Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (6 page)

* * *

Ancenon Escaroth had been born Ancenon Evoprosee, of a respected house, where he as third son had a brilliant career ahead of him as a hanger on, had he wanted it.

He had not.

When his older brother Haldan had joined the Casters, and his next older brother the Merchants, Ancenon had taken it on himself to join the priesthood of Adriam, a rare and usually ignominious destiny, as priests did not normally seek more power than that of a god.

In the priesthood Ancenon had come to the
Ultimate Truth
, and then combined the power of a Caster with his existing teachings to make himself a rarity among a rare people, the only priest and Caster among them.

From there, he’d been adopted by the King himself and married to the King’s daughter, taking on the name Aurelias and enjoying the title of Heir for more than 100 years.

Then had come the Conqueror, and the Daff Kanaar, and a fall from favor that cost him his title of Heir, his prestige among his people and the favor of his own wife, who in his absence laid shamelessly with their Uman servants. It had been a matter of time before another, with an infusion of gold which Ancenon knew well had come from Outpost V’s hidden treasury, had replaced him, and Ancenon had become an Aurelias in name only.

Today Ancenon lost that name, and became an ‘Escaroth,’ the sole male of a dying house responsible, at least, for a portion of the city wall.
His new ‘Proud Falcon’ could be seen from Outpost IX’s southern towers.

Contagious in the Conqueror’s weird sense of humor, he allowed himself a smile as he contemplated flying the purple hook of the Daff Kanaar beneath it.
Walking beside him through the stone halls of Outpost IX, to those southern towers, his new sister took note.

She raised her left hand and turned her wrist out in the form of the Inquisitive Relative, and said, “You are in good spirit, Lord Brother.”

He nodded and, still walking, put his knuckles to his hips and informed her, “I was considering my house.”

For every condition, etiquette defined over centuries by the Uman-Chi, shared only among themselves, differentiating them from lesser races, lesser species, persons to whom form was barely more than excusing their own farts in public.

“Are you familiar with our proud history, brother?” Glynn asked him, placing her left hand in her right palm at her waist before her, in the position of the Eager Teacher, Supplicating.

He nodded. He’d studied their scrolls. “My concern for you, sister, is more for your future than your past.”

She smiled, and returned her hands to her side. “My song?” she asked him.

“I regret I cannot hear you sing it,” he said, “however my cousin, D’gattis, will attend in my stead, as I am unavoidably detained.”

Glynn extruded her lower lip for just a moment—an actual younger sister deprived of an older brother’s approval. He extended her his elbow, to walk beside him as Equal Companion, all he could offer her at this time.

B
ecause of my ambition, your father and your brother were killed,
he thought to himself, walking beside her.
Both were friends of mine. In penance for that ambition, I take their names now, and extend their house’s life.

She took his arm, this young girl, so promising, so full of Life among the Uman-Chi.
Every one among them knew Glynn, the youngest of the Casters. Her father, of the Caste of Warriors, had been
so proud
to claim her and her extraordinary abilities.

Some among them thought her the answer to the Conqueror’s wife, Shela Mordetur.
Ancenon knew better. He’d never seen Power represented so clearly in another. Shela wielded a magic Uman-Chi had no answer for. Power where their grace could be overwhelmed completely by her raw might.

Ancenon’s ambition had cost him much, and rewarded him much more.
Angron ruled Trenbon but, with his companions beside him, Ancenon could actually buy it out from under him, or take it by force. Ancenon had incurred great debts along his path, and the lives of the Escaroths were high among them.

He would do a lot of things to repay that debt, however watching Glynn Escaroth die was not one of them.

* * *

By the end of week two as Trainer: Bill Howard, the other employees just assumed they could go anywhere with him, ask him for advice on any topic, and that he would answer any personal question about his past life, having kids, why guys were horny jerks or how to close a sale, including what it was okay to say.

             
Melissa praised his wisdom, kept him at arm’s reach at all times and kept the number in their new-formed clique increasing. The answer to any question became either, “Bill said,” or “You should ask Bill.” Of course there followed a steady stream of advice on his clothes, his hairstyle and his beard, which his new friends alternately hated or needed to manicure in a different way. When Melissa found out he bought his trousers at Target, Bill thought for a moment she would cry.

He impressed himself by wearing cologne for the first time in five years.
By that second Saturday, however, he’d been properly groomed, manicured and styled, and left no question in anyone’s mind that he had graduated from trainer to ‘pet,’ mostly Melissa’s.

Chapter Three:

              The Song in Her Heart

      
The day
had come.

Angron had decreed the time for the event.
Her new brother had apparently spoken with their King before leaving the Silent Isle.

Glynn donned the beautiful white robes of a Caster.
In the two weeks since she had been given permission to sing, she’d had a new robe commissioned for her, just to be worn this one time. She wished only that her father had lived to see it, or her natural brother.

             
The cotton felt like a dream to wear. She cinched the belt tight on her trim waist. Its touch made her alabaster skin tingle, light and secure, properly demure and yet deliciously naked in the way it let her move beneath it. It imbued her with the power of her station, a Caster—the ruling elite of the Uman-Chi.

Finally, to
sing
! Even if she died this day, she died on a high note seldom felt by others.

             
Well, perhaps not. She drifted back to reality, and let her toes touch the ground. A good enchantress doesn’t build bridges from twigs and muck. She might sing that the next harvest would be dismal, or that the herds were palsied.

             
She straightened her back and set her jaw, then with a wave of her hand had the Uman servants open her chamber door for her. No, she assured herself. She had not spent these days in deep training with a Master like Chaheff, learning how to focus great energy, to give crop or weather reports. This would be whatever the gods decreed it, certainly, but no less than it would be.

             
Glynn glided in the manner of Uman-Chi Casters, maintaining the hem of her robe equidistant to the floor. This discipline prepared her mind for the song, and for the sacrifice she might have to make. She maintained it until she entered the throne room. Ten other Uman-Chi, all in the white robes of Casters, waited for her there in the gallery. D’gattis, with the yellow mark on his robes, stood closest to the throne where she would be, as her brother had promised.

             
They’d drawn a chain of thirteen circles, each interlocking, on the white marble around the Circle of Judgment before the throne. The priest of a different god had consecrated each one of them. Glynn took her place within it, and D’gattis and Avek sealed her with a spell. If she should lose control, then that would be the first line of defense against the unleashed power.

             
Her heart raced, her mind swam with the song, its imperative, its
power
. Her years of discipline in the art of casting barely kept her from fidgeting. The time had finally come!

             
Glynn inhaled, exhaled, and looked to her wise King.

* * *

              Lunch rolled around and for once Bill found himself alone. The timing couldn’t be better—he had driven and he
really
wanted to listen to Rush on the car radio.

             
That wishful thinking lasted until he saw them all in the parking lot by his car. He sighed and grumbled to himself—he didn’t always want to talk and answer questions at lunch. Bill shook his head and let the door swing shut behind him. As he started down the office steps he saw the hood up on Melissa’s car, and realized they were looking at that.

             
And there stood that sweet, friendly girl, bent over her engine with a guy he knew as Roy standing next to her, and one of her teenybopper friends trying to crank the car over.

             
“Stop!” he shouted. Melissa, Roy and most of the others jumped like so many kids stealing cookies from a jar. He ran the short distance to them, his belly jouncing up and down over his belt.

“Dude, like, what’s up?” Roy challenged him.

              “If you’re going to look at the engine, tie back your hair,” Bill scolded them, ignoring Roy. He came to a stop, already sweating, next to Melissa. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her from the engine compartment. “Your hair was right in that engine, Melissa.”

             
The girl in the car cranked again, and the engine roared into life. Melissa jumped again, but she didn’t pull herself away.

             
“See that?” Bill asked her, letting go of her and pointing at the fan belt. “Melissa, your hair was
right there
. You’d be dead now.”

             
Her eyes widened and she looked to her peer group for support.

             
“He’s right, Mel,” one of the girls said. “There’s even grease on your tips.”

             
Melissa grabbed the ends of her long black hair and held them in front of her eyes. Sure enough, some were sticking together, black with grease.

             
“Wow, Bill,” she said, looking up at him. For a second he thought she would cry. “I, you know, like, I am so sorry.”

             
He shook his head. “Don’t be sorry, just tie your hair back,” he said. “My dad got pulled into the block of his Chevy that way, by his tie. It didn’t kill him but I saw the bones in his chest where—”

             
He looked around, and they were staring at him like he was the messiah or something.

             
“What?”

             
“Dude, that was, like, so cool of you,” Roy said.

             
“What?”

             
“Yanno,” the girl who started the car said, Spanish by the look of her. “All Sir Lancelot to save her.” She looked at Melissa, and said, “Girl, you’ve
got
to buy him drinks tonight.”

             
“Oh, yeah,” Melissa said. “We’re like, going to the Mill tonight.”

             
Bill took a step back. “Oh, kids, um—I don’t think we should—I mean, you don’t want an old fart like me—”

             
The look in Melissa’s eyes burned with excitement, and then faded as he watched them.

             
Bill immediately felt every second of his fifty years of age. In one sentence he had reminded them he was older than most of their parents, and he just couldn’t play with them.

             
His heart slowed down, and only then did he realize it had been pounding.

             
“Come on,” he said, “you kids don’t want some old guy slowing you down.”

             
“You’re not so old,” Melissa said, her eyes on the ground.

             
“And who cares if you are,” Roy said, and actually put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Dude, you know how much I’m making here, ‘cuz of you?”

             
“Me, too,” one of the girls that he hadn’t trained said. “Just talking to you, listening to what you tell the other people to do, I made more sales this week than I did last week, and I still have Thursday and Friday to go.”

             
“We, like, owe you,” another of Melissa’s girls said. “So come out with us.” She waved a hand at him. “You don’t want to make Melly cry, do you?”

             
It looked to Bill like Melly
was
going to cry. She wouldn’t look at him now, focused on the tips of her hair in her hand, and her shoes, apparently.

             
Every bone in Bill’s body melted. Even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew that he was screwing up.

“Ok
ay, the Mill tonight,” he said. Melissa looked up like she had just got ‘Bingo’. “What time?”

             
“We meet at six for happy hour,” she said. She turned to her friend and continued, “This is great, and I’ve got this new top I want to wear.”

             
“The pink one?”

             
“No, the blue one with the sparkles that I got at Bealls.”

             
“Oh, I
love
that one!”

             
And off they went to lunch, where they would only let him get a salad, and of course Rush Limbaugh was on his own.

* * *

              “By the power of Adriam, we do invoke thee,” the combined Casters intoned.

             
“Praise to the All-Father,” Glynn answered.

             
“By the power of Eveave, we do invoke thee.”

             
“Praise to the Taker and the Giver.”

             
Throughout the list of gods, they invoked the protection they would need for the song. Finally they came to Steel, who was only half of a god, a child of Earth and a woman, who had emerged from Water to be among them, and be the One who could touch Adriam’s creation directly.

             
“In the name of Steel, we invoke thee,” the Casters intoned.

             
“Praise be to Steel, who is the Savior,” Glynn said.

             
The power boiled in her throat. Tears ran down her cheeks, from the effort to contain it. She could see the words before her in her mind, becoming more imperative, letting her know they needed to be spoken.

             
This preparation went on for grueling hours.

“Commence your song,” Angron commanded from his throne.

              And Glynn sang:

“Fovea, oh Fovea, beloved of the gods,

Of Earth and Water’s coupling

Were we among them born.

We walk upon the fertile Earth

‘Mongst seeds already laid,

Six heroes brought forth by the One

Await the coming day.”

“The day, the day, there comes the day.

The day, the day is near.

The day, the day, here comes the day.

The time of War is here.

“From Fovea, from Fovea, the Cheyak, they are gone,

Struck down for their failing,

To make way for the One.

The One, who walks upon the Earth

The One, who is of War.

The One, who others wait upon

To fight forever more.”

“The day, the day, there comes the day.

The day, the day is near.

The day, the day, here comes the day.

The time of War is here.”

“To Fovea, to Fovea, a champion is called.

Summoned on these very words

To witness rise and fall

They will fall, who walk with her

They will fall, who oppose her

They will fall, for the power

Of the goddess, who chose her.”

“The day, the day, there comes the day.

The day, the day is near.

The day, the day, here comes the day.

The time of War is here.”

“On Fovea, on Fovea, seek a noble young and old,

A foreigner among his kind
                           

A hero, fate foretold
                                         

One who fights as does the Sun
                           

Waits in a sacred place
                                         

A guardian will bring you there

With a devil born and raised”

“Through Fovea, through Fovea, over you shall watch

One who eludes prying eyes,

With one who can’t be touched.

So shall they come together

Heroes of the land

Together to oppose the One

While all apart they stand.”

“The day, the day, there comes the day.

The day, the day is near.

The day, the day, here comes the day.

The time of War is here.”

“For Fovea, Fovea, then must they live and die.

Fight the battle from within

With a champion from outside.

You shall be the weapons

The tools of men and gods

Who come too late for victory

And win despite these odds.

“The day, the day, there comes the day.

The day, the day is near.