Phoenix Rising by Ryk E Spoor Page A

We’d pretend they were adventurers, I always took the phoenix and Rion the dragon and we’d share the others .
    She put the box down gently and looked around the room again. What am I looking for? she wondered. It wasn’t as though these items hadn’t been examined. The Justiciars had all combed through the wreckage. Rion had helped others sort through the pieces. Toron, an Adjudicator of the State of the Dragon King, had searched every piece, and none of them had found anything. The gods had been terrifyingly silent, even Myrionar, with its usual power to see through falsehoods and name truth, even Elbon of the Diamonds and the other dragon gods of the Sixteen had not spoken the answers to its child and servant Toron. What am I expecting to find down here?
    She found herself standing, as she always did when she came here, before the two doors in the center. She remembered how she’d done the same thing when it happened, stood staring for some unmeasured time at these two doors, the only things left untouched in the midst of devastation, portals that should have barred the entry of any hostile force, but that had somehow allowed them to break through, without the faintest alarm being given.
    But having stared at them for so long, she also was annoyed by what she saw. The inside of the doors haven’t a clue to offer .
    She understood why they lay that way—the bar which had held them together would make them rock unevenly if they were laid over it—but she preferred to look at the part where the house had actually tried to keep out the killers.
    She bent over and lifted. Balance , they’re heavy .
    With a grunt, she hefted the first door—eight inches thick of wood bound with enchanted steel—and tipped it over. The other one followed a few moments later, crashing onto its back with an echo like doom. She stood still for a moment, catching her breath. They talk about the Vantage strength, but that’s still hard to do.
    The two doors shone in the lightglobes, smeared in places with soot and ash and dirt, but mostly still clean and smooth, marred only by the deep crescent-shaped gouges where whoever—or whatever—had killed her parents had battered down the door. She moved slightly to the left, and the light reflected back from the gouges, one set nearly a foot lower than the others. They looked faintly silvery, just as she remembered.
    “Who’s down there?” came Rion’s familiar voice. “And what in the name of the Hells are you doing?”
    “It’s me,” she answered.
    “Kyri?” Footsteps, and her brother entered, the glittering armor of Silver Eagle still on him, beaked helm under his arm. “What brought you in here ?”
    She chuckled slightly. We repeat each other . “Urelle came down here earlier today, then I couldn’t get this place out of my head.”
    He nodded, blond hair slightly matted from the helm but still shining in the light. For some reason Rion had gotten all their father’s traits—the light hair, the lighter skin, the blue eyes—while she and Urelle were both very dark, black of hair and with eyes of stormcloud gray which came from their mother’s side of the family. “Yeah, I sometimes get that too.” He sighed. “Not that I ever find anything,” he said, shrugging the shoulders of his armor, “but it doesn’t hurt.”
    “I suppose,” she said, still looking at the doors. Something was still nagging at her. She reached down and traced the grooves. “Did you realize that Urelle didn’t remember any of what happened for . . . well, I’m not sure, maybe weeks afterward?”
    “ Nothing? ” Rion stared at her. “No, I hadn’t.” He stared off, pensively. “But it does make some sense of a few exchanges I had with her off and on.”
    Something about this feeling . . . reminds me of the party for some reason . . .
    Suddenly she was staring at her brother, and he stepped forward, concern writ large. “What? What is it, Kyri? You look like you’re about to