Emissary

by Thomas Locke

  Edlyn’s voice carried a crystal clarity. “Behold the orb that has remained hidden for a thousand years. Our power has been kept alive for just such a moment as this. We stand with you. We will not fail.”

  Trace pointed across the gathering and continued, “And there stands a company of Ashanta, a folk who in ten centuries have never left their communities. Do you see them, my friends? Do you understand what this means? We are today assembled as we have not been for a thousand years.”

  As the light faded, the Elven king motioned to his attendants. Two staffs were handed forward. The king planted first one and then the other into the roots upon which they stood. “Your orb, Master Trace.”

  The globe glowed in his hand with a special hint of springtime mint. Darwain held it a moment, his face bathed in the remarkable blending of green and violet, then set it atop the staff, which grew tendrils up and around the orb, gripping it firmly. “My lady?”

  “This is the first time in a thousand years that hands other than ours have held this orb,” Mistress Edlyn said.

  “I am honored,” Darwain said, planting her orb atop the second staff.

  Hyam watched the living staff grip the violet orb, seeing his mother’s final tapestry come alive before his very eyes. Only there was a difference here. He did not carry the staff into battle. In fact, his plan required that he not touch the orb at all. Hyam felt the first stab of bone-deep terror, for his plan was feeble in the face of their enemy’s coming wrath, and there was a very real chance he had gotten it all wrong.

  But it was too late to change things, for Darwain gave the staffs holding the orbs back to Trace and Edlyn and said, “So the globes were carried into the last battle against the Milantian foes. Now you are ready for war.” Then he turned to the Elven mages and cried, “Release the portal!”

  49

  The trees parted, the portal opened. Beyond the veil of green lay a harsh yellow light. The change was as shocking as the sudden blast of heat. The army had been warned, and still it faltered.

  “Remember your orders,” Bayard called, leading from the front. “Stay together. Attack on my command, or retreat if you are called to do so. Victory is ours. Onward!”

  Hyam clambered onto the vacated ledge so as to watch their progress and observe the enemy’s lair. They were separated from Emporis by a narrow valley that was empty of all save heat and rock and yellow dust. A fitful wind drifted back through the massive portal, carrying with it the scent of creosote and desert pine. The army moved swiftly into position on the bare rock terrace beyond the arid glade. Trace led half the mages to one side of the gathered force, Mistress Edlyn moved opposite him. On a rise behind her clustered the Ashanta. At the center of the warriors, equidistant between the wizards, stood Bayard and his force.

  There was no reason for subterfuge now, no need for further stealth. They were after havoc and alarm. They wanted the enemy taken aback.

  Which was why Bayard shouted with all his might, “Unfurl the banners!”

  A hundred tribal clans lifted standards of valleys that had been reduced to ash and cinder and bones. They were joined by standards of houses once bound by oath and blood to Bayard’s forebears. And there at its center, largest of all, rose the forbidden seal of the Oberon kings.

  “Sound the trumpets!”

  The silence was shattered by the rising clarion. Hyam shivered from its impact. To his ears, the trumpets resonated with an impossible combination of silver and crystal and raw courage.

  The enemy saw them. His rage was a hot breath that defied even the sun. Hyam reached for the orb he no longer held and hoped he had done the right thing.

  Bayard called, “Advance!”

  As he and his force marched into the valley, a swirling mist of rage and death rose from the city’s highest tower. It swirled in a delicate tendril that grew and spun and reached out. One strand, then another. Aiming across the valley like flaming meteors.

  Mistress Edlyn’s voice carried an impossible strength for one so ancient. “Wizards! Attack!”

  The mages clutched with magic hands at the two orbs, sending out lances of violet and silver-white light, spearing the incoming flames and reducing them to faint whispers of dark against the desert sky. More lights launched from Edlyn’s bevy, blasts of power that shot across the valley and struck the portals of Emporis with such might the ground beneath the army trembled. Again. A third time. On the fourth, the portico gave a great heaving groan and toppled to the earth.

  A rush of shouting warriors spilled through the demolished city gates. Their swords and armor glinted in the ruthless desert light. Bayard glanced back at Edlyn, who shouted, “They are human! They live!”

  “Then they are ours!” Bayard lifted his sword. “Attack!”

  Edlyn and her mages went back to assaulting the citadel. “Trace! The tower!” the Mistress cried.

  While ever more tendrils of flame rose from Emporis, Trace wove strands of his own, spinning them together into a light-lance that carried a searing force, growing and weaving like a master working a loom.

  “Trace!”

  The lance ripped the air as it shot across the vale. The sound was that of a giant’s blade cutting a slice from the world.

  At the last minute, the flaming tendrils retreated. They gathered into a massive shield held by a giant’s hand. A crimson beast rose above the highest tower of Emporis, forming a monster larger than the city below. The red tendrils were shot with fire and lightning, a crimson beast that deflected the light-lance with one sweep of his giant red orb.

  In the valley below, the two armies collided in a rush of steel and cries and fury.

  An Elf stepped to the center of the massive portal. She was garbed in mail as pale as moonlight. In her hand she held a green staff, upon which was planted an orb that shone with a fierce green light.

  Darwain had slipped up alongside Hyam. “We will keep the portal open as long as possible. As long as the remaining orbs can guarantee my kingdom’s safety.”

  Hyam turned to the Elven king and said, “It’s time.”

  50

  The Elven queen requested the honor of leading Hyam and Joelle to their destination. When the king looked ready to object, she said, “You should remain on command at the crucial juncture, sire.”

  “Return as swiftly as you are able,” he said, dismissing her.

  She bowed and waved them along.

  The lane they traversed was narrow by comparison, a high-ceilinged path that descended slightly and then ran smooth and long and true. At its end waited a score of Elven archers who knelt in greeting to their queen.

  “They did not volunteer for this duty, they begged,” she said.

  Hyam bowed to them and wished he was gifted at fine speech, for these warriors deserved more than a simple thanks. There before them rose another cloaked portal, far smaller than the one overlooking the valley. Hyam had no idea what he would find on the other side, even if his destination was where he intended. Abruptly he was caught by the recollection of his first dream of power, when tongues of fire rose from the earth and lashed at him. He shuddered and did his best to push the memories away. The prospect of not surviving the coming attack changed nothing. He had no choice but to try.

  The senior archer brought him back to the present by demanding, “How is it you speak our tongue?”

  “It was beaten into me. I resisted because I knew it was all wasted effort. Since everyone knows the Elves no longer walk the earth.”

  The archer did not quite smile. “It is good to know we are led by one who can admit when he is wrong.”

  “More often than I am right,” Hyam said. “More often than I would like.”

  “I will guard the portal,” the queen said. “Though I do not hold the orb, I am able to call upon—”

  She was silenced by an unearthly shriek. It rose both through the portal that opened ahead of them and from down the lane behind. The wail rose and was joined by a chorus of inhuman voices.

 
“What is that?” the Elven archer hissed.

  “The rise of the ghouls,” Hyam said. “My worst fears have been justified.”

  “Let us hope they will still obey the Ashanta countermand,” the queen said.

  Hyam glanced at Joelle, wishing for the impossible, that she would have remained somewhere safe. For even in this moment of gut-churning panic, he knew that unless they were successful, safety was nothing but a momentary myth. “Ready?”

  Her gaze held the strength to steady him. “I love you, Hyam.”

  The queen swept one hand up, drawing away the green curtain. “The hopes of all our races go with you.”

  As soon as they stepped through the portal, all their senses were assaulted by the battle. Directly overhead swarmed a ferocious pall of misery and ire. Two legs the size of cities rose to support a giant of fire and red smoke.

  Lances of brilliant light stabbed the giant, the city, the tower. The air shrieked from the strain and the impact. Searing forces released pungent clouds of sulfuric fumes. All around him, unseen folks screamed and wailed. The ground shook and groaned. Somewhere close, a fire raged.

  The Elven king had said that any grove would suffice to anchor their portal. But the larger the coppice, the stronger their bond. And the largest they had located inside Emporis was precisely where Hyam had hoped. He stood at the back of the royal gardens, staring directly into the peaked oak door set into the castle’s main keep. The tower from which the smoke and fire rose was directly to his right.

  “Spread out,” Hyam told the archers. “Guard our way back.”

  As they moved into position, Hyam said to Joelle, “I will try to lead you.”

  “I am ready.”

  It was a grave risk, for she had not managed to connect to the force before, only the orb. And he had never tried to forge such a bond without the orb within reach.

  He had also never stood atop the juncture of four great rivers.

  He did not search for the orb. He feared such an extension would alert the crimson mage. Everything that happened beyond the city’s walls was a diversion designed to grant Hyam this tiny moment in which he had to plunge, hunt, fly down deep into the earth.

  Without the orb.

  Hyam thought back to the moment he had stood in the field, and the energy that had surged up through his legs, filling him with the power to turn a spade into a wand. He clenched his mind and eyes and body, and hunted.

  Instantly he felt it. Only there were not four rivers. There were five. The four currents joined, and from them rose a fount that fed directly into the crimson mage’s orb.

  Hyam was not even aware he had crouched or that he gripped the earth. All he knew was the energy surged up, forming a sixth flow, coursing into him as well.

  Beside him Joelle sang, “I feel it!”

  But Hyam could no longer respond. The power gripped him with such ferocity he knew he was being consumed. Just as Trace had warned. Without the orb to serve as a conduit, he was filled with more energy than his human form could contain.

  The pain was an animal that consumed him from within. At the same time, his awareness blazed in all directions. Hyam glimpsed with utter clarity how the crimson wizard used his force to deafen the ghouls to the Ashanta’s unified commands. And how the Ashanta themselves were shielding the human forces led by Bayard from the ghouls. But the Ashanta’s power was waning from the fierce otherworldly onslaught.

  Hyam knew he had to act. The crimson one was winning. In an instant it would be too late, and all the forces arrayed against him destroyed.

  But he could not move. The light blinded him from within, chained him in place, and melted the flesh from his bones.

  From some great distance he heard Joelle scream his name. Her hand reached through the searing force and seized his shoulder. Joelle cried in a voice Hyam had never heard before. Or perhaps she made no sound at all, for his senses were melting from the power that poured through him. Then she unsheathed the Milantian blade and aimed it upward. Diverting the flow of power, draining some of the force away from Hyam. And toward the crimson mage upon the tower ramparts.

  It was the one line of assault the mage had not prepared for. The one direction from which he had no line of defense.

  Joelle shrieked a battle cry that echoed along the blade, a shimmering force that shone so bright it seared Hyam’s closed eyes. He felt the wizard on the citadel falter in utter astonishment and almost be defeated as a result. But not quite, for at the very last moment he withdrew from his assault across the valley, utilizing all his force to forge a magical shield. Joelle’s blast of energy was deflected upward, becoming a beacon lost to the desert sky.

  Hyam’s clarity returned with this draining of some of the power. He enveloped the Elves with his mage-force and cried, “Shoot your bows!”

  Instantly the Elves obeyed. Hyam fashioned an arrow of his own from the force that almost overwhelmed him. He was literally burning up from within. Releasing the arrow was a relief, for it granted him an avenue to discharge part of the force. The arrow became a stream of fire that flowed from the bow to the wizard.

  The crimson mage gestured with his orb-topped staff, deflecting their missiles as well.

  The Elves fired as fast as they could pluck an arrow from their quivers and draw and loose. And each one flew with the power that streamed through Hyam, consuming him in the process.

  The crimson mage reached up, and lightning gathered upon his orb. Around him rose a ghoulish cloud of dead warriors, screaming their war cry as they followed the lightning flash straight down, aiming for them.

  Joelle did battle with a spear that reached to the heavens, but the mage was besting them all. Hyam extended his arm and allowed the force of four rivers to pour through him. He knew he was burning up. He knew he could not survive much longer. And he knew as well that the crimson mage’s orb was holding fast.

  The answer came to Hyam with a tragic finality. He knew there was no time to think, for the power would soon consume him utterly.

  Hyam reached out with his other hand, crossing the valley in a single instant beyond time, and plucked the violet orb from Trace’s grasp. The old mage cried in forlorn protest. But Hyam was already gone. Streaking back across the vale.

  From his position at the tower’s base, he kept up a steady rushing torrent of power. Together he and Joelle blinded the crimson mage to the oncoming assault. Until it was too late.

  The crimson foe sensed Hyam’s new attack at the last possible moment. He had time to shriek his rage and woe. He lifted his own orb. Just as Hyam knew he would.

  The two orbs came together in a blast that flattened the tower. The explosion flung them to the earth. Stones melted to crimson lava and rained down around them.

  Hyam did not so much release the current as admit his final defeat. He gave in to the blackness and knew no more.

  51

  The first words Hyam heard were, “No, no, no, lass! Weave the spell. Like fabric rising from the loom of your fingers.”

  “Which is exactly what I was doing.”

  “You weren’t. You were kneading the power like you were making a loaf of bread.”

  “You weren’t even watching.”

  “What a mess you’re making.”

  “Mistress Edlyn says my work is beautiful.”

  “The poor lady’s mind is finally going. What a pity.”

  “You’re the one who can’t see what’s happening on the other side of the bed. Peevish and blind.”

  “I most certainly am not either.”

  “Peevish, peevish, peevish.”

  “Be silent, you scamp. Now observe. You release the energy. Push it away from your fingers. See how it weaves?”

  “Ooooh, that’s lovely.”

  “There, you see? I am not peevish.”

  “Let me try again.”

  “First you must apologize. It isn’t fitting for a student to address the master as you did.”

  “It is if the master is a fussbu
dget. All right. Here I go.”

  “Now that is much better. Excellent! In another fifty years or so, you might make a half-decent mage. If someone with more patience than I can somehow teach you proper respect.”

  Hyam drifted away then, carried by the comforting sound of friends. He settled back into the embrace of whatever potion and spell they used to hold him. But not before he caught the faint whisper of loss. Something was gone, leaving behind a sorrow so intense it sliced at his final waking breath.

  The next time he rose up, the Mistress of Falmouth said, “He is with us.”

  “I don’t detect any change,” Trace said.

  Hyam found it easier to speak while keeping his eyes shut, as though he had the energy to speak or see, but not both. He licked dry lips and croaked, “You didn’t notice the last time either.”

  He felt soft hands touch his shoulder, his neck, his cheek, and Joelle whispered into his ear, “My darling, how are you?”

  Hyam found it impossible to respond, because the answer was, he was already retreating.

  The next time he returned, he was carried aloft by the knowledge that the orb was gone. The thought resonated through his mind, pushing away the lingering tendrils of sleep. The globe was shattered and the point of power lost. But this was not the true problem. Hyam recalled the surge of force rising through him and knew something had been burned away. He felt it like an absent limb. He knew with utter certainty that he would spend the rest of his life reminding himself he had done the right thing, that his sacrifice had been the only route to victory. That his loss was a small price to pay.

  He opened his eyes to find Trace there beside him. The room swam gradually into focus. He was back in a windowless chamber, as bleak as the cell he had known as a child. The only difference was the magical illumination that glowed in the side alcove, filling the room with a comforting warmth. That and the smiling mage who lifted his head and helped him drink.

  Hyam lifted his right arm, the one that throbbed the worse, and saw it was bandaged from shoulder to hand.