The Capital

by A. H. Lee

  “I’m not saying I think you have a problem.” Sairis spoke patiently. “I’m saying you should take steps to make certain you don’t have one in the future. Understanding of mirror magic has evolved in the last few years. Your wards may not be up to date.”

  Roland waved at the two guards beside the door as he strode past. Daphne and Sairis were standing at the far end of the room, gazing at the mirror as though it held a secret. Roland cleared his throat.

  They both turned.

  “Your Grace,” said Roland, “I could wish that you were not...” Alone here with a necromancer. Daphne gave him a skeptical look and he finished lamely, “still working after such a long day.”

  She sighed. “He doesn’t bite, Roland.”

  No. He hardly even opens his mouth.

  Sairis coughed. Roland was sure he was thinking the same thing. Roland continued desperately, “I think you should be careful. Uncle Winthrop said some strange things to me.”

  Daphne shrugged. “I doubt they were stranger than what Uncle Mani said to me.”

  There was an awkward pause and Sairis spoke. “Perhaps the two of you should compare strange uncles.” He lifted his coat from the back of a chair. “After I’m gone, of course.”

  Roland hesitated. Then he made up his mind. “You should be careful, as well, Sairis. He suggested I collar you, take you to the border, and cut off fingers until you raise a corpse army.”

  Sairis froze.

  Daphne threw up her hands. “Oh, for love of Phaedra!”

  “That sounded a lot like making a liar out of you,” continued Roland to Daphne.

  “Yes, it does,” fumed Daphne. “Thank you for telling me.” She drew a deep breath. “Sairis, what do you want?”

  Sairis blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “In exchange for helping us, what do you want?”

  Sairis licked his lips. “I can’t promise to raise a corpse army...” His eyes flicked to Roland. “No matter how many fingers you cut off.”

  Roland winced.

  “I wasn’t asking you to,” said Daphne. “But if you consult for us, help us discover ways of dealing with Hastafel’s creatures, perhaps train some of our magicians...what do you want?”

  “The Parabola River,” said Sairis immediately.

  Roland drew in a deep breath. The Parabola was a river that had once flowed through Karkaroth’s lands. Damming and rerouting it was one of the things Roland’s father had done to break the necromancer’s power.

  “And lift the bounty on my master,” said Sairis. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” said Daphne in a thoughtful voice. “Water has grown precious. The Parabola is in use by other people now.”

  “Then give them the ornamental stream from your garden,” said Sairis irritably. “Or they are welcome to move back to Arabis.”

  Arabis was a town on Karkaroth’s lands, long deserted. Arnoldo Malconwy had salted the earth, making it difficult to grow food there. He’d adopted the tactic of cutting off Karkaroth’s resources, rather than facing his magic directly. He’d taken away the people, the water, the fertile land. It had worked. In the end, he’d burned the tower, although soldiers had never managed to get inside. A hefty bounty on the necromancer had ensured that a steady stream of knights and other private parties attempted to kill him. None of them had ever shown up at the palace to claim the reward, however. The forest around Karkaroth’s tower was a grim place now—a shadowy, dying husk. It certainly looked haunted. The return of the Parabola could change that.

  “I will consider it,” said Daphne. “Anything else?”

  Sairis’s eyes flicked up as though to gauge her expression. “Anyone who wants to come study there is welcome.”

  Daphne frowned. “It sounds like you’re asking me to give him influence again, Sairis. I’m not willing to do that. A way to live peacefully? Yes. Influence? No.”

  Sairis’s lips pressed together in a tight line.

  “I live with my stepfather, who is dying.”

  “He’s sick,” said Roland quietly.

  Daphne cocked her head. Sairis looked startled for a moment, then furious.

  Daphne looked between them. “What—?” she began.

  They all paused as the door to the room swung open. Roland turned to see who had entered, but the door wasn’t open. Roland felt an icy hand at his chest. He turned to the glass beside their heads. The door had opened in the mirror...and only in the mirror.

  “Back,” hissed Sairis. “Get away from it.”

  The three of them made a swift retreat to the far end of the room as a man strolled into view. He was tall and fit, with black hair and the almond eyes of the southern mountain tribes. He wore a leather jerkin and padded shirt with ornamental stitching that, nevertheless, looked brutally serviceable, as though he’d just come from the practice yard. His gauntleted hands held a naked sword, its blade a gleaming black. At his side paced a huge wolf, dark as the sword.

  “Guards!” bellowed Daphne.

  They rushed into the room, swords drawn. The guards looked first to Sairis as the most likely threat. They gaped when they saw the mirror.

  “He can’t come through,” muttered Sairis. “He can scry for a mirror with a bit of something from the room, but to actually come through, he would need an anchor—magic in the glass on this side.”

  “Hastafel,” whispered Daphne. Roland had never heard such a combination of anger and fear in his sister’s voice.

  “Queen Daphne.” The sorcerer’s liquid purr filled the strategy room, rich with the almost musical accent of Zolsestron. “I heard there was a meeting of local rulers today. I seem to have mislaid my invitation...which is why I am late.” He nodded at Roland. “Prince Roland, I trust we can cross swords again soon. I, for one, would like a rematch.”

  “Your orders, Your Grace?” asked one of the guards.

  “Stand by,” said Daphne. She turned to Sairis, ignoring Hastafel. “Can you fix this?”

  “Yes,” said Sairis. “But it will take a few moments.” He was fishing in his pockets. “You should be safe if you don’t touch the glass.”

  The wolf at Hastafel’s side looked out of the mirror with disturbing, blood-red eyes. It wore a collar that looked like silver. Behind them, several of Hastafel’s own guards trooped into the room—warriors in chainmail and helmets, visors down.

  “I see you’ve gotten yourself a court magician,” continued Hastafel, as Sairis approached the mirror. He gave Sairis a once-over, which Sairis did not return. The necromancer snatched a chair from the table and dragged it to the wall. Roland realized, with a trace of embarrassment, that Sairis intended to stand on it. He wasn’t tall enough to reach the top of the mirror unaided.

  Lord Hastafel clearly realized the same thing and laughed—a sound that rolled through the chamber like winter rain. “Are you the best they could do?”

  * * * *

  Sairis forced himself not to look at Hastafel as he considered how to ward a mirror that had already been scried. He drew a rune on the wall at the upper corner, careful not to actually touch the glass, and began a long row across the top.

  Hastafel had returned his attention to Queen Daphne. “I am here to offer you terms, my lady. You’ll find I’m easier to deal with than your neighbors, I think.”

  “I doubt that,” said Daphne. “But I’ll hear your terms.”

  “The Shattered Sea is now a land of magic,” continued Hastafel. “There can be no mundane rulers here anymore.”

  Sairis had to move the chair in order to get to the other half of the mirror. The process made an anticlimactic scraping sound across the floor. Hastafel was forced to stop and wait until Sairis had repositioned himself. Sairis was darkly amused to hear a hint of petty irritation in Hastafel’s voice when he spoke again. “Every kingdom of the Shattered Sea will be ruled by magicians of one stripe or another. I have power and skill, and I can hold your land against others who will try to take it. If you submit, your cities will stand and your
people will live.”

  Sairis hopped down from the chair and connected the top runes to a spot at the bottom with a line down the wall. Thump, scrape. Hastafel’s eyes jerked to Sairis in annoyance and then back to Daphne.

  “I will take your magicians and train them for my armies. I will take your young men and do the same. I will take any of your women I fancy. In the end, this will be no different from the rule of the average mundane monarch. The difference is that I will win. I will hold your borders, and you will have peace. You will rule as my governor, and you need fear nothing under my protection. What do you say, Queen Daphne?”

  Sairis worked his way along the bottom, crouching, writing fast.

  “I say no,” said Daphne. “Anything else?”

  Hastafel didn’t seem surprised by her answer. His voice dropped to a dangerous purr. “Very well. Prince Roland, I hope you’ve told your sister what she can expect when I take your city. My men will have their day of blood, well-earned, I think. Your ghosts will power my war machines. And I will leave Chireese a smoking ruin, populated only by rats and starving orphans. From your countryside, I will recruit new armies. I doubt your peasants love you as much as you imagine, nor will they miss you as much as you think.”

  Sairis had almost circled the mirror now. Don’t look at him. Don’t engage. When he’d drawn the last rune, Sairis paused. He would need one mark on the mirror itself to finish the ward. With a grimace, he stood up and faced the glass.

  He wasn’t surprised to find himself nose to nose with Hastafel’s wolf. Its breath fogged the opposite side of the mirror. The runes on its silver collar were almost close enough to read. They’re not really here. Sairis thought of Karkaroth, chiding him for being afraid to go into the cellar. “Some things can hurt you, boy, and some things can’t. Knowing the difference is half of being a wizard.”

  Sairis’s spelled chalk touched the glass.

  And sank through it.

  Sairis’s heart gave a squeeze as he raised his eyes to the wolf. Its breath moved hot and moist over Sairis’s cheek. He’s not scrying. This is a gate.

  Chapter 11. The Best They Could Do

  Roland’s hand itched for a sword as he listened to Hastafel’s sneering threats. Roland knew that fighting a sorcerer holding a magic sword was foolish, that he’d been lucky to escape last time. But I almost won.

  He could see the chip near the handle of Hastafel’s blade from here. It’s a glass sword, for gods’ sakes. It ought to shatter! It almost did.

  Would he respond to a challenge to duel? Would Daphne allow it?

  He couldn’t bear to stand here unmoving for much longer. The frank pleasure in Hastafel’s voice as he described the slaughter of an entire city made Roland want to punch him in the throat.

  And then something changed. Roland sensed it a fraction of a second before he saw Sairis reel back from the mirror. The wolf leaned forward...into the room.

  Several things happened at once. The two palace guards closed ranks in front of the queen. The wolf dissolved into red smoke, rolling upward into the form of a towering knight in blood-red armor. The knight snatched the sword from Hastafel’s open hands and lunged into the strategy room. Daphne was already shouting for more guards and Roland added his bellow. The guards moved Daphne forcibly into a corner, and Roland joined ranks with them.

  However, the wolf-knight did not go for Daphne. He followed Sairis, who was backing swiftly across the floor. Sairis threw something at him—a ball of light that dripped, sizzling, down his armor, and then burst into flame. But the red knight ignored the fire. He caught Sairis as he reached the far wall and drove his sword straight through the smaller man’s abdomen to sink with a horrible thunk into the wood paneling behind him.

  * * * *

  If someone had asked Sairis what it would feel like to be run through with a sword, he would have said, “Very sharp.”

  But when it actually happened, it felt more like blunt impact, a bone-jarring shock, as though a horse had kicked him.

  Then...weakness. Blood seeping through his clothes. Oh, gods.

  He’d wasted too much energy on that fireball. He’d panicked. At least he had the satisfaction of seeing the wolf dissolve back into its animal form, belatedly realizing that necromantic fire could burn through magic as well as matter. The animal rolled wildly on the carpet.

  And now the carpet was aflame, too.

  Fuck.

  There is a sword in my stomach. Sairis stared in fascination at the runes etched into the blade. Obsidian...spelled stone...as good as spelled steel, I suppose. Maybe better.

  It was becoming hard to breathe.

  Got to...do something.

  Sairis gritted his teeth and tried to pull away from the wall. And now it hurt. Holy hells, did it hurt. His vision blurred. The sword hadn’t moved, and neither had his body. Sairis tried to reach the hilt and couldn’t. He wrapped his hands around the blade, careless of its edge, and tried to pull. He only succeeded in slicing open his palms. More blood. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Sairis looked up to see that Hastafel’s warriors were attacking the guards around the queen and Roland. The wolf demon had returned to its master on the other side of the gate. Its essence had probably been damaged. It would recover quickly with a whole army to feed upon, but at least, for the moment, it was out of the fight. Unfortunately, the fire that had injured it was spreading on the rug.

  Hastafel did not seem overly concerned about his demon. He watched Sairis coolly, pinned like a butterfly.

  “Are you the best they could do?”

  Fury lit Sairis’s brain and dispelled the fog of pain and panic. He slid an unsteady hand into the pocket of his coat and touched something cool and smooth. The shard. The wards upon the sword were clearly still intact, but the shard was a discordant jumble of incomplete spell-work.

  Hastafel’s voice chimed out, “You’re Karkaroth’s fetch-and-carry boy, aren’t you? That’s where I’ve seen such an aura before. Is the old goat finally dead? I can’t imagine that he would have sent anyone to help the Malconwys.”

  Sairis could feel the River now, pulling at him—familiar as an old friend. “Come away,” it seemed to whisper. Sairis forced himself to focus on Hastafel’s sneer. Inside his pocket, his bloody finger inscribed a circle on the obsidian fragment.

  “You do die hard, don’t you?” murmured Hastafel. “They say necromancers are bad at dying. You’re hardly more than a baby necromancer, though.”

  “You know nothing about necromancy,” breathed Sairis. He could taste blood. He wasn’t sure the words would even reach Hastafel, but the sorcerer’s smile broadened.

  “You should have come to me,” said Hastafel. “I could have freed you from that crumbling tower and given you real power. Instead you’ll die here, defending people who hate you.”

  “Are you the best they could do?”

  Sairis’s finger traced runes. “You know nothing about necromancy,” he repeated, “so maybe you shouldn’t meddle with ghosts.”

  Hastafel actually looked interested now. He leaned forward. “You heard about my golems? Care to tell me what you think of them? I’m guessing you have about a minute.”

  Sairis didn’t think he had that long. He raised the shard from his pocket. “I think you’re making them with this sword. I definitely think you shouldn’t put such a lot of yourself into it. What did you use? Your own blood? Your name?”

  Hastafel’s smile evaporated just as Sairis spoke the word to activate the world’s smallest summoning circle. Even a baby necromancer can call the River, you patronizing prick.

  And even a baby necromancer could loose the ghosts tethered to this bit of stone and send them down a blood trail.

  Hastafel did what Sairis had expected. He closed the gate. He and his smoking wolf vanished from the mirror. Sairis and the Malconwys were left with ordinary soldiers in a room full of old paper and necromantic fire.

  Chapter 12. Pinned

  Hastafel and the wolf vanished. Sai
ris had driven them away. Roland understood that much. In addition, more palace troops had arrived in response to Daphne’s summons. Roland knew, logically, that it had only been a minute or two since the fight started, but it felt longer.

  With the arrival of reinforcements, he was able to disengage from the group around Daphne and reach Sairis. The little man’s face looked gray, thrown back against the wall, eyes shut. He was gripping the sword with hands that had been cut to ribbons. His glasses were speckled with blood. So were his lips.

  Roland felt numb. Sairis opened his eyes, saw Roland, and grabbed for him desperately. Roland realized that Sairis was struggling to remain upright. When his knees buckled, the sword was going to slide up his body, literally cutting him in half.

  Roland stepped forward without thinking, and suddenly Sairis was in his arms. Roland held him up, warm blood seeping between them, the sword an unyielding pressure against Roland’s hip. Sairis’s arms locked around Roland’s neck as he sagged. He whispered against Roland’s ear, “Spelled stone. I can’t...can’t...”

  “I’m sorry,” choked Roland. I’m sorry I was afraid to touch you. I’m sorry that this is the only way I’ll ever hold you. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry...

  “Get it out,” breathed Sairis.

  Roland had done this before. Sairis’s slender body reminded him of boys he’d trained. A few of them never made it past their first battles. Roland had held bloody hands before. He’d held them in his arms before. “Please, Captain, please...”

  And sometimes it wasn’t new recruits. Sometimes it was old friends.

  Roland was sobbing. He was on a misty mountainside. The clang of swords echoed all around him, the shouts of command, the screaming of horses. “Marcus, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  His hand closed on the hilt of the sword. He pulled, but it wouldn’t come loose.

  Sairis was deadweight in his arms. He coughed and sprayed blood against Roland’s neck. “Get it out.”