Hello, love. I've felt you there, all this time. Ceera's voice sounded frail and dry, as if a gentle breeze would whisk her away.
Mama? Emrillian's voice nearly cracked. I'm coming home. I'll be there soon.
We'll all be safe. Pirkin needs you. Sweetling, I'm so proud of you. I promise, I'll never ask anything like this of you ever again.
They lingered in the safety of the Threads, enfolded in power that Mrillis knew he would pay for in the morning, happy and making plans for when Emrillian would be home and Ceera would be strong and healthy again, until finally even his strength couldn't fight off the inevitable. Ceera drifted back into sleep. Mrillis sent Emrillian an impression of his arms tight around her, and kissed a ghostly semblance of her forehead. When he let go of his daughter, he warned her to be careful and she promised to be doubly alert.
Ceera could only open her eyes when Mrillis dropped his cloak in the doorway, settled at last at her bedside and took hold of her hand. One corner of her mouth twitched, attempting a smile, then her eyes closed and she slid into sleep.
Mrillis sat at her bedside, fighting his tears so he could see hear clearly and count every breath she took. She had always been pale, but beautiful like moonlight and silver, with the power of the sea depths beneath her delicateness. Now, however, her skin looked whiter than bleached bones tossed up by the waves and the fever that sucked at her vitality etched hollows in her cheeks and defined all her bones under her skin.
Endor struck while Mrillis slept, drained dry of imbrose and exhausted, half-lying against Ceera's bed so his head rested on her thigh. The utter terror and despair in her soul-cry woke him.
Emmi!
The bereaved shriek of a mother's soul echoed through the night, jangling discord among the Threads, as Mrillis brutally yanked himself back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and felt the last flutter of Ceera's pulse in her wrist where he cradled her hand. Then she was gone.
* * * *
Mrillis moved in a haze of pain in body and soul. He felt as if all his skin had been scoured away with burning sand. Every sound, every movement hurt. He fought to see, to hear, to move. He had to find Emrillian and bring her home. He had to give instructions... For what, he couldn't remember, a moment after he resolved to do it.
The only clarity he had for two days were those moments when he held Pirkin. The boy's presence, the weight of him, the smell of him, cleared the thick, gritty fog from his mind and soothed him so he could sleep for a few moments at a time.
Despite the agony of leaving Ceera's empty shell and knowing what he would see, Mrillis went out to meet the returning team of healers and Valors. He had to know, to see for himself. He had to brutally face the reality that Emrillian was dead, and her death had killed her mother.
He wasn't sure sometimes how he had survived. At other times, he was sure that he was dead, and he was only a ghost waiting to fade through the doorway to eternity, where Ceera and Emrillian waited for him. Most likely with impatient amusement.
He prayed, as he clung to his horse and rode out of the safe, high walls of stone that surrounded the Stronghold, that he would discover all this was a fever dream, and he had been ill, the only victim of Endor's plague. Briefly, he was willing to let the last forty years be nothing but a dream, to go back to those days after the forging of the Zygradon, before he had spoken his heart and taken Ceera into his arms. He nearly asked Breylon if such magic was possible, to turn back time and forfeit all the joys he and Ceera had shared. What was better? To make it so Emrillian had never been, or face this tearing, crippling grief?
The somber party that met him only three hours from the Stronghold shattered his last fevered, exhausted hopes. Pyris rode in the lead on his massive black gelding, cradling a form wrapped in Emrillian's familiar, emerald-trimmed, vivid blue cloak. The Valor's eyes were dark, lifeless, his face grim and lined with new pain, smeared with sleeplessness. Stark white punctuated his golden brown hair. Mrillis looked at him and thought he saw a blurred mirror image of himself.
"Why didn't she answer?" Pyris asked, his voice cracked and strained, smoldering with anger. He reined his horse to a stop and glared down at Mrillis and the other riders from the Stronghold.
"Who?" Mrillis reached up, holding out his arms to take Emrillian's body from him. Pyris tightened his arms around her instead.
"The Queen of Snows," he spat. "For her own daughter, at least, shouldn't she have sent help?"
"Ceera died with her daughter." Mrillis waited, saw the emotions ripple across Pyris' face, the longing to argue, to deny, to call him a liar. Then the granite of the Valor's face crumbled. He slumped forward, shoulders shaking, dry, wracking sobs escaping his throat. And finally let Emrillian go into her father's arms.
Mrillis fought not to collapse as he took the slight weight of Emrillian's body. It seemed to him she had weighed more than this when she was a newborn. He braced himself for more pain, and tugged up the billowy hood that had covered her face.
Her bottom lip was raw and there was a smear of dried blood where she had bitten it through. Mrillis remembered how she always used to bite her bottom lip when she concentrated on something that frustrated her. He saw no other sign of catastrophe, no pain, no ravages of whatever battle she had fought.
"It devastated her to do it," Pyris said, after the riders who accompanied Mrillis convinced his party of travelers to dismount and make a temporary camp. They made fires with magic to heat the wine and revitalizing potions they had brought with them, and made the healers and Valors drink.
"To do what?" Mrillis asked. He reached over and put two fingers under the bottom of Pyris' cup, to tip it up and make him drink.
"She hunted them down. The traitors. Before she could hide the bowl, she hunted them all down. She gathered us all together and took all the strength we could give her, and she killed them." Pyris choked. "I thought I was the ruthless warrior, when necessary, but she frightened me. Until she collapsed after the battle and wept until I thought she would be sick." He shuddered, tipped the cup back one more time and drained it. "It isn't enough."
"No, it isn't," Mrillis agreed. He shuddered, sickened by his hope that the traitors had suffered before they died. He wasn't ashamed of his anger, his hunger for punishment, even as he felt sick. Ceera would scold him, even as she understood.
Ceera wasn't there to make him a better man. Endor and his followers had destroyed her. Had they deliberately killed Emrillian, knowing it would be the final wound to push Ceera through the doorway to death? Or had that been mere luck on the enemy's part?
"What do we do now?" Pyris whispered, as if ashamed to admit he needed guidance.
"We bury our dead. And we mourn. Pirkin is safe." He almost smiled when Pyris flinched and gasped and his eyes showed his shock and guilt for forgetting about his son. He almost smiled, but his face ached too much to allow it. He wondered if he would ever smile again.
* * * *
When they returned to the Stronghold, they found Trevissa approaching the entrance just ahead of them. The girl was bloody and bruised, her clothes torn, muddy and scorched. A red-haired body slung over her limping horse's saddle turned out to be Triska. The girl said nothing and defiance burned in her eyes when she faced them.
"Thank you," Pyris rasped.
Mrillis said nothing. He had hoped they could have taken Triska alive, to get some answers from her. Obviously, in retrospect, they had not asked the right questions, or enough questions, when they explored Triska's mind so many years ago.
When they entered the Stronghold, Pyris demanded his son. He held Pirkin close and refused to let anyone take the boy from his arms, even when he ate and slept. Mrillis understood how he felt, but a tiny seed of resentment and fear nudged aside some of the aching, empty, scorched feelings enfolding him. Wouldn't he be doing the same, if Emrillian was still a child and he had just lost Ceera?
They built Ceera and Emrillian's funeral pyre in a sheltered canyon meadow, where mother and daughter had b
oth played and gathered flowers as children. Despite the hundreds who stood with them in silence while the magical flames roared and filled the air with smoke that smelled of apple blossoms, Mrillis felt he stood alone, only sporadically aware of Pyris and Pirkin next to him.
He ached and regretted and welcomed the searing heat of hatred and anger, to bring him back to life. Or some semblance of life.
The plan came to him as he watched the flames leap, blue and purple, crimson and gold. When the flames died away, leaving nothing but cool, silver-blue ashes, Mrillis knew every step of what he had to do.
"Let me hold him," he whispered, as he and Pyris watched Ceera's ladies gather up the ashes to put in the two urns inscribed with the likenesses of mother and daughter.
Pyris started to draw back, turning to put himself between Mrillis and the sleeping boy. Then something broke visibly inside him. Shoulders shaking, he stretched out his arms, slowly, as if the movement pained him.
Mrillis pressed his grandson to his heart and looked down at the soft, round face. With his wheaten hair and lashes, he looked more like Pyris than Emrillian, though Mrillis had always thought it was hard to see the resemblance to either parent in those chubby cheeks and tiny, up-tilted, infant nose. He memorized his grandson's features, down to a last few tears still glistening in his lashes in the corners of his eyes. Mrillis kissed the boy's forehead, hugged him close one last time, and handed him back to his father.
"Where are you going?" Pyris asked, frowning, something besides grief putting awareness back into his eyes.
"Most likely to die." Mrillis gestured as if he saluted the Valor with an invisible sword.
"But first you'll destroy him." He gave one short, sharp nod. "The Estall go with you."
"And with you. If...remind Pirkin that his grandfather loved him, too," he murmured, and turned to walk away before he could rethink his decision.
Mrillis mounted his horse and was gone from the Stronghold before anyone realized that he wasn't about to join them at the mourning feast. If anyone tried to follow him, he had no idea. All that mattered was that he rode out to seek his vengeance alone.
* * * *
Mrillis let his grief and fury guide him. He let the turmoil, the ragged, bleeding sense of loss overwhelm his physical senses and his soul, but his mind stayed icily calm and alert, lightly touching the Threads, waiting for that first shimmer of movement, of energy drawing near, the resonance that only one person in the World could command. He had waited for years, listening, expecting another attack in the vicious game Endor played, until he grew weary and distracted by the joys and busyness of life. That resonance never set off an answering echo inside him.
That resonance would come now, when the one who created it thought him numb and weak and lost in his grief.
Mrillis didn't expect Endor to be complacent and dangerously confident. Hadn't they spent hundreds of hours in their youth, studying the histories to learn from the mistakes and successes of their ancestors and their enemies? Hadn't they mocked the ones who relaxed when they thought they had the advantage?
Endor would come after him quickly, knowing he had to strike before his prey could gather his forces and strength and resolve. Mrillis realized, in that flash of insight when his world was torn apart in Ceera's loss, the only way to catch someone as twisted and deceptive as Endor was to do and be the unexpected. He had been the hunter all this time, and Endor--well, Mrillis had no idea how Endor saw himself, but he had been hiding and then striking out from his hiding places before he abandoned them for a new safe place. Endor would not expect Mrillis to become both hunter and hunted, to use himself as bait.
"I have let you set the rules for this game and you have changed them, or perhaps lived by none at all. But you expect me to live by rules," Mrillis told the bitter cold darkness, when he was forced to stop and rest his horse. How many days had he ridden into the wilderness? He had lost count. "Until I am rejoined to Ceera, I shall have no rule but this: my enemy exists only to be destroyed. I can't bring Ceera back, but I will find comfort in knowing she waits for me, and you will never again be near her."
Mrillis stopped when a faint sense of movement in the still night warned him some life, some awareness, drew near. The Threads he had set around himself like tripwires, to warn of physical approach, showed that no living thing moved near him or his quiescent, patient horse. Endor sent his senses ahead, testing the prey. He amused himself with the speculation that Endor knew he was talking and tried to listen, thinking him reduced to ravings like a madman. Mrillis supposed Endor mocked him for his grief and called it another weakness. He could have no idea that Mrillis found iron inside the jagged, fiery teeth of his loss.
"No, not iron," Mrillis whispered, hoping his former friend listened. "Star-metal. Better than star-metal. More powerful and enduring than star-metal." He laughed, and the sound came out as a harsh rasp from his dry, fevered throat.
How long had it been since he ate or drank? Mrillis looked around the dark clearing where he had stopped to rest, knowing he had only done it out of pity for his horse, who couldn't see in the dark. He vaguely recalled four sunrises and sunsets. Or was it five? Six? He had fed and watered and rested his horse, but not himself.
Irony. Perhaps I really am a madman. Well, Endor will never suspect the trap hidden under the truth, will he?
The sense of another presence grew more certain, a little more solid. Still no response from the Threads set to warn him. Mrillis laughed aloud, startling the horse, and silently called Endor a coward. The darkness slowly gave way to the silver-gray before dawn.
He felt the coiling of power as he grasped the saddle and lifted one foot to put it in the stirrup and mount. Mrillis grinned in the depths of his hood and prepared the burst of power he had fashioned in long hours of thinking and riding and suffering. All the power of the Zygradon and Braenlicach was his to command, though the bowl's powers were muted because Emrillian's protective spell held firm despite her death. He fully expected to die from the heavy, hot stream of destruction he would channel through body and mind and soul.
The healers in the Stronghold had taught him in his childhood that sometimes, to save the body from a particularly malignant wound, a limb had to be sacrificed. Mrillis saw himself as a limb with no purpose, without Ceera.
There was the boy to live for, his grandson, all he had left of Ceera and Emrillian. There was Athrar, partly son, partly brother, and Athrar's sons to look after. Mrillis knew he could find a reason to live in them. But Endor would destroy them, quietly, insidiously, patiently waiting years for his vengeance. Mrillis would gladly sacrifice himself now for their lives. His reward would be to rejoin Ceera and end this horrid, hot, torn sense of bleeding.
So he continued up into his saddle, slowly, pretending exhaustion after days of no sleep or food or even water. Endor couldn't know that the power of the Zygradon fed Mrillis more perfectly than anything in the physical world. The Zygradon, and the need for justice. Mrillis deliberately didn't brace himself against the coming attack. That had been his mistake when they were boys, and Endor tried to trick him with ambushes when he was busy doing something else--mounting his horse, carrying buckets of water, and other chores.
There would be no mud puddle or pile of horse dung to fall into this time, Mrillis vowed.
Endor struck, a gust of harsh, hot, grit-filled wind. Mrillis uncoiled the power gathered up tightly inside him, lashing out, catching Endor's power and imprisoning the Threads he manipulated, forcing them to curve around and tangle him before he could let go.
Mrillis had learned that trick from Endor years ago, when they were boys, laughing and tussling in friendly competition. It didn't matter now if Endor had never seen it as friendly. Mrillis was beyond the point where the thoughts of others could affect him.
Endor's fury vanished for a moment, smothered by shock when his ambush turned back on him.
Mrillis laughed, deep inside, where it had no affect on his concentration. Vaguely he was
aware of the rocky clearing churning with a massive whirlwind that uprooted the hardy, scrubby bushes and stripped away the moss on the rocks and picked up pebbles and smaller rocks like dust. He heard his horse scream and it meant nothing. Sand scoured his face and clothes and he ignored it.
The battle raged in the Threads. Endor struggled and cursed and flung fire through the physical air.
The horse erupted into a fireball and Mrillis didn't choke on the black, foul smoke.
Endor twisted and lunged, pushed forward and retreated.
Mrillis held still, making himself the center of the battle, and slowly, inexorably, drew his enemy closer and wrapped him tighter in the Threads.
Endor shouted, his face twisted in a mask of fury. Other times he laughed, his words meant to taunt, to mock.
Mrillis heard nothing but the beating of his own heart, and faintly, a lullaby Ceera used to sing to Emrillian when she put her to bed after a nightmare.
His wife and daughter were safe, together, and soon he would join them after ensuring the World was safe.
Endor entered the clearing, among the fire and rubble, the thick haze of grit in the air, the blood and smoke. The Threads had brought him there, against his will, despite all his struggles and strength.
"Come," Mrillis whispered, and held out his hand for the invisible sword he had clutched in his imagination all this time.
Endor shrieked as the air turned to molten metal and Braenlicach appeared in Mrillis' hand, hot and nearly liquid as it coalesced out of the air. It cooled rapidly against his burned flesh, and the fire that turned his glove to ashes died in a breath.
Mrillis remembered how Endor had mocked him, affectionate teasing, for putting more value on his studies, on service and knowledge than war craft. The sword of star-metal glowed soft silver-blue in his hand, cutting through the filth and dregs of the battle.
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