by N. M. Howell
“Do you have the strength to continue?”
“Let us find out.”
This time I bring my hand down so hard that I punch into the earth and gush the freezing winter magic into the ground. The light reappears and now it branches out like roots all through the earth in every direction. I locate the largest one and Thea supports me as we walk.
We follow it for some time. We must cover some four or more miles southwest. Finally I sense the end of the light approaching. It is rising nearer the surface. Surely it must come up soon. But I am feeling weaker and it is getting harder to maintain the light; it grows fainter beneath us and I am having trouble keeping track of it. Yet with one last burst of magic, we are able to find the end. It turns straight up toward us and ends. I lift the earth with my remaining strength and we stare down into the black.
“This is it,” I say. “This is the end of the tunnel in my vision.”
“So be it,” Thea says, grinning.
And she hurls us both forward into the dark.
Across the sea a party moves through the Targarossian Forest, where all the trees have grown red since a fateful night long ago when the sky itself lived red. It is a party of Norrolai, abominations of nature long thought myth by the people on the other side of the sea, but well known terrors to the inhabitants of Targaross. Norrolai have the ability to become the elements: earth, fire, water, wind. They are masters of stealth and torture, horrendous foes. They are the bastard race of the Warriors, who mated with human men and women during the War of Four Heavens when all existence was in pandemonium. Also within the party are the Helkar, who hate the Norrolai nearly as much as they hate Yunger’s army. The Norrolai, the Helkar, and the small army of men that follows advance through the tree line and into the Wooden Desert, where lie the wrecks of some thousand ships—wrecks whose origins no scholar or sorcerer in history can trace. The party stops. They have come to the field where they will do battle and across from them stands an army four thousand strong, more than four times the number of the small party. Three advance from the party.
It is Laoren, Delara, and Eduard, or what used to be Eduard. After Laoren beat him into submission, Eduard was too weak to control his black-hearted brother inside him. And so after four hundred years of being caged, the prince was finally able to take control of Eduard’s body. His mother named him Horace. He strides forth now in a suit of gold and black, no need of armor or shield. His eyes no longer change color, for the prince’s magic is mor’lumière. Delara wears her gold and white silk, fearless, beautiful, and stronger than Nethlamas’s wildest dreams. Laoren is clothed in white from her neck to her feet, a leather and steel suit of fitted armor she conjured herself. Traega’s cape still hangs from her shoulders.
“You confound me,” Laoren calls to commander across the sands.
“Say what you mean, witch, and quick, for this day you go to the dogs.”
“You confound me. I do not understand why death should so attract you. I make dust of mountains, change the color of skies, build heavens. I once stood against the Almighty himself, yet there you are in shield and armor, staring at the face of your demise and you have not even the wisdom to be afraid. I will not ask you to lower your blades. I will not ask you to reconsider. I will not even pretend that I mean to spare you. If you love the thought of death so dearly I bid you came and eat of it.”
“I’ll have that pretty head on my blade, I swear it. I know no pity for the wicked and sick of heart. Bring your magic to real men, witch, and feel the telling bite of our steel.”
Laoren spreads her arms and rises up into the air. She closes her eyes and when she opens them a wave of blinding energy bursts from her body. It rushes out across the desert, not harming the men, but obliterating the ships. It must crush at least half of them, filling the air with a shower of splinters and chips. The opposing army now understands. They now see her power, but it is too late. She raises her hand toward them; they don’t dare to run, but they cower under shields, terrified. She merely laughs.
“You are not worth the pain of my magic,” she says, smiling. “But my Helkar and Norrolai are starved for bloodshed.”
Delara throws up her hand and a black smoke rushes out from her palm at the enemy, poisoning them, immobilizing everyone it touches. The Norrolai, the Helkar, and men rush forward and like a terrible wave of death and hate they break upon the men in the sands. Delara and Horace, too, rush forth into the fray. Delara conjures her sword of black flames and cuts down great numbers of the men. Horace uses his favorite trick and transforms into the minotaur; the devastation cannot be exaggerated. The Norrolai cannot be stopped: they become fire and race across the battlefield consuming ten at a time; they become water, making traps of mud and drowning the men. They become winds whipping the sands into storms, or the very sand itself and run down the men’s throats. The Helkar cast their black stars and transform into every beast and creeping thing imaginable. The men who oppose them, who gathered on this desert to stand for light and good and freedom, do not stand a chance.
It is a bloody but brief battle and by nightfall not one of the men in the sand is left. Laoren has lost very few and only floated above while the battle raged. She comes back to the earth. Delara and Horace come to her. Horace kneels. Delara bows her head.
“Well done,” Laoren says, with no small smirk. “Delara, this will be the last battle for you until the child comes. I sense its strength amassing. We can afford no mishaps now.”
“Of course,” Delara says. “The child needs rest from my body. What you say is best.”
“And you,” she says, turning to Horace. “To not have not fought for four centuries you have proven yourself strong this day.”
“You set me free from myself long ago,” he says. “I was caged again through my own foolishness, but now that I’ve returned I serve you again, mistress. You have but to ask of me.”
“Rise, young prince. Take your wife and walk beside me. I will take you to a place of rest.”
Horace stands and takes Delara by the arm. Laoren leads them through the carnage of the slain, among which Norrolai still move as fire, burning the bodies into nothing. Once they have cleared the dead, Laoren speaks to the wind and an oasis of trees and water and life spread out before them. She conjures a sort of grand cottage and directs Horace and Delara to enter. Horace deposits Delara in a chair and seats himself beside her. He watches Laoren as she watches the work of the Norrolai outside. She looks displeased.
“Are you unhappy with the results of the battle, mistress?” he asks.
“I am bored with the results, prince. I tire of these brawls in sand and trees, these skirmishes of guerilla fighters and poor, broken militia made of the elderly, the scared, and the dumb. That commander today, the one who stood up against me, I want more of his kind. I am bored with battle. I want war.”
“And you shall have it, Laoren,” says Delara. “I swear it. And after the child has come and you have used its power, I shall fight alongside you. You will conquer Targaross and we will cross the Sightless Sea. We will storm Glassenross and take the Hundred Kingdoms. You shall wear the High King’s crown.”
“I shall have it for a toy. Tell me, Horace, how does it feel to wear the body of your brother?”
“It feels like a glove that should fit, but for whatever reason won’t. It is strange, mistress, but the worst of it is the taste of weakness he leaves. He had so much power and yet all he seems to want is that white-haired whore. Prancing around Glassenross as a Queen when she is but a servant given powers she cannot begin to understand or control. He cries out for her in the night. It sickens me.”
“Indeed. Leave me and Delara alone for a time. Make sure the Helkar and Norrolai aren’t at each others’ throats.”
Horace stand, bows, and leaves. Laoren turns and walks over to Delara.
“He underestimates that girl. Many times have I called her whore and witch and charlatan, but her power is now undeniable.”
“How can
she be a match for you, Laoren, when she could not even defeat me?”
“Of course she can defeat you. Girls like her are ruled by good hearts and thoughts of saving what they love. It was her friendship to you that held her back and saved your life. That was three long years ago. I doubt you would want to fight her now. She grows strong. I can sense it. Soon she will be able to sense me, too.”
“I would seek out that good heart now and rip it from her chest were I not carrying this child.”
“You are brave and cold of heart. A perfect lieutenant. But we are not fighting a servant girl with a broken heart. She has killed many across that land. They run scared across the sea to the safety of my side.”
Laoren compels Horace’s chair to her. She sits, watching Delara. For some moments that is all she does, observe the girl from head to toe, wondering.
“When I first laid eyes on Prince Horace four hundred years ago I knew he would turn. I knew he would welcome the dark magic and fall in behind me without much ado from me. The first thing he did when he took over Eduard’s body was lead me back to the castle he once lived in, slaughter everyone inside, and hand it over to me. His heart is a charred thing. Strange, for when I uttered that spell to change the sky it was in fact Eduard’s mother I had chosen. It was pure chance that another woman was with child and bearing the same name: Lorelai. But I never would have guessed that someone such as yourself would follow me. What did Erglon say to you? What promises did he make you that you would forsake everything and join me in a fight against everyone and everything you knew?”
“He said I was the heir of Nethlamas. That powerful and unstable mor’lumière ran through my veins.”
“That’s very well, but it is not a promise to make a lady kill. What was it?”
Delara looks down into her hands for a moment. Silence. At last she looks up again.
“I knew my family would not take me back once they learned I had the dark magic. My father, my mother. My little Thea. They would never want me again. And the servant girl I’d grown to love had proven that she cared not for what mattered to me. Erglon told me nothing that I believed. His tongue was too forked to convince me of anything. I knew only that here, with you, I would find others like me. And if I must lose my family, through no fault of my own, then so must the rest of the world.”
“You are a Queen in your own right, Delara,” says Laoren. “You shall be by my side through it all. But you still cling to those you left.”
“I do not. I have forgotten--”
“You cannot lie to me. At this very moment I read your heart. You are in pain. Fear not, most trusted, I will free you yet.”
She stands again and returns to the window.
“I want her soul,” Laoren says. “I want her essence and the winter magic that fuels it. She cannot be allowed to breath in my new world.”
`Darkness takes the sky. Black smoke pools at Laoren’s feet and oozes from her fingertips. The walls and the earth and the very air shake. This is great fury. Black fury.
“She cannot be allowed to find her people, for she would gain a great power through them,” she continues. “I will see this girl chained and stripped of her arrogance. I will not underestimate her, but she will kneel in the presence of my power and I will chew the magic from her throat.”
She turns up her head and from her throat pours a multitude of pitch black crows with eyes as red as fresh blood. The crows gush from the cottage and over her forces. The Helkar and Norrolai are able to resist, but the men are helpless. The crows bite and tear at them until they fall on the ground, writhing in death. The crows pick them clean before returning. They land in the trees and there are so many that the trees look as if they grow black leaves, as if they’ve fallen under a spell of night. The cawing is a most terrible sound to hear.
“I do not know mercy,” Laoren says. “I cannot fathom love or peace or pity. Not anymore. Too long has my heart been shut to this world of waste, ruin, and decadence. Let it be known, I seek not to cleanse or bargain. I seek the life essence of the world and its creatures. I seek the throne of Heaven and the head of the murderer who once sat there. I will take it all and when I reign over the cosmos only then will I turn my ear to the screams and death whispers of the earth.”
When I wake, I am being dragged through complete and utter darkness. I cannot see my own hands. And I am so weak. I do not feel the draining anymore, instead I feel empty. Not dead, but half gone. Something has stolen my magic. Thea is grunting and gasping as she continues pulling me. I can only imagine what a burden it is for her.
“Thea, stop.”
She stops moving and kneels beside me in the dark. She takes me in her lap.
“Neven, are you alright? Almighty, I thought I’d killed you.”
“It was not you. There is some curse on this land. It has drained me of my magic.”
“I am sorry. But we are so close now. Look, there is a light.”
She helps me turn myself to see and sure enough there is a dot some distance in the dark. I gesture to her and she helps me gain my feet.
“Are you sure you can walk?” she asks.
“You cannot drag me all this way on your own. I can walk if you will aid me, but I pray the way is clear, for I have only my sword and not even the strength to lift it.”
Together we slowly make way for the light at the end. It is hard and piecemeal work. Thea is strong and brave, but she is merely a girl and though I am ever driven by the desire for revenge and by an anger I cannot put into words, I am weaker than I can ever remember being. So accustomed have I grown to my magic that I have never even considered what I might be without it. Shall I be a servant girl once more? On and on we trudge, the dot growing and growing in the distance. We are sweating and shuffling and near collapse as we finally reach the light. We stop short. It is a precipice.
Before us is a sheer drop, perhaps two hundred feet. We have entered a vast cave and judging by the large number of other holes and paths, this is the epicenter of a network of tunnels. There seems to be a field of some kind below: large bright flowers grows there, though I wonder how life could grow underground. Thea turns to me.
“Neven, have you any magic at all? Anything left?”
“I am dry inside, Thea. I can only just manage to walk.”
“Well, you must find a way. The answers we seek lie quite some way beneath us.”
I think for a moment, my frustration growing with this girl. Before she came I had a mission and a purpose. I was on my way to a destination and now I am somewhere under the earth, stripped of my magic, and about to topple from a precipice. But the golden pool was certainly no trick. I am now compelled to go on for the satisfaction of my own curiosity. An idea comes to me.
“Here,” I say, giving her my sword. “I do not know if it will work.”
“If what will work?”
“The time for questions is done.”
With that I grab her by the shoulders and cast us both into cave. Down and down we fall, locked tight together.
“Cut me!” I yell.
“What? No!”
“Do it now or we die!”
Thea runs the blade across my side. The pain is momentary and I have been so long in battle that I barely notice it. And then I feel the winter magic surge within me, only a small amount, nothing near what it once was, but just enough. I throw out my hand towards the ground and a jet of freezing air collides with the earth. It slows our fall much, but still we come crashing to the earth. The wind is knocked from my body and I’m certain my wrist is broken. I wait for the winter magic to finish healing me, but it is gone.
Thea is next to me and my blade has fallen on the other side of her. It is a miracle it didn’t impale her. I turn over to examine her and although she is unconscious she is not seriously harmed. I turn my attention to the flowers around me, but now that I’m down here I see: they are not flowers, but heads. White-haired heads. These are the bodies I saw in the pool. And I am only just realizing th
at they are alive and staring at me. They seem as awestruck as I am.
“Who. . . who are you?” I ask.
“I am Analwyn,” he says, not without hesitation.
The form of is name cannot be. Not here, not ever. My people are gone.
“And what. . . how. . . who are your people?” I ask.
“I am of the Braelynn. We come from above. From the Winterlands.”
And I see and hear no more.
When I wake I am on a bed of some kind. The cut on my side has been bandaged and my wrist has been set and braced. I look around and Thea is sitting next to me, some cuts on her face, but otherwise fine. She is smiling.
“Can you rise Neven?” she asks.
Slowly I lift myself up and turn to put my feet on the ground. I do not feel up to standing yet.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“They’ve brought us to their healers. We did it, Neven. We found your people.”
And then I remember falling. I remember Analwyn. The Braelynn. From the Winterlands.
“Impossible,” I whisper.
“But what is impossible for a Queen, especially the Winter Queen of the Winterlands.”
I turn to face the voice and find a woman, thin and with some lines in her face, but beautiful. White-haired and full of grace. Majestic, even here underground.
“I could tell you a story of a mother and father who had a beautiful daughter. The child was special: the last hope of a doomed race. It was the most important thing in the world that the child be raised in the sun, happy and safe, even if it meant being away from her parents. Oh, how they wept and screamed when they had to deliver her up. But everything they did was for that precious, powerful child.”
There are tears in her eyes. She reaches out and sweetly touches my face.
“My precious, powerful, beautiful girl. Welcome home, my darling child.”
Chapter 12
“This day for me is even happier than the day you were born, for then I knew I must send you away, but now I know we shall be together.”