All-Patron Reward: My Favorite Scenes 3: Phoenix Rising, Portal, Spheres of Influence

In this continuing series, we now reach my first epic fantasy release, the first volume of the Balanced Sword trilogy, Phoenix Rising. 

This trilogy, just being re-issued now by Ring of Fire Press, remains one of the closest to my heart; it introduced my world of Zarathan, created in 1978,  to the readers and was a story I started working on in 1991. As such, it has honestly a lot of scenes I really like -- Kyri's destruction of the portal through which abominations are coming, her arrival just in time to save Tobimar, Poplock's first "fear me" scene, and Kelsley's cleansing of his temple being some of them. 

But ultimately, I think my favorite is still the one in which Kyri has discovered the impossible treachery of the Justiciars and confronts her own god with its failures...

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How much more simple, how much more sensible, to believe that it was the whole brotherhood that was responsible?

The brotherhood I sent Rion to question!

I SENT him there!

She tumbled backwards down the stairs, scrambled to her feet, sent one more horrified glance at the crate squatting on the tenth stair, indentations glowing like soulless grins in the final rays of sunlight, and turned away, stumbling, tears streaming from her eyes, unable to do anything but run, run, any direction, and repeating the single word no.

Inside she knew the answer was yes, but she could not bear to hear that voice, and so she ran. Brush and vines tore at her, but she ran on, heedless of anything save the terrible need to escape the heart-rending realization of betrayal more monstrous than anything she had ever imagined. She remembered green eyes gazing into hers, a hand warm on her own, and screamed, half in denial, half in rage, her voice echoing through the jungle and dying away like shattered hopes.

I sent Rion to them. I sent him to ask questions, to let them know someone suspected the truth!

Rion died because of me!

A part of her, a very distant part, tried to turn her back, knowing she was fleeing into the Forest Sea, but it was impotent before the seething fury and self-hatred boiling ever higher inside of Kyri. Something lunged at her, bladed legs and venomed fangs and a screech of hunger, but that was its one and final error, for without even truly being aware of it, Kyri caught the striking forelimbs, broke them, shattered the carapace, left the thing dying, and ran on, crying now, tears that seemed torn from the core of her soul.

Full dark had fallen and she burst through into a clearing. Shadows of movement were in the clearing, but fled, sensing that the newcomer was heedless, reckless, perhaps mad in truth, and thus a thousand times more dangerous than any more cautious foe. Stars glittered overhead, sparkled in the clear sky, and as Kyri paused she saw the twinkling stars of the Sword and Balance.

The sight was a shock of ice-water, bringing her to her knees. Then she surged to her feet, balling her fists, and screaming at the sky.

"Why, Myrionar? Why? We believed in you, we called your name, we trusted in Justice and Vengeance and your Wisdom and Mercy! My parents raised us to believe!" She reached inside her shirt, tore off the golden symbol so hard the chain left bleeding welts on her neck, but she didn't care. She shook the tiny sword-balance at its celestial mirror. "Even after they died we followed you, Rion gave his life for you, and you did nothing! Your own Justiciars! Your own Justiciars betrayed us, mouthed lies and deceit in my own house, set foot in your temples and you give us not a hint?"

The tears streamed down her face so that she could no longer see the stars, and her furious tirade was full of pain and sorrow as well as smoke-black anger. "How could you? Where is the Vengeance or Justice that could explain this?" She hurled the symbol away from her and fell to her knees again, crying, no longer able to scream, just to speak in pain-wracked sobs. "The Arbiter tore his soul to save Rion in your name! Kelsley almost died, and Rion did, and all for nothing! How could you? How could you abandon us all?" She raised her face and glared once more at the distant stars. "ANSWER ME!"

Her final cry echoed through the trees and died away to nothing. Silence surrounded her, a silence deeper than any forest should hold, and a chill went down her spine. Not a bird, a single animal, even the buzz and hum of insects was absent, and in the profound quiet the only sound she heard was her own ragged breathing and, under that, the pounding of her broken heart.

"I have not abandoned you."

With the words came the presence, the feeling of something vast and wise that had always been a part of the Temple; only this time it was a hundred times stronger, and the voice itself, though quiet, thundered through her bones, echoed in the ground, a voice that seemed both as unfamiliar as a stranger on the street, yet so familiar that she felt she had always known it.

"I have not abandoned you, Kyri Vantage, and I grieve for all you have suffered. Your faith has been true and even the gods cannot condemn one who is given such cause to doubt."

Kyri, open-mouthed, wanted to scream her accusations anew… but just as she could feel the Presence, so, too, could she feel Myrionar's pain, a sorrow that felt as deep as her own and older, ancient, as though the god had lived with such pain for all of Its existence. "Then… then why, Myrionar?" she said finally, a question instead of a demand or accusation. "Why, and how?"

"Many are the gods, Kyri Vantage. Powers there are greater than mine, and others subtle and cautious who spent ages finding solutions to dark puzzles of their own. I cannot say – precisely – how my Justiciars could be subverted within my own gaze. What I know would be too dangerous for you now, and there is still much hidden from me.

"But not for such useless riddles and half-answers have I spoken to you. You call on me in the name of my last true Justiciar, for the sake of my wounded priest, for the love of your family and for the loss of your innocence, and if any Justice remains in the world, I can do nothing but answer you."

The stars blazed brighter, and suddenly a golden Sword of heavenly flame burned in the sky, a golden Sword holding aloft a silver Balance of cold-fire beauty, casting aside the night and bringing argent-auric daylight to the clearing in which she stood.

"Kyri Victoria Vantage, hear now the words of Myrionar, God of Justice and Vengeance. If you will have faith in me, I shall in you place all of my faith. Your path will be long, and hard, and filled with pain. But this I promise, this I swear, on the very power of the gods, that if you will remain true through all, if you will be for me the living symbol of Myrionar, then to you I shall in the end deliver all the Justice and Vengeance you desire – knowledge of your enemies, and the will to confront them, and the power to drive them to ruin as great as the pain they have caused."

"Have faith in you?" The words were ludicrous. Moments ago she was cursing Myrionar. "How… how can I? How, when I have seen nothing of your Justice, Myrionar?"

The familiar, alien voice was both stern and rueful, recognizing her plight yet yielding nothing. "Only you can answer that, Kyri. That is, and has always been, the test of true faith. Can you believe, without proof? More, can you believe still, in the moments when all seems to shout at you that what you believe is a lie?"

She shook her head slowly. Believe… have faith in Myrionar. How?

The treachery of the Justiciars pressed in upon her, and she shuddered. They had been one of the greatest symbols of her belief, and now she knew they had been false, every one of them a lie.

No. Not every one.

For a moment, she almost felt she could hear Rion's voice, and her eyes stung again with tears. Rion had had faith, and Myrionar had given him the power. He had been seeking justice when he died.

Can I let my brother have died in vain?

And she remembered Arbiter Kelsley. An act of faith and devotion so extreme that he nearly died.

"… be for me the living symbol of Myrionar…"

And what was Myrionar? What was the truth? She remembered the many discussions in her classes, time spent arguing with Rion beneath the starwood tree in the back yard, Kelsley's sermons, even – though spoken by false lips – speeches of the Justiciars.

"There is a reason Justice is always spoken first," she remembered Kelsley saying. "Because Justice is always to be foremost. Vengeance comes only after Justice has been done, after wisdom has found the truth and after careful judgment has guided us to the Just and Right solution, and, if warranted, tempered with Mercy. Only then is the cold and implacable power of Vengeance to be unleashed."

If Myrionar spoke truth… then something inconceivably terrible had happened, arranged and guided by some force so mighty and subtle that a gods' own servants had been subverted in a manner so constrained by power and necessity that even the god dared not alert others as to what was happening.

And was it not one of the most basic of the tenets of Justice that it was easy to give justice to the strong and secure, and thus far more important for the weak, the betrayed, the helpless?

And suddenly Kyri understood, and she laughed – a painful laugh, filled with the ghosts of tears shed and other tears to come, but a laugh. God though It was, Myrionar was the helpless one. Evanwyl, the stronghold of its faith, was held somehow by the enemy – perhaps the power that lay beyond Rivendream Pass, perhaps something else – and in Its own name it now came to her…

… Because she was the one who would truly understand both what It asked, and why.

It was that which released the terrible knot in her heart. The pain was not gone, but the bile-acid corrosive fury against Myrionar, the foundation of her childhood, faded away. The god asked her to help make all these things right, asked her here, in the shadow of the First City, far from the corrupting power that had destroyed her family, and she realized that whatever game Myrionar was playing, it was a deadly serious one, one whose price could be the life of a god… or more than one.

She rose slowly to her feet, gazing at the burning symbol. "You swear that if I hold true, that in the end I will have justice and vengeance?"

"By all the Powers that are or have ever been or will ever be, I swear this to you."

"Then…" she took a deep breath, "… then I will swear to you that I will keep faith in you, Myrionar. My brother died in your name, died because I sent him into that danger, and I believe in Rion… so I believe in you. I have to believe in you."

The Balanced Sword flared so brightly that it seemed to light the entirety of the sky. "Then you, Kyri Vantage, shall be my one, true, and only Justiciar, the founder of the new Justiciars. Your course will be long and painful, sometimes darker even than the moment in which first I spoke to you; but believe, and hold, and be true to Justice, and there is a way out for you. Follow your instincts but temper them with thought; Justice, Wisdom, and Mercy before Vengeance."

The Balanced Sword descended, its light drowning out all other sights. "My touch is upon you, and you shall see it reflected in the morning's light. Find your course, and know my blessing is with you… and my thanks."

The Sword and Balance rose then, ascending to the heavens, fading… and then there were only the stars shining softly down.

But inside, Kyri felt… somehow at peace, at least for this moment. She knew Rion would be happy, he would approve… and so would the Arbiter.

Two people, against all the ocean of pain and guilt and betrayal.

But they were two people who mattered.

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Threshold had ended with our heroes crashed on Europa, the radiation-battered icy moon of Jupiter. This, too, has a lot of scenes I very much liked -- poor General Hohenheim preparing to send a final message from a dead and deserted ship, only to discover that all might not, after all, be lost; Madeline Fathom once more demonstrating the reason she got the nickname "Supergirl", saving the rover from plunging into the depths of Europa's ocean; the scene in which humanity first contacts another species, beneath the ice of a frozen moon.

The latter one MIGHT be my favorite, but I kind of honored it already by telling the entire story a second time, from the aliens' point of view in "Skyspark". So in this case, I think I''ll actually choose one of the earliest scenes in the book, when the character that refused to let me drop him -- Dr. Nicholas Glendale -- gets a special piece of news...

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Nicholas shook his head and felt the ache not just in his head but in his joints, seeming buried in his bones. I'm getting too old for this, he thought.

It dawned on him with a faint chill that, in fact, he wasgetting old. I'm past seventy now. It's been nearly fifteen years since Helen, Joe, and Jackie first dug up Bemmie. Ten years since I stood on Earth and watched Nike blaze its way out of orbit. Almost five years since we discovered a base on Ceres.

These days seventy wasn't that old, true. When he was born – when personal computers were new and the web not yet worldwide – seventy was nearing the end of a man's life. People lived longer now and the last great medical advances had pushed active, healthy lifestyles even farther, so that he was physically more as his father had been at forty or forty-five.

But right now he felt more like twice that.

He sat back down and called up the almost blank document which was supposed to be a press release – one he simply couldn't put off much longer. Oh, there'd been a quick one expressing everyone's shock and loss, with some hope that perhaps Nebula Storm would be located soon – but this was different. He would have to decide what direction he would take, both in public and behind closed doors, in placing – or not placing – blame for the disaster.

The European Union itself certainly wouldn't have resorted to such tactics… but the European Space Development Corporation might have; according to Walter Keldering, who was still the United States' representative here at Phobos Base, the ESDC's Chief of Operations Osterhoudt had some rather dark-gray, not to say black, operations history.

"Not directly, of course," Keldering had said, some weeks ago, "but he's connected. We're sure of it back at the Agency. And with the political pressure and having seen the benefits coming out of the discovered bases thus far… no, I wouldn't put it past him." He'd made a very expressive face. "And picking – rather forcefully – FITZGERALD for this? Sorry, Nick, but that pretty much screams 'dirty tricks'."

He'd appreciated Keldering's honest input – the more so since he could get it now. The President who'd tried to screw Madeline over and, when Maddie foiled him by resigning and signing on with the IRI, sent out Keldering as a replacement was gone now, his final term marred by a completely home-grown scandal that put the opposite party in power. The new President was much more interested in cooperation, the more since he could then rely on others to do a lot of the work while he showed a focus on domestic issues. With those pressures gone, Agent Walter Keldering had become more an associate who simply had to be treated with respect and the same caution over proprietary information as any other, not a specifically-assigned spy.

He sighed again and started dictating. "The IRI apologizes for the delay in this announcement, but we have all been in a state of shock, and mourning, ever since we received the news that the Nebula Storm and the Odin had both been lost or suffered terrible damage, presumably resulting in the deaths of all aboard. We have lost friends and even family on those vessels, as have those in the European Union, and we extend our own sympathies to our brethren in the EU over this terrible accident…"

This was, naturally, the obvious and wisest course, to say nothing to anyone. Treat it as a terrible tragedy whose cause would likely never be known and perhaps arrange a true joint mission to Enceladus with the EU.

But he had to stop the dictation again, because the very idea made his gut rebel. They killed my friends. How can I allow anyone to get away with that?

He knew he couldn't really live with himself if he did. That was the reason Madeline, Helen, A.J., Joe, and even Jackie and Larry had gone out on that half-mad venture, chasing down the Odin in a vessel sixty-five million years old: because that kind of action, that sort of robber-baron treachery, could not be tolerated, must not be tolerated in the greater reaches of the solar system.

But at the same time he couldn't afford to lose the support of the European Union.

I really should have stayed a paleontologist. I had no trouble dealing with the petty politics there.

A light blinked on his desktop and he touched the icon. A message from Ceres. Encrypted.

Perhaps they'd found some evidence, at least. If he could provewhat had happened on Ceres…

He was startled to find it was heavily encrypted. The standard decrypt key in the desktop wasn't sufficient; it was demanding a personal one-time key and biometric verification. It must be something important.

The screen lit up and his heart seemed to stop for a moment.

Then it gave a great leap and he felt a laugh of joy and relief rising as the golden-haired (if somewhat bedraggled) woman on the screen smiled at him.

"Hello, Nicholas," said Madeline Fathom. "I'm using the secure Ceres relay for this because I'm sure you'll want to decide what to do – and what you want usto do – very much in private.

"A warm hello from all of us here on sunny Europa."

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Towards the end of 2013, the sequel to Grand Central Arena, Spheres of Influence, was released. It was kind of nerve-racking for me because I honestly wasn't sure if I could successfully follow up on GCA, which was something of a distillation of everything I loved in space opera.  

Spheres might not have been quite the festival of cool scenes that GCA had been, but it still had its share. Sun Wu Kung's awakening from sleep, bringing a joy to DuQuesne he had barely dared hope for; the epic capitulation of the Minds to Ariane Austin's demands; Simon's first true awakening to his powers and defeat of Vantak. But if I have to pick one, I think it's the truly awesome return of the Monkey King from the dead: 

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As six ships spread in a defensive pattern between Thilomonand a huge white cloud about two hundred kilometers away, the cloud began to darken. Even Ariane stopped watching the duel between Zounin-Ginjou and the other Blessed ships; the whole battle, in fact, paused, as though everyone aboard all the vessels were holding their breaths.

And the cloud suddenly exploded outward, dozens, no, hundreds of black and gray and green and blue forms shooting out, directly for the Blessed fleet. In the center, a monstrous thing, white and black and blue rippling across its surface, blending it with the background so it seemed some hideous ghost, gargantuan, with a gleam of crystal teeth the size of houses, a sharklike profile in double symmetry, unmistakably alive, unmistakably predatory, impossibly cruising directly at them.

"Morfalzeen!" Hancray gasped, and the entire fleet shifted, even Zounin-Ginjouapparently uncertain whether to continue firing at the Blessed or at this titanic monstrosity – a hunting creature five kilometers long, Ariane realized incredulously as she saw the scale at the bottom of one display. But of course there would be such things – what else would prey on something like the vanthume?

"That's bad, I take it?" she murmured to Sethrik.

"Morfalzeen have been known to attack and destroy battleships, yes. Though they are not invincible and almost certainly die in the same attack. I am utterly at a loss, however, as to why the rest of these creatures," he gestured at the motley assortment of Arenaspace life, ranging from tzchina to virrin and at least three or four others that she'd never seen, "are apparently with the morfalzeen."

The cloud bulged outward and something else came through, something that drew incoherent shouts and curses from the Blessed and even from Sethrik. It… looks like a Skyfall. She remembered threading thatdesperate needle and nearly getting killed. But it's coming so fast, almost as though –

A vanthume emerged, shoving the mass of stone and earth ahead of it, into the approaching mob of creatures. The aerial avalanche curled around the morfalzeen, apparently almost unfelt, and the smaller creatures ducked and dodged amid the rocks. A fast-moving contingent of zikkistreaked past Thilomon, closing to less than two hundred meters before veering off.

"What? What is this? Have the heavens gone insane?" Vantak cursed again. "Concentrate fire on the mor—"

Alarms did not buzz, but shrieked this time, and a machine-gun rattle of impacts echoed through Thilomon; the screens showed the other vessels in even more trouble – even as the morfalzeen accelerated forward, literally shoving one Blessed warship aside like a linebacker tossing a toddler out of his way. The immense creature jerked as explosive and energy salvoes struck it, but continued forward, undeviating, undeterred.

A missile struck and shattered directly on the main viewport in front of Ariane, and she realized it was… "Rock? Are those zikkithrowing rocks at us?"

"What?" Sethrik stared, hands twitching in the instinctive "no" gesture. "Impossible. Ludicrous. The zikkicannot use tools, they haven't the intelligence to think of such a tactic, and they have no reason to even approachsomething of this size!"

Now another wave of creatures wove in, ducking and weaving, evading energy weapons and futile cannon. The tzchina hurled their cargo, and more stone – and what looked like bones – rebounded from the viewport.

But… are those scratches? "Sethrik –"

"I see… yes, the stone of the Arena is often made of the bones and such of dead creatures… and such often still has ring-carbon composite within. This battering will have an effect!"

The swarm wove through the Blessed ranks, sowing chaos. Zounin-Ginjouseemed oddly untouched, and suddenly swung about, firing on one of the nearer vessels; instantly the firefight began anew, but now a three cornered battle, and one where one set of participants was a total mystery.

The Brobdingnagian morfalzeen bored onward, shrugging off missiles and cannon and stabbing energy weapons. To Ariane's simultaneous amusement and horror, it seemed to have targeted Thilomon, for as the Blessed flagship tried to dodge out of the way, the morfalzeen turned with it.

"Reverse engines! Slow!"shouted Vantak. "Brace for impact!"

The monstrous predator turned at the last second, but something huge and dark continued on, blotting out the sky, a gigantic stone that smashedinto the bridge viewport; Thilomonstaggered; and even as the darkness began to lighten, something else flickered, slammed into the viewport –

And the viewport shattered, exploding inward, scattering dust and stone and jagged-edged pieces of transparent ring-carbon composite everywhere. Hancray gave a buzzing shriek and collapsed as one glittering shard impaled him.

Dust filled the air, blanking out sight. She squinted, trying to see through drifting grayness. There. Someone… a figure…

The wind from outside whipped in a breath of clearer air and she gasped as she suddenly saw…

… Robes of ruby and gold, sparkling of jade and sapphire and twilight purple; red-black hair flowing in the wind, bound by a golden circlet with a diamond sparkling like a star; and a crimson-and-gold staff gripped in a clawed hand…

Head held high, green-gold eyes coldly furious, Sun Wu Kung stood before them.

For a moment no one moved; even Vantak seemed utterly stunned, without words or understanding before the impossible.

The Monkey King cast his gaze around at the tableau, and then without warning took three swift strides and fell to his knees in front of Ariane. "I… failed you," he said, and his voice was soft and sad. "I failed you and DuQuesne. I was supposed to protect you and I did not. I was tricked, drawn away by a childish deception, and even when I realized that… even then, I was not good enough, not fast enough. I failed you, and I am ashamed."

Ariane was still staring, hardly able to grasp what she was seeing. "Wu…?" she whispered.

He looked up, and the emerald-auric eyes shimmered with tears of shame and remorse.

She suddenly felt her heart beating, hammering from shock and excitement – and finally she smiled. "Wu… Wu Kung, there is nothing to forgive, you… you… impossible, chaos-sowing… Wu, the only thing that matters to me is that you're alive when I thought you were dead."

His eyes widened and for a moment, as a slow, unbelieving smile dawned on his face, he looked both like a child whose mother had suddenly appeared to lift him up, and a man seeing a revelation. "R… really?"

"Really."

The smile sharpened, even as she saw movement around them. "Then…" he stood, and whipped the staff around in a theatrical whirling motion that made everyone else leap back, "I think it's time to play!"

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That's it for today -- next month, three more books and scenes!