“So the councilors are already panicking, then.”
“Can you blame them? The Crell are literally on our doorstep. Celenest hasn’t been seriously threatened in anyone’s lifetime. He wants all of his most loyal people around him, now more than ever.”
Ethan pursed his lips. “What will you do if the city falls? Where will you go?”
Valestra shrugged. “I doubt I’ll go anywhere. I’ll just have to stay with my family and hope for the best like everyone else.”
A grave silence settled between them. Ethan had obviously never cared for the Alliance, and a part of him took a perverse pleasure in imagining the provincial lords hanging by their craven necks in an imperial gallows. But whether he liked it or not, Galvia’s fate was still intertwined with its Solarian neighbors…and the thought of an old friend like Valestra falling into Crell hands made his stomach turn. She might have been the only woman who had ever really understood him.
“A part of me wishes I could ride along with you,” she said after a moment. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen Ashenfel. I wonder if my old house is still standing.”
“Even if it is, I doubt you’d want to see what the Crell have done to it.”
“You’re probably right,” she murmured. “Sometimes old memories are best left undisturbed.”
“Yes,” Ethan agreed. “Yes, they are.”
Valestra reached out and squeezed his hand. “Whether or not you survive, I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again.”
He squeezed back. “I’m sure you thought that before. I was dead, after all.”
She smiled up at him, and for a moment he swore he could see the past glittering in her eyes. All those years working together in Ashenfel…all those years spent as colleagues when they could have been more. Valestra had been his wife’s best friend and one of his closest confidantes, but she was also the living embodiment of a future that could have been but wasn’t.
Still, he had never allowed himself to regret their decision. Intentionally or not, Ethan had made a habit of destroying the lives of the women who loved him. Elissa had been murdered by the Crell, and Selvhara had been permanently exiled from her home for the crime of following him to war. At least Valestra had been able to live her own life and build her own family. If she had chosen him instead, she probably would have been rotting in an unmarked grave by now.
“Once you plant the flag and get a free moment,” Valestra said, “I’d appreciate it if you would visit Elissa for me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance again.”
“I will,” Ethan promised. “And if your house is still standing, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
She smiled. “Goodbye, Ethan.”
“Goodbye.”
Valestra turned and gestured for her horse. She set off towards the city a few minutes later, and Ethan watched her vanish over the hills, likely for the last time.
The female is gone, master, Kar’zhel said. The demon reared back on its massive legs, and the mouth at the center of its bulky mass opened and closed in anticipation. Is it time for us to leave?
“Yes,” Ethan said. “Take the others with you to Ashenfel and await my command.”
Chapter Twenty
“With all due respect, Your Majesty, it is not a question of whether the Crell will invade—it is a question of when. We must strike now before they have the chance to mobilize. Give me your blessing to keep Galvia safe.”
—Ethan Moore to King Whitestone, 1997 A.G.
“Off-hand, I’m not sure what I’ve missed the most about home,” Tam commented as he trudged up and over another mound of semi-frozen dirt. “The endless fields of brown muck, the painfully long winters, the constant smell of dog shit…when you think about it, there are so many great choices.”
“You spent half the trip to Talisham complaining about the heat, and now you’re upset that it’s too cold,” Sarina grumbled. “Maybe the real problem is that you’re a mewling toddler who’s never happy with anything.”
“Says the angry barbarian woman. At least I have a sense of humor.”
She stopped in place and glared at him. “I could throw you down this hill. We’d all get a good laugh watching you slosh face-first into the mud.”
Jason shook his head and smiled as they continued their long march across the plains of western Galvia. “Sometimes I think they’re secretly related,” he whispered to Selvhara. “They bicker like siblings.”
“Yes,” the druid said distantly, her violet eyes latched upon the horizon. She had seemed especially distant ever since they had docked in Tibel on the northwestern coast two days ago. Outside of their ongoing channeling lessons, she had barely uttered a single word.
“Are you doing all right?” Jason asked, leaning in close enough that others wouldn’t be able to hear over the buffeting afternoon breeze. “You seem…distant.”
Selvhara blinked and seemed to drag herself out of her reverie. “I haven’t been in this part of Galvia for a long time,” she said softly. “We fought several battles in these plains. None of them ended well.”
Jason nodded in silent understanding. After the Crell had taken Kiersale during the last war, they had attempted to surround Ashenfel before finally laying siege. Their continuous incursions here in the west had largely been successful, and they had forced his father to split his remaining forces defending Ashenfel and the coastal cities of Tibel and Cergar. Then King Whitestone had been killed, and the war had effectively been over.
Tibel had a particularly bitter history for Selvhara, though. That was where his father had assembled the surviving Hands a few years ago in a last, desperate attempt to manufacture a genuine rebellion against imperial rule. It was also where she had left him for the last time…and where he had allegedly turned to summoning demons.
Jason and the others hadn’t spent much time in the city after they had landed a few days ago. After Gor had purchased long-term docking for his ship, they had restocked on supplies and then set off without pausing for a single night’s sleep in a real bed. Jason had insisted it was because he didn’t feel safe in a Crell-occupied city, not with the Zarul actively hunting them…but the truth was that he had wanted to avoid the ghosts of the past every bit as much as the Crell Imperators.
“It will be difficult seeing your father again,” Selvhara whispered after a moment. “For both of us.”
Jason grunted. “You’re worried that I won’t be able to stand up to him once we finally meet.”
“No. I’m worried that you will be.”
He frowned and had to force himself to keep walking. “What does that mean?”
“I fear you’ll be tempted to take the easy way out,” Selvhara said. “But killing him won’t solve anything.”
“Tell that to the family his demons butchered in Celenest,” Jason growled under his breath. “Tell that to the thousands of others who have died in his mad quest for vengeance.”
“Vengeance is not the answer to vengeance.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “You sound like a Solipean monk again,” he muttered. “Or a bloody paladin. If anyone deserves a blade in the gut, it’s my father.”
“Perhaps,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t mean you need to be the one holding the handle. If you kill him, it will haunt you the rest of your life.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, “but someone has to do it. That was the whole point in chasing him halfway around Torsia—that’s the whole reason we’re here in Galvia right now. I don’t even want to imagine what he plans to do with his demonic army.”
Selvhara’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “Assuming he’s actually summoned one. I’m not sure we should trust Dathiel.”
“I don’t trust him, but I trust his memories,” Jason said. “He legitimately believed that my father was here and that he planned to summon a demonic army to retake Ashenfel.”
“Which doesn’t necessarily make it true.”
He scowled at the side of her face. “If you have a suggestio
n to make, I’m more than willing to hear it. But all this nitpicking is getting pretty tiresome. You’ve barely said a damn thing over the last few days, and now it sounds like you’re trying to convince me to just walk away and forget this whole thing.”
“If only I could,” Selvhara whispered. She closed her eyes and nearly stopped walking altogether, but then she belatedly remembered the others trailing behind him and kept walking. “I’m sorry,” she said, stretching out to hold his hand. “Like I said, it’s this place. It’s like I can feel the dead crying out from the soil.”
“It’s all right,” Jason said, and meant it. He had been too young to fight in the early stages of the war, but he’d read enough accounts of the battles here to paint a vividly macabre mental picture of what had happened. It was even worse for Sel, though. Her decision to stay and fight had cost her more than a litany of harrowing memories—it had also resulted in permanent exile from her own people.
“If Ethan plans to unleash his demons against anyone, then we must stop him,” Selvhara told him. “But we need to confront him first. We need to learn his precise intentions. Your father never does anything without plotting several steps ahead.”
“Do you really believe he’ll cooperate?”
“Probably not,” she murmured. “But we don’t need his consent.”
Jason nodded but didn’t reply. Back in Celenest a few months ago, he had unwittingly found himself probing so deep into her mind that he’d actually hurt her…and he had promised never to use his newfound telepathic abilities like that again. The fact that she would even suggest it as an option was more than a little shocking…and probably a good indication of how much the build-up to this confrontation was already affecting her.
The rest of the day passed more or less uneventfully, and despite the still-frozen roads they once again made excellent time. They still had at least a full hour until dusk when Ashenfel became a visible blot on the horizon, and Jason was tempted to press on just to see if they could find a way to slip into the city and spend a night in a real bed. But then they spotted the wall of imperial soldiers blocking off the road, and he ordered the group back into the forest to try and figure out what was going on.
“This is strange,” Sarina commented as she laid flat on her belly and peered through her spyglass. “It looks like they’re turning merchant caravans away from the city…and a lot of them aren’t happy about it.”
“Why would the Sovereign turn away merchants?” Tam mused. “Even the Crell aren’t stupid enough to prohibit trade.”
“Perhaps your father has already made his move,” Gor suggested. “The city could be completely infested.”
Jason scratched at the increasingly coarse hair on his chin. He really needed to shave or at the very least do some trimming. Sarina might have hunted bears before, but she probably didn’t want to kiss one. “If that were true,: he said, “you’d think we would have heard something about it in Tibel.”
“We didn’t exactly stop and chat with the local guards, and there were barely any Crell soldiers in the city,” Tam pointed out. “Maybe they pulled everyone back to Ashenfel to try and control the infestation.”
“Some of the caravans are already turning around,” Sarina announced. “We could go and speak with them once they’ve gotten some distance from the Crell.”
Jason nodded. In order to keep as low a profile as possible, they had avoided interacting with anyone along the road this whole trip…but now he felt a bit silly for not stopping and asking one of the caravans for information.
“Good idea,” he said. “Let’s see what we can find out.”
The group migrated down the road a few hundred yards and waited for one of the merchant groups to ride past. Gor and Sarina concealed themselves along the edges of the forest, both to provide cover and to lessen the chances of intimidating the caravan guards. They didn’t want anyone to think they were bandits, after all, especially not with a Crell patrol nearby.
Ultimately, their caution proved unwarranted; the merchants were more than willing to rant about local troubles, even to complete strangers. Evidently Sovereign Verrator had locked down the entire city as of yesterday, but not because of a demonic infestation. The truth was even more surprising…and potentially every bit as harrowing.
“An Asgardian army?” Sarina breathed once they had regrouped in the wilderness. “How is that even possible?”
Tam shrugged. “Seems pretty obvious to me. Your people love to fight, and his crazy father needs an army. It’s a match made in the Aether.”
“Except that High King Zharrs has explicitly avoided taking sides in any conflict over the past decades,” Jason added. “It seems strange that he would change his mind now.”
“Ethan can be very persuasive when he wants to be,” Selvhara whispered. Her back was turned, and she was staring out towards the encroaching sunset with her arms folded across her chest. “Now we know what he’s been doing since he left Celenest.”
Jason shook his head and closed his eyes. Rationally speaking, he probably should have been happy about the news. From everything they had heard about the war, the Solarians needed all the help they could get, and an Asgardian assault upon Galvia would ease the pressure on the other fronts. But the fact that his father was behind the whole thing made Jason’s blood run cold and his stomach churn…
“We don’t actually know whether or not your father has anything to do with this,” Gor pointed out almost as if he were reading Jason’s mind. “The Asgardians could have decided to enter the war of their own accord, or the Solarians could have convinced them to form a coalition. You did say there were some Alliance troops marching with them.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Tam conceded. “Maybe this is actually really good news—if the Asgardians liberate the city, your father might not bother with his demons at all.”
“No,” Jason whispered, shaking his head. “If there’s an army marching on Ashenfel, I guarantee my father is with them. He would never leave anything like this to chance.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Selvhara agreed. “Ethan is with them…whether they know of his presence or not.”
Tam glanced between the two of them. “Let’s assume you’re both right. What do we do about it?”
“We intercept them before they reach the city,” Jason said. “The merchants said they were less than fifty miles away, which means they could be laying siege as early as the day after tomorrow. They could start aerial bombardments even sooner. We need to move quickly.”
Gor combed a claw through his mane. “What exactly are you planning to do? Approach the army with a white flag and hope their dragons don’t burn us to cinders?”
Jason walked up behind Selvhara and slid his arm over her shoulder. He could feel the tension in her muscles and her mind. Clearly, she wasn’t able to accept this “good news” any more than he could. If his father was involved, then something else was going on here. Something dark and horrible they needed to stop.
“I’m not sure,” Jason whispered. “But we’ll figure something out.”
***
“Another Alliance regiment has been confirmed missing in the Darrowmere, sir,” Lieutenant Mirrel reported. “Our aerial scouts believe they are down to less than ten thousand defenders.”
“Barely over half of what they started with,” Horsch said with a bemused grin. “Our little queen continues to panic. In another week or two, we won’t even need to bother with dragons. There won’t be anyone left guarding their walls.”
Onar Tenel nodded idly as he stood over the growing collection of maps and troop deployment reports. It had been nearly a week since their victory at Amberwood, and thus far nearly everything had proceeded according to plan. They had reinforced the fort with enough men to prevent any realistic counterattack, and their armies in the Darrowmere were poised to effectively bisect the Solarian provinces. Celenest wouldn’t be able to summon any more help from the south, and soon enough the rest of the provincial lor
ds would be on their knees begging the High Sovereign for mercy.
All in all, Tenel couldn’t have reasonably expected the events of the last few weeks to have unfolded any better. For the first time in generations, a real victory was on the horizon. The Alliance would crumble, and then the long, hard, and far less glamorous work of picking up the pieces could begin. In the span of a few months, Tenel would have accomplished more than any Crell military commander since the foundation of the Imperium.
But he wasn’t prepared to celebrate just yet. Not until the butcher of Geriskhad was finally brought to justice.
“What about the Asgardians?” he asked into the long pause.
“They have set up camp roughly fifty miles north of the city,” Mirrel told him. “There are no more reinforcements on the way from Lyebel, at least not according to our scouts.”
“I doubt they have any to send,” Horsch said. “Frankly, I’m surprised the queen was willing to spot them as many soldiers as she did.”
Tenel shrugged. “She knows the importance of this battle, or at least her advisors do. They’re growing desperate, and this is the only way for them to turn the tide. I also assume that Moore still has her ear.”
Horsch glanced over to Mirrel. “We’re certain he’s with the Asgardians, yes?”
“He was when they landed on the Lyebel coast,” she said. “We assume he still is, but we can’t confirm anything one way or another.”
“He’s with them,” Tenel murmured. “And I’m sure his Elf Witch will be joining him soon.”
Horsch grunted and rifled through the written reports. “You’re still convinced that was her in Tibel?”
“Do you know of any other faeyn in Galvia?”
“There have to be some. I’m just saying that we can’t be certain.”
“It was her,” Tenel insisted. One of their Imperators in Tibel had reported seeing a faeyn near the docks a few days ago, and based upon the admittedly vague description of her companions, Tenel was certain that Moore’s old colleague had decided to join him for his assault upon Ashenfel. The only question was whether or not Moore’s son and his divine spark were with her…
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