by J. S. Morin
"I stopped telling her such things when parting," Rakashi said. "I never liked the answers I got back."
"You lot must have walked into your share of traps, I imagine," Brannis said, settling in for a tense wait. "I'm sure she will be fine." The clenching of his stomach kept his mind from rationalizing away his worries for her.
"Once or twice perhaps, intentionally," Rakashi replied. "Do you think any of the new spells she has learned from Lord Harwick could be of use to her?"
"Not without time to practice them. She really is bad at it, you know. Juliana would be just as awkward fighting bare fisted though, I imagine," Brannis said. "This would all be so much easier if Kyrus and I had not switched places."
"I imagine a great many things would be easier."
"Like just walking in there, demanding the return of the two of them, then transferring us all back to Scar Harbor," Brannis said.
Rakashi looked at him. It was hard to tell the look in the leaf shadowed moonlight, but Brannis suddenly realized that maybe he had said too much.
"You have heard of the Test of Kings?" Rakashi asked.
"Yes."
"Think on whether you would pass or fail," Rakashi advised.
* * * * * * * *
A crash of underbrush had Brannis grabbing for the hilt of Avalanche, but a firm hand held him in check. Soria slumped down next to him. He had not even heard her approach until she was close enough to have slit his throat, had she been so inclined. Brannis found his breath quickening and his heart racing.
"Scared you?" Soria asked. Brannis heard the smile in her voice more than he could see it.
"Well, I suppose I don't have to ask whether you are all right," he replied.
"What did you find?" Rakashi asked, cutting the banter short.
"This one is going to be fun. We've moved up in the world it seems. Just about everyone in there had a musket, a pistol, or armor like mine," she said.
"Tezuan?" Brannis asked.
"Looks like some are, at least. The others are at least mercenaries with a high opinion of themselves." Soria reached under her hood and untied the mask. She pulled the hood off of her cloak and shook out her hair.
"Might not be a bad time to replenish the aether in my armor," Brannis suggested.
"And in my half-spear," Rakashi added. "I hate black powder—it’s a coward's weapon."
"Even Tanner?" Soria asked, reminding him of Tanner's new pistol.
"Fine, a coward's weapon, or a child's."
"What about the defenses? Did you find where they are keeping Abbiley and Tomas?" Brannis asked.
"Yeah, and I have a plan to get them out." Soria took a coil of rope that had been slung over her shoulder, and threw it to the ground between Brannis and Rakashi. "They're in the topmost floor, in adjoining rooms. I'll climb up and get them while you two cause enough of a diversion to buy me time."
"What sort of diversion?" Brannis asked.
"A Raynesdark sort of diversion," Soria replied.
Chapter 27 - Intent to Fail
The Dhakoun drifted over the streets of Weiselton like a circling vulture, except that, unlike the vulture, it killed its own prey before feasting. The initial attack had included a sweep of the city gates, and Jinzan had left some of his apprentices by each to hold them against the anticipated stampede of frightened peasants.
Jinzan stood at the ship's bow, leaning out and over the edge to catch sight of fleeing Kadrins and draw out their Sources. It was a harvest more than an assault, a recruitment effort for an army that conscripted even children and the infirm. Jinzan ached from the passing of such vast amounts of aether through his own Source, even with the aid of the Staff of Gehlen.
"Bring us hard about," Jinzan rasped. He spoke seldom enough that his voice was growing stale from disuse. He had no need to speak the orders aloud. His crew of dead Kadrins did not understand Megrenn anyway, and obeyed the thoughts behind the words. "Prepare for another pass, by the eastern gate."
A mumbling gibberish of arcane words from the ship's dead sorcerer resulted in a tailwind along their new course. Cannot even speak the spell properly, but they can work their magics anyway. I must teach a new one though, perhaps one of the apprentices—that Kadrin corpse will not last much longer. The rigging pulled taut, and a creak of protesting timbers accompanied their turn.
"Master, look to the south!" One of the few remaining apprentices aboard had called out above the winds and screams from the terrified and dying below. "Master," you call me? I should be "Captain" here. And that is starboard on a ship, you land-dwelling clod. It is even south south-west, if you must use compass points. Jinzan's mental rant passed quickly as he deigned to heed the ill-worded warning. There was another airship approaching.
"Belay my previous order," Jinzan said, voice hardly strong enough to carry over the ambient aeronautical noise, barely more than a hoarse whisper. "Mr. Holyoake, run out the guns!" Of course, there were no cannons aboard the Kadrin ship, and only a few twinborn who would even know what to do with such an order. Just seeing an enemy ship though, was enough to spark memories of happier times in another world, in a sea made of water instead of air.
The ship changed headings yet again, swerving and waggling in the air until the crew had sorted them out on a course to pass the rival airship. The captain of the other vessel seemed of a like mind, and the two ships came together like jousters on the tournament ground.
Jinzan kept his position at the bow, growing nervous that the ships might collide, so close did their headings appear. Would they ram us? Near certain death for all on both sides? Jinzan had the Dhakoun turn a few degrees to port at the last moment.
Jinzan held the Staff of Gehlen out, reaching to grasp the Sources aboard the Kadrin ship. Accustomed to far different battles at sea, he found himself astonished at the speed with which the two ships passed. He had nothing like the time needed to wrench free the mortal aether within his victims. Jinzan turned to watch the Kadrin ship recede in his view, but noticed something else more urgent.
The other ship's sorcerer had been better prepared for a brief pass. Flames ate at the Dhakoun's rigging and sails, where a spread of firebolts must have struck them. The dead crew carried on, oblivious. The apprentices had no ready answer either, looking to their master for succor.
Jinzan struggled a moment to flip through the catalogue of old spells he knew, things he knew before the wonders of Loramar's magic had supplanted them. The Grand Necromancer's cache of wisdom held such elegant simplicity, power beyond imagining, written in primal snips of what must have been the language the gods used in creating men. The old, tired ways of his Academy learning felt childish by comparison, but dealt with matters of elemental energy and materials, problems closer at hand than the loftier study of immortality.
"Pukai feldenok ixnoi," Jinzan whispered. He watched the fires, reaching out to each and pinching his fingers. One by one, they snuffed out. He felt a smile within him that settled among the muscles of his face.
"Full about," he ordered, chuckling with a dry wheeze as the crew struggled with the damaged rigging, ropes snapped and dangling loose in places. The Dhakoun protested, but obeyed. The Kadrin ship had already turned about, nimbler in the air with a living crew and undamaged ship.
You wish to fight with fire, then? Very well. Jinzan watched the ships hurtling toward one another once more, and tried to gauge his timing. It was a blunt calculation, more to ease the tax upon his Source than any real limit to the power the staff bestowed upon him. He was more greatly concerned about being late than early, and he had plenty of aether stored for what he planned.
"Omiku draxo tojifu retakinu hakto," Jinzan shouted, lending all the voice he had in his anger. He raised his arms, high in the air, beckoning the bowels of the earth to issue forth his wrath.
The ground below cracked and parted. A great gout of molten rock erupted from the streets of Weiselton, directly in the path of the Kadrin ship. The Dhakoun swung about in an effort to avoid the spattering fires and bits
of melted stone that splashed around the pillar of destruction. The Kadrin ship had no time to react. It was a smoking, fiery hulk of timbers the instant it hit the volcanic mass in its path. It crashed into the city, spreading fires among the buildings that promised to put half the city to flames.
The ship's sudden turn had Jinzan grasping for the safety of the riggings, despite not just anticipating it, but having given the order. The spell had drained him more than he had expected. He stumbled across the deck to the nearest crewman, and sucked the dead man's Source dry. The corpse collapsed, inanimate once more. Jinzan felt better immediately.
The spell he had used was not from Loramar's tomb, nor anything that had been taught at the Academy. Rather, it was a spell that proper young students ought never to have seen. It was, however, the type of spell that an ambitious and talented young Megrenn patriot would seek out, even if he found it beyond his power at the time.
Jinzan scanned the skies, watching as they filled with smoke and seeking signs of any other aerial opposition.
Finding none, he resumed his work of harvesting an army of the dead.
* * * * * * * *
It was a coward's run, headlong, panting for breath, with nary a thought backward except to verify that life-ending peril was indeed still at hand. Each glance over his shoulder showed Tharyn Lurien sights he had hoped he would never see. His pursuers were dead—garishly, sloppily, freshly dead. They still wore Kadrin uniforms and wielded Kadrin-issued spears. The nearest to him, which he saw all too clearly each time he turned, bore claw-like scratches down its face, and an eye that had been torn loose, but not off.
Eight of them had fled the walls of Weiselton. Seven made it as far as the first farms tucked in between the city and the forest. Five still ran as they stumbled through the underbrush.
Tharyn spared just enough time to fumble at his belt for a pouch that held a palm-sized turtle shell. The markings on it were faded red paint, chipped and flaking, but the runes were whole enough. He held it with both hands, and blew a ragged gasp through it as he kept his legs scrambling beneath him. The shell let forth a sound like a sheep trying to bleat out a tavern song. A few paces further along, Tharyn slowed, and tried again. The painted runes glowed.
Brrrruuuuuuuuu!
He did not bother to stow the magical horn, but neither did he drop it. Tharyn gained some measure of hope as he saw the undead soldiers struggling with the gnarled and root-clutched forest floor. Never did they end their chase, but each pratfall gained the weary refugees precious distance.
A thrashing in the forest ahead gave pause to four of the runners, but Tharyn's heart leapt. "Help us! Please!" he called out, voice hoarse but available on limited muster. He spoke not his own tongue, nor any other human language, but that of the ogres who called the forest their land.
Mammoth humanoids emerged, their painted skins blending them in against the forestscape until they were just a few paces distant. Like men stretched and pulled, they bore a human shape, if not one most folk would consider pretty. Gaunt and muscular, their ribs showed where hair and sinew did not cover them. Their skulls were wider and rounder than those of humans. The warm season kept them clad in little more than rags that dangled about their waistlines, and a few trinkets worn as decoration. Their weapons were carved tree trunks, shaped with the likenesses of fearsome beasts, both real and fantastical. There were handholds cut in the titanic clubs, meant to be wielded with both hands by creatures strong enough to crush a man's skull between pinched fingers.
The other Kadrin refugees cried out in terror, but Tharyn shouted them a warning: "Get down!" Frightened and confused, the others obeyed, diving headlong into the brush before the onrushing ogres.
A score or more dead soldiers outnumbered the three ogres who came to Tharyn's call, but numbers had never been the ogres' worry. The dead flew in pieces from the ogres' sweeping swings, battering rams whipping through the air like swords. If any Kadrin among them had been trained in tactics against ogres, the knowledge seemed not to have persisted beyond death.
Tharyn helped put fire to the twitching legs, arms, and heads, which gamely kept trying to fight, even when separated from their bodies. The ogres accepted the aid of the Kadrin sorcerer without a word. When he was finished, and the piled remains lay still and smoldering and the ogres took over. They laid aside their weapons and knelt. With calloused hands twice the size of a man's foot, they patted the earth, occasionally pausing to spit. They were either cleansing the land or trying to protect it against the spread of fire—Tharyn did not know which.
"Thank you," Tharyn told the eldest among them, after the ogres finished their task and stood.
"You gave your word," the elder ogre said. He took hold of a string of beads that dangled from his waist, held it toward Tharyn, and shook it. "Four and ten times the moon has filled and emptied. You kept your word. War Bringer has not come back."
"Yes, the truce works for both sides," Tharyn agreed. "I keep my word."
The ogre narrowed his eyes for a moment, then nodded.
"If you allow, I must work magic. I need to warn others of the dead warriors," Tharyn said. The ogre language had no word for "undead."
With no pause for consideration, the ogre nodded again, granting the request.
"Haunu chixixa gefetio daelu," Tharyn chanted, then held a finger aloft, and waited until a bird alighted upon it. The little thrush shook its feathers as Tharyn whispered his message. Then the bird flew off into the canopy as it began a mission at the magic's compulsion.
"Your warning goes," the elder ogre noted. "Now it is treaty time. No ogres leave the forest; no humans enter."
"Yes, very well, we—"
Tharyn's words were lost as the elder ogre's club flattened him to the forest floor. The other four who had survived the reborn dead followed shortly thereafter, their screams ripped from lungs worn dry by running.
* * * * * * * *
Kyrus opened the door of his bedroom, eyes still gummed with the remnants of sleep, to find one of the palace guards waiting for him. The man had been provided a chair and table (from one of the vacant sitting rooms by the look of the upholstery), and he was eating from a tray of tea and pastries. The guard clambered out of his chair, transferring a half-eaten sweet tart to the tray in the process.
"Good morning, Sir Brannis."
"I suppose that was my morning feast you were enjoying a moment ago?" Kyrus asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Um, no sir. I've been here since before dawn, waiting. The kitchen sent this up hours ago. Tea's even cold, check for yourself." Kyrus did not reply, but merely waited for the guard to sort himself out. The man was dense as dragon bone, but took the hint eventually. "Oh, the warlock wanted to see you in the Map Room, soon as you were up ... which you are now."
Kyrus eyed the man crossways. Too little sleep, I suppose. "Warlock Rashan, what was his mood like when last you saw him?"
"Fine spirits, sir. You might even call him giddy."
Kyrus stole a scone and a cup of cold tea, heating the latter as he walked. Giddy? Oh, that bodes ill. For a man whose hobbies involved blood and the sacking of cities, giddiness was hardly a cause for comfort. Azzat probably decided to invade us. No one else seems keen on fighting anymore. Of course, Kyrus knew that was not entirely true. Jinzan Fehr was taking on the role of Loramar and hero to all who opposed Kadrin. Likely, Rashan had some news along that vein.
The echoes down the corridor in front of Kyrus struck a familiar chord in Kyrus's mind as he drew nearer his destination. Rashan's singing voice was reedy, but it was clearly the noise he heard ahead of him. He had the melody chained to a wall, flogging it—the poor thing was in audible agony—but the tune was familiar. The words fit uncomfortably, the Kadrin syllables wedged in where Acardian ones had been scooped out, but it was an old tune that Kyrus knew. It was the sort of song the greybeards dredged out of the bottom of their fourth tankard of ale or so, making ridiculous boasts of prowess on subjects martial, marital, and ever
ywhere in between, growing wilder by the verse. It was inappropriate fare in taverns before a certain late hour, wildly so in the imperial palace. Of course, who was going to tell that to the demon?
"Has anyone ever told you that you cannot sing?" Kyrus asked upon reaching the doorway.
The song stopped. "No one who’s lived to tell the tale," Rashan replied, and fixed Kyrus with a smile fit to swindle a moneychanger.
"Well, let me just be the first, then. You cannot."
"First time for everything, I suppose," Rashan replied. "Such as me besting you at your little game of predicting enemy movements."
"Ah, is that the byword this morning? The reason the guard outside my door told me that you were 'giddy'? I would have thought a few hundred winters of being right ought to have inured you to such gloating."
"You might think so, but no," Rashan said. "You can impress most of the folk around here by doing sums without consulting your fingers. I have bested simpletons and the creatively stunted. I had a conspiracy sniffed out, right beneath my nose, and little Celia Mistfield peels back a layer to show me that my most trusted bootlick was masterminding it. I spent most of a season assuming that Jinzan Fehr must have taken refuge in Azzat, or taken his chances in the jungles of Elok, where I might never find him. Instead, I discover he was foolish enough to be lurking beneath Ghelk, in tombs I had thought burned and buried. I had a special doom planned for my old Ghelkan friends, and I still might visit it upon them, but in the meanwhile, I wait and deal with the latest necromancer to think himself a threat to the empire."
"Is he not a threat to the empire?" Kyrus asked. He had wandered into the room, and began looking at the illusory map, seeking changes that had been made since he last saw it.
"No, not really. Oh, the people within it, certainly, but not the empire itself. The empire will endure. The day he manages to kill the two of us, then perhaps the empire will be imperiled, but until such time, he is a fly. We might swat in vain at him, but eventually he will land long enough for us to smash him to ruin. And ... I was the one who guessed his path." Rashan crossed his arms, and nodded to the map. As Kyrus watched, the city of Weiselton caught fire. A tiny plume of smoke rose to knee height above it.