The Sword of Myn’: VII: Exile
O min nefrydyr Dhiós! Eos-fylakas-inä, m’éneia, aurös! Mitená min, mará velthaya en ärdos!
O my beloved God, the Star-keeper, keep my family, I beseech thee! Mother mine, may my pain, like yours, not be eternal?
The words were repeating, punctuated by the ancient Aves taught by the abbot, running as a river through Eya’s mind. She was aware of little else, barely conscious of the words themselves, staring at the carriage wall, seeing now in her mind a dark prison where her family might be; or a desert; or a tomb.
The carriage was rolling up to the spaceport now. The river sparkled on its way down to the bay, and transports zipped to and fro; even on a quiet day, many travelers were leaving Solaria for home. The carriage halted at a side door, nearest to the east wing where Brendan’s ship, the Altair, was waiting.
Earthiana stirred, and looked out from the deep recesses of her hood into which she had withdrawn. The cloak’s bonnet, wired in sunburst pleats, kept her face in shadow, within which her mask was lost.
A sound of someone jumping down, and Brendan opened the carriage door. He lifted Eya out reverently and set her on her feet. Liralei was next, similarly unrecognizably shrouded in a hooded cloak; William and Mira had already obtained entry earlier in the morning, the latter packing away Eya’s things as though they were her own.
Eya waited as Liralei paid the driver; the horses went their way, their burden easily lifted. If only hers could be!
She was leaving home. She was doing what everyone had told her not to. Would her family tell her otherwise now? According to the Abbot and Liralei, they would. She was leaving everything, and yet everything – save those two – had already left her.
“Princess… we need to get you through as swiftly as we may.”
Brendan was already holding the door for her. Earthiana tore her eyes away from wandering the distant city skyline, dropped her head, and entered. The sleek lobby opened directly into the well-organized tri-leveled port, arranged in a crescent, the concave side allowing for easy exits over the riverside.
Brendan found a kiosk and obtained the key to the lot he had taken, and paid the final fee. Then it was back into the open air to dodge transports and bikes, until the lot they sought appeared, barricaded in on both sides by massive cargo ships. It would seem that loads of precious stone and newly-filled greenhouses were on their way out of the system, too.
The Altair proved to be a small cruiser, the kind that knew its worth both in battle and in cargo runs. Its double, backwards-hooked wings recalled that of an eagle, covered in marbled aluminum and chemically strengthened tridymite tiling. The hatch was opened, the ramp lowered; William was standing at its foot, watching for Eya’s arrival. Just as the others, he hid his face by a cloak, capped, for it was unhooded, but the collar covered his mouth in the cold.
Mira ducked down the ramp. Brendan met her.
“We’re set.”
“There’s no time to waste,” William said gravely. He took Eya’s arm and squeezed it. “All your things are inside. You’ll be alright.”
Liralei stopped him from helping the princess up the ramp.
“Just one moment more, Will. . .” she murmured. She stooped and looked into Eya’s eyes.
“My prayers will be with you, as with your family. Promise me that you’ll do all to stay safe, Lei-Lei.”
Eya nodded slowly.
The priestess straightened, reaching beneath her cloak, and drew out the sunbelt from about her waist.
“Take this.” She raised a hand. “If it bears the power of protection, I need it to be with you, Amira.”
A frown furrowed Earthiana’s brow.
“It’s your sacred relic. How can you give this to me?”
Not to mention, that was not an easy thing to take, when it was not of her faith.
“There’s always been a copy of the belt,” Liralei responded. “For safety. No one will know. And if they did, no one would mind.”
She studied Eya’s face.
“I know what troubles you. I passed it before the Abbot, he blessed it. Take it, Lei-Lei.”
Eya allowed the priestess to clasp the belt around her waist. A few bars were slipped out; the belt melted to her measurements.
“Now. . .that wouldn’t be too safe this way.” Liralei laid her hand on the great jewel. A sound like a digital connection, and it morphed the gold into a leathery brown shade. The great stone dulled.
Liralei took Eya’s face in her hands and smoothed the wrinkles from the mask. “I fear you’ll have more to learn on this trip than you think, Lei-Lei.”
“Why do I feel like everyone knows things about me that I don’t know about myself?”
Liralei smiled a little sadly.
“Because maybe we do.”
“But why? Shouldn’t I know things about myself?”
“Maybe you’re not meant to, sweetheart… not yet.”
“Liralei – we have a five-minute clearance,” Brendan said quietly.
Liralei released Eya and stood back.
One foot in front of the other – that’s all there was to it, Eya tried to tell herself, as she began to follow Mira.
Earthiana halted and looked back at William. His eyes showed his heart even behind the mask. She ran back and slipped her arms around his neck. He held her tight. No words were spoken. It was time to go, and for all she knew, she’d never see him again.
Liralei shielded her eyes as she watched the ramp raise and the hatch slide shut. The lights bordering the lot began to blink as the engines fired up. Then the Altair rose over the river, and, with a spurt of blue flames, leapt away and into space.
The hollow breathing of the air conditioning and the life support systems layered with the soft throbbing of the engines. It was lulling, safe: if one was used to space flight.
Brendan sat in the pilot’s seat, flicking switches and setting the Altair on temporary autopilot. Mira, in the co-pilot’s seat, swiveled around and checked their automated flight path; she got up and took the stairs out of the bridge two at a time.
Eya stood there, gripping the back of the guest sofa where she had been seated, eyes staring out the front shields; she crept to a side window and watched her home planet spiraling away.
First flights were normally exciting, not disturbing. Slowly her fingers untwisted the golden buttons clasping her cloak. She removed it and wrapped it around her arms like a winter muff. Her hands felt safe there. She was afraid, afraid because she didn’t know her companions well, and yet trust was necessary for her to give.
Mira returned, bearing a shawl; she draped it over the sofa and watched Eya.
“Careful, my princess,” she said lightly. “Such views have been known to make some dizzy.”
Brendan swiveled around now and looked silently at the princess, who turned reluctantly from the window and stood, painfully straight, at a loss as to what she should be doing and where she should be going, even only on board.
Mira patted the sofa. “You may sit here, Princess, if you wish. The ship is as yours. Please make yourself at home; when you’re ready I’ll show you your cabin, but for now this is probably best as we figure out where we’re headed.”
Eya took Mira’s advice and sat down once more, gingerly, and her anxiety didn’t stop her from remaining proper. She had a very specific way of seating herself which Mira had only ever seen in one family before: pivoting as she met the chair, she sank down, her legs already crossed.
Mira’s eyes slid to her brother’s face as he leaned his arms on his knees. He had seen it, too. Brendan sighed a little and stood up.
“Would you tend to the Princess, Mira? Water, perhaps, for all of us. Princess, I know this first flight will be uncomfortable for you, and we’ll help you adjust as much as we may. For now, I’m going to bring up the Constellarium; we can plot a course from there.”
Mira nodded at her brother’s suggestion and soon was setting three tumblers of iced citrus water before them, mixed with just a little berry syrup for Eya; enough to turn it a translucent blush.
Earthiana murmured her thanks and took up the tumbler without question, yet she knew she drank it the more readily.
Brendan seated himself at the circular data center, a few paces from the sofa, and pulled up the 3D constellarium. A few taps and the map was centralized from Solaria. He offered it to Earthiana, for her to point out the course as described by the Lady.
“It’s the Sword of Myn’,” Earthiana said quietly, as Brendan demonstrated how she could touch the projection and draw a course. She lightly tapped the air where Denea was marked, and began to draw her fingers across the sphere.
Her fingers started shaking. She pulled her hand back, curling it. The shaking didn’t stop.
Mira touched her shoulder. “Your body needs sustenance, even if you don’t feel up to it, Princess. Liralei told us how it was for you. Please, let me get you something. It will help, and it will help your family. . . they need you to be well.”
Eya only nodded, rubbing her hand and staring at the selected star.
Mira vanished into the kitchen, and soon was setting a tray down for the three. Evidently she had prepared and portioned out the meal before they had even left the ground: pasta, flavored with Divadian squash puree; custard bread with sweet cream, and chilled berries. Eya stopped and stared at her plate for a moment.
“How did you – Liralei must have told you. My mother often had it made for me. Thank you.”
Mira smiled.
“You’re welcome, Princess.”
But Liralei hadn’t needed to tell her.
“No-”
Mira stopped halfway to her seat.
“It would probably be best not to call me by my title,” Eya said slowly. “And Earthiana is an unusual name even on Solaria, so Eya, perhaps. You may call me by my title while we’re away from others, if you wish, but it would probably be safer…” Her voice trailed off as Brendan raised his eyes from studying Denea’s system.
“Wise,” was all that he said, but his eyes hesitated to leave her face. He glanced at the plate before him and prayed grace.
“Whenever you feel well enough, Amira. For now, I’ll study Denea’s system. Unless you think that we’re only meant to travel by this line to the end point.”
Eya had to pause from finishing her custard bread.
“I… She didn’t say. I would assume she would only have shown me the end point, were we to go there, alone. Perhaps the remaining crystals are necessary for us to find, and perhaps the Sword of Myn’ is the narrowing of the search that we needed. But as for what planets or moons, or other objects we might be meant to investigate, I know nothing of.”
Brendan just bobbed his head thoughtfully.
Earthiana laid down her fork and drew her fingers down across the sphere, highlighting four stars and marking Denea at the last.
“These are the other stars in the Sword of Myn’,” she said. “I don’t know what you might call them, but for us they are Glesär, Rhyne the Ruby-Drop, Iryidl, and Mista.”
Brendan tapped the stars marked and their names appeared.
“Castula, Caseyta-4, X’Uma, and Alula Borealis.”
“Meh, Vestar has the blandest naming system,” Mira grumbled, humming as she drew a basket of pencils from beneath the data center and began arranging them in formation.
“Says the one who literally named the last dog, ‘Dog.’”
“That’s because we weren’t supposed to keep him, and it was logical to just call him dog.”
“Your logic is lovely, Mira.”
“I like how you kept calling him Dog even though you argued with me that we should name him.”
“At least I got us started calling him by the Elvish version.”
Eya was watching them quietly.
“While you speak of names, Mira, are you a princess, then?” Eya inquired, cocking her head. Mira was not a name anyone bore on Solaria, except as Amira, with varying pronunciations.
The girl smiled as she drew out more construction materials.
“No, not a princess, dear one; it means ‘maiden’ in our tongue.”
Brendan eyed his sister.
“Mira? What are you building?”
“I don’t know, I’m just building something.”
“Just don’t use up all the pencils in it, please. We just bought these two weeks ago because you used the last set in a project.”
He tapped on Castula’s icon and pulled up the system’s file. It was one star in a pair; according to both Vestar and local knowledge, there were only two known natural satellites. One was a planet, and a dwarf planet. Neither had been greatly explored.
The planet’s name was Aiala; it sat within the distant habitable zone, and was unlike any of which Brendan or Mira had heard tell. It was covered in water, bubbled by a thin but strong atmosphere; but all life was beneath the waves, and there were no landforms anywhere to be seen.
“I’m not sure this is going to be of much aid to us,” Brendan muttered.
“What if-”
“Mira. . .”
“No, what if, there’s something underwater?”
“And how do you expect to park the ship on water?”
“That is a problem I would love to solve.”
Brendan checked the dwarf planet’s file. It was outside of the habitable zone, much too close to Castula to be as safe for them to visit as he’d like.
“Princess?”
His eyes turned to her for a decision. Eya froze. How were they to know where to go? How could she tell them where to go when she didn’t know?
Brendan seemed to understand how she was feeling.
“We can always investigate the second if the first gives no answers,” he told her. “Which do you feel is the more likely?”
“Perhaps… Aiala? Since it would be safer. I would rather not take anyone into danger needlessly.”
He smiled and transferred the coordinates from the data system to the nav-com.
“It looks like Aiala is our first course, then,” he declared. “Mirmir, enjoy your research, and I know I don’t have to ask you to share your findings on landing, because you’ll be much too excited.”
Once he had manually locked the course, he warned the two girls to take their seats for hyperflight.
“Hyperflight?” Eya repeated incredulously. “I didn’t know it was real!”
Brendan smiled. “A handy tool Vestar discovered in a corner of the galaxy and improved. Even so, it will take a few days for each journey.”
“Yet it will be so much swifter,” Eya whispered. “We have time!”
The relief in her eyes was matched only by the look in Brendan’s as he turned away.
The computer scanned the intended flight path for obstructions.
“The chosen course is clear,” said the computer. “ETT, twenty-two hours. Jump to hyperflight commencing in 10 seconds.”
Eya held her breath as the count-down began.
“10… 9… 8… .”
In less time than she’d ever guessed, she would be out of calling distance from home.
Then again, perhaps it was her home that had been kidnapped.
Maybe she would find it again.
Maybe.
Read the previous chapter here.
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