The Prince of the Veil

by Hal Emerson

  “Shut up princeling, you had me before the pep talk,” Davydd said. “Not that the talk wasn’t nice, a little pep is always appreciated.”

  He looked around, and everyone seemed of similar opinion. Leah’s eyes were bright with unabashed excitement. The air around them seemed to crackle with energy – they had a chance. There was a way forward.

  “Elder Crane,” Raven continued, speaking quickly, “please go with Elders Spader and Ishmael to collect Elder Goldwyn’s sambolin and inform the others we will need more time. Dunhold will have to hold the passes for as long as he can.” Raven strode out of the circle and began to make his way to the distant side of the clearing, moving toward the base of the first gentle slope. Without the slightest hesitation, they all fell into step behind him. “Tomaz and Lorna, go with Crane and get a description of the runes: I will need you to help the Elders craft them. Davydd, Leah, Autmaran, Tym, Lorna, Tomaz – I need your Anchors.”

  He turned to them.

  “We don’t have much time. Hurry.”

  Crane gave a curt nod and left in a swirl of gray robes, Spader and Ishmael following close behind. Raven breathed a sigh of relief as soon as they had their backs turned. He was the one I expected to fight me. The others all reached hands into their robes and pulled out their Anchors, Tomaz and Lorna dropping theirs – a red-edged sword and a small horse, both of beautiful design in Valerium metal – into the cloak Raven was holding between his hands before running off after the Elders and speaking to them in low, rumbling voices.

  Raven realized distantly he was only several yards away from the side of the ravine that cut off one side of the clearing.

  A man fell down there … I wonder what happened to his body.

  Davydd, Leah, Autmaran and Tym had all followed him while the others went about their tasks. He turned back to them, his black cloak whipping in the wind that came off the plains of Lucien and battered against the low mountain slope. He reached out with the Raven Talisman, and felt the Imperial army massing below them, the huge lives of the Daemons out front, readying for an attack.

  We need to do this fast.

  “This is it,” he said quickly, opening his eyes. “This is the spot where they left me, and, if Crane is right, it’s the thin spot where the Empress thought she could kill me and fully claim the Raven Talisman. Spread out,” he flung his arms wide and turned quickly, scanning the area, reaching through the Talisman and letting all the details of the outside world flow into him. “We need to clear this place of rocks and branches – we will need a smooth surface to carve the runes into the earth.”

  They nodded and set to work, and Raven’s thoughts turned inward even as he helped Davydd and Tym unearth a large boulder.

  What runes do we need ... what do I remember from the rituals I saw?

  He remembered the black pit, the way the runes glowed blood red in the darkness of the underground caverns. Geofred had led him down there, to the place deep below the Fortress, the day he turned five. As all of the Children were commanded to do at that age, he’d killed his first man. It was the first time he’d ever absorbed a life through the Raven Talisman, the first time he understood what it meant to be one of the Children, to be given power over the lives of others. And from the memories of the man he killed, he’d learned what evil was, what men could do to the world to make it a place of horrors.

  Don’t focus on the man. The rune beneath him … there was something, I know there was…

  Finally the thought came to him, bubbling up from the back of his brain as all memories eventually did. There had been a labyrinthine rune there, one forming a perfect circle at least fifteen feet across. It had been sharp and angular in the center, and as it expanded out it had become more circular and begun to curve in long arcing lines.

  Tym and Davydd succeeded in removing the boulder, and as they rolled it to the ravine to drop it over the edge, Raven knelt to the ground, where a patch of bare dirt now lay free in the middle of the grass. He began to draw what he could remember: the angular lines in the center, the curving lines along the edge. Several times he scratched it out, and several times he redrew it, each time more confidently.

  He heard voices from behind him raised in argument, and turned to see Crane emerging from the trees with Spader and Ishmael, both of whom looked disgruntled at being dragged through a forest, though for different reasons.

  This might be the closest Spader has ever come to nature in his entire life.

  Ishmael’s discomfort, on the other hand, was soon made known by the man himself:

  “This will not work without the full circle,” he said. The low octave of his voice did not prevent it from coming out with a sharp intensity, and it sawed the ear as well with its usual raspy quality, which today was even more pronounced. It was as if he was trying to force the words out to break something, pushing them forward to puncture the building excitement palpable in the group.

  “We must try,” said Crane.

  “Hold on,” Spader said, watching him with a hint of alarm, “let’s not make any hasty decisions. This is untreaded territory – we don’t even know if we can make our form of Bloodmagic touch him, he’s been imbued with the Raven Talisman. Black Bloodmagic, the Imperial Bloodmagic – we can’t work around that in most cases.”

  “We were able to swear him in as Prince of the Veil,” Crane pointed out.

  “That was with a full circle,” Spader said, his voice calm but forceful.

  “Not to mention the ancient runes of the First Elders,” Ishmael continued, “runes of power that have been engraved in that stone for nearly a thousand years.”

  “It was not with a full circle,” Crane said a note of impatience. “Iliad was missing, making us twelve. You both know as well as I do that while thirteen is nearly infallible, twelve is only marginally better than three. If we could touch him then, we can touch him now. Besides, I did not choose you for arbitrary reasons: the three of us are the strongest of the current circle. It is the same reason I sent you both north.”

  “That and the fact you know we’ll go along with your damn schemes.”

  “That too,” Crane admitted.

  “Pan outstrips me,” Ishmael rasped. “And Stanton does such things as I have never seen.”

  “On their own, they are very powerful,” said Crane, his voice quick but measured, his eyes calm, a strong point of security in all the strange newness of the moment. “But in a circle, they are weak. They work well together, but not like the three of us do. We who have been together the longest, known each other, cared for each other since we were children. If there are any who can do this thing, it is the three of us standing here right now. More will not make a difference; I doubt even the full thirteen, if such a thing were possible with Iliad in his condition, could outpace us when we are focused on a thing.”

  There was a long pause as the others watched him, and watched each other. Raven and the others could only look on in silence; they had all stopped what they were doing to focus on the Elders. There was something deep between these three, something even outside of what Crane had alluded to, that spoke of a long history.

  It is no mistake Spader and Ishmael were sent with us when we went north. Crane made sure they were the ones, made sure that if he needed them here, they would be ready, and he wouldn’t have to fight them like he would have had to fight the others in breaking a tradition of this magnitude.

  “Fine,” Spader snapped, “but this is breaking a hundred different laws about needing a full Council to decide things. Laws you made me write, I might add.”

  “I take full responsibility,” Crane acknowledged. “But we are breaking the laws to save the nation, and for that I have no regrets.”

  “I never thought you were an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of man,” Ishmael grimaced. “But I know I am. If this is what needs to be done, then my feelings are of little consequence. I may not like this course of action, but I can see no other logical way forward. It must be done.”
>
  “Good,” Crane said.

  There was more rustling behind them, and the two giant forms of Tomaz and Lorna appeared, each bearing what looked like hastily-constructed digging implements that had recently been pikes.

  “Where do we start?” rumbled Tomaz.

  “Here,” Crane said, striding to the center of the space that had been cleared by the others. Raven moved forward to talk with him, but found his way blocked by the slight form of Ishmael. He looked down into the Elder’s eyes – and was surprised by the realization he was taller than the man.

  That really doesn’t matter: this man could kill me in my sleep ten times over before anyone knew I had stopped snoring. Thank goodness he’s on our side.

  “Show me what you’ve done,” Ishmael rasped. “I will take to Crane what I think we can use.” He bent over the lines drawn in the dirt and began to ask questions, which Raven struggled to answer. His loathing for Bloodmagic had led him to neglect it, indeed to shun it, and so he knew very little about the purpose of any of what he’d seen. Ishmael, however, seemed able to make something out of it.

  “Besides the fact you drew it upside down,” the Imperial Liaison muttered, “I think this was meant to be a dedication circle as well, very similar to what we use. If we improvise here and here to make connections, we may even be able to overlay the two runes to create an entirely new one. You say that this is used in the creation of a Soul Catcher?”

  “Yes,” he responded quickly. “A man is killed over the top of this rune, and his blood and body just … dissolve. They melt, and … and run, as if every bond in his body holding him together had suddenly been snapped in two. The blood passes into the rune, the rune begins to glow, and in the very center – here – a Bloodmage stands, holding a ready crystal in his hand.”

  “The sambolin are not crystals,” Ishmael warned him. “They are ornamental blades made of metal that, when enchanted, become … something more.”

  “Whatever they are, the spell is already a part of them. The only reason crystals are necessary is that they take the enchantment while other stones don’t. If the Elders’ Bloodmagic has already transformed the sambolin into a carrier, then there should be nothing to worry about. It should work the same.”

  “In theory.”

  “Theory is all we have at this point,” Raven said, becoming exasperated. “No one has ever done anything like this before; we’re going to have to make some things up as we go. Believe me, it makes me uneasy too. But it’s necessary.”

  Crane turned to catch Raven’s eye over Ishmael’s shoulder, and he could see a sparkle there that belied excitement and intrigue.

  “Fine,” Ishmael rasped. “Let us begin.”

  Within minutes the lines had been drawn in the earth, and the group formed up. Raven was standing at the center over a number of indecipherable runes carved deep into the black earth by Tomaz and Lorna, and the others were arrayed equidistant in a circle around him. There was little discussion for the most part, aside from the occasional disagreement between Ishmael and Spader as to the specifics of the runes beneath their feet. Crane stayed out of the whole affair, standing off far to the side, watching the whole proceeding with veiled eyes.

  Nothing shakes this man.

  His gaze flicked to Tym, and he saw the boy looking at him sadly, and he quickly looked away. The Snake Talisman had always been the one that made him the most uneasy – the fact it had been transferred from his sister and purified hadn’t seemed to change that.

  Huge bellowing roars sounded from down the mountain, and they all turned to look, though nothing was visible here. Raven sent out his mind to check what was happening and saw that the Imperials had stumbled into the first ambush the Kindred had set and had retreated again. They were reforming now, and the Daemons looked ready to lead the next charge.

  They were very quickly running out of time.

  “All right!” Crane called out. “Let us begin! Raven, do you have the Anchors?”

  Raven nodded and pulled out the scrap of cloth in which he had collected the six Anchors, the little pieces of Valerium that contained drops of his friends’ blood and made them citizens of Vale. He was very careful not to touch them – particularly Davydd’s, which was a miniature version of the Valerium sword he wore slung across his back; it was just as sharp as the real thing. He took a deep breath, and carefully laid them beside the already waiting sambolin.

  Elder Goldwyn’s sambolin … I wonder if his memories are inside it. I wish … I wish he were here. He’d know exactly what to say to make me feel like this will all turn out just the way it’s supposed to.

  He dropped a hand to his side and rested it against the hilt of Aemon’s Blade. If this was going to work, it would all hinge on the very large assumption Crane had made that Aemon’s Blade contained more than just a drop of Aemon’s blood. If this whole thing worked at all, it would be because of something set in motion by one man over a thousand years ago. The thought was chilling.

  Raven’s hand moved with a mind of its own, unsheathing the sword and laying it in the middle of the pile before him. Head spinning, he felt himself nod to Elder Crane, and just before the Elder began to speak, Raven’s gaze slid sideways to Leah; she had her stone face on and was staring at him with a determination that was frightening in its intensity.

  The word Crane spoke wasn’t a sound so much as it was a vibration, like the first note of a primitive song, something low and deep, even deeper than the voice of Tomaz. The Wise Elder held up his hand, and pulled out his own sambolin, where it hung dangling on its chain around his neck. He unsheathed the dagger, and its multi-hued blade caught the last rays of daylight and threw them across the glade in a hundred spangled flashes.

  Ishmael and Spader took up the call, and with all three of their voices joined together, the sound was suddenly unbearable. The notes didn’t fit – they jarred, splintering into thousands of pieces and piercing the brain. Ishmael and Spader drew out their daggers as well, and then all three Elders slashed their hands in unison.

  As soon as the blood began to flow, the sound changed. The cacophony melded seamlessly into something else, so easy and fluid it was like watching water run downhill. Raven watched as Crane’s eyes widened in surprise, and Spader was suddenly smiling inexplicably, looking like he’d found an answer to a question he’d had for a very long time.

  It was the others’ turn now. Each of them drew out a dagger of their own, all of plain metal, and sliced their palms with it. With each cut, it felt as though the air grew tighter around him – as if the violence done to his friends’ flesh was increasing the tension in the air.

  Crane broke off his chant, and called out:

  “On my count of three!”

  Raven realized a background noise, completely independent of the Elders, had begun to build around them, so deep it vibrated him where he stood.

  “ONE!” he shouted. Ishmael knelt and threw his hand to the ground. Raven flinched, but then realized this was part of the ritual: the section of the rune before the dark Elder turned a deep, unforgiving black, and the humming grew louder.

  “TWO!” Crane cried.

  Spader dropped to his knee and slammed his own palm into the ground, and another section snapped into a tan color flecked with lines and spots of a deep tawny. Raven felt the hum begin to collect beneath the soles of his boots, and the Anchors at his feet suddenly moved, snapping into a perfect circle around him, each leaping to a point directly between Raven and its owner.

  “THREE!”

  Crane, Autmaran, Tym, Lorna, Tomaz, Leah, and Davydd all knelt as one and slammed their hands into the part of the rune in front of them. In immediate reaction, wind appeared from nowhere and shot past them, sucked down in a sudden vortex that descended around Raven, leaving him untouched but fiercely buffeting the others.

  “HOLD STEADY!” roared Crane, straining to be heard over the rushing gale. “WHATEVER YOU DO – DON’T BREAK CONTACT WITH THE CIRCLE OR HE’S LOST!”


  Raven gritted his teeth, trying not to think about what that meant.

  Crane, Ishmael, and Spader all began to chant again, their voices low and yet somehow loud enough to be heard over the whipping wind that had encircled Raven. The words cut through the air, and he watched in equal parts fear and amazement as the area of the rune in front of each person began to turn a separate color, each corresponding to the color of their Talisman.

  Raven looked down and his heart leapt into his throat.

  Their Anchors were vibrating so hard and fast that they had begun to melt. The Valerium metal was falling off of them in droplets and pooling on the ground beneath, burning the grass and blistering the soil. The center of each Anchor had begun to glow a deep, deep red.

  Shadows and light, their blood is being distilled from the Anchors.

  He spun and looked at Aemon’s Blade, and saw that while it continued to vibrate, no such thing was happening with it. It stayed just as it was, whole and unbroken, the lynchpin that held this all together.

  Words continued to spill from the Elders’ mouths, tumbling and tripping on each other, faster than any tongue should have been able to speak them. This was completely unlike anything he’d seen before. It was a violent fight with something deep and elemental, something that knew what they were doing and was trying to stop them.

  Energy began to crackle in the air as the wind picked up speed, nearly blowing Tym off balance before he dropped himself completely to the ground and grabbed a handful of turf to keep himself anchored to the circle. The smell and feel of lightning encompassed Raven’s senses; the air had turned crisp and sharp, and his anxiety began to spike, morphing to fear inside his chest.