by A Van Wyck
Circling around to come up from the side where the press was thickest, he sidled into the crowd. Reaching up, he unbuckled his helm and couched it in the crook of his arm, drawing the under-padding down about his neck.
Just another face in the crowd, he thought as he elbowed his way through the mob ringing the palisade. His uniform stopped anyone from objecting too strenuously to his rude jostling. He didn’t push all the way to the front, leaving a screen of bodies between him and the field. Everyone had eyes only for the match currently taking place but his attention was directed across the ring to where the princess stood, speaking animatedly to a stunned looking Marco. He frowned as he watched the blood visibly drain from the young scholar’s face.
The immediate fight wound to a spectacular close to the cheering of the crowd, the match caller announced the victor to renewed roaring. But his attention wasn’t for them. Craning his neck, he saw the princess beckon for two squires to help Marco to a pavilion. She meant for him to fight in the tourney, then. From the expression on the Heli lad’s face, it had come as a surprise to him as well.
He guffawed bitterly, thinking of the chaos the princess’s request must have caused the organizers. These days, he knew a little something about being caught between a princess and a hard place.
My sympathy, lads.
Still, what was she thinking? Obviously Marco hadn’t asked to compete. Why would she push him–
Ah…
A day off.
He chuckled, bemused. The sound of his humor was lost in the drone of the mob, though the man on his left cast him a curious glance.
Wondering who Marco would be fighting, he glanced at the progress board behind the judges. Pages were in the process of rearranging the wooden shields on their hooks, reflecting this latest win. Someone had fashioned a shield for young Marco. It was emblazoned simply with the Heli Imperial flag, a rising sun on a field of red. It glistened, the paint probably still wet. In all likelihood this was the first time in Renali history that the Imperial sigil had found its way onto a Kingdom tourney board. Marco would know for sure. He’d ask later.
Poor Marco.
He wondered if the boy knew he’d be representing the entire empire in this bout.
There were some surprised grunts and scattered, dissatisfied mutterings among the crowd as the red and gold shield was hung. This new peace with the empire was tentative at best. The idea had not as yet had a chance to take root in the collective consciousness of the Kingdom citizenry. And there were many men in the crowd old enough to remember having fought against the empire in the last war. No one would be cheering for Marco in this fight.
His eyes fell on the princess, beaming at Marco from across the ring. Well, he corrected himself, almost nobody.
He watched as a familiar looking shield was placed across from Marco’s sign.
“Is that the Norvalis crest?” he asked his neighbor.
“Aye,” the roughly dressed man rumbled around a wild, ginger moustache. “Keppin the younger. Saw him just last week as when I was delivering ale to his lordship’s men at their city estate. ‘E was there then, sparring. No swordsman I, so’s I can’t say for sure but ‘e looked to be in rare form.” The man rubbed a hand across red stubble, rasping audibly against a callused palm. “Mind you,” the man mused, “’e’s at that awkward age now, so’s that might hamper him some.”
He glanced over to where the young Lord Norvalis had just stepped onto the sand of the enclosure, already helmed despite the match caller only now entering the ring. His eyes narrowed. There was nothing awkward-looking about the young lord.
Movement caught his eye. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the squires practically dragging Marco out of the pavilion and onto the field. If not for the unsavory nature of his task, he might very well have enjoyed this. He knew how the boy loathed being put forward. This must be absolute torture. And with the princess in attendance… The teasing was going to be legendary, no matter the outcome of the bout – even if he did have to pretend he’d heard the account second hand.
“Begin!”
The crowd cheered.
In mere moments Marco had been driven into the palisade.
“Ooooh…” he gusted in sympathy along with the crowd but couldn’t prevent his cheek from twitching in a smile regardless.
The crowd screamed their approval. He had to admit Norvalis’s skill was impressive for one so young. The Hawk of High Reach must still have Fortune’s touch. He watched Marco shake off the defeat. By the set of the professed scribe’s shoulders, he could tell it had stung.
The second round began and the boy was immediately put on the defensive again, slowly being driven back, a step at a time. But it was different this time, a fighting retreat instead of a rout. He felt his eyebrows inching upward as he watched the lightning defense being conducted by the young scholar. He’d known the boy could fight – he’d reported as much – but there was a big difference between knowing how to handle yourself and matching blades with the child prodigy of a living legend.
“Hmph,” his red whiskered neighbor huffed in surprise as the tables suddenly turned, Marco going over to the offensive. The two flitted around each other, swords licking out to ring sparks off one another. He stared. This was not the fight he’d been expecting. Son of a potter he might be but he knew his way around a sword – and he wasn’t bad. But this… Had they inadvertently pitted two child prodigies against each other? This was closer to the swordplay he’d seen in the barracks yard between some of the skilled veterans.
Unexpectedly, contrary to the style he’d displayed thus far, the young scholar bulled into Norvalis, connecting with a slash to the midriff.
The crowd jeered. He clenched his fist, suppressing an excited shout. The combatants broke apart, circling each other warily now. Remembering his purpose, he glanced quickly across the ring at the princess. Her eyes were wide, peeking above the hands that hid her face, shoulders drawn up to her ears. If she’d been hoping for a friendly bout of good natured swordplay, this obviously wasn’t the fight she’d been expecting either.
The two closed again and he pulled his eyes away from the princess to watch.
By the second blow he knew something was wrong. He caught his breath as he realized Norvalis was no longer sparring. The tempers of the nobility were notorious and with the young lord’s ire apparently awakened, the attacks turned vicious. The young lord drove Marco relentlessly toward the palisade, the blows coming hot and fast. The clang of metal rang above the sound of the crowd’s cheering.
The boy slammed into the palisade, desperately parrying an onslaught of deafening blows.
“Break!”
But Norvalis didn’t, continuing to batter at Marco’s notched sword.
“Break!”
Something was very, very wrong. He stiffened in shock as he saw the young scholar narrowly turn a blow that would have broken his neck if it had landed. And still Norvalis did not let up. In the space of a breath, he saw two more near fatal attempts.
“I said, break!”
He was already over the first palisade and hurdling the second before he realized he was moving. He hit the ground running, reaching for his sword.
But he was too far away – Marco had nothing left. Even as he watched, his friend’s sword was battered aside. He yelled as he charged, trying to distract Norvalis and buy Marco another moment. Horrified, he watched a dirk appear in the lord’s offhand fist. The heavy, spike-like tool punched easily through a triple layer of padded leather as Norvalis drove it in, underhand.
Eyes huge through the slits of the visor, Marco seemed to collapse into his killer’s arms. The dirk pulled back for another stab.
“Halt!”
His sword was in his hands and he swung for the killer’s back with the flat of the blade, knowing he was too late. Norvalis whirled, towing the limp Marco before him like a shield.
He screamed with desperate effort as he tried to alter the trajectory of his blow,
his own muscles fighting him. His sword point plowed into the dirt, the merciless momentum throwing him from his feet.
And then the killer was gone and Marco was collapsing on top of him. He surrendered his sword to catch the falling boy. He was so light.
Kneeling with his friend in his arms, he whipped his head left and right. The killer leapt from the first to the second beam of the palisade and into the crowd. The press flinched violently away from the armed and armored murderer who plunged in amongst them, brandishing a bloody dirk. The closest fell over themselves, backpedaling desperately and bringing down the ones behind them. Those who could turned to run but were hampered by the press of those bearing forward to see what was happening. Pockets of halberds wove and swung drunkenly above the heads of the crowd as Guards fought the press of bodies to reach the commotion.
A man with the curled moustaches and oiled ringlets of a noble, obviously a contender at the tourney, drew a sword. The murderer left the spike dirk embedded to the hilt in the man’s eyesocket, flitting past to horrified screams. Amidst the renewed panic and confusion the agile figure slid through the crowd like an oil-slicked snake.
A palsy, trailing surprise and revulsion, showed the killer’s rapid progress through the throng. A vendor’s pushcart, heaped with meat pies, overturned violently and a flash of leather streaked down a narrow avenue between the stalls. A stream of screaming guards, finally clear of the crowd, barreled after the disappearing Norvalis, hindered by their unwieldy halberds in a space thick with tent lines, banners and pennants. Ever fainter screams and sounds of breakage tracked the felon’s flight.
He stared down at Marco’s face.
The boy’s eyes were closed, the armored chest still.
Too late. Too late.
Unable to look anymore, he tore his eyes from his friend’s slack face. They fell on the Princess Dailill. She was surrounded by a cordon of nervous Guards, one of whom restrained her with hands clamped on her shoulders. She was struggling, tears streaming down her face, one hand stretched toward the still form he held, crouched in the dust.
“Marco!” she screamed, her voice breaking in agonized sobs.
“Marco!!!”
“I’m sorry, are you alright?”
Justin blinked, his mouth open and his hands frozen mid gesture. The Islands’ ambassador was looking at him in friendly concern, their conversation on the vagaries of Kingdom politics interrupted by his sudden lapse.
“I’m fine,” he wanted to say. But the words stuck in his throat. Another wash of pain, rushing along in the wake of the first, crashed over him. This one was shot through with the bitter flavors of panic and grief.
He was on his feet before he knew it, oblivious to the Islands ambassador’s shocked expression. He hadn’t run in years. He was famous for never running. But he ran now, his robes hitched up to his skinny knees. Melding his empathy with his streaming, he rolled his own fear before him, clearing a path through the throng of merrymakers. People stared uneasily after the hurrying priest, fingering their weapons and clutching their children to their skirts. He hardly noticed them. He’d felt a pull like this only once before.
Please, merciful goddess, let it not be Marco, he prayed as he ran.
But he was powerless to stop the High Arcanist’s words from milling through his head: A month or two. Maybe less…
“Please, no…” he begged. He didn’t have far to run. He smacked into a solid ring of people, their fear and anger cluttering his senses. He pushed through them like a crazed man, eliciting shouts and curses, until he was brought up short by a wooden fence. Beyond it, in a cleared space, knelt a man in Royal Guard livery, clutching a prone figure.
Merciful Helia, please no.
Ducking under the fence, he skidded to a stop at the guardsman’s shoulder… and looked down into Marco’s pale, blank face.
For a moment, fear and loss froze his faculties.
“Move,” he commanded, brushing the Guard roughly aside to kneel by Marco. “What happened?” he demanded, pressing two fingers beneath the edge of the boy’s jaw. There was no pulse.
“They were sparring,” the guardsman stammered, obviously overwrought, “and then there was– He– He stabbed him! He had a dagger. Got him in the stomach.”
“Help me get this off him,” he directed.
Together they struggled to peel the stubborn leathers and iron plate off the boy, the guardsman’s trembling fingers nevertheless deft with the buckles. Tears tracked down the Guard’s face as they lifted it away.
Marco’s undershirt was one great crimson stain and tore easily as he ripped it. The wound was ugly, jagged and deep, the work of a star-pointed blade. The flow of blood had ceased along with the boy’s heart.
“Give me your dagger,” he commanded.
“What?”
The guardsman was young, he saw, and probably in shock. He reached out and plucked the man’s dagger from its sheath. Closing his eyes, he wrapped his fingers around the tip of the blade and stilled his breathing. The prayer preceding his streaming this time was unlike any other he’d ever voiced.
Please, please, please…
He ignored the lashing pain as the metal heated, burning quickly toward an angry, spitting red. Black wisps of smoke curled from his fingers as he let go, quickly pressing the branding blade to Marco’s wound.
There was a raw hiss, the smell of burnt meat filled his nostrils. Repositioning, he applied the blade twice more, flipping it over, before the wound was entirely seared shut. Discarding the dagger, he dug in his belt pouch with his undamaged hand, drawing out his focusing crystal. His healing skills were less than mediocre but he had to try. He slapped it down on the boy’s chest atop the older spell scar, closing his eyes again.
It was getting more and more difficult to control his breathing. He struggled, wrestling with the spell as it refused to knit the dead, resistant flesh. Gasping, he felt the energy drain from him as it finally took hold, settling imperfectly.
It would have to do. Two workings of this caliber in one sitting was already pushing his limits. And he was not done yet.
“Don’t touch him,” he cautioned the guard. “Or me,” he added as an afterthought.
At least not until it’s over.
He moved up to place one hand over the boy’s dead heart.
Just don’t think of him as Marco or you’re going to crumble…
In his damaged hand he gripped the crystal tightly.
Please Helia, let me be strong enough for this.
He took a deep breath. And reached out.
The incredible resistance from the forces he attempted to cajole spiked into an instant migraine. It threatened to tear the top off his head. If he didn’t need both hands, he’d be clutching his splitting skull. These weren’t forces you could rush but rush them he did, spending lavishly of his own energy. He wrestled with the elements, putting himself in opposition to the natural order. No mortal could long withstand the immense strain but he wouldn’t have to hold it for long. Sweat streamed unnoticed down his face as unseen forces ponderously aligned to his will.
He was no Cyrus. He couldn’t restart another’s heart with his own, he’d end up killing both.
But I can do this…
Tilting his head, he stared upward with unseeing eyes. From out of the clear blue sky rumbled the deep boom of unseasonal thunder. His skin crawled as hair all over his body strained away from him, trying to escape what was coming. He was expecting the pain, sat gritting his teeth against it, but there was no preparing for this kind of agony. It flashed through him. He had only an instant to dissipate what he didn’t need. He siphoned it into the ground, into the air, sending the rest into the still heart beneath his fingers. He felt the body jump lifelessly beneath him. But the heart remained silent.
He floundered, his reserves spent. Somehow, he rallied for another attempt.
Thunder droned angrily.
He hunched beneath the pain as lightning crashed behind his eyelids,
plucked straight from the friction in the atmosphere. Beneath his palm the body’s limbs flailed but the heart lay still. The ache behind his eyes was a living thing, clawing at the inside of his skull, shredding all it found. He felt himself slipping, the forces he’d attempted to tame defying his tenuous control. They would rip him apart in another moment unless he let go.
Time for one more. Just one more.
The heavens boomed. The full force of the unleashed lightning lashed through him, carrying his consciousness away with it.
Steam curling from him, the priest collapsed.
PART III
The final days of the Age of Magic
The day of the Fall
The Battle of Thell
He bellowed words of encouragement to his besieged soldiers, hoarse voice lost to the din of war. He moved behind the line of Foot, trying to identify possible breach points. The call for reinforcements hovered on his lips. His brave men and women stood their ground stoically, their determination weathering the onslaught much better than their steel-sheathed shields. The shredded metal, battered and scored by the never-ending assault, seemed thin protection against the roiling waves of horrors battering at them.
That wave foamed chaotically, seemingly suspended on the cusp of crashing down and burying them. Creatures, sentient and not, drawn from a hundred conquered worlds, were poised to pit themselves against the flagging defenses. Among their number lumbered great furred monstrosities thrice as tall as a man. Scaled terrors stalked with fang filled maws. Ink-skinned shadows with plague fingers flitted among them. Grey pelted, tusked terrors roared their rage at the besieged lines. Some exotically armed and armored, others setting to with teeth and claws, stings and pincers. A nightmare menagerie.
He saw the arrow arcing over the heads of his line of soldiers and whipped his shield up. The clang of the arrowhead piercing the metal and wood reverberated like the death toll of a breaking bell. The impact buckled his hind leg and he staggered a step, exhaustion driving his knees to the ground. The heavy shield dragged his arm down. Over its rim, through the press of seething bodies and over the discordance of battle, he saw the creature that had loosed the arrow. Sickly grey pebbled skin over lean, apish limbs and from its wide trap of needle fangs issued a screech of manic glee at seeing its intended victim fall.