The Prince of the Veil

by Hal Emerson

  He saw the birth of Rikard, of Geofred, of his Mother’s determination to find a way to return to the land from which she’d come. The memories came faster, all the impressions of a thousand sensory details overwhelming him, submerging his mind. Memories of him, even, seen through her eyes. Azraeloph growing up, Azraeloph with black hair and eyes and features so similar to Aemon, who she had loved so long ago … so very, very long ago.…

  “Raven!” Leah was shouting at him. “You can’t hold all of this in! You have to break the power! You have to break the crystals!”

  Crystals … crystals … what was she talking about?

  “Raven,” she shouted, “you have to give it up!”

  No. No, he couldn’t give it up. There was something left undone. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t – why couldn’t he do it?

  “I can’t do it,” he said, speaking the words aloud.

  “Yes,” said the voice of Leah, and he realized she was by his side again, shouting at him over the sounds of a storm. Lightning ripped the sky above them and the world shook and burned. “Yes – you can!”

  “Don’t give in!” roared the voice of Tomaz, a huge boom of its own that broke through even the rolling thunder that surrounded them.

  “Not yet,” Azraeloph gasped. He began to smile.

  The memories took him over and merged with reality, the two streams of thought melding back into one. He broke away from Leah and Tomaz as his limbs surged with power. He knew what he had to do. He knew what he could do, what he had the power to do. He stood tall and drew the power into him fully, taking all of the life stored in the crystals straight into his body through the Crown.

  “NO! Stop – wait – Raven, stop!”

  Leah was rushing for him again, but, as he watched, the world slowed and stopped, leaving her several paces from him, hands outstretched, eyes wide and green and beautiful.

  An explosion of power roared through him, rocking back everything within a hundred yards. He filled himself with power, drinking deep until every inch of skin felt electrified as he thrummed with supreme authority. He began to rise into the air without the need for wings, wind whipping him from all sides, and soon he was high enough to see all that was happening, all the city, and he knew what he had to do.

  “Let light shine through the darkness!”

  The Command rolled out of him and raced over the city, shooting into the sky, breaking apart the clouds, allowing the morning sun to send its first, tentative, questing rays out to them as it rose over the distant mountains.

  “Let the ground be level!”

  The huge sunken cavern began to shift and move in impossible ways, and the broken stones of the Fortress picked themselves up by the thousands and shot through the sky, crashing into the distant mountains. The ground shook, and the earth moved inward, filling the sunken pit beneath the Fortress so perfectly it looked as if there had never been a cavern there.

  “Let life come to Lucien!”

  Grass grew from the ground in spontaneous waves, coating the entire city. Trees, oak and pine, spruce and ash, sprouted and bloomed, reaching toward the sky, filling the space between broken hills of rubble.

  “Let the dead live once more!”

  And they did. All of them. All the Commons the Bloodmages had killed, all the Kindred that had been cut down. Lorna rose among them, pushing herself up from among the Bloodmage crystals, and Azraeloph felt Tym stand as well just outside the city, his wounds healing, his skin stitching back together.

  He threw back his head and laughed, shouting his joy to the clear blue skies. He was a new god, a benevolent ruler that could mend the wounds of the world.

  “I am the wind of change!” he shouted to the skies.

  A huge wind sprang up, coming out of nowhere, in obedience to his will. He lowered himself back to earth and turned to Leah and Tomaz, who were barely able to stand. The wind buffeted the giant, throwing him back and rolling him away, until he flattened himself against the ground. Leah crouched low, her long black hair whipping in every direction as she was buffeted by the wailing wind.

  “Don’t you see?” he howled at her. “I have even brought back our friends – I can fix it all!”

  But Leah’s mouth was set in a grim line.

  “That is not Lorna!” she called to him. “These people are not alive! You cannot make life like this – you are no more a god than she was!”

  Azraeloph laughed in derision, turning to the form of Lorna and moving toward her. He would show her – he would show her that –

  He stopped short, as he realized Lorna was staring at him with blank eyes … eyes that were slowly turning a sickly, corrupted green.

  “No,” he said. “No – stop!”

  Lorna froze in midstride, but her eyes continued to glow. Azraeloph shouted at her again, yelled at her, but nothing changed. He reached out with his mind and grabbed hold of her life, feeling it, trying to find that sight and smell and feel that was completely hers – but it wasn’t there. He reached down inside himself, into the crystals, and realized there was nothing there either, nothing that could make her who she had been in life. All details of the lives the Bloodmages had taken were gone, broken down into one single well of power. The memories were gone, and only blood red light remained. He had the power to make her stand – but not the power to make her live.

  I don’t have her memories. I don’t have them … they’re gone forever.

  He sent his mind racing across the city and found Tym, and realized that the boy too was becoming something corrupted, something unnatural. He had risen, his wounds had healed, but he was not the beautiful young man he had been before his death. All throughout the city, every single man, woman, and child who had risen …

  Death Watchmen.

  Azraeloph threw the thought from his mind, shouting in horror as he recoiled from the knowledge of what he’d done. The wind turned into a howling gale around him, and rain appeared from nowhere, clouds blanketing the city again in seconds as the weather mirrored his emotions.

  “Raven! Raven – stop this! You have to stop this!”

  He heard the shouting voice, and a small part of him remembered Leah. He turned and saw her, and felt something rise up inside him.

  Stay away from her – she turned me back last time!

  And as that thought crossed his mind, he realized what was happening to him. He looked down at himself and saw the changes had already begun; he felt his body stretching and twisting as the power that ran through him changed him. Even the pure memories of Aemon weren’t enough to save him now – there was too much in him, too many memories from Alana, too much power flowing through his veins, and all of it was jumbled in a terrible, incoherent madness. It was a sea, an ocean of souls that had been harvested and brought together through Bloodmagic, and it picked him up and bore him away like a twig on the tide.

  The world around him stood out in bas-relief as the sharp light from the Crown of Aspects changed and morphed, becoming something harsh, something cutting. He felt himself fading away, becoming the embodiment of the Talisman he wore, a ruler that would replace his Mother and recreate a new and stronger Empire.

  The Lord of Death, the Reaper of Souls, the Prince of Ravens.

  He heard Leah’s voice calling to him again, shouting over the maelstrom he’d created.

  “Destroy it! Destroy the Crown! Give the power up!”

  He shook his head, trying to dislodge the words.

  “Think about your after, Raven! Think about what you really want!”

  An image came to him, bidden by her words, an image that had nothing to do with Azraeloph, nothing to do with the Empire or the Children or any of it. It was his, just his, and it vibrated through his bones so powerfully that it jarred loose the raging power roaring through him.

  A cabin among white stone mountains.

  Not for her, not for the Kindred, but for him. The image took him over completely, and the knowledge of his name, Raven, the Exiled Prince, coursed
through him with such vehemence that the creature inside was pushed aside. With a burst of lucidity, he raised Aemon’s Blade even as the creature clawed for control, and pulled the Crown from his head, flinging it to the ground. With a swing that nearly ripped his shoulders from their sockets, Raven crashed the sword down atop it, driving the razor-sharp edge of the Blade through the opal stone.

  The tempest around him froze, and then the world exploded outward in a shockwave that warped reality. What little was left of the city disappeared, the reanimated bodies fell and moved no more, and the Crown itself, now nothing more than a simple piece of metal, split in half, broken. The Bloodmage crystals cracked and shattered, one after the other, and the thinness they had caused, the power they’d pulled out of the world, flew back into it, healing what was torn.

  He collapsed in a heap, his vision dark, and for a long time lay unmoving.

  Silence held him, for how long he did not know. He seemed to float, weightless, somewhere in his own mind, for an eternity. He saw that the darkness that had lain so long on him was gone, rooted up and burned away, and a peaceful serenity had filled him in its place. He longed to stay here forever, floating in the comforting nothingness that somehow seemed full, but he knew he could not. Slowly, he was pushed back, by himself or by some other force, and he emerged once more in life.

  The first sensation that came to him, the first indication that he still lived, was subtle warmth against his cheek. It was soft and golden, and gloriously simple. His eyes slowly opened once again, and he found himself staring at a lightening sky, going from black to violet to indigo, and farther to the east from blue to red to orange. He turned his head, following the warmth, and saw the rising sun shining on land that had lain so long in darkness it had forgotten the joy of light. But it rejoiced now at this reacquaintance, and reached up toward the sun, unfurling and embracing the warmth.

  He noticed that his mind was quiet, and seemed somehow empty. He reached slowly over his shoulder, feeling for the ridges of the black markings of the Raven Talisman.

  And found only smooth, unblemished skin.

  His hand fell back down to his side. He heard a rustling, and became conscious of someone coming up beside him only in the most distant way. The world had started to breathe again, and he could feel it. Nothing felt strained or torn – there was no thin spot here, not anymore. The Veil was whole again.

  “Raven,” Leah said, kneeling beside him. “Raven, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said, and felt a surge of emotion run through him that caused tears to leak from the corners of his eyes. The sound of that word, and the truth of the answer, was so good it hurt. He tried to breathe and felt his body wracked by a silent sob.

  Leah levered a hand underneath him and pulled him up, helping him sit, and he clung to her, feeling the warmth of her skin and the firm tension of her body. She held him and told him softly, over and over, that it was finished, that it was done.

  He grasped at her hands and saw that the blue of her Aspect was gone. He looked over to Tomaz, the giant still towering over them as he watched on, and there was no red light shining through his armor. He swept a gaze around what had once been the Fortress, and beyond that what had once been mansion complexes and a dark, cesspit of a city. All of it was gone, leveled by the force of the falling Fortress, and then scattered to the winds by the sweeping power Raven had tried to wield.

  And in its place was soft green grass, and sapling trees that whispered to him as wind played through their leaves. The warm, rising sunlight tossed shadows along the ground, and spring caressed the land like a forgotten lover.

  The world was moving on.

  Chapter Thirty-Two: After

  The cobalt sea lapped against the edge of the wide wooden dock. The tide had reached its height and was straining the huge ship against its moorings, the thick ropes pulled tight. The sky was a clear, crisp blue, with dashes of white cumulus wafting lazily into the east.

  Raven had never been to the Port of Valour before. The northern- and western-most city in the Empire, it had been built just north of where the Empress and her party had been stranded so long ago. Raven could still see it in his mind’s eye; his mother’s recollection of this place, while full of loathing, was more or less accurate. Little had changed in a thousand years. Buildings had gone up, and the natural harbor had been expanded and rounded, but the land itself was still the same. Trees still covered the hillsides, and wind still swept in from the ocean full of the tang of salt.

  Raven had never seen the ocean before, either, and that had been the biggest surprise. That huge expanse of blue, going on forever … it really was possible to believe one could be lost in crossing it.

  I wonder what that other world was like.

  He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the windowpane, and found himself staring once again at the youthful face looking back at him. He’d gotten so used to the years the Aspects had forced on him that it was taking him time to reacclimate to being eighteen again. It was strange knowing how he would age in the coming years, but oddly enough he enjoyed knowing he would. He’d come to the conclusion that life was only precious if it could be lost. Maybe Goldwyn would call that wisdom. Still, he wasn’t particularly looking forward to the worry lines he’d seen form across his forehead and around his mouth.

  At least you have a full head of hair to look forward to. Pick your battles.

  “Hey,” said a voice somewhere to his right. He turned and saw Leah standing further down the wood-paneled hallway behind him, her eyes now permanently back to their natural, striking green. She had taken to pulling her hair back with a leather cord the way the women in the Port did, a style that revealed more of her smooth olive skin and sharp cheekbones.

  “What are you watching?” she asked, coming up beside him. She looked out the window and saw what it looked out onto, and he felt her stiffen. She shook her head, spilling her black hair back over her shoulder, and turned away from it, leaning up against the wooden frame.

  “Has he come yet?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he replied.

  They lapsed into silence for a time, and Raven felt no need to break it. A new level of comfort existed between them that wasn’t threatened by dead air. It was something he’d never had with anyone else; something he didn’t want with anyone else. She was the one who spoke first, as she often was these days.

  “How are you feeling?”

  The edge of his mouth quirked in the beginnings of a smile, but it stopped and faded away. There wasn’t really anything funny about the question, only that she continued to ask it.

  “The same as yesterday,” he said, “and the day before that.”

  “Better,” she said. “You’re feeling better. Sorry – I know I ask too often.”

  “I appreciate it,” he said simply. “It’s nice to have someone care … and nice to be able to take my time.”

  She nodded and turned back to the window. “I never realized how much I’d love the sea,” she said. The ocean was sparkling in the summer sunlight, reflecting in her eyes. “Though I do miss the white stone mountains.”

  “Me too,” he said with sudden yearning, thinking of Vale. The rooms they’d been lent here to recover were full and warm, but it wasn’t home. They lapsed into silence once more, now so close their shoulders were almost touching. He was wearing his gray tunic today, one of the three he’d bought himself. None of them were black.

  “I thought of a question,” she said slowly.

  Raven nodded.

  “I promised I’d answer them,” he said. “As fully as I can.

  “You were convinced you’d die,” Leah said. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Ah,” Raven sighed. “I still think I was supposed to.”

  “But why didn’t you?”

  “Because I decided at the last moment not to kill her. She forced me to do it … she wanted it. I think may
be she wanted it all along. It’s probably the only way she could return home … the closest way, at least.”

  She made a soft, pensive noise, looking over the harbor.

  “Crane knew,” Raven said with the ghost of a smile. “He told me, right after we’d made the crown: the reason changes everything.”

  She shook her head.

  “I still don’t understand – the action was the same, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s what I said,” grumbled Raven. “But he said it wasn’t. And … I guess it was different. When she died, it was because she made me do it. I did it because it was forced on me – all along I’d been trying to steel myself against the knowledge I would have to do it, and in the end it turned out I didn’t.”

  “You really think you would have died if you’d killed her?”

  “Yes,” Raven said after a moment. “I … you were there; you felt it, the way the world seemed so thin, like you could breathe on it wrong and everything would just drift apart like a broken spider’s web. We were connected – through blood, through Bloodmagic, and through the Crowns. The shock of her death … yes. I became so much Azraeloph as it was, I don’t think I would have come back if I’d killed her.”

  They fell silent and watched the waves roll in and out. The Port of Valour was peaceful, and almost abandoned. The ships that carried grain from Tyne to the docks in Lucien had gone south to collect their shipment, and the men and women of the city, one of the only cities unaffected by what was being called the Kindred War, were a private people that kept to themselves. They were very fair of skin, almost as alabaster as the Empress herself, and their city stressed peaceful non-involvement.

  Leah moved closer to him, and he felt her lips touch the edges of his ear.

  “I love you,” she whispered; he smiled and grimaced simultaneously, feeling joy mix with sadness in his chest. He still felt the old pangs of unworthiness when she said it, but each time that feeling receded a little more.

  “Even after everything?” he asked, turning to face her.