Whisper Alive

by Marc Secchia

  “Azar! To the Grey!” thundered Xola. “Shields! Get me canodraconids at the double, you laggards! Load that catapult – aye, you withering fungus brain! Now!”

  As Whitesun finally dipped below the great bulwarks fringing the canyon, the Azar army streamed over the bridge, both above the buttress and on the bridge dangling below. Whisper saw many of the shorter, thicker Arborite axmen mixed in with the tall Azarinthine soldiers. Xan must have been recruiting. Above, in the air, the Dragons reformed as though responding to an invisible command, and a dense flight of dragonets came swirling in from the strongside direction, cawing and chittering their anger. Xola had archers and crossbow-men deploying on the slopes and taking command of the well-built battlement, and with a few swipes of her right boot, deployed her Mages and Warlocks efficiently. Meantime, the Arborite troops swarmed through the archway and formed up in their ranks, sixty wide and four to five soldiers deep. They shuffled forward a few feet in close formation, allowing the Azar soldiers to deploy mobile crossbow-stands behind them, and a line of Mages, Enchanters and Warlocks filed around the back too; one shook hands gravely with Shivura and took a moment to introduce himself.

  Whisper blinked. Humans. This was the moment to exchange pleasantries? Rhyme and Xan could be excused as they had assumed the Warlock had been crushed under hundreds of tonnes of stone – sadly, apparently not the case.

  The Earth Enchanters were already chanting away, trying to seal up the gap where Warlock Sanfuri had vanished, but the rock-slide bulged ominously and developed new cracks. “Shields up!” Mage Shivura called clearly. Just in time. Shendite, granite and graxite exploded outward, showering the waiting ranks with dust and boulders, but the Mage-magic pulverised them and only dust and pebbles rained down. The soldiers coughed, covered in a thick layer of grey dust.

  “Sorry,” growled the Mage. “No time for details.” He raised his hands in expectation.

  Sanfuri and Ignothax staggered out of the tunnel’s dark opening. The Warlock looked fetchingly displeased with life, bleeding from his ears and nostrils and rather grimier than his usual spick-and-span best, while his Gold-Red familiar limped heavily, favouring his left foreleg.

  Whisper called, “Do us all a favour and die properly next time, will you?”

  Grim laughter rippled over the Arborite and Azar ranks.

  Warlock Sanfuri twisted his head as if his neck hurt, and then wrung out his fingers and arms with a convulsive gesture as ranks of his Mages and Warlocks filed up behind him. They were all clad in sweeping grey cloaks. Whisper suspected Sanfuri had wanted to demonstrate his dominance. Now, nothing showed in his countenance except cold fury, and that made him doubly dangerous.

  “Exterminate these vermin who dare oppose Sanfuri the Conqueror,” he whispered, yet the sibilant sound carried to every ear. “The Grey Queen is mine. Destroy the rest.”

  Chapter 25: Dashing Whisper

  MISSLES DARKENED THE early evening sky and the ground groaned and heaved as the magic users of both sides set to with a will. The Element Enchanters cracked rock or solidified it in defence. Earth, pebbles and fragments of crystal sprayed from their hands in attack. The Mages shielded or summoned fire, hurled mana-bolts across the divide and hammered at each other’s minds, seeking a decisive advantage or a chink in the mental armour. The Warlocks unleashed their devious devices or summoned creatures to the fray, birds and lizards and dragonets in the main. Sanfuri’s Dragons edged forward, shooting fire and acid, or employing their higher attacks, from psychic blasts to a blazing turquoise mana-inferno unleashed by one of the older Dragons. That attack arced into the chest of one of Shivura’s cohorts, and blew the Mage apart. Translucent shields crackled as lightning crackled crazily over their soap-bubble surfaces, while foul, electrically-charged blue smoke billowed away from the clash.

  In all this, Whisper awaited her chance, and then flashed a flechette-spray into the Dragons as their shield momentarily wavered. Within a minute, two of the Dragons collapsed. The balance of the battle was against them, however, as Sanfuri weighed in with a mighty sequence of conjured metal spheres, smashing his opposing Warlocks to the their knees as they desperately defended themselves and the troops ahead of them. Overmatched. Wavering.

  “FOR ARBOR!” Rhyme raised her axe.

  Just then, Xola’s mind touched hers!

  Get out! Whisper snapped.

  “I’m not trying … freaking … Whisper, what is this? I … see … the world …”

  Suddenly, Whisper felt Xola somehow linked into her mind, separate but with a curious oneness that felt at once powerful and profane – and was vehemently rejected by her tail-memories!

  I am not your familiar!

  The inner shout seemed to ring through the canyons and bulwarks of her world, shaking the unshakable, and in her mind, a fey, troubling wind blew – she tried to shut it out, yet nonetheless, she knew that something unprecedented lurked in the winds of fate this day. Mana. The fey, fickle element, never to be trusted.

  Xola made a strange gesture beneath her throat. “But I didn’t want … tahgê-tu’um-T’kra, Whisper! You are your own, o Whisper!”

  Nothing changed. Whisper realised, for the first time, that her inner knowing was wrong. This was not a familiar-bond, not a blood-oath imperative. It was something quite different, and despite the Mana Enchantress’ denial, the connexion only seemed to gather a more profound dimension in the face of both of their aversion. United. Inviolable in nature, but sharing knowledge at the speed of thought. Xola saw differently, her senses expanded into a Whisper’s ability to slip through modes of time, as the Enchantress called upon her power.

  “AZAR!” shouted King Xan, raising his sword.

  “Drex, with us!” cried Xola, to Whisper’s surprise.

  Sanfuri raised his hands. “DRAGONETS, ATTACK THE QUEEN!”

  The Queen seemed to dance through the battle, surrounded by the flying, deadly dance of dragonets subsumed by the Warlock’s power, and they could not touch her. Whisper danced with her, her daggers flying – atop the Queen’s shoulders, skittering down her front, slipping between her legs, firing her flechettes into the mêlée. She was one with the Grey Enchantress’ rising howl of magical power, helping her to ride the incoming storm of mana and tame the wild deluge surging through her body, compelling the power into her hands. Xola strode forward, leading Drex’s troop against Warlock Sanfuri, her face set in grim, intent lines. Sanfuri hurled exploding rocks at her, bolts of lightning and hissing chains that whipped about as though they were alive in their own right, but Xola shrugged them aside, not without a shudder of effort each time. Dragon fire exploded over her troop, but Shivura was somehow behind them, bolstering the shield, and in that moment, Xola reached and touched Sanfuri’s shield.

  KEERRUMP!

  The resulting explosion was nothing ordinary, felt more as a soundless punch than a physical shout, but the concentric waves of explosion that emanated from that touch flattened every person and creature on the battlefield, including the Dragons. Armour clattered everywhere. The explosion blasted Warlock Sanfuri twenty feet backward, but he was the first to recover.

  “Aha!” A chain shot out from his outstretched right hand, whipping about Xola’s slender body.

  He roared, “Tamsui-tak-Xolaaaaaaaa …”

  The Enchantress turned white. Suddenly, she was fighting that chain as if her sanity had completely snapped. Whisper knew her pain. She knew Xola’s terror and sprang for the Warlock with a wild shout, but Ignothax stepped into her path. She feinted and struck out, but the Dragon swatted her away with his mind power. Whisper slammed into Drex’s legs.

  She rolled over, groaning.

  Xola bucked and fought like a wild Dragoness, but Sanfuri’s grasp was as terrifying as it was immovable. Blue crackled along the chain into his body. Reversal! Somehow, he was drawing on her power, feeding on the frenzy, and with each passing second, the Warlock appeared to grow more powerful. He blazed with mana. He laughed massively, shaking the
battlefield as Men and Dragons alike tried to find their feet; he kept reeling Xola in, laughing maniacally at her struggles and screams, and Whisper fell to her knees, shattered by the pain emanating from her friend.

  “Come to me, my darling Xola,” he sneered. “It has been too long since I supped of your powers.”

  “You’ll never have me!” screamed the Queen, lashing out. Tendrils of blue fire wrapped around the Warlock’s grey gauntlets, but only appeared to feed his strength.

  Sanfuri said, “Oh, don’t worry. You’re beautiful, but I’ve no desire to have you to wife, for I have long since risen above the mortal coil of my flesh, with all its demands and limitations. All I want is the powers I gave you, Xola. The beautiful, illimitable mana of your magical existence, the power that animates and illuminates your immortal soul. You will serve me, giving wholly of your body and unique powers to feed my ambitions. Beyond that, you are nothing to me. Less than nothing. A vessel of my greatness, you shall be, o former Queen of Grey.”

  “Xola!”

  Two screams – Xan’s, of course, and … Rhyme’s! Whisper gasped as both royals ran at the Warlock, trailed belatedly by those of their troops who could still stand.

  Sanfuri’s Mage fire blazed over them, white and blue. The air before them shattered against what Whisper realised was a negation thrown up by the Mage Shivura. The royals fell with loud cries, but the Mage crumpled, insensible.

  Her legs. Must stand. Fight. None of the others could …

  The Warlock said, “Another day, I shall punish Arbor and Azarinthe. But I have grander designs to pursue and greater heights to scale, and the fates of your pathetic civilisations are beneath me. Come, sweet Xola.” He jerked her chain. “Today I shall claim my prize, which I prepared in your pathetic life all those years ago, when you were a flowery-eyed apprentice so enamoured with the power of Warlock Sanfuri!”

  The Queen tried to shout a magical command, but a snap of the Warlock’s wrist arrested her. Blue mist ran along the chain linking them and settled in rings around her waist, upper torso, neck and forehead. Silenced. Helpless, even though she fought with every fibre of her being. Whisper’s heart bled for the Queen. Rising, she snapped off a shot from her left wristlet, but the Warlock and Ignothax had re-established their shields, and the dart just fell to the ground.

  Still, Whisper rose upon trembling legs and sprinted toward Xola, only to strike an unseen barrier and fall away. She cursed and coiled, searching for an opportunity. Strength. Where was her strength? Gather, powers of Whisper … if ever her heart was true! Whisper gritted her teeth, raiding her body for resources of strength and defiance she had not known she possessed.

  Xola … find me through the link.

  No, you’ll be captured too, replied the Enchantress, her eyes growing unfocussed as she spoke in her mind. Whisper, this is for the best …

  She was gone.

  Whisper staggered and fell once more.

  Meantime, Sanfuri laughed indulgently. “I promised I would take her. Were you fools not listening? No person nor power in this world can stop me once I have the five Talismans in my hands!” Pointing at the downed Whisper, he cried, “Oh, poor Whisper, how thou art fallen.”

  Xola’s grey eyes shuttered as she moaned, lashed by an inner recoil of pain. She shuddered, fighting the chain weakly, but it appeared to have robbed her of all strength and the fire that Whisper had always known in her.

  Whisper screamed in despair!

  Sanfuri laughed softly, making a gesture with his clenched right fist. “Dragons, you may withdraw. It is time to take our quest elsewhere. Little Whisper, I would like you to know how we have used you. Firstly, you blazed our trail to Arbor. Then, you connected us to Azarinthe, exactly as I intended, and brought me the person of Queen Xola as a fine gift. Your search for a traitor distracted everyone from the one person who has unhindered access to the King –

  Whisper gasped, “Yessimy!”

  “Aye, the fat, stupid cook. So easily gulled. She thinks she’ll be saving the King, when in reality, she will deliver his doom. By the way, the Arborite ring’s magic is real. Its power, evoked by touch and thought, has been keeping the monarch alive despite the worst attempts of your foolish healers to treat him. Now, as an unexpected bonus, you have even succeeded in producing the Princess Blue –” his grey hair swayed as he made a mocking half-bow in the fallen royal’s direction, but when his gaze rose, it was lambent with magical power “– so that she can see and appreciate the mode of her precious father’s demise. These dracowasps.”

  His gauntleted left hand drew a bottle out of an inner pocket of his cloak. Inside, Whisper saw three blue wasps, each three inches long and furnished with iridescent azure wings. Their heads were unmistakably draconic. “They are magically enhanced, of course. They will find their target, and their target will take them to the King. One little sting …”

  The illustrative snap of his fingers made Rhyme cry out.

  “A race shall amuse us all,” said the Warlock. “A race between Whisper and dracowasp. Who will win, I wonder?”

  Slowly, as he spoke, the Warlock coiled the chain around his wrist, until the magic-imprisoned Queen of Grey was forced to kneel at his feet. Xola was deathly pale, her hands trembling visibly now. He took his time over the humiliating gesture; time enough that Rhyme regained her feet and Drex palmed his hammer, quivering, but the Princess’ hand upon his arm halted an incipient and doubtless suicidal attack.

  Legend told that dracowasps were amongst the fastest sustained fliers in the draconic kingdom. Whisper thrust that thought aside. Watch. Learn. Seize whatever opportunity, however slight, might come her way.

  Ignothax stood beside his master, smirking at all of them as Warlock and Dragon surveyed the smashed, humbled armies of Azarinthe and Arbor. Whisper could not bear it. How could she attack? How could she break through? She had half an idea …

  By focussed telepathy, she said inside of herself. Xola, don’t give any sign you hear me. Help me. One last attempt. If we fail …

  “Yula-îk-yyrrkûdi, Whisper! I bind thee!”

  The Warlock’s shout shattered her resistance. Whisper felt her body change. Her senses came alive, awaiting the commands that defined her existence so narrowly.

  “O Master, describe the person, place and imperative.”

  The voice was hardly her own. It was an echo of centuries of servitude, hateful and submissive. She could not fight it. Nothing within her responded to the desire to oppose that magic, for it was her. It was her life.

  Sanfuri said, “In a straight race of fifteen miles against my dracowasps, Whisper, I calculate that you should reach the King of Arbor about a minute before he dies. In that time, you will tell him this: ‘I, Sanfuri the Conqueror, want you to know that my designs of these last twenty years have borne fruit. I say –’ ”

  Whisper. I obey. Help …

  Xola? She sounded so tired, so defeated. This was not her. This was a woman whose powers had already been raided and ravaged, and Whisper found a furious nugget of hate in her heart for this man, who used others without a single thought for their welfare or future. He did not even want her to wife. All he wanted was her power.

  “ ‘– o King Rhuzime of Arbor, thou art weak, and an unmitigated fool, and easily swayed. You were never worthy to ascend the throne of so much as a drakkid-nest. Now, as the last breath your mortal life gutters upon your lips, know that I have defeated and sacked your worthless city. I am a man of my word. May your soul rot with the darkest fungi.’ ”

  He clenched his fist. “And after that, Whisper, since you have been such a pest, I command you to swim to Illuxor. Find their King and tell them I shall invite a Sundering to blast his kingdom!”

  Whisper wanted to rend his sneering, scarred face with her talons. Instead, she heard herself confirm, “Is that the complete –”

  “Aye, you prize idiot!”

  No sooner had the words begun to form on his lips, when she moved, Whisper-swift. Her paws
rose, armed with a white mana-dart in each palm. As she rushed the Warlock, she heard Drex’s heavy tread right behind her. How had he known? A presentiment? She was fast, but his every stride was four of hers. Whisper reached out for Xola’s mind, shifting her right arm upward and outward with power the young Queen no longer possessed, until it intersected the slightly pearlescent shimmer of the Warlock’s shield. She could see shields. Humans did not, but with a Whisper’s eyes, Xola was able. She formed the thumb and forefinger into an ‘O’ with just a smidgen of mana leaking across that space – all that the Enchantress had left. Narrowing her eyes, Whisper whipped a flechette forward, underhand, a flat and hard throw. Right through that tiny circle.

  Turquoise mana exploded against the Warlock’s hand, washing over the chain that bound Xola.

  In that instant, Whisper willed herself to achieve what she had done before in passing through the protections of Azarinthe. She felt a flicker, a whisker-sense tingling her cheeks. Whisper snapped through the Warlock’s shield as it wavered, as the man flung up the other hand to protect his face, but Ignothax’s fore-talon intersected her throw as she tried to release the second dart. The Dragon laughed evilly, snaffling her into his paw.

  Ping! The mighty sweep of Drex’s hammer shattered the Dragon’s left wrist. A sympathetic blast echoed through the familiar-bond, exploding the Warlock’s mana-wreathed hand into blue dust. Sanfuri screeched a terrible, grating cry, as did the Dragon. His forepaw hung limp, then appeared to shiver from within. There was nothing left – no bones, no structure!

  She tumbled free from the limp digits, looking first to Xola, but an unexpected flicker of light off glass arrested her movement. The glass jar of wasps flipped out of Sanfuri’s other hand. Dropped. Frozen in that second of time, Whisper could only watch it fall hopelessly out of her reach. It shattered.

  Sanfuri backed away, his face as white as the petals of a limthis-daisy. The Gold-Reds and Ice-Orange Dragons rushed forward in concert, but Ignothax struck Drex and Whisper aside, his mental power once again shoving them away irresistibly. As they skidded unwillingly backward, fighting the unseen push with everything they had, Ignothax snatched Xola up with his fangs, apparently unfazed by the bands of power still holding her captive. Her entire torso disappeared inside his maw, but his bite upon her flailing legs was surprisingly graceful.