Citadel of Fire (The Ronin Saga Book 2) (73 page)

He saw Meira and Finn react too, as if their scarlet robes itched.

They breached the dark halls suddenly, appearing in a white courtyard with grass and alabaster stone statues. In the center sat a pool with a huge statue of a flame—sigil of the Great Kingdom of fire—spouting water, and the Citadel’s Star of Magha, drawn in red tiles in the water’s shallow depths.

Finn looked around, puzzled.

“This doesn’t seem so dark and dangerous,” Zane declared, scratching his stubbled jaw. Hannah was close at his side. The two hadn’t parted more than an arm’s length since their reunion.

“Because we aren’t in the upper halls anymore. In fact, this is the Neophytes’ Chambers,” Meira explained. “Or it
was
, for whatever is going on here is not normal. We were preparing for an attack, but this is much worse.”

“This… this isn’t right,” Finn agreed.

The others, Devari and Reavers, seemed equally unnerved—a few of each running off to scout.

“I don’t get what’s going on,” Darius said. “What’s all the fuss?”

“The room is empty…” Gray said, lifting a hand to the air, feeling its coldness. It felt strange, as if he was reading both the ki and the flows of wind at the same time. “Whatever used to be here is gone.”

“How long?” Finn asked.

Gray breathed in the scent, using his ki and his nexus. He almost thought he could feel the emotions on the air, stale and faint, but there.
Fear. Sadness. Chaos.
There was no sensing how long it had been. At last, he shook his head, frustrated. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell.”

Darius growled. “Would someone mind telling me what in the seven hells you’re talking about?”

Reaver Meira answered darkly, “This room is empty, and it’s not supposed to be. Women, men, and children normally fill this room with life…”

A chill ran through Gray, and he saw the others give equal reactions.

Ayva eyed the surroundings, sidling closer to him. She wrung her silvery dagger in her hands and spoke, hopefully, “Perhaps Sithel simply took them elsewhere?”

Two Devari returned, breathless.

“What did you find?” Gray asked

“Nothing,” the Devari answered. “A few dead, but that’s it. They’re all gone.”

“Gone…” a few others whispered, Reavers and Devari.

Gray gripped his nexus with anger and stillness, searching. The wind flowed along the halls, running through hollow courtyards and vacant halls. Sheets ruffled from the wind’s presence upon tousled but empty beds in a hundred different rooms. The ramparts were clear as well. No guards. Nothing. He retreated back into his body with a gasp, opening his eyes. The others were looking at him curiously. “It’s empty—all of it,” he announced. “Not a single sign of life.”

The others shook their heads, baffled.

“How is that possible?” questioned a short, brown-haired Reaver with two-stripes upon her cuff. “There must be some life—something!”

“I speak the truth,” Gray answered.

“Then what now?” Zane asked at Hannah’s side.

“We must do what we set out to do,” he pronounced. “We will join the others at the Citadel’s entrance once they have rescued the prisoners. Until then, we will search for any that I might have missed. Whatever the case, they had to have gone somewhere.”

“He’s right,” Meira said. “Besides, we’ve dawdled here long enough. Come,” she ordered, leading the way.

As they moved, Finn joined his side. “It seems you have a knack for sensing what’s ahead,” the Reaver said insinuatingly.

“Is that a question?” Gray asked.

Finn lowered his voice. “Is it truly wind?”

Eyeing the Reaver, judging if he could trust him but knowing Meira had—and for some reason he trusted Meira—he at last nodded. He was no longer afraid of the wind and its power, but he realized that in this world it was a banished element. As such, others seemed wary of him, as if debating whether to treat him as a demon or a spirit. Glancing over his shoulder, the other Reavers and Devari gave him strange, almost brooding looks. “It seems it’s not as common as I expected.”

“Wind is a banished element as you know,” Finn explained. “Many fear what they don’t understand, but do not blame them. Their hearts are in the right place. But a word of advice if I might?”

Gray nodded for the man to continue.

“I would be cautious with that power of yours if I were you,” he said. “The world may be less forgiving of a man who threads wind… A man who reminds them of The Wanderer.”

Gray felt sweat flash across his brow, but he remained silent.

As he moved through the Citadel, he realized the truth of what he’d seen.
Absence.
The quiet was thundering. Ayva and the others stayed close as they moved, as if hoping to banish the silent night with the sound of their breaths. Moonlight lit the eerie courtyards, shining like a gravesite without headstones.

They passed a dark hall, and he slowed.

The others stopped.

“What is it, Gray?” Ayva asked.

Gray looked down the hall, gaze narrowing and his vision racing towards a wooden door at the end of the hall. Something pulsed inside him, like fingers gripping a string within his heart, pulling him towards the door. He listened. Distantly, he felt the others following.

Zane fell in at his side as he reached the door. “Do you sense someone inside?”

He shook his head. “Not someone, but something. What is this place?”

“This is the Neophytes’ Quarters,” Reaver Finn stated.

Gray gripped the door knob, and his arm began to tremble. His heart hammered in his chest, but he wasn’t scared. It was Kirin. He twisted the handle but it was locked. He felt a hand on his shoulder as Zane pulled him aside. “Allow me,” the fiery man said, raising a hand and a bolt of fire blew open the door, wood shards flying through the air.

“Agh!”
Darius exclaimed, coughing from the cloud of dust. “
Real
subtle. My favorite characteristic in you, Zane.”

Zane snorted, uncaring.

The other Devari and Reavers stood behind them. “Gray,” Meira said. “We have no time for this. We have to meet the others and search for survivors. There is nothing in here.” Gray ignored her, leaping through the debris into the room, then with a thread of his power he used a gust of wind to wash away the cloud of dust, revealing a room set in pitch-black. A colored-mosaic window took up the back wall, though shattered. Boards were set over its gaping holes, letting in a faint, eerie wind that cut through his clothes and chilled him to the bone.

“Little cold and dark in here, isn’t it?” Darius voiced, rubbing his arms.

“Allow
me
,” Ayva proclaimed, eyeing Zane with a playful smile. Then raising her hand, a globe of light formed, golden and brilliant, bursting the shadows around them and revealing the room.

The others gasped.

The stone was stained a deep red, almost black.

Blood,
Gray knew,
and lots of it,
as if a war had been fought. Someone had obviously attempted to scrub it away, but to no avail. On the sides of the walls, furniture lay shattered. Otherwise the room was barren.

A Devari cursed, “This room, it is forsaken… We must leave it at once!”

“What are you talking about?” Zane asked.

“So this is it then,” Finn said in realization, eyes tightening. “The room in which the last Leader of the Devari, Ren, met his end.”

“What happened?” Ayva asked.

“Ren was betrayed,” the tall Devari answered spitefully, hand on his blade.

Finn shook his head. “The truth is no one knows exactly, all we know are rumors.”

“What rumors?” Darius questioned.

Gray remained silent as they conversed. His arm shook at his side.
What is this feeling?
he thought in rising dread. Morrowil grew hot upon his back, rattling in its sheath.

Meira answered, “Rumors that a boy, a young Devari, killed his master and his brothers. But it is impossible—no single Devari, let alone a non-Sword-Forged one, could kill the Leader of the Devari.”

Gray closed his eyes and had flashing visions and searing emotions.

Scarlet robes.
Flash
. A beautiful face—Vera’s.
Flash
. A sword in her stomach, blood covering his hands.
Flash
. Dark tentacles.
Flash
. Blood-curdling screams, rending the cold air.

With each vision, his heart raced faster and, distantly, he felt his nails scraping stone.

Flash.

This one came sharper and harder.

A vision of a man, a familiar face, a long graying braid, fighting to save him. He watched as horror and confusion filled the man’s eyes as he fell—dying, blood and gore everywhere.

Terror and sorrow rent his heart.

It was his doing, all of it.

Gray’s eyes snapped open, and he saw others were looking at him. Slowly he rose to his feet, catching his breath. But the memories still lingered, and his mind felt full and pained, as if the dam was on the verge of collapse, his memories bursting at the very seams. Frustration, fear, and anger rose inside him, and he cursed Kirin.

You’re taunting me, aren’t you?
He asked the voice within his head.

Silence.

Speak!
He ordered.
I need to know.
Are you… am
I…
evil?

More silence, but Gray thought he heard distant sobs or perhaps laughter.

He clenched his eyes, ignoring the looks of others.
I know you’re there, Kirin.
Show me the truth. I beg of you. I need to know once and for all—let me remember what happened or be gone forever.

Soon…
came the soft reply.

With a shaky breath, Gray embraced his nexus—finding anger easily but stillness with difficulty. The line between all things. It afforded him a veil of serenity and he opened his eyes, seeing the others still staring at him, and spoke. “Let’s continue then, shall we?” With that he pressed forward, leaving behind the dark room and the puzzled looks of the others.

Yet Gray knew the shadows of his mind were about to be revealed.

* * *

Jian sat in the cold, mist swirling about his form.

The red sun was just beginning to crown over the dark walls beyond.
Red.
An omen he knew all too well. His hand played over his scabbard, touching its handle, once leather, now worn to the nub. He pondered what was to come. His men stood behind him—dozens of Sword-Forged Devari, simply waiting for his command. He directed his attention back to his sword. Every little bump upon his hilt was familiar to him, and it gave him comfort now, not knowing what he had to do.

Behind him sat the Citadel, empty.

“What are we doing here?” he whispered.

His second in command, Orrick, spoke. “
Sometimes, when you know not what to protect,
when even the direction of your blade is unknown, you have to trust what is familiar.”
It was a saying of Renald Trinaden, the first Leader of the Devari, the man who took the oath and bound himself and all Devari to the Patriarch and, in turn, the Citadel.

“Wise words,” said another, older Devari.

“The Citadel is our home,” Orrick declared. The scar over his eyes knotted as his brow furrowed in anger. “We must defend it at all costs, my lord. That is what we must do.”

Others nodded, but Jian remained silent.

He knew those quoted words. They all did. Renald Trinaden was considered the father of their kind, his words passed down from Devari to Devari. Trinaden was the only man more revered than Ren, the last leader who was named after the father of Devari. But did those words mean what he thought they meant? Times were changing, the Citadel crumbling beneath him with Sithel and his charge corrupting the very fabric of what they stood for. The flame of the Citadel beneath Jian’s feet felt a mockery of justice. Then what could a man do?
Trust,
his thoughts echoed.
Trust what is familiar.
What was familiar was his duty and his honor, like every scratch upon his sword.

He looked up into the red sun and spoke with a heavy breath, “Prepare yourselves. It’s time to move.”

A Moment of Fate

G
RAY FROZE IN HIS TRACKS, EYEING
the chamber ahead.

“Well, this is familiar,” Zane announced.

“What is this?” Hannah breathed.

They stood in a huge room with walls of shimmering gems and a ceiling simulating the sky above, a more vivid blue than Gray had ever seen, the billowing clouds all too real. But this time, however, the transporters were silent, and the room as barren as all the others. Gray moved across the grand floor, the others at his side, the silence unnerving as he recalled the life that had once filled this grand chamber.