Each night, Michael told a part of the story of Aurelia and her duel with the Eldest One, leaning over the small camp-fire as he whispered of deeds bold and desperate, of gods vile and heroes noble, and of magic so powerful that the entire world had trembled in terror of it.
It gladdened him more than words could say to spend his days in such a company. Not since his mother’s passing had he known such peace, such contentment, such happiness even. Yes, for the first time in years he would confess to happiness. For so long he had dwelt in winter’s chill, but now the summer sun had burned away the snow and he felt half a child again, able to believe that these halcyon days would never pass.
Michael’s tale of Aurelia was finished by the fifth night, and on the sixth day Michael stepped through a particularly thick grove into a wide sunlit clearing and beheld before his eyes the dead city: Aureliana.
"Stop!" Michael called out before Fiannuala smacked into the wall face-first. "We have arrived."
The outer wall was wholly white, or at least it had been built that way, and in the height of its pomp the walls might well have shone brilliantly in the light of the sun. But now they were rent with innumerable holes where the Imperial siege engines had smashed through them, scarring the defences and leaving mounds of fallen stone everywhere. The breaches where the legions had stormed the walls were clearly visible to him, steep piles of rubble that must have been a trial to scramble up in armour while carrying sword and shield. The surviving sections of the walls were covered in dirt, overrun with vines creeping up them, their colour ruined, the stone fallen into disrepair, cracking from the inside out.
From what he could see of the dead city beyond the walls, visible through the breaches and the damage of the siege engines, the settlement itself was falling to pieces in much the same way, buildings wrecked or falling into ruin.
And so too Davidheyr shall be, in the end. The Empire's flag will fly only in tomes of dusty history, Corona's storied past shall live only in old tales of no interest to any but whey-faced scholars, and some young warrior shall stare at the ruins of David's city and be made melancholy as he is reminded that his world, too, shall come to an end and be forgot in time.
"I don't see anything," Fiannuala said.
"You wouldn't," Gideon murmured. "Only Michael can see it."
Fiannuala frowned. "I don't like feeling left out." She raised her hands, and snaking vines burst out of the ground, scattering the soil in little clumps as they went. They surged towards the walls like an attacking army eager to storm the city, but as they were about to touch the walls they suddenly stopped, shuddering and shaking like an old man feeling the cold.
Fiannuala snorted. "I can't move them any further. I push at them but nothing happens. Have I hit a wall?"
"Not physically, princess, not yet, but I suspect you have hit a magical barrier of some kind," Michael said. "The same kind, one assumes, that hides the city from your eyes."
His Highness leaned upon his shepherd's crook. "How do we enter a city we cannot see?"
"By following a guide who is not blind," Tullia murmured. "Michael, can you see a way in?"
Michael hesitated. "I can see a breach or two, but I am not certain how practical they are."
"The soldiers climbed up them, they can't be that impractical," Amy said.
"They are steeper than you might think," Michael replied. "I would almost suspect someone of half rebuilding the walls."
"Cynane?" Gideon murmured.
"Possibly," Michael replied softly. "Wyrrin?"
"Yes?" Wyrrin asked
Michael pointed in front of him, up the nearest breach. "Can you, with your claws, try and scrabble up the wall? Follow the direction of my finger straight ahead. If you get up the rest of us will try to follow."
Wyrrin tilted his head to one side, snorted, then said, "If it can be done, it will be done." He began to run, his tail swinging behind him as his legs pounded, his head bobbing up and down as he moved. He ran on swiftly, past Michael and straight for the breach, dust rising up behind him. Then, with a great cry, Wyrrin leapt up in the air, his powerful legs carrying him up above the rubble. He began to descend, and Michael saw that he would land halfway up the breach already.
Then Wyrrin stopped. For a moment he hung suspended in the air like a toy held by an invisible child, then he was hurled backwards with a cry of pain. Michael caught him before he hit the ground, and the two of them were carried backwards, bounced along the grass until Michael's rear felt like it had endured a beating for some crime and they lay in a tangled heap nearly twenty feet back from where Michael had started.
"I am sorry," Wyrrin gasped in between deep breaths.
"There is no call for sorrow or apology," Michael said. "I used you ill, that is all."
"It seems we are not going to enter Aureliana in the way the soldiers did," Jason muttered.
"Clearly, your highness," Michael replied.
He led the way around the circle of the walls looking for a complete hole that might have afforded them better chances, but finding none. Eventually he led them to the city gate, a black iron structure decorated with an image of Aurelia, banishing the Eldest One. Strangely, the gate itself was intact, showing no hint of damage or the effects of age.
"Gideon," Michael said. "When the Empire laid siege did they not attack the gate as well as the walls?"
Gideon frowned. "It was broken down by the Seventeenth Legion Demodocia Auxilia, who claimed the honour in vengeance for the destruction of their city. Captain Caius Usebius and Sergeant Titus Castra of the fifth company were the first men through after the gate was breached. Why?"
"This gate looks like it was raised yesterday," Michael said.
"Cynane's magic most likely," Gideon said. "I believe that if you open it the rest of us will be able to see the city within."
Michael nodded and stepped up to the gate. Tentatively he reached out for it.
"Careful," Amy warned.
"We have to try, our Amy, or we'll never get inside."
"That might not be such a bad thing," Jason said quietly.
Michael ignored him, placing his hand upon the smooth, cold iron. It did not attack him, as the city wall and its magical barrier had struck at Wyrrin, but the city did not reveal itself to his friends either.
Nothing, in short, happened.
Michael scowled, leaned upon the doors, and thrust against them with all his strength.
Nothing happened.
Taking a deep breath, Michael tried again. The stillness of the gate mocked his feeble efforts.
"Here, Michael." Amy trotted up to stand beside him. "I'm standing in the right place, yes? I'm not going to be shoving on the wall or anything."
"No, you are well placed," Michael said. "Thank you."
"No worries," Amy said. "Now: one, two, heave!"
She put her shoulder to the gate at the same time as Michael renewed his own assault against it.
It did not move.
Fiannuala joined them on the other side of Michael, and Wyrrin too, all pushing against the gate with all the strength at their command. It resisted them more staunchly than the city had resisted the Empire's assault.
"Maybe there's something wedged against it on the other side?" Jason said.
"It would have to be something awfully heavy for us not to be making it budge an inch," Amy said. She struck the gate with her fist, causing a gong-like sound that she didn't seem to hear, but doing no damage to the gate itself. She turned to Jason. "Try firing some magical arrows at it and we'll see what happens."
"I don't really expect that will do any good," Jason said.
"Well have you got a better idea?"
"Blood," Michael said, cursing himself for his foolishness as realisation struck him. "Blood, my blood. I must prove beyond a doubt that I am of Cynane's line. How could I have forgotten, when it is so obvious. And I pride myself on my knowledge of tales and legends, yet one of the most basic motifs eludes my thinking." Drawing his s
patha he sliced open his left palm, letting the blood trickle onto the ground for a moment before rubbing it upon the gate. He left a trail of blood across the metal.
A bell tolled across the city, a heavy and dolorous sound, and with a grinding, clanking, rattling noise the gate into Aureliana ground open, revealing in full the ruins that Michael had glimpsed before. The eyes of his friends widened, and Michael guessed that they could now see what he had seen from the start.
"You can see that time has taken its toll," Jason said. "And yet, less than you would think considering the circumstances. More magic?"
"I would not discount the possibility," Gideon replied. "Thank you Michael, well done."
"I did little to be proud of," Michael said.
"Even so," Gideon replied. "We shall go in once you have had that hand bandaged up."
"There is no need."
"Yes there is, give it here," Amy grabbed hold of him, and Michael was forced to endure ministrations until there was a tourniquet tied tightly around his left hand, soaking up the blood.
The seven of them lined up in the gateway to the dead city, looking in at the ruined houses and fallen temples, the crumbling shops and shattered towers, the demolished statues and the burnt out gardens.
Michael felt a shiver run down his spine at the prospect of entering this hallowed place.
Gideon looked to each of them in turn. "We have come far together. Some of us farther than others, true, but as a group, as a unit, we have come far." A small smile played across his face. "A contubernium such as this was never such a force as I imagined commanding, yet now that that is my command I find that I would not trade it for an entire legion. We stand now, I think, upon the cusp of success. I would like you all to know how proud I am of you before we take this next step."
Michael bowed. "And we are proud to serve in obedience to your will, Lord Gideon. If you will but issue the command, then we shall crown your long endeavours with the glory that is your due."
Gideon smiled and drew Duty with a flourish, holding it point up in the air, the blade aligned with his face. "For the Empress, and the Divine Empire forever! All together now, as one, forward!"
As one man they took the next step into Aureliana.
There was a snapping sound, like someone stepping on a dry twig, or the springing shut of a trap.
White light surrounded Michael, blinding him, forcing him to shut his eyes against it and raise his hands against the brilliance that burned past his eyelids.
When he could open his eyes again he was alone, and stood in the midst of a courtyard in some far off part of the city, wrecked and decaying houses looming all around him.
“Our Amy?” Michael called, turning where he stood to look around the ruined houses and the toppled temples. “Filia Tullia? Your Highness?”
There was no sound, no reply. He was all alone in this cold place.
Michael knelt down and prayed to God that they would find each other soon, to be reunited hale and hearty, before they could be picked off one by one by the killing blade or the magical arts of darkness.
XVIII
Guardian Naiad
Amy kept her sword out as she nosed through the ruins of Aureliana. She had not sheathed it since she became separated from the others.
So far, she had not been successful at finding either her friends or the Sword of Cupas. Of course as far as the blade went she wasn't really sure what she was looking for, but she hoped she'd know it when she saw it. Hopefully it would be shiny and decorated in some way. It was a knife made by gods after all.
The quicker we get out of this place the better, Amy thought. It isn't natural.
This place, its state of ruin, reminded her of villages she had seen after an undine raid, where her grandfather's knights had arrived too late to stop the raiders from doing their work and making off with the loot. This place had the exact feel: buildings destroyed, objects smashed, all that were missing were the bodies of the fallen.
The problem was, those villages she had seen had been days at most after the fighting that had wrecked them. This was five hundred years ago, there shouldn't be more than a few freestanding walls remaining. It was like someone had frozen the whole place in ice from its fall till their arrival. Not natural, not in the least.
And she was certain that something was following her. She could hear it whispering.
Amy tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword before she whirled around to confront her stalkers. "All right, I've had enough of this. Out you come!"
"Watch your tongue you insolent little brat, before I decide to have it ripped from your mouth," her grandfather shouted right back at her. He sat before her, hunched and stooped upon his lordly seat of carven stone, and his court stood ranged about him: her father, fidgeting with his hands and unable to meet her gaze; her uncle Antonio, whose mouth tightened as he regarded her; Antonio's son Ferdinand, Amy's cousin who was set to inherit Seafire despite being younger than Amy by a year; Cassio, her grandfather's Caedan blademaster; Prospero, a sorcerer, his skin wrinkled with age, who was her grandfather's most trusted councillor; Gonzalo the Steward and Hippolyto the Captain of the Guards. And beyond them, less distinct in Amy's eyes, all the knights and lesser lords of the Seareach staring at her, all save for Ser Viola, the only one who might have been on her side.
Before her eyes the world shimmered, and the city plaza became her grandfather's hall, hung with trophies of victories recent and far gone, merfolk servants bustling around her, the stillness of the dead city replaced with the heavy silence of the court.
"This isn't real," Amy said. "I'm not really here."
"You think so do you," her grandfather said. "I wish that myself. I wish that I didn't have to endure a half-human whelp as my granddaughter. I wish that I did not have to acknowledge you as part of my line. Well, blood or no you'll not inherit Seafire Peak, I promise you that! And you'll not take your cousin's birthright of that sword and armour either, get them off."
"I am the elder born, and offspring to your elder son," Amy said.
"You're a bastard born to a savage," grandfather snapped. "You have nothing here but what I give you. Nothing here, and nothing anywhere. Or did you think that I don't know the real reason you ran away, stealing what rightfully belongs to Ferdinand?"
"I left to help a friend."
Grandfather laughed. "You can lie to yourself, bastard, but not to me. I will always know all the truths you want to keep hidden: you ran away because you thought you could win glory on the land didn't you? And now you're back because it didn't happen. Ha! Did you think that just because they didn't know the intimate details of how you came to be that they might suddenly think that you were actually worth anything? Fool! Anyone with so much as a single eye can see you'll never be worth anything on land or sea."
"That isn't true," Amy said. "I left for Michael's sake, not my own."
"Would you have left if you had been given the knighthood you desired?" Antonio asked.
"I-" Amy hesitated.
"As if one such as you could ever attain knighthood," grandfather said mockingly.
Ferdinand's voice grated upon her ears, "If you had been grandfather's heir instead of me, would you have given Seafire up to me to go and help your friend?"
"I can't say what I would have done, only what I did," Amy replied.
"I tried to defend you, daughter," her father said in a slow and melancholy tone. "I told them that you would master your weak, human blood and prove yourself a true naiad, a daughter of Niccolo; but in the end you have shown yourself a mere human after all. Your mother's child, not mine."
Amy's jaw tightened. "If that's what you think then why did you marry mother? If she was so weak, so human, then what did you ever love about her in the first place?"
"Love," her father laughed. "You foolish child. I took a night's pleasure from your mother, intending to move swiftly on ere I returned to Seafire and my home; to take a naiad bride from a noble house, and sire worthy heirs
upon her. But you, you bound me to that foolish creature, kept me in servitude for ten years, ten years in which I lost everything. And all because of a mistake."
It was what she had feared to hear from him, ever since she had been old enough to comprehend the slurs directed at her, the disdain the pureblood naiads felt for humans, the scorn with which she and her mother were regarded. Several times she had come close to asking her father what had brought them together, he and a woman from a race despised, but always she had drawn back from it in fear of his response. And now it seemed she had been right to fear.
Prospero cleared his throat. "I suggest the child be conducted to her chambers, where she may exhibit her grief without observation."
"Yes, tears would be a very human reaction," Antonio said.
"One I've no wish to see," grandfather said. "Air your human frailties in private, not in public."
Amy's face contorted into a snarl, the ice in her gut melting in the heat of her rage. "No, you'll not see tears from me. So you never wanted to stay around with your daughter, is that it, father? Well you know what? I wish you had gone if you wanted to! You never did a single thing for me my entire childhood. I was upset, sad and miserable nearly all the time and you never did anything about it, not even when I was getting beaten up for how I looked. Michael did more to stop what I was going through than you ever did, and you had the nerve to give him grief about it! About the only thing you ever did for me was bring me somewhere I could learn how to fight, and even then you didn't do anything to stop all the crap I went through on the way.
Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1) Page 60