by Ben Hale
“Teriah is in Herosian with the entirety of her forces,” he said. “I’ve seen no sign of Meressa or Elsin, but they’ve built a capitol for their Empire and are prepared to defend it.”
Alydian nodded in agreement. She’d seen glimpses of a city but hadn’t understood its import. But understanding what she’d foreseen did not explain Teriah’s intention. Was this also a feint? There had been no sign that the Empire was even trying to watch their invasion, all but ignoring Alydian’s march across their lands. Then Raiden’s message took a different turn.
“Some of the Verinai have turned against their guild,” he said. “They’ve proved valuable allies and have insights we did not anticipate. I will not identify them lest this message is intercepted.”
His tone darkened. “It appears the Empire is not without surprises. Teriah has employed a great number of the Verinai to build a titan, a sentient larger than anything in history.”
Alydian exchanged a look with Elenyr and Devkin as Raiden described the titan, and her heart sank. She’d known Teriah was up to something, but a titan charm? Such a thing had never been created.
“I will send another message when possible,” Raiden finished. “Until we meet, our hearts remain with you.”
Alydian smiled at the shift in tone at the end of the conversation, recognizing the you was meant specifically for her. She’d thought often of Raiden since his departure and yearned to be reunited. The bird flapped its wings and then disintegrated in a burst of sparks.
“We saw the bird,” Astin said, riding up to them with Princess Ora.
“What news?” she asked.
“Raiden has joined with a group of Verinai that stand against the Empire,” Alydian said. “It appears the Empire is waiting for us in Herosian, where they’ve built a new fortress.”
“Any chance the Verinai with Raiden are spies?” Princess Ora asked.
“Not likely,” Devkin said from behind Alydian. “It would take a great deal for Raiden to trust a Verinai, and he is smart enough to recognize a spy.”
“If Teriah and the Verinai have built a fortress,” Astin said, rubbing the neck of his steed. “They will be difficult to defeat. They will have the greater magic and the greater position.”
“Then we must be smarter,” Princess Ora said. “At our current pace we’re a week from reaching Herosian. Let us gather the people and lay siege to the Empire.”
As the conversation shifted to tactics, Alydian glanced backwards. Dust billowed up from the column of soldiers. Horses and foot soldiers, mages and magicless, and members of many races marched together. The column reached nearly to the horizon.
With scattered trees and rocky hills, the landscape did not lend itself to travel, forcing them to narrow their march onto the road. Spread out as they were and an overcast sky to darken the ground, an ambush would have been expected. Yet again, the Empire was disturbingly absent.
She dipped into her farsight. Behind the walls of a fortress the Verinai and the Empire army would be all but unbeatable, but they were essentially trapped. The rebellion would be able to gather a superior force and surround the city, caging the Empire in a single city.
But why? Alydian could think of dozens of smarter tactics and she was hardly the tactician that Devkin or Astin was. So what did the Empire have to gain by walling themselves into a defensible position . . .
Time.
The answer was obvious yet only prompted more questions. By all accounts time was against the Empire, for the more time that passed the more magicless would join the rebellion. The Empire’s chance of victory would dwindle with every defection, until even their city fell.
“What are you thinking?”
Alydian turned to find Elenyr at her side, a small smile on her face. “I’m sorry,” Alydian said. “Just lost in thought.”
“That was the look of an oracle struggling to understand.”
Alydian laughed and shared her thoughts. Astin, Ora, and the other generals had drifted away, leaving Alydian, Elenyr, and Devkin in relative privacy. When Alydian finished explaining her doubts her mother bore a frown on her face, an expression matched by Devkin.
“It appears my expression was contagious,” Alydian said dryly.
Devkin snorted. “Your assumptions are sound.”
“Teriah is patient,” Elenyr said. “She planned her Empire for a century, and a few months or years mean little to her.”
“But what advantage can they gain?” Alydian asked. “The people clearly do not favor the Empire.” She gestured to the new caravan of villagers pulling into view. “Time will merely add to our strength.”
“They do not seek the greater army,” Elenyr said. “They seek a lasting victory.”
“You think they have prepared magic that will devastate us?” Devkin asked. “Like the titan?
“Perhaps,” Elenyr said, but her expression was doubtful.
She reached up and wiped the perspiration from her brow, grimacing as if in pain. Then she sighed. “They could be crafting powerful sentients or guardians that will take them to victory.”
“The best traps invite the unsuspecting prey,” Devkin said.
“Nothing with your farsight . . .?” Elenyr asked, her voice trailing off as she again wiped the sweat from her brow.
Alydian frowned, her attention shifting to her. “Mother?” she asked. “Are you well?”
“I am well,” Elenyr said airily.
But she was not. Elenyr’s face was pale and she swayed in the saddle. Her eyes fluttered in her head and she grappled for the reins, fighting to steady herself. Alydian reached out to her and their eyes met.
Elenyr’s eyes were full of fear, of dread. Then her eyes glazed and she swayed in the saddle. Alydian cried out but Devkin was faster. He leaned out of his saddle and reached out to brace her—and his hand passed through her body.
Elenyr’s arm turned ethereal, the flesh and clothing turning ghostlike. Devkin stared at his hand in shock. Alydian leapt from the saddle and scrambled to her mother, her urgency drawing the attention of nearby soldiers.
“What’s happening?” Astin asked.
Alydian reached out to her mother but her hand, too, passed through Elenyr’s form. Elenyr swayed in the saddle, her eyes shut, her words no more than a mumble. Panic engulfed Alydian and she searched her memory for some sort of magic to offer aid. But she’d never heard of such a curse.
Senin reared back in fear. “She’s turned into a spirit!” he cried.
“Don’t be a fool,” Devkin growled, but fear began to spread into the army.
Astin shouted for order as soldiers craned for a look at Elenyr, whose entire form was barely visible. Elenyr’s gaze briefly focused on Alydian, her eyes wide with fear. Then she slipped from the saddle, her legs passing through the animal as she fell. But she didn’t strike the earth.
She fell into it.
Alydian dropped to her knees and frantically sought to find her, heaving great sections of the earth in her effort to locate her mother. Horse and man scrambled away from the waves of soil. Seconds stretched into agonizing minutes, but there was no sign of Elenyr.
The army gathered around the rapidly expanding hole, whispering and pointing. Earth mages jumped in and dirt flew. Still Elenyr did not appear. Panic gradually gave way to mute horror until Alydian was forced to accept the truth.
Elenyr was gone.
Chapter 20: Elenyr’s Fate
The loss of Elenyr hit the rebellion hard, and the entire advance ground to a halt. When searching for her physical form proved futile, Alydian resorted to her farsight, searching her mother’s tree for any sign of her location. But her mother’s future was invisible behind a storm of indecision. What was clear was the fear her disappearance had sparked.
Rumors spread like wildfire that Elenyr had been killed by the Empire. Although Astin tried to suppress them, Duke Senin supported the theory. Doubt and worry gripped the rebellion forces, forcing Astin and Ora to triple the night watch to prevent
infighting.
Devkin ordered a watch placed around the pit but the soldiers kept their distance, leaving Alydian in the depths of the chasm. Already a hundred feet deep, the hole had begun to fill with water but Alydian doggedly kept to her search, fighting her desperation with movement. Devkin alone remained at her side, spattered in mud, a shovel in hand.
The sounds of the camp died down until Alydian could only hear the scrape of Devkin’s shovel. She glared at the earth as if it was a foe, wearily casting her magic to lift the earth and toss it onto the rim of the hole.
“Alydian.”
Alydian continued to dig into the mud, but every new depth failed to alleviate the terror in her gut. After everything she’d endured, the prospect of continuing alone instilled more terror than she could endure.
“Alydian . . .”
“Don’t,” Alydian said, whirling to face him. “Don’t say it.”
“You need to rest.”
“I can’t.”
“Alydian,” he said, his voice soft. “We can continue the search tomorrow.”
“I can’t.”
“Alydian . . .”
“I can’t do this alone!”
Her words faded into silence. Too ashamed to meet his gaze, she stared into the pool of muddy water until a tear fell down her cheek. She swallowed and tried to wipe the moisture from her face, spreading mud across her features.
“I can’t do this alone,” she whispered.
She sank into the mud and stared at the hole. Her mother had been her family, her guide, her champion. She’d prepared for the Mage War for decades, planned hundreds of contingencies in order to give them a chance at victory. If she was gone, that would leave the rebellion on Alydian’s shoulders.
“You aren’t alone,” Devkin said quietly.
Alydian shook her head. “She’s been the foundation of peace for ages, holding it together even when the council plotted against her. And what did I do? I destroyed Dawnskeep.”
Devkin sat in the mud with a sigh. “She may be the greatest oracle in ages, but you are her daughter. She believes in you, or she would never have suggested you become an oracle battlemage.”
“Am I destined to lose everyone?” she asked, her gaze turning to the sky. “How many of those I care about will perish before this is over?”
“We are willing to die for those we love,” Devkin said, his tone drawing her gaze. “You are like a daughter to me, and I would gladly pay my life for you and your cause.”
“I don’t want you to die,” Alydian said. “I want you to help raise your grandchildren, find a wife, and grow old together.”
Devkin laughed wryly and rubbed mud from his beard, revealing the white mixed with the black. “I’m already old.”
Despite her despair she smiled. “You don’t act like it, you know. You are the best swordsman in the kingdoms.”
“Perhaps at one time,” he replied with a smile. “But I fear that title is owned by the one you love. You picked a good one, you know. Your father would be proud.”
“How can I do this?” she asked, flicking mud off her hands. “I need her.”
“I know,” Devkin said, “but whether it’s today or ten years from now, you would lose your mother someday, and then you would stand alone. What defines you is not the loss, it is the legacy.”
“When did you become so wise?” she asked.
“When I got old,” he said.
She laughed and he joined in. When her humor subsided she did not feel the aching despair. Instead it was confusion that tightened her features.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve never heard of a curse to make one’s body ethereal.”
“Do you think it’s an attack by Teriah?”
Alydian shook her head. “I’m not sure. Ero knows they’ve created many new spells, but this doesn’t seem like Teriah. If she had the ability to strike at someone in such a manner, why not strike at me? Or Princess Ora? My mother has no magic anymore, so Teriah probably doesn’t perceive her as a threat.”
“You don’t need magic to be a threat,” Devkin said with a smile.
“True,” Alydian replied. “But I can’t see Teriah striking at her now. I’m the one she hates.”
“So what could it be?” Devkin asked. “Surely it was magic . . . perhaps Marrow?”
“She’s still with Raiden,” Alydian said, but his comment gave her an idea. Marrow displayed a number of rare magics, and they frequently had unintended consequences. Elenyr too had recently had a unique type of magic in her flesh. “What about the poison?” she asked.
“What does that have to do with this?” he asked.
She felt the urge to pace but the sucking mud did not allow that so she fidgeted with her hands, thinking aloud.
“The poison was an enchanted parasite,” Alydian said. “It fed on her magic.”
“You think it survived?”
Alydian shook her head. “When my mother used the horrending dagger on herself she sucked the magic from her body, taking the poison with it. What if the poison leeched something else from her flesh?”
“It could have taken what made her tangible,” Devkin said. “But why did it take so long to take effect?”
Alydian shook her head, but the idea had brought her to her feet. She cast about for answers and her thoughts turned to a conversation she’d shared with her mother. Alydian had been a child and just discovered her magesight.
“Every color represents a type of power,” Elenyr had said. “To manipulate magic you must see the power and then seek to alter it.”
Alydian held her small hand aloft. “I can see right through my hand!”
Elenyr knelt at her side. “That’s because your flesh is merely a shell that houses your essence.”
“So I could leave my body behind?”
Elenyr smiled. “No, little one. Your body cannot survive without your spirit, and your spirit cannot survive without the body.”
“That’s not what believers in Ero preach,” Alydian said, jutting her chin out.
“Religion is a conversation for another time,” Elenyr said, pursing her lips. “For now, understand that your life comes from the joining of your essence with your flesh. Now, let us begin . . .”
The memory faded and Alydian’s eyes settled on Devkin. In hopeful words she described the memory, and its possible ramifications. Devkin was now on his feet, his expression hopeful as he hefted the shovel.
“You think she figured out how to use the horrending dagger to discard her flesh?”
Alydian didn’t dare hope, but she nodded. “The dagger must have severed the link between the two, and the body gradually wasted away.”
“If that’s true, wouldn’t you be able to see her with your magesight?”
Her heart hammering against her chest, she stepped into the water at the base of the hole and turned her eyes downward, searching for any hint of her mother’s essence. Now that she knew what to look for she spotted it almost immediately.
Another hundred feet down and to the north, a faint green form rested in a bend in the stone. Alydian had used her farsight to look into the earth many times since her mother’s disappearance but assumed it to be a shard of limestone.
“I found her,” Alydian breathed.
“Is she alive?”
“I think so,” Alydian said. “I’m going to try and bring her to us.”
Instead of reaching for Elenyr by stone or water, Alydian reached for Elenyr’s essence. It felt odd, like willing her consciousness to extend further than her flesh. At first it refused to obey, but then she changed her perspective and treated her own essence like a unique magic.
This time her consciousness spread outward, expanding through and around the concerned Devkin and rising into the air. She looked down on her kneeling body, on Devkin standing nearby. It was disconcerting to view herself from outside, but her focus remained on her mother.
Twisting, she willed her projection into the rock. She felt t
he grains of sand, as if they lingered on her feet after a day at the beach, only now they seemed giant, her consciousness a fine thread that passed through the solid bedrock.
As she approached her mother she found Elenyr caught in a particularly dense portion of rock, where her ethereal form had finally come to a halt. Elenyr looked exactly as she did in the flesh, but her flesh had turned a dark shade of green. Alydian reached out and hesitantly touched her mother’s hand. To her relief she felt the fingers on her own.
Tightening her grip, Alydian began to draw Elenyr upward, pulling her back through the bedrock to the hole above. Her mother had more weight than she’d expected for an ethereal form, and it took all Alydian’s will to drag her to the surface.
Alydian reached the base of the pit and returned to her body, still kneeling in the ground. She retained a desperate hold on her mother’s hand as her fingers became corporeal. Then Alydian pulled her hand from the mud, and Elenyr’s hand appeared in the base of the murky water, greenish light illuminating the basin. Devkin gasped and scrambled down but growled in frustration when his hands passed through Elenyr’s arm.
Now gasping for breath, Alydian managed to pull her up through the water to the surface, more light spilling from her flesh. Alydian reached out with her other hand and caught hold of her mother’s arm, holding her aloft. It felt like holding water in her hand, and Elenyr began to sink again.
“Mother!” Alydian cried. “You must come back to me!”
There was no answer, so Alydian pushed her consciousness into her mother’s mind, sensing a spark of thought there. Elenyr twitched as Alydian screamed into her mind . . . and then Elenyr’s eyes fluttered open.
Weak and groggy, Elenyr managed to look at Alydian. Tears blossomed in Alydian’s eyes as she clung to her mother, and then Elenyr seemed to shake herself and rise, but she fell through the water before Alydian managed to catch her.
“Your flesh is gone,” Alydian exclaimed, her voice strained from the effort. “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep you here. I think when the poison left your body it leeched away your flesh.”