by Jean Johnson
Elrik didn’t know where that thought came from, but he knew he didn’t quite trust the man. Hallakan seemed ambitious, and very interested in settling the succession, even if he didn’t believe in religious texts or ancient agreements between mortals and gods. Elrik had to concede that he himself wasn’t overly religious either, but his was more a matter of agnosticism; he was merely a mortal man, relatively unimportant in the grand scheme, and unlikely to be visited by the Gods of either his father’s or his grandmother’s peoples. But he did believe they existed, with or without any fervent worship from him personally.
Hallakan murmured something, moving to get ahead of the women as they entered the crevasse. Elrik held himself back, taking up the rear position; there was just enough room to walk in pairs, but not comfortably. Surrounded by rock, the heat felt closer, yet cooler, mostly because the cliffs were close enough to cast a bit of shade despite the height of the sun. Lifting his waterskin again, Elrik drank. When he lowered it, he saw Hallakan looking up and shaking his head slightly a second time.
Odd. Surreptitiously, using the brim of his sun-hat to shield the direction of his gaze, Elrik searched the cliffs again. Now that they were crossing hard rock that was dusted with sand too shallowly for sand-demons to feel comfortable swimming through, he didn’t have to worry about one of the two women being stung.
It wasn’t until several minutes later that he thought he saw movement again. Someone was following them, up along the top of the ravine. Movement to the other side, a turbaned head clad in desert shades, told him more than one person was up there. Elrik wasn’t a fool. Two people, following and flanking their position, and one of their own party members shaking his head, suggested the staving-off of an ambush.
But why? Only a fool of a bandit would think their plainly dressed party had any money, since even Hallakan had for-gone colorful silks for plain, sturdy linen. Bandits wouldn’t stay their hand, but rather dump a small avalanche upon them to dig through the rubble and search all their bodies afterward. He’d seen the aftermath of similar tactics up in the Frost Wall passes.
But an avalanche would put Hallakan at risk, and he was still traveling close to his chosen princess.
A cold shiver raced up Elrik’s spine, widening his eyes. There was another way to guarantee which woman was firstborn. He wasn’t completely sure, since there was this Covenant thing and its Goddess-based magics entangled in the matter…but if one of the two women died, with no offspring to follow after her and cloud the issue…the survivor automatically became firstborn. At least, that was the commonly held law of the king-states down in Kumron.
The thought, stark and horrible, hurried his steps. Crowding behind Arasa, he made her close the small gap that had started to grow between her and her sister. So long as they were too close together to risk an avalanche, Hallakan would be forced to continue to shake his head in negation. Unsure of just how closely he himself was being watched, Elrik didn’t unclip his mage-staff from his belt, but he did grip it with his hand, focusing his inner energies into the crystal-studded shaft. A warding-sphere would prevent them from being attacked by falling rocks, flying daggers, or soaring arrows. It would also keep out charging swordsmen, if he could gather enough energy beforehand.
Nothing happened for several more minutes, just the four of them wending their way through the narrow defile, but he didn’t relax. It looked like the ravine widened up ahead into a small valley. Once they were free of a possible rock-fall, there would be other ways of being attacked. Unhooking his staff, Elrik held it close by his hip while he whispered under his breath, concentrating his magic. The Land might know and protect one of the women just ahead of him, but he didn’t know which one, and he couldn’t take the risk that it would protect only the firstborn of the two from its own dangers. Emperors and Empresses had been killed by the efforts of mere mortals in the past, though it was a rare thing.
With half his attention on Hallakan and half on the cliffs, he saw the moment when the turbaned lord nodded, ever so slightly. They were away from the rock walls, away from tumbled boulders that might have served as defensive shelter. Elrik snapped up his staff, releasing a rippling, spherical wave of air outward with the release of the prepared spell. It fluttered the folds of his garments, washed over the bodies of Arasa and Kalasa, tugged at Hallakan’s clothes, and stopped with a thwack-thwack as it encountered two small arrows, off to one side. Crossbow bolts, rather.
From the angle of them, he figured they had been meant for both Arasa and himself. With the mage in their midst as dead as the princess, there would be no witnesses, and the attack could be called the work of bandits without being contradicted. Arasa glanced between Elrik and the thickened air, confusion in her eyes. Her twin blinked and frowned at the rippling air, while Hallakan glared at the spell-stuck bolts.
Eyes narrowing, Hallakan spun to face Elrik. “You!”
“More like you,” Elrik retorted. “I saw you signaling to them. Who are they, your guards? Hired trash? Someone you can claim were just bandits, killing the two of us so there would be no contention for the throne, and no witnesses?”
Arasa’s gaze snapped to her sister’s flushed face. “That’s what this is about. With one of us dead, the other is automatically the heir!”
“I didn’t want to do it!” Kalasa protested, backing away from her twin. “But I couldn’t find any other way! Not until you showed me that scroll—”
“—Oh, stop putting your faith in a bunch of tales told by the priests to keep us all ‘morally responsible’!” Hallakan snapped at her. “The Gods—if there are any—only support Their promises on a random whim at best.”
“When a firstborn dies without any heirs, the next child becomes the firstborn. That’s what you were looking at, wasn’t it?” Arasa asked her twin, advancing one step at a time. “I remember, now; the eldest of one of our Empresses died of a childhood disease and her brother became the firstborn heir…and thus the next ruler of the Flame Sea. Only in our case, it doesn’t matter who is really the firstborn, because whoever survives will automatically become that firstborn. But you didn’t even have the courage to make it a fair fight—a challenge, a duel!”
“I didn’t want to kill you. I don’t!” Kalasa argued, backing up. “Hallakan may not put his faith in the Covenant, but I do!”
Elrik was aware of movement along the periphery of the warding-sphere. Flicking his gaze away from the other three, he counted four, five…seven men surrounding them. So long as he held the barrier against them, they could not interfere, and no one could—
Steel rasped, recapturing his attention. It was Hallakan, drawing his sword. Someone could hurt them, someone who was within Elrik’s warding-sphere. The nobleman was armed against sand-demons, as was Elrik, but Elrik needed to keep focusing his magic through his staff; he honestly didn’t know if he could divide his attention well enough to keep out seven determined would-be assassins and fight off a man who probably knew how to use that narrow, curved blade very well. A blade that was too close to Arasa.
Elrik lunged forward anyway to try to block the blow with his metal-bound staff, but he was too far away. The blade slashed through the air—and missed. Arasa had swayed, twisting away from the blow. Almost all of the blow; the tip of the blade scored her upper arm. But to both his and Hallakan’s shock, she didn’t move back. Instead, she stepped in closer, ignoring the scrape and the danger.
Angered by this betrayal, Arasa snapped her hand up, grabbing the sword as Hallakan brought it back for a second strike. She stopped it before it could gain momentum with a full swing, and the sharpened edge bit in her palm as a result, but she stopped it. Stopped it, and squeezed it deeper into her hand, ignoring the aching, bone-deep pain.
“Traitor,” she growled, staring into the nobleman’s startled brown eyes. Blood trickled from the cut, racing down the under-side of her forearm. “Traitor to the woman you would have wed, for ambition’s sake. Traitor to her sister, to myself, who would have been your
kin, too.”
The line of crimson thickened and lengthened, more flowing down her skin as she squeezed his blade tighter, preventing him from tugging it out of her grasp.
“Traitor to our father, your undoubted Emperor! Traitor to the Empire, for threatening its heirs!” she snarled. Dark red swelled at the point of her elbow and dripped onto the hard desert ground beneath her bare feet. It impacted with a sound that all of them felt with their bones, as well as their ears. “Traitor to the Blood!”
Dirt exploded around them in a cloud of dust and grit, heralding a scraping, screeching, grating cacophony. Spires of reddish granite thrust up around them, unfurling and striking like some sea-creature’s tentacles. Wincing from the bursts, squinting against the debris, Elrik heard the men on the far side of his shield yelling in fear, and saw their bodies thrashing against the solid bonds that had captured them, holding them at wrists and ankles. Inside the sphere, which was half-smothering them as it contained some of that choking grit, tendrils of stone had grabbed Hallakan by his arms and his legs…and they had grabbed Kalasa as well.
The sword, torn from its owner’s hand, dropped from Arasa’s now very bloodied grip. Her breath hissed through her teeth at the pain, and she cradled her wounded limb against her chest, trying not to cry. It hurt; her hand hurt very badly, but the greater pain was the stab-wound of her sister’s betrayal. She couldn’t tell whether Kalasa was telling the truth about not wanting to kill her, nor whether her sister would have suggested an honorable death-challenge, rather than this assassination attempt of Hallakan’s…but her twin had considered it as an option. That hurt more than if she’d had her whole hand severed, rather than just gouged all the way to the bone.
Elrik ended the warding-sphere; it was only keeping the dust trapped inside with them, preventing any breeze from clearing the air. With their ambushers trapped by a display of magic far greater than his own, he didn’t need to shield against them. Clipping his staff back onto his belt, he crossed the sand to his shuddering betrothed, digging into his satchel. He had some bandages he could wrap around the injury, embroidered with runes to cleanse and seal the wound and keep out infection while it healed.
Neither of them said a word while he gently wrapped her palm. The others cursed, coughed, and struggled against their bonds while the air slowly cleared, but none of them moved. With a hand-length’s worth of solid granite wrapped firmly around their limbs, none of them were going to be able to free themselves soon, if at all. They could be dealt with later; Arasa’s injury concerned the two of them right now.
When her hand was wrapped, Elrik held Arasa for a few moments. She buried her face against his chest, letting him shelter her while she tried to come to grips with what she’d done, and what must happen. Imperial law was very clear regarding the fate of undoubted traitors. But to make sure they were undoubted, they would have to be questioned. And she couldn’t pass on the responsibility to another.
At some point in the future, her father would either die or step down from being Emperor, and then all the tough decisions of running the Flame Sea would be hers. Sending soldiers to fight bandits and repel border invasions would be no less difficult than deciding the fate of a person who had tried to kill her. More so, in some ways, for soldiers were loyal and obeyed their orders, trusting that their leaders would not risk their lives casually or carelessly.
Composing herself, she pulled free of his embrace and stepped back, squaring her shoulders. “Do you still have that Truth Stone on you?”
Nodding, Elrik fished it out of his bag, passing it to her. Padding barefoot across the now quiescent ground, Arasa moved to the farthest of the seven men caught and held in her stone-wrought bonds. The granite tentacles hadn’t been a deliberate choice on her part, just an overwhelming need to stop everyone from harming her and Elrik. The Land had responded to her need, as it had responded to the need of her ancestor six centuries ago. Stepping up to the scared-looking man, she pressed the disc against his brow.
“Did you agree to help kill me and my companion? Yes, or no.”
“No!”
Lifting the stone from his skin, she checked the far side. An imprint of his forehead and part of his nose blackened the white marble. He could see it, too, and struggled fruitlessly against his bonds. Moving away from him, she crossed the sandy ground to the next captive, and repeated the question as soon as the disc touched his cheek. He stayed silent, refusing to answer.
“If you do not answer, I will have to believe your answer is yes, you deliberately chose to assist in assassinating me, and with it, committed treason. I ask you again, did you agree to help kill me and my companion?”
The man stared over her head, refusing to meet her gaze, let alone respond. Arasa sighed. “Then you are as culpable as he is.”
She worked her way around the ragged circle. Two of the others stated a bold, almost proud “yes,” one stayed silent, and one spat at her for his answer. The last tried to plead that he had been threatened with death if he didn’t comply, that he didn’t know until the end that he’d been hired to assassinate a Taje-tan. When she examined the Truth Stone, Arasa found it to be almost entirely white, with only a hint of gray. Probably whatever money he had been paid for the job had enticed him just enough into ignoring the fact that he was being bought to commit a murder.
Crossing to the fallen sword, she picked it up in her uninjured right hand, carrying it by the hilt. Sand had crusted to the blade, glued there by her drying blood. She didn’t bother to clean it, just held it at the man’s throat and willed the Land to release him. The rock holding him rumbled, creaked, then shuddered and retracted rapidly under the thin layer of sand coating the valley floor. It was hardpan desert, with only an inch or two of semisoft soil on top; there were no sand-demons here. But to get out of here, he would have to cross soft, loose sand at least a foot deep, and that was where the beasts preferentially lurked.
With the would-be assassin held at the point of the blade, she ordered, “Drop your weapons and strip off your boots. Do not think to attack me. I have renewed the Covenant of Am’n Adanjé, and the Land will take offense, if you do.”
He blinked, hesitated, then lowered his hands slowly to his belt. Unbuckling it, he dropped it and the sheaths bearing his sword and two knives at his feet. Then, lifting one leg at a time while balancing awkwardly on the other, he unlaced and removed his boots. It was a wise choice; stooping might have made her think he was reaching for a weapon. Once he stood on feet as bared as her own, she flicked the sword in her hand away from his throat.
“Leave. That way,” she added, tipping her head off to the right. “Go that way, and you’ll reach the caravan path within a quarter selijm. If you make it back to Ijesh without drawing the attack of a sand-demon, then the Gods will have forgiven you for what you tried to do…but do not cross my path again. Do not come back here, either. Nor seek to give these others the mercy of a swift death, or you will share their fate,” Arasa added, catching him glancing at his companions, “rather than generously escape it.”
Stumbling over his belongings, he edged around her, backed up several feet, then turned and ran in the direction she had indicated, limping a little whenever a bared sole landed on something sharp or hard.
That left her with only two more prisoners to interrogate. Moving up to the imprisoned Hallakan, she touched the Truth Stone to his face, pressing it in place as he tried to turn aside. She didn’t ask him the same question as his accomplices, however. “Now that you have seen the power of the Covenant, and how the Land itself has responded to my need, declaring me the undoubted firstborn of the Royal Blood…will you still try to kill me, to secure my sister as the firstborn with my death?”
He didn’t answer her.
Elrik moved up beside her. He had a question of his own. Now that he knew the so-called nobleman was capable of killing to gain political power, he had to know. “Did you deliberately arrange for that adder to kill your own father, securing the leadership of you
r Family?”
Hallakan’s jaw worked for a moment, then he spat at the mage. It splattered on his victim’s chest. Wrinkling his nose, Elrik wiped the spittle from the front of his poncho. A glance at Arasa showed her own jaw tightening, but not to spit; rather, she was holding back her contempt. Leaving the dark blond man, she approached her twin last of all. Kalasa seemed to be holding her breath, until the cool white disk touched the bare skin of her shoulder. She let out the air in her lungs in a rush, then spoke without prompting.
“Yes, the death of one was the only way I’d found over the last year to ensure that the survivor was the firstborn. No, I wasn’t happy about that sort of solution, and yes, I prayed to Djin-Taje-ul that you’d found some other solution…and yes, I told Hallakan of my findings. He wanted me to challenge you as soon as I could, but I wanted to find another way, had hoped you had found another way.”
The stone was white, unblemished when the firstborn twin pulled it back. Arasa stared at it for a moment, then pressed it against her sister’s arm again. “And if there had been no other way, what would you have done? Challenged me to a duel? Or stabbed me in the back?”
“I would have talked about it with you, first. I wanted to avoid fighting with you, because I knew I was the better swords-woman, and you wouldn’t likely have won. Hallakan was the one pressing for me to fight you right away!”
Turning over the disc, Arasa saw a tinge of gray on the marble. It faded, and she pressed it against her twin one more time. “But you would have fought me. Tell me something. Knowing that the Covenant and its powers are just as real as all the tales we were told as little girls, that as the firstborn, I clearly have the power to command the very soil of the Flame Sea to do my bidding…do you still want to be firstborn?”
Kalasa didn’t answer for a long moment. Only when Arasa shifted to take away the disc did she speak, and speak quickly. “Not at the expense of your life!”
The Truth Stone, when examined, was an unblemished white. Clenching her fingers around it, to the point where it dug into her flesh with a bruising pain somewhat like the throbbing of her wounded palm, Arasa made up her mind. Rock groaned, flexed, and dropped, releasing her twin. Kalasa collapsed to her hands and her knees, choking a little on the dust stirred by the retracted tendrils.