“We are working together,” Pietre said. “We’ll be on the hill, protecting his back.”
“He will not need you to protect his back,” Zinnegael said. “He will need you to place the stone. And though he may not seem to appreciate it at the time, he will eventually. You watch.”
Pietre opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again and said, “Isn’t there a prophecy or something? My mother said in the old stories there was a great one needed.”
“Yes, dear,” Zinnegael said. “That’s you.”
Pietre actually laughed. “That’s not me.”
“You’ll have to do,” she replied, pulling several rolls from the oven.
“But not just anyone can fulfill a prophecy.”
“Why on earth not?”
Pietre shook his head. “Because that’s not the way they work. I mean why have a prophecy if anybody can just walk up and fulfill it?”
“I did not say anyone could,” Zinnegael corrected.
“Yes, you did.”
“I said anyone who would could.”
“Stop rhyming,” Pietre said, his voice rising.
Quietly, Zinnegael looked him in the eyes. “Prophecies are often there not to tell us what will happen, but to tell us what can happen—to show us our potential, what could be if we work hard enough. Not to mention the fact that a prophecy isn’t usually fulfilled by one person. It takes a village to be the chosen one, that’s what I always say.”
“That makes no sense,” Pietre said.
“Well, fortunately for me, I did not say it made sense, only that it was true,” Zinnegael replied. “A prophecy is naught but some beads of words strung together—preferably in rhyming couplets. Its fulfillment, if fulfillment is to be, is a lot of work by a lot of people willing to see it through to the end. Even if the end is bitter. Or, one could hope, bittersweet.”
“There is no great one,” Pietre said, putting the idea together as though tasting a new food and not really liking it.
“Oh, there are plenty of great ones,” Zinnegael said. “The trick is finding one willing to do the job.” With that Zinnegael hurried him out of the door of her hut, tucking a crescent roll into his jacket pocket as though he was going on a day hike, not marching to his potential death.
Chapter 50
Kaxon waited at the base of the hill, as the dawn spread its purple fingers across the sky. His palms were sweating and he gripped his scythe harder than necessary. He didn’t get it. Even at age eighteen, his life hadn’t exactly been pristine. He’d learned to sneak out of his bedroom at age ten, pulled pranks, told lies, passed most of his school exams with a little “help,” and of course there were his productive hours in the kitchen with the wenches. But the long-tipped Grey scythe was different—a step up from his usual crimes. It bothered him that this was the first thing in his life that he was perfectly sure both his mother and his father would disapprove of. His father would consider it weak, dishonorable. His mother might have thought so too, but more than that, he imagined that she would worry for the damage such a blade could do. Not that damage was what Kaxon intended to do—not that much anyway. He just needed an edge, something to pierce a little deeper and disable his opponents a little quicker.
What he couldn’t quite excuse was that he planned to blame Wittendon if he got caught. Wittendon who clapped him on the back every time they passed, Wittendon who would have happily skipped out on the Mal and let Kaxon have it all to himself if the rules had allowed a royal son to bow out.
A bugle sounded and the final ten contestants walked out onto the field for Round Three. Each was adorned in golden mail, the fur of their heads tipped in burgundy paint. Around their necks hung capes of various colors, representing the house and lineage into which they were born. Kaxon and Wittendon both wore shades of red with amber and yellow pictures embossed with magical thread that shifted into different battle scenes as the capes blew in the wind.
A second bugle sounded and a group of ten female Veranderen strode onto the field to remove the capes and grant a kiss. Sadora stood behind Wittendon and whispered something in his ear as her lips brushed his cheek. Kaxon had chosen a curvy brunette who wore too much perfume and couldn’t stop giggling at the crowd.
He gripped his scythe tighter.
At last the third bugle sounded. The Veranderen were blindfolded and led to different starting positions at the base of the hill. When all three bugles sounded together, the blindfolds would come off and the hunt would begin.
Wittendon was led to a thicket of woods. The blindfold only heightened his other senses. He could hear the crowds at the base of the hill—their voices and cheers pulsing with the fervor of a deadly stampede. He could smell the musty layers of leaf under his feet, a patch of closed moonflower behind him, the lichen on the trees. He could feel the swaying of branches near his face and the shade they provided. He was grateful for that. Several of his opponents, he suspected, were at positions more vulnerable than his—near rocky cliffs, by deafening rivers, in the center of fields baking with morning sunlight.
At once the screams from the crowd hushed and Wittendon’s body tingled. For several seconds even the wind seemed to stop and then three lonely notes poured over the hillside.
“Luck,” the guide whispered, whisking the cloth from Wittendon’s eyes, and running.
Wittendon opened his eyes, expecting—he wasn’t sure what—but something terrifying. Instead, he stood on a shady hill—so quiet, so beautiful, so still. For the briefest moment Wittendon wished to forget the Mal, forget his errand with the stone. He wanted only to sit down on a soft blanket with a warm lunch. He realized in another minute that that was the very danger of his position and that it could be just as deadly as the rockiest cliff. Even so he did not immediately move. He needed to hear, needed to feel.
All at once he felt too much. The ground in front of him seized. One of the trees near him lifted its roots and pounced. At least that’s how it looked. Wittendon dove to the left so that the thick trunk would not crush him, but as his paw-like hands hit the earth, the ground mounded up around his legs, so heavy and thick he stumbled. More earth rose around him burying all but his face in a shell of mud that hardened instantly. A vine from the fallen tree wrapped around Wittendon’s neck and a tall Verander walked from behind where the tree had stood. “It was easy to see that the rumors of the verlorn prince were true,” he said. “Still, I did not expect it to be quite so easy. I can only assume you made it this far because of your father’s position.” The easterner named Koll raised his hand about to send a flare for one of the overseers of the game, but with an intense bite, Wittendon snapped through the vine that surrounded his throat and—summoning all his feelings of courage and strength—he jerked out his arms and legs, cracking the thick casing of earth like a clay toy.
Wittendon thought of his mother, of Sadora, of Sarak—of all that was solid in his life. He thought of the boy Pietre with his steady blue eyes. Wittendon held out his palm to calm the earth in front of him, and then, raising his arms overhead, he used his magic to lift the enormous, fallen tree trunk and throw it at his opponent.
“You should not always believe the rumors you hear.”
Koll jumped from the tree though it caught his back paw and Wittendon heard a small crack.
Below them, Wittendon could hear a collective gasp, whispers, and the word ‘magic’ as it pulsed through the crowd rising into a cheer. So the secret was out. It felt good.
The Verander Koll steadied himself on his good leg, then jerked his scythe from his scabbard and dove toward Wittendon.
Their blades met in a crack as loud as the crashing of the tree and for several minutes they maneuvered through the shady woods, neither able to gain an advantage. Their fight was so well-matched that Wittendon began to feel it was almost meditative—peaceful in its steadiness—just like the wood. The wood. Wittendon focused his energy on it, the calm seductive nature. He thought of walks with Sadora, picnics with his mother
, lying on the softest moss for rest in the shade of a giant oak. Rest. He thought intensely of rest, and he gripped his blade. In one quick movement he nicked Koll on the cheek, sending all of his thoughts of peace, fullness, and sleep to the weapon’s tip. The Verander staggered back, then fell, curled into a soft slumber, a tiny drop of blood hanging on his cheek like a good-night kiss.
Wittendon touched the wound with his finger so that it would not continue to bleed and whispered, “You deserved worse.” Then from his palm, he shot a white flare into the sky. An overseer would come quickly with a group of healers to carry Koll like a baby down the hill. Embarrassing, yes, but in the history of round three defeats, definitely not the worst way to go.
In the distance, Wittendon saw another flare go up—this one in red to indicate a significant injury. No, not the worst way to go at all.
Wittendon walked to the edge of the wood, feeling strong. For a minute, Wittendon thought about how easy it would be to just compete at the Motteral Mal, make his father proud, become a leader of his land, and then grow old and fat. But that minute passed and Wittendon looked up the mountain, to the small overhang where the stone would need to be empowered—the place Zinnegael had called Steenmacht. Another flare went up. Three Veranderen down, six to go. Wittendon sheathed his blade and broke into a run.
The stuttering man walked up to the gate, his head hung low, a bucket of fish in his left hand, his fishing spear in his right. Masses of humans milled around the gates, awaiting entry. By mid-morning all of the Veranderen and wolves had gotten through and now the humans lingered, papers in hand, hoping for their chance to catch a glimpse of the famed tournament. The stutterer—called Damiott by the old maid-servant who had found him abandoned as a child in the woods—was glad for the crowds. They shielded his own scruffy band from suspicion. Still, he was puzzled at the idea of his own kind eager to watch the match of the Veranderen.
A woman next to him practically giggled in excitement though Damiott considered her well past giggling age. “Can you believe it,” she said. “Once every hundred years. I think we’re going to get in.”
Damiott nodded.
“You know they say the youngest son of the king is breathtakingly handsome,” she babbled on. “In flesh form of course. One look,” she murmured, “just one. And tales for generations.” She sighed in delight.
Damiott looked north for the captain’s signal and fidgeted with his bucket.
“Come now,” the woman said, moving closer. “Tell me it’s not just the most exciting thing of our lifetimes.”
Damiott desperately wanted to say, “It’s not the most exciting thing of our lifetimes,” but all that came out was, “N-n-n-Nt. I. I.” And then he stopped.
She wandered off muttering, “Of course I’d wind up talking to the village idiot.”
Damiott the idiot, he heard chanted in his head, just like it had sounded all those years of his childhood when he had worked cleaning washrooms in the king’s court. He breathed deeply to calm himself and a small tremble shook the ground beneath them—a tremor you would notice only if you were waiting for one. Damiott had been waiting for one all his life. He stepped forward to the guard, set his bucket down, held his papers out and then—more calmly than he’d ever spoken a word in his life, he took his “fishing spear” and stabbed the guard under his arm. The Verander crumbled, unconscious. Lifting his bucket, Damiott walked serenely through the gate—a steady line of humans, Veranderen peasants, and a dog or two following him, as though they were all at the head city for a once in a lifetime event. As indeed they were.
Kaxon stepped over the Verander’s body. He hadn’t even unsheathed his weapon on this one. All he’d needed to do was create a simple illusion—two actually. The Verander had jumped over the part he’d considered water, onto the part he’d considered earth; and into the sinking pit.
One leg was broken and he’d howled like a child, though he must have been a couple hundred years old. Kaxon had to resist the urge to throw the dirt back in and cover him up so he didn’t have to listen to it. He had passed only one other Verander who had cried—and that one had had his limb blown off by an explosion his opponent had hidden in the ground. Kaxon wasn’t looking forward to meeting the foe who liked to detonate his opponents. Perhaps Wittendon would be a gentleman and do that one in for him. Of course, even if he did, there was still the largest, most experienced finalist to defeat—the one who had been a finalist in the last three Mals, the one who had sent his opponent down the hill on a stretcher, unconscious and dripping blood from a broad gash across his chest.
All at once the vegetation in front of him burst into flame. Kaxon was angry he hadn’t heard the Verander approach and wondered at once if it was the explosion guy—he seemed to like heat. Other trees were catching now and soon Kaxon was surrounded by a ring of flame that got smaller and smaller as it moved in on him, like a wall in the scary stories his nanny used to tell. Sweat began to mat Kaxon’s fur and the only colors he could see were the black of the smoke and the red of the flames. Poison of unnatural types was not allowed during the Mal. Smoke, however—totally legal.
Kaxon hit the ground, lying as low as possible with his sash pressed hard against his nose and mouth. The ground just under him felt oddly cool compared to the hot air everywhere else. Kaxon focused on the cool, pulled as much of it into him as possible. The more he did, the deeper he felt the earth and the cooler it became. Mentally, he burrowed beneath layer after layer of soil, searching for the cool wet areas and then—bingo—he found an underground river. It was just below him—probably part of the Grey mine. He focused on the water with every bit of brain and magic he could muster and pulled it up, gathering with it any moisture he could find in the layers of dirt. Just as the wall of fire nicked his paw, the water burst out—shooting him up into the air so that he stood atop a great geyser. He smiled, enjoying the cool, wet water at his feet, and the look of shock on his opponent’s face. Kaxon recognized the Verander Peigh. Short and lean, he was the smallest of the finalists, and close to Kaxon in age.
Kaxon let the water collapse. It doused the remaining flames with plenty left over to throw his opponent to the ground. With any luck, Peigh would get knocked into a tree trunk and lose consciousness. But luck wasn’t what the Mal was about. Peigh got to his feet and raised his blade to the sky. Kaxon could tell that he was feeling for any electric current in the air, which he would then send through the water to Kaxon’s feet. It would have been a nice move.
Kaxon drew his own blade and banged it against his opponent’s. Both of them felt a bit of the shock that had gathered and took a step back. The short one actually laughed like they were brothers playing too rough behind their nanny’s back. Kaxon liked that. Maybe they could be seated together at the celebratory ball after this was over, but only if Kaxon could defeat him without sending him to the infirmary for several weeks. He re-sheathed his blade and gathered the water that was trying to seep back into the earth, forming it into a ball in front of him. He threw it at Peigh. With an easy movement Peigh caught it and threw it back.
“I was hoping you would stab it,” Kaxon said.
“So I would be drenched from head to foot?” Peigh responded.
“It would hardly destroy you, but it would have given me a good laugh,” Kaxon said, gathering the ball of water again, this time with more concentration. He hated to do it, but he had just seen a flare go up behind Peigh’s back. Whoever had won the match was not far off and would find them soon enough. Kaxon needed to make this quick. Into the ball, Kaxon gathered twigs and rocks, leaves, and an unlucky lizard—these would be a distraction. At the center of the water ball, he gathered something else—something he hoped he could find enough traces of in this water from the Grey mine.
Peigh watched the ball carefully, his hand on his blade.
Kaxon suspected he was heating it. Heat was too easy in the Mal, which made it a bit of a weakness. You felt angry or scared or pressured and you went for heat. Heat was m
aking Peigh sweat; heat was predictable and, even though it was a risk, Kaxon was counting on that. He flung the enormous ball of water at Peigh and just as Kaxon had hoped, Peigh stabbed it with a super-heated blade so that it evaporated on contact. Down rained the dirt, leaves, and sticks. The lizard hit the ground and scampered away. A deluge of pebbles battered Peigh’s head and shoulders and then, just as it seemed it was done, a small ball of compact mineral with traces of the Grey fell from the cloud. The clump was not as heavy as several of the others, but it was more potent. The stone hit Peigh with a solid plunk and the Verander collapsed.
Kaxon waited for several moments to be sure he was really down and then sent up his flare. He walked over to Peigh and kicked the small mineral stone away, examining the bump on Peigh’s skull. It wouldn’t be pretty, but nothing that would keep them from sharing a goose leg at the final ceremony. Peigh’s blade lay near his body and Kaxon picked it up.
For a minute he considered abandoning his scythe and taking Peigh’s normal one. But then he thought of the stump of exploded wolken leg. He thought of the largest Verander and the way his blade gleamed—polished and sharp against the sun. He thought of the crowds below. And he thought of his father—watching from his box, waiting for a win. Two to go, Kaxon thought, and then I can bury this cursed weapon and forget it ever was.
Chapter 51
Sadora walked through the midday crowds in a blood red dress that matched Wittendon’s ceremonial cape. Around her neck she wore the necklace of dull metallic petals, though the broken locket hung underneath her dress, as close to her heart as ever.
Everywhere she went people smiled and murmured. Several curtsied and then teetered with gossip as she passed. People seemed to think that when you were pretty you couldn’t hear a thing. Most of the doting ladies of the court hated her sincerely. It was this—this tendency of the high-birthed ladies to smile and gush, then mutter to another about your ignoble birthright or coy plottings for the prince—that had driven Sadora first to the lonely dark libraries, and later to the ancient, ugly tunnels. In the end it was those seemingly abandoned tunnels that had cured her of her exclusion. She had friends in the Septugant, friends of all sorts and races. She could feel them watching her now as they milled through the crowds, slowly and steadily changing their positions, making their way, step by shuffled step, to a deep nook on the eastern slope.
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