by Allen Snell
“That’s why your soul is more important than the invasion,” Garen said. “We’re going to meet with Amiri and make those demands now, not when Therov convinces you to throw any more lives away.”
Drake was still in agony, that much Garen could tell, but the waking nightmare seemed to have passed. The beaten, weary voice of his friend answered him. “Perhaps you’re right. We should go.”
* * * * *
Drake joined Garen in the levitrans and rode back toward the city. Thankfully, the imperial crest emblazoned along the side and bottom let them make it over the walls without causing a stir from the guards below. At Spiredal’s gates, Garen sent word that he had returned with information about the invading forces’ demands. Drake smiled weakly, appreciating the lack of specifics.
A dozen palace guards escorted them inside. Within the usually spacious halls of Spiredal, hundreds of refugees crowded around. After minutes of pushing their way through the crowd, they arrived at a private meeting room. More refugees were huddled inside, and guards ushered them out.
Other than the handful of possessions they left behind, the room had only a long wooden table and chairs around it. Drake took a seat and waited silently. Garen sat beside him. The moment he did, worry crept into his mind how this might appear. He wasn’t planning to be on Drake’s or Amiri’s side in the conversation ahead. But in a physical sense, there was no seating option for “neither.”
Drake shivered, and Garen could see how much was burdening him. Drake mumbled to himself.
Garen nudged him. “Hey, don’t even listen to their nonsense. That monster’s nothing like you.”
Drake nodded and muttered back to himself, “Garen doesn’t even need to hear you to know that’s a terrible idea.”
Micah and Amiri entered the room, dismissing all but two remaining guards to their positions. Word of Drake’s presence must have reached Micah before he entered the room. He seemed elated without surprise. Before either could address him, Drake took the initiative. “Men, I need you to sit down and hear me with an open mind.”
Micah’s expression turned from joy to concern. Both kings sat, but Amiri chose to ask his own questions. “Who speaks for the Apatten? Can you tell us what they’re after?” Amiri’s arms rested squarely on the table, for once not fidgeting with his beard.
“Fine,” Drake said. “I will answer your questions first. The man who brought this army to your gates is…” Drake looked to Garen and nodded, “…a monster. But it was not without purpose.”
“This man you speak of controls the Apatten?” Amiri asked.
Drake’s eyes fixed on a blank patch of the wall. “He speaks to them directly on the wind, a voice in every ear he chooses. He guides them in and out of the earth. He is their god, and they follow his every command.”
“We need to know who has those spirits,” Micah said. The relief from seeing Drake alive still colored his words with hope.
Drake’s hand rattled against the table. He refused to make eye contact. “Please listen and hold your judgment. This monster is within me. Therov has poisoned me, mind and soul. He stokes hearths into forest fires. He bends fears and ambitions into obsessions. Even when I tell him no, he guides my steps. A gale too powerful to resist.”
Amiri slowly reached a hand to the glowing band on his arm, but Drake’s shout froze him. “No! You must listen to me first. I’m not proud of what I’ve done. That shame kept allowing him to manipulate me. But I’m here to make things right any way I can. To resolve our demands peacefully.”
Amiri placed his arms back on the table. “Your demands?”
“Yes,” Drake said. His calm sigh reassured everyone. “The immediate release of every slave hidden within the Geonode Guild’s towers. The reinstatement of geonode trade limitations. And amnesty for my kingdom. They had no part in my decision to bring the Apatten here.”
Amiri retained his stiff posture, stroking his beard as he contemplated the list. Garen tried adding to his persuasion. “None of us want to be in the position we’re in, but these are good requests.”
Amiri glowered at Garen as if he were a child speaking out of turn. Garen suddenly realized he wasn’t sitting among two friends and a king. He was sitting among three kings. Amiri turned back to Drake. “You’ve left a long trail of bodies behind you for a man with good requests. If I cower to you now, what stops you from making unreasonable demands next time?”
Drake furrowed his brow. “I believe your brother can vouch that I have no greater ambitions than seeing my family brought to justice. I can dispose of the Apatten once and for all as soon as my demands are met.”
Amiri continued to mull it over beneath his dark expression. “The demands themselves are reasonable,” Amiri said. “But no change is immediate. Guild reform is tedious and delicate, not something I can enact in a single day while your beasts ravage the farming settlements.
“No change is immediate?” Drake asked with a huff. The tone was more confrontational than Garen was used to. “All change is immediate. It is the very nature of change. The wind does not wait for you to tell it where to blow.”
The hair on Garen’s arms stood on end. He couldn’t tell how much of his friend was speaking. The words didn’t sound like Drake’s. He tried to nudge Drake again, but Garen felt the bite of wind along his skin. Drake’s eyes stayed locked with Amiri’s.
Amiri did not back down. “Then you and I must remember we are not the wind. We are all just men hoping to avoid a lot of bloodshed today.”
“And I imagine you expect that change immediately, not after they have picked the city clean.”
“Are you now threatening to use your army? I thought you’d come to us seeking forgiveness,” Amiri said, one hand reaching for his wrist again. He touched the band until it glowed blue.
Drake breathed deeply. “I knew you would take more convincing. I was a fool to ignore Therov.”
The door to their meeting room opened. A gust from Drake slammed it shut. He raised the stone floor up at an angle to keep it closed.
“Drake, please!” Micah said. “We only want to discuss this matter in a safer setting. We can still resolve this peacefully.”
“I might have believed you. That is, if I hadn’t listened to your endless stream of lies this year, Kiron. Also, I can hear the heavy footsteps moving toward our room. They have their weapons drawn.”
Garen could hear them guards trying to force open the door.
“A precaution you have made necessary,” Amiri defended his actions as he stood. “Just in case Therov—”
Drake stood and shouted back. “In case Therov does what?” His eyes flared with hate. “Convinces me of the one truth he’s been whispering this whole time? That you’ll never see past your pride and bow to another’s wisdom? That the only submissive Jundux is a dead one?”
Garen couldn’t sit next to his friend being manipulated like that. He stood and reached for Drake. An unexpected force tripped Garen backward over his chair.
Guards broke the door off its hinge. Amiri leaned over the table, glaring at Drake. “I’m done being threatened. We can continue this conversation once you’re my priso—”
Amiri’s words ended in a choked cough. Garen kicked the chair aside and bounced back to his feet. He saw a wooden spear stretched up from the table. It extended straight through the eldest king’s throat.
Micah leapt to his brother. Garen charged at Drake, katana unsheathed. Drake gave the briefest glance, but quickly looked away. A gap split in the stone floor under Drake. He dropped into it. The ground sealed shut and left no trace.
Chapter 32
Garen pounded the floor with the bottom of his fists. He hated feeling this helpless. That cowardly escape had been used against him for the last time.
“He’s gone,” Garen shouted at the confused soldiers entering the room.
Garen looked to Micah with a terrifying question on his mind. Micah’s dark hair swayed as he shook his head, downcast. He snapped the woode
n point protruding from the back of Amiri’s neck and, with a gruesome shiver, lifted him off the spike. Micah laid his brother to rest on his back. The most dignified of the Jundux sons was dead, his face frozen in a contortion of rage and pain. Micah closed Amiri’s eyes. The blood on his hands smeared across Amiri’s face. Micah was trembling. If Garen felt like his world was falling apart, he couldn’t imagine Micah’s loss.
Garen couldn’t stand still. He tossed a chair out of his way and ran for the door. Micah gave a quiet command, “Don’t go after him.”
Garen stopped, puzzled. “We have a war to fight. He made that choice for us.”
Micah didn’t face him, still kneeling beside his brother. “Then go win a war. But don’t look for revenge. Either he’ll take your life, or you’ll take his madness. I won’t have either. Not when you’re my only family left.”
The plea took hold of Garen’s stomach and twisted it. He wanted to leave this moment behind and drown his guilt in the tide of war. But those were words he couldn’t brush aside. He’d never regarded Micah as family. He was elevated, proper, and royal—far too distant to view as a brother. But to Micah, Garen was the last person alive he’d grown up with, the last trace of happier days in their youth. What he wouldn’t give for another day with them all.
“I’ll try to get through to him,” Garen said. “If Naia and I can get in close enough, anything’s possible.”
Micah nodded and Garen left. The guards he ran past were spreading the horrible news at an alarming rate. He imagined some would be stirred to bravery by it. Others seemed devastated. There was no way to recapture the secret at this point. They would have to be willing to fight for a kingless kingdom.
He stepped into the sunlight and saw the frantic movement on the horizon. Thousands of Apatten soldiers were in full sprint toward them. They needed no ranks or formation. Their arrangement seemed random and chaotic, but he knew the order had been spoken to them on the wind simultaneously.
Garen hadn’t seen a single levitrans coming in our out of Kalyx since he arrived. Thirty of them zipped into the sky and filled that void. They spread in every direction. For a moment, it looked like a coordinated escape. These were normal transports, not some weapons-clad creation. Apparently, that was the easiest way to drop Morgan’s fire geonodes.
The Apatten were still distant. Panic following the king’s death must have trumped Morgan’s argument to wait. Garen wanted to get closer to the walls, but descending into the city would make it difficult to survey the battlefield. What would he do once he reached the walls, anyway?
He saw why Micah and Idrian had been insistent that the Spellswords could not fight a war. It wasn’t that the forces could overpower him. It was that he couldn’t stop enough to matter. They could quite literally ignore him in every way, let Garen cut them to pieces, and still demolish the city entirely. Holding them at the walls and letting the crossbowmen thin their ranks seemed to be the only hope. Walls. The least useful tool since the goffing Dawn.
The first levitrans reached a cluster of Apatten in the open field. Garen saw the geonodes drop as it circled overhead. Columns of raging fire a hundred feet long shot outward from the stones and turned everything in their way to chaff. As they bounced against the ground, the columns spun at unpredictable angles, and the fires consumed any of the creatures caught in the way.
The River Rojand shook, rising and spilling onto both sides of the bank. It didn’t make sense for Naia to divert the river like this, but it was too much water manipulation for anyone but a Spellsword.
The riverbed crested and formed two diverging streams. He realized it wasn’t the water that was being shaped. Grooves spread across the grassy plains, allowing channels to circle the city. The river flowed into them. They were less than a foot deep and quickly turning to mud, but they were sufficient for the Apatten’s need. Each creature took a roll through the murky water, emerged sopping wet, and continued their sprint.
Levitranses in every direction scattered their fire geonodes. Some were successful, incinerating both dry and drenched Apatten. Several more landed on muddy ground. Instead of bouncing and twisting the fire, they merely thudded once and scorched a line in the earth.
The frequency of the explosions tapered off. Garen feared their arsenal was spent. Through the haze of smoke, Garen could see the Apatten scattered across the landscape, still running forward no matter who died to their left or right. The grass fields burned in wide expanses between the river channels. The walls of flame would have kept normal soldiers at bay for a while, but not these things. A few were punished with scalding burns. Fewer still caught fire, and it quickly brought them down. Most were sopping wet and charged through the fires without fear. Nearly eight of the original ten thousand rushed onward behind the returning levitrans fleet.
Garen was forced to assess where he would be most helpful. Kalyx had only two breaks in its walls, one where the River Rojand entered and one where it exited. The number of channels diverting the river caused it to run abnormally shallow. If it drained any further, the Apatten would have a clear breach to enter through.
Garen light-shifted from one rooftop to the next. He found Naia already standing where the river and wall met, a gap about ten homes wide. She pulled the shallow water out of the river like she had strings attached. It iced over as she attached it to the wall. She closed the gap entirely, securing her barrier firmly to both sides with an extra layer. Ice and ice-covered stone shimmered blindingly in the midday sun.
Naia took off running in the opposite direction. It seemed likely the other side of the city would need the same protection. She dove into the river, unconcerned with its temperature this late in the fall. She wrapped herself within the wave and let it carry her under the city.
An explosion rang out in the distance, a sound that he’d learned far too well from Vikar-Tola. It was the sound of stones erupting and the steady rumble of a collapse. Garen light-shifted as quickly as he could to the sound. Chunks of brightly decorated stone lay in a heap. The wall was split apart a dozen feet wide. The Apatten had their first opening into the city, assuming they could climb the debris along the bottom. Garen saw Drake soaring overhead. Another explosion rang out. The wall crumbled there, too. Crossbowmen along the top fell to their deaths. Rubble buried the soldiers near the base.
Kalyx guards ran toward the breach. It didn’t take long for Garen to realize they were a specialized group like the Centralians. Some guided the debris back to the wall. Others waved their hands side to side and reconnected the multicolored stones. It wasn’t as thick or as elegant as it originally stood, but it would stop the Apatten from pouring in when they reached it.
As Garen light-shifted to the top of the wall, he realized that moment was dreadfully close. Protecting this city would mean stopping Drake from leveling the walls. It wasn’t revenge. It was necessity. All he had to do was chase down the one person who could outmaneuver him in the air.
Raw speed wasn’t the issue. Drake moved quickly through the skies, but Garen knew he could catch him by shifting into light. He unsheathed his sword and zipped through the air, one shift at a time. Eventually, he reformed a few feet from striking distance. Another explosion shook the ground below. Drake swerved away from him. Garen shifted again. It was closer, but still out of reach from a moving target.
“I spared you once,” Drake shouted, “but that mercy is spent.”
Garen readied himself for the best chance he had. He shifted in front of Drake and let out a beam of blinding light. Drake cursed and redirected his flight away from the city. Garen chased after him. They passed overtop the army of Apatten below. He kept up with short light-shifts, this time ready to expend as much depth as necessary to bring Drake down.
Garen formed a dozen lances of ice, each glistening in the sky. He sent the barrage straight for the still-blind Drake. Only a couple lances were fast enough. Rather, they would have been if they hadn’t vanished into nothing on contact. Garen recognized the Gate of Ch
oice. He felt his depth return to him as if he’d never cast it. Either Drake had yet another skill he was unveiling—or Aethis was nearby.
Garen didn’t have to search the battlefield long to find her. She sat atop a golden sedan chair with poles along the side. Four Apatten carried her as fast as they could run amidst the rest of the advancing army. And if a golden throne amidst the battlefield wasn’t obvious enough, she raised her hand from her lap just high enough for a polite wave to him.
Aethis cancelled the wind spell keeping him aloft. Garen summoned another gust. The spell was quickly waved out of existence, but each initial burst slowed his descent. He repeated the process to keep from falling at a terrifying rate. The Apatten beneath him kept their purple eyes fixed forward. They had no idea what was about to land.
With both hands above his head on his sword, Garen pulled the muddy soil up to his feet and pushed it down with the impact of his fall. The ground rippled out in every direction, tossing the nearest hundred Apatten like ragdolls. Garen felt the strain in his knees, but was delighted to know they could handle the abuse.
He considered executing as many Apatten as he could on the way to Aethis. Seeing thousands of the creatures up close showed him how little it would matter. Five quick light-shifts brought him to her. He cut down two of the Apatten carrying her sedan before they could respond. The chair tipped backward, alerting the front two of the danger. Garen took off the head of one while it reached for its weapon.
The golden chair thudded to the ground as the last Apatten readied its blade. Garen exchanged a series of fast clashes, always surprised by their reflex and prowess. Garen swung his katana in with a reckless, one-handed slice. The Apatten blocked the obvious strike. Garen pressed the palm of his other hand to the creature’s chest. If Aethis had tried, she wasn’t fast enough to reverse the spell that lit it on fire.