Grace Lore

‘THE BOY WHO SPEAKS FIRE’

Follow the light.

On the unkempt path along the mangrove-lined river, overgrown with vines and flowers, the paladin in his gilded ceremonial armor cut an imposing figure. A dozen warriors and several local guides marched behind him; explorers brought up the rear, sketching, collecting samples and taking notes. The paladin’s wide-eyed young daughter gripped his outstretched finger with her whole small fist.

“Do you like the islands, Grace?”

At six years old, this was her first trip outside of Gythia, and the foreign tropics were a dizzying delight. Wherever there was soil, color burst through. Flowers as big as her head called_hi! hey! hi!_Exotic birds showed off their plumage and screeched to make sure she looked. Even the mosquito swarms shimmered.

“Yes,” she answered, her tone solemn. “This must be the prettiest place in the world.”

“These shall be the Grace Islands, then.” Her father waved his arm in an arc to indicate the half-moon shape of the archipelago. “Make a note of it,” he called over one shoulder, and a mapmaker scribbled in her journal.

Grace stared in reserved wonder at her surroundings while her father named the flora and fauna as though he’d created it all. The locals wore colorful sarongs and flowers in their hair. They waved and never ceased smiling. One of them fed plums to a young macaque that perched with hungry obedience on the little girl’s shoulder.

“These are nice people,” observed Grace.

“Peace and kindness is embedded into their culture. They even file down the sharp teeth of adolescents to remove their violent nature.”

Grace touched her own teeth. “Does it hurt?”

“Oh yes.”

“You should tell them to stop, Papa.”

“Oh,dulcissima! A man may be a better hunter than a tiger, but he would be a fool to tell the beast how to hunt on its own land.”

“But these are people.”

“Yes, they are people,” mused the paladin. “Of a kind.”

Grace stopped short, wavering on her feet. The world around her brightened at the edges. The monkey leaped away and the retinue came to a halt.

“Papa?” she whimpered.

The paladin held her steady by the shoulders. “Do not fear. Tell me what the light shows you.”

Grace shivered as a great wall of ice rose up, blocking their path. Where the path forked toward the river, a wall of fire blazed upward, spitting embers and burning her cheeks. “Ice and fire,” she whispered.

“Which way is the fire?”

She pointed to the river and the vision ended, the walls only tricks of the light.

The procession moved single-file onto the stone steps leading across the river. In the center of the water stood a temple.

A guide intercepted them. His smile never wavered, though his voice was strained. “Sir,” he said, bowing low, “visitors do not cross here, Sir. Danger, Sir.” He held out his arms, revealing rippling burn scars.

“Stand back,” said the paladin. He rested a hand on the guide’s shoulder, and when he lifted it, a hand-shaped spot of healed flesh remained.

The temple was made of stone. The mangroves growing over it were scorched. The buzzing mosquitos and bickering monkeys stayed away, so that the temple was cloaked in eerie quiet. At the temple’s entrance a local boy appeared, perhaps a year younger than Grace. He wore only a sarong around his waist, so that gruesome scars and new welts from burns showed all over his chest and face.

“This boy speaks fire,” whispered the guide. He stared in wonder at his shoulder as the healed skin spread down his arm. “His name is Reza.”

“He’s hurt,” said Grace.

The paladin guided Grace forward, toward the boy. “Go and do as you have learned.”

Grace stepped across slick stones to the temple with care, leaving her father behind. She greeted the boy with a Gythian hand gesture and he flinched.

“I’m going to take care of you,” she said, gentle but firm. She rested her palms on the boy’s face. The light burned at the top of her head and she guided it down, as her father had taught her, down through her head and throat, flooding her heart and belly and arms and then escaping through her fingertips. The light swelled and the boy’s eyes grew wide. Down to his shoulders her hands slid, leaving behind smooth, healed flesh. The light traveled down his body, enveloping him with its warmth. “There,” she said when she had done. She was tired to her bones from the effort, but the boy’s burn scars and welts had disappeared, leaving behind a dazzling, dark beauty. “That’s better.”

The boy opened his mouth to speak, or cry or laugh; it couldn’t be known, for what came from his mouth was a trail of fire, just like in Grace’s vision, spurting sparks and raining ash.

The paladin’s light shield burst into being between her and the boy just in time. The flames beat against it but could not penetrate. The boy’s mouth shut and his eyes filled with ashy tears as the paladin approached.

“The Mageborn must be trained to the proper use of their power, just as you, born to the light, have learned to control your visions,” he said, patting Grace’s red braid. “Until we deliver him to the mages, you must care for him like a sister.”

“My brother.” Grace took the boy’s hand. “I shall name you Titus.”

‘THE FIRST HOUR’

Grace woke in the dark, her greyhound nuzzling its wet nose into her foot. Rolling the morning stiffness from her shoulders, she made her way to the empty training yard in the first rose light of dawn, the greyhound following at her heel. She selected a heavy mace from the weapon rack and moved through a warmup flow, swinging it in slow, controlled circles in front of her body and then behind her back, changing grip and direction, then progressed through lunging battle forms. Her mind stilled as she put her body through the old disciplines. In this way, she had learned long ago to control visions, to bid them come when she wished. Her consciousness flowed with her breath, up and up, the training yard falling away, up and then out.

At first there was only a sound, that of a young man crying out words of power, and then there was a darkness that split apart the air. From that darkness came tortured beings, phantasms, dead things with white eyes yearning for freedom. The Nether, a place of nightmares, the absence of life and light, called forth by a mage.

Grace danced through the mace flow, blind to the world around her, her eyes rolled up, and forced the vision forward. Show me he who opened the Nether, she said without saying, and the vision changed – but instead of a mage, she saw a knight wandering the city’s twisting alleyways in the dark. He was a stranger in Gythian armor, bearing a shield and a lance, braving the sea-cold wind without tiring, asking locals for the whereabouts of a wayward boy. Grace watched as he paused to admire the ancient towers, to stare at torchlit fountains and, in the minutes before dawn, to breathe in the smell of the day’s first bread baking.

Grace ended the mace flow and shook off the vision. A silent cluster of acolytes in robes and cowls filed out to the yard and went to work trimming the rose bushes, brushing and raking the clay and sand yards, and skimming the surface of the battle pool with a net. The mace landed in Grace’s palms with finality and acolytes scurried to bring water and towel the sweat from her brow.

“There is a man at the gate,” said Grace, sitting for her breakfast. “Bring him to me.”

Grace’s visions were not questioned. A few moments later the stranger from her dream was led to her table. He stared at the training yard with open-mouthed awe, his eyes beatific as an icon, while his shield and lance were presented to Grace for study. “These were Gennaro’s,” she said. “Did you know him?”

The man met Grace’s eyes with a wide smile and an ease that few possessed in her presence. “Gennaro was my teacher. He journeyed to the next world on the back of Archelon and passed his possessions to me.”

Grace handed the shield to an acolyte. “Then we mourn together. Gennaro was a good knight, and a friend of my father’s. Do you, then, seek knighthood?”

“That was my reason for coming here,” said the man, and all at once he seemed tired down to his soul. “I found a mage and swore to protect him, to prove myself worthy. But his tenth trial was designed to kill him, and I could not do as I promised.”

“So he is dead.”

“No. I don’t know.” The man sighed. “He did something I could not understand.”

“He opened the Nether,” Grace whispered.

“He tried to kill the Archmage. His own mother.”

“His mother?” Grace’s heart fell.

“I stopped him, and he fled. So I must find him, and right this wrong, so that I can fulfill my destiny.”

Grace stood, and even without the splendor of her ceremonial dress she was an imposing figure, the sunlight enveloping her. “What is your name, warrior?” she said in a low tone.

“Lance,” he said, his voice withered with shame. “Lance of Archelon.”

“On your knees, Lance of Archelon.”

The man knelt, prepared for punishment. Instead, he felt the woman’s palm on his bare head. Warmth flooded down his spine, and with it, a peace he had not known since he was a babe in his mother’s arms.

Faith shows the way.

“With valor and bravery you saved the life of the Archmage,” she said. “You kept watch in the night. Do you swear to live by the tenets of justice, courage, mercy, decorum, honesty, honor, loyalty and character?”

“I do.” His words cracked with emotion.

“Then you are welcome in my guild and in my country. Rise, Lance, Knight of Gythia, in the name of the Light.” Grace smiled and her hand dropped. “Go and rest. This is now a matter for the office of the paladin.”

He wept his thanks as the acolytes guided him away. Grace’s attendants hovered close.

“Shall we call upon the Archmage, Domina?”

“No.” Grace turned and strode toward her chambers, the greyhound at her heel. “Find my brother.”

'REZA, THE FIRE MAGE'

~

ALTERNATE FATES

‘VALKYRIE’ GRACE

THE VALKYRIE AND THE BERSERKER

Where's your valor now?

Red mist covered the muted sun of the Netherworld, and the valkyries in their feasting glade turned their noses up to inhale the smell of nearby fire and blood.

“War,” said one, the eldest, called Grace.

“War,” said the others.

Cheers erupted from the dead warriors at the long table. As the valkyries mounted their horses, the warriors wagered on who would return, hoping for their own relatives and friends.

With her great war hammer lifted, Grace led her sisters to the magic hedge closest to the battle. The sisters sang to open the barrier between worlds, a trick only valkyries know, and leapt over the hedge to the living world, where the sun beat down on the hillside littered with the dead. The valkyries dispersed among the victims, galloping, dreamlike. Some of the delirious dying thought they saw winged angels; some saw armored warriors and some saw barefoot maidens. Well-fed crows scattered to the trees as the valkyries made their choices.

Grace passed by those crying for mercy, for death, for the glade or for their mothers. She left behind a dozen warriors with lightning and shadow-burnt sword wounds until she found the fighter who had felled them. The berserker laid face-down, her hair soaked red with the blood of her enemies, swords still in her fists, an axe buried in her shoulder.

Into the mud Grace dropped. With one sharp tug she freed the axe from the berserker’s scapula. The warrior’s groan bubbled in the mud and blood pulsed from the wound. “Not dead then,” murmured the valkyrie, “but not far from it.” She settled on the ground to accompany the berserker into death.

“Hail, Warrior,” she said. “Tonight, you feast in the glade.”

“Rather not,” mumbled the berserker. She rolled one muddy eye to glare at the Valkyrie. “Have a moose stew going at home.”

“It is a great honor to be chosen for the warriors’ glade,” said Grace.

“I make my own honor.” The berserker winced.

“Death cannot be turned away.”

“When Death comes, I’ll deal with him. Right now, I deal with you.”

“Fair.” Grace stood, gripping her great hammer in both hands. “I shall heal your wound, and then we shall fight. If I prevail, you shall feast with your foremothers in the glade tonight.”

The other Valkyries paused to watch, their dead trophies bent limp over their horses. None had ever seen such a bargain, but none dared to question their eldest sister.

“And when I prevail?” coughed the berserker.

“Then I shall return for you another day. Unless you die of natural causes.”

“I would never!” The berserker spat mud and tried to rise, her swords vibrating with power. “How dare you!”

“Then we have a bargain.” The sky blackened, roiling and rushing to cast the battlefield in shadow. A dense cloud formed over Grace and her berserker, rippling with electricity at its edges, just before the world erupted in a strike of golden lightning.