The Warlord's Domain

by Peter Morwood

  His sword was halfway through a savage downward sweep when Aldric wrenched the descending blade to a dead stop, for what was locked around his armored sleeve was no demonic claw but a human hand and wrist which had pushed through a shimmering shear plane in the very air itself, a hand that burned but only with the heat of living blood. He felt his throat thicken and tears sting at his eyes as he recognized the ring on its third finger: heavy gold, with a square face that was plain except for the chequered diagonal of a clan-lord's youngest son—the ring that he had set on Tehal Kyrin's finger as a love-token until they could find a better.

  Kyrin's hand began to pull him through the walls of death and back toward the living world, and in the same moment Issaqua took a single raking stride forward. Once he was gone, it would have Voord all to itself. The Woydach's renewed wails of terror dinned in Aldric's ears and made his skin crawl. Everything was going to be worthless after all. Unless…

  His left arm had been drawn through almost to the shoulder when Aldric threw himself against the slow, steady pull and lunged toward Issaqua. It lacked all grace and control and was more the limb-flail of someone falling from a horse, but it brought him just close enough to cut tarann'ach, a vertical stroke with all his focused force behind it that split the universe in two blue-blazing pieces. His whole body jolted, and he didn't know whether it was with the impact or with being brought up short in his tracks by a frightful jerk on his outstretched left arm.

  The demon's armored shape stood quite still for a long second with only its great crooked claws flexing like a spider's legs—glowering, unhurt, as impossible to dismiss as a bad dream.

  Oh God, what does it take to kill you …

  A silvery line as straight and precise as a geometric exercise appeared down the center of the demon's huge triangular head. It slumped a little and ceased to be symmetrical, then sagged sideways and fell apart in two sheared halves. Issaqua, Ythek Shri, the Devourer in the Dark, quivered once all over and toppled silently forward in a long, long fall that flared into hot blue light and drifting ashes and never reached the bottom…

  Kyrin's hand came back through the doorway with a sudden rush, and the haze between the lintels winked out of existence. There was nothing now except a staff carved with the outlines of a dragon and the black hilt of a broken sword. Nothing at all… her hand was empty. She stared at it, not wanting to believe that what her eyes said was the truth. The ring on her finger, Aldric's ring, glinted coldly in the cold light and mocked her hopes.

  Gemmel was watching her. He did not speak, and Kyrin was glad of it. There were no words left to him that would mean anything more than the most feeble of excuses. She tried not to blink, for fear that the tears would start again. "I told you." Her voice was quiet, without any hint of blame. "Can we go now, please?"

  "Not without my son."

  "I would have carried him," said Kyrin simply, "but you can help me, if you want."

  "No." Gemmel made no move. "Wait!"

  Kyrin felt anger at the old man's stubbornness boil up slowly through her grief. She could understand how Gemmel felt—did she not feel the same?—but not why he persisted in this useless charade once they had both seen how he had failed. There had to come a time when he accepted what she had known in her heart all along, that Aldric was dead and no sorcery or talk of Balance set awry would bring him back. To do otherwise lacked dignity, and that was all Kyrin had left. "Wait?" she echoed. "You've done all that you thought you could, old man—more than that, you made me believe it, too. You made me see him die all over again…"

  "Did I? Then I ask your pardon for it." Gemmel shrugged, dismissive more than apologetic. "But had you trusted mare and doubted less, it would not have happened. Look, Kyrin… look again—and see him live." Kyrin looked… and at first saw nothing. Aldric lay as still and pale and dead as when she laid his body on the ground. Then something moved, a thing so small that at first she did not realize what it meant. No more than a bead of water on his brow, as unremarkable as sweat or rain…or a snowflake that had only now begun to melt.

  Aldric's eyes snapped open, then as quickly shut to squinting slits until they grew more accustomed to the winter dusk that was a blinding glare after the blackness beyond the gate. For long seconds after that they stared unfocused at the ceiling, while vague dark figures moved to and fro and voices spoke through the ringing silence in his ears. The breath came back into him in a single long shudder and he tried to sit up; then let that first breath come gasping out again as the hurt muscles of his stomach suggested not just yet.

  There was more pain in his left arm, a silver needle of it stabbing up from the hand he had braced against the floor—a hand whose palm he was suddenly afraid to look at. Now that memory came rushing back like the spray of that wave of pain, he was more than willing to lie still and try to make some sense of what had no sense in it at all. "I was dead."

  "You were dead." That the first voice he heard should have been Gemmel's, and agreeing with him, was of a piece with the rest. That it should have been edged with irritation in an attempt to hide any softer emotion was also quite in keeping. "Pig-headed self-sacrificial tradition-bound honor-fixated…" Gemmel paused, clearing his throat with unnecessary vigor. Seen upside-down, his smile was a peculiar thing, but even so it went a long way toward taking the sting from what he said. "Don't make a habit of suicide, Aldric. It's usually permanent."

  Always give as good as you get, when you're able …

  Aldric grinned the tight little smile of someone receiving unnecessary advice. "I'll bear that in mind, altrou.'"

  Gemmel snorted and stalked around to stand beside him, where he leaned on the Dragonwand and stared down critically. "Can you stand?"

  Aldric thought about it. "I think so."

  "Then take my hand."

  "I… Your pardon, Father, but there was another hand—the hand that brought me back. Please. Kyrin was here."

  "She still is, my love." Kyrin knelt down beside him on the shattered marble of the floor among the snow and the blood, and reached out as she had done before across an infinitely greater distance. "I told you once, Aldric: where you go, I go. We go together, or not at all."

  Aldric looked at her left hand—long-fingered, ringed with gold and perfect—and shuddered when he thought of the claw that Isileth's edges had made of his own. At last, reluctantly, he raised it. There was no claw. The hand on his wrist showed hardly any sign at all that its palm had been carved off—except that where the Honor-scars had been was now all new, unblemished, slightly tender skin.

  Kyrin had seen the look and the hesitation, and knew why. She took his hand in hers and helped him to his feet. "They're gone. All the duty and the obligation went with them." She touched a fingertip lightly to his chest, and to the small white triangle where a tsepan had gone home to the full length of its blade. "The only Honor-scar that matters now is here."

  "Now, and later," said Gemmel. "Much later, and well away from here." He bounced something on the palm of his hand, a thing of gold and greenish crystal which Aldric had known for several months by no more than a description, before he saw it clasped around the neck of Woydach Voord. The Jewel, that had been the cause of so much grief. "Before he wants this back."

  Aldric and Kyrin gazed distastefully at it and then, as the import of the enchanter's words sank in, stared at the place where the Grand Warlord's corpse had been. Voord was standing up…

  "These things happen," said Gemmel, very dry. "But then, I understand you couldn't kill him anyway?"

  "I tried." Aldric shrugged, watching the unsteady figure in the sword-slashed clothing. "But I couldn't."

  "You tried to help him die… and instead helped him to live."

  "You know that well enough," said Kyrin, and gave the old man a warning look from underneath her brows.

  "I do. Yes, indeed. But I'd as soon not put too much pressure on his gratitude. Not after this"—he tucked the Jewel into one of the pockets of his tunic and out of sight—"a
nd especially not now that he owes you what can never be repaid. I doubt he takes kindly to the debt."

  "He's got his life back," said Kyrin, "and ought to be satisfied with that."

  They walked carefully together toward the ragged hole that sorcery had torn in the wall, breathing the cold clean air of winter as it gusted through, and then Aldric hesitated. "What about Widowmaker?" he asked.

  Kyrin glanced sharply at him, and for a second her expression was that of a woman whose lover asks after the health of an old mistress. "It's just a sword, and a broken one. Leave it."

  "It still deserves better than to be left here."

  "I don't…" Kyrin shrugged and smiled briefly, dropping the dispute. "Go and get her. We'll," with a warning look at Gemmel, "stay here."

  As he searched for the point-shard, meaning for safety's sake to replace it in the longsword's scabbard, Voord watched him through glazed, hooded eyes. The Woydach was breathing, but as Aldric reached out carefully for the still-sharp blade it occured to him that Voord was somehow different, as if he had not been restored whole and entire. There was a lack of luster about the man, as if some inner spark was missing; he might be upright, but he was still dead inside.

  Aldric's fingers closed on the length of chilly metal, and he realized that Widowmaker, too, was changed. There was no longer the tingle of hungry menace which he had associated with the taiken for so long. It was as if all the killings of the past two thousand years had never happened. She had returned to what she had been in the beginning: Isileth, "Star-steel," an elegant weapon made by the finest swordsmith of all swords in all times and places from metals that had fallen from the sky, for no other reason than to test his skill. Kyrin would like that.

  Aldric heard the scuff of feet behind him, overlaid too late with Kyrin's cry of warning. Something massive hit him in the back, punching through the lamellar armor as if it wasn't there and doing something to his lungs that made him cough. He staggered forward into arms which had not been close enough to save him. There was perhaps two feet of steel in Widowmaker's hilt, and by the feel of it most had gone inside him. There was no pain, only a dull sensation of being pulled off-balance by the long blade standing out between his shoulders, and a sickly awareness of his own stupidity as he turned his head.

  Voord was smiling now, as he had not smiled before. It had been brooding hatred which had made him seem so dull and dead—hatred at being saved, which was bad enough, and saved through pity and an enemy's sense of honor, which was far worse. Only with requital for that ultimate of insults had the spark of his life returned.

  "Burn the bastard!" Aldric heard Kyrin spit the words in a voice so vicious that it had almost ceased to be her own. For the first time in her life she had learned what it must be like to suffer Voord's soul-spoiling hatred for any other living thing. He felt Gemmel draw his sidearm from its holster, and his ears filled with the high shrill whining that meant death.

  "No…" He grabbed for the weapon and weakly tried to pull its muzzle out of line, but might as well have tried to bend a bar of iron.

  "No?" Gemmel plainly did not believe what he was hearing.

  Aldric coughed blood-spots on to the old man's immaculate uniform. "No. Didn't go through… all of that—not just so you could kill him. D-dying isn't that much fun."

  He saw understanding in their faces, felt the pistol's long barrel drop from aim and smiled with relief. His head lolled forward as if it weighed a thousand pounds, then dragged upright again as he shook the encroaching darkness from his vision and grinned savagely buck Ai Voord. "Poor sort… of revenge anyway," he said, taking care to speak distinctly. "No imagination anymore."

  Woydach Voord glared at them in loathing with all satisfaction drained out of his face, knowing beyond doubt that whether Aldric lived or died the sweet taste of his victory had turned irrevocably sour. He began to screech something that none of them bothered to heed. Kyrin and Gemmel heard only the frightened urgency in Aldric's voice: "Like death. N-not worth repeating. Once is… is enough. But I'm dying, Father…"

  "Easy, my son," said Gemmel. "I know." He raised the Dragonwand above his head and braced his newfound children close against his side. Power blasted down from the spellstaff and swirled about them so that they stood at the heart of a twisting column of ice-blue flame. "I know. We're going where I can help you. Home…"

  Aldric watched their faces, heard their voices, until all faded. All sound was lost. AH sight was swallowed up. All the world faded; and went black.

  The fire faded and went out, and they were gone.

  Glossary

  achran-kai. (Alb.) "inverted cross"; a double cut in taiken-ulleth in which the blade, often striking from the scabbard, follows first a horizontal path at chest or eye level and then a vertical downward path, both to strike a target directly in front. If the first cut is delivered with proper force, focus and accuracy, the second is not usually required.

  altrou. (Alb.) "Foster-father"; also a title given to priests.

  an-Sherban. (Drus.) Patronymic of members of the Sherbanul dynasty, present rulers of the Drusalan Empire.

  arluth (Alb.) "Lord"; ruler of lands or of a town.

  aypan-kailin (Alb.) "Cadet-warrior"; a youth undergoing training in the military skills of sword, horse and bow.

  Coerhanalth (Drus.) "Lord General"; Commander-in-Chief, most senior of all Drusalan military (as opposed to political) ranks.

  coyac. (Jouv.) A sleeveless jerkin of fur, leather or sheepskin.

  cserin. (Alb.) Child of a clan-lord, and in line of succession to the title.

  cymar. (Alb.) Long overrobe for outdoor wear.

  eijo. (Alb.) "Outlier"; a wanderer or landless person, especially a lordless warrior.

  eldheisart (Drus.) "Commander"; Imperial military rank.

  elyu-dlas. (Alb.) "Color-robe"; formal crested garment in clan colors.

  erhan. (Alb.) "Scholar"; especially used of one who travels in the course of his/her studies.

  eskorrethen. (Alb.) The coming-of-age ceremony at age twenty, when a warrior is confirmed in his status and in any ranks, styles or titles to which he may be entitled. His hair, grown long for the purpose, is tied back in a queue (originally the handle by which his severed head was carried if he fell in battle); oaths of loyalty are taken before religious and secular witnesses; and if he is kailin-eir (q.v.) and thus of a rank to warrant it, he is given a tsepan (q.v.) which is used to cut the Honor-scars in his left hand. These three scars are a permanent reminder of his blood-oath.of honor and duty to Heaven, Crown and Clan. From that time forward the tsepan must always be within arm's length, and when in public his hair must be tied back in a queue.

  estoc. (Jouv.) A sword with a slender single-edged blade, sometimes slightly curved but more usually straight, whose fencing style makes more use of thrusting than does the Alban taiken (q.v.)

  glas-elyu Menethen. (Alb.) The Blue Mountains, a range in North-Western Alba.

  hanalth. (Drus.) "Colonel"; Imperial military rank.

  hanan-vlethanek. (Alb.) "Keeper-of-Years"; a Court archivist.

  hautach. (Drus.) "Sir"; literally "High One," used when acknowledging the commands of a superior officer.

  hauthanalth. (Drus.) "Over-Colonel"; Imperial military rank.

  hautheisart. (Drus.) "Lord-Commander"; Imperial military rank.

  hautmarin. (Drus.) "Ship-captain"; Imperial naval rank equivalent to hautheisart.

  hlensyarl, hlens'l. (Drus.) "Outlander"; a foreigner or stranger. This can mean someone from a different province, city or even village, but is always a person of whom to be suspicious.

  ilauan. (Alb.) "Clan"; a noble family, linked by name and bloodline. All members of a clan are related to a greater or lesser extent, but only the cseirin-born(q.v.) may rule, and then only in line of succession.

  ilauem-arluth. (Alb.) "Clan-lord"; the head of a noble house, ruler of its lands and commander of its forces.

  inyen-hlensyarl. (Drus., from hlensyarl q.v.) "Alien-foreig
ner"; someone from another country, and therefore always considered a potential enemy. The present political situation within the Drusalan Empire has done nothing to amend this, and increasingly the word has taken on the connotation of insult.

  kagh' ernvakh. (Drus.) "Honor's-Guardians"; the Imperial Political and Secret Police.

  kailin. (Alb.) Warrior, man-at-arms, especially when in service to a lord.

  kailin-eir. (Alb.) Warrior nobleman, of lesser status than arluth (q.v.)

  kortagor. (Drus.) "Lieutenant"; Imperial military rank.

  kourgath. (Alb.) The Alban lynx-cat, proverbial for ferocity out of all proportion to its size; also a nickname.

  margh-arluth. (Alb.) "Horse Lord"; one of the Alban warrior nobility whose clan lands are found mostly in Prytenon and Elthan.

  mathern-an arluth. (Alb.) "Lord King"; literally "lord above other lords"; formal title of the King of Alba.

  matherneil. (Alb.) "Kingswine"; the sweet white vintages of Hauverne in Jouvann, rare and expensive in Alba because of small vineyards and restrictive export tariffs.

  moyya-tsalaer. (Alb.) "Great Harness"; full battle armor, with helmet, lamellar cuirass, armored sleeves and leggings. Shields are uncommon, normally carried only during formal combats.

  pesoek. (Alb. dialect, Cernuan and Elthanek.) "Charm"; a lesser spell, or a conjuring trick performed without true magic.