The Vanguards of Scion Read online

  Emmanora finished off the last puff on her pipe and shoved it back into her pouch with her moon-moth powder. She slipped off her black headscarf and shook out her puffy, red, milg hair. It grew straight up from her cranium and stood stiff in the cool breeze rolling through the tall switch grass.

  By the time Ruby brought her home, she had nodded off on his back. When he stopped by the camouflaged trap door of her cellar, she fell from her saddle and face-planted in the dirt, startling her awake. Luckily, the moon-moth had kept her numb, and she didn't feel much pain, but it scared her a little and that pissed her off. "Fuck!" she yelped and jumped to her feet. She scowled at Ruby who was sniffing at her and still chewing a bit of grass he had torn up a few feet back. "Why didn't you wake me? You know the deal. You're supposed to sit down when I'm asleep and roar! Remember?" She caressed his face, and he turned his head and gurgled.

  Emmanora smiled and shook her head. "A bit late, pal, but I guess you get points for effort." She unhitched her loot bags from his saddle. "We're lucky no one robbed us after I nodded off. Or followed us." She paused and scanned the surrounding landscape. Except for the huge redwood tree, there was nothing but an ocean of switch grass surrounding her for a mile in all directions, she saw nothing unusual. Nothing that was taller than the tall grass spanning the stretch of land all around her. Shoulder high to a milg meant waist-high to most other humans, so it was unlikely anyone was crawling for a mile on their belly to rob her.

  She shrugged. She knelt beside the hidden door on the ground beneath a nondescript cap of sod she had used to hide the door from travelers wandering off the main road. It was a good six miles from the redwood and her cellar below it. She dialed through the puzzle sequence with her finger poked into the track-lock she devised years ago from chiseled stones. Nine different track tracings released the lock. She flipped over the circular stone door and began dragging the bags of coin and jewels over to drop them down into the cellar. After she had tossed all eight in, she shoved off the edge of the hole into the cellar, landing ass first on top of the eight bags of loot. She laid back in satisfaction with her hands behind her head for a couple of minutes before fishing for the flint and steel packet on her belt. She used it to light the oil lamp she always kept down here. The entire room glittered and sparkled in the firelight. She savored the scent of turned earth that lingered. Over a decade of hoarded coins and valuable jewelry filled wooden shelving she had carved herself on two sides of the narrow cave. She had dug out the cave between two huge redwood roots.

  All her coin stacked in perfect denominations and nice, even towers of perfect incremental values of five. "Hey!" Emmanora fumed. "What do you think you're doing little bugger?" She reached out and snatched a ground beetle that was crawling up the side of a stack of gold bull coins and misaligning them as it did. She tossed it, legs kicking, up and out the entrance hole above. At that moment she heard Ruby cry out above, a long steady gurgle. This sound usually signaled alert. Something troubled him up there.

  Emmanora put the lamp down on the floor and went for the ladder which she always let fall back into the crevice fork of the two roots when she exited the cellar. She propped it up on the entrance hole and quickly climbed up to have a look.

  When she emerged, Ruby was standing. Nothing seemed amiss in the immediate vicinity. She stood up and scanned across the grass all around. She patted Ruby and said, "What's going on? Are you well? Be still for a minute." She mounted his saddle and stood up on his back to get a better look at the perimeter.

  "Hmm. I don't see anything peculiar?" She hopped back down and dismounted. "You still hungry? Thirsty? I meant to go to the stream later and fetch us a bucket." She started rummaging through his saddlebags until she pulled out a waterskin. "This should do until then." She popped the cork and tipped it into his mouth.

  He did drink it, twisting out his tongue and spilling a good amount out the side of his sagging lips. She caressed his neck to reassure him.

  A pebble bounced across her view into the clearing around her redwood and came to rest at her feet. It looked like a polished oval of black onyx. She glanced down at it before corking the waterskin and pinching up the pebble between her finger and thumb to investigate it further. It was polished onyx, and it was hers. It came from her stone collection she kept under her bed in a small wooden box. She only kept her favorite shiny things there.

  She looked straight up, and realization came over her. She ran towards the redwood and did a flying leap for the lowest branch, flipping and vaulting her way up to her treehouse hidden far above. She made sure to use her most delicate acrobatics to insure the silence of her approach. When she pulled herself up and somersaulted into her loft, she came up in a kneeling stance with Heartnail poised.

  "Oh, about time you showed up, shorty. I was beginning to think you'd lost your edge for perception," said Liobe Cerahal, Emmanora's sister. Liobe stood a foot taller than Emmanora and hadn't as much milg in her blood, leaving her with more platinum blond and fewer freckles. "I've come here to kill you. I hope you've at least learned to fight. I've been dreading this would be boring as ever for my entire trek to Voth. At least make it more entertaining than I expect. Nice place, by the way, good hideout. I almost never found it, but you were always good at hiding like a rat." With the last, she released a dagger in a blur from her golden ringed fingers that sunk into Emmanora above the collarbone.

  A burning blossomed in Emmanora's chest.

  "That knife wound would hardly be a hindrance to a real assassin."

  "You killed mother and father, you cunt!" was all Emmanora could say, through tears of rage. She leaped through the air with Heartnail recoiled for a downward heart skewer from the space just above the rib cage and below Liobe's neck.

  Liobe collapsed backward into a roll, dodging, and Emmanora's rapier sunk between two boards in the hardwood floor. Liobe hooked the back of her hammer onto Emmanora's sword as she came up from her roll and bent the blade and pommel free of Emmanora's grasp. She pulled it from the floor for herself. "I did not kill them, though they deserved to die all the same for what they did to us. They were monsters! I provided them with another bad decision, one they would've made on their own had they came across it without my help." She taunted Emmanora with Heartnail, waving it around at her face. "Now, I've got your stupid little pig-sticker! Should I kill you with the weapon you used to murder fat rich men who can't fight for themselves?" Liobe smirked. Her face glistened with golden septum piercings and eyebrow rings. A tattoo of a sun bursting with spears covered the left side, a mark of her pirate affiliation. She tossed Emmanora's sword out the window behind her and said, "Come join us, sister! You might learn something from the pirate king. Edvard loves the smaller girls. He might make a real warrior out of you." Liobe patted her silver hammer. "Or I can follow through with my mission to eradicate all competitor rogue lords and renegades in The East Realm. I am merciful, you see."

  Emmanora felt blood streaming down between her breasts beneath her leathers. It made a tapping sound as it fell to the boards on her floor. "I am not!" She charged Liobe. She wanted to claw her pretty eyes from their sockets. A fury beyond rational thought overwhelmed her. The window behind Liobe stood at least fifty feet from the ground. She didn't care if they both tumbled out. On the way down she would pull the dagger from her shoulder and repeatedly stab Liobe until they hit the ground and met both of their deaths.

  Emmanora's hands met Liobe's throat within the arc of a lunging jump. The force of the blow knocked Liobe back and both went tumbling out the window. Emmanora found herself swimming in midair kicking and grasping for purchase. As she flipped over and felt her head dip back towards the earth, she caught sight of Liobe above, hanging from the ledge of her window. Liobe climbed back inside.

  "Cunt!" Emmanora whispered. She conceded failure before she hit the ground, and everything blackened around her.

  3

  VENDRONIA

  "Hey, stained girl, bring me another wine! A dark one like
your scarlet skin. When not on the hunt, you know your role. These hides we won won't tan themselves," said Torvul, Varl of the trogs and champion of the valley.

  "Yes, my lord," said Vendronia, eyes wide with a big smile on her face. She jumped up and down a little with clenched fists. She had waited until the Glory Hunt Celebration to reveal her surprise to the Varl. Now festivities peaked. Drummers pounded low pummeling tones. Sparking embers swirled into the dusky azure sky from many blazing bonfires surrounded by rings of dancing trogs and sweaty naked tangles of sexual writhing dotted all about Torvul's farmstead. Vendronia had only just been appointed to the Varl's farmstead to serve, and she had been waiting to win his favor. "I have finished carving you a new cup from horn. Your wine should taste the best it has yet! And I will finish the hides with great passion tonight, as it is among my favorite tasks. I love the soft fur of the Caribou on my fingers." She filled his cup and brought it for him to drink, raising the first sip for him to his lips.

  He grabbed at the cup with knobby calloused hands and downed the wine, gave the cup a glance and nodded his approval at its craftsmanship. "I suppose it's fine," was all he offered, wine dripping into his silver beard.

  Vendronia smiled and bowed, hoping no one noticed how forced the gesture felt to her. She left the Varl's hearth room and went back to her tent outside. He seemed to approve, but he would still address her as the 'stained girl' or one of the many other names she hated. Stained girl, Bloodchild, Bloodcurse, all references to a child who had been born during a woman's bleeding cycle and marked forever with deep raspberry skin. Whether or not this was true, Vendronia did not know. She didn't believe it sensible but sometimes a half-baked story stuck like tar in the hair.

  She sat in the middle of her bearskin rug and gazed at the charcoal drawing she had made of Ona on a stretch of dried goat hide. "Why?" she said. "Why did you try to make me one of you?" She held up her own hand and eyed her deep scarlet skin. "Clearly, I am not. In the years without you, as I grow older it seems to get worse. I think I shall never find a life mate. No one wants to breed a cursed bloodskin. I am ever too small anyways, compared to trog. I can only seek solace in your memory and the guardian spirits." A clammy sweat poured down her neck, and her fingers shook. The sickness was coming. The voice of her demon would come soon, the voice that made her spiral into the darkness of hopelessness. The voice that told her she should not exist. The people she protected in battle and imbued with ferocity with her rituals before a hunt seemed ever ungrateful and rarely said a word as to her part in their glory. She needed more yage root to put the demon voice back to sleep. She dug through her component sacks with wild abandon, scattering her things across the tent until she found one half-finger of the root. She ate it quickly, not grimacing at the pungent chalkiness of it. It was little and would only last for tonight, but it was a blessing nonetheless.

  She began to gain her composure. As the root did its magic and caressed her thoughts, she daydreamed about Ona. She could almost hear her scratchy snarling voice telling the stories she often told her, particularly the one of her discovery. "Found ya in a cave, we did then. Freezing, skin hugging ya bones like a wet sack full'a sticks. Torvul's father Greth wanted to smash you with his ax because he thought you were a demon spawn, but Ona the Crone Mother," --she had pointed at herself with a shaky crooked finger--,"Ona had been there with them that day and suggested a more rewarding fate. I say maybe this be a gift from the Witch-God, and we are meant to rear this red-skinned child. Maybe the Witch-God wishes that she serves us one day with a great black magic. Ona was the Crone Mother, the most respected wise woman in the clan, and they knew to question her wisdom be a hex. And so, it was. I called you Vendronia which means blessed hex, and I foresee you to live among the trog."

  But Vendronia never felt peace or acceptance. She lived and tried to find joy in small victories and frail bonds with those that had upheld their oath to Ona to foster her. Before she died, Ona had begun to reveal secrets of the dark Vudjinn magic of the trog to her and gifted Vendronia her magic tomes. She had tried to imagine what a birth mother might be like for many years, but she only had Ona to compare. When Ona passed of the old age of one-hundred-and-six-years, Vendronia had fell into a deep sickness of sorrow and anxiety which only seemed to grow as she aged into her young adulthood and began to bleed with the moon.

  It occurred to her she must continue to practice the Vudjinn magic and seek fulfillment not just in the yage root, but in the guardians of the spirit realm who released her to the trog. If she needed help growing her own yage root, they would help her. She had failed so many attempts. It proved a stubborn and needy plant. For five years now she had strived to get one finger width growth and failed. In the beginning it was the seed that would never sprout, then it became black with rot before a thick root would swell. She needed the yage more than ever now. She had decided to turn to the only thing left that she hadn't tried. She began gathering up her ritual components and Vudjinn magic tomes. She would go up to the sacred burial mound and summon the Watcher.

  She rode out in the night on Moon, her gray mare, unnoticed with all the revelry of the Glory Hunt still ramped in its debauchery. She rode past Varl Torvul's longhouse and followed the banks of the Great Snake River for a few miles until she had the trog burial mound in site. This is where the trog buried their common folk, anyone not of high clan status. She made her way up a beaten path to the top of the mound that looked out over the treetops and found the uncovered grave-hole where the trog were known to toss the bodies of children lost in childbirth, an offering to the Witch-God. It was a large depression in the turned earth filled with the dust of bones of many generations. She dismounted Moon and gathered her things and descended into the hole and prepared the ground for the ritual.

  An hour passed. Darkness blanketed the sky above. Vendronia sat before her offering bowl, chanting and sprinkling in the bits of soul collected for the rite. She had poured the salt and ash mixture in the shape of the nine-pointed star and drawn the circle of chicken's blood around it. The 'bits of soul' consisted of a dreadlock yanked from her own scalp, a scraping of lamb horn, a finger-bone from an infant, a piece of fiber from the rope of a strangled man, bile from a Gothi Priest's gut and as par for any summoning, a few drops of blood from her own pinky finger. This mixture burned with the powder of dried poppies would summon the Watcher, the Maker of Dreams.

  "Farinthol bordodious oomaxitvarx!" she snarled through clenched teeth as she cut into her pinky. She still shivered with withdrawals and sweat drizzled down the sides of her head. She needed more yage root. She couldn't do her job otherwise. She protected the clan. Without her, battle would falter. The warriors would carry their hexes in their thoughts into the hunt. She lit the offering bowl with a spark from a striker rock and flint. It glowed and warmed her cheeks. "Great Watcher of the gates! Bring me good fortune and make fertile the land, so I may be fruitful in yage root to medicate my spirit."

  She waited. Only once had she ever summoned the Watcher, and he had come to her from behind. He towered over her petite blood-skin frame, thick horns sprouting from his head. She recalled feeling his bovine breath on the nape of her neck.

  Vendronia heard it again. Breathing. The Watcher had crossed over into this world from the Nothing. Vendronia bowed, pressing her forehead down on the dirt before her, and rose again to speak. "Please, I beg of you to grant me the fruitfulness of the soil in my garden to flourish the yage root, so I may serve the destinies of the trog people and gain favor with Varl Torvul." A dark form appeared before her, but it was not the Watcher. It was a figure of utter darkness wearing a black crown. A chill went through her. His spidery spectral hand coiled around her neck and compressed. "I am not who you name, but I am a watcher! Call me the King of Scion! I have come to save my people and let them breed on this land. You will be my pestilence to cleanse the land and enrich the soil. For this task, I grant you motherhood over all the insects that bite and sting. They will appear when you are in n
eed. You will be a Vanguard of Scion"

  The King of Scion brought himself breath to breath with her then, and she felt a tingling of tiny lightning envelop her face and chest. Though it was spring, his breaths smoked like on a cold winter day and clung to her skin like frost. He embraced her with his shadowy arms and squeezed her until she saw nothing but flashes of lightning within the darkness. All the cricket chirps and frog rattles of the night were drowned out by the buzzing of bees and flies. Millions of them swarmed en masse. Her skin burned with bites and stings of crawling things going inside her ears, nose, and mouth and into her nether regions between her legs. She tried to scream but a mass filling in her windpipe silenced her. She welcomed the sleep that took her then.

  4

  KAZIMIR

  "Here we see that when combining the precise gesture as a double fanning of the fingers followed by a twisting backward turn of the fist in conjunction with the release of the giant silver moth powder, we get a beautiful corona of colored light that can bedazzle the softer minded opponent," said Kazimir Drajor to his captive gathering of young students of alchemy.

  Some of his students had nodded off on their desks, others whispered to one another, hardly listening to his demonstration.

  Kazimir sighed and cleared his throat loudly.

  He performed the gesture, cringing within when he noticed his hand tremble and released the powder. The corona burst into a spinning star of iridescence, and then there was an audible pop. The corona swelled in size until it hovered over the entire congregation sending rays of blue, green, red and yellow dancing across the pupils' faces whose eyes bulged with awe.