Bardian's Redemption

  H. Jane Harrington

  Bardian's Redemption

  

  Book Four of The Guardian Vambrace

  Tumbleweed Crossing Publications®

  Bardian's Redemption

  Copyright © 2017 by H. Jane Harrington

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced

  in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are products

  of the author's overactive imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental,

  and would be pretty darn hilarious.

  __________________

  ISBN-10: 1546936661

  ISBN-13: 978-1546936664

  __________________

  Cover art by H. Jane Harrington

  Interior art by Haddie Harrington

  guardianvambrace.com

  Tumbleweed Crossing Publications®

  To Haddie, for being my wingman.

  To Andy, for being my eldersitter.

  To Jen Bohan, for being my cheerleader.

  And to Terry, for it all.

  Also by H. Jane Harrington

  The Guardian Vambrace series

  Ithinar's Bloom

  Valoria's Honor

  Shunatar's Folly

  Bardian's Redemption

  

  

  We are but a fabrication. Untruths lining the layers of false worlds.

  In my supposed strengths, I am feeble. In my loves, I only dreamed.

  Though I blink, I do not see. My eyes are open, yet ever shut.

  I am undone.

  Might I trade myself for a truth? There is no price too high: even breath of lung or

  beat of heart I can afford. I cannot count the cost, for I have traded

  divinity's smile for my Guarded's soul, and I do not now believe a million thus

  of mine to be restitution enough. What must I pay, what must I sacrifice, that

  I may buy him back? Take the best and all of me. I give it freely in exchange

  for a soul much more precious and worthy than mine has ever pretended.

  - Toma Scilio, Guardian Betrayer

  A Foot on the Path

  * * *

  

  -1-

  Cut on the Shards of a Shattered Soul

  Malacar once told me my mouth and my ego would be my undoing.

  That he so accurately foresaw my fall might lead one to believe my

  Guardian brother is a Prophet Unawares. The crueler reality is

  that my fate was obvious to those who know me best.

  - Excerpt from the transitory journal of Toma Scilio, Guardian Betrayer

  Day 7 in the boat from the soggy bottom of the Five Layers of Hell

  It is not a good day.

  Our rations have gone to mold in the sogharbor humidity of this northern air, my underdrawers chafe with salt and sea, and my muse has abandoned me. Can I blame her, this dereliction of inspiration? I would abandon me, too.

  There might be some manner of irony to be found in the beauty of the azure canvas that fills these northern skies. We bards sing of stormy clouds as an omen of dark times rising and yet, the skies I see before me are vibrant and robust, like the twinkling gems that once were Vann's eyes, before my hand severed his soul. The sky admonishes me in that obtrusive blueness. It reminds me of my betrayal, as surely as does Vann's empty vessel. As here I gaze to yon eastern horizon, upon the imagined shores of Havenlen where we are bound, I see the promise of shelter, the cover of anonymity, and the dry, stable ground that does not dampen my cloak. Vann sees nothing. He stares blankly. His eyes are cerulean as the sky, yet dull as the water in the boat that sloshes and bothers my boots.

  It is not a good day.

  “If you get past the tangy bits, it don't taste so bad,” Dailan said. He thumb-launched a dry biscuit that arced across the boat and plopped perfectly between the cleavage of the journal's pages. “This is just surface splotch. I had worse. I was so hungry once, I et a whole loaf that was green and black full through.”

  Toma Scilio sniffed the moldy biscuit distastefully and tossed it back to the boy. “You are welcome to my share. We should be seeing the shores of Havenlen in another day, where I shall dine to my heart's content upon a more agreeable cuisine. I do not believe my tender digestive system to be a match for yours.”

  Dailan shrugged and popped the morsel into his mouth. “If you say so. But if you use your imagination, your digestivals can be fooled. I just pretend it's cherry pastries instead of moldy hardtack, and my guts don't taste the difference.”

  Scilio displayed repulsion across his pallid face in the form of grimace and verdant flush. He had always been delicate of stomach and particular of palate. Averting his gaze from the golden-skinned boy's uncouth mastication, Scilio skipped his violet eyes along the southern horizon. He searched the open seas, wishing a particular Hilian ship to sweep upon them with messages of victory bursting across its banners. Never did the ship of Scilio's dreams materialize. His imagination was much richer than his reality.

  “So, what's White Tower like?” Dailan asked conversationally. “That is where we're going, ain't it?”

  “It is, though I cannot provide an adequate description,” Scilio lamented.

  “You never been there?” Dailan raised an incredulous eyebrow. “I thought you knew Havenlen like the lining of a lady's specials.”

  “Alas, my travels in Havenlen were limited to the northernmost half of the isle. The Scilios are legacies of Drendledown University, you see. Excursions to visit with my scholastic siblings padded the annuals of my visits. I was the lone Scilio with no aspirations to follow in the deep trench dug by elder feet, for my calling was to chase the breath of the wind's melody. Upon my proverbial flight from the nest, I did return to Havenlen, oh yes! Many moons overlooked my company with a traveling theater troupe, though we never made it south of Johrsel's Glenn. The road washed out in a gale—it was the summer of the floodmere moon—and so we turned back upon our path to the sea,” Scilio mused, feeling nostalgic pangs twinging his heart with longing, as though a lifetime had separated him from those lost glory days and not scant years. He remembered himself quickly. “I left Havenlen thereafter and had not a chance to return.”

  “Well, now you get to see a whole new part. It's like an adventure!” Dailan said, with winsome cheer.

  Scilio tried for a gracious smile. Adventure was the playground of youth. Scilio was only twenty-three, young by all standards, but his mind felt aged beyond the tender suggestion of his years. Naivety was no longer a luxury he dared afford.

  As the long hours ticked by, passed in rounds of idle chatter and idler silence, the boasting blue skies opened arms to the welcome of a cloud army, fancied in stories of old as the skypixies who built their walls of towering opulence and fluff. They would hammer out their wars with pixiearrows of hailstone and raindrop, punctuated with cannons of Blazerstreak. When their battlefields had dried, their fortresses fallen, they would build their walls of cloud once more, to unleash their sky wars for eternity. Long had bards lifted voice in song to honor the tales of the skypixies' quenching wars, which fed life to the grounds below with their tragedy and death from above. Scilio could not find a note of gratitude in his lungs now, for those mythical fantasies were about to unleash their fury upon the shores of Aquiline, where Kir and Malacar were bound.

  Barely visible, merely a hint and a whisper caressing the far distant southern horizon, a squall line marched along the expanse, the poetic harbinger of all the dark times
to which Scilio had alluded in his journal. It was the gentian of a deep bruise and seemed to rise to the Heavens, a towering wall of raging Elementals. Those unfortunates on the southerly seas, Kir and Malacar's ship in the inclusion, were about to be pummeled by torrents. While Scilio would never wish the chaos upon his Affianced Crown Princess sister and Guardian brother, their proud galleon would tolerate the storm much better than Scilio's modest vessel, which limped along toward Havenlen on paltry wind magic, sleepy currents and insignificant prayers. Scilio was rife with abundant thanks that the rain would not affect him.

  “Freaky-looking storm yonder,” Dailan said, following the path of Scilio's distant gaze. Moldy crumbs ejected from his overburdened mouth as he spoke. “You think it can really rain fish? Lyndal told me he seen jingfish come down in buckets during the drencher season a few back.”

  “I am certain Lyndal was engaged in hoodwinkery for a laugh,” Scilio said, brushing away the clingy crumbs that adhered to his tunic. “Your clan brother is somewhat given to monkeyshines for merrymaking.”

  “No, he took an oath on it. Said the fish storm came down so hard, it knocked a goat clean through his shanty floor, and the old widow Rappinnah got herself drowned under a thousand swishing tail fins!” Dailan looked for the first time with dismay upon the sack of biscuits he held. “Almost wish it would rain jingfish here.”

  “Assuming we survived the onslaught, how might you suggest cooking such a feast? What with our overabundance of kitchen wares?” In Kir's absence, Scilio was not generally given to sarcasm, but there were some situations that invited it.

  “Cook? You never et raw fish before? It's damn tasty on rice or crackers. I was thinking it would liven up these biscuits proper.”

  The suggestion was enough to nudge Scilio's tender gag reflex, so he set himself firm with a mental charge of Kionara! to forestall dry heaves. A diversion was in order, and a changing of the subject. “I'll not wish us an aquatic hailstorm, thank you. Might you engage Vann in some stimulating conversation? He may not hear, but it does no harm to exercise what little awareness remains. Perhaps you might regale him with some of your exploits in burglary for his shallow entertainment?”

  “Good idea.” Dailan bobbed his head with youthful exaggeration, a motion that shifted disheveled umber bangs over his eyes. Away from his forehead he wiped the strands, made clingy and clumped from the salty mist of the sea air. He plopped himself beside Vann and commenced to chatter away, despite the void in his audience's eyes.

  Scilio seized the opportunity to return attentions to his musings. This particular book was not the favorite leather bound journal that was embossed with the Scilio family crest in the corner of the cover. That one rested safely in Kir's possession. It had descriptively documented their journey with precision as they had traversed the Septaurian isles. Should it fall under the scrutiny of an agent of Alokien, their identities would be realized, completing Scilio's failure as a Guardian. The risk represented by keeping it in Vann's proximity was too great.

  Scilio had purchased this inexpensive journal in Balibay before their departure. It was far too dangerous to document evidence of their true identities, but Scilio knew himself well enough to recognize his own need for narrative release. With no outlet for his Creative gifts, the pent up ideas would certainly dissolve his sanity from the inside out. The tension and depression melted away with the graphite that confessed it all to the paper. It would be a temporary resting place for his creative works and observations, which would burn to ash under their nightly fires when they made landfall. Scilio could open his soul to the page, subsequently allowing the words to feed the evening air with warmth. He flipped to a blank page, sighed to the world, then began writing.

  Dailan is a faithful companion. He brings a lightness to this little boat that would otherwise be lacking. The emptiness of Vann's blank expression and the despondence of my own spirit would make a dismal journey of this quest for sanctuary and redemption, but for young Dailan's presence. If not for this twelve-year-old boy bleeding life into the cargo, I fear my own discouragement would darken the skies themselves. Perhaps it is Dailan that keeps those distant storm clouds at bay, if not overhead, then at the least in my heart.

  “Hey, Shunat—,” Dailan stuttered against the force of habit.

  Scilio forced an exhale of exasperation and clapped his journal shut. He had insisted the title of Shunatar be retired to its passing, as he had no more desire to be reminded of his divine parentage. Scilio may still be a Shunatar, the son of a God, by blood, but the conceited, arrogant thing the title had created had been soundly murdered at his own hand. He would never again fall to vainglorious airs. Alokien, the God of the Creatives, was Scilio's father. The warped deity had manipulated Scilio into betraying Vann. It was a betrayal Scilio could not bear. He had very nearly impaled his heart on the jagged shards of his shattered soul. If not for Kir and Malacar holding back his intent, Scilio would certainly have ended himself upon his blackened Guardian sword. They had replaced his shame with a stronger urge: to right the wrongs he had committed. His task was now to protect Vann, their Crown Prince (or unAscended King, depending on how one went about defining the title). To hide him away from the Chaos Bringer who wanted his empty vessel, and find a way to recapture Vann's lost soul. To return Scilio's tainted Guardian sword and vambrace to the lustrous, opalescent lumanere glory they once were.

  “Ooops... sorry. I mean Tosh,” Dailan corrected carefully. His chin was tucked against the expected reprimand.

  They had to leave their former names behind to disappear into the world. Scilio had settled on Tosh for himself. He had already chopped his gorgeous tawny brown ponytail, the marker of the stylish nobleman he had been. His silky hair, once long and treasured, now fell to shoulder-length, abandoned of care. The new name had been one more step toward re-creation. Scilio was an accomplished actor. He would take on this new role of Tosh for as long as they hid at the bottom of the world.

  “No worries, Dainn,” Scilio soothed, using Dailan's new appellation for practice. “I'm not accustomed to our new roles, either. We'll help each other, you and I. What did you want to ask?”

  “Just wondering how far's Havenlen,” Dailan grinned. His crimson eyes tweaked in mischief. It had been the millionth time he had prodded Scilio with the question, and it had become something of a playful torment.

  Scilio sniffed, suddenly empathizing with Kir's proclivity to whack Dailan with a paper fan when she was annoyed with him. Alas, Scilio was not given to barbarism as was his dear sister-of-the-sword and freshly minted Crown Princess. He must resort to a more gentile form of warning. He lacked the mental energy for anything more.

  “Do ask it again,” Scilio warned, “and I may be prompted to impart my answer upon your backside.”

  Dailan cackled and bared his buttocks in dare and playful mockery. Scilio swiped his boot, grazing the boy's hip as he swung away.

  “I now understand why some animals are inclined to eat their young.”

  “You ain't that hungry, are ya?” Dailan prodded. “'Cause moldy biscuits taste a lot better than scrawny gutter rats, and I got a whole bag full'a them. The biscuits, that is.”

  Dailan seemed to grasp how to pull Scilio from his chasm of depression, even if the manner upon which he did was boorish and crude.

  It was not a good day, but Dailan made it marginally better.

  -2-

  Throwing Curse to the Gods

  I cannot fathom how Kir found it in her heart to forgive my betrayal. I fully expected and yearned for a quick end on her sword, for it would offer a sweet escape from the agony and guilt of my own creation. Perhaps she learned something of the implementation of torture from Tarnavarian. Her forgiveness and insistence that I live to bear the burden of my

  guilt is a much crueler punishment than her sword would be to my heart.

  - Excerpt from the transitory journal of Toma Scilio, Guardian Betrayer

  It was a great day. W
et, wild and wonderful.

  The galleon's decking groaned under the stress of the swelling waves, and it roared under the torrents of black rain. The storm threatened to capsize, to founder, to drown the ship from above in a trillion angry drops of the very stuff that kept it afloat from underneath.

  Kir hitched her arms to the rigging on the main deck, leaning forward with her chin to the sky. She screamed challenge to the Gods that conspired against her. To Brenderia, the Goddess of the Naturals, and to Bosk, the God of the Elementals. If they had sent the squall for Kir, she would send back her own defiance. She would not be foundered, and she would not be beaten. Not by the angry walls of black rain that she hated so much, or by Alokien's creative chaos that would paint the world a landscape of darkness. She would vanquish them all.

  “Soggy bottom of the Hells, Kir!” Malacar cried into the roar from behind. He freed her wrists from the knotted ropes and hauled her through the hatch, helped by the wave that poured them inside. He fought the storm forward to secure the hatch against the angry wind and dogged it down.

  The jumpy-juice was flowing. Kir laughed boldly into the sudden quiet of the passageway. She threw Dimishuan curses to the hatch, hoping whatever Gods were listening could hear. She promised a good spanking and other delights of torment. It was the first time in two weeks Kir had felt energy in her bones and exhilaration coursing through her veins.