by Hal Emerson
A Scout appeared from around a bend in the road ahead.
“Sir!” he called out as he caught sight of the Commander.
“Speak, Jansen!” Autmaran called out without reining in his horse. They were going at a steady trot now, trying to preserve the horses as best they could while still eking out as much speed as possible. Jansen fell in step beside them.
“Sir,” he said, “there’s a fork up ahead, one that isn’t on our maps. I don’t know where it came from – it must be recent, likely within the past half year.”
“Well, which side do we take? The maps should still be clear on that.”
“That’s the thing sir – they aren’t. The rest of the Scouts say the markers have been cleared; there’s no trace of anything, and the roads seem to run roughly parallel; they must diverge farther in.”
Autmaran was silent for a time and then nodded, looking grim.
“Very well. Scout as quickly down each path as you can and report back; try to find which way takes up most directly to Banelyn.”
Jansen left, and Autmaran turned to Davydd and Lorna.
“I told you we shouldn’t have taken this shortcut,” he said, his dark eyes narrowed in something bordering on fury. That wasn’t a good sign – Autmaran did not lose his temper. But they were all going on no sleep and little food, and marching with the knowledge that even now their fellow soldiers could be caught in a massacre that they were too far away to stop. It was enough to make even the most stalwart general a mite tetchy.
“It was the right choice,” Davydd said with a grimace. “I know it was.”
“How can you say that?” Autmaran asked, his eyes flashing. “I must have been insane to trust you – now we need to spend extra time scouting both paths, and –”
“Calm down, Auty,” Davydd said with a touch of his old ebullience, flashing his teeth at the man in what he knew most people saw as a slightly feral smile. The effect must be even worse now with his half-burned face. He would have gone for a more winning one, but even smiling at all was a feat worthy of epic poetry; the pain from his left side was so intense he was continually fighting off unconsciousness. “I have the Fox Talisman now, it means I’m lucky. My gut told me to take this road – it’ll get us to Banelyn. Just gotta trust me.”
“How do you know it’s working?” Autmaran asked, his face softening by small degrees as he watched his companion cringe in pain. Davydd cursed under his breath – he hated people seeing him weak.
“Because it bloody is. Just take my word for it – I can’t explain.”
As he said the words the thing happened again, the strange twist that occurred in his vision, making the world turn somehow. It was a small, infinitesimal shift, but every time it happened, glowing lines of beautiful gold shot across his vision, overlaying reality, and he somehow knew things he couldn’t explain.
Davydd gasped as the pain blazed through him again, and he bit down so hard on his back teeth that they felt ready to crack. His left side was so raw that the slightest movement seemed to blur his vision with a red haze that obscured the golden lines and broke whatever tenuous connection he had to the Fox Talisman burning its way through his body. He hid the tension as best he could, but he knew Lorna and Autmaran had seen it.
“Just keep going,” he grated out. “ Trust me.”
Autmaran looked ready to argue again, but changed his mind, looking as though he were reserving his comments for another time. Davydd felt his anxiety mount; the general had wanted him to stay in Formaux, and Davydd wouldn’t put it past him to send him back now.
He won’t – he knows everyone is needed.
The tipping point had come when Davydd shared the memories he’d gleaned from the dead Prince of Foxes, among them the intended trap at Banelyn. The debate had ended immediately, and they’d set out within the hour with their force of Exiled Kindred and fervent Formaux Commons.
Commander bloody Autmaran thinks they’ll stay true to us in the heat of battle.
The Formaux citizens, those of the lowest and most populous class called the Commons, had been the ones who’d enabled their swift, nearly casualty-free, take-over of the most eastern city of the Empire. After Raven, the former Prince of Ravens and current Prince of the Veil, had led them north and slain his brother Tiffenal, the city of Formaux had fallen. Commander Autmaran had taken the walls just as Davydd and his Ashandel partner Lorna had helped Raven killed the Prince of Foxes with Davydd’s sword – a chain of events that had led to the famed Fox Talisman, the Talisman of Luck, transferring to Davydd instead of Raven. However, the memories of Tiffenal, Prince of Foxes, had been shared evenly between the both of them, courtesy of another odd quirk of the Raven Talisman his friend wore.
Friend? Really more of an unfortunate acquaintance.
Another searing flash of pain rushed through him, and it was all he could do to hold on to his stallion, Aron, as the Fox Talisman continued to burn its way down his arm and leg. It had already taken the left side of his face and torso as well as most of his hip, burning the skin there and leaving it cracked and blackened. He could feel it reaching further though, those golden lines of power tracing their way along his veins all the way through the rest of his body.
At least it’s only half of me.
The pain subsided to a dull ache, and he looked over his shoulder, catching sight of the mounted column of Formauxans on their liberated horses keeping pace with the Kindred more out of determination than skill. In truth, it was because of the Commoners that they had taken the city so easily – when they had heard the alarm bells and word had spread that Tiffenal was dead, slain by the hand of Raven, the Exiled Prince, the men and women had risen up and deposed the vast majority of the High Blood, breaking open the dungeons and torture chambers below Tiffenal’s palace and freeing generations’ worth of captives.
We invaded the one major city already ripe for rebellion.
Another painful hour passed as they continued on, alternating between a full gallop and a slower trot. They were pushing as hard as they dared– a dozen horses had already fallen with broken legs from ruts and holes in the road, and twice that many men were down from sheer exhaustion.
And still we must go faster.
They turned a final bend and found themselves at the fork Jansen the Scout had described. It was almost like something from a fairy story: two perfectly good roads in a heavily wooded forest, neither any different from the other. Jansen was there waiting, talking to a dozen or so others in the red and silver of the Scouts; both the horses and the riders looked winded; they must have just returned.
“What did you find?” Autmaran asked immediately, signaling for the others to draw rein behind him as he spurred his own mount forward. Davydd and Lorna came with him.
“Sir,” the Scout began, hesitating as the other Kindred relayed the command back along the road. He swallowed nervously, and shifted his leather-clad hands on his horse’s pommel.
“Shadows and fire!” shouted Davydd. “Just bloody say it!
Jansen’s head jerked around in surprise and Davydd cursed himself for the explosion, but felt vindicated. Everyone always took so much time trying to find the right words – just say what’s on your mind!
“Don’t stall,” Autmaran said, not acknowledging Davydd, but also not apologizing for the outburst. “Tell us what you’ve found.”
“We’ve found nothing, sir,” Jansen said quickly, looking down. “We scouted up both roads, as far and as quickly as we could, but they go separate ways north and south, with neither turning back to Banelyn.”
“That makes sense,” said Lorna, peering out from under her blonde bowl-cut with a bright, insistent gaze, steady as a blacksmith’s hammer. “We’re still too far out to need to head directly west.”
“I hope Raven figured out which one to take,” Autmaran said.
“He grew up memorizing maps in the Imperial Fortress of Lucien,” Davydd said dryly. “He could probably draw the whole Empire blindfolded and upside down. If he came
this way at all, he likely didn’t even stop to think about it, he just took the right path.”
“Jansen,” Autmaran said, “keep scouting down both roads until we find some kind indication of which way to go.”
“Wait,” Davydd said to the Scout. He heeled Aron forward, and then reined him around so that he was alongside Autmaran’s dun mare and the two of them were side by side.
“What else would you have me do, Davydd?” Autmaran asked quietly, though his voice was still strong and commanding; the man was born to make hard decisions. “We need to know which way to go forward.”
“It will waste too much time!” Davydd hissed vehemently.
Autmaran looked at him sharply from the corner of his eye – the Commander was taller than Davydd, who, though strong, was still one of the Kindred Eshendai and therefore built more for stealth than open warfare. The dark-skinned officer stared down hard, his deep brown eyes fierce, and Davydd took a deep breath, trying to calm the fire in his side or at least forget about it for the next few seconds.
“What else would you have me do?” he repeated.
“Give me a chance,” Davydd said quietly, barely moving his lips.
Autmaran’s eyes became even more intense, if such a thing were possible – no wonder Raven gets along with him so well, they were both born with iron rods shoved up their backsides – and Davydd saw his gaze flicker to the burnt side of his face, the one glowing with golden veins.
“It took the Prince months to teach Tomaz how to touch the Ox Talisman,” Autmaran said, “what makes you different?”
“It is different,” Davydd said. “I can’t control it – this one doesn’t seem to be about control. It’s deeper – it just happens. If I put myself in the situation – “
“Davydd,” Autmaran said, his voice carrying a harsher tone now, “you’re the reason we’re in this predicament to begin with; you’re the one who told us to take the shortcut off the main road. The siege is already underway –”
“Just let me try!”
The Commander broke off, barely holding back a rebuke. Davydd grimaced as pain shot through him, likely brought on by the outburst, and the Talisman advanced again, this time creeping into his forearm, leaving the smell of singed hair and charred flesh. And then it happened again – golden lines splintered across his vision, springing from seemingly random points in the air and ground and arcing through space.
“I got us into this,” Davydd said, taking responsibility, “so I’ll bloody get us out. You weren’t there when we were in the throne room fighting him; Tiffenal couldn’t be touched. He dodged things thrown from behind him. Everything he did came out his way – everything.”
He drew in a hissing breath as his calf cramped inside his boot, the Talisman burning so badly his muscles were gripped as hard as iron.
“And if it doesn’t kill me, then it will show us the way to Banelyn,” he continued through gritted teeth. “You’ve seen the things Raven can do; you saw what Ramael did when he had the Ox Talisman. I’ve got luck – let me use it.”
He was holding Autmaran’s gaze with all his might, and after a long, tense moment, made nearly unbearable by the pain in his side, the darker man nodded.
“Jansen!” he called out.
Immediately, Davydd reached down and grabbed hold of his cramping calf and kneaded it, unable to keep from whimpering in pain. Lorna rode up and grabbed it for him, quickly punching his pressures points with her iron fingers and getting the blood flowing freely once more, though it almost made him cry out in a mixture of relief and pain.
“Gather all your men in,” Autmaran was saying to the Scout, “we’re following Captain Davydd’s lead until further notice.”
Lorna released his leg and he breathed a quick word of thanks, before spinning around and plastering his accustomed grin on his face. As he did so, the men and women of the Kindred around him noticed, and he saw a visible straightening of shoulders and eagerness about the eyes.
A man’s got to keep up his fake reputation.
He heeled Aron up to the fork and looked both ways. They were almost mirror images. He waited for the golden lines to splinter his vision again, but nothing happened. He could almost feel hundred of eyes staring at his back, Autmaran’s chief among them.
Shadows and fire, come on!
He frantically started looking for differences between them, thinking maybe he could at least choose one that looked better, but before he could focus on the task, the burning pain intensified tenfold. All of a sudden it was as if molten gold was being pushed through his veins; the fire rushed to his toes and fingertips, making him feel as though he were about to be burnt alive; he threw back his head to scream in agony –
And then it vanished.
Davydd felt cool breeze touch the burnt half of his face, and it felt no different than if it had touched unmarred skin. He flexed his foot, his fingers, his jaw: no pain. Elation shot from the pit of his stomach up through his chest, and something in his vision shifted. The whole world seemed to tip to the right for no explicable reason. The wind suddenly felt colder coming that way, and after a moment he thought it even smelled of heated metal. The sounds of breaking stone and splintering wood followed next, amidst shouts of battle, and golden lines flashed across his vision, pulling him.
“This way,” he said, pointing right. “It’s this way! It is!”
They all looked the way he had pointed, but none of them seemed convinced. Davydd couldn’t understand it – the sounds and smells and wind had all faded, but the sense of which way to go, the sudden intuitive knowledge that came with the golden lines, was still there.
“It’s this way,” he insisted, “it is!”
Autmaran and Jansen were clearly looking at him as if he’d gone insane, and even Lorna seemed to be on the fence about the matter. Davydd growled impatiently and kicked his horse into a startled gallop down the right hand path.
“Just follow!”
For a moment, all he heard were Aron’s iron shoes pounding against the hard-packed dirt road, and he thought they might actually refuse. But even as the idea crossed his mind, he heard Autmaran shout the order to follow, and the thundering sound of the army swallowed up the silence. Soon, Autmaran and Lorna had both caught up to him, and they were all rushing down the road as it wound its way through the forest. Neither of them looked at him, and he didn’t look at them either. Likely they were all thinking the same thing.
Shadows and fire, I hope I’m not crazy.
He looked up at the sun overhead. It had just passed the zenith of midday and was descending toward the western horizon – toward Banelyn. If everything the Prince of Eagles had planned went accordingly, then Banelyn was either under attack or would be shortly. The Kindred under Davydd, Lorna, and Autmaran numbered only several thousand, and they were hardly certain that such numbers could make any kind of difference.
But a sharp shock at the right moment … that’s the kind of tide-turning deed that songs are sung about.
He felt the wind pushing against his face once more, rushing past burned skin that felt perfectly healthy. Reaching down inside himself, he touched what felt like a bundle of golden light that clustered somewhere in his gut, and lines of bright gold shot across his vision, all leading him forward along the chosen path. With each stride of the horse beneath him he felt more certain, more confident. Whatever the Talisman – or Aspect – had needed to do, it had done. He was its new master.
He grinned manically, and there was nothing forced about it this time.
Chapter Three: The Raven Prince
When Raven woke, it was into a world of raving madness. The agonizing sounds of battle were ringing in his ears, along with the final words of his brother Geofred, and the air was thick with the screams and smells of the dying.
And as his consciousness gathered and he found himself fully awake, he contemplated never moving again. But he couldn’t find the resolution he needed; his body rebelled against the thought, and his eyel
ids snapped open to reveal a ceiling carved with artful crenulations. The sounds of battlefield surgery punctured his skull like needle points, and when he raised himself up onto his elbows he found himself in the middle of a grand hall that had been turned into a field hospital.
He was at the back of the hall, almost nestled against the base of one of the painted walls, and Healers were moving men and women past the partition opening in front of him. Bare stretches of off-colored wall caught his eye and he realized tapestries must have hung there until very recently; standing up he could see over the hastily-done partitions of cloth and sheets to where an enormous fireplace along the room’s far right-hand side held the remnants of a dying fire. He looked up higher and saw a broad, cross-beamed window. The sky was light outside, but not very. He didn’t know which way that window faced – was it close to sunrise, or sunset?
What happened to me?
The events of the previous night came back to him in bits and pieces, and he found himself reliving in brief the hour of torment he’d undergone as his brother’s memories had rushed through him. There were flashes of other things too – of Tomaz running toward him, of Leah lying unconscious in his arms. Fire – smoke and haze that burned the eyes – cowled figures running to escape falling stones and shattered glass –
But what came between those images drew him even more. The memories that came to him, the ones he had gleaned from Geofred’s mind when it had been absorbed into his, those were the thoughts that had him clenching his teeth and gripping his hands into fists as they tried to spasm and twist.
The prophecies he knew … most of them are confused, but not that one; not the one that he specifically burned into his memory for me to find.
Fire. Death. Blood.
The images were more specific, but all were variations on that same simple theme. The Empress stood above it all, and as she glowed with the siphoned power of hundreds of thousands of souls, she smiled and choked the life from him.
The Return begins.
“You’re awake!”