Fiction

Fall of Flowers is the first book in a fantasy trilogy.

Aisari is sent behind enemy lines to stop a war. Morgon has tried to escape the enemy, but they still own him.

How far would they go, to save their homelands?

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Fall of Flowers

Post 1

Prologue

He hated mud.

His foot slid on a thick patch of it and, running too fast to check, he hit the soft ground hard- on his sword arm, gods dammit. He rolled; the swamp mud slowed him, pulling on the pack still on his back. He rolled again and felt the sword miss him by a hair.
Now the thick, black muck was in his eyes. Prone, he swung on instinct and felt his blade slice; someone cried out, fell. He rolled, rolled again, swiped at his eyes and finally felt ground beneath his feet. As he pushed up, the ground slid away a little - this was, after all, the bleakest, most foul-smelling swamp in all of the Four Lands.
Not a place he wanted to die in.
He stood, swung off his pack, switched hands on his sword, drew a poisoned throwing star and turned, threw; drew another, turned, threw… two more cries. He had thought there were three but dropped back down, just in case, and heard an arrow pass his ear just before he rolled once more and felt himself sucked into a deep, fetid bog hole.
Why did it have to be mud?
He held his breath and stilled. For a long moment he heard only the low moans of the three fallen around him. He waited – moments seemed to stretch and thin….. there. He punched one arm out, his fist making a clenching twist in the air as he threw his energy out.
A hit. He felt his attack blast through the archer and raised his head in time to see a figure, looking blurry through the mud on his eyelashes, topple slowly into the swamp.
After a long moment, he pushed to his feet again, wincing at the squelching sounds he made. He had to pause halfway up, his head spinning, dripping fetid bog. Weeks of fighting and running had taken their toll, and this energy work had sapped him completely. Finally, wiped his face as best he could and looked up to take stock. Flat, dark land stretching in all directions; a low, grey sky; and four person-shaped heaps slowly but inexorably sinking into the thick mud.
Well. Perhaps it was useful for something after all.
He wanted to search them for food but knew it was only a measure of his hunger. If they were Daraup’Tai, stealing from them - even as they were dying - was never a good idea. If they were only thieves… no, it wasn’t worth the risk. Instead, aching and tired and slowly dripping, he turned back to pick up his soaked pack, sheathed his sword – he grimaced: impossible to clean it first - and found a thin trail of tussocks that headed roughly east.
He hit the trail running. There was probably no-one else following him, but nothing was certain and he could not weather another battle...
He tired too quickly, and slowed to a walk. As the twilight deepened, insects swarmed and, at the edges of his senses, swamp things began to stir. The thin trail grew tenuous, disappearing sometimes, but there was no choice except to go on.
How had his life narrowed to this?
When the message had come, he had been determined not to answer. But somehow... here he was. A decision he could not, even now, bring himself to regret. Sometime this night he would cross back into a land he had sworn never to enter again. Hunted, mud-soaked and forsworn; his return would be even more ignoble than his flight had been.
For this he would go back. He would meet an army of Masters he didn’t know and a friend he had tried to forget, to stop a war. A war that threatened the Four Lands as nothing had done for millennia.
He stumbled a little, a measure of his fatigue. Still, it was only a few days until he reached the meeting point, and there he could take stock, watch for his hunters, and rest. Guided by the dim stars, he felt his way through the night. All he had now, really, was his promise: hope would have to wait.

Fall of Flowers

Post 2

Chapter 1

LIGHT filtered down through the windows set high in the great hall, warming the vast, airy space. Far below, Aisari stood on the polished floor, motionless, in the opening posture; back straight, eyes focused, body balanced. She raised two swords.
   The man standing across from her mirrored her movement. The swords in each of his hands were long, straight and deadly, twins of hers. She was tall, but he was much broader and stronger than her. She would have to take him swiftly, if she was going to take him at all.
   What opening move could catch a Master off guard?
   She launched herself upwards. She held her swords low and kicked straight at his head. He turned, spun away, but only barely; she flipped, landing to find two swords crossed at her throat. She moved the only way she could, leaning back then dropping to the floor between the slicing edges, and as the blades slid together where her neck had been an instant before, she leaned on one hilt and drove the other weapon up towards his stomach.
   Spinning, sliding, turning, they moved across the smooth wooden floor, the only noise their harsh breathing and the smooth ring of swords catching edges. Time seemed to flow slowly, each second stretching to fit parry and thrust, weave and drop into it. Aisari felt her arms tiring, her reactions slowing a fraction. The Master’s dark eyes never wavered from her; his body in unceasing motion, blades flashing. Aisari caught his right sword on hers, and he twisted sharply; she felt her weapon fly from her hands, dropping to the floor across the hall with a loud ring. Without hesitating she took her second sword in both hands and swung at him, deflecting the second blow aimed at her heart. It had to be now. She moved forward with a flurry of blows, trying to catch his two weapons on her one and drive him back. He gave a few steps, and she knew that she was working him hard; that she could get under his guard, if only she could lure him this way, and then that…
   She cried out as a stinging blow slapped across her hands, and the second sword flew from her grip. She dropped to escape the following thrusts, and struck at his knee. The kick was glancing but hard enough to unbalance him. He fell forward but, from a kneeling position, flung his swords forward also. Aisari, rolling away, was caught as a blade of steel touched her heart, and she stilled completely. The hall was suddenly silent but for their breath. His face was intent, still focused, but she sighed. “You have the match.”
   The Master pulled away and grinned at her. “Well done, Aisari.”
   She allowed him to pull her to her feet. She bowed to him, then they both turned to a long table set under the windows.
   Five Masters sat at the table, facing the hall. The Arms Master strode over to them, placing his weapons carefully aside and wiping his face.

The Sight Master said to him, “Do you think she has passed?”
The Arms Master dropped his towel and grinned. “Yes.”

The seated Masters watched her, considering; a row of solemn faces, from middle-aged to old, lean to round, all neutral. The rangy Sight Master finally said, “I agree. Aisari has passed the first stage of Mastery.” She reached out, dropped a square of old, frayed cloth on the table; white side up.
All down the table, hands raised, dropping the cloth; Dreaming, Healing and Ending Masters, all white side up. The table ended in an empty chair; the Journey Master wasn’t here, but that chair had been empty for as long as Aisari could remember. She let out her breath. She had passed. The Sight Master winked at her; she could never sit through a solemn occasion solemnly. Aisari gave a furtive wink back, before sinking to her knee and bowing her head in respect for the last time as a Journeywoman-in-training.

She had passed.

“Aisari.” The Ending Master smiled her delicate smile. “Go to the Maha Master. She has asked for you.” Aisari nodded, looking once more around the sun-filled hall, her teachers rising from the long table under the dappled light of the high windows. Then she turned and left.
Outside, truly outside, for the first time in a year. It was summer. She had forgotten the smell of grass. The evening was closing in and students wandered through the gardens, brightly-robed patches of colour. Past the garden, the ancient grey towers of the School walls loomed, seeming to watch, to be present, imbibed with the wisdom of a thousand years of Scholarship. She stretched, arms flung upwards towards the sky, and laughed. She had survived more than a year training and meditating in isolation; to be in the world again, as a Journeywoman…

“Aisari.”

When she dropped her arms and turned, the Arms Master looked like he was trying to hide a smile. He gestured to the path ahead and side by side, they turned towards the centre of the School. They had forged a strong bond in the last year, but even before they had been friends, of a sort. She was the only In’savelien here, her fair skin and silver hair making her stand out from the shorter, dark Four Landers. He too was different. He was broader, taller, with skin was more golden than dark and almond shaped eyes. She had found his birth country on a map but it was so distant she often wondered how- and why – he had travelled here to Dale. But he would not talk about himself.

Now, he said, “I never thought I would have a hand in training the first Knight-Sage in an age.”

“I’m not one yet.”

“You will be.” When he wasn’t focused on battle, he had the trick of seeming to gaze into a future no-one else could see. “Although I don’t think you will reach your Mastery here.”

“Not here?” Her steps faltered.

“No.” He paused with her. He looked more serious than she had ever seen him. “Aisari. Times are... hard, and are getting worse. The Maha Master will tell you. We need you to start your Journey sooner than any of us thought.” He reached out, gripped her shoulder, and although she felt comfort in the touch, Aisari felt her happiness drain away, and shivered.
   Alone, she pushed through the massive oak doors, scarred with age, that led into the largest building of the School. She had walked these halls countless times. At the ornate door to the library, she brushed fingers over the carving of a bird that may have been eye height, once, to a five-year-old. She walked through rooms of warm light and endless books to a smaller door. An old, bent man with an impossibly wrinkled face waved her through.
   Inside, the room was quiet. Somewhere, water fell. An old Daleish woman sat on a window seat, turning as Aisari came in. She was so tiny that she hardly seemed to make a mark on the cushion she sat on. Aisari bowed, then sat across from the Maha Master.
   The Master reached out and took Aisari’s hands in hers. Her hands were warm, her aged skin papery but her grip firm. “You’ve done well, Aisari. You have done very well.”
   Aisari felt a smile break out again, warmed by the delight in the Master’s deep eyes. “Thank you.”
The Master patted her hands, then leaned back on the window casement, and Aisari could see the bone-deep weariness behind her smile. “You should be celebrating. I’m sorry to dampen your success so soon, but… how much news you have heard in the past year?”
   The tradition of keeping trainees in a meditation cell for a year had never felt so restricting. “The Arms Master told me news when we were training. That some of our energy work is failing.”

“Yes. We are being limited. It started… insidiously. But now it’s affecting more of us. It may… it seems to be getting worse. Soon, none of us may be able to work energy at all.

“We still don’t know what, or who is responsible. It might be the Daraup’Tai. It may be the Northern priesthood, which would make sense because the news from the North is terrible. We have lost Flowers.”

Aisari felt a visceral shock. “Flowers has fallen?”

“Yes. The Northerners crossed the border into the Four Lands last month. They finally overran Flowers last week. We failed. We didn’t know enough. Could not see enough.” Her eyes were now fierce with regret. “If they keep moving south… when they invade south, the other Four Lands will fall. We will fall. We cannot stand against them, not without Flowers.

“I’ve decided to close the gates.”
At first, the words didn’t mean anything to Aisari. Flowers was a great kingdom, larger than Dale here in the south, second only to Lorn in the Four Lands. How could they fall so quickly? And closing the Gates. The School was open to all, always, and had been for a thousand years.
The Maha Master continued quietly. “All Scholars have been called back here. A few are being sent out, into the world, to find answers. But not many, because our farspeaking and our farsight is failing. We can’t keep anyone outside our Gates safe now. We cannot.. cannot risk what we have.”

The Master was right. Every adult at the School knew how to fight, but there were only a few hundred Scholar-Knights. Without the ability to work energy, it would make little difference to Flowers if the whole School marched now. “What...” Aisari’s voice was thin, and she tried again. “What can I do?”
   “The Journey Master was in Flowers. He was mind-to-mind with the Sight Master – when someone attacked him. We lost him, but he sent these images before the link was broken.”
   She held out two sheets of paper, and Aisari took them to see vivid drawings on both. The first was stark - hordes of Northerners at the gates of the School, hewing them down with their axes, alight with battle fever. She turned over the second sheet and stopped breathing. “But why?” She swallowed. “Why would he have sent an image of me?”
   “Why a Master who has never met you should send your image... I don’t know for sure.” She paused. “The Prince of Lorn has sent an envoy to ask for our help. I think that the Journey Master chose you. We want you to go to Lorn, speak to the Prince there, and the King. Then you should, if you can, go to Flowers to find the Master. To find the tower he sent from; maybe he left a message for you. Maybe he knows how to stop the Northerners.”
   Aisari felt at a loss. “A prince has asked for our help. He’ll expect an army. But without energy work…”
   “Yes. Not only will our numbers be insignificant, but we would be showing that we can’t use energy anymore. That we’re defenseless. If everyone knew…”

“There would be panic.” Closing the Gates meant the School could keep this secret for as long as possible, while Scholars would be more protected and could try to find a way out of the binding, back to their power.

“Yes. But even when we do get our skills back - we need answers, not more violence. After centuries of peace, or at least of truce, why have they attacked us now? What do the Northerners want?”
   Aisari said quietly, “I will go, if you think it best.”
   The Maha Master released her and Aisari’s hands immediately felt cold. “I don’t know if it’s the right decision or not. The Masters are divided. But here we are; and here is my final word. Be our envoy, and find us peace. Come back at dawn and we’ll begin to prepare.”
   “Very well,” Aisari stood, bowed, started to walk away.
   “Aisari,” the Master said softly, and Aisari paused at the doorway. “I, too, am afraid”. After a moment, Aisari closed the door quietly, to leave the Maha Master alone in the deepening gloom.

Fall of Flowers

Post 3

Chapter 1

Outside, Tsering was waiting for her. He held out his arms, and she leapt into his embrace. Whooping, he swung her around.

He had changed in twelve months; he felt broader but leaner. She held him tightly, and his arms still felt like home.
   He put her down and pulled away a little, holding her face between his hands. “You’ve changed.”
   “So have you.”
   “Not so much. Physically, maybe. I’ve been training hard. But you…”
   “You still know me.” She smoothed dark hair from his eyes. “Knight Tsering. It was a long year. I missed you. There were times when I… it was hard. But now… now…”

He dropped his hands, stepped away. “What did the Maha Master say? Did she tell you they are closing the Gates?”

“Yes.”

His eyes were suddenly bleak. “There are streams of Scholars coming back from all over the Four Lands. Flowers… Many of our Scholars didn’t escape in time.”

“Oh.” Aisari didn’t know what to say. “Tsering...”

He shook his head, tucked her hand into his elbow and tugged until she followed him down the path that meandered between the garden beds. “After something to eat. And a bath. And… what did you want most for a year in that meditation cell?”

She smiled a little. “Chocolate and a bath.”

“See? I can still make all of your dreams come true.”

“Tsering…”

“Later.” He said again firmly. “We’ll talk, Aisari. Later.”

Aisari lay in her own bed for the first time in a year, somewhat regretting the amount of chocolate and wine she and Tsering had gotten through with their friends. A quiet celebration, with Scholars from posts all over the Four Lands dropping by their table to congratulate her. Some had a haunted look; there was an air to the School she could not name, exactly, but made her heart heavy. Then a hot bath that had helped with the aches and bruises she had collected while being tested on the Art of the Knight.

Deeper, if invisible, were the injuries from yesterday’s testing for the Way of the Sage.

Although a Scholar-Sage might be many different things – a healer, a dreamer, a worker of air or sea or words – Aisari had mostly trained as a healer. The testing of her knowledge of medicines and healing energies had not stretched her. The final examination, though, had felt like a fight for her life, just as much as today’s sword match had.

She had sat in her small meditation cell while the Chant Master asked questions, hour after hour. She had grown stiff, sitting on the floor in front of him, and longed to move after the first hour or three; but this was part of the discipline, and therefore also part of the testing. Finally, with her straight back screaming and her legs cramping, a little dazed after a long afternoon of questions, the Chant Master had said, “I’ll only ask one thing more.”

She had tried to contain her relief, merely nodding.

He had asked, looking at her quietly, “What is your greatest fear?”

There were many catechisms against fear in a Scholar’s life. The root of all fears was held to be non-existence; a fear of death, of losing this life, of not being oneself anymore. But Aisari paused. Reaching Mastery was about mastering oneself, and in that moment, only one answer had risen in her mind. She had to face it, or fail everything.

She said, “My father…”

The Chant Master knew her story; nevertheless, he had gestured for her to continue.

She had cleared her throat. “My father abandoned me here when I was five. But not because I had Scholar’s gifts. Because he could not bear…” she hesitated. “Could not bear that I dreamed of him. Of him… killing.” She still remembered the nightmares, the visions, of her father. Violence, fire, smoke; his voice, roaring; blood and bodies. So many bodies.

She knew her fear wasn’t rational, but it was deeply embedded. “I fear being a killer… like him.”

“We all have the ability to kill.” The Chant Master had known that she feared killing not because it was difficult, but because it was so easy. A Sage or a Knight learnt secrets of life and death in so many forms… sometimes, while training with sword or scalpel, she had felt it; to slice that way instead of this, to move her sword there instead of here. Humans were, after all, absurdly vulnerable.

Trying for calm, she had asked, “Are Scholars not always seeking peace?”

“Yes.” The Chant Master had replied. “But we all must be prepared to make the decision to take a life, if we must.”

Logically, Aisari had known what he meant. Dialectics offered so many examples: If one person was about to commit a great crime, and she could avert it by killing them, wouldn’t that be best for all?

The School had made that decision before.

But her fear remained.

Her memories of her father had, over the years, remained such a heavy burden because she thought that one of the people he had killed was her mother.

She had passed both tests. Both the Way of the Sage and the Art of the Knight were within her reach.

Now, she sat up, pounded the pillow that felt too soft after her year in a cell on a pallet, and laid back again, staring at the ceiling. She might be the first potential Knight-Sage in centuries, but what could she really achieve, alone, on this mission? What would Lorn say when help arrived and they saw it was only… her?

The next morning, Aisari leaned back against a wall, legs stretched out in front of her on the warm wooden floor. It was quiet in the map room with only the sound of the Ending Master breathing next to her. The light was diffuse to protect the paintings that spread over the room from the ravages of time. Aisari swallowed a yawn and tried to concentrate.

The oldest map, painted in painstaking detail on the wall in front of her, showed the Four Lands of Sêr, Dale, Lorn and Flowers. The vast, cold North stretched to undefined ice fields near the ceiling. The North was patched, divided into irregular provinces, charting the hard rule of Warlord Clans that stretched back into time unknown. Across a thin ocean of curling blue waves, the equally massive, warm southern continent of In’savelien rested just above the floor. The southern continent was divided into huge, ordered states; In’savelien had long been a matriarchy, and the position of the Governor was a unifying power. Not quite a democracy, not quite imperial; as her eye followed the detail of its vast coastline, Aisari felt a stir of curiosity about the land she had been born to, but never revisited. She moved her eyes upward again. She thought about her father when she thought about In’savelien.

The map on the wall to her right was newer. In the Four Lands, the oldest map had shown each country in a different colour. Dale had not changed on the new map; it was nearly featureless, flat with few waterways and thin roads. To Aisari, the shape of it was home, and its uncluttered lines reflected the calm of the elected ruling Council. To the east, Sêr was also unchanged, though they had become poorer than the rest of the Four Lands over time.

Lorn and Flowers had become a single colour. The smaller, colder Flowers had been overtaken by Lorn in a coup more administrative than violent more than a hundred years ago, and reduced to the status of a vassal. It still had a nominal royal family at its helm, and Aisari wondered if they had survived.

The border with the Northerners was the only part of the Four Lands that had seen battle in the last century, with clashes over land, resources and power. But even there, in the last twenty years or more there had been peace, until now; and now the whole of Flowers was lost. Aisari felt an uncomfortable squeeze in her chest. The next time she was here, would all of the Four Lands be patchwork pieces under the colour of a Northern Warlord?

“It’s never as bad as you think it will be.” The soft comment made her turn to the delicate woman sitting against the wall at her side. The face of the Ending Master seemed even more remote than usual in the soft light, her eyes on the maps.

“How so?” Aisari didn’t think that the people of Flowers would agree, but it was always a good idea to be polite to a Master.

“Time. Endings, and new beginnings.” The Master turned and Aisari looked into eyes that had witnessed, guided, and known thousands of dying moments. “When you have seen as many deaths as I, you understand that time smooths the ravages that seem so momentous now.” She flicked long, thin fingers at the maps. “Life and death circle endlessly, regardless of peace or war.”

Aisari frowned. “That does not mean we should not… strive.”

The door opened and the Arms Master looked down at them, his presence filling the room. “Here you are.”

Aisari smiled. “Here we are. Contemplating life, death, and how far it is from Dale to Flowers.”

For a moment, they all looked at the thin line of roads that would take her north into Lorn and then, perhaps, further, through mountain passes etched so carefully onto the map, to the twice-conquered Kingdom of Flowers. The Arms Master said quietly, “Far enough. Come, the Maha Master is ready to continue.”

Aisari sighed, then rolled to her feet. The Maha Master was training her personally for the journey, and not all of what she was learning was comfortable. Perhaps it would be necessary though. Aisari took a last look at the maps showing, innocuously, the hardships she would need to cross with weary travel. The Ending Master waved them out and returned to her solitary contemplation of the ever changing, unchanging world.