by J. S. Morin
Within a short time of realizing his hand was not needed to guide the quill, Kyrus had finished the extra copy of the shippers’ bylaws. Kyrus’s very own copy of the world-wise men’s view of life beyond Acardia—and how to exploit it for profit—was now set out in front of him.
Kyrus was giddy. He poured another cup of his new favorite tea and thought about what he should try next. He noticed his hands were trembling with fatigue as he poured, though. He noticed also that his head was feeling heavy and a bit fuzzy. While he might possess magic, the tea was merely an extraordinary concoction of the mundane, and he had discovered its limits. Finally giving in to practicality and the needs of the clumsy vessel that carried around his brain, Kyrus set aside his cup of tea unfinished and headed up the stairs.
Ash, who’d had enough of magical shenanigans with the lights, chose to remain below and curl up atop the stove with the still-warm kettle. As Kyrus ended the light spell illuminating the work area, Ash yawned and quickly went to sleep.
Kyrus collapsed into his bed fully clothed. He ached throughout his body and mind, but it was the exhausted ache of a victorious gladiator. His battle had been fought and won, and he now needed rest before he would be ready to begin anew. He had turned lights on and off, made tea, and written a set of guild rules rather poorly, but he had done it with magic.
He felt like one of the mighty wizards of the fairy tales.
Chapter 13 - Returning Home
“How’s that now?” Jodoul asked. “What do you mean that we can’t go back to bein’ soldiers?”
He rode atop one of the pilfered horses from the garrison and was now embroiled in a conversation about what they would do once they got back to the Empire proper.
“You have seen too much, been too close to me, witnessed the way I was living out there. I cannot have you mixing back in with the common soldiers like it never happened,” Rashan replied.
They were all riding close together and talking loudly enough for all to hear. Rashan had slowed their progress back to Kadris, assuring everyone that the message about the goblin raiders had arrived. Rashan’s change of heart after the massacre had quickly resolved itself into a determination to resume his place atop the pecking order of the Kadrin sorcerous hierarchy.
“This is no free pension to live out your days in luxury, but you are not going back to front-line duty or digging latrines. I shall find places for you all, once everything has fallen back into place.”
“You are assuming you will be welcomed back so easily? Surely High Sorcerer Gravis is not going to step aside and cede you the position,” Iridan chimed in. He rode right next to Rashan on one of the smaller horses, a white mare that had a grey streak down her chest.
“Of course not. I do not plan on making it a choice, though. By all rights, I outrank him, even now. The position of high sorcerer is still a lesser one than warlock, and I never officially resigned. Traditionally the role of high sorcerer is assumed by a warlock as well, but I may allow him to keep his title and role as second in command should he be cooperative during the transition.”
Iridan looked visibly concerned. “‘Cooperative?’ High Sorcerer Gravis is not known to be one for compromise, let alone ceding rule of the Inner Circle to someone who has not set foot in the Empire for a century. Suppose he is not cooperative? What then?”
“Do not worry. Leadership of the Inner Circle has always been a small part politics and a large part aetherial might. Despite not being current with the doings at court and the petty backstabbing amongst the Imperial Circle, I shall have no problem demonstrating that I am the rightful leader of the Empire’s sorcerers … and the knighthood. I suspect we will find far less resistance on that front, however.”
“Why is that?” Brannis asked. “I have been through both the Academy and the School of Arms, and if anything, the knighthood is more hidebound and traditional than even the sorcerers.” Flanking Rashan on the other side from Iridan, Brannis had been the counterpoint to Rashan’s arguments since he began making hints to his post-return plans for the Empire. “They will not just step aside and allow you to take charge of the order.”
“Well, I think they value tradition more than you even know. Those old war-mules have always looked back on the ‘better times,’ every generation of them. And let me tell you this much: those better times nearly always coincided with the ascension of a warlock to lead the Empire in battle. There is no glory in parades remembering someone else’s wars. Plunder, conquest, the expansion of the Empire, and throwing down the broken corpses of old foes: those make for the tales that the old men tell. Most warriors, when they reach the age where creaking bones and failing sight limit them to hearth sides or their beds, want nothing more than to relive the glory of their youth and see wonder and admiration in the eyes of their young kinfolk. Pity the ones who have no tales to tell … or who cannot lie.
“No, the old guard will put up enough of a resistance to show they care, and they will make sure I have convinced them thoroughly that my claim is authentic, which I have no worry of accomplishing. Then they will salute and step aside.”
Brannis noted that Rashan now sounded confident. His demeanor had changed markedly. He was no longer quiet and unassuming, content to let Brannis lead them and keep out of sight, back with Iridan. Now when he asked questions, he sought only information, or to make one think of something in a new way. He no longer asked permission or even hinted that it might be necessary. He seemed to just have naturally taken over command. If his claims were all true, it seemed he was even within his rights to do so.
“What if they charge you with abandoning your responsibility to the Empire?” Brannis asked. “A Kadrin officer could never get away with a long unexplained absence without charges being brought. What will you tell them of the time you spent outside the Empire’s borders, with no word.”
“Perhaps they shall try that, though I think the circumstances are certainly unusual enough and the justification legitimate enough, that I will weather questioning well enough,” Rashan said, somewhat more quietly.
“If’n you do not mind me askin’, just what was the circumstances?” a soldier named Tulok asked from the back of the group.
“Do you know the history of the Necromancer Wars?” Rashan asked.
There was general muttering at the question.
“I do,” Brannis said.
Iridan nodded.
“What of the Battle of Farren’s Plain?” Rashan continued.
“No, I cannot say that I know that one,” Brannis responded. He had been a good student and had an excellent memory, especially battles. The Kadrin Empire had a rich history of wars, and Brannis knew them all quite well. He looked skeptically at Rashan, possibly having caught hold of a thread that could unravel his story.
“Well then, what do you know of the last great battle of the Third Necromancer War?”
“Well, that would be the Battle of the Dead Earth. That is when Warlock Rashan—err, you, I suppose—unleashed a magic of unfathomable power that consumed both armies. There were no survivors, and the land itself was cracked and broken, with every plant, animal, and man not just dead but reduced to skeletal remains. Nothing grew there for winters.” Brannis recounted the story as best he remembered it being taught to him as a boy.
“So they ended up calling it the Battle of the Dead Earth, did they?” Rashan mused. “Would you like to hear the rest of the tale?”
Rashan didn’t wait for a reply: “It had begun to rain as the final blows rang out from the forge. It was an open-air smithy that adjoined the royal stables. The work had taken much longer than I had expected. I am no blacksmith, nor was I then, but I felt it was something I had to do myself. My handiwork was good enough to pass the muster of many a smith in the Empire, though candidly I must admit I used aether to guide my hammer. And I did not just guide the blows of the hammer to shape the metal of the blade, but I forged aether right into the alloy, and not without structure, either. The blade had a purpose, and ju
st as that purpose was finished being crafted into it, one of my apprentices, a promising young man named Sarthon, spoke up.
“‘Your work does not pass unnoticed,’ he told me. I always valued thinkers who spoke their mind over the obsequious bootlicks the others in the Inner Circle seemed to prefer, so I asked him what he meant by that.
“‘The heavens themselves cry at what you have wrought here,’ he said, gesturing up to the rain-soaked sky. I had paid little attention to the weather, but it was indeed a foul day he was attributing to my handiwork. I took no offense, for indeed I had created something terrible. It seemed Sarthon was a bit of a poet, and I liked the image he had conjured in my mind.
“‘Well then,’ I replied, ‘I shall call the sword “Heavens Cry.”’ It seemed somehow appropriate. The task I had set out for was an unpleasant one, and I was equal to it. I had spent winters fighting back the legions of dead that Loramar and his underlings kept creating and expanding. Several of the Empire’s protectorates had been freed from our reign in the aftermath of the previous wars, and this time, Loramar seemed intent at striking at the heart of the Empire. He had been bypassing the larger cities in favor of sacking villages and moving quickly, carving a path that one could see led straight to Kadris.
“Here was our dilemma, though. You probably recall their name, Brannis—as might you, Iridan—but for the rest of you, should you not remember your history, my men were called the Red Riders. I stole them from the Imperial Academy and trained them as knights. Their magical training I diverted toward a single purpose: maintaining their hold on their own Source. You see, such was the evil of the necromancers that even approaching them was fatal. They drew aether not just from the world around them, but straight from living Sources. They could, and did, kill men outright, just by draining them dry inside. A man killed like that was easier for them to re-animate, and sounder of body, than one who had been rent apart by blades or magic. Armies of foot soldiers would march into battle under one banner and end up fighting for their enemy.
“My Red Riders could wade into the middle of the fray, hacking down the dead. Our steeds were fashioned from nothing but aether, constructs I had made myself that were difficult and time-consuming to unravel, and sturdy enough to bear the rigors of battle. We brought nothing and no one with us that could be turned against us. I stole half a generation of sorcerers from Kadrin, but it was needed.
“I had known that blades alone would not be enough. They were too many and we were too few. My own power I used mostly to defend us from the other tricks the necromancers knew, though even at that I had to be wary of all the dead aether that followed the walking corpses everywhere they went. That was why I created Heavens Cry: to destroy an army.
“The fateful day we met Loramar’s army in Farren’s Plain, we faced the entire might of the Great Necromancer and all his apprentices. It was his final march toward Kadris itself, and he was preparing to do battle with all the forces we could muster. I had left scouts a day’s ride behind us, so that if we failed to stop them, word would reach Kadris for everyone to evacuate before the battle for the city. All who lived there were weapons waiting to be wielded against the Inner Circle should the dead army get that far.
“Farren’s Plain was farmland in those days. The wheat fields were knee high—not quite tall enough for a good ambush, had our hundred or so had any need for stealth. Stealth was not an option for what I intended.
“Each time we had fought Loramar, we would attack and withdraw. We would break his dead soldiers and ruin them so they could hold aether no longer, then ride off without letting him have any more corpses to replace them. It was wearying work, but we had been able to eventually wear down his armies and win two wars. But in the third war, Loramar had done better. He kept his armies far from the territories the Red Riders kept safe and amassed a huge force, one that our strike-and-flee tactics could not combat quickly enough to protect the heart of the Empire.
“That day at Farren’s Plain, we charged into the vast legion with no thought of escape. The necromancers had grown used to our attacks and weathered them, rather than putting serious effort to destroying us. I had thwarted them each time they had tried, and they had grown weary of wasting aether against my defenses. But that day, they saw blasts of aether and pieces of the dead flung like leaves on the wind. They realized I was no longer on the defensive, providing cover for the Riders. No, I was carving a swath straight for them, safe at the center of a sea of dead bodyguards. They panicked, and they attacked.
“My Riders had been trained to protect their Source, but I had done better. My men could be overwhelmed by the sheer force of the necromancers’ combined powers, but my Source I had turned into a fortress. You see, I had already by this point gone beyond my mortal limits. The quest to find a way to defeat Loramar had led me to the perfection of my defenses against him. Unfazed by their impotent assaults directly on my Source, they tried conventional magics on me, but those were pitiful, atrophied powers, forgotten lessons that could not be relearned in the midst of battle.
“I cut my way to the heart of their army, within sight of Loramar, the only one who posed a threat to me personally. As my men died around me by the dozens, I unleashed the power I had crafted into Heavens Cry. I drove the blade into the earth at my feet with all my might, nearly to the hilt, and I drew all the aether I could. I drew from anything and everything I could grasp hold of, and I fed it into the sword. The ground cracked and split beneath my feet, in an ever-widening area. From the cracks a caustic fog arose and clawed at the flesh of the living and the dead alike. Nothing could bear its touch for long. Loramar withstood it best, but even then, it seemed unsatisfying how quickly he succumbed to its power.
“But I became the center of a maelstrom. I had made sure the sword could finish its task. Whether I survived the day or not, I wanted to ensure that none of the necromancers made it out of that field alive. The sword continued to draw all the aether in the area. The field of wheat, Red Riders, Loramar, his apprentices, and the animate dead, all were drained to the last wisp of aether as the sinister fog grew and spread. Cloth and leather, skin and sinew, the fog devoured it all, save my own flesh; I was its creator, and in its crafting, I was able to ensure at least that one small self-protection. My Source was safe from it as well, though I could not teach it to let that be. I was immortal already, a demon as you would call me, and my Source had no weakness through which aether might be pulled.
“Minutes passed, and I stared at nothing but the ground where the blade had entered. When I looked up, there was almost nothing left. Where I had moments earlier ridden into battle beside a hundred men and faced an army of uncountable thousands, there was nothing left that moved. The fog dissipated soon after the last of the aether had been burned off, and I could see to the horizon in all directions, and there was little left but cracked earth, fallen weapons, and a few bits of camp debris to tell there had been living men there at all. Bits of skeletons lay here and there, not fully consumed before the fog had gone, enough to hint at the vast scope of the carnage.
“I felt dizzy and sick. My life was war and carnage, and such a clean battlefield was nothing to my sensibilities, having seen the guts of friend and foe alike spilled an arm’s length from me more times than I cared to count. No, it was being a conduit for all that aether, and not just aether, but dead aether. Imagine if you had gorged yourself at a feast, only to find that half the food was rotten with maggots.
“I felt infested, unclean. It was a nearly indescribable sensation. I stumbled away from the battlefield, confused. I am not one who is used to uncertainty, but I did not know how to cleanse myself of the aether that had gotten into me, that had merged with my own Source. I did not want to bring that back to Kadris with me, nor to anyone I wished to remain safe, so I set off alone to find seclusion and hoped that I could cleanse myself of the taint I had acquired.
“The rest is a tale longer than the trip we have remaining before us. Perhaps I shall tell bits of
it, but understand that I left the Empire after ending its greatest threat in centuries, and then stayed away for its own good. If I stayed longer than perhaps necessity dictated, I would say that I earned it.”
And with that, Rashan left them to consider his tale … and the missing bits of history that he had just revealed.
Brannis knew well that the historical account said no one had lived through the Battle of the Dead Earth.
* * * * * * * *
The rest of the day passed more quietly. After finishing his tale, Rashan became somewhat subdued, as if he had perhaps given them a bit too much insight into his past. When Brannis, Iridan, and all the rest had eagerly tried to find out what had happened thereafter, Rashan told them that they would have to wait for another time when he was feeling loquacious.
The open farmland they had been passing through gave way to a small town called Pevett. It sprawled on either side of the Thadagar River, a few hundred houses, mostly with thatched roofs, a marketplace, and some mills. More importantly to Kadrin, it was a shipping port for transferring goods up and down the Thadagar as well as dispersing the riverboats’ cargoes to the smaller surrounding villages. Most importantly, within its borders was the West Way Bridge, one of the main crossings of the slow, deep Thadagar River, and where Brannis and his remaining command were intending to cross.
The town was surrounded by a wall of rough-cut stone and mortar, with sentry towers at infrequent intervals. Pevett was far enough from the borderlands that the wall defined the town more than it defended it. It was kept in good repair, as Pevett was a prosperous town and the local lord who ruled it, Lord Fenrigar Whitestag, was a responsible, prudent man. Pevett was a hub of commerce, and Fenrigar believed that if war ever came, it would be a valuable target for disrupting the western half of the Empire proper.