Revenant Rising - Vessel: Chapter One (Partial Chapter Due To Word Count Settings)

On this cold, autumn day in early October, there was a lot of cleaning to be done. The drafty castle’s bewildering warren of quiet, open passages and overgrown, ivy-choked plazas were bustling with courtiers and servants, whispering with excitement and nervousness. Kitchen wenches exchanged significant glances over washing basins under the still-brightening sky as muted exchanges seemed to take place in every passage and terrace of the great, towering metal citadel. Besides the weather as evidence to the contrary, one might have thought it was the first day of Thaw, judging from the air of breathless anticipation. However, the great twisting calendar set into the stonework of Temper Plaza declared a different reason for the bustle altogether: this day was the New Fire Ceremony Festival.

What made New Fire different from all the rest was the actual date—a date not many people actually understood the significance of. All they knew was what was about to happen: Quetzalcoatl was coming to the Coszcatl today. It had been sixteen long years since their godking had set foot in Coszcatl’s drafty halls, and now he was due at high noon. The cleaning girls hadn’t been allowed inside the Sacred before today—a warm, magically lit space on the top floor of the Coszcatl, free from the whistling wind that invaded every nook and cranny of the aging keep. However, with the dawning of light upon the Coszcatl’s glistening spire, the chambermaids descended upon the dust and unpolished surfaces like a whirlwind. Today, the godking would hold Court again, and every inhabitant of the palace bustled with purpose and rumor.

In all actuality, there was at least one resident of Coszcatl that didn’t care so much about the goings-on of godkings and hurried subjects. This solitary, simple girl was sitting cross-legged in a small alcove between the dull, warm copper glow of the bestial gargoyle Meridyn and the wall with missing panels that was open to all the glorious, rushing air, the rays of the newly risen sun giving her just enough light to see the words she burned into the wood block with her etcher.

Liza, named Xoco by the elder sisters of the Order of Chimalma, had never been anywhere except the Castle and the surrounding village of Sharlit. Coszcatl—meaning Jewel in the ancient language of the gods—was the central castle of the area, though legend said that there used to be more than the four that framed the horizon. Coszcatl, from what Liza could gather, used to be the heart of Merricka, a place of great evil that the godking Quetzalcoatl conquered after a sixteen year war. She wasn’t sure on the exact details, because all of the history she knew came from Loko Grayse, the hedgewitch who came to town from her hermitage out in Gas Stone every other month for supplies. The old woman would hobble up the road on legs so unsteady Liza figured it had to be magic that kept her up and going. Her gap-toothed smile was as friendly as could be to the gaggle of youngsters who would gather around the hem of her tattered skirt as she entered town, but the scowl she bandied out to all else could make a man lose his bladder. Liza saw it happen once. It was awesome.

The surrounding buildings were of brick and metal make, though none reached even half the height of Coszcatl. Most of the servants lived in the great expanse of the Groj nearby, pallets and meager personal belongings separated by thick sheets of plastic that might have been white so many years ago, but this gift from the gods now was a light brown that tapered darker the closer it got to the cold concrete floor.

Coszcatl was older than anyone could remember, and only Loko Grayse ever talked about the ’Tants, who inhabited the lands of Merricka before Quetzalcoatl and his brethren came and saved everybody. The remnants of that evil civilization lay decrepit all about them, and though they were said to be of the darkest nature, the godking had declared that it was safe to use those tools which were still of use to his subjects.

Liza never had learned what the ’Tants called Coszcatl before they were wiped out, but in her heart of hearts, she knew it would have been something beautiful. Even though she wished with every fiber of her being that she could go out and have an adventure, exploring the Parishes beyond the Glen, she would always think of Coszcatl as her home.

However, even with her love of the place, it seemed as though she were the only one who hadn’t settled into the niche she had supposedly been born into. The hunters would bring in their game with huge smiles on their faces; the cobblers seemed to be content with making and fixing shoes; the cooks rushed around the kitchen patio, clucking like so many fat chickens. Liza, however, had a different lot in life…

Before she’d even learned to talk, she’d been made to understand the significance of her role in the society here in Sharlit. Indeed—even the whole of Quetzalcoatl's domain. Raised by the Chimalmist priestess’s sect, she was given every advantage in life one could ever hope for in the kingdom of Sharlit—except that one thing she most yearned for, and yet was so out of reach: freedom.

She’d dreamt of going out into the foothills and then beyond the ranges of the Smoked Sierras, having adventures and dashing to and fro, saving the hapless villages stashed away there in the foreign lands from the ravages of the ‘Tants. She, with her trusty sidekick, Zella, would charge off in the company of Sir Xiuhcoatl, Quetzalcoatl’s Right Hand, Head Eagle Knight of Carolina, and defeat the hordes of savages that doubtless lay just within a few day’s ride to the west, learning the bow even as Sir Xiuhcoatl cut down the vile ’Tants with his mighty broadsword, backed by Zella’s spear…

Zella, known in the Sisterhood as Yoatlyotl because of her fierce demeanor and even deadlier skills with the tepoztopilli, could cut down eleven blooded warriors without batting an eye. The blade at the end of her six-and-a-half foot spear was almost a foot long, edged with the traditional obsidian that Quetzalcoatl’s warriors of the ancient past once placed upon their own weapons. The tepoztopilli had been a gift from High Priestess Quetzalxochitl herself, who is without a common name.

Zella… Yoatlyotl had been enlisted to fight the ’Tant threat beyond the western border of Carolina, where the Badlands lay. She’d been gone a fortnight already, and Liza missed her milkmate sorely.

Looking down at the dressings that had been prepared for her by the castle servants, Liza frowned. What was meant to be elegant and stylish draped across her bloated figure like a tent. Any moment now, she expected to see a family of four crawl out from under her robes and head off to the fields to start their day’s work. She hated being fat. She hated what she saw in the polished silver of her room’s mirror when she peered into its reflection: her pudgy, plain face staring back at her in slight distortion, her own glare hateful and accusing. If only she could...

She knew she’d never be anything more than the stupid girl that she was, but she always wished that she could do something else—anything else. As it was, she was stuck in the archives of the basement floor, learning from the multitude of scrolls and reciting the litany of facts to her tutors’ satisfaction. Sometimes she thought that if she had to learn a single thing more, her head would burst! But, alas, it did not, and so she was forced to continue.

What she really enjoyed, however, was scribing. She’d been given an etcher at an early age, and ever since she’d learned the letters and the spelling, she’d been scribing her thoughts and dreams when no one was looking. She’d been careful to burn the long blocks of wood with her beautiful words on them, lest anyone find out her deepest desires… For it was not thought to be right or fit for the Revenant of the Godking to be scribbling nonsense like she most undoubtedly was. No, she was supposed to be second-in-line to be the next High Priestess, should Quetzalxochitl fail in her divine tests. But that would only happen if something happened to Zella, which was impossible. Yoatlyotl was mighty and brave. No ’Tant could cut her down. Liza was safe from the inevitability of the final fate of the High Priestess, but it saddened her heart that Zella was destined for it.

Her thoughts had already started drifting to her stashed block and etcher, and the mean things she had to say about hateful ol’ Quetzalxochitl that no one else would ever read. She hoped. Probably. . . No, no one would ever see her private thoughts and dreams, her aspirations to get out of Coszcatl and travel past the Glen and see what the other Parishes looked like.

“Xoco! What the Haitia are you doing out here?”

Big Jon! She froze, her cold fingers numbly dropped the etcher onto the plated surface of the alcove, the metal-on-metal clatter jarring in the momentary lull of the howling wind. Slowly, she eased herself toward the lip of the alcove, doing her best to keep her block as inconspicuous as possible while trying not to get blown off the edge before she could make it through the hole in the plating.

“Nothing,” she wanted to say, but before she could get even a single syllable out, a strong, calloused hand reached out of the dark depths of the hole in the wall and pulled her in, accidentally scraping her calf against the rough metal surface.

She tried not to wince as she rubbed her scuffed leg with her right hand, careful to keep her eyes lowered and deferential. Big Jon was the Master Huntsman of the godking, who could be nasty when he was upset, and she’d sometimes be cuffed for even looking at him wrong. Every time she’d cried in the past, he would sit her down on his knee and tell her that she was too stupid a girl to know it, but the defiance in her eyes would get her killed someday, even if she was second in line to the High Priestess. She couldn’t really disagree with him about that. She knew she was stupid. Everybody said it.

And she’d learned a couple of years ago she couldn’t get him to show her any sympathy anymore. She’d grown too old to be able to wiggle into his heart with a well-placed sob, and now he would just hit her again, telling her to quit whining like a little shrishraka. She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but she knew it wasn’t nice. A man like Big Jon—a bastard son who’d risen through the ranks of the Huntsman by being the most savage and bloodthirsty hunter of infidels—wasn’t likely to care about being put to death for the slaying of a Revenant. He was already condemned to the higher levels of Haitia for rejecting his Nahuatl title.

“Nothing—“ she tried again, but a blow from out of nowhere connected with her temple and she was suddenly on the floor, interesting colors flashing before her swimming eyes. She didn’t have to ask herself what had happened. She already knew: she’d been stupid again.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been doing nothing, you stupid shrishraka! I know that’s what you’ve been doing! What else would you be doing the exact moment work needed to be done?!” He reached down and pulled Liza to her feet, idly brushing off the dust and debris that was stuck to her pudgy face. She looked up at Big Jon’s looming figure, deciding against reaching out a hand to steady herself against his huge bulk.