Arise

by Tanya Schofield

  Melody began to speak, and her voice was heavy with the power.

  She spoke the words Crestus had pieced together, the chant that existed to weaken the minor forces spread out before them. After a moment, the others realized what she was doing, and more voices joined hers. It took only seconds before each user was chanting in unison with her, speaking the words as they had practiced for weeks. The resonance came, the reflection of her voice in theirs, and the words swelled beyond their original volume until it seemed the syllables were being spoken by the very thunder overhead.

  The scholar’s efforts exceeded all of their expectations. The words, which were designed to “unenchant” the undead, worked exactly as Crestus had hoped when he penned them, and then some. The words removed the enchantments from every being within its scope. Without the basic enchantment that gave purpose and motion to dead limbs, the vast crowd of Semaj’s forces simply returned to their previous state – as lifeless, motionless corpses. In less than a minute, every visible undead warrior that waited in the town below had fallen. Not a single one remained standing.

  Melody signaled for the end of the chant at the last word, and the resulting silence was absolute.

  Phelwen Semaj was angry.

  Beyond angry.

  He was furious. Insane with rage. How dare she? How dare she come here, to the seat of his power, thinking the humans actually had a chance? To use the words of the old tongue in such a way … What arrogance! Did she think he would not retaliate? Did she think he would sit idly by and let them come? Did she think for one fraction of a second that he would surrender?

  Oh no, she was sorely, dreadfully mistaken. Phelwen Semaj was the Lord of Death. Phelwen Semaj was the Lich King Reborn. Phelwen Semaj did not surrender. He spread out his arms, spread wide his hands, and called for darkness.

  Darkness came.

  Complete, impossible blackness shot out from the town and halfway up the hill, stopping the now-charging soldiers in their tracks. Nothing was visible – not the sun, not the sky, not their companions. They couldn’t see so much as a hand held so close it touched their noses. But they could hear.

  The laughter drifting through the unnatural darkness and between the confused soldiers was mocking and snide, deep and resonant, and thoroughly terrifying. Under the laughter came the sound of hissing, the sound of barely audible clicking, the sound of something not human moving in the darkness.

  It was time.

  “Boys, would you shield us now please?” Melody’s voice was calm and clear as she looked down at the blackness below her. She did not look back towards the Healers and the twins, she simply trusted that they would do what was necessary. The twins faltered for a brief moment, then the familiar wash of tightly woven magic shimmered up around all of them.

  “That’s excellent,” she praised, and they beamed back proudly. She felt the insistent tightening of her abdomen as if from a distance, the mild pain was barely a thought … her entire focus was forward, towards where she knew Semaj would be. Melody returned her concentration to outside the shield, and down towards Cabinsport.

  Phelwen Semaj emerged from the Witherin behind his remaining wraiths and his twisted, impossible creatures. He trusted the insects and rats and whatever undead had survived the girl’s unenchantment to dispatch the weak humans who floundered in the darkness. He could feel their fear, flickers of it like lightning in his awareness before they died screaming. He laughed again, knowing the sound would steal strength from their limbs, spark madness behind their sightless eyes. Their fear was his. The darkness was his.

  He kept the body’s shoulders straight, he walked with the strength and purpose of a man who refused to be denied. The girl was his target. That naïve creature who seemed to think she could come here, to the center of his power, and challenge him - oh, he would delight in her defeat. To his mild surprise as he narrowed his focus on the girl, he realized that the body remembered her too. Semaj seized the memory as he walked, learning all he could.

  Melody saw Semaj as clearly as if the darkness did not exist, so bright was the light of his magic in her eyes. The blue outline of his form was so intense, so vividly painful, that it nearly burned. She saw him exit the tunnel with the nightmare creatures, and saw him turn to where she stood, and she saw him start walking - his pinpoint red eyes boring into her.

  Wraiths, she realized, her stomach cold. She couldn’t manage all three, and Semaj. She sent magic to outline them, illuminating them in hopes that if they were visible in the darkness, the others could fight them.

  The Lich King was completely unconcerned with the soldiers now fighting around him, he was cloaked in the impossible darkness, and not one of Thordike’s men could see him. All that mattered to him was up on the hill, guarded by nothing more than children.

  Jovan. Melody slipped her mind across the space between them, giving him her sight, showing him where Semaj was, and where he was heading. The warrior heard and understood, but he gave her no response; there was no time. Creatures he could not see surrounded him, and he was fighting purely on instinct. He put a quick end to the last of the dog-sized spiders that had blocked his path, and blindly followed her guidance.

  Melody divided herself, giving some of her power to Jovan so that he could see to reach Semaj. It was more difficult here, there was no abundance of magic like she had found on their journey - and what was here belonged to the Lich King. The magic in this place was dark and uncooperative, so she called on more of her own, focusing to form the words of the Breaking.

  It took several repeatings of the primary chant before the other users added their voices. Even safe within the twins’ shield, many of them were confused and frightened by the blackness that had blocked their view of the town below, and the terrified screams that drifted up to them.

  Elee was the first to join Melody in the chant, and their combined voices broke through the fear of the others. When the rest of them finally spoke, Melody found herself buoyed by the added power. She increased the volume of the crucial first chant while part of her continued to aid Jovan in finding a path to Semaj.

  The only mages not joining with Melody in the Breaking were with Rhodoban. Arik and some of the others whose skills were better suited to battle than just as a mirror for Melody were down the hill, in the fray, battling the darkness itself – and they were making a difference.

  Phelwen Semaj paused in the middle of his stride, feeling his power challenged. His fury, impossibly enough, grew. Not only was the cursed girl using the old tongue against him again in a painfully familiar way, but his enveloping shroud of false night was dimming in response to other, different magic. How dare—

  The body reacted on an instinct that Semaj did not have, and spun to face one of the human warriors that had somehow located him as he sought out the girl. Lich King he may be, but Phelwen Semaj was no warrior. He thrust the body’s consciousness forward to fight.

  Jovan dodged the sudden attack and backpedaled, giving unexpected ground while he tried to process the surprise that flooded through him. Garen Tambor? This was the nightmare of his childhood? The Lich King was … Korith’s chancellor?

  Semaj is using Garen’s body. Melody’s not-voice in his head brought brief clarity to his confused thoughts, and Jovan renewed his efforts against Garen-Semaj. Melody’s tone had been strained, and he could hear the sounds of the Breaking rolling down the hill. This was the only chance he would have. Lich King or not, Garen had to exist inside that body somewhere, and Jovan renewed his silent vow that this man who had once taken what Melody was not willing to give would regret the moment he ever laid eyes on her.

  Garen slid back into his role as a killer easily, delighted to have control over himself once more if only for this moment, but Jovan was more than a match for his skill. No matter. He had dealt with better fighters than himself before, and in his experience, few of them could continue fighting once he pushed into their thoughts and removed their knowledge of how. Garen reached into Jovan’s mind �
�� and found it occupied.

  Melody gasped at the familiar, greasy touch of Garen’s magic, forgetting for an instant that she felt it in Jovan’s consciousness, not her own. Her belly was already clenching steadily, but this time it twisted even more tightly in remembered fear and shame, and she was nearly sick. The tightness in her abdomen was almost enough for her to feel pain over the cloaking rush of magic, but Jovan needed her. She ignored the squeezing ache that made it so difficult to breathe. Before Garen could recover from his own surprise, Melody had divided her power again and wrapped it protectively around Jovan’s mind.

  Garen could gain no grip there, and pulled his magic back even as he kept fighting the huge warrior, frustrated.

  Phelwen Semaj observed the events and considered. The body he had chosen had magical talent of its own, it seemed, a talent that was magnified by the power of Semaj’s consciousness … this was something to reflect on. More interesting than the body’s ability to slip into the mind of another, however, was the body’s newly awakened memory. It was a thoroughly satisfying memory of the body overpowering the mind of a girl … that girl … not so long ago … in Foley. What had been done once, Semaj mused as the body ducked and spun and lashed out in a fight it must inevitably win, could be done again.

  Melody’s head rocked back without warning, as if she had been slapped. She dropped to her knees, and the Healers immediately moved to brace her. She continued to speak the chant, maintaining the resonance between her voice and the others, but the breath strained in her throat and her face was twisted into a tight, pained grimace.

  “Speak louder, Elee,” Lady Marina said, turning her youngest daughter away. “Just look at me, all right?”

  Elee, her eyes wide, began to cry instead.

  “It might be a birthing pain,” Senna told the others, placing a hand on Melody’s swollen stomach.

  Bethcelamin wanted to help, but there were already more Healers at her daughter’s side than there was room for. Lady Korith looked around for a way to be useful.

  Duke Thordike was fighting right in front of the strange, shimmering bubble that was her only protection - he was terribly close. She could not tear her eyes away from the sight of the huge, pale, bloated spider towering over her husband’s oldest rival. It all seemed almost unreal. The Duke slashed into the enormous spider’s abdomen, and thick black ichor bubbled out as the spider screamed. It oozed thickly down his sword in crystal clarity, and she turned, thinking she might be sick.

  What she saw in the other direction was no better. There was Jayden, also fighting one of the horrible spider creatures, standing over the still-twitching bodies of several rats— rats the size of goats, bleeding out the same black blood as the spider.

  Melody was trapped. It had the unpleasantly slick feel of Garen’s magic, this barrier that thrust her so brutally out of her own mind without warning, but it had the strength and timelessness and inarguable finality she could only assume was Semaj. Every shred of her willpower and concentration was focused on maintaining the chant. The Breaking was their only hope – but it was so difficult, and the pain in her stomach was getting much worse.

  Leave me be, she sent with as much force as she could muster, but her power was spread too thin. Semaj’s mocking laughter echoed in her mind.

  Chant, then, he hissed inside her head. Give it everything you have, little girl, and I will take the rest. Melody did not understand his meaning until the next pain clamped around her belly, and she felt Semaj’s unmistakable presence drifting downward, towards her unprotected son.

  NO!

  Her desperate cry echoed in her head, and with his own psyche so wrapped up in hers, Jovan felt Melody’s every frantic, panicked heartbeat. He knew exactly what Semaj was doing and exactly what he intended for the unborn baby. Garen did not stand a chance, not even with Semaj’s protection.

  Vengeance – an aptly named weapon – slid into Garen’s chest as if the bloodless clutch of the body was a sheath, and pierced directly through the heart. Without pause, Jovan braced his boot on the chancellor’s stomach and pulled the weapon free. He swung it over his head once for momentum, and sliced cleanly through Garen’s neck before the slumping body had the opportunity to tumble to one side.

  Melody gasped, choking and coughing and struggling not to weep. Her stomach was tightening almost incessantly now, and without the distance granted by the magic flowing through her, the pain was enormous. The threatening presence in her mind was gone. It had released her the instant Jovan had killed the body, the same instant the impossibly thick darkness below them had simply - vanished.

  Her stomach throbbed, her head spun. She could see Senna, she was right there in front of her and the Healer’s lips were moving but she couldn’t hear what she was saying…

  “The chant,” Senna cried, though Melody seemed too dazed to understand. Senna looked past Melody to Lady Thordike. “Elee, the Bonding!”

  The Bonding. The second chant. Melody hauled herself to her feet, bracing against Senna as she looked down the hill to where Jovan stood over Garen’s fallen body. Without the cover of darkness, Jovan and the other soldiers could see the remaining wraiths and more persistent undead creatures - and they could see them moving up the hill, towards the faintly shimmering shield that marked Melody’s location. As Melody watched, one of the wraiths disappeared in a violent burst of concentrated flame – the Elves may not yet be here, but Rhodoban and the other mages were still giving it everything they had.

  The battle, though, was not over.

  Melody pulled back from Jovan’s mind, coalescing every scrap of power she could muster, and began to chant The Bonding, throwing her arms wide. Almost immediately, the other magic users joined in, finding the vibrating tone that magnified Melody’s - and Elee’s - power. The chant would seal Semaj to the corpse of the body that he had inhabited, preventing him from finding another host… but Melody had no idea how much time had passed since she regained her senses. The Bonding needed to be cast at the moment of death … She could only hope she had acted in time.

  Phelwen Semaj stared from behind new eyes at the gleaming sphere of energy, and through it to the tiny pregnant girl so brazenly trying to destroy him. The familiar words of the old tongue could not harm him, he had already taken his new host. She had failed. He was weakened, certainly, manifesting in a host took a tremendous amount of power, but they believed him dead, and he could bide his time – but he would not. Not yet. There was still the matter of the girl.

  This new body, he was pleased to discover, hated the girl almost as much as he himself did, hated her so much the aching mind practically thrummed with it, and was more than willing to offer itself to his service. But the body’s knowledge of the magic shield around the girl insisted that he find another way, that once the twins had placed it, the barrier was impenetrable.

  Semaj reached for the knife in the new body’s boot.

  Bethcelamin watched, disbelieving, as her husband pulled the knife from his boot and stepped up behind Duke Thordike. Time seemed to slow, and the unreal feeling of it all was compounded by the chant - the combined voices of Melody and the others were like thunder and water and wind all rolled together, and they seemed to be coming from every direction at once. It was difficult to tell where one voice ended and the other began, and impossible to discern whether or not it was working.

  Korith drove the knife deep into Thordike’s back.

  “Jayden, no!” she cried, pressing her hands against the invisible barrier between them. “Stop!”

  The twins opened their eyes, curious, and the magical shield dissipated the moment they saw their father dropping to his knees with a look of almost comical astonishment on his face, flecks of blood around his lips …

  “Father!” they cried, scrambling to their feet.

  Korith didn’t even look up. Bethcelamin watched as her husband - no, that couldn’t be him, it couldn’t be - jerked the knife free of Thordike’s back, and stepped out around the twins who ha
d rushed to their father’s side. There was a trickle of blood creeping from his nose, she noticed in perfect clarity – he must have another of his headaches. He raised the knife again.

  “Jayden, no!” Bethcelamin lunged forward, but it was too late. Korith sidestepped her charge neatly, and threw the knife over her head when she overbalanced and fell. She didn’t have to look to know that her daughter had been the target. She heard the solid, slick wet sound of the knife connecting behind her in nearly the same instant that Senna screamed.

  “How could you?” she whispered, realizing that she did not recognize the disturbing grin that was twisting her husband’s face. The grin became a grimace, and then it was Jayden who was screaming as he brought his hands up to his face. Blood poured from his nose, rushing between his fingers and spilling over his chin.

  Phelwen Semaj saw the knife fly free of his hand and connect with the pregnant girl, but its perfect trajectory was altered at the last second by a staggering pain in the side of the body’s head. The knife slid easily between the girl’s ribs, but on the wrong side – what should have landed in her heart ended up on the other side of her backbone – but Semaj could not make the body’s eyes focus on the target.

  Something was wrong with the body, dreadfully wrong. There was too much heat. He was suddenly weak, all over. Blood flowed from the body’s nose, ear, eye. It had to be this monstrous pain in his head, he realized as the strength left the body’s legs, dropping him to his knees.

  Survival. That was all that mattered now - the body was dying. Semaj knew what he had to do. The transfer to another host so soon would drain him entirely. He would lose this moment, but the girl would still die, and he had been patient before. He pulled magic into himself, and reached out. In that split fragment of time, he realized the others were still chanting.