Penumbra (5)

This watchtower was of a design similar to the tower she had last slept in, but with some small differences. The mess was much smaller in this tower, allowing for some additional rooms for bathing and hospitalization. This meant there was a much more somber atmosphere compared to the bar-like joviality of Ganroc's tavern-like kitchen, and the few soldiers gathered there quietly gave Alys a nod as she quickly gathered some food and hungrily swallowed it down.

She was sitting contemplatively with a tankard of water when a soldier meekly approached her.

"Begging your pardon my lady, but your brother asked to speak with you when you awoke."

Alys looked up brightly. "My brother? Yes I would like that, very much. Where is he?"

"He's in the crow's nest, my lady, on watch. The very top of the tower." He pointed toward the ceiling.

"Thank you, I shall go."

Alys climbed the two ladders required to take her through the armory level (which was also subdivided into small section, as the kitchen level had been), and then to a small trap door leading to the turret. On this she knocked three times, and after some murmuring above there was the sliding of a bolt and the door opened, revealing Rogan's wide smile beaming down at her. He held out his hand and hauled her through the entrance, up into the clear dusk air, where he embraced her in a huge bear hug. Beside them, the enormous signal-fire burned steadily, suffusing the turret with a hotshield against the coldness of the twilight.

"Oh my little sister." Rogan said into her hair, while still holding her tightly. "I'm very glad to see you, but I wish like hell you were not here."

Alys pulled back. She loved her brother dearly, but had never once let him get away with condescending to her.

"Am I not capable of going where you go? Or do you think me still a child?"

Rogan sighed with the familiarity of one who has had the same conversation many times, but still smiled.

"Same old Alys. What are you doing here? You obviously haven't come as part of our regular reinforcements. By the Sun's rays, don't tell me you left the capital without our fathers blessing!"

"If father had his way he'd keep me locked up in the towers of the City keep forever."

Rogan spun about on his foot in frustration. "You ran away from home? Father will be scouring the great circle for you! Think how worried he must be."

Alys did not want to admit that she did feel guilty about making her father worry, yet at the same time knew she was in the right for leaving. "Father knows where I am going, and he knows I can take care of myself. I've passed my birthstone eighteen times in this world, Rogan. I am old enough to choose my own path, and my choice is to be here, with you."

Rogan's face was an odd mixture of pride and anger. "This is a military unit, Alys! You don't just show up to serve as you please. There is training, there are orders."

"From what I understand you haven't received reinforcements in many moons and that the Frontier is woefully undermanned. You and I grew up under the same tutelage, I can handle a bow and horse just as well as you. What's more I have been trained in the healing arts. Couldn't your tower use a medic?"

Pride began to win out over anger, and his look softened. "Of course we can use every hand we can get, but for all I know there are other towers that could use you more, that is why we have a military structure at all, so that the best people go to the best place."

"Fine. I'll stay here until your reinforcements arrive, and then I'll go wherever they care to send me. I didn't come all this way just want to be with you, Rogan, I want to protect the Kingdom as much as anyone else. You're just my inside man."

Rogan's sternness finally broke and he laughed heartily. "Fine then, you scamp." He hugged her again. "You can stay and help. But stay in the tower! I don't even jest when I say that father would decapitate me with his own hand if he lost you on my watch. Which he very nearly did when we found you!"

Alys blushed and looked down. "Thank you, by the way, for saving my life. I thought for sure I would be banished to the night forever. I've never been so terrified. However did you find me in the fog?"

Rogan smiled. "Well, we had a message come up the line that a VIP was coming up the line and that we might want to ride out to see them. I had no idea it would be you! When the fog came down we patrolled the line looking for you. Normally very dangerous, I wouldn't allow a patrol out in the fog unless there was some compelling reason for it. I'm just glad we found you! We followed the noise the Enemy makes when they want to rattle their opponents in the fog."

The memory of the sparks in the night, and that horrible noise, caused Alys to shiver. "The Enemy. I'd never imagined...I didn't know what to expect. I'd always assumed they were...animals of some sort."

"Animals they are." Rogan retorted.

"Yet they wore armour, they carried constructed weapons. They were obviously coordinating movement. Doesn't that imply intelligence? Which might mean we can communicate with them, establish a dialogue. Find out what they want."

Rogan looked at her in contempt. "A few have thought along such lines. Most of them are now dead. The Enemy does not communicate. They kill, or they drag you kicking and screaming back into the dark hell they came from. Language? Yes, they do seem to speak in a strange tongue. But as far as we are concerned, the sword is all they will ever understand."

"Dare we not ever hope for peace? Surely the Gods..."

"The Gods?" Rogan barked sharply, cutting her off. He regarded her for a few moments, before gingerly taking her by the arm and leading her to thecrenelations on the edge of the turret. Alys felt a not unpleasant pang of vertigo as she looked down on the surrounding lands from on high, seeing the grass and hills gently rolling by. To her pleasantsurprise , to the right of the tower she thought she saw Atrius and a few horses grazing on the rich green grasses they were passing through, tended by a rancher to keep them from wandering too far from the tower.

At the lip of the tower, Rogan gestured out toward the darkness just beyond the light generated by the topflame behind them, an indistinct border of light that flickered against each new line of hill as it slowly rolled into the darkness, out of their vision, into the great emptiness beyond.

"I see nothing."

"Yes, nothing. Nothing at all. No light. We are taught from birth that Helios shines his light on all, and protects us all, but does he shine here? Can you see him? Do not look to the Gods for protection here, little sister. They have no dominion in this place. And where Gods dare not tread, I call that place hell. We stand at the lip of hell, dear Alys, it is there, before you! Nothing? Hell? Night? I think they are the same. And anything that comes from there must be a devil or demon of some kind. I think the Enemy are demons, Alys, and they wait in the darkness and consume all who dare tread too close."

Alys saw a quiet rage simmering in her brother's that she had never seen before, and it scared her almost as much as the visage of the Enemy.

"Let me show you something." Rogan said on a more level note. He looked about for a moment, then pointed into the darkness at something. Alys squinted at it, and could see, to her astonishment, a small point of light in the night sky, like a pinprick through a sheet of thick canvas, shining like the topflame of some far away tower. It seemed to flicker slightly, white and red.

"What is it?" she gasped.

"We know not. Sometimes it appears at different places in the sky, other times it is gone altogether. Speculation on its nature runs rife within the ranks of the Frontiersmen. Some think it to be a weapon of the enemy, others think it a shard of Helios, sent by him to protect us. But I, my sister, I think that it is the God of the enemy, watching over their domain as Helios watches over ours. I wonder if they worship him as we do Helios. I wonder why we ever came to this accursed place." He stood silent for a few moments, contemplating the infinite depths of the darkness before them. Alys had always been able to see thoughtsoccurring in Rogan's head, and she could see he had just thought of something. He leaned over the tower and shouted down to the base:

"Mazzum, how many turns has the wheel made since we passed Knowth Rock?"

"Twenty and three-quarter turns by your leave, Rogan." came the reply.

"Here," Rogan said, an impish excitement in his voice, "I think you'll enjoy this." Rogan turned her slightly so that she faced Southeast, turned at an angle from the darkness but still looking at a dark horizon to the South, one of the topflames of another tower showing slightly to the right.

"What is it?" she asked after they had waited for a few minutes.

"You must be patient. I am not sure when it will rise."

So Alys stood patiently for quite some time, and she was about to ask again what Rogan meant for her to be looking at, when she saw a thin white line of glowing light suddenly appear on the horizon. She gasped again. "What magic is this?"

"Wait, wait, you'll see." Rogan said, a tinkle of amusement behind his words.

As Alys watched the line grew and grew, quite rapidly by all accounts, and began to form a large semicircle of white light above the ground. It seemed somehow familiar to her, and as the semicircle grew and grew to form a full circle in the sky, the shock of recognition took her breath away.

"Rogan, it is the moon!"

Rogan laughed and patted her on the back. "Yes, that is how many react on seeing it like this, for the first time."

"Why does it glow so? I've never seen it so clearly."

"I supposed without the light of Helios to compete with, it holds a light of its own against the darkness."

"It's beautiful. I could not have imagined it could be so beautiful."

Rogan grinned, his white teeth shining against the darkness as much as the moon itself. "I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to see the world anew through your eyes." He clasped her by the shoulders. "It is good to see you, my sister."

"And you also, Rogan." she said, meaning every word of it. They had been close siblings growing up, and it had been lonely for her since he had left for the service.

"So, you rode here from Cardinal City all by yourself?" he said, pride for his younger sister beaming through.

"Yes. I mean, I kept to the great circle so there were often fellow travelers I could go alongside, camp with when we needed. The occasional settler took me in. And I just hopped from land train to land train. My reckoning is that it took me about a moon to get to Aerialus, and then another to get to Tarkos, which is the last city before coming to the Frontier.

"Truly you have made an epic journey. I do not think that even I could have achieved it."

Alys blushed again and said it was nothing. Many people traveled back and forth across the realm of light as part of their day to day lives.

"Well, I suppose you'll be wanting to tend to Atrius, and then I shall assign you to a duty roster. There is always much to do."

"I'm looking forward to it."

Rogan turned harsh again. "But this is no game, sister. As you have already experienced, we are in the most dangerous place in the realm. I've had good friends taken by the dark, good men who could handle themselves. It is not a question of strength, or guile. It's about respecting a power we can't understand, even as we try to fight it. Let down your guard even once, and it will take you. Be vigilant at all times."

"I will, brother."

"Good. I must continue my watch until the next turn. We can tend to your steed then."

At that moment, a low bell started to tone from somewhere below them in the tower. A voice shouted from below:

"A troop bearing the flag of the kingdom approaches from the west, muster a patrol to ride out."

Rogan and Alys turned about and walked around the topflame in the center of the turret and looked towards the sunward horizon to see a troop of about two dozen horses, each draped in the finery of the royal court. The lead rider carried a tall banner, from which fluttered the banner of the orange sun, with a sword and a bow criss-crossing the circle. It was the symbol of the Lord of Arms, the leader of the kingdom's military and one of the most influential servants to the king.

"Oh no." Alys breathed, while Rogan cursed loudly. It was a familiar flag to them, as they grew up under it's shadow, the coat of arms to their own house.

It was the symbol of their father.