by Mok, DK
Kaligara shrugged.
“He goes free in a few weeks anyway.”
“Free?”
Kaligara smiled unpleasantly.
“Let’s just say young men shouldn’t make bets with sorcerers,” said Kaligara. “Do come back and visit when this is all over.”
This was tedious. Not that she wasn’t honoured by the responsibility, but Qara couldn’t help feeling penned in by all the desks and piles of parchment. It was a comfortable office, strung with polished brass lamps and papered with tidy schedules, but if she had wanted comfortable, she’d have stayed at Corwen Manor.
Qara reached across a sprawling map and pushed a line of regiment tokens into a slightly different formation. She suddenly felt a faint breath behind her ear, and an arm reached around her, sliding the tokens slowly into another position.
“If we place the Sagat company in the third camp, there’ll be room in the barracks for the cavalry from Evelay City,” said Albaran.
Qara grudgingly unclenched her fingers from her sword. The thing that annoyed her the most about Albaran was his habit of talking to people while standing right behind them. She didn’t know whether it was just an odd quirk or an uncontrollable compulsion, but back in Algaris, it had made working with him almost impossible. Qara felt that her natural response to someone appearing unexpectedly behind her was perfectly normal, but after she’d sent him to the infirmary for the third time, she was the one who started getting a reputation for assaulting subordinates. Qara had been quietly grateful when Albaran was posted to Tigrath, but there seemed little likelihood of that happening again in the near future.
“You’re right,” said Qara. “We’ll move the company from Ralmir to camp five, and Savil’s regiment can join the infantry in camp three.”
“Excellent, Lord Qara. May I say, it’s such a pleasure to be working with you again.”
Qara could never tell whether or not he was being sarcastic, but she threw him a warning glance anyway. Albaran took a measured step backwards, and Qara turned back to the desk. He was creepy as hell, and he could make “It’s a pleasure working with you” sound like “I’d love to put your organs into labelled jars”, but he did have a talent for sorting and slotting things.
Qara felt an arm reaching around her again.
“And if we move the seventy-third regiment from the eastern barracks to camp four, we can fit—” Albaran’s other arm was already reaching around her towards the model horses.
“Captain,” said Qara, turning around with an exasperated sigh. “Remember that talk we had some time ago about personal spa—”
The floor suddenly shook as an explosion rumbled through the walls. The hanging lamps rattled dangerously from the rafters, and Albaran grabbed the desk to steady himself. Qara was already halfway to the window when the ground shuddered again, another deafening boom tearing through the air. She stared at the fireball rising from the eastern quarter, then at the flames in the western district.
“The traders’ district and the ports,” said Qara, racing towards the stairs.
Albaran rushed to follow, and they thudded down the wooden stairwell, past guards scrambling to attention.
“Fire teams to the ports! Secondary units to the traders’ district!” yelled Qara.
A messenger burst breathlessly through the doors of the guard tower.
“Lord Qara,” gasped the messenger. “Report from the message tower. The resistance has activated. Tolgar, Ralmir, Tigrath, and Sagat have reported simultaneous internal attacks. Reports still coming in.”
“Message to Algaris,” said Qara. “Do they require reinforcements?”
The messenger nodded and raced from the building.
“Mobilise infantry units nine through fifteen!” barked Albaran. “One through eight, defend the barracks! Archers and cavalry to remain in lockdown!”
“All camps to hold the perimeter!” yelled Qara. “If this is a distraction, we need all regiments ready for immediate deployment!”
Several squads dispersed amidst a clatter of swords and shields.
“Captain Albaran!” said Qara. “Your squad to hold the guard tower and coordinate from here. I’m going to make sure our message gets to Algaris.”
“Lord Qara,” said Albaran, “shouldn’t you remain here?”
Qara grabbed a shield as she headed for the door.
“My city’s out there, Captain,” said Qara. “That’s where I serve her best.”
Seris pounded across the city, the crackle of burning timber drawing closer on all sides. The vibrant port city was barely recognisable—smoke poured through the streets, and burning ships drifted on the harbour. All across the skyline, silk pennants billowed into ash.
It seemed perverse that things so painstakingly created could be so quickly destroyed. Then again, it was true of many things.
Including friendships.
Elhan had discarded him with such casual ease, as though Seris were nothing more than a footnote in a book she’d lost interest in. However, Elhan probably hadn’t counted on Seris being the kind of book that would follow you across the continents, pelting you with wadded-up pages of stubborn messages. If Elhan thought she could get rid of him by punching him in the face and leaving him on the windswept heather, she had another thing coming.
Seris suddenly staggered backwards as a mass of flaming debris crashed in front of him, spilling embers over his bare feet. He glanced forlornly at a burning shoe shop, wondering if it’d count as looting if he borrowed a pair of boots. Before he had a chance to resolve this moral dilemma, footsteps hissed across the stone behind him. He turned to see a pack of six wiry figures unfolding into a circle around him, long daggers sliding from their tunics. They wore neither uniforms nor armour, and their clothes were as plain as their faces. But they moved with dangerous purpose, a taut menace behind their steps.
It suddenly occurred to Seris that Lemlock might’ve spread the word that a cleric of Eliantora had destroyed their entire supply of explosive weaponry. It also occurred to Seris that he was completely unarmed, and that he didn’t, in fact, know how to fight. He raised his fists experimentally, and the resistance fighters exchanged vaguely disgusted looks. A blade suddenly slashed towards Seris, and he raised his arms defensively.
There was a swish, followed by a thud. Seris peered through his arms as his attacker toppled forward, the slender hilt of a throwing knife protruding from his back. The remaining rebels spun around, and one of them reeled as a heavy river stone struck him in the face. Like a shoal of fish being charged by a shark, the rebels scattered into the darkness, dragging away their fallen comrades.
Seris stared at the impressive figure astride a chestnut stallion, already galloping away.
“Lord Qara?” called Seris.
The rider turned, and there was a pause as she took in the faded stitching on Seris’s robes.
“Seris?”
“Lord Qara!” Seris felt as though a beam of sunshine had just burst from the sky.
For the briefest moment, all of his problems seemed to fade. Quests and curses, armies and sorcerers. Standing before Qara, he was tempted to just dump the whole mess into the lap of the politicians—after all, it was their job, not his. But he knew that responsibility wasn’t something that was given to you, it was something you took on because someone had to.
“Seris, you look—” began Qara.
“Like hell?”
“I was going to say ‘healthier’, actually,” said Qara. “But don’t tell me this is as far as you got.”
Seris wasn’t sure where to begin—Lemlock’s resistance, Lord Haska’s army, inexplicably powerful sorcery, or the Kali-Adelsa and a destiny unfulfilled. When everything was haemorrhaging, you just had to deal with the most urgent thing first.
Keep the heart beating.
“There’s a massive army headed for the capital, travelling by sorcery,” said Seris. “I have to get a message to Algaris immediately.”
Qara held out her
hand, and Seris grasped it.
“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” she said, hauling Seris onto the saddle in front of her.
They galloped through the smouldering streets, past knots of fighting and forests of flame. Qara suddenly raised her shield in front of Seris, and there was a solid clunk against the wood. He could feel the tension running through her as they pounded over the paving, and he could sense the question she was refusing to ask.
“I think I know where Prince Valamon is being held,” said Seris. “I think he’s alive and trying to get away.”
Hoofbeats clattered in steady rhythm beneath them.
“Lord Qara, it’s not your—” began Seris.
Qara pulled up abruptly, swearing viciously under her breath. Seris stared up at the blazing column of flame, a pillar of black smoke and vines of fire reaching skyward.
The message tower was burning.
Passing on a message sounded easy enough. What Valamon had failed to tell her was that the city was on fire. Elhan supposed royalty were a bit like that when it came to instructions.
Elhan slunk through the alleys, avoiding the Talgaran soldiers as they swarmed, scattered and reformed around hotspots across the city. Lemlock’s fighters darted through the streets like sliding shadows, trailing a line of burning shops and houses.
It’s all so messy, thought Elhan, ducking beneath the eaves of a milliner’s shop. All this constant fighting, in its endless incarnations, for reasons that never really mattered. People only knew what they wanted, not what was important. That’s why things didn’t work.
Valamon’s words had crystallised something she’d been coming to realise for some time now. She was different, and maybe somehow broken, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t do things. Great things.
Elhan had spent her life thinking she was supposed to run—from people who were afraid, from the terrible things that happened around her, from a curse she couldn’t control. She’d grown to accept it, and there were aspects she’d come to enjoy, but she still saw the curse as something that just happened to her. A burst of strength when she needed it. The occasional stroke of unbelievable luck. But Tigrath had changed all that.
Elhan had seen, and probably caused, a great deal of misfortune in her life. Fire, floods, and plagues of vampire squid, but nothing like…
Stone melting into sand. A massive edifice pulled apart, grain by grain. An object completely unmade.
In the deep recesses of her mind, she had a partial understanding of what had happened. The power had been hers—a churning torrent of blind energy—but somehow, Seris had given it form. As it tore through him, instead of shredding him into elements, he’d instinctively shaped the power, as he did Eliantora’s, and turned it into…something terrifying.
That had been the first moment Elhan realised that maybe, just maybe, the curse could be controlled. Perhaps the suffering and devastation that followed her had been random because she’d allowed them to be random. Watching Seris apply his feeble, watery power with such skill and discipline made Elhan wonder if perhaps she’d allowed the curse to control her, when she should have been controlling the curse.
Maybe she’d been too young, too ignorant, or too confused to understand it before, but these last few months, she could feel things changing. She was changing. Seris thought the answer was breaking the curse, but maybe the answer was using the curse. Maybe she had to stop pretending that everything was fine, and realise that what she had was better than fine.
She was the bloody Kali-Adelsa.
Elhan stopped outside the guard tower, embers swirling in the breeze. Pools of water flickered with firelight, like portals to the underworld. She pulled her gaze across the defensive line of guards, and smiled at their expressions of terror.
“I have a message for whoever’s in charge,” said Elhan.
They never really stood a chance.
She could see them moving slowly, like mountains eroding over eons. She could hear the rush of blood in their veins as muscles strained against gravity, against inertia, like great oaks trying to fly. She swept easily around them, through them, their eyes trying to follow her, always a beat too slow. It was over before the first body hit the cobbles.
As Elhan stepped over the strewn soldiers, it occurred to her that she hadn’t given them the option of standing aside. Or passing on the message. Then again, it was Seris who reminded her of things like that, and he was already blurring into memory.
Inside the guard tower, no one stood in her way—at least, not for long. Elhan climbed the stairs like a wronged god returning to the heavens. She could feel the panic humming through the tower, like alarm pheromones flooding a broken anthill.
Some small part of Elhan had childishly imagined a different return to Horizon’s Gate, one involving an obedient Prince Valamon and possibly a parade. She realised now that wishful, pointless thoughts like these had held her back, had kept her victim to a curse she didn’t want to understand. She’d wasted so much time chasing a life that wasn’t hers, and running from something she should have embraced long ago.
She stopped before a mahogany door at the end of the stairs, her reflection distorted in the gleaming red wood. The door swung open at her touch, and she stepped into a brightly lit office overlooking the smoke-riddled city. Elhan suddenly felt a familiar blade pressed against her back.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Albaran, his voice beside her ear. “Where the Kali-Adelsa goes, destruction follows.”
“Hey, this destruction was here before me. Looks more like you weren’t doing your job.”
Elhan could feel Albaran smile.
“I would have picked better last words,” he said.
As his blade plunged forward, the floor rocked in a violent explosion. The lamps shattered, and debris blasted through the room as the outer wall disintegrated in a cloud of flame. Half the floor vanished, like burning parchment receding from a fire, and the remains of the office hung open to the night sky.
Albaran found himself sprawled on the scorched floorboards, his head ringing from the blast. He felt the slightest bit annoyed with himself—he really should have focused on the terrorists and left the Kali-Adelsa for another time, but it was easy to make that call after you’d lost half your eyebrows. Qara and Falon had only to exchange a look and he’d be captaining snowmen in the Griven Tundra. At least the guard tower hadn’t melted into millet.
Albaran reached across the floor for his sword and found Elhan’s foot planted firmly on the blade. This was probably one of the more unpleasant scenarios he’d imagined involving the Kali-Adelsa, and he suspected that the even less pleasant ones were about to follow. He looked up at the figure silhouetted against the stars.
“Take a good look around, Captain,” said Elhan. “You thought you could silence the revolution, but for every voice you took away, another five rose in its place. You’re too busy fighting the shadow of war when the war’s already here. And here’s a surprise for you, Captain. I’m mostly on your side. Today.”
There was a sudden, eerie noise, like a swoop of wings, and the sky behind Elhan turned seething black, as though a rustling wave had risen to blot out the stars. It took Albaran the space of a single thought to realise that the sheet of arrows raining towards them would be the last thing he’d ever see.
Elhan grabbed Albaran’s tunic and dragged him roughly to his knees. She stood before him like an executioner, and then turned calmly to face the arrows.
There was a noise like a thousand nails slamming into wood.
When Albaran finally drew breath, he saw a forest of arrows solid around them, a dark halo of smouldering shafts. Elhan turned around, untouched.
“So, about this message,” she said.
Bodies littered the ground, and smoke billowed from the burnt-out shell of the guard tower. Qara rode through the fray and grabbed a bow from a startled rebel, kicking him squarely in the face. She yanked a quiver from another archer and began nocking arrows, firin
g them precisely into the tangle of fighting. Seris clung to the horse’s neck as blades and arrows whizzed past.
Through the smoke and shadows, two figures emerged from the fire. Shimmering in the heat, silhouetted against the roiling flames, Elhan strode from the guard tower, dragging a breathless Albaran. Qara’s bow turned watchfully towards the pair.
“Elhan?” called Seris, sitting up suddenly and nearly losing an ear to a passing arrow.
He slid quickly from the horse and ran towards the pale, smoky figure, dodging swords and the occasional flying boot. His heart pounded as he approached, unsure if Elhan was in a more genial mood than when they’d parted.
“How the hell did you get back so fast?” said Elhan, letting go of Albaran, who staggered away, coughing up small clouds of sooty smoke.
“I got transported,” said Seris. “Elhan, about the curse—”
Albaran strode quickly to Qara’s horse, still struggling for breath.
“The Kali-Adelsa—” began Albaran.
“I know,” said Qara grimly.
“Hey, you guys know each other?” said Elhan, looking at Albaran and Qara.
Albaran looked over, and suddenly noticed Seris.
“You,” said Albaran, and his tone said everything else.
Albaran made several staccato military gestures to a nearby squad of soldiers.
“He’s with me, Captain,” said Qara.
Albaran shot Seris a look full of daggers and dissecting implements, and Seris sidled a little closer to Qara.
“In case anyone cares, there’s this huge army camped just west of the forest outside the city,” said Elhan loudly.
“It’s already here?” said Seris with dismay.
Qara turned to Albaran.
“The message tower’s been destroyed,” said Qara. “Did any of the carrier falcons survive?”
Albaran pulled an engraved silver tube from his jacket.
“I can get word to the capital,” said Albaran.
Qara glanced at the silver tube with simmering mistrust, then turned to Elhan.