by Joe Ducie
“Behold the Orc Mare,” Emissary snarled. “Another race loyal once again to the true masters of Forget: the Everlasting.”
From behind Emissary, dozens of Orc Mare unfurled semi-translucent wings. They were skeletal creatures, with wasted leathery skin that stretched taut over their elongated and misshapen bones. Burning, insane eyes of black coal glared at me, and fanged maws dripped yellow pus, which sizzled against the road. Even from fifty feet away, they stank of sulfur and death.
Not overly worried just yet, I gripped the barrel of the shotgun and frowned. “Em, you seemed to have some control over these beasts earlier in the year, when you stabbed me—”
“They owed me a tentative allegiance then,” she said, hands protecting her baby. “King Morpheus held some command over them in the outer territories of Voraskel. They do not owe me allegiance now… and Morpheus is quite dead.”
“Ah, right.” I shrugged out of the pack, keeping a firm grip on the shotgun. When—not if—the attack came, I wanted to be able to move quickly, unencumbered.
“Now I’ll take the dagger, if you please,” Emissary said. “And the woman.”
“You would dare…” Emily said softly but loudly enough to carry the distance between the monsters and us.
“My lady,” Emissary said, his smile all charm and eyes alight as he stomped out his cigar. “Your race is run, your game is over. Lord Oblivion was quite clear. I’m to slice you open and feed that abomination in your belly to the Orc Mare.”
Well, that settled who would die first and, if I could swing it, slowest.
Emily pursed her lips into a thin, dangerous line. “Declan, I would very much like you to destroy that creature.”
“Well, Hale?” Emissary snapped. “Have you nothing to say?”
“Oh, aye. Just one thing, you ken?” I leveled the shotgun at his head. “Knight’s bite repels the blight, motherfucker!”
“Bah! Mortal weapons are—”
I fired—the shotgun roared.
The scatter from the shells of Infernal-runic star iron tore a hole the size of a grapefruit in Emissary and ripped his right arm from its socket. Emissary wailed, spun on the spot, and struck the ground in a bloody, writhing mess. Purple ichor spurted from its wound, and if I knew anything about the creature, it wouldn’t stay down for long. They needed to be beheaded good and proper with a piece of star iron—preferably a sharp piece—to finish the job.
I didn’t have a sharp piece of star iron, but I had my grandfather to thank for teaching me their weakness. As Chief Librarian of the Forgetful Library—at least, before my downfall—old Aloysius Hale had held and read books most Knights didn’t even know existed. He had picked up an old scrap of law: Knight’s bite, star iron, repelled the blight—repelled the Everlasting and their servants.
The Orc Mare charged me en masse, howling, raving, slathering at the mouth and coal-black eyes burning.
Now, that was a challenge I was more than capable of meeting. I stayed in front of Emily, tossed the shotgun aside, and pooled smoky, luminescent light into my palms.
It had been a good long while since I’d fought foes that could fall under simple Willfire. I’d been one of the Academy’s best students when it came to combat enchantment. That skill had served me well in the Tome Wars, ensured my rise through the Knights and access to battle enchantments better left alone.
I cracked my fingers, fell into an old stance, and began to carve through the Orc Mare. “Come on, then, you sons of bitches!”
I summoned needle-thin beams of pure energy, borrowed from the world of Coyle’s Reborn—a story where the characters could manipulate light and string together weaves of crippling power. The barrage of white fire cut through the first wave of Orc Mare, slicing them in twain and twain again. The ragged flesh burst like swollen sacks against a hot stove. The battle howls turned to shrieks of dismay, of agony.
Still the horde attacked. Some took to the air, while others stumbled and clawed over the squirming mess I’d made of their brethren.
I stood my ground and gave Emily a quick glance over my shoulder. Picking idly at threads on her blue shawl, she seemed content to just watch me work. This ugly work was what I’d been born for, twenty-five years ago, and bred for through all my time at the Infernal Academy and in the Tome Wars. I kept one hand firing pellets of crackling energy into the snarling crowd and used the other to create a whip of bright red flame. I cracked the whip through the air and struck the beasts that had taken to the sky, slicing limbs from torsos and heads from necks. It started to rain monster blood and sizzling chunks of charred, rotten meat.
A wave of heat, backlash from the whip, washed over me, carrying the scent of burning flesh. I took a step back.
The Orc Mare ranks broke and turned to flee, but I didn’t let them get far. I clapped my hands together and sent a crippling explosion of wind and fire after them. The chipped cobblestones broke further under the force of my power and downed the last of the Orc Mare, their bones liquefied.
Quiet fell.
Slow trails of luminescent smoke spiraled up from around my hands.
“It is truly something to see you… unleashed, Declan.” Eyes alight and wild, Emily was breathing hard, flushed with adrenaline.
I hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Emissary, amidst the carnage, started to laugh. That particular asshole had been slowly pulling himself back together during the festivities and was almost whole again.
From within the ruined buildings, howls of anger began to rise.
More Orc Mare. By the sound of it, a helluva lot more. In the dead years since the Fall of Voraskel, it seemed that the city had become infested with the worst kind of scum.
“Time for us to depart, I reckon.” I quickly strapped the shotgun to the pack, shouldered it, and pulled the straps tight against my chest. I reached into the pool of Will once more, palms aglow, and offered Emily my hand. “I’m barely warmed up, Your Majesty. May I?”
Emily grinned—her timeless smile that always hinted at secrets I was too stupid to see. “I thought you’d never ask…”
One arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, I picked her up, baby and all.
The Orc Mare were regrouping and pouring from the ruins of the city like shit from a burst pipe, howling for my head. The creature I knew as Emissary had nearly succeeded in pulling itself back together, but it was having some trouble with the star iron shells fused into its flesh.
“Hale!” Emissary roared.
“Overstayed our welcome,” I muttered and concentrated on the ground at my feet. Passages of Raymond Germaine’s Gravity Boots swam through my mind. Cords of liquid light fell from my hands, and a warm breeze swept Emily’s hair into my face as a bubble of invisible energy began to form around us. Cracked stones and pebbles began to float up toward me, the pressure building. “Hold on tight, my dear!”
The bubble of Will burst, and I was flung up into the sky, high above the city. A hundred feet, two hundred, three hundred—higher! Wind rushed past my ears, and Emily laughed, delighted, as we arched over the ruined skyscrapers and crashed starship. We gracefully fell on a platform of glowing smoke beneath my feet, the remnants of the bubble.
I wasn’t flying—that wasn’t quite possible, as far as the Knights knew. Well, it was possible, but required such an understanding of aerodynamics and air pressure as to be a wholly ineffective means of getting about. But I could leap several hundred feet into the air in a single bound, and fall with a bit of style and grace. We were taught the technique from a very young age at the Academy, from books written expressly for the purpose of teaching young Knights how to survive. Or, as the case may be, how to make a swift exit from a dangerous situation.
I landed outside the other side of the city, as gently as if stepping off a curb, and placed Emily on her feet. The air behind us was rife with the frenzied screams of the Orc Mare. They’d soon be hot on our tail.
In front of us were trees, leafy and green and a
good hundred feet tall. Thick bands of roots, as thick as I was wide, had grown together in a tangle that seemed impenetrable.
“Well,” Emily said. “Right where we need to be. The Forest of Astoria, the Sleeping Goddess.”
“Best we hurry,” I prodded. The fight with the Orc Mare had sapped my strength a bit. I wasn’t keen for a rematch any time soon. “Which way?”
“This way, sweet Declan.” Emily headed along the edge of the trees. “If we—oh, oh my.” Her hands flew to her stomach, and her face clenched in pain.
I was at her side in a heartbeat. “What’s the matter?”
“Hmm… nothing, I’m fine. I don’t think the bairn enjoyed your leap through the sky as much as I did.” Emily Grace smiled and wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. “Come along, then. A few miles farther to travel yet.”
Chapter Eleven
The Enchanted Forest of Astoria
Emily led the way under mighty boughs and over tangled roots, seeming to know where she was going. She moved with that timeless grace of hers, each step certain, and I sensed that Emily Grace had spent distant years wandering the paths of this forest. Too much I don’t know about you, Em… After all that had happened between us—my death—the last thing in the worlds I should’ve been doing was helping her. But she was lovely and pregnant, and I cared for her deeply.
“Take me for a fool…” I muttered and swatted at some tiny fireflies dancing around my face. The air was warm under the tall, leafy trees, and charged with scents of earthy grass and something that might have been lavender. We’d left behind the sounds of the Orc Mare and the ruined city howling for my head.
Only an hour after the fight in the city, and Willful energy still jolted through my veins, making me eager for more, to drink as deeply from the fires of creation as I could, to bask in the light as I burned. Only my discipline and my years of training kept me from doing just that.
New recruits at the Academy had horror stories drilled into them on their first day. The power of Will itself was infinite—forever and eternal—but human capacity to use and abuse the fuel was limited, sometimes severely. That was why I’d taken Ethan under my wing earlier that year—if someone didn’t guide him, he’d trip up one day and burn himself or others to ash… if he even left that much. He had that potential in him, buried under years of pretending magic wasn’t real, but channeling vast amounts of Will came with one helluva high. Thankfully, only the strongest practitioners, the elite, ever became Knights—and therefore those able to channel vast amounts of Will were taught the skills to manage it.
Ascension City was full of people who could use Will, but the vast majority—ninety-nine percent, even—could never reach the apocalyptic amounts the Knights were capable of wielding. Those people could use small enchantments all day, every day, and feel nothing more than a caffeine buzz from their efforts.
The Knights were orders of magnitude above the vast majority. That was why we ruled the world.
I wondered if Emissary had managed to pluck the star iron buckshot from his chest—were we hunted yet?
Emily did not seem concerned, for she stopped to smell a copse of colorful wildflowers.
“How far to go?” I asked, glancing up at the sky I could only glimpse through the canopy. Avalon hung over most of the heavens, but the sun had fallen behind the planet. A dusky sort of twilight, blurred by the planet’s broken rings, dominated the sky.
“Not far now, Declan,” Emily said, holding her stomach again. “Little lad is kicking up a storm in here.”
“Lad?” I raised an eyebrow, somewhat startled to learn the baby’s gender. “You know, back at the Academy, the recruits used to tell stories. One—well, more than one—was about prophecy. I’ve never been much of a fan of prophecy. Still, the story goes that the son of the Immortal Queen would both save and destroy the world… Or destroy it to save it, or something. I forget the details. And it never said which world.”
Emily laughed, high and true. “Well, if he’s anything like his father, then I imagine he’ll get up to all sorts of mischief.”
“Who is his father, if I may be so bold?” I’d assumed it had been Morpheus Renegade, a few months before I’d driven the Roseblade through his heart.
“A man I met some years ago.” Emily’s face grew wistful. “All charm and kindness, but underneath a layer of unbreakable iron. He was handsome, too—inside and out. And a few years older than you, Declan.”
I pondered Emily’s description for a moment, stroking my chin. Nothing in there that gave away much. “Sure, but I bet he didn’t have rugged good looks and a kickass eye patch like me, did he?”
Emily smiled. “No, he certainly did not.”
From the copse of flowers, Emily led the way along a rough path through the forest. The path took a turn down into what I could see was a deep valley between a range of distant peaks, collaring the valley almost like a horseshoe. Nearby I heard gushing water. Great boulders the size of minivans lined the path, caught between the trees as if dropped by ambling giants. Thick, green moss clung to the rock and the air took on a cooler bite, less humid, more charged with negative ions.
I felt more alert and energetic—ready for anything.
“If I recall, we’re close to the outer ring surrounding the Tomb,” Emily said. “There’s a hidden glen, a sort of secret grove, where we can rest and plan for the assault on the Tomb.”
A rest, something to eat, and maybe an hour or two of sleep sounded ideal. Long shadows and the onset of night drew close. “An assault? What are you expecting to find there? This far out in an empty forest on a relatively empty world?” I sighed and answered my own question. “Lord Oblivion—you think he’s here already.” Inside what’s left of Tal…
“Yes, I imagine he is close by. The Emissary and the Orc Mare were, I believe, an alarm to alert Oblivion of our arrival. Now, we’ll soon pass over an outer ring of star iron,” Emily said. “When we do, you may find yourself cut off from Origin, Declan. The Tomb is surrounded by deep layers of runic star iron, buried hundreds of feet down into the earth.”
I hesitated, just for a moment, one hand leaning against a heavy old oak tree for support. Star iron had a plethora of wonderful uses beyond beheading demigods. The Knights forged blades that couldn’t be manipulated by enemy Will-casters from star iron. They also—and I knew this firsthand—made shackles that dammed the Willful’s ability to access their power.
Emily had just informed me that I was about to be hamstringed and, likely, trapped with one of the Everlasting.
“Great. Anything else you want to tell me? Perhaps that I’ll need to be blindfolded for the next round? One arm tied behind my back, maybe?”
“Oh I’m sure a resilient young man like you will find a way to save the day.” Emily grinned, showing perfect white teeth and soft dimples. “If we hurry, we’ll be hidden in the grove before true nightfall.”
*~*~*~*
The grove was secluded—secretive, even—and for the first time that day, I felt almost safe. The feeling was an illusion, perhaps—given where we were, what was on our tail, and what lay ahead—but for the time being, we could rest under the shattered sky.
We had crossed the star iron bindings surrounding the Tomb of the Sleeping Goddess a half-mile back. Doing so had dealt me a sore blow, as if all the air had been pushed from my lungs. Crossing the wide, deep ring had felt like wading through waist-deep treacle, slow going and sticky. Entering the binding’s ancient power had left me a touch groggy and Will-less, while the pack and the shotgun became a whole lot heavier.
I’d grumbled and moaned the whole half a mile to this little slice of enchanted paradise.
Emily’s secret grove was nestled up against a wide pool of near-still dark water reflecting the ruins of Avalon high above. A small, trickling waterfall fed the pool from a series of cracked boulders that had fallen into the valley like misshapen stairs—a natural windbreak against the weather rolling in over the mountains. On the north and s
outh banks of the pool, small smoother rocks—natural seating—were scattered on the dry green grass, and to the right, a border of impenetrable ancient trees covered in velvety moss hid us from prying eyes.
In the air hung sparks of ethereal white light, as if a light snowfall had been set on fire. I reached out to touch one of the sparks, but it darted away. Huh. They’re alive, whatever they are…
“Oh, it is good to be back here.” Emily removed her sandals, took a seat on one of the rocks, and dipped her toes in the pool. “Nowhere else in all the worlds I’d rather be…”
“Paddy’s?” I offered, slipping out of the pack and unclipping the shotgun for ease of access. I took a moment to reload the darn thing from the stock of shells in the pack. “I hear it’s rebuilt and better than ever, after Emissary’s attack earlier in the year. I don’t think I ever thanked you, by the way, for warning me about that.”
Emily rolled her eyes and grinned. “For a man known during the Tome Wars for his strategic mind and cleverness in plotting and planning the downfall of empires, gods, and the almighty rulers of Forget, Declan,”—she gave a wry chuckle—“you can be hopelessly predictable.”
“But never boring, eh?”
“You are many things, but never boring. A little maudlin, at times—not without reason, I know. But if you wore a little more happiness every now and again as well as you wear that waistcoat...”
I snorted laughter and set about preparing a small meal in the last of the light. The snowflake creatures provided a subtle ambience, as did the bands of torn planetary rings in the night sky, creeping in between the canopy and reflected in the pool.
Dinner was a small, intimate affair. Emily and I sat, tired but warm, on boulders near the water and feasted on warm apples, squashed bread rolls, handfuls of salted almonds, and a small helping of comfortable silence. I kept an ear perked back toward the city, listening for the snapping of branches or disturbed underbrush. Emissary and the Orc Mare would not have given up.