by Matthew Ward
In time, the sounds of battle faded, but I stayed clear of the road even so, choosing to keep it just within sight. I didn't want to stay on the moors, for the rains had made a quagmire of every step. My pace slowed, and I knew an already irksome journey would grow more so the longer I kept to my current course.
Twice after Edrekan I considered rejoining the road, but on each occasion I saw things that convinced me otherwise. The first was a herald, riding north under heavy escort; the second, a merchant train heading southwards, its own guard of Thrakkian mercenaries no less fearsome in the evening light. In all the time between I saw no other travellers. Apparently the road to Edrekan was not considered safe.
Days passed. I trudged unceasingly north, burdened neither by the need for food nor the desire for rest. The rain finally stopped on the morning of the second day. It returned many times as my journey progressed, but never with such vigour. The ground grew firmer under my feet, and I made up much of the delay forced by my abandonment of the roads.
The road may have been unsafe, but the moorland held perils as well. On three separate occasions, bands of fallen roamed away to the west. Each time, I sought shelter behind the scattered rocks until they had passed. Perhaps they would have recognised me as one of their own and left me be, but it wasn't worth taking the risk.
On the fourth day, a band of fallen emerged from behind a crest less than a hundred paces distant. It was early morning, the sun barely up in the sky, and they couldn't have helped but seen me. I sought cover anyway, crouching low behind the remains of an ancient henge.
No sooner had I taken up position than a column of Tressian soldiery appeared over the same rise that had lately hidden the fallen. With a blare of trumpets, the blue-liveried soldiers spurred to the charge, and soon the sounds of battle rang out. The fallen broke and ran, the Tressians in savage pursuit. I waited for the last of them to pass me by, then slunk away as quickly as I dared.
I'd only the haziest idea of where I was headed. Villages, coaching inns and the occasional town fell away on my right, but I'd no idea of their names. I'd never travelled in this part of Tressia, but knew that so long as I kept heading north, I'd reach the city.
On the sixth day, we were attacked by revenants. They appeared at dusk, a dozen shadows given malevolent substance. Perhaps they'd counted on surprise for their advantage. Perhaps they simply attacked out of instinct. It didn't matter. Now I knew what harm their blades could do me, I was doubly careful to avoid being cut.
Even so, I doubt I would have prevailed without Elspeth's help. Though she made no attempt to fight the revenants, her mere presence seemed to confuse them. Dropping from my shoulders and shifting into her mortal form, she led the attackers a merry chase across the moors, their darkness apparently unable to resist the lure of her light. She revelled in the mischief, darting and weaving closer to the revenants than I would have thought safe, pausing only to laugh at their clumsiness before twirling away. Her behaviour was certainly reckless, and arrogant besides, but it allowed me to face the revenants at manageable odds.
"I enjoyed that," she announced afterwards.
"I saw," I said wryly. "You don't think you took too many risks?"
Elspeth laughed. "They're even clumsier than you."
"That didn't trouble them in Valna."
She snorted. "That was different. In Valna I was confined, and the Palace of Dreams denied to me."
"And it isn't any longer?"
Elspeth scowled. "It is, but it's like the door is ajar. I even think I might be able to hide you from revenants' sight."
"You couldn't have had this idea before?" I asked, with less than perfect grace.
"I couldn't do it before," she snapped. "There's no guarantee it'll work now, but I'll try all the same, despite your attitude. Mother obviously thinks I shouldn't come home, not yet." Her happiness faded a little with that revelation, but not a very great deal. Recent events had given her hope, and I found I was glad for her.
As for me, my hope faded with every step. By the tenth day I'd grown disconsolate. The excitement I'd known in Valna had faded, devoured by a legion of doubts. How was I to find Zorya? What if she were beyond the city walls? What if her disappearance had not been by choice, but had occurred through some artifice of Azyra's?
Even if I could find Zorya, there were plenty of obstacles to be overcome. Zorya would help, of that I was sure, but it was just possible she would welcome the Radiant's return more than Arianwyn's survival. As for Svara and the other sentinels, they had refused to aid me once before, and I'd no evidence – only the hope of a desperate man – that they'd do so now. It seemed likely they would want vengeance – or at least justice – but perhaps they would not.
There were other doubts. Just getting into the city would prove difficult in and of itself, especially as I was now, as both fallen and Hadari, the two things least in favour within the Republic's bounds.
Elspeth, wearing Morecet's cloak and walking a few paces behind me, seemed to sense my gloom, but let me be. I doubted she could have said anything to help – hers was not a personality much given to empathy or consolation. Nevertheless, I wished she'd try. The more I delved into the challenges ahead, the more impossible they seemed.
As night fell and the moon shone down, Elspeth finally found her voice. "There's nothing more you can do," she said softly. "Torturing yourself with possibilities that may or may not arise is both foolish and wasteful." She'd clearly seen deeper into my mind than I'd thought.
"It's an easy thing to say," I said, "but far harder to do."
"And if I told you that all of your fears were for nothing – that everything you hope for will come to pass, would you believe me?"
"No."
The corner of her mouth curled upward. "Then that is why I said what I did."
"I don't expect you to understand."
"No, I don't suppose that you do. After all, to be cast out of your home, tantalised by the vaguest possibility of return, and knowing it happened as a consequence of doing what you thought was right...? I'd know nothing of that."
She's laughing at you, whispered the voice in my head. You don't need her, and she can't help you. Why suffer her presence any longer?
*******
The next I knew, my sword was in my hand, the point set at Elspeth's throat. She couldn't escape, not easily. She was trapped against a hollow's earthen walls. Why? We'd been walking across open moorland.
"Edric," Elspeth said quietly, "you don't want to do this."
Yes you do, the voice spat. She's not even running, not anymore. Be rid of her. She's just a spy, a spy for her mother. She's not your friend.
Ashana. I was about to kill a Daughter of Ashana. No! With supreme effort of will, I opened my fingers. As my sword struck the ground, the whispers faded from my mind.
I staggered away, hands trembling at the thought of what I'd almost done. I'd come so close to doing something terrible. I knew with certainly that had I done as the dark voice had instructed, I'd have been lost forever. "I'm sorry Elspeth. I'm so very sorry."
"It doesn't matter." The tremor in her voice told a different story. She rubbed her throat. "It wasn't really you, was it?"
"I don't even know how I got here." I clenched my fingers into a fist. Little by little, the shaking stopped.
"I ran," she said simply. "And you followed. I couldn't make you listen. I thought you'd gone."
"I nearly had." I sighed. "You need to leave. I'll travel the rest of the way on my own."
She snorted. "Not a chance."
"What if it happens again?"
"What if it happens again, and I'm not here to stop you?" she countered. "What if you lose control when you reach the city, and you kill the first bystander you meet? A child, perhaps?"
She was right. I hated it, but she was right. "Thank you."
Elspeth gave a sardonic salute. "I'll carry the sword from now on, if it's all the same to you?"
It wasn't, but once again she was
right. I threw her my sword belt. Elspeth reached down for the sword, and thrust it back into the scabbard. She didn't attempt to tighten the belt around her own slender waist, but hitched it up over her shoulder. "Shall we go? I at least had the sense to run north, rather than round in circles like a headless mortal slattern."
*******
I sought to apologise as we travelled, but Elspeth brushed aside each attempt. Her own patience was clearly not all it could have been, and after my third time she snapped at me to be quiet. Silently, I obeyed.
"Did you know that this sword was my mother's work?" she asked with the forced friendliness of someone who believes they owe an apology, but cannot bring themselves to offer one.
"It's not much of a surprise." I glanced up at the moon and narrowly avoided tripping on a rock in the process. "It was a gift from my mother to my father, but I've heard suggestions its connection to my family goes back further. Given what I've learnt since, I'd be more shocked to learn Ashana had nothing to do with it."
"Yes, I feel the echo of your kinfolk through the steel," Elspeth said. "So many laid hands upon it, in fair deed and in foul."
We walked along in silence after that, and I found myself wishing she hadn't spoken. I remembered little of my mother, save for the fact that she was beautiful – though I supposed all mothers are when viewed through a child's eyes. There were snatches of a song, too. About a maid and a river, though I can recall few words, and little of the tune. My last memories of my father were not so joyful – a once-powerful man slipping away whilst his physicians looked on in confusion, unable to defeat the sickness tearing through his body. I'd never had much use for the rest of my family. My uncle aside, we'd never much gotten along, but I'd have given much to have had even one close by, if only to talk to.
"Stop moping, Edric. It's unseemly to see a Saran so."
There at my side, walking in perfect step, was a ghostly figure, as wispy and insubstantial as I'd been in Otherworld. He was dressed in imperial robes, though bleached of all colour. I knew him at once. With that beard and that chiselled frown, it could be no one else.
"Father?"
Confused, I came to a halt and shot a look back at Elspeth, who nodded urgently back at the spirit walking beside me. It was my father, not as I'd last seen him, but in the prime of his life, before he faded.
"For the most part." My father didn't slow his pace, and I had to run to catch up. "That which remains, at least. Although looking at you, I'd say you're faring only slightly better."
I winced. "Possibly worse even than that."
"Nonsense!" I found myself flinching from a disapproving cuff about the head that his ghostly hands could not deliver. "You can still have an influence on this world. All we can do is watch."
"We?"
"Those of us bound to that sword of yours, of course."
"You're trapped there?" Somehow the possibility hadn't occurred to me, even though both Adanika and Elspeth had strongly implied it.
He laughed – a strangely empty sound. "No, not at all. It anchors us to the mortal realm. We return to the Palace of Dreams whenever we choose, but even the most beautiful of music fades after a while."
"Then you know about Alfric?"
My father sighed. "His feet were always upon the wrong path, though your mother and I tried to change that. A most unlikable soul, and I'd say that even if he hadn't murdered me." He peered at my dumbfounded expression. "You didn't know? It was poison, of course, though I don't know what kind. I could have respected him had he done it with a blade, but he was never one for the honourable path."
In hindsight, of course, it was obvious. I'd known Alfric capable of almost anything if the fancy took him, but I'd assumed some acts were beyond even his demented ambitions. I'd been wrong.
"He paid, in the end, and even sought redemption."
"I know," my father said. "You did all you could, and it was more than he deserved. You restored our family's honour. You should be proud."
I didn't say anything. My guilt over Alfric's death had faded, but I felt a burden fall from my spirit all the same. It was a weight I hadn't even known I'd carried until it was gone.
"You've always worried too much," my father went on. "I saw it in you as a boy. Too concerned with what was expected of you, what you thought other people wanted. But let me tell you a secret, Edric, and secrets delivered by the dead should always be paid close heed: why matters far more than what."
I tried to speak, to tell him I'd heard all this before – indeed, it had been one of his favourite lessons in life – but the ghost wasn't done.
"Look at you. Look at how you're striving. None of it's for yourself. You're not trying to cheat death. No, you're trying to save those who rely on you." He halted and poked an insubstantial finger at my chest. "That's why you'll succeed: not because of what you're seeking to do, but why."
I shook my head. "I wish I had your certainty."
"Perhaps it's for the best that you don't. Arrogance is..."
"...is more dangerous than a sword," I finished with a smile. "You've told me more times than I can count."
"It's always worth one more," he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. It was the closest he ever came to smiling. He glanced over at Elspeth, who gave a small nod. "You'll do us proud, Edric. You'll do me proud. I have to go, but we're none of us ever as far away as you think."
"Thank you father." I wished I could bring myself to say so many other things, but then he was gone, and the moment lost. I stood in silence, staring at the space where the ghost had so recently stood, wrestling with sorrows renewed. I looked over at Elspeth, and saw her staring back at me.
"You did that, didn't you?" I asked quietly.
"I did. As you wouldn't listen to me. I thought you might listen to someone else."
"How much of it was real?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters a very great deal." How could she think otherwise?
She smiled, for once without a trace of malice. "It was all real. All true. Why do you think I took your sword from Skyhaven, Edric? It's not as if I'm a kind or generous creature. I found it in an armoury. The serathi had cleaned and re-scabbarded it, but they couldn't disguise its nature. Touching it, I felt a bond to the Palace of Dreams. I thought..."
"You thought you could use it to go home. But you couldn't."
"No," she said bitterly. "No, I couldn't. The door opened a little when I touched the sword. When I tried to enter, I found myself in a Thrakkian wood. I told you mother's sense of humour is highly suspect."
"Then how did you summon my father?"
Elspeth's smile grew wry. "The moon is nearly full, and my mother at her most generous. Also, I think she very much wants you to succeed. Why else saddle me with you, or you with me?" She closed her eyes, lost in private rapture. "The door is almost open, Edric. The music within washes over me in waves. I could go home now, I think, if I wanted to."
"Then why haven't you?"
Her eyes blinked open. "Perhaps I'm wary of my mother's sense of humour, of the door slamming in my face. Perhaps I've decided I want to help you. Perhaps I'm looking forward to seeing you fail."
"And you're not going to tell me, are you?" I asked, with a smile.
"I most certainly am not," Elspeth replied. "I am a goddess, albeit a humbled one, and proprieties must be maintained."
"I suppose I can live without an answer."
"You'll have to."
I reached out a hand. "Can I have my sword back now?"
"Why? Do you think you can be trusted with it?"
"Yes, as it happens." I felt more at peace than I had for a long time.
"The answer's still no," Elspeth said sharply. "At least for now."
"You don't trust me?" I started walk northwards once more. "I can't much blame you."
"You're not getting an answer to that question either."
We walked in companionable silence for a time. Far to our left, I saw the first glimmerings of
moonlight on water – the Western Ocean, for a certainty. Tressia couldn't be far away.
"How many of my ancestors are anchored to the sword?"
"Dozens," Elspeth. "Would you like to meet them?"
"I would," I replied. "If the goddess is pleased to permit it."
Elspeth smiled. "The goddess is in a generous mood, at least for now, so let us see."
*******
For the rest of that night, I walked with my ancestors. Some were only names on the faded scrolls of lineage I'd so hated to learn as a boy. Others were famous in our land – and notorious in Tressia – for deeds performed and the wars waged.
Foremost was Kai Saran, the only one of our Emperors to have come close to wiping Tressia from existence. The Republic vilified him as a despot, but the man to whom I spoke was kinder than any spirit I met that night, including my father. Kai Saran's life overlapped with Sidara's, and I reminded myself that the Tressians were seldom honest about that era. Indeed, Kai remembered little of the young Constans and Sidara Reveque, whom his actions had supposedly endangered. He was too fixated on his defeat at the hands of Lord Droshna, a man also hailed as despoiler and saviour, depending on who you asked.
I would have liked to speak with Melanna Saran, Kai's granddaughter, and one of the few ruling Empresses. If history told the true, she'd bargained with Jack to spare the Empire from invasion, but had angered the Lord of Fellhallow by turning a defensive pact into a cause for renewed war. But though Melanna had borne the sword, Elspeth could find no trace of her spirit within it, and so my questions went unanswered.
I spoke to a score of ghosts that night. All were pleased that I sought them out, and most had some fragment of wisdom they sought to convey. Not all of it was useful – Andar Saran had spent much of his life fighting the Ith'najim, and even as a ghost he spoke of nothing else – but it was a strange joy simply to be able to converse with them. At last, dawn arrived, the moon faded from the sky, and with it went Elspeth's ability to conjure the spirits.