by Brian Fuller
Gen approached her quickly and knelt before her, head bowed. “Forgive me, Mirelle,” Gen intoned sorrowfully. “I have done you and your daughter a great wrong.”
“Get up, Gen,” Mirelle commanded, grabbing his arm and pulling him upward.
“Milady, I. . .” His words were quelled by her lips on his, and his concentration wandered as she covered his face with kisses and tears.
“Please, Mirelle,” Gen begged. “I have things I need to say.”
“And I won’t listen to one word until you have held me until I am warm again. I have been cold for so very long. Come, sit against this tree. Not another sound unless I command it.”
Gen obeyed, Mirelle melting into the circle of his embrace. Her warmth and affection dulled his impatience and fear of discovery, and he relaxed, weeks of anxiety draining away. She laid her head on his chest, sporadically rising to kiss him. Eventually she quieted, and the comfortable glow of her presence and the deep rhythm of her breathing lulled Gen toward a sleep he knew would finally be free of fearful visions. But as his eyes fluttered, he denied himself such a dangerous escape and he stirred, forcing himself awake.
“You are more prickly than the last time I slept on your shoulder,” Mirelle reminisced dreamily, rubbing his beard with her hand. With effort she sat up and smiled at him. “I wish you loved me as you love my daughter.”
Shame rose within him. “It was wrong of me to let my feelings for her get out of hand. It was unforgivable and foolish, at best.”
“No, Gen,” Mirelle whispered, leaning into him again. “I am glad of it. Every woman should know the love of a good man, and you have given her that gift. Your words and your consideration have strengthened her and edified her in ways only I would notice.”
“But I am not that good man, Mirelle. I have come because I wanted to apologize for not listening to you and not obeying Lady Khairn.”
“Do not call her that!”
“It is who she is, Mirelle.”
“It is not, Gen. That is what she is called by anyone who does not know her. You know better than to ever associate her with that name.”
“I am sorry. But I have something else I must tell you. It won’t be easy for you, but I want you to hear it from me and not Athan. Mirelle, I am the Ilch.”
Her soft laughter caught him off guard. “I know. Athan does as well, but he hasn’t told anyone yet. I’ve known for as long as Ethris. He consulted me about it before letting you join the Protectorship. Please keep that fact to yourself. I have plans.”
“And you still let me. . .” Gen blurted out incredulously.
“Yes, and I still let you guard my daughter. You had me in your power long before then. And, I am happy to say, that despite my blindness when it comes to your behavior, I was right about you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Good. Then shut up for a little while longer.” She pushed him back against the tree, but he resisted.
“I really should go,” Gen said, a sudden sadness washing over him. “I don’t want to be trapped by Athan again.”
Mirelle sighed disappointedly and rose. “Let me wake the Chalaine,” she said, walking toward the camp. “I’m sure she would like to see you. She has worried a great deal.”
Gen pulled her back. “No, Mirelle, please. I have hurt her enough and I cannot face her. I have disgraced myself and failed her.”
“Please, Gen. That is nonsense!”
“It isn’t. She hasn’t told you all, I am sure. I cannot see her. It would be best that she forget me.”
Mirelle’s face wrinkled with worry. “I will respect your wishes, though I assure you that you do not comprehend her feelings for you at all.”
She stepped forward and hugged him tenderly. “One last kiss for a friend?”
He obliged her momentarily and tore himself away before he could enjoy it. “Tell them not to come toward the lights,” Gen said as he turned to go. “It will be a brighter day for you tomorrow.”
Mirelle watched him leave, straining to see him in hopes that he would return and fill the emptiness she had lived with her entire life. Time slipped by, and something told her she would never again enjoy that voice or that embrace. There in the hollow night she felt as if a part of her died and slipped from her body to intermingle and slide away with the mist. Wiping her eyes and gathering herself, she found Maewen waiting for her by the Chalaine.
“Did he tell you about the lights?” Maewen asked, tone guarded and eyes sympathetic.
“He did. Wake the others.”
The Chalaine had rarely felt what she considered ‘spitting’ mad, but after her mother revealed to the party what Gen had told her, the Chalaine was furious that her former Protector had not spoken to her instead. She was the Queen, after all. When her mother pulled her aside privately shortly thereafter and told her that Gen flatly refused an opportunity to see and speak with her, the Chalaine nearly screamed in frustration despite their precarious circumstances. She had half a mind to command Maewen to find him and drag him back to her camp, but the sight of Athan nearby forced her into more sensible thinking.
“You should stay well back within the grove, Ladyship,” Athan suggested. “If Gen does bring some force and a battle is joined, this is a natural place of hiding and retreat for friend and foe. Stay close to your Protectors.”
I will make him pay for this, the Chalaine thought, ignoring Athan completely. No specific punishments leapt to mind, but she had ample time to exercise her creative powers. She dragged a protesting Dason and Jaron toward the edge of the copse that faced the Uyumaak at the wall. She wanted to watch, not cower. Everyone stood listening and peering into the dark from behind tree trunks save Chertanne, who had obeyed Athan’s advice.
Several minutes passed in tense excitement, but as time wore on with nothing but darkness before them, her companions shifted and yawned.
“Something approaches,” Maewen announced some time later. “Stand ready.”
In a few moments the Chalaine heard it. A large company passed well ahead of them in the dark, a discomfiting hissing noise accompanying their passage. At once, Uyumaak drums pounded a new and frantic rhythm, and the sound of their marching filled the night.
“Whoever Gen brought, there are a lot of them,” Jaron commented. “I do not like the sound of their passing.”
Athan gasped. “We are in grave peril! Merciful Eldaloth! What he brought with him has an ancient mind and an evil heart. We must flee this place at once!”
The sight of nine ghoulish lanterns unshuttering a hundred yards from their position tore all eyes away from the Padra and onto the field. Nine pools of green mist flickered before them as short figures bearing sharp axes and heavy hammers crossed between them and the light.
“Dwarves?” Maewen half announced and half asked.
“It is not the minds of dwarves that I sense,” Athan said, voice quavering. “I recommend we retreat.”
“No,” the Chalaine piped in firmly, her ill mood lending her words a sharp tone of command. “Gen would not endanger us. We wait here.”
Athan regarded her briefly. “Perhaps I should consult the Blessed One.”
Yes, the Chalaine derided inwardly, go convince your puppet to order us to leave.
“The drumming and thumping has stopped,” Maewen announced unnecessarily. “What is at work here?”
Their straining eyes could just make out the shapes of Uyumaak slowly and reverently approaching the luminescent mist. More approached, peeking around each other’s shoulders at the lamps, a great horde of them ringing around the lights until only the faintest of glows could be discerned above the throng.
Chertanne approached. “Athan has apprised me of the danger, and I command everyone to. . .”
A thunderous crash of colliding bodies and weapons drowned out the rest of his order. Two mute parties strove with each other in the confused black. No screams of pain or rallying cries pierced the night, only the hissing of serpents and th
e thumping of overmatched Uyumaak. At first the lanterns provided some illumination, casting wild and frightening shadows into the air, but all too soon rushing feet kicked them over for corpses to fall on and smother. Full dark reclaimed the mist, amplifying the eerie sounds as they stared ahead in vain.
“Something is nearing,” Maewen warned them, drawing her bow. “Probably deserters.”
Those with weapons drew them.
“Ready your magic, Sire,” Athan admonished his charge who withdrew farther behind a tree that shielded him. Maewen released two arrows into the dark before a line of Uyumaak warriors emerged from the mist, stumbling over each other in full retreat. Dason pushed the Chalaine behind him, but upon seeing armed men ahead of them, the Uyumaak turned and faced their pursuers, and what came after them in the dark stole the breath from every throat.
The terror the Chalaine felt at the sight of the Uyumaak paled in comparison to the horror of what Gen had brought to slaughter them. Dark, sleek vipers intertwined with dwarven bones, providing strength to long-dead limbs in a perverted, counterfeit resurrection. Snake heads poked from empty eye sockets, and the lithe bodies of other vipers provided the skeletons with musculature to walk and to grip wicked battle axes as bright as the day they rose from the forge. But more than this, the ire of a trapped malice exuded from the unholy warriors in palpable waves emanating from the tiny, wet eyes of the serpents that opened a window to the wicked intelligence that commanded them.
The snake-animated dwarves pushed the Uyumaak backward toward the copse, hewing their enemies down brutally without finesse. Rarely, an Uyumaak would score a hit, and a serpent would fall to the ground, only to be replaced by a reinforcement slithering up the frame until the creature was again complete. The last Uyumaak fell not ten feet from the edge of the woods, an ax blade chopping into the space between its head and shoulder.
One of the monsters stepped forward and the vipers of its body turned their gaze upon the Chalaine’s party. A snake slithered into the space where a dwarven tongue had once rested. “Are there more?” it hissed.
“Leave us be!” Athan yelled. “Back to the Abyss with you!” The Padra gestured, incanting a spell. Nothing happened as he moved his arms and chanted frantically.
“Pitiful fool,” the snake mocked. “The only reason you are not meat for my children is that we are bound to obey the One. Do you want to know my mind? Then learn!” Athan screamed, spine arching as if someone had stabbed him in the small of the back, falling to the ground wrenched in agony. “Your mind is a puddle and mine an ocean. You have no room for the flood.”
The creatures turned and ran toward the sound of distant battle, and Athan went limp. Maewen knelt by him, but he waved her back, managing to slump against a nearby tree. “What imagination could create such an abomination? What will could control it?”
The Chalaine had clutched a branch near her so tightly that her fingernails had sunk into the bark. Her mother stood nearby, face and eyes blank. Seeing her mother reminded her to be angry at Gen, though she wondered how he had come to ally himself with such a terror and if he was in danger in the mayhem in the dark. The only thing more unforgivable than not seeing her would be for him to die before she could properly chastise him for it.
The sounds of battle rose and fell, gradually fading in frequency and duration until the faintest rays of light colored the horizon and all sound ceased. The absence of Uyumaak drums, the party’s constant companion for days, was the most keenly and most welcomely missed. Figures milled about half seen in the mist, but the weary survivors of the caravan waited, not daring to step out and investigate and having no desire to give thanks to the dark creatures to whom they owed their liberty.
When the sun rose high enough to burn off the mist, they stared with astonishment at the grassy slopes before them. Not one corpse, amputated limb, or ruptured serpent littered the field. All weapons, drums, and cookpots had gone. Only the blood on the grass evidenced the battle of the previous night or the presence of the Uyumaak the weeks before, and even that seeped into the ground as melting frost carried it to the earth.
Tentatively, Maewen led them from the copse and into a day dawning cold and clear. They walked past the fortifications and to the lakeshore. There they found sand discolored with ash and the charred remains of the barges that had brought them to where they now stood. They scanned the water near the cliff edges in the hopes of perhaps finding a barge that had strayed and caught on the rocks, but no such luck attended them.
Fenna was first to voice the question, “What now?”
“I will try to communicate with the other Padras,” Athan announced, “but I will need my privacy.”
“I thought you couldn’t do that across shards,” Maewen said.
“I am hoping a Padra will be stationed at the floating dock. I will return to the trees. Do not follow. I should return shortly.”
“Shall I accompany you?” Chertanne asked hopefully.
“Not this time, your Grace. Please stay with your Queen and see to her safety and comfort.”
Athan shouldered his pack, striding purposefully up the hill. As he reached the top, he exhaled and turned, finding the others milling about the beach or reclining on the sand. Maewen had thrown in a fishing line, and Athan mentally prayed for her success. Freshly broiled fish, even something as inferior as carp, would brighten his mood considerably. But as for that, as he turned his back and found himself truly alone for the first time in weeks, his anxiety drained from him.
Peace.
Only in blessed solitude could he calculate the true weight of the grinding burden that guiding Chertanne had placed upon him. A necessary duty, but a difficult one. Chertanne’s wants and selfish needs loomed so large that they blocked the young King’s vision of the necessary and expedient. Miles of danger, carnage, and exhaustion had failed to aid a nobler character to develop. Athan’s fellow Padras would certainly find Chertanne’s nascent sobriety encouraging if any of them could distinguish it from his egregious cowardice. Suffering does not ennoble man. It is the invitation to nobility, Athan reminded himself.
And if molding Chertanne into a King were not trial enough, Athan had to instruct him how to appreciate and respect the most beautiful woman in the world. Of all the tasks that should come naturally to a young man, even if an Aughmerian! Of course, the Ilch had poisoned her opinion of him, and she had failed to show a properly submissive attitude until after facing the Throgs. But even then he sensed a firm will within her waiting to assert itself, no doubt at some disastrous moment for Chertanne and the world.
Pushing these thoughts aside, he entered the copse, unpleasant memories of the past several days returning. He continued on until he could no longer see the field or the lake, and, after casting a quick ward to turn away visitors, he opened his pack. Reaching deep inside, he pulled the Assassin’s Glass out and unwrapped it from its cloth. Miles of travel had not broken or tarnished the artifact that he had pilfered from Regent Ogbith so many weeks ago.
Ethris thought himself so clever, Athan thought. I suspect I thought of bringing it long before he did.
When he had gone to the Church Archive to fetch it—only to find it missing—it took little reasoning to connect its disappearance with the reports of Ethris and Kaimas on the road together in Mur Eldaloth.
Turning the mirror toward him he nearly laughed at the weathered, unkempt face presented to him. The man in the mirror rubbed his tanned forehead and scratched at a beard he could not wait to shave off. He lost several moments contemplating his reflection, but the thought of cooked fish awaiting him on the shore prompted him to hurry. He stared intently into the magical device.
“Padra Nolan.”
The mirror flashed blue for a few moments before resolving on the back of a balding head. Padra Nolan sat at his desk in a tent, a lantern providing him light as he read a letter in the predawn chill.
“Padra Nolan,” Athan called softly, and the older man jumped and turned, nearly upsetting t
he lantern. His eyes cast about frantically before finding the small Portal hovering in the air.
“Padra Athan!” he exclaimed. “Eldaloth be praised! We had nearly despaired of you! Chertanne, does he live?”
“Yes, fortunately, as does the Chalaine, who is pregnant with the Holy Child. The First Mother and a handful of others also survived. All the Eldephaere we secreted on this mission died in an attack at Dunnach Falls.”
“We heard of that event three weeks ago.”
“How?”
“Ethris, Shadan Khairn, and a few soldiers escaped death that day, but were pursued by a large body of Uyumaak to the fortifications on the beach. They rowed away while soldiers bought them time.”
Athan nodded. “All were apparently killed in that attack. The Uyumaak held the wall against us and burned the barges.”
“We have been building boats as fast as we can,” Padra Nolan reported. “We still don’t have enough to shuttle enough soldiers to. . .”
“There is no need, now. The Uyumaak were killed.”
“By what means?”
“That can wait. Just send whatever barges or boats you have prepared immediately. I have a job of the utmost secrecy to assign to you.”
“Name it, your Grace.”
“You will have questions about what I am to tell you. Do not ask them now, but suffice it to say that Gen betrayed the Ha’Ulrich during the marriage.” Padra Nolan’s mouth opened with questions threatening to spill out in a rush, but Athan stopped him short. “No questions for now. There is a lot to explain, but listen. Do you have any of the Eldephaere with you?”
“Yes, but. . .”
“Good. Gen is running fugitive somewhere on this shard with Gerand Kildan and Volney Torunne. I have reason to believe that they may be able to reach the Portal gate before us. I would like you to wait for him on the floating dock. Act relieved to see him, but when you get the chance, cast a stupor upon him, restrain the others, and then drug Gen so that he does not wake. Drug the others as well, if you feel it necessary. Keeping Gen unconscious, however, is of utmost importance. Do you understand?”