by Greg Curtis
The sudden pain pulled Sam out of his shock, and quickly he raised his fire walls again. But for a heartbeat or two it could have gone either way. He could have dropped them completely as he reeled in the sudden pain. It was no doubt exactly as his brother had planned.
A heartbeat later he had his brother once more pinned between the sword and the fire wall, and was preparing to end it.
“So you lie again! Even at your end you show yourself to be a deceiver. Not a warrior, not a king, not even a man. Just a black hearted thief of words. You have always lied. From your very birth you learned deception with every sip of your foul mother's milk, and now even at the end you can't find the truth. How can such a miserable creature as you ever be my brother? Our father's son? Dishonour is your way, and I am grateful that our father is not here to see you like this. You expected me to believe you. Just enough so that you could get me to lower my defences, and then kill me. But guess what brother. It didn't work.”
“You should have known better. Your plan has failed, and your death is near. It will not be an easy one.” And just to emphasise his point Sam pulled the arrow free, threw its bloody wreckage at his feet, and then set it aflame, all the while keeping his wall hot. It hurt. But mere physical pain could not distract him.
“You have cost me five years of my life for nothing. Your evil has caused me more torment than you could even understand as you have held my wife apart from me. You have tormented her as well, and locked her away in a dungeon. It is unthinkable! And now foul demon, you have murdered her! The least you can do is scream for me. Scream as you have never screamed before!”
Immediately he began tightening up the fire wall behind his brother, burning the hairs off his back, and getting the desired reward as Heri screamed with all his worth. And yet he was still trying to speak, to lie his way out of trouble.
“No! She lives! I promise you! On my honour. On my life!”
“What honour? Sewer rats like you have none! Were our father still alive he would spit on you. He would cast you off the battlements and feed your remains to the pigs! But you are finally right about one thing. Your life is the coin that you will pay for your crimes with.” Except that even as he was speaking he was looking into his brother's terrified eyes, wanting to see some sign of regret, and seeing instead the one thing he had never expected to see. The truth. Or at least a lack of lies.
Heri finally had nothing of planning or deceit left to him. He was just a frightened, screaming coward. Which gave Sam just enough room to hope. To dream for the first time in many long years. To plan. And to ask a question that had never occurred to him. Could it be? Could she be alive?
How? Her parents had received the death notice. They had visited the grave. And they did not lie. But could it all be some sort of mistake? It seemed impossible – or nearly so. But still, he had to wonder.
And he also had to understand that if his brother was finally telling the truth, then he was in the strongest position he ever would be. His unstoppable anger had somehow brought him all the way through to the king unharmed, and then let him capture him. This chance would not happen again. He had to find out if there was truly any hope.
“Tell you what toad. Bring her to me now, before I count to maybe a hundred, unharmed and I'll even let you live. Fail, and I shall start slicing you up, piece by piece.”
And just to emphasise his point Sam guided the flame sword down his front, cutting through his night clothes. Sam started at the collar and worked his way straight down while Heri screamed with fear and pain as his skin started blistering. He had never had much in the way of courage, depending on others to do his fighting for him, and in the face of a fiery death, he had none at all.
“Quickly now. Before I begin to doubt you.” And to emphasise his words he started counting – loudly.
It was as the flame sword tip reached his belly button that Heri finally had the presence of mind to stop screaming and start ordering his guards to do as he said. And once he started he couldn't stop. There was a mass exodus of feet as surely a dozen guards went running off for the dungeons as fast as they could, but Sam paid them no mind.
Instead he was simply trying to remain calm as his instructors had taught him to. But it wasn't easy. On the one hand he was praying – even daring to hope – that his brother was telling the truth, and the promise of a whole new wondrous life had suddenly been laid out ahead of him. On the other he knew his brother was most likely lying. He was desperate and would no doubt say anything, just to save his own skin for a few more moments. In between those two raging emotions, he had to keep concentrating. To fail was to let go of the fire, to release it along with his soul. To fail was to die, and maybe take out the entire castle with him.
Closing his eyes – it was something a soldier would never do in battle but in this case he simply had to – he concentrated on moving beyond fear and hope as his teachers had taught him. He looked to find the calm place in his thoughts, and to expand it until it enveloped him. Because it was only there that the wizard could rule. And he needed to be the wizard. Eventually some sense of peace returned to him. Not much, but enough.
Finally he opened his eyes to see his brother staring back at him, and saw both hope and fear written all over Heri's face. The sweat that had begun pouring off his brow was dripping everywhere, until his remaining night clothes were plastered to him, while a puddle was forming around his feet. Sam would have wagered good coin that it wasn't all sweat.
He understood Heri's fear, but why was he hopeful? That was the important question. If Ryshal was dead he had no reason to hope. He would die shortly regardless. And Sam wasn't about to let his walls drop again.
He mulled it over silently, desperately trying to remain calm, while they waited. Heri just stood there and sweated.
Finally, after the longest wait he had ever known, Sam heard the sound of heavy steel shod boots clanging on the stone floors as their owners returned at a run, and he turned to face them, filled with hope and dread. The pounding of his heart in his chest was unbelievable, and the sound almost deafened him.
Finally they came into view, and he saw the one face he had never expected to see again. Ryshal. His mouth dropped as he drank her beauty in. And haggard though she was, she was still beautiful.
Her normal dark tanned skin was pale, and there were blotches on her face. The result of too little sun and a poor diet. Heri had never fed his prisoners very well. Not even apparently, his hostages, despite his promises. Her normal graceful and lithe form had become painfully thin, and he could see her cheek bones sticking out. She also could barely stand. It would be a long time before she would dance for him again. Her beautiful long tresses of hair had been cut short, and what was left was unkempt and matted. She looked to have aged fifty years in just five. Yet still he saw the incredible love and joy that shone from her very soul. Some of the laughter might be gone, but not he hoped, forever.
“Merciful creator.” He barely even knew he'd spoken until he heard the words come out of his own mouth, and then he wondered who said them.
“Ryshal. Beloved.” Actually he called her aylin mi elle, Elvish for light of my heart. But in common it translated as beloved, and seeing her he was once more in Shavarra in his home with her.
“Samual.”
Her voice still sounded of sunny days in forests filled with happy creatures and dancing waterfalls, and it took him all the way back to when they had first met. Of the way she had entranced him with her beauty and love until all else had seemed as nothing. The pain of his flesh as long days training in weapons had left him close to exhaustion. The ache in his very essence as he spent long nights being tutored in magic and science. Even the suffering in his soul as he mourned for his father, and learned to despise his brother. The only thing Heri saw in their father's death was his chance to rule early. But not till he turned eighteen, for which pain he had blamed everyone, but most of all Sam. And he had taken it amiss that Sam should take a wife while he suffered.
But when Ryshal had arrived in his life, all of that had become as nothing to Sam. Only she had existed. And that still held true.
They had not been married long before Heri had struck and before that they had only courted for a year. But she had become his world in that time.
“Come.” Sam lowered a section of the fire wall and held out his hand for her, but for some reason she didn't move. It was then that he finally noticed the dagger to her throat, and the way her arm was being cruelly forced behind her back by the guard. It took a few heart beats to restrain himself enough not to strike the man dead where he stood for such insolence. But he reminded himself; the man was only being loyal to his king. A virtue not an evil, even when the king was Heri.
“Soldier. I have already said I will release Heri unharmed. Unlike my verminous half-brother, I have always been a man of my word. My honour as a knight of Hanor. As the true son of King Eric Hanor. Let her go, and you may have this miserable worm back.”
“But I don't want him back.”
Finally enough of the guard's face emerged from behind Ryshal that he could see him. He was no guard. His shield bore a pair of snakes entwined with a sword, the insignia of the Fallbright house, and his armour, not just the breastplate, was inlaid with silver and gold etchings. He had to be one of the lords of that house.
“I want him dead.”
Sam, caught by surprise, was spared having to say anything by Heri, who suddenly screamed at his guards to arrest the traitor. He had seen his hope of survival arrive in the form of Ryshal, and suddenly he was terrified that it was leaving him again in the form of a coup.
About half the guards suddenly grabbed their weapons and started moving toward the traitor, while a dozen new soldiers from the Barony of Fallbright suddenly entered the room, weapons already drawn. They brought with them a half dozen more of the keep's own guards, all fully dressed for battle. The rest of the guards just stood there, plainly wondering what to do, while the archers held their ground, bows at the ready, and wondered who to kill. It was a coup.
Everything stopped for the longest while, as everyone in the room stared at everybody else, wondering who was friend and who was foe. No one was willing to start anything, lest they get caught on the wrong side or be stabbed in the back by their former comrades. Lest they have to fight their friends, or die at their hands. The silence was complete as no one dared make a sound. And the murderous tableau held for what felt like a lifetime as the silence stretched.
Meanwhile the wheels were turning in Sam's head as he started putting the miracle of Ry's survival together with the report of her death and the Fallbright coup, and saw the entire picture. It came as a revelation to see just how badly the wheels of power and politics had turned in Heri's kingdom. But Sam couldn't allow that to distract him. He couldn't hesitate any longer. He had to take the initiative or risk losing it all. He was too close now to having everything he wanted in his grasp, to let it be lost in a pitched battle.
“Well, well, well little brother. It looks like all is not well in Fair Fields, and while you have been spending all your time and effort hunting and fearing me, those of your enemies a little closer to home have seen their chance to stick the knife in.”
He mocked Heri with his words, and yet for once he heard nothing of complaint or disagreement from him. He was too frightened. All eyes were suddenly back on Sam as if he was a great leader. He was no such thing, but he knew he held the floor. With so many undecided men in the room, and a wizard capable of destroying them all in a heartbeat in their midst, they would listen, hoping he had a way out for them.
“And you young Lord of Fallbright. I take it you were the one who sent the messenger to Ryshal's parents saying that she was dead. You arranged the grave for them to visit. You hoped that they would find me and that I would kill Heri in my rage. A cunning plan, if a little dishonourable.”
Not to mention rather flawed given that it hadn't come off, but he didn't say it aloud. The young Lord of Fallbright – assuming that was who he was – nodded in agreement. He even had the gall to smile; Sam could clearly see his white teeth showing through the slits in his visor. He still thought his plan was working. Foolish man.
“Then again you just might yet get your wish anyway.” He heard Heri gulp behind him. “Because if you do murder Ryshal I will kill him – and you with him. But you will have the privilege of hearing Heri scream like a girl at least a hundred times, as he in turn will have the same of you, before you both make it all the way to the pits of the fiery underworld and the great beast sups on your bones. That is the only mercy I will grant either of you.”
The smile vanished as if it had never been as the would be king finally understood he had outplayed his hand.
“But I -”
“Are equally responsible foul brother. You captured her, locked her up and chained her. You starved and abused her, and then allowed her to be used as a pawn by your enemies. I will not forgive you this evil; ever. Nor will I forgive your would be usurper. My mind is made up. You will both die together in flaming agony, and there's nothing either of you can do about it. Nothing all your soldiers can do, since they will all be dead in the first heartbeat. Nothing your wealth can buy since I will loot anything I want from your rotting corpses. And nothing your families can even beg for, since they will all be dead too shortly after.”
As he told them that, Sam was staring directly at the newcomer, and for the first time he got a look at the eyes of the young lord. He watched them widen in fear, and knew he was making his point to him as well. The young Fallbright was attempting to take the throne. He wanted power, but he wasn't willing to die for it. Least of all in screaming agony. Just like Heri. He wanted power at all costs – as long as he didn't have to pay them.
“Or, I can spare you.” Suddenly all eyes were riveted to him. “I can change things for you both. I can be merciful, or I can be the evil one himself.”
“Kill my beloved and I can assure you, you will die in screaming torment. Both of you. And after that I will go on to destroy your families and friends as you've destroyed mine. I will make sure that they know why they are suffering such horrible deaths. I can't make any promises of course, but I will certainly try to ensure that they will die cursing your names. Praying neither of you had ever been born.”
And that for any Fair Fielder was the ultimate curse. Most believed that people so cursed had their souls shrivel up inside them even before they died, and that when they did finally leave the world, the demons would sup on their flesh for eternity. True or not, they would not risk suffering that fate.
“Or you can let her go and take your chances with your swords against each other. I will even give you that option. The chance for each of you disreputable worms to salvage at least a fraction of honour in front of these good soldiers. A duel. A fight to the death. Man to man. I would spare your soldiers a flaming death. Likewise your families and loved ones. I will give both of you a chance of victory. A chance to be king by your own hand, or at least to die quickly. Against me you have no chance of any of those things. No more do your guards or your families.”
It was a telling point. He was by far the most powerful man in the room, and both of them had suddenly realised they were outmatched. Later, if either survived, they might come to regret their decision to take him on. For the moment they just wanted to live.
“And at least it's honest. Both of you will be given the chance to take or keep the throne on your own merits, instead of trying to twist myself and others to your ends. And really Fallbright, with all these people present did you really think that using me to kill Heri would somehow leave your hands clean? Now everybody knows. It's too late for that plan. You have been exposed as a foul schemer just like Heri. Are you a coward like him as well? And if you can't face a wounded coward on your own, what true man would ever follow you anyway?”
Sam watched the faces of the soldiers, all of them in fact on both sides, staring at one another and silently asking the same
question.
That was one of the major obstacles Heri had faced in becoming and remaining king. Unlike their father he was a coward and a betrayer and known for both. His men did not respect him. He overcame it by sheer cunning and absolute ruthlessness, ensuring their loyalty by other means. And by the looks of things, this newcomer would have to face those same obstacles and use the same techniques himself.
“Your word?” The newcomer had made his decision quickly, not that he truly had a choice. He had foolishly overplayed his hand in his childish ambition, hoping only that Sam's uncontrollable fury would do what he couldn't. But when it hadn't and he had seen Sam's strength first hand, he had discovered his mistake, and seen death approaching on swift wings. Someone he most desperately didn't want to meet. Besides, he had seen his soldier's doubts about him as well, and he had to restore their confidence. He figured it would be easy. He was a skilled swordsman, Heri a wounded coward, and he just wanted to make a show of his valour. Therefore he accepted the right of combat as his chance to seize the throne rightfully.