The Sun Kingdom: The Sword of Myn': V: Solitaire
Alone in the World.
A stray beam of sunlight extricated itself from the thin curtains, and slipped through the shadows, bringing brief light and warmth to each, before wandering away and encasing a drowsy Earthiana inside its light.
Earthiana stirred, visions of revolving suns and velvet-mantled queens still locked behind her lids. It had been a nice dream, a good one, a break from -
The nightmare! She bolted upright, surprised to find herself still in the convent bedroom, dreams or visions nearly forgotten in an instant. The nightmare was real. Here she lay in the room meant for her kidnapped sister, her parents and Bran still very much missing.
Mercir would be coming. He would have news, she prayed; perhaps a ransom was being asked for. That thought was a surprising source of hope. She slipped out of bed and hastened to the chapel, where she knew Mercir would find her easily, perhaps even to join her before Mass started.
Chants were already being sung by the religious as she knelt, but they seemed sad and plaintive, though they were sung no differently from before. Eya leaned her head on her hands as her stomach felt ice-cold. She wasn’t sure she could make it up for Communion. She stayed in her pew, waiting and wishing for Mercir’s hand to find hers.
Even after the religious had all slipped out and headed to the dining hall to share the morning meal with their guests, Earthiana remained.
Yet, when she heard footsteps come her way and halt beside her seat, it wasn’t her brother. It was the Abbot.
“Princess,” he whispered soberly. He took her hands in his. For a moment, his lips parted to speak, but hesitated to move. Earthiana’s heart tightened.
“Dearheart. . . I believe. . . that you ought to include your entire family in your prayer.”
They were gone.
All of them.
“Oh, Father!”
Mercir had disappeared on his way back to the palace in the night, and the rest of the royal family had been missing from their chambers that morning.
Even the palace was no longer a safe-haven.
Indeed, perhaps it had become the most dangerous place to be.
The sun moved along the walls until finally, Earthiana's tears had stopped in that moment when one is too hurt to feel the pain. She looked to the abbot, who had remained with her, and now he tenderly touched her cheek.
“If you feel up to it. . .someone is here to see you, little daughter. It may help, a little.”
The abbot gave Eya his hand and walked her out into the garden. A woman stood among the flowering shrubs and herbs, the last person Earthiana would have expected to see there. Eya didn’t say her name because her throat still hurt from weeping, but she ran into the priestess’ open arms.
“Little Lei-lei!” Liralei Diae murmured, cradling Eya’s head against the gauzy folds of her robe, the cool silken weave of her heavy mantle rubbing the girl’s cheek.
“Did you know?” Eya managed, straightening as she touched her mask. Even through her gloves, it was quite damp.
“I heard,” the priestess murmured. “I had a feeling you were still safe. My Lei-Lei, I’m so sorry. I wish I could protect you.”
Earthiana nodded.
Diae sighed and tucked her mantle over her arm. Earthiana noticed that she was wearing the Sunbelt over her adhonga: it was unusual to see her wearing such a sacred treasure outside of the Temple, especially at a time like this. Diae saw her confusion.
“It was always said to bear the power of protection, Lei-Lei. If that’s true, I wish to wear it near you, for if the rest of your family has been taken. . . I can only think they mean to find you, and soon.”
Her eyes roved around the garden.
“No, I never thought I’d be here,” she smiled a little. “It feels safe for you, for a little while, Lei-Lei. I’m going to remain here with you, until we know what’s going to have to happen.”
Diae took Eya’s face in her hands.
“Hm, as I thought. You aren’t well, of course, my little one. I know you don’t feel up to eating, but a little nourishment will help you.” She put her arm around the princess’ shoulders and guided her back inside the abbey.
“Tea, perhaps, Father Abbot? Away from everyone else, I think. One never knows who might be in our midst, besides.”
“True enough, Liralei. The conservatory will be quiet. I’ll have one of the sisters bring what we need.”
Eya let them lead her along until she was seated on a yellow-striped wicker sofa, surrounded by whitewashed stone columns wound about with vines of many colors. Opalite angels stood in the corners, bearing urns which poured into the lily-sprung pool in the center of the room. The ceiling and walls were mostly of glass, with little pastel rondelles every so often, depicting the heavenly garden and the Tree of Redemption.
Diae seated herself beside Earthiana as the Abbot rang for tea.
“Was anything else taken, besides your family?” she inquired.
Earthiana hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ve not heard. Bran’s satchel was found -”
Her pulse quickened as she realized that the crystals, the book, his notes - she had been too heart-stricken to think of them sooner.
“Father, please have the satchel brought from my room?”
It was done, and Eya waited tensely. If these items were gone – well, would Bran have had them with him? Probably, to safeguard them.
Tea arrived, but the scent of wisteria and honeysuckle couldn’t quell her fear as she seized the satchel handed to her. It was heavy, and the latch was still firmly locked and undamaged. From what the friars had described of its positioning beneath shrubbery, Bran had likely cast it away as soon as their attackers had appeared.
Eya turned the little half-moon lock and peered inside. A set of data tapes, a box layered with stellanene and velvet, a datapad, and a massive book were the initially visible contents.
The book was so ancient that the gilded title had flaked off and the binding was crumbling. Eya opened to the title page.
“Star of the Angels: A History of the Angelin Crystal – Its Creation, Destruction, and Legend, by Antonio Elivar, A.D. 4771,” Diae read over Earthiana’s shoulder.
“They didn’t take it,” Eya sighed.
“And the crystals?” Father Riga murmured.
Eya pulled out the data tapes, and a few papers they were bound up with. The latter proved to be some of Bran’s final exams, and were of little importance. A few tapes were notes from his studies, but one stack was labeled simply, “The Search.” She set those aside for further examination.
Rummaging through the satchel, Earthiana located a handful of meteor bits, a compass, and a datapad with a cracked screen – likely from the satchel’s rough landing, Earthiana assumed. Then she found something hard in the bottom of the bag. She drew it out.
It was the little box she had initially seen, carved with Bran’s moon crest. She had given it to him for his sixteenth birthday, to keep any prayer beads he might not carry in his pocket.
Eya felt first in the satchel for any secret pockets, but there were none. Unless Bran had carried the crystals on him - or put them in the box, too.
She cracked the lid of the case open and all three of them gave what was almost a sigh of relief. Inside, resting on a bed of embroidered velvet – a scrap from the fabric which Eya had designed for his school robes – were four shards of crystal.
They were smaller than Earthiana had imagined, and, as Bran had explained, only formed a single lost crystal. Each shard was a soft aqua which gleamed turquoise and azure in the light, clear like opalite, with soft milkiness deep within. It took Earthiana's breath away to be staring at such a legendary artifact. Maybe there was hope!
Earthiana carefully pried each crystal from its resting place and tried to put them together. It seemed to form a roughly four-inch-long crystal, the sides of which were roughly scraped.
Examining it closer, Earthiana wondered if it was some type of text as the legend described. The abbot took a closer look at it.
“I believe it is an example of Angelic script,” he informed her, half in excitement, half apologetically. “It's a lost language. There are a few examples of the text scattered through the galaxy, but no one knows how to interpret it anymore. That is probably one reason why the cure was never found.”
“It seems to me that all we can do is attempt to follow the trail Bran had discovered,” Diae mused. “Whether that is the first path we should take though, will depend on what we hear from the guards I hear approaching.”
Indeed, William and Jamèz were ushered in only a moment later.
“Princess!” they exclaimed, with a look of relief.
Earthiana closed the crystals’ case and ran to meet the pair. William had never been allowed – or never had allowed – himself to hug her for the sake of their positions, but he forgot that this time, and Eya was glad. Jamèz caught her gloved hands gently and stooped to look in her eyes.
“How are you, Amira?”
Earthiana answered with a silent look. The soldiers sighed.
“The city is in turmoil,” Jamèz said seriously. “There are Masses and prayers, and ceremonies at the Temple being said left and right, but everyone is worried. They are afraid of what will happen without a member of the Royal Family to lead them.”
Earthiana looked from one to the other.
“Surely . . . you don't mean for me to lead them?”
The soldiers looked at each other.
“Well, you are the only one left. However, no one actually knows that you weren't kidnapped along with the rest of your family,” Jamèz reminded her.
“We'd rather like to keep it that way, Princess,” William said quietly. “You might be safer if you made yourself scarce for a time.”
Earthiana, her mind feeling as though it had been trampled in a stampede of Solarian gazelles, turned and walked to the window. She looked out at the beautiful city which had been her home for so long.
Where would she go? She had never left Solaria since her adoption. What planet would be willing to welcome her, and whom could she trust?
“Please, Sabé, we can’t risk losing you, too. . .” William murmured.
“Where will I go? They always told me – I couldn’t, shouldn’t leave,” Eya whispered, raising her eyes to meet their gazes. “How can I now?”
“Princess. . . if there hasn’t been a ransom for your family yet, I don’t think that’s what they want,” Jamèz told her quietly. “We don’t know what they want, but we do know that we can’t let anything happen to you! You’re the only one left, Amira.”
“Your safety is our first priority. We’ll do what we can to recover your family, Sabé.”
“Will, I can’t do nothing!” she gasped. “I can’t-”
Her voice trailed off as her eyes caught on the queenly statue standing some distance out one of the windows. A voice came whispering back as if out of a dream.
“I. . . can. . .she said follow the Sword of Myn’,” the princess said softly. “She said I would find what I need, what I desire, and I want my family back and for Starsickness to end-”
“Who told you?”
“Mitená!”
“Mitená?” The quizzical looks reminded her that most called their mothers that.
“Our Mitená. Our Solaria, if you will, the Son-Mother, Mary.”
When pressed, Eya tried to tell what she could of the vision from the previous night, without disclosing enough to lose its precious peace.
“I need to follow the Sword,” she ended. “But. . . I can’t go alone.” She turned to William, wistfully. “You’ll come, won’t you?”
He hesitated and then knelt to take her gloved hands.
“Sabé, I would gladly cross all the stars with you! Yet, I fear that if I disappear, too, everyone will know that you are safe, and that could be a risk. Those who took your family know that they don’t have you, but my face is one more way to find you if I go with you. If I could find a way. . . I would go, Eya. We will need to find someone who will guard you as well as I.”
“I think I know who may,” the abbot offered. “I will speak with them and if they are not willing, they may know of someone who is. They will keep the secret.”
“Then it is decided,” Diae stated, rising and folding her mantle over her arms. “Whatever you need to take with you, Lei-Lei, I’m sure Jamèz and William can acquire for you. Your little friend, the Amira Vira, will be of assistance in choosing your wardrobe; Aphrodelle’s handmaid serves you at times, does she not? Together they will make quick work of things.”
She took up a tea glass and filling it, handed it to Eya.
“Drink this, Lei-Lei, and then I want you to go and rest. We’ll take care of things for now.”
Tea having been disposed of by all those present, the parties separated. Liralei and the abbot would meet with Eya’s soon-to-be proposed companions, and the guards returned to the palace, leaving Eya to wander through the abbey on a roundabout way to her room.
She’d have to duck through the center quarter of the abbey, which was off-limits to all but guests on retreat; it would keep her safer that way, to avoid unexpected faces.
She was watching the sun slide the colored panes of light across the floor, at the foot of every stained-glass window, when she had a collision.
Read the previous chapter here.
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