” She asked me. The tears threatened to start anew. “My family was murdered last night. Someone is taking over the island!” My voice was trembling, my hands clenching at my ruined gown. “Taking over?” The woman's voice was sultry and deep, her tones shocked and bewildered. “His…his name is Xenos. Yes, that is what they called him. A monster of dark eyes and hair, a sword that drips with my family's blood! He wishes me dead as well, mistress.” My voice was growing steadily more frantic and I feared it would vanish in a scream. Apparently so did my strange companion. She gestured for me to be quiet. “I know of who you speak. Do you have anywhere that you can go, child?” She asked, her dark eyes questioning, dirt streaking her face. She was a woman of middle age and tangled hair. I looked at her quietly for a few moments, wondering at her interest before I answered. “I have none. My father was a Senator. My family is dead, save for perhaps my younger brother, Nahum. But, if he is not dead then he is in league with the new leader. He was always resentful of my family. I would find no safety with him.” I gazed at my hands, at the dried blood beneath my fingertips, the dirt covering my palms. “Poor child. I am an old woman and often lonely and unloved by the government. Would you give a poor soul companionship in return for a roof over your head as well as education in ways so old that the inhabitants of this island abandoned them long ago?” I raised my eyes when the question reached my ears. So much had happened in the last few hours. I felt so very lost, a leaf caught in a hurricane and tossed wildly about without direction, not knowing if the next moment would bring me soaring into the sky towards the sun like Icarus or crashing into the murky waves below. I pondered her question in my mind, my heart threatening to crumble into dust. I had no family left to me, no friends or relatives I could turn to. Their lives would all be forfeit due to the new tyrant's reign. “I thank you for offering me a place to live.” My child's voice sounded so very old. In the last hours of darkness I had been stripped of my youthfulness and filled with such evil things as contempt, hate, and rage. The evil acts of Xenos had caused me to grow the span of years within a few moments and for that I resented him nearly as much as I did for his destruction of my family. “Yes, please teach me the old ways, teach me how I may rise above my torment and seek out the cause.” “You are a bold child and filled with a god's fury. And who can blame you? Poor thing stripped of her family and her childhood. Ariana will take care of you, my child. I will make you into a powerful and beautiful woman, and one day you can use the hate that builds in your heart for a great purpose. That I can guarantee. Now, come and let us go to my home. It is near the sea and not far from these woods. I am certain they are probably looking for you if you managed to escape them so be careful and quiet in your steps. You look horrible, child. You need a good bath and some warm food. Follow me.” The woman named Ariana seemed unworried of the troubles she might be harboring by taking me in and I found myself following her as she wound her way through the trees and forest undergrowth. I was frightened, in pain, and lost. Ariana in that moment seemed a shining light that promised salvation at the other end of the tunnel. I was drawn toward that light as a moth is to flame. I was the moth, in search of peace and redemption, a way to wash the blood from my soul and make my pain useful. Ariana offered me this path, and with the trust that only a child can possess, I walked it. I heard him in the woods before I saw him. I had spent the last few days beginning my lessons under the patient but rigidly persistent Ariana. Already my skin had picked up a darker golden tone from the sun's bathing light and the wounds on my flesh had begun to heal. However, the wounds upon my heart had begun to fester and turn what was once innocence into an ugly thing. When I closed my eyes at night after curling onto the pallet of furs and feathers provided for me to sleep upon I could see the killer's eyes, see the face of every man that had raped my mother. I woke screaming, my fingers clenched and the nails biting into my palms. Revenge turned my soul into a coiled and waiting serpent, and even though my child's mind could not understand I knew I would endure many years of hatred and patience before my time to avenge my family would present itself. Amidst this childhood trauma my lessons under Ariana were already thriving. She was teaching me slowly and already I could hear the call of the sea and by its sound discern whether the tide was high or low. I knew which shells could be ground into powder and rubbed against my teeth in order to keep them white, which shells to grind and swallow to make certain my bones became strong and would not easily break as was such a problem amongst my people. I was outside her small hut stirring food within the cauldron when I first heard the horse's hooves. I propped an elbow atop the large pole I was using and brushed my hair out of my face. Trepidation matching the hoof beats rumbled through my heart. My lips formed the name “Ariana” but no sound issued forth as the gleaming armor of a soldier began to appear through the underbrush. My limbs were screaming for flight but before I could force my protesting mind into action he burst through the trees. His blond hair glinted in the sun as he removed the helmet on his head. His eyes were pale blue and the look upon his face was a mixture of foreboding and determination. The wind drifting in from the sea blew sand up around me as I stood frozen, unable to move. I watched with wide, fearful eyes as he dismounted, dropping the horse's reins and approaching me. The sound of metal against metal as he withdrew his sword from its sheath grated on the edge of every nerve and I wondered if I would ever forget the sound. Ariana appeared from inside the hut, wiping her hands on an apron. “What is the meaning of this?” She asked, already knowing the answer. “I have been sent by Lord Xenos to destroy the Senator's daughter.” He said in a steely voice that held an underlying uncertainty. He was young, green around the ears. He had not been in military service for very long, and under Xenos' iron fist even less. This young man, this brave soldier, beautiful though he may be, was to be my spirit of death, my gateway into the next realm. I found I could not move, and was not sure that I wanted to. My heart was bleeding, my soul raw and exposed. In unison they called out to my dead mother and father, for the childhood that had been so quickly torn away. I trembled as he came toward me with that deadly blade glimmering dully in the harsh sun. “Why?” The whispered question slipped from my lips as I fell down to my knees, looking up at him waiting, fearing, barely daring to breathe. “Why my family? Why me?” A tear trickled from my eye and drew a line through the dust on my cheek. A sob began to well up inside me and I fought to keep it inside, to keep it from breaking forth in all its child's agony and confusion. “In order for the new government to take hold all opposition must be eliminated.” The words fell from his lips but even as young as I was then I knew that they were recited, something practiced and drilled into his head at the point of a blade or under threat of something much more horrible. “And you would kill a child? What opposition does she hold for you?” Ariana's voice was a harsh thing as it cut through the air with the force of an arrow. “Is Xenos such a coward these days?” “Mistress, I…” The young man trailed off, at a loss for words. Color filled his youthful cheeks. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for breath but no words or sound came forth. “I am following orders.” He finally said with an explosion of breath, as though it took all the courage in the world to utter that single sentence. I began weeping, and it was a pitiful sound. I stared at the man's sandals and focused on his toes. Strands of blond hair curved over the bone and there was dust caught in dark lines between the creases of his joints. His nails had been neatly filed, probably with one of the stones that washed up on the beaches so regularly and were carved into neat blocks, sold in the marketplace. My thoughts drifted to when I had purchased one for my father as a gift. I had wrapped a ribbon of gold around it and oh how he had praised me for the way I tied the knots so well. “Are your orders so cruel that you could kill a child who kneels before you, her tears wetting your feet?” Ariana's voice was a soothing balm to my soul and a flare of hope sparked within my heart when I heard the soldier pause. I looked up at him and I met that pale gaze. I filled my own with all the earnestness I could muster. I pled with him silently. I prayed to the gods above that they would bless me. Had I not been a good child? Had I not tended their altars so carefully? I watched as his expression crumbled and the sword lowered in a defeat I did not understand. “I cannot do it.” His voice was broken. “I will die if I do not bring him the heart of a Senator's child.” I felt Ariana walk up behind me and place her hands upon my shoulders, drawing me up to my feet. “The gods provide answers to those who are earnestly seeking, son.” Ariana told him and their eyes met. Some silent exchange took place that I could not understand but a moment later the helmet found its way onto a head whose hair glinted the same tone of gold as mine in the sun, the sword found its way back into its sheath. The soldier mounted his horse again and I was once again graced with the vision of sun-lit armor under a strange and unfamiliar flag. He talked sweetly to the horse and then turned the animal's head toward the line of trees in the distance. Tufts of sand were kicked up by the horse's hurrying hooves and as that rhythmic sound faded into the distance all became silence again. A feeling of foreboding washed over me, but I did not understand why. I had narrowly escaped death, and I suddenly had the guilty sensation that another would pay the price for my life with their own. ~*~ He pulled back on the reins as the horse brought him up to the marble walkway of another peaceful home. His heart pounded in his chest and his mind was screaming at him to simply walk away, return to Xenos, and kneel before that terrifying blade to await his death. He had one moment of horrid thought as he wondered what a human heart must taste like. Would they fry it up along with the lamb and place it on his plate? Or would he eat it like some bloodthirsty madman, raw while it still beat? He shuddered and removed the helmet from his head. Perhaps if it were only his life in the balance he would have been able to stand and meet his fate for disobeying a direct order from this new and mysterious tyrant that had somehow managed to single-handedly overthrow an entire government. But, it was not just his life in the balance. He knew if he returned empty-handed with some lame statement of how he had been unable to find a young girl of ten years who had run off barefoot into the woods the girl's life would not be safe. Xenos would send another, and perhaps the next man would not be so soft to the wiles and the beauty of a little child and an old witch. He would save both of their lives. His hand clenched around the hilt of his sword and he walked up to the wooden doorway of the spatial house. The family inside did not deserve what he was about to wreak upon them, but neither had the others. The door was opened before he knocked and a blustering man ushered him inside, twisting his robe nervously in his hands. He was balding and red-faced, his eyes unable to settle on anything for too long. It was the gaze of a man who had done many horrible things by way of politics throughout his life, and had this man been his intended target he would have felt slightly better about his decision. “What brings one of Xenos's men out at this hour?” The man stuttered as he took in the armor, the insignia on the breastplate and the hand resting so tensely on the sword at his side. “Where is your youngest son, Matinus?” The blond man's voice was cold, carefully dead and void of emotion. The bushy brows of the Senator furrowed. “He is in the garden having lessons with one of the slaves. What is the meaning of this, Abranius?” The man in question did not answer, merely brushed aside the shorter man and headed toward the garden. His eyes barely took note of the beautifully carved patterns in the stone floor, the way the light glinted from the twelve year old boy's black hair in the garden. He did notice how beautiful his mother was as she sat weaving in the corner where shade was the thickest, her corn rows of black hair framing the deep rich chocolate of her skin. She looked up and she smiled at him. He had spent many evenings within these walls eating dinner and drinking wine, laughing of politics and of literature. And now…now he would destroy it all. “Abranius!” The youth called out, the scrolls he had been studying forgotten and soon lost in the grass as he tossed them aside and rose from the stone bench. He ran with arms outstretched and tears pricked the soldier's eyes as he unsheathed his sword. It seemed time slowed to a standstill and each moment was revealed in painstaking detail as the expression on the boy's face became one of confusion and then slowly turned to one of fear as he slowed and then stopped. The sword cleared the sheath and began its deadly arch toward the young boy's neck. Metal connected with bone and did not slice so much as it splintered through flesh and muscle. It made a sickening sound and blood sprayed in an arch from the boy's opened mouth. The eyes still seemed unbelievably lifelike as the head separated from the body and went rolling across the ground. As though he were watching the scene from afar he stood frozen. The mother's and slave's cries were a distant din in his ears and he barely felt Matinus's hands pulling at his armor and his hair as ragged staccato cries burst from his lips. He merely watched - dumbfounded - the sight before him of a child's body crumpling to the ground, the head rolling and settling in a nest of grass and flowers. It was he who had caused this, and now that he had started it he needed to complete the task at hand. Shoving Matinus from him and sending the senator sprawling to the ground in an ungraceful heap he knelt and turned the headless body over. He ripped away the blood-stained tunic and with his sword he dug a cavern into that young unspoiled chest. He dug and bathed the dead flesh with tears and blood until he reached the heart, which was thankfully and blessedly without movement in that mass of carnage. “You will be cursed!” The mother screamed, grass and dirt filling her hands as she sought to crawl to him across the stained ground, her weaving forgotten. “You are an evil man, and the gods damn evil men!” Her voice was a siren's wail and it filled with his heart with an ominous foreboding. He reached his fingers down into that cavern and he pulled free that heart, ignoring the heat of it – still warm from life – against his palm. He sheathed his bloody sword, not caring that it would ruin the leather of his sheath. He turned his back on that grieving family, the family that knew better than to raise a hand or blade to one of Xenos's men. The family that had bowed out of the government just so that something like this would not occur to them as it had to others. He had betrayed their word to the government and their promise with the gods. He knew they would not question Xenos, would not ask that endless question “why”. To question Xenos was to die by him, and everyone who was still living from the Senate had discovered this. He left behind the keening wails and the blood-splattered home. He mounted his horse with the heart of a child in his hand and turned toward the city. He turned to where he knew Xenos would be found in the innermost temple where the military and priesthood's elite were located. He would give him the lie he held in his hand, would watch the man feast upon what he thought was the end of a prophecy and not just the death of an innocent. And as he rode closer and closer to his destination he suddenly realized he believed the stories. He believed the child of the stars had come. He was unable to do otherwise as he remembered those crystal eyes glowing forth from golden skin. He had seen the wisdom in her eyes, in the woeful gaze she had given him. But, more frighteningly he had seen the face of the gods in that child's eyes. He had seen the prophecies through her wide fear-filled orbs. The stories were true. How he knew he could not put into words but as the blood dried on his hands and the inner temples came into view, he felt that time would soon grow short for them all. ~*~ “You serve me well.” Xenos told the blood-smattered soldier with appreciation as he held the heart of a dead child in his hand, inspecting it as though the crimson gleaming object were something made of gold or something equally precious. “So much for religion!” He proclaimed to those who were gathered in the room as though he were a king and they his court. “So much for the gods' saving grace!” Eyes and feet shifted, fingers found themselves tightening knots that did not need tightening, brushing invisible dust from sandal and robe. The majority of those gathered were soldiers, some of them priests. And in the midst of a temple made for both military planning and religious worship, a man had just proclaimed that the gods meant nothing, that nothing and no one would save them. The heart of the prophecy's child was within his hand and hope took flight from most of those gathered save for the young soldier that stood before Xenos with a lie harbored within his heart. The new tyrant feasted upon his prize with relish and Abranius watched in silence, both relieved and guilt-ridden. He knew that child's eyes would haunt him the rest of his life, but more so he knew he would remember the golden face of the child he had saved and how the gods had gazed at him through her eyes. She had been beautiful, even as a child. Such beauty he could not destroy. Any price, he told himself, would have been worthy. Why he felt this way he did not understand, but he did it justice and he stood with his head high and watched in silence, letting the zealous hunt die with the last bloody morsels of flesh Xenos consumed upon his golden platter. ~*~ My hands shook for hours after the soldier had left. “Ariana, I do not understand.” I said as I stared at the dirt beneath my fingernails. “Why did he not destroy me as he had been ordered to do? I have seen this Xenos. His power is frightening. That such a young man would have strength to stand against him is astounding.” “The gods take care of their own, child.” Ariana told me simply in response. “But why me?” I insisted. “You ask too many questions, Cynara.” The woman told me with a sigh. “Answers come more easily to those who do not insistently pester after them. Now, come. Show me where the lion rests in the sky and then tell me which gods reside within his eyes.” She led me out where the breeze was cool on the beach and whispered of night time secrets as it blew in from the dark, murmuring sea. I lifted my face to the heavens and the mass of twinkling stars that returned my gaze. I breathed in deeply. I traced the lion out with my fingers in the air. “He watches over the warriors. He is might and he is strength. Sinoda, Ahsairam, and Wodaha guard him and reside within his three eyes.” “Can you speak to the three eyes, child?” Ariana asked me. I looked at her, my brow furrowing with confusion. “All have spoken to them. All one need do is open their mouth and speak. All they need to do is pray.” “I do not speak of prayer, child.” Ariana responded sternly with a shake of her head. “I ask, can you speak to the three eyes?” I thought of the many times for as far as I could remember when I'd lain in the courtyard and talked to the stars, practiced the songs that praised them. I had talked, but had I spoken? I had prayed, but had I communed? I dreamed that I had heard whispers, inklings that perhaps those who had gone before truly heard me, truly listened. “Can you speak to them?” Ariana was persistent. “I – I do not know.” I answered, feeling suddenly frustrated with the woman standing at my side. “Clear your head of your confusion.” She told me, moving to stand behind me. She placed work-calloused hands to my temples and kneaded the flesh there softly. The touch was calming and made my heart ache for my mother and the gentle attentions she so often gave me when I fretted. “Clear your mind of all troubles, all pain, all thought. Listen. Then tell me what you hear.” Her voice became a mantra to calm my frazzled thoughts, my tense muscles. Her voice turned into the ocean waves and then even those sounds faded into nothingness. “The whispered cries have faded.” “What, child?” Ariana's voice and my own that spoke so strangely without my will seemed so far away from wherever it was my soul lay. “Woe unto the light of day where horrors cannot be hidden.” “Cynara!” I felt a violent shaking and a rushing sound filled my ears, the thunder of a thousand waterfalls. And the three eyes blinked a fiery red from their home in their sky. The lion of stars raised his head and roared. “Child!” Ariana was suddenly before me and whatever trance, whatever vision I had been snared within vanished like mist within the morning sun. Ariana's eyes glittered as she looked at me, but not with worry. “You are gifted.” She said matter-of-factly. “I could almost hear it in the wind, but I am old and my talents fade.” My gaze lifted to the sky once again but the lion was still, no more roars echoed across the sky and no triplicate gaze of fire was placed upon me. It was as though it had never occurred, and I felt fear. Fear for what I possessed. Fear for what I was being shown. What terrible things were to befall my land? What further horrors than those I had already seen would be wreaked upon my people? “A hot cup of tea, I think.” Ariana murmured when she gazed upon my paling complexion, the way my eyes flitted about as though to spot some unseen enemy lurking in the shadows. I grabbed her arm as she began to walk back toward the small hut. “Why?” I whispered, blinking back the tears that threatened to fill my eyes. “I don't want this!” “The scrolls spoke of you, child. From what you have told me I know your parents must have known this.” She said, placing her hand on mine in a comforting gesture. “We do not choose our paths. We merely walk them.” “What if I refuse to walk?” I asked with a stubborn set to my jaw. The eyes that looked upon me were filled with sympathy, but there was a purpose and resilience in them I knew would not be easily quelled. The words that she spoke were filled with certainty. “Then your parents' deaths would have been in vain. Your family's suffering would have been for naught.” Her next words were softer. “You were meant for something great, Cynara. Why else would Xenos be so fearful of you? Why would he send members of an army after such a young creature if he himself in his heart did not know that there may be truths to the passages within the scrolls?” I raked my fingers back through my tangled, dirty hair but I began to walk back toward the hut with the woman who had taken me in. “I will kill him one day, Ariana.” I told her. “I know you will, child.” Those words were her only reply to my promise. “Now let me make some warm tea. I picked the leaves fresh this morning.” No more mention of the vision on the beach, no more elusion to my place in prophecy or imagination. Just Ariana with Ariana's ways as she bent over the small fire we used at night to stay warm in the chill ocean air. ~*~ “We will place troops in the southern sector.” Xenos passed a blade down the southern section of the map that marked out the island's boundaries. “But, sir, we've not had any type of war since this city was founded.” A young lieutenant was bold enough to say in conflict. “Now is the time for war, boy.” The black-eyed man said with certainty. “Now is the time to bathe new altars and old city streets with blood. Set military rule to govern.” “But the priests…” The man started. “Nevermind the priests.” Xenos said crudely, cutting the lieutenant off. “Those who protest will be killed. Examples will be made of them. There will be no opposition to my orders or you will find your head on a pike beside theirs. Am I understood?” “Aye, sir. Very much so.” The man responded. “Good.” Xenos said. “Now do not concern yourself with whatever my reasoning may be. Move troops to the southern sector. I want that south sea guarded.” “Aye, sir.” Came the reply and the lieutenant departed the man's planning chambers as quickly as possible, leaving in his wake two other soldiers. When the door shut behind him, Xenos reached for the glass of wine that sat next to the city maps. He idly looked up at one of the soldiers standing near the wall. “When that man completes his mission, I want him killed.” “But, sir…” The man started and was silenced with a steely gaze. “Unless you wish to join him, I would not finish that sentence.” The tyrant threatened. “Will you carry out your orders?” “Yes sir.” The soldier responded and placing his fist over his heart, he bowed and departed as well. ~*~ My dreams were both awesome and frightening. The lion roared in my ears and yet over the din my own heart beat in rhythm with the pulsing of his flaming eyes. But those fiery eyes turned black and the stars became flesh. The night sky became a river of ebony hair and I stood before the man who had destroyed my parents. In my hands was a heavy sword already slick with blood. I could feel the wetness of it welling up between my fingers, could feel my teeth gritting one against the other as I lifted the sword in trembling, blood-soaked arms. Oh, foreign prince of darkness. How he shakes the foundations of earth. It was an echo in my mind and then the ground below me began to shake and split. I had no voice to scream, no hand to reach out with. And yet he kept me there. And his eyes were cruel and they were filled with an inner fire. It was the fire of the lion's eyes and the third was a flame in the center of his forehead, bright as the sun and just as scorching. I woke screaming. It would not be the last time I did. [Next Chapter]