Transcendence and Rebellion

by Michael G. Manning

  “The shield, Conall,” repeated Ariadne.

  He snapped, his fear and terror fueling action born of pure instinct. Instead of lowering the shield around his cousin, he lowered his own. As he did, he felt the krytek begin to gather their aythar, but he was already lashing out with his own power, transforming the aythar that had once been his defense into arrow-like shards of destruction. They lanced outward, and a few of them found their targets, tearing through the bodies of three of the krytek.

  The four remaining krytek reacted almost instantly, working in unison. One spoke a word, putting the Queen’s nearby guardsmen and servants quickly to sleep. Two clamped their power around Conall in a rushed attempt to smother his power with their own, while the last one began forming a spellweave to contain him more permanently.

  Three might have been enough, but trying to lock him down with just two, that was a mistake on their part. Conall’s fear was gone now, transformed into a blind rage as his power surged, shattering the shield they had placed around him. The two krytek holding him fell back, stunned by the feedback as their magic broke. Conall leapt forward, sweeping his sword from its sheath and using it to cut away the half-formed spellweave before plunging it into the krytek’s chest.

  Something struck him then, and he staggered. He had lost track of the krytek that had put the servants to sleep. Turning, he sent a blast of gold fire in its direction, but his fiery assault was deflected by a hastily erected shield. Beneath that protection, his final foe began to construct a spellwoven shield, something his magic would be unable to break.

  A roaring filled his ears, though whether it was from himself or some external source Conall didn’t know, nor did he care. Focusing his power this time, he broke the krytek’s shield while simultaneously propelling his sword through the air like a spear. As the shield broke, his enchanted blade tore through the spellweave and lodged itself in the krytek’s heart.

  He couldn’t rest yet, though. The two stunned by feedback could recover at any time. A shadow fell over him as he turned back. Looking up, Conall saw Carwyn’s massive bulk pass over to land nearby. She summoned him, he realized, feeling a sense of relief. After the dragon landed, he took two steps toward them, deliberately stepping on the two still living krytek, crushing them beneath his clawed feet.

  “Conall!” yelled Ariadne. She was still trapped inside the shield he had put around her, and she was staring at him worriedly.

  Feeling numb and strangely calm, he smiled. “It’s alright. I’m fine.” He expanded the shield around her and moved it, so she could walk over to him. He wasn’t about to release it. When she was close by, he opened it and stepped inside with her.

  “No. No, you’re not. You’re bleeding,” insisted the Queen, her hand moving to indicate his stomach.

  Looking down, he saw blood on his shirt, and after a moment’s exploration realized he had a hole in both his belly and his back. Something had passed completely through him. I didn’t feel a thing. His thought was interrupted as he realized they were not alone; another mage was present. Moira? He recognized her aythar immediately. How did she get here? Was she riding Carwyn?

  Chapter 15

  Tyrion stalked the halls of the palace, his feet moving quickly across the tile floors. Only a short time before, he had received a disturbing report from one of his krytek. An unknown mage had appeared in the city, but those he had sent to investigate hadn’t returned.

  Could it be Mordecai? he thought. Surely not. He had sent another of his servants to the Queen’s chambers to use the portal there to check on Moira Illeniel, but he hadn’t heard back from that one either.

  All of it served to give him a bad feeling, and now the hairs on the nape of his neck were tingling. Something was wrong. “Where the hell is everyone?” he shouted in frustration. The halls were empty. He had yet to find even one of the servants in what was normally a very busy section of the palace.

  His magesight couldn’t locate anyone either, possibly because of the abundance of privacy wards set up in the various rooms of the palace, but even with that, he should have been able to find someone.

  He increased his pace. He needed to find Ariadne. Whatever was happening didn’t bode well, and her safety was his first concern.

  Tyrion went to the council chamber first, and when he reached it he threw open the doors using his power. Then he knew something was badly wrong. The room was occupied, but those within were all slumped on the floor, as though asleep. Searching with both eyes and his magesight, he quickly identified most of the occupants: Benchley, Harold, several courtiers, and a variety of mundane servants and guards. They were all alive but unconscious.

  “Useless, all of them,” muttered Tyrion. Striding quickly across the room, he found Harold and began shaking the large man. “Wake up, fool! The Queen is in danger!”

  It took a long and precious minute to wake the knight up, which was another obvious sign of a magically induced slumber. When Sir Harold’s eyes finally opened, he stared at Tyrion in confusion. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what? I’m trying to wake you up. What happened?” asked Tyrion.

  “It was one of your men, those krytek things,” said Harold. “Don’t they take orders from you?” Harold’s gaze was suspicious as he slowly sat up and rubbed at the back of his head. He had bruised it when he collapsed.

  “They do,” answered Tyrion. “What did it do?”

  “It came in and just sort of looked around,” began Harold. “Then everyone started collapsing to the ground, like puppets with their strings cut.”

  “If you’d been wearing your armor you might have been protected,” declared Tyrion. “Where is it?”

  “In my room,” replied Harold. “I was wearing this, though.” With one hand, he drew out the enchanted pendant Mordecai had given him years before.

  Tyrion knew then, and he felt as though a cold stone had settled in his stomach. Moira. She was the only one capable of such a thing. And she’s suborned the krytek. “Get your armor, and make sure you keep the helm on at all times,” ordered Tyrion. “If you meet any more of the krytek, kill them quickly.” Rising to his feet, Tyrion activated the enchanted runes that covered his body, and he was comforted by the familiar feeling as a shield of force encased him in armor stronger than any steel.

  “Where are you going?” asked Sir Harold.

  “To find the Queen,” stated Tyrion. “Warn anyone you find, especially Conall. Don’t waste your time trying to wake the guards. They won’t be of any help in this fight.” With that said, he left.

  He headed for the Queen’s chambers first, but as he neared the outer door, two of the krytek stepped out.

  In the moment before most conflicts, men hesitate, even if only for a second. Humans are social creatures by nature, and violence is instinctively preceded by a pause to consider consequences, but the krytek were not men. They were bred for battle, without human instincts or compassion, and their orders were clear.

  Tyrion was faster. He had given up his humanity ages ago, long before he had become one of the She’Har. The endless battles of the arena were permanently etched in his heart. It was the main reason he was so ill-suited to civil society. Violence was always his first reaction. The self-restraint of living among peaceful people was exhausting for him.

  But today, for the first time in a long while, Tyrion was relaxed. He was at home.

  His first blast struck as their shields were just coming to life, and the two krytek were slammed back through the stone wall that flanked the door. He leapt through the stone dust even as they struck the other side of the antechamber he had blown them back into.

  Tyrion’s right armblade cut through one of the krytek before it could recover, then he spun and cut away the spellweave snaking toward him from the other. Reaching out with raw aythar, he seized on a chair behind the second krytek and pulled it toward his remaining foe.

  The krytek spent a precious second reinforcing its new spellwoven shield against an attack tha
t could not possibly injure it, but that wasn’t the point. The chair sent it flying toward Tyrion, and he was waiting with open arms and a feral smile. A second later it was over, and Tyrion marched across the bloody remains of his former servants.

  Ariadne’s bedchamber was empty. He stared at the room for a moment before he heard the unmistakable roar of Carwyn, the Queen’s dragon. The massive creature’s voice reverberated through the halls, coming from the other end of the palace, and then fell silent.

  Turning back, Tyrion began to run.

  He had no time for turns or detours. Using his memory of the palace layout, he took a direct path, destroying the walls that presented themselves on the way. As he went, he hoped to hear the dragon’s call once more, for that would mean that the fight was not yet over, but nothing reached his ears. She has to be safe.

  The last wall he destroyed was also one containing a privacy ward, so he was surprised when he passed through it. It opened onto a terraced walkway that surrounded the royal garden, and it was there that his enemies finally converged upon him. Several beams of power and two long, vine-like spellweaves struck him as he came through the new-made hole in the wall.

  He was unable to avoid them all, but his enchanted shield withstood the assault. Unfortunately he couldn’t escape the stone ceiling that the attacks brought down on his head. As the covered walkway collapsed, the heavy weight drove him down against the paving stones, but his defenses kept his body from being crushed.

  Though he was now entombed, Tyrion wasted no time. The next attacks will be focused to tear through both the stone, my shield, and finally, me. Exerting his will, he summoned a dense fog laced with aythar, an old tactic to block magesight. That would prevent precision attacks, but it wouldn’t be enough on its own.

  In the past he had escaped similar predicaments by burrowing through the earth, but the heavy paving stones beneath him would slow that sort of tactic, and he instinctively knew they expected it from him. It was time to show his cards. Imagining what he wanted, he diverted some of his aythar to his new body’s seed mind. Threads of aythar shot forth, flowing through the rubble around him and creating a complex web, a spellweave with several distinct functions as power struck the pile from multiple directions.

  His spellweave absorbed the attacks, repurposing the energy to negate the inertia of the stone around him. When it finished, he gathered his will and pushed. He released the spellweave a split second later.

  Tiles, building blocks, and broken rubble exploded outward in all directions, regaining their true masses as they took flight. They ripped through everything close by—krytek, trees, support pillars—only the grass and smaller plants of the garden near him were spared. Rising from the center of destruction, Tyrion gazed upon the results and felt a swell of pride at seeing his handiwork. The smile that he wore was entirely genuine.

  He wasn’t one to stand and gloat, though; such activities were for fools waiting to die. Most of the krytek had survived, their defenses too strong for simple stone to destroy, but the blast had thrown them into chaos. Calling up another magesight—blocking fog, Tyrion simultaneously sent runners of aythar along the surface of the ground, creating a faint grid to allow him to locate his foes. Then he began to dance, weaving through the mist, hunting and slaying his one-time servants.

  When he thought most of them were dead, he dismissed the fog and scanned his surroundings. On the far side of the garden he saw Carwyn, Ariadne’s dragon. In front of it stood Conall, sheltering the Queen behind him. There were dead krytek scattered around them, the apparent product of the young mage’s enthusiastic defense of his liege. Good job, boy, thought Tyrion.

  Two of the krytek that had attacked Tyrion were still alive, hovering several feet off the ground to avoid the grid he had used to locate their companions. Seizing the air currents, Tyrion used his greater strength to hurl them into the sky, flinging them up and out of the palace entirely. It wasn’t likely to kill them, but it would get them out of the way until he could secure the Queen.

  Running again, he headed for Ariadne and the others, and as he did, he noticed several strange things about the situation. Carwyn stood perfectly still, seeming more like a statue than a living, breathing dragon. Conall held a vivid golden shield of power between himself and the dragon, and his face appeared strained, as though he was struggling against a powerful force, though Tyrion didn’t see any other foes present. No—there! A woman stood on the other side of Carwyn, a mage, her body sheathed in power. He recognized her immediately.

  Conall saw her too, and his expression changed to one of confusion. “Moira? Why are you here? Is this your doing?”

  “No,” answered the woman. “I’m trying to help you.”

  Ariadne straightened, ordering, “Then release my dragon, immediately!”

  Tyrion was still twenty yards away, but he knew he had almost no time. If she reaches them, all is lost. Channeling his anger, he sent a meteoric blast of pure hate and aythar at the woman, who had stepped out from behind the dragon and was now in his line of sight.

  Conall sensed his intent and shifted his shield, moving it to include his sister and block the thundering blast that Tyrion had sent at her. The air shuddered as their powers met, but the young knight’s shield survived the assault.

  “Try that again and I’ll answer in kind,” challenged Conall, turning his body to face Tyrion’s approach.

  Frustrated beyond endurance, Tyrion screamed back, “You fool!” but it was too late. Moira stepped close to her brother and laid one hand on his shoulder. A second later the young mage slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  He was almost to them by then, but Moira reached toward Ariadne with one hand and barked a command at Tyrion. “Stop or she dies.” A black claw of aythar extended from her arm across several feet. It had long, slender digits tipped with deadly talons and it wrapped entirely around the Queen without quite touching her. The central talon was poised above Ariadne’s heart like a dagger, ready to plunge itself into her chest.

  Tyrion didn’t pause, he leapt forward, his arms outstretched and sheathed in deadly power. Moira’s eyes widened in surprise and the dragon’s head dipped down, whipping toward him like a striking snake, but he was faster than both of them.

  His arm blades plunged through Moira’s chest as Carwyn’s jaws closed around his torso. Blood erupted from her torso, and Tyrion’s hands were buried up to their wrists in her body as Carwyn’s teeth pierced his shield and bit into his flesh. Ordinary teeth wouldn’t have managed it, but Mordecai’s dragons were armed with enchanted teeth and claws, backed by more power than any mortal mage could resist.

  Moira died near instantly, while at the same instant, Carwyn’s jaws stopped just short of crushing him completely. The dragon released him, and Tyrion fell to the ground, bleeding from the equivalent of a dozen serious stab wounds, but he lived.

  Ariadne stood nearby, staring down at him in shock, too numb to move or react while Tyrion quickly set about fixing the more serious wounds. Some of them were deadly, and without fast action might have killed him. He muttered to himself as he worked, glancing at Moira’s dead body. “You misunderstood me. I’d rather kill an enemy, even at the risk of a friend. Better to be a live bastard than to die a hero.”

  The magic covering Moira’s body sloughed away, and as the illusion faded he saw it was yet another of his krytek. Tyrion stared at it in confusion. It was definitely her aythar. There was no mistake.

  Then Moira’s face rose from the body, ghost-like, and it stared at him with disdain. “She’s in love with you. Did you know that?”

  Tyrion seized the strange spellbeast with his aythar, ripping it to shreds, but she wasn’t done speaking. “You’ve already lost,” it said with Moira’s voice. It sounded as though she was whispering in his ear. How long did you think it would take me to get inside after your shield was destroyed?

  He could feel the tendrils of her will winding through his mind, trapping him inside his own body, but they wer
e weakening rapidly. Her power had been cut.

  Tyrion fought, tearing at the shadows that surrounded him, filling his vision, and the darkness began to fade, but he still heard her laughter in his ears. He shouted at the ghost within him, “You were a fake all along!”

  More laughter answered him, Just as you are. Her voice was growing faint.

  “I’m alive, you’ve lost,” he replied. She was dying, and he was still strong, his core untouched, but as she faded away he heard her final words.

  You don’t deserve love.

  She was gone then, and Tyrion lay on the ground, weak and exhausted. He could no longer keep his eyes open, but he thought he had done enough for his wounds to keep from dying. After a time, he heard voices calling out, searching for the Queen and he recognized Sir Harold’s baritone.

  Ariadne must have recovered from her shock by then, for she answered, “Over here.”

  He listened to the big man’s footsteps as he hurried to them. Tyrion was too weak to speak, and his consciousness was beginning to fade, but he heard the next exchange.

  “What happened?” asked Harold anxiously.

  “Tyrion has betrayed us,” said the Queen in a clear voice. “Take him.”

  Chapter 16

  Hours later, Ariadne sat beside a bed in one of the palace guestrooms. More specifically it was Sir Conall’s bedroom and the young knight himself was stretched out upon the mattress, still sleeping soundly.

  Soundly, but not peacefully; Conall’s face was pale and his skin was hot to the touch. A man stood on the other side of the bed, his hand stretched out over the young man’s belly. Gareth Gaelyn had been there for some time, but his face was resigned as he withdrew and spoke to the Queen. “It isn’t good.”

  “You’re an archmage, Lord Gaelyn. Surely you can fix whatever is wrong,” she responded.

  The taciturn mage grimaced. “Not without risking my own life.”