by Regina Watts
“Weltyr will name the victor of this duel,” the secretary told us, having summed up the guidelines by which we were to engage in battle. “When the dust has settled, the winner must abide by the standards of the loser, for that is the will Weltyr has chosen to support. What is your will, challenger?”
“That Zweiding should yield his claim over the hand of Elishta-bet.”
“And your will, Commander Zweiding?”
“That this impudent welp should be ejected from the Order, and his rank permanently stripped.”
Terms stated, Zweiding and I were sent to back twenty paces.
The secretary made himself scarce and, only when clear at the side of the field, called the fatal word: “Fight!”
A bevy of noise erupted to emphasize how unnaturally quiet the battleground had been. Amid the cheers of the witnesses and the metallic clatter of moving armor, Zweiding charged. I met him head-on, moving not so much by instinct but by the hand of one who knew my body better than I did.
Our swords met.
Across the sparking blades, a wave of surprise altered Zweiding’s face. The force of my parry knocked him back some feet, and my charge gave him only a few seconds to recover.
We were both amazed for different reasons as I swung the glittering blade in a blitz the Commander was forced to waste much time and ground parrying. The sword in Zweiding’s hands, though possessed by the same unyielding charm reflecting his oath to the Church, rattled as though to warn any lesser blade would have already snapped. He gritted his teeth against the energy rattling through him with each hammering of this new sword of mine through the air, his skull surely ringing as he met each strike with the only defenses he could manage.
“You always were a fighter of reasonable skill,” he admitted, dodging a slash only to have his sword nearly knocked from his hands as I swung into another flurry. What a balanced blade! I might have laughed for the pleasure of the fight if he would not have been offended. As it was, he continued on to ask in a tone of consternated appreciation, “But where did you learn to fight like this?”
“Only the blessing of a god can permit a man to win a duel against one such as you, Commander.”
With a humorless smirk, he eased up on his sword, then tried to knock my leg out from under me and keep me from another blitz. Before he could get near such a thing, however, I had already followed through on a slice through the air. My blade sank into his pauldron. The metal of the armor gave way like wool, and as the Commander hissed I was amazed to find how easily the sword came away from the wound it had made.
Blood flowed through the gap in Zweiding’s armor. The cheers that had begun with the battle had by now faded to shocked murmurs. Face hardened by the pain, Zweiding charged me with incredible strength.
Now it was I who stood at the defense, though the sword that had been, as promised, gifted to me in my most needful hour was strong against the assault. It absorbed every blow with minimum impact, its blade still as unnaturally sharp as it had been when first I set my eye upon it. Moreover, it was so graceful that even with the encumbrance of my armor I felt light as a feather when it came to meeting my opponent strike for strike.
As his blows all came to naught, Zweiding’s already reddened face grew hard with frustration. Soon, wrath.
“What nonsense is this,” he shouted, beating his blade against mine to drive me back. “You were never so skilled!”
“Your position in the Order and the worldly adulation you receive for it has blinded you to the will of Weltyr,” I informed him, knocking his sword from his hands to send it sliding across the dirt. “Perhaps, if you went out into the world again, it would teach you that you know far less than you think you do. Do you yield?”
Teeth bared, Zweiding dashed to reclaim his lost weapon. I let him pick it up and stood while he vented his fury on me, each blow angrier than the last until his arms had begun to shake. Only then did I drive him back to our starting places, his blade unsteady in his hands and soon once again upon the ground between us.
The tip of my gleaming sword pressed against the breastplate through which we both knew it could effortlessly tear.
“Do you yield?”
“I’ve never lost a battle,” he said, ducking down to grab his sword again. “You’ll have to kill me.”
Driven by fury and dangerous pride, Zweiding swung his blade against my side and did make impact, though Rigan’s armor held as I had expected it to. Hoping to end the duel, I sliced toward my opponent’s legs.
The shock that blossomed across his features as the blade sliced into his greave to sever the tendons of his leg—it saddened me. How was it that I had been given a blade so deadly only once I asked Weltyr to help me deal more gently with my fellow man?
Perhaps that was why the sword had now arrived. I had proved that my heart’s greatest desire was to act not as conqueror in Weltyr’s name, but defender of it.
Collapsing to the dirt with a cry of pain, Zweiding released his hold of his sword to tear his armor from his bleeding leg. As a medic hurried forward to see the injury and a few high-ranking Order officers followed suit, the Commander forced himself to hiss, “Very well, damn you, very well! I yield, I yield—the battle and Elishta-bet, I yield them both!”
Relief surging through me along with the hollow feeling of victory, I slid the unsheathed weapon into the loop where once hung Strife’s scabbard. The Sword of Weltyr gleamed like new, unstained by blood or the dust of the field.
Valeria’s fast footsteps drew my attention. I turned just in time to catch her in my arms. Embracing her delicate elf’s body to mine, I held her close and kissed her fragrant mouth with a sigh of relief.
“My warrior,” she cried with pride, her features as bright with delight as ever I had seen them. “Oh, Burningsoul! Oh, Rorke! How wonderful you are!”
I chuckled, holding her, that regal face once more a wealth of lovely blue grays in the light of the sun. Drawing the hood down just so over her eyes, I told her, “Wonderful, perhaps. A part of the Order, never.”
Hissing as the medic probed his wound, Zweiding stared up at me in absolute resentment. Part of me did feel a certain shame—I had beaten him so handily that I experienced a twinge of sympathetic embarrassment, though I was quick to reminded myself it was an embarrassment he would not have endured had he been less heinous a person in his heart of hearts. His ways were not the ways of the All-Father he proclaimed to serve, for the All-Father loved all thinking things upon the planet without regard to their race or creed or magical talent. It was only their disobedience to his will that he did not love…and yet I have heard it said that even the tendency toward rebellion, he admires—for the gods, knowing too much, have no free will of their own. Even the All-Father’s True Will is that inevitable force of nature and time that is the sum total of reality.
And it was evident that Zweiding’s free will failed to align with my Master’s True Will. Therefore, I was the tool of his humbling.
If a man’s free will did not align with Weltyr’s course for reality, then why should an institution, however old and revered, not be capable of the same straying?
Clarity arose in me. My hand upon the pommel of the sword that was once the Scepter of Weltyr, I told the man being attended to by now more than one medic at my feet, “It pains me to say this, but I cannot join the Order.”
“Then you’re a coward,” spat Zweiding, “and a failure. Forsaking your quest to find the Scepter over a woman! What does this concubine of yours think of that, by the by?”
At Valeria’s faint scoff, I drew her behind me and informed my former Commander coldly, “There are truths in this world that may only be found by traveling, and trusting, and risk-taking through time. You took all your risks in the military, Zweiding, and may Weltyr’s maiden daughters attend you well in his Hall for it; but, by taking ample advantage of the earthly rewards offered you for this service, you’ve begun slaving for yourself rather than our Master.”
“Fool
! The outside world has poisoned your mind. Perhaps you enjoyed your time in the Nightlands a little too much—were you unmanned there in body as well as mind?”
“That’s a bitter tone for a duel already decided, and a fine example of why I cannot join the Order. If my time in the Nightlands showed me anything, it is that the durrow are, apart from the values of their society, just like elves; and that elves are just like us. All mankinds are equal in the eyes of God.”
A sacred raven crowed merrily from a battlement. I doubt Zweiding took heed of its agreement. “See what traitorous beliefs you’ve taken on! Next you’ll support interbreeding.”
I scoffed. “Of course I do.” That got a few more sidelong glances than I had expected, and I looked about in surprise. “The Church teaches nothing about such matters.”
“But history does,” responded Zweiding sharply, gritting his teeth as the wound upon his leg was sutured shut right there on the field. “The Order is the point where the Church meets with secular history. We are the intersection between clergy and militia, Burningsoul! It’s something you’ve never understood. You’re not a paladin—you’re a priest who likes to fight.”
I might have had my pride rebuffed by such a remark a mere few days before. Instead, it made me laugh. In so many ways, he was right; and, though I still consider myself a paladin in the name of Weltyr, I have remembered that comment with fondness for all of my days. I can only imagine how enraged Zweiding would be to know such a thing!
“That may be so,” I told him, trying to keep my smile under control lest he thought I mocked him, “but you must admit…as priests go, I am a very skilled fighter.”
“You really have changed,” observed a nearby paladin with whom I had trained but who I would not consider among my friends or mentors. “Not a boy anymore, eh, Rorke.”
“Only a coward. Very well.” Zweiding spat from the side of his mouth and into the dirt, his breath hitching as the hooked needle of the medic tugged his flesh shut. “The Order doesn’t need those who are too soft-hearted to carry out their duties. How pathetic you are! Lucky for you we’re not at war, and luckier still you weren’t raised in some rural principality where the primary duty is eradicating heretics.”
I had been about to extricate myself from a conversation that I felt could only lead to another, more informal and all the more dangerous fight, but that comment gave me pause. The voice of the hivemind pulsed through my consciousness while I asked, “So it’s true? In the Nightlands, I was told a terrible story—one of a durrow settlement destroyed by servants of Weltyr. Have we been truly committing such atrocities for generations?”
““Atrocities!” How weak you sound…and pathetic. Amazing that, after all these years of education, you never puzzled together what it means to defend the faith and wipe away heretical beliefs. The only thing for it is the sword, not words. Pagans will always find ways to justify themselves, but their sound defeat in battle proves Weltyr’s will is the only one that’s true.”
“If Weltyr’s will is true, and victory in battle is proof, then how can you say I’m false in my beliefs?”
Valeria’s voice was softer than a whisper and most assuredly inaudible from the distance of the other paladins. Some kind of prayer drifted from her mouth while Zweiding told me, “Because your beliefs are not in line with the Church. Are you saying it’s a good thing that all these races exist? That false species with false gods were introduced to Urde when the spirit-thieves invaded from whatever hellish location they once called their home?”
Glancing back over my shoulder at softly whispering Valeria, I studied Zweiding more intently and tried not to enjoy his wince too much when the suturing process began on his arm. “What do you mean to say, exactly?”
“You see…you jump to conclusions and leave the Order before the full truth can be disseminated to you. These durrow you so adore—and the elves, and the dwarves, and all of these other races competing with humanity for resources—they were artificially created, Burningsoul! Falsely engineered. Not by Weltyr, but by the spirit-thieves!”
The words of Al-listux swept back to me through time.
You have me and my kind to thank for the love of your life…for your own life, and your so-called ‘natural’ will.
“But—how could such a thing be possible?”
“Spirit-thieves possess technologies ungodly in design and origin. They hold knowledge that no mortal being should ever be permitted to know, and they worship a demon from beyond the stars.”
“To what end, though? Why would the creation of these races assist in anything like what you describe?”
“Because: with so many mankinds, and so many heretics, and with such frequently renewing warfare, we cannot agree on anything. Humankind cannot even agree among itself, let alone elf with human or dwarf with elf! It is not possible for us to become a star-faring planet in such conditions, and the spirit-thieves therefore have no competition when it comes to tightening their control over all the universe.”
“What nonsense,” I said almost without thinking. “Why should any species desire to control the universe?”
“For resources! That’s what the spirit-thieves want more than anything, Burningsoul—fuel for their ships, slaves for their consumption, gold for their sleeping demon-god!”
More aware of Valeria’s soft voice than ever before, I turned to see father Fortisto watching nervously from the hedges. He wrang his hands and looked more than once over his shoulder as though to ensure the path remained clear should we need to run…and I had the feeling we would, because I could not let the Commander of Weltyr’s Order say such insane things while the other members nodded sagely on, or at the very least listened with close interest.
“Yes, I’ve heard it said that the spirit-thieves were extraterrestrial demons who migrated to Urde long after its creation…but if that is the case, then I cannot help but suggest this, too, is the will of Weltyr.”
Balking, Zweiding demanded, “How can you say such a thing?”
“Because the True Will is too vast to be experienced by mankinds—even the longest-lived elf will never know its full scope. Who is to say that the creation of more races, or even a human loss when at war with the spirit-thieves, does not factor into the longterm aim of this True Will? How are we to judge what is right and wrong when we have not one iota of Weltyr’s understanding?”
The Commander’s eyes narrowed. “Are you really saying that Weltyr sent the spirit-thieves to us? That all these species and all these false gods are in some way the will of the All-Father?”
I spread my hands. From the corner of my eye, a black dot scuttled across the field. “I suppose I am. Having experienced what I have experienced on my journey for the Scepter, I have come to believe that even the greatest or most loathsome thing that occurs cannot ultimately occur if it interferes with the longterm fulfillment of the Master’s will.”
“Then I suppose we have nothing more to say to one another,” said Zweiding coldly. “Arrest this race-traitor—and that woman, too.”
With a scoff, I stepped back against Valeria and set my hand upon my blade. Another insect of some kind crept past. I noticed it was a spider but was much too shocked to fully absorb the implication. “What?”
“Such heretical thoughts cannot be expressed without consequence.” While a few of his comrades drew their blades, Zweiding continued. “Rest satisfied in your cell knowing that Elishta-bet will be free from the cold clutches of matrimony with me…and, perhaps, comfortable in the cell next to yours, since without reformation she can never hope to be anything but a witch.”
“Valeria,” I said as the Order members made their way toward us, “we have to—”
But her voice lifted in a high elvish cry that, upon fading from our ears, revealed like the pulling back of an audible curtain the scuttling of thousands of spider legs. Father Fortisto cried out in horror.
Seconds later a sea of arachnids from all the shadowy corners and dark alleys of Skythorn
rushed into the training field in a hideous wave.
A few paladins cried out in fear that was somewhat shocking to me—perhaps it was the first time I saw them as actual, fallible mortals, rather than infallible celebrities. As they hurried back from the skittering onslaught, a pair of massive plane-walking spiders manifested on either side of Zweiding and his medics. All of them cried out in horror, the medical officials hurrying away and leaving the Commander to fend for himself.
“Let’s run,” said Valeria while Zweiding snatched up his blade. The braver men present all raised arms against the plane-shifting beings while more soldiers, attracted by the sea of spiders rushing past the temple gates, joined the fray and were very soon covered in thousands of the smaller arachnids. By the time we reached Fortisto, who had found an island of safety upon the large stones lining a flower bed outside the arena, a third alien spider had joined the battle—by the looks of its size, to defend its smaller children.
“The two of you must leave Skythorn at once,” advised the old priest, gripping my shoulders while we delayed to try and convince him to leave Temple grounds until the heat was off. “It’s not safe for you here anymore—Zweiding will see the both of you arrested, oh, Rorke—”
“But there’s no other airport for weeks of riding! Not one with ships that go as far as Rhineland, anyway.”
“Then you must flee now and hope you can make it before today’s flight departs…once you’ve left Skythorn, you’ll be a wanted man. Surely arrested when you try to return.”
My heart sank to think such a thing. Ejected from my own home, and under such sordid circumstances!
But—it was the will of Weltyr. I holstered my sword again and embraced Fortisto.
“May Weltyr grant you many more long, happy years, my friend. I love you as a son loves a father.”
When we drew away, Fortisto’s eyes were filled with tears.
“Take heed in the streets,” he told me, pushing me toward the gates. “Don’t look frantic, but neither should you take your time. Oh! Rorke—a true servant of Weltyr if ever I have been blessed to know one. Your name will be remembered forever. God bless you! God bless you! May you be selected for the Hall!”