Endor struggled against the Threads that held him prisoner physically, binding his imbrose so he could not use it.
Mrillis considered letting the Threads squeeze the life out of his enemy, but that would still give him time, a chance to find an escape, one last word that might break through the deafening rumble of heartbeats in Mrillis' ears.
"You wanted to touch the sword, to feel it in your hands. Feel it now," Mrillis said, his voice an exhausted whisper.
Endor's mouth opened in a shout, and his eyes were almost as wide in terror and comprehension.
Mrillis drew back, holding the sword in both hands, and plunged it forward, into and through Endor's chest. The Threads held him still so even the spasms of pain didn't move him in his prison. Mrillis thrust again. Then stepped back and swung and severed Endor's head from his shoulders. He released the Threads at his command and Endor slowly collapsed to the ravaged, steaming, bare rock, a puppet with clipped strings.
Mrillis went to his knees, propped up with the sword that seemed to have become part of his flesh, and waited as silence fell and the air cleared.
But the end didn't come and death didn't ease his last breath from his stinging, emptied husk of a body.
* * * *
The Valors found him after Mrillis had crawled through the slowly growing dawn light. It amused him that a battle that had been decades in the making took less time than a sunrise. Mrillis wondered where the remains of his horse were. Had his neglected supplies survived the battle? He needed to eat, needed water, or he might just shrivel into dust and blow away in the chilly, dew-laden morning breeze.
It was amusing, actually, to realize he wanted to live. Or at the very least, to end the aching, gnawing emptiness in his middle and wash away the dust filling his mouth.
He thought he hallucinated when someone propped him up, put a water skin to his lips and let a few drops trickle in. Mrillis wanted to snatch at the water skin and squeeze until the entire contents gushed down his throat. He didn't have the strength. Even the wish exhausted him.
No one tried to pry Braenlicach from his hand while he lay in his half-dead state. For an entire day, his rescuers fed him watered wine and bits of bread soaked in wine, until a healer caught up with them. Mrillis roused enough to feel the cold, heavy burden in his grasp. His flesh split and bled when he pried his hand open. The Valor tending him at that time nearly dropped the sword and his face was white with strain, his eyes burned husks of some pain Mrillis only vaguely understood.
Five days later, they brought him to Wynystrys, to Deyral and Breylon. Silence enfolded him like a second cloak. No one spoke to him, except to assure him all was well, he was safe, and he would be taken care of. Mrillis couldn't find words inside himself, and he wondered if he would ever speak again.
It was Breylon who told him the battle with Endor hadn't taken a sunrise, but more than a year. The blockage that dammed up the words inside his mouth and heart shattered. Haltingly, stopping often with weakness, Mrillis related the battle, from the moment he had conceived of his plan until he crawled out of the bowl of devastation and realized he hadn't died after all.
"There were many who thought the disappearance of the sword was a sign that our World had fallen to the Nameless One and his heirs," the former High Scholar admitted, when Mrillis finished his tale.
"I can imagine Athrar was frantic." Mrillis felt a thickness in his chest that might have been laughter, if he hadn't been so exhausted. He wondered if he would ever feel his full strength again.
He glanced up at Breylon, expecting his old teacher to share his bit of humor. The tears in the man's eyes startled him. Mrillis inhaled sharply, but the breath caught in his chest and for a long, frantic, painful moment, he thought he might suffocate there.
"What happened to the boy?" he wheezed. "Please, blessed Estall, don't tell me that my taking the sword weakened him. Made him vulnerable. Please tell me I didn't kill him."
"He was already dead, murdered, before the sword vanished. Everyone but Efrin. We caught the rebels who attacked, thinking we'd be witless in mourning for Ceera."
"I should have thought--"
"Regrets will cripple us all!" the old man thundered. He glared fury at Mrillis until the younger enchanter subsided. The fire left Breylon's eyes and he knuckled away a few tears. "You, of all of us, had the right to retreat and mourn. After all you have done for our World, you owe us nothing. Least of all having to lead us by the hand and teach us to be careful of our enemies. And yet you rode out, drawing Endor's attention, risking all that you were..."
"I'm sure there are some who will curse me for a fool," he responded dryly. "Ceera would laugh and pretend to slap me and call me silly and dramatic. And she would cry and kiss me and--" Mrillis choked on the tears that threatened to gush up from the pit deep inside his heart. He feared if he let them escape, they would bring a flood that would never stop.
"Those who might criticize you have been silenced. The whole World knows what you did. It took us days to understand, when the battle began and the power drained away through the Threads." Breylon sighed heavily. "We have paid a heavy price, but we can be comforted that our enemy has been dealt a killing blow. It might take generations for him to recover."
"Endor is dead," Mrillis whispered.
"But Endor could have a son or daughter to carry his poison, just as he carried his father's poison."
"Trevissa..."
"The girl needs watching, yes. We were unable to detect the poison in her mother, so how can we be sure she does not carry the same curse?" He sighed loudly. "She caught and killed her mother, for what she did to Ceera, for bringing the plague into the Stronghold. With any other family, we would accept her actions as proof of her loyalty and her heart."
"If the Nameless One would kill his own children for the sake of his magic, then his granddaughter could do the same to her mother." Mrillis closed his eyes and gave up the battle to sit upright. "Master...all I want is to sleep. Forever." A whisper of a chuckle escaped him. "I found Graddon, you know."
"What does that have to do with this?" his teacher snapped.
"He sleeps, safe and hidden, passing the ages in a breath and a whisper. I wonder if he was thinking of me, when he found his hidden place and wrote his prophecy of the Sleeper?"
"Not yet, lad."
Mrillis grinned and opened his eyes, and was relieved to see the humor in Master Breylon's eyes, too. How many years had it been since his old teacher had called him 'lad'? He had seen his reflection in the washbasin, and a wizened, white-haired, white-bearded man had gazed back at him.
"Efrin is young and untried, afraid and alone and trying to act like a king, when all he ever dreamed of being was Warlord for his brother. Before his mourning could fade, the sword vanished. There are many--troublemakers for the most part--who say it is a sign that the Estall has rejected him as Warhawk. We need you to bring the sword back and put it in the new Warhawk's hands. He has his father's face and the crown, and the support of most of the Noveni kings as well as Wynystrys--"
"And the Stronghold?" Mrillis swallowed hard, fighting a thickness in his throat that could have been sickness or more tears. "Who is Queen of Snows?"
"A council has been formed, of all the Queen's Ladies. They will lead the Stronghold, until the girl Ceera has named her successor has been born."
Mrillis caught his breath, remembering Ceera's plans. Belissa had told him she planned to marry Cafral--her daughter, not even conceived yet, would be the next Queen of Snows. But Cafral was dead. What would happen to Ceera's plans, her visions, now?
"Efrin has the support of so many, but the world waits for you to put the sword into his hands, to make him truly High King," Breylon said.
"How can they wait, when most of the World thinks I'm dead?"
"The few who are bound to the Zygradon, who did not turn traitor or were murdered, say it still exists, and if you had died, it would have been destroyed." Breylon licked his lips and sat forward and low
ered his voice as he continued. "Where is the Zygradon?"
"Emmi--" He caught his breath as a storm tried to burst out of him. Mrillis dug his emaciated fingers into the arms of the chair and fought for breath through the wails that wanted to erupt out of him. It was many long minutes before he could speak, after Master Breylon held a cup of wine mixed with restorative herbs to his lips and made him sip.
"Emmi hid it," Mrillis whispered, "hidden behind walls woven of magic, and told no one where it was before she died."
* * * *
Efrin Warhawk had aged ten years in the year since Mrillis last saw him. His heart ached for the boy who had played with Emrillian and sat on his lap to beg stories and teased treats out of Ceera. Seeing the young king, sole survivor of his family, tore through the wall Mrillis tried to erect around his loss and pain, like a flaming knife through a sheet of parchment. He drained his slowly growing strength to maintain his façade of serenity and dignity.
Master Breylon was right. Efrin needed to catch hold of the confidence of the people and sway the doubters now, at the beginning of his reign as Warhawk. Appearances were everything. Later, when the ceremony of returning the sword had ended and Mrillis could hide behind a solid door and thick stone walls, then he could collapse and give vent to his pain and the loneliness that tried to suffocate him.
Pyris commanded the Valors who guarded the new Warhawk. When Mrillis rode through the gates of the fortress, his son-by-law looked at him with something like shock on his face, just for a moment, before dignity masked him again.
Mrillis nearly smiled, but that was just as dangerous as tears. He knew he had changed, emaciated and bearded, his hair gone white in the battle with Endor. He supposed he looked like a grandfather now.
Pirkin. The knowledge that his grandson was safe and alive was the only good Mrillis could feel or see in anything. When this travesty of politics and ceremony was over, he would talk to Pyris and find out where Pirkin was, hold his grandson in his arms and maybe, just maybe, see an echo of Ceera and Emrillian in the boy's eyes.
Mrillis had regained enough strength to travel by horse to the Warhawk's fortress, but he still needed help in dismounting at the foot of the steps leading up to the main doorway. He gritted his teeth and accepted that help. It wouldn't do to have the bearer of Braenlicach fall flat on his face in the dirt, in the presence of every Noveni noble and Rey'kil lord in both lands, before he gave the star-metal sword back into the High King's hands.
"Thank the Estall," Efrin murmured, when Mrillis took two steps away from his horse and tugged back his long, too-large cloak to reveal the sword sheathed at his side.
"Please forgive me, High King, for frightening you. I had need of the sword and didn't realize--"
"The sword can vanish into the Nethers for all I care," the young king blurted, and flung his arms around Mrillis, nearly knocking him off his feet.
His strength was bruising, but Mrillis felt a new warmth flare inside him, where he thought he would be cold forever.
"We can make another sword. I know Lady Ceera told us what it took to make the dratted thing, but if it was done once, it can be done again. But you--there's only one you," Efrin declared, standing back and taking a grip on Mrillis' shoulders, effectively holding him upright. "I refuse to do this without you. I know I'm not trained for this. I'm not so arrogant to think I should even try. You have to stay with me, and teach me, and make me as good a man as my father. Please," he added, his voice dropping to a whisper, with just an echo of the impetuous, high-spirited boy he had once been.
Mrillis took a deep breath and smothered the ragged wail of self-pity. Hadn't he earned his rest? Hadn't he earned the right to sit back and let someone else guard the World? He wanted to be nothing more than an old man, and play with his grandson.
Instead, he nodded, and bowed to the young king as much as Efrin's grip on his shoulders would allow.
This seemed the right time to present him with the sword. Mrillis stepped back, and unbuckled the sword belt. Without prompting, Efrin went to one knee. His face paled as he held out his hands.
When the hilt touched his bare flesh...nothing happened. Mrillis held his breath, waiting for that flash of power to show Efrin's hands were the ones the sword had been made to fill. A soft glow sheathed the sword, and took on a blue radiance that brought a soft sigh of wonder and satisfaction from all those gathered around, when Efrin unsheathed the blade and held it aloft.
The power was there for his use. The sword, and by extension, the star-metal in the World, and the Estall, had accepted the new Warhawk. Mrillis knew everyone was pleased, relieved, and Efrin's reign had been set on a firm foundation. Perhaps he was the only one who was disappointed at the meager reaction of the sword. Quiet acceptance was all well and good, but Mrillis wanted a blazing beacon of light that would make the Warhawk's enemies hesitate in their plans, and guarantee peace for Lygroes and Moerta.
"Blessed Estall," Master Breylon whispered behind him.
Mrillis turned, and saw the white mist of a Seeing in his teacher's eyes.
"The line is unbroken, the wheel continues to turn, and the Three Drops of Blood wait to be born."
About the Author
Michelle Levigne has been a book addict since kindergarten, starting with Dr. Seuss and graduating to the Happy Hollisters juvenile sleuth series, then an abridged two-volume set of Rudyard Kipling found in her parents' bookshelf (fell in love with Mowgli and Kim) before detouring through a flirtation with Star Trek in fifth grade (who is better, Trek's Dr. McCoy or X-Men's Dr. McCoy?) before being captured by the Black Stallion like all the other girls in her class. In junior high, she fell captive to Greco-Roman mythology and found The Odyssey after watching an old Kirk Douglas movie on rainy Sunday afternoon. (And some people still believe her when she says she read it in the original Greek.) Then in senior high, the addiction took over her life and she became a pusher--she started writing.
The Zygradon books, which are original to Uncial Press, have a firm foundation in the Mary Stewart Merlin books (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment), which she discovered in college. During a brief flirtation with fanzine publishing, influenced by a friend who wrote Fantasy Island stories (yes, that long ago!), she wrote a Fantasy Island episode where the daughter of King Arthur, awakened from an enchantment, became Mr. Roarke's ward and came to the island to find Excalibur. When will the descendant of that story show up in the Zygradon books? Be patient. There's a lot of history to explore and enjoy.
Welcome to the Zygradon series, and many thanks to Uncial for inviting me to join them at the beginning of this adventure.
We're going to have a lot of fun.
To learn about other universes and genres Michelle writes in, visit her Web site: www.Mlevigne.com.
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