by N. M. Howell
It was Stefan. He was the oldest member of the council, well over two-hundred, but he still had the appearance of a man in his thirties. He was the most uncompromising, the most ruthless, and the most powerful. If there was a single man in all of Taline and the surrounding country that Eric did not wish to cross or to make suspicious, it was Stefan. There were stories about this man; things it had been hinted he had done or facilitated. The memories of the world and its chroniclers is long, but much of what was said about him was uncertain.
“You have always been jaded, Stefan,” Christopher said. “But for now the games are still needed. We can discuss their future at length soon. However, right now I ask that we turn our attention to Eric. He has something for the council.”
“Thank you,” Eric said.
For some moments he was silent, still. The other six councilmen were watching him with undivided attention, not suspecting, not assuming. “These are rational men,” he thought to himself. “They will hear me out and deal fairly with this serious topic.” Still, he was hesitant. Christopher looked over at him searchingly, asking a thousand questions in the thickening silence. Ian and Raymond waited peacefully, as did Michael and Lucas—the latter two, though kind men, were usually blank-faced and reticent. It was Stefan who was most unnerving. His stare was direct, total, and devoid of anything. But then Eric remembered Jane’s words. Andie’s smile. The smell of his home and feel of the dining room table against his wrists. He thought of the suffering and anxiety he would feel if anything ever happened to them, anything beyond his ability to heal with his own magic. He thought of his helplessness and the helplessness of countless of other families if the hospitals were closed.
“Brothers,” he began, “I--”
A great ball of purple flames exploded in the distance. The force was so great that it blew some nearby buildings completely off of their foundations. The flames dashed and danced across the air, spreading to other structures, and the debris fell to earth in a deadly cascade. Black smoke moved like the steady hand of death itself and crashed down with enough force to crack the asphalt wherever it touched. Even from that distance, they could hear the collective screams of the people. For a moment, the council was frozen in the shock and horror of the burning scar at the heart of Taline. Stefan was the first to move. Like an arrow, he flew up into the air and then turned, heading right for the explosion. The rest of the council remembered themselves and flew off as well.
Eric was a bolt of power and fear. He was a better, faster flier than the others and he arrived at the smoke before the others. He flattened his arms to himself and barreled straight for the smoke; his only thought was finding survivors. But just as he hit the smoke, he was stopped cold. The smoke was like a stone wall. The force generated by Eric’s speed knocked him out on impact. The world went instantly black for him. He fell through the air. Fell. Fell.
* * *
He woke up in a glass room, sweating, trembling, and with a searing pain in his neck so sharp he had to lay down again. Suddenly arms were around him, and a familiar warmth was encompassing him. Jane.
“Eric, are you okay? How do you feel?”
“What happened?”
“You broke your neck,” she said, checking every inch of him for more injuries like she’d already done ten times.
“That’s impossible. On the smoke? It can’t be. I was flying from Bane the explosion and. . .”
He stopped, at a loss.
“That’s all I remember.”
“Eric, sweetheart. You flew straight at the smoke and broke your neck. You nearly destroyed your spine. No one even knows how you didn’t die instantly. I guess your own magic saved you. Stefan caught you in the air and began the healing spell. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Stefan,” Eric said, reconsidering ever notion he ever had about the man. “That explosion. . . It was magic more powerful than anything I’ve ever seen. Purple flames. Smoke that could turn solid and move with a mind of its own. An impossible fire. That wasn’t just any kind of magic.”
“I know,” Jane said, checking her surroundings and leaning in close. “It was dragon magic.”
The walls went from completely clear to opaque as she uttered the words. Eric checked their surroundings and realized they were in Bane; the building wouldn't tolerate the mention of that word, and even a single utterance would be treated with extreme suspicion.
“Don’t say that again,” he warned. “Bane won’t allow it. Who could have this kind of power?”
“We always assumed it was just me and Andie, but we’ve been hiding in plain sight for years. Who’s to say there aren’t others?”
“This attack makes sense. In Taline, a person with that kind of magic is a threat to be eliminated without compassion. If one of your kind is here, they could be out for revenge.”
“But why destroy a hospital? Why not attack Bane or even the Light of Man?”
“The hospital?” Eric asked, confused. “But. . . The Letter. It was The Letter.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, overcome. Jane got in bed next to him and pulled his head into her lap. She just sat with him for a moment, stroking his hair and silently calming him.
“How many dead?” he asked.
“Tens of thousands.”
He took a moment to think of the sheer enormity of the loss. The friends. The families. The vendors, tourists, husbands, wives, sons, daughters…
“Andie!” he said, suddenly sitting up and ignoring the pain. “We have to get home, now. This is just the kind of tragedy the university has been waiting for. An excuse to blood raid the city and surrounding areas for people with…the other kind of magic. They might already be on the way. We have to hide her, and we have to get you out of this city. Now.”
Jane pulled as Eric raised himself. They passed out into the hallway and into the fray; Eric tried to move quickly without arousing suspicion. That day was not the time for calling attention to oneself. They reached the wall and Eric tried to form the loveglass, but it didn’t respond. Bane was on lockdown.
“I have an idea,” Eric said.
He raised his hand over them and tried to cast an invisibility spell, but Bane wouldn’t allow that either.
“Of course,” he said. “All cloaking spells are forbidden in times of crisis. How do we get out?”
He rested his head against the glass and was reminded of his injury by the incredible pain.
“Can we fly down the center?” Jane asked.
“Everyone would see.”
“Eric?”
He and Jane turned around. It was Stefan. The people on the floor were so loud, frantic, and chaotic that they never heard him approach. He was fixing Eric with his total stare. Then he looked at Jane, in a way that was characteristically dismissive, but also very nearly suspicious.
“I didn’t expect you to live,” he said.
“I was lucky.”
Eric didn’t want to introduce Stefan to Jane, but it would only have seemed out of place if he didn’t. All he could think is how he must keep Stefan at bay.
“This is my wife, Jane.”
“An honor, Jane,” Stefan said, extending his hand.
“It is. You must be Stefan,” she said, deducing his name from the look on Eric’s face. “I owe you more than words for saving my husband’s life.”
“I was glad to do it and glad to see him up again,” he said in a voice that is anything but glad. “Though I would suggest sitting down until you’ve seen a real doctor. We wouldn’t want your neck to heal wrong. At any rate, the searchers will be here any moment. As a council member, it would be helpful if you could calm the people on this floor.”
“Searchers?” Eric asked, baffled.
“Yes. The Letter was completely destroyed, along with seven other nearby buildings. Tens of thousands of lives gone in an instant. It is the most devastating attack in the history of not only this city but the entire country. The university has decreed blood raids ev
ery morning and evening for the rest of the year, beginning today. They started an hour ago and already have units heading for the surrounding villages.”
Eric tried to respond, to think or even move, but he was speechless, shocked into a numbing terror. Jane tried to cover.
“You can count on Eric to do his part.”
Stefan nodded and turned. Eric was still a mute mass, though Jane was discreetly trying to shake him back to attention. Suddenly she stopped. Stefan had turned back again. He walked back to Eric and looked him straight in the eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Eric was paralyzed. Not out of any cowardice or timidity, but of pure uncertainty. His mind was not even in the building with Stefan, but across the fjord in Michaelson, where his daughter sat unprotected, completely oblivious to the fact that men are coming to capture and kill her.
“What’s wrong?” Stefan repeated, taking a step closer.
Now Eric’s mind snapped back to the room, to the situation at hand. He registered the pandemonium of fear happening around him. He registered Stefan standing right across from him, his face now covered in his suspicions. Eric took a deep breath.
“What’s wrong, Eric?” Stefan asked, taking another step and bringing himself almost nose to nose with Eric.
“Nothing,” Eric said. “I’m just surprised it took them so long. I would have hoped their response would be faster. At this rate, the perpetrator may have escape. Thank you for saving my neck, Stefan. I’ll take it from here.”
Stefan’s eyebrows pulled back as Eric’s serenity collided with him. There was a final moment of unsureness, but then Stefan inclined his head in a gesture of acquiescence and left. Eric turned to Jane.
“We’re out of time. I need you to cast a speed charm. You were always better at it than me. We’re going to have to run out of here, right through the crowd.”
“For that to work you’ll have to stay close to me,” she said.
“After what I’ve seen, what’s happened, I’m never letting you go again.”
With a small, worried smile, Jane raised her hand to cast the spell. There was a brief flash of purple light that turned a few heads, but no one noticed where it came from. Eric took her hand and ran.
It was as if the world was standing still. Eric lead Jane through the nearly-frozen bodies, hand-in-hand, dashing and slipping through the crowd at a speed that defied explanation. In mere seconds they were already halfway down Bane. Eric’s mind was half on the peopled course in front of him and half on his defenseless daughter at home. But just as they reached the 108th floor, the loveglass began to change colors above them; it is a slow transformation, due to their speed, but the glass was turning black, and the building was changing its shape. It had detected Jane’s dragon magic and acted to protect itself. The change started at the top of the building and came down. In real time Bane’s reaction was instantaneous. Eric and Jane never stopped running. Eric knew he couldn’t speak to Jane moving that fast, but he also knew she’d pick up on his lead. They would never make it to the exit before Bane trapped them, not with all of those people in the way. But there was a pillar that ran through the open center of the building, all the way down to the lobby. Eric leaped across, pulling Jane with him.
They managed to reach it, but that millisecond in the air when they couldn’t maintain speed endangered them. The changing was now past them, the whole building transforming around them. They raced straight down, faster than sound. The bottom floor and the lobby were already beginning to change, the loveglass trying to seal all the doors. Eric and Jane strained themselves, threw their bodies forward with all the force, all the magic in their blood. Even the pillar was changing shape beneath their feet. By some miracle, they reached the lobby just as the pillar ceased to be and as they sped for the last exit, the only space in the loveglass still offering light and escape, they were matching the changing inch for inch. Across the lobby they streaked, thinking of their Andie. With a final push, a last thrust of energy, they just survived the closing of the loveglass. They did not stop as they raced for the train station. Eric changed his robes back to the civilian color.
They reached the train station only to find that both the Sud and the Nord had been shut down.
“Of course,” Jane said.
“They’ve shut down the whole city,” Eric said. “I wonder if. . .”
He ran to the end of the platform and looked out at the water of Gordric’s Pain. It was as beautiful and blue as ever, but just below the surface were lights. Hundreds of them. Searchers.
“They’ll never let anyone out by water,” Eric said. “And they no doubt have men posted along the cliffs. There’s no way in or out except to fight through and we can’t take them all.”
“Eric, we have got to get home! For all we know they could already have her! My little girl.”
Jane held herself, began to break at the thought of Andie all alone, taken and erased by the university. Eric held his head, running through the deep and intricate maze of the entirety of his magical education looking for something, anything, to help them.
“Therianthropy,” he said.
“What?”
“We transform into something else. They’ll never suspect us.”
“Maybe,” Jane said. “Maybe that could work, but imagine swimming through hundreds of searchers. All it would take would be getting too close to one of them whose casting revealing charms and we’re dead. They’ll kill us on sight for trying to escape lockdown.”
“Ravens,” Eric said, the idea crashing on him like a heavy gust. “Red Ravens. They’re a symbol of good fortune and magical success. It’s forbidden to harm them.”
“It’s also forbidden to imitate them in any way.”
“We’d have to be caught for that to matter. Listen to me; we have to get home. To Andie. We’re not going to let them take her, but if by some stroke of misfortune they do, they’ll have to pry her from us and leave over our lifeless bodies because we will die if that’s what it takes. Are you with me?”
Jane didn’t respond, but she didn’t need to. She had always been with him. Eric thought for a moment, trying to remember the spell; though therianthropy was elegant if executed correctly, it was dangerous and difficult magic. In fact, it took four different attempts before the spell was complete and he and Jane were nauseous and dizzy from the effort.
The Red Raven was three times the size of its black, purple-tinged progenitor. It was swifter, stronger, deadlier. Yet this noble red species played a critical role in the beginning of Taline, and so they were honored with great respect and free reign in the skies over the city and surrounding regions. Not one of these birds had been harmed in so long that many have begun to wonder if they even can be harmed. Eric and Jane soared out softly, flying straight and easy as they passed above the train and then Gordric’s Pain. Sure enough, searchers were scattered along the silver cliffs, nearly invisible, carrying those hated weapons that only they can wield: guns. The world had a long history with earlier, less deadly versions of that weapon, but nothing like those. Never like those.
But they were still flying. No one stopped them. The searchers either ignored them or saluted them, but no one was shooting them out of the sky. They were doing it. They were escaping. On and on and on they went, farther and farther south through the fjord until the searchers began to thin. Gordric’s pain stretched before them, and they continued until a while had passed since they saw the last searcher. They landed on the train rails, simply perching there for some moments until they were absolutely certain no one could see them. Eric returned them to their human forms.
“I think we did it,” he said. “I think we’re free.”
“Let’s get home,” said Jane.
She cast the speed charm again, and they dashed away into the night.
* * *
What they didn’t know was that just as they began racing home along the rails, a cloaked and hooded figure was moving down Owl’s Line. The figu
re was dressed in black, the darkest purest black there ever was, its hues pulled right from the night sky. Calmly, phlegmatically, the figure glided down the broad street, panic-stricken people still stumbling and trembling in the street. There was something off about the figure, something or some things were protruding from its back, underneath the cloak. The silent steps of the stranger’s boots moved along the pavement. Whether the figure was man or woman, none could tell. A man bumped into the figure. The figure turned. Rather than apologize, the man launched into a furious tirade, fueled by the anxiety and fear of that terrible day. The figure did not waver, did not back down, but simply took the man by his throat and raised him off of his feet. Something bright, hot, and purple traveled from the stranger’s hand to the man’s face and entered his veins. The figure dropped the man and moved on. The man was in agony, unable to breathe, unable to make a sound. Suddenly his heart slowed and his body aged until he turned to dust. In a city that large, people tend to ignore one another’s problems, but some bystanders saw the man’s death and turned on the dark figure, who opened up a black void of nothingness that sucked them right out of existence. The figure moved on until it reached its destination. Bane. The figure raised its hands, pulled down into its very soul for magic.
And another explosion ripped the city. An explosion by dragon’s magic.
* * *
Jane and Eric were only just reaching the village.
“Jane, you have to hide.”
“Eric, you’re not going to face them alone,” she said, pointing to the armored trucks already moving through the village.
“I can’t be worried for her and you, too, Jane. You stay near the fjord, hidden, and I can do what I need to a lot better. Please.”
“But you could use my magic.”
“I know, sweetheart. But if they see you use your magic and we’re not strong enough to take them down, then I’ll be left without either of you. I promise you, I will die before they take Andie from us, but I have to go now.”