The Flame of Wrath (14 page)

             
Silence reigned. It was unnatural. It was as if reality, itself, feared to live aloud.

             
Unable to stand the heavy quiet any longer, Aurea tentatively opened her eyes. She saw the world around her from beneath the prominent shade of another's body. With trembling hands, her fingertips reached out to caress the back she saw taut with strength and a determination to protect her. Though the wings she had witnessed the night of their first meeting had long since gone, she thought she glimpsed their shadow falling over her in an effort to shield her from the battle.

             
Autumn held her ground firmly between the warrior and the Queen. She felt three sharp points piercing through her left shoulder. Their stinging kiss had been diverted from their original intent by the sword she had managed to raise in time. Her blade was locked angrily against the forked-weapon. Her eyes were a storm of gray, misted by rage's rains.

             
The Guardian gasped in horror. Her eyes were wide at the sight of blood. “My Lady,” she rasped. “I would never----” She lowered her weapon, feeling sick.

             
Autumn groaned as the serrated ends of the blades begrudgingly left her body. They were stained bright red.  She reached upward to clutch her injured shoulder as the others ceased all movement.

             
Aurea felt tears stream down her face in time with the red tears flowing down her love's back.

             
“Zahara,” Autumn breathed. Her eyes cast a spell upon the warrior in white.

             
The woman found herself slipping into the depths of Autumn's eyes.

             
“Forgive me.”

             
Features contorted beneath the skillful hand of rage. Autumn thrust her foot forward with such brutal might that Zahara took flight.

             
Zahara was cast backward. Her body bowed as her weapon slipped from her hands.

             
Autumn caught the trident before the woman had even hit the ground.

             
The ribbon romantically embracing the hair of a hopeful bride-to-be fell in tandem with the motionless Guardian. Hair hung wildly around her passionate face. Autumn was the breathtaking image of death when it comes swiftly to this world. “Knights,” she roared, “to me!”

             
The knights rallied readily around their Queen. They stood arm in arm with a burning-eyed daughter of Angels.

             
Autumn's choice was made.

             
They had only just completed their line when the guards and their much-needed reinforcements advanced.

             
“Protect the Queen!”

             
For all Autumn's attempts at nonlethal force, she acted with such cool precision that she might have been the night-stalker. She was the lethal mist to swarm across the land before gripping souls with an icy hand only to whisk them away to the Underworld.

             
Aurea could not look away. In her wife-to-be, she recognized fires to rival any Dragon Child. Autumn was each quality Aurea had found within her knights individually. However, in Autumn those solitary traits had been combined into one person. Much to the delight of her ambitious dreaming, this person would be the person Aurea would have at her side forever. Invincibility melted sweetly against her tongue.

             
A hard brush at her side sent long waves of brown fanning outward. Autumn sharply turned her head to see that Angelos IV had moved to take a position at her side. She gave him a curt nod before returning her attention to the fight.

             
Finally spotting a way out, Aurea touched her palm to Autumn's back.

             
Of one mind, Autumn did not turn to see what Aurea had found. She knew the exact layout of the gardens perhaps better than most. This was Aurea's chance. “Go!” she commanded.

             
The royal force slipped out with their Queen while Autumn held her father's men at bay. 

             
Slowly, Autumn began inching backward. Her eyes observed each movement made by the guards. With a seasoned eye, she gaged which warrior would be the first to act or perhaps which would be the first to lose his nerve. She needed a means of retreat, one that would give her a bit of time while granting Aurea all the time she could afford.

             
Autumn caught the flickering light of a pyre to her right.

             
“She's gone now. There is no more reason for us to fight,” Angelos III said. His eyes implored his daughter to consider what she was doing. “Just let her go.”

             
Having heard her father's words, the sadness in his voice, Autumn hung her head sadly.

             
Angelos III took a deep breath, relieved that this senseless fighting could end. Something inside him twisted violently at the thought of his soldiers taking up arms against his own children. This was madness and Aurea had birthed it.

             
The brunette reached out and grabbed the pyre by its base. She jerked with all her might.

             
Alive by the sudden adrenaline-infused burst of air, the pyre spiked as it was sent crashing savagely against the ground. Its fire caught wildly. The flames rose higher, fanned by the once enchanted breezes.

             
With the fires dancing zealously inside her eyes, Autumn shot her father a warning look. Her eyes said, “Do not follow” but her lips only parted in a passionate pant for air. She turned, spiriting from the gardens. In her eyes, her prayers were clearly read. 

             
Flee, my Love
.
Flee but know that wherever you run to, I am coming to join you.

             
In the chaos of the flames, the High Lord gave a snarled command. “Keep them apart!” he said. The vision granted to him by the Oracle sent a frightening chill throughout his entire being. “Whatever happens, Autumn must not reunite with them!”

********

              The Knights were charging forward on the backs of their horses and the gales of a prayer. They rode hard, knowing that any moment the Guardians of Angels could swoop down on them. The Guardians' transports were the fastest in the land. It would be no trouble at all for the Guardians to overtake them. Why hadn't they? Their only hope was to avoid detection and somehow steal across the borders.

             
Aurea spurred her horse onward, increasing their gate to a near neck-breaking sprint. Her eyes watered with the might of the wind to others, but she knew the truth. No wind could inspire the tears which were fighting to be unleashed. What had she done? She had made a horrible mistake. She had alienated the Province of Angels during her first official visit to its lands. She had made a sworn enemy of its High Lord, the man who had served as a valuable General to the royal house for decades, but more than this, she had left without Autumn!

             
Her heart ached. She was not fooled as the others were. She knew precisely why the Guardians had not found them. It was because their fleeing entourage was of secondary importance. Right now as she and her men rode for their lives, the Guardians and as many royal guards as Angelos could spare were flocking after Autumn. They were trying to find her before she found Aurea's party.

             
The Queen released a strangled cry in lament for her lost love. She veered sharply to the right nearly losing her entourage.

             
“The caves,” she reminded herself. “Get to the caves in the forest.” As her comrades struggled to keep up, she sentenced them to damnation if it meant that they would slow her pace. She had plans of her own. She pressed her horse harder, thundering toward a prayer.

********

              Autumn ran as fast as her legs would carry her. Each step sent an electric pain coursing through her shoulder. She flinched hard, pushing past the burning of her lungs or the excruciating stinging of her wounds. She had to get to the highest point of the valley. She had to get to the Oracle's dais.

             
At her back, she could hear the desperate footfalls of her father's men. She had outsmarted them by taking paths too densely populated with trees for horses. They had been forced to pursue by foot. Her head-start had provided her a slight advantage but that was waning. They would catch her soon if she could not hold out. They were already gaining on her. The only thing she had going in her favor was that she knew this land better than her father's men.

             
Autumn felt her stomach rumble with what felt like fluttering bats. She knew that the woods would soon begin to thin. As she continued onward, the density lessened until it died to nothing.

             
The woods had ended. In their absence, the world opened up to the tall-grasses of a small field. She scurried across it, a ghost among the reeds. She had to be careful. If she didn't make it to the trees across the field, a transport would surely swoop down to claim her. That fear caused her to drop down into the thick shroud of swaying gold.

             
In the distance, she could hear the guards’ voices.

             
“Where are you, my Lady?” they called.

             
A guard raised his scythe. He swiped it across the horizon, cutting down a row of tall grass.

             
“What are you doing, you fool,” another guard cried. “You could hurt Lady Autumn!”

             
“We have to flush her out,” the other guard protested. He muttered beneath his breath, “Pity we didn't have time to retrieve the hounds. They could have found her in all this.”

             
The other guard sighed. The hounds would have been a wonderful help, but it was too late for that. “Fan out,” he ordered. “We'll wade through the field ourselves.” His eyes narrowed on the guard still using the blade of his scythe to clear a path through the field. “Use the flat of your weapons to sift through the reeds. We don't want to injure Lady Autumn.”

             
Cast as a searching net throughout the tall grasses, the guards began their attempt to draw in on the young woman.

             
Autumn crawled with her belly against the earth. She was careful ---oh so very careful---- not to rustle the reeds. She had faintly heard their comments regarding her father's hounds. Tearfully, she did not dare to breathe her gratitude for their absence. They were among her father's prized possessions. Their skill was well-fabled and as she crawled with a pain coursing throughout her body, she knew that her blood would have surely given her away.

             
When she had nearly reached the forest's edge, she scrambled to her feet.

             
“There!” a guard shouted.

             
Autumn exploded into the trees. She disappeared into the woods with only a gaping wound in the brush to show that she had come and gone.

             
A massive owl dropped its mistress into the tall grasses. Crossing the last of the field, Zahara stopped breathlessly. Her eyes scoured the visible beginnings of the forest but saw nothing. She lowered her eyes to see where Autumn had made her entrance into the dense wood. The crimson painting the leaves made her blanch beneath her helmet.

             
Autumn appeared to be moving with a purpose, but what was it?

             
“Where are you going, Autumn?” Zahara wondered aloud. She motioned the High Lord's guards forward.

             
As the men vanished into the darkness of the forest, her warriors drew closer to her.

             
Collectively, the women lifted their heads. They saw beyond what was directly before them. They saw with the eyes of the animals they rode, able to witness a much grander picture.

Just beyond the wood's borders, a high peak loomed in mythical glory. The Oracle's home sent its long shadow over the land.

              “She's trying to get to higher ground,” Zahara gasped.

             
The Guardians summoned their transports with a shrill whistle.

             
Immediately, the massive animals answered the call. They glided swiftly toward them, traveling over the earth like soundless shadows.

********

              Winds wailed bitterly around her. Autumn was whipped by them, but she did not stop. She climbed the stone steps just as her father had done the night before. The bitter difference between them was that Autumn felt as though she was running for her life where as her father appeared to be running from it. When at last she reached the summit, her legs shook with fatigue. She was mere moments from collapse.

             
Autumn scoured the horizon. She could see everything. That is, she could see everything, but the Oracle. She had known that she would not be there, but a small part of her had still hoped for it.