by N. M. Howell
“I daresay the power you’ve stolen from me will be returned,” Laoren said.
The sky burst open in an explosion of lightning and sound and color. A void appeared suddenly in the clear morning sky and a face showed itself. A great, magnificent face, not human or creature or anything describable. Laoren screamed, spun her cape, and disappeared. Eduard stared up in his agony at the void and the face within it.
“Who are you?” he asked, not knowing whether to fear or not.
“I have been many names. I have been many deeds. But this and the last age of man have known me as the Almighty.”
Eduard fell back against the ground, stunned. It was impossible. With the exception of his father, everyone in Eduard’s life had always reminded him to pray and remember that a great being in the sky watched him, but he had never been able to decide for himself whether or not the stories were true.
“Impossible,” he said. “You cannot be real. And if you are, why have you chosen me? Why am I worthy to be saved?”
“Saved?” the Almighty responded. “I have not come to save you, boy. I come to take from you the precious gift the witch gave you. Vierg’lumière runs in your veins. Once I’ve ripped it from your soul I shall destroy and begin again.”
“Destroy what?”
“Everything. You need not worry. You could never survive having the magic taken from your soul. Whatever fury I shower on the earth you shall not live to see.”
The Almighty flew down from heaven and landed at Eduard’s feet in the shape of a common man. White hair. Fair skin. The only thing unique about him is a scar on his chest, it runs from his throat to the bottom of his abdomen, bluer than the Sightless Sea. He reaches down and lifts Eduard with a single hand. He throws the already broken boy on a nearby cart, face down, and rips Eduard’s shirt open. The Almighty speaks into his hand and then reaches into Eduard’s back to grab the spine. Eduard screams in agony, but the Almighty does not listen to him. He twists and pulls, but eventually he realizes. It is gone, or rather, spoiled. He releases Eduard and lets his fall back to the ground.
“The Fulcrumnai,” the Almighty exclaims. “You fool! You’ve ruined it. I cannot use you now.”
“Please, for mercy’s sake help me,” Eduard pleads.
“Help you? Stupid wizard, I mean to destroy every foot of this earth. Every brooke and stream, every hill and dale, every kingdom and village and cave and rock. Every creature on the earth is a plague upon it and I know what you all want. My power. You seek the means to destroy me, to usurp me! But I will not be broken. Be it now or centuries from now, I will bring this world to its knees. I will steal the breath of men and babes and creatures, I care not.”
“But you created us. You’re the Almighty, you can’t want us dead.”
“I did not create you, nor do I know who did, but once I can use the Stones again I will have the power to end you. And stop calling me that ridiculous name. I have heard it uttered for millennia and it has never once pleased me. My weak fool of a brother called me that. Long before your time, many life ages ago, there was a race of men whose skin was pale and whose hair was light. They worshipped my brother and me unflinchingly. I promised them, as I promise you now, that one day I would destroy them. When that day arrived, as I turned their bodies inside out, they cried out a name for me in their anger and pain. Ragnarok.”
He lifted his foot and brought it down on Eduard’s chest. So many bones broke it would not do to name them all. All went dark for Eduard. Ragnarok bent low over him.
“Give me your memory, boy. Perhaps one day when you’ve dealt with the second soul in your body you will remember.”
Suddenly Eduard is awake again. At first he is baffled by the memory he has just had; it seems impossible that he should have lived all these years unaware that he had met the Almighty. Unaware that the being he had praised for four hundred years nearly killed him for nothing. As the shock wears, he begins to notice himself. He feels better, stronger. He is still weak, but his mind is perfectly clear. He stands and turns, finally seeing he is not alone.
The shore is covered by the strangest people he has ever seen. Creatures made of pure rock and stone, at least ten feet tall and as silent as the sand on which they stand. They are all wet as if they have just come out of the sea. Eduard takes a step back. Even in his wide and varied studies, he has never come across the like of these. One of them steps forward to him.
“Do not fear. We did not travel from Targaross to murder a lone man on the sand. Unless you fight for that witch in the white cape.”
The entire army of them tense, ready to crush him should he answer wrong.
“She has been my enemy for nearly four hundred years,” Eduard says. “I go to fight her now.”
“Then we shall go with you, man. I am Mot, one of the elders of my people. We are Blackhearts, rock people from the Rock Realms of Targaross.”
“It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance. You are quite a people. I mean no dishonor, but did you say you are an elder?”
“Indeed, but it need not trouble you. You cannot measure our lives by your standards. My people and I fought in that last terrible war. The last birth among our race was three hundred years before that. I have seen so many ages of the earth pass I cannot even remember what it was in my time. Don’t worry, we grow stronger with age. So strong in fact that we walked many thousands of miles across the bottom of the Sightless Sea to this shore. But we do not tire and already we hunger for war. How does our medicine feel?”
Eduard looks down at himself. He sees he is still disguised as the enemy. He reveals himself and notices that he is covered in a dark, heavy salve. They have saved him.
“It feels fantastic.”
Just then dragons dash across the sky. There are so many they seem to blot out the sky.
Chapter 21
Delara’s black blade has become legend. Since the beginning of the war, word has spread far and fast about her unquenchable fury. Wherever she is seen rushing into battle, whole battalions flee before her. She is as a force of nature, a cruel wind of death and pain and gore.
She has not even given her daughter a name yet; all her thoughts have been of how to escape. She was fortunate that Laoren met difficulty in the Winterlands, for today is the nineteenth day. Delara has never been this scared, this caught in the grip of anxiety. She is without recourse, without a friend on the face of the earth whom she can trust. And the poison in her veins weakens her by the day; it is only her great power and her drive to save her daughter that propels her across the battlefield. Just now she has fallen, not from the stroke of blade or arrow, but from sheer exhaustion. That evil venom inside her is eating at her insides. Any common person would have died the very day they were infected, but Delara has grown powerful indeed. But as she lays there in the dirt, watching the hell of war close in on every side, she makes a decision. She thinks of her child.
She forces herself to her feet and turns her face to the east, where her child lies in the care of nurses. She casts two spells: one to make her body hotter than anything on earth—so hot that anyone within ten feet of her is turned to ash—and another to give her incredible speed. And like a flaming dart of death she rushes across the land, faster than a blinking eye and destroying everyone and everything in her path. On and on she runs, abandoning war and strife, making haste for her daughter.
It is an hour before she reaches the fort where her daughter lies, but in that time she has covered more than one hundred miles. As she nears the fort she pauses, falls to her knees. She has never felt this weak and now she begins to understand: she will not survive this. She only hopes she has enough strength to save her daughter. Perhaps by saving the child she can save some part of her own black soul, and even if she cannot help herself, she will not let harm befall the only thing in the world she loves. She takes a moment to rest, to catch her wind. Ahead the fort is protected by a phalanx of Laoren’s soldiers. Five thousand men. Behind them are three hundred creatures ranging from giants and
spiders to Vampires and Meethrul. Beyond that assortment are a hundred Norrolai and a hundred Helkar. Fifty-five hundred, surrounding the fort completely and given one objective: that no one should pass their ranks unless it is Laoren herself. Fifty-five hundred stand between Delara and her child. She sits with her back against the tree to rest a moment longer, for her trial is just before her.
Roasha picks up speed again and I must lean low and hold on tight, for the earth rushes by at a terrible speed when a dragon makes haste. We come upon Laoren’s soldiers at last. Though only a fraction of her forces, it is a massive army. There must be millions of them, so many that several battalions aren’t even fighting. The division of Yunger’s army that is combatting them is fighting bravely, but they are hopelessly outnumbered. They need not fear, for I bring a mighty help.
Roasha gives a terrifying scream and then we dive down for the battlefront, seven hundred dragons diving behind us. We crash upon Laoren’s men with a fury and a strength untold. Dragons bite and claw and throw their massive weight. They grab soldiers and toss them across the sky. They charge through Laoren’s forces as if it were all they had ever dreamed to face and conquer evil. As they shower their rage on the enemy, I slip from Roasha’s back and draw my blade. It feels good in my hand. With my people and the freedom of the world in my mind, I give the enemy mightier strokes than ever before. Left and right and forward I cut, sending dozens to their grave. Light work I make of these heinous cowards, for not one of them has the power to defeat my blade. Ahead I see Norrolai, creatures I thought existed only in legend, but as they eye me they transform into various elements and charge. I spell my blade and brace myself. As they near me I spell my skin to the strength of steel and as they crash upon me I smile, for they have doomed themselves. I plunge my bewitched blade into the gut of an earth form and it turns to stone and crumbles. I slice through a fire form and it dissolves into smoke and ash. Water forms try to drown me, but with a whisper I return them to their corporeal form and stab them through their hearts. Another earth form draws me underground, but with an explosion of freezing energy I leave nothing of him or his trap but a wide, ice-covered crater. The rest of the Norrolai become wind and attempt to flee, but I raise my hand pull the energy from their spirits. They fall to earth, lifeless.
I run to Roasha and leap to her back. At her command all the dragons take to the sky and turn north, where the unoccupied battalions of Laoren’s army stand. They see us and turn in horror, but nothing that runs on legs could hope to outrun a dragon. There are so many of them. We drop lower, some one hundred feet above the ground.
“Give them your fire!” I shout.
Roasha and Kalsha open their giant mouths and beat the earth with flame. Then seven hundred other mouths gape and pour fire on the land. It is searing, bright, and deadly. The men below cannot outrun the dragons’ swift flight and even the Helkar have no defense against the blue fire raining down over them. As we push forward, the dragons destroying the evil with jets of fire one hundred feet long, I summon the winter magic and beat my enemy with ice and hail and frigid winds from the sky. They flee like cowards, but there is no mercy for the wicked. They cannot escape us. Fire and ice consume them. We lay waste like a force from myth.
When we’ve done, we turn back to the battle front. We have decimated her forces in this area and Yunger’s army can handle the rest. I think of him as I watch the men he trained fight for their freedom and their land. I can honor him and the others who have been lost only by ending this war. Roasha turns east. For a time we fly seeing nothing, only piles of bodies in places where battles were fought.
Below the soil of the Winterlands the Braelynn wait for salvation or destruction. Months have passed since they sent their princess out to change their fate. They sent with her their hopes and dreams and every promise for the sun that their people have carried since they first left the world above. And now they sit in the dim, musk tunnels of their home, forty thousand people waiting for the return of the one girl who can save them.
Since the beginning of this war they have lived in fear. All day and all night they lay close together, listening to the tremors of the earth as great armies do battle on their land above them. There are places where the tunnels are only a few feet below the surface and the Braelynn avoid those places at all costs, for those are areas where the screams and pleas of dying men are easy to hear. They begin to fear now; their race has languished underground for thousands of years and now, when hope is more real than it has ever been, a war rages across their homeland. There may not be a land to return to.
For strength, for wisdom, they turn to their Queen and king, Corinnalwyn and Rhealwyn. These are the two pillars of their strength and hope, for this pair are brave and as unwavering as the very earth that houses them. It is fortunate that the people were given so great a king and Queen, for in such dark and uncertain times these courageous, lion-hearted people are needed. They have no one to pray to, for they reject the wicked, false promises of the Almighty, but they trust in their king and Queen with all their hearts. Just now the king and Queen are in their chambers.
“Say it again,” Rhealwyn says to his wife.
“I’ve told you a thousand times,” Corinnalwyn responds with a smile.
“Yes, but you were fortunate enough to see her. To speak with her. Our daughter. Please, my love.”
“Alright,” she says, moving to sit next to him. “She is certainly of the Braelynn folk. She has your eyes and the curves of your face. She has my stubbornness. Her grandmother’s defiance. But she is more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen. And strong. Stronger than our wildest dreams.”
“And what of her heart? Is she happy? Is she whole?”
“No, love,” Corinnalwyn says, downcast. “She is broken. Too much has happened to her and I fear adding the burden of being our savior will destroy her. She is strong, but she thinks she is alone.”
“She will never be alone. And when she comes home we will spend the rest of our lives convincing her of that. But no daughter born of the Winter Queen Corinnalwyn and named for Queen Maerolwyn can fail. She will save us.”
“And we will save her in turn.”
The king takes his wife into his arms and they hold each other for a time. And then something happens above them.
While Rhealwyn and Corinnalwyn sat talking of their daughter below, Laoren was wreaking destruction above them, untiring and unyielding in her rotten heart. For some time she had begun to notice the strange effect the Winterlands had on her magic. She at first thought that the sentiment of being back in this land was obscuring her focus, but she soon began to realize it was more than that. She had been fighting in and out of the land for nearly a month. But now as she tries to use her magic she finds that it is almost gone. Were it not for the incredible amount of power bestowed on her by the Almighty millennia ago, she would have no magic left. But upon realizing, she kneels and closes her eyes. She places her hand on the ground and exhales. The earth begins to shake. She is drawing the spell from the land and as it leaves her magic returns. The land trembles harder and harder. A soldiers sneaks up behind her and tries to take off her head. As his sword falls on her skin, the blade melts. She is unharmed. With a mere thought she breaks every bone in his body. The earth calms. The spell is gone.
Laoren draws her blade again and resumes battle with the Famished.
Underground, Corinnalwyn is nearly choking. Something is breaking open inside of her, grabbing at her with a strength she cannot combat. She is in a fit on the ground, tossing this way and that as she begins to turn blue. Rhealwyn drops to the ground beside her and gathers her into his arms. Just as he is about to call for help, she opens her eyes. She sits up. Then stands. Rhealwyn rises, too.
“My love,” he says, “What happened?”
For a moment she simply stares at him, bewildered, dazed. Then a smile slowly breaks on her face.
“My magic has returned.”
When next morn dawns, children wak
e and quietly creep under the fallen trees. They play with their sticks and pebbles and charred toys silently. They do not run or sing, for to do these things is to attract attention. The world is cruel enough in this time of war without making a target of oneself. When ten minutes have gone they creep quietly back into caves and animal dens and clefts made in riverbanks, where their families and dozens of other families await rescue or starvation. Across every kingdom and realm there are such places where a pitiful life is eked out day by day. They drink dirty water and eat whatever they can find in the trees yet to be burnt down or ravaged in battle. They do not hunt, for any game that has not been razed has run far away and they could not cook it anyway, for a fire would surely give them away. Children learn not to rejoice, not to skip or laugh or dance. The elderly refuse to eat or drink, deciding to save the food for those younger and more likely to survive. Many of these miserable camps are raided and destroyed daily. The people becomes slaves, if they are fortunate.
A world at war is a cruel thing. Such wanton rage and ruin cares not for age or circumstance, only the grimmest carnage possible. Many soldiers believe they know best of the wreckage of war, but they know very little. While the brave men and women march off in their shining armor to fight and die for glory and freedom, they leave their families at home. Those families have no way of protecting themselves or the meager possessions they have. They are defenseless against the cowardly enemy who would attack and maul the innocent, the young, the sick, and the elderly. Evil cares nothing for anyone. It wants only the satisfaction of its own greed and desire. Whole towns are laid waste by cowards too afraid of a real fight, who would rather listen to the screams of invalids begging for mercy.
War ravages the earth. Whole peoples are wiped out and kingdoms and realms go dark forever. Castles and citadels that have stood for millennia are pulled down and fed to the flames. Lush, fertile lands are ruined for all time. In some regions the dead lie so thick that the ground beneath cannot be seen.