Bones of the Empire

by Jim Galford

  Estin could not see what they were looking at from where he stood. When he tried to drag Feanne a few feet closer to the edge, she dug in her toe-claws and fought to keep them both still. He attempted to budge her, but she was far stronger.

  “Have I ever let you fall, Feanne?” he asked her softly, getting a slight shake of her head in reply. When he tilted his head to try to see her face against his shoulder, he found she had her eyes clamped shut and her ears flat. “I won’t start today. We need to go a little closer to Turess. Can you move with me?”

  Feanne bit him lightly on the shoulder, surprising him. Given how terrified she was of heights greater than twenty or thirty feet, he realized he probably should not have been surprised by anything she did. After a moment, she let go and nodded slightly.

  Inching sideways, Estin had to almost carry Feanne to make her move. She kept her eyes closed and her claws dug deep into Estin’s shirt and fur. It took him far longer than he would have liked, but eventually he got close enough to the edge to see much of the land below.

  He certainly did not expect what he did see.

  Hundreds of feet below, roiling clouds of glowing mists spread in all directions, creating a curved line, behind which he could see the landscape broken and twisted in their passing. In a particular spot off to his right, the mists had left the skeletal remains of a city that appeared to have been dropped from a great height. Ahead of the clouds, the vast snow-covered lands of Turessi spread as far as he could see. It looked almost as though the mists were running into some kind of wall, churning and stretching in an effort to get around its sides, in spots sliding up the invisible barrier and flattening out.

  “Where are we?” he asked, staring wide-eyed at the miles of mists below.

  “About a hundred miles northwest of Jnodin,” Mairlee explained, pointing somewhat off to the right. “The city is there. The mists are avoiding it as well. Rather, they are now, thanks to Turess’s work.”

  Turess nodded. “This is one reason she had me renew magic at temple. The mists wear it down. Magic does not last forever. Much less than forever when magic-eating cloud comes.”

  As Estin watched, the mists slowly climbed the invisible wall, though still spreading around the sides. They slid back down, but continued to try in one place after another, gradually getting farther up the smooth barrier each time. It felt like he was watching animals clawing to get inside, where their prey waited.

  “What’s stopping them?” he asked, shivering. “Is what you were casting in Jnodin all that’s keeping them back?”

  “No,” Turess answered. “I make much bigger in bones of my old land. Will keep mists a hundred miles or more away, but one at Jnodin keep them barely out of city. I put them in all my cities when I know I had made mistakes. Plan was to keep people safe until we find way to stop mists. Still trying to find. Had hoped to wake to better days.”

  Mairlee shook her head, looking sadly down at the clouds below. “There is no way to just stop them, Turess. I told you that two thousand years ago, and I stand by it. Sadly, I believe that the only cities that still hold back the mists are ones your brother now controls. He crushed Lantonne to ensure their runes could not keep the mists from retaking that region and thereby deny any sanctuary to those who opposed him. The shrines in your old lands—Jnodin, Altis, and Pholithia—are the only barriers I can still feel standing. Any others are far beyond my sight. The pattern of our fates lie in those cities and none farther.”

  “What about Corraith?” Estin asked, but neither Turess nor Mairlee acknowledged him.

  At the mention of the land where their children were, Feanne’s trembling stopped and she steadied her breathing.

  “No matter how many cities are left,” Turess said, pointing farther south, where Estin could see more mists traveling through the mountains. “Mists seek magic. Your kind went to sleep to hide from them, Mairlee. Leaves only monsters like my brother as targets. The mists come from all parts of world, while closing off my lands. Eventually, even runes in empire’s bones will fall, and these lands will be consumed. They will hunt the monsters, and they will hunt my relics, until both are gone. Dorralt brings his monsters home, drawing all the mists to one place. We bring relics to same place. No mists will care about rest of world.”

  “The mists eat magic?” Estin asked, his skin going far colder than the weather alone would have caused. “Is that why the circles of magic kept falling? That’s why they came after us? Because we had magic?”

  “It will get worse, if any of my kin wake to my call,” Mairlee added, brushing away a loose lock of hair that flapped in the strong winds. “We need them, but their presence will only encourage the mists to push this way. Any of my kin who do not come here will be a draw to the mists into other lands. Even the spell I cast to increase Feanne’s power briefly at the temple will draw more mists to Jnodin. Perhaps if we are lucky, we can keep them here for a while to allow the mortals south to enjoy another few months of life.”

  “What can we do?” Estin asked, feeling hopelessness looming as he watched the vast stretches of mist closing in on Turessi. He instinctively tightened his hold on Feanne.

  “Once the mists block off Turessi…very little,” Mairlee admitted, shrugging. “Until then, I intend to get into Turessi’s safety and use that as long as we can. We may be able to destroy our enemies before we die. It is not a perfect solution, but it is something. My people are not averse to dying for a worthy enough cause. If we all die here, perhaps the mists will run out of magic before they can reach another land.”

  “I have plan,” Turess said, turning away from the edge of the mountain. “When time is right, we discuss. May not work, so do not get hope up. Is vague memory from visions before dying. Will need to remember more.” He briefly looked at Estin before staring at the ground. “May require sacrifices, but we will try.”

  Mairlee eyed Turess with curiosity, but then turned to Estin and put one hand on his shoulder and another on Feanne’s. “It is time for all of us to go. Feanne, I need to borrow your mate for a bit. By my brood, I’ll bring him back in one piece if I am able. If not, I will bring you what I can.”

  Before Feanne could answer, winds slammed into Estin again. Feanne was ripped from his arms after a few seconds. When the winds stopped, Estin lay on his back in an enormous damp cave, where the whistling of air moving through the passage echoed eerily.

  “We have a discussion that needs speaking,” Mairlee announced, walking over to stand above Estin. The dim lighting of the cave made it difficult to make out her features, but for some reason, Estin felt acutely afraid of her. Her eyes caught the light oddly for an elf. “I need you to ensure that Feanne fights this war to the best of her ability, which I believe may be what Turess was alluding to. In your current condition, you will die in the first battle. I can see it in your pattern. Your death will ensure most of us die, as well, if you were to die in Turessi. Even I cannot save you, and without you, no one can save me. I need you alive, no matter the cost.

  “Once, you said you did not know if Raeln lives yet. His pattern will intersect with yours again if you live. If you do not…him and I will die on the same day, I believe.

  “I can fix this, Estin. Time and Turess’s teachings will do much the same, but neither of us will live long enough to see that happen. You need another month of dedicated work to regain any semblance of the skills you once had. We have perhaps a month before we need to be standing in the temple…the bones of the old empire, as Turess puts it.”

  Sitting up, Estin swallowed his fear and focused on the very rational way Mairlee was discussing their deaths. “Show me how to get my magic back, if it matters so much.”

  Mairlee snarled and spun away from him, stomping one slippered foot, which echoed as though the impact were far greater than her size would have allowed. “My people swore in Turess’s time that we would not do that again. I will not break an oath to my kin. I cannot teach you anything, Estin. Teaching magic is forbidden.”
>
  “Then tell me what’s wrong with me.”

  That seemed to strike Mairlee as funny, making her grin as she paced around Estin. “Mortals were never meant to harness magic, let alone the kind of magic you used to rewrite Feanne’s pattern in this world. I sincerely doubt mortals have harnessed that magic, still. Using the spell you did tore away part of your own life, much as flesh can be ripped and must take time to heal. As with other wounds, waiting alone is rarely enough—one must rebuild lost strength. Your wound is far from healed, yet Turess is trying to help you regain a muscle that has withered. The wound will tear open again when you push too hard. You will die, likely at the worst possible time. If that happens, you will get me killed too. When I die, the pattern appears to show that my kin will also die. We are supposed to be apart from the pattern, but those days are gone.”

  Estin tried to follow Mairlee’s explanation, as well as her movement. Between the dark and her rambling, he felt both were beyond his ability to keep up with.

  “So many risks with either path,” she mused, shaking her head.

  “What can we do?” he demanded, and Mairlee jumped a little, as though she had forgotten he was there.

  “Do?” She stopped pacing and knelt in front of Estin, bringing her face close enough that their noses nearly touched. “I told you I cannot teach you, Estin. If I give you the answer, it will not have the same significance as you figuring it out yourself. You always have been clever. Rely on that.”

  Estin stared back at Mairlee, unwilling to look away first. He slowly thought through what she had just told him.

  When Estin had first been learning to heal from Feanne’s mother, Asrahn, she had begun by teaching him how to tend to wounds of the people in the camp. He had set bones, sewed cuts, and nursed many through illness. Asrahn had insisted that magic alone could not be relied upon to heal. When you needed it most, you would be without it and would watch your friends die if you did not know what else to do. By using magic only when other means had been exhausted, many more patients would live.

  “You said this is a wound…something torn,” he reasoned aloud.

  Mairlee stared intently at him, waiting for something.

  “I can’t put a sling on this or stitch it. You cannot teach me…but that doesn’t really matter here. I can’t heal myself of the inability to heal, can I?”

  “No,” she replied, a slow smirk creeping across her lips.

  “Can you heal this?”

  “Not exactly, Estin. The wound is a part of your body and spirit, as much as your very life is. It is tied to this—” She poked Estin in the chest harder than he would have expected. “—this flesh. As long as your mortal body continues living, you will have this deep wound. Were we to work with you for the entire rest of your short life, you would be just a shadow of the person you were before the wound.”

  Estin thought on that. He had brought the dead back in the past, though he had needed a sort of magic that was now gone, thanks to the mists. Cities had once used circles of magic to concentrate healing energies into one spot for the purpose of magnifying the power of a healer. It allowed them to bring back the dead, no matter the condition of their body, within a short time after their hearts stopped. His magic alone could revive someone within seconds of their heart stopping, but those circles were lost with the coming of the mists. The only one he has seen functional in years was a thousand miles away.

  “Resurrection circles—”

  “Are no longer an option. You are limiting your thoughts.”

  Glowering, Estin continued. “The circles are old magic. My teacher said that no one knew where they were first created.”

  “No one? How droll.”

  “You taught Turess how to make them, didn’t you?”

  Mairlee grinned and shrugged. “Not I, but you are thinking properly now. The circles were a gift. It allowed mortals to do something for themselves, instead of always begging when a loved one died unexpectedly. At times, it felt as though mortals were lining up at our hiding places.”

  “You can do the same thing without a circle? You can resurrect the recently dead.”

  “I can. Rather a pointless request, though. That magic is meant to do one specific thing and is quite limited. You are wounded, not dead.”

  Estin leaned forward, tapping his nose against Mairlee’s. She did not back off at all. “You need to get rid of my mortal body, if the wound is tied to it. The circles allowed us to restore incredible wounds, even regenerating lost limbs if the recipient was strong enough. Our limited magic became far more powerful at those places. Can you destroy my body and remake it?”

  “What you are asking is for me to kill you and attempt to bring you back through sheer force of will. No mortal being has that kind of power.”

  “You aren’t a mortal, Mairlee.”

  Mairlee chuckled and remained dangerously close, somehow projecting a sense of danger that made Estin want to back away. “I am aware of that.”

  Finally sitting back, Mairlee got slowly to her feet, making quite a show of the act, as though Estin was to believe she was as old as she appeared. “Estin, I can repair what you did to your own spirit to bring Feanne back, but it will have its own risks. If I do what you have asked…and I succeed…your magic will return and you will be as strong as you ever were…but doing so will likely also strengthen Oramain. I do not know if he still exists, but if Dorralt has control over him, we are then strengthening our enemy. Worse still, it will weaken me to the point that Dorralt may manage to kill me. This is a profound risk for both of us. It will take me months to recover my own magic fully, though I will still be able to fight when the time comes.

  “Alternatively, I can kill you and be done with this. I believe that if done properly, it will destroy Oramain and take away a potential ally of Dorralt. In doing so, I believe Feanne will refuse to fight, and that will likely lead to all of our deaths. I cannot predict the outcome of either action with any surety. That is why I brought you here alone. I will let you make that decision. For once, I cannot make a decision with any confidence.”

  “You want me to tell you whether to kill me?” he asked, laughing as he got up. “Who would say yes?”

  She shrugged. “If I kill you, a possible outcome is that Feanne may live up to a year longer. She will lead the assault on Turessi in anger, seeking to end her own life. She may have a greater chance of living through this that way. If I kill you and attempt to heal you, you might be able to keep her alive using your restored magic. There is no sure outcome, and either could save or doom her. That is why I ask you. I can see as easily as anyone that you would let me kill you if it would protect her. It might…it also might not.”

  The chill of the cave’s dampness was quickly replaced by the cold touch of fear from thinking through his options. She was right. If he could save Feanne by dying, he would accept that. Not knowing which way would help and which might endanger her, he had no idea what to say.

  “Can we fight Oramain if he is still out there?” he asked at length.

  “I can stand against Dorralt and keep him from destroying your army,” Mairlee replied. “Oramain can raise an army of his own to rival anything you can field. Add to that the armies already serving Dorralt, and they will overrun all of us. But yes, Oramain can be defeated, but not at Dorralt’s side. Together, I doubt anything in Eldvar is strong enough to hold them back for long. Not I, not my kin, possibly not the mists. If restoring you gives some of my power to him, Oramain might not need Dorralt anymore.”

  “And killing me will destroy him?”

  “It might.”

  Estin looked up with a touch of surprise. “Might?”

  “He is no longer a part of you. His fate should be loosely tied to yours. Your empowerment is his, and your death is his.”

  “Should be? Killing me might not destroy him?”

  “Correct.”

  “And so fixing me might not empower him.”

  “Also correct.”

>   “How risky is this, Mairlee?”

  She frowned. “I will need to rest for a week or more afterward, and once this war is over, I will need to slumber for a year or more. It will take nearly all of my strength to do this without killing myself in the process. I have no fear of that outcome, but it is a mild risk that I am willing to take. Think of what I am about to do as being similar to what you did to yourself to bring back Feanne, except that I will mend in time.”

  Spreading his arms wide, Estin said, “Heal me. I’ll take those odds. Feanne once told me that I had the best luck of any unlucky person she ever met. I swore I would never leave her again. If we die, we die together.”

  Mairlee meandered away from Estin and then back, eyeing him head to paw. “How much of your childhood do you remember, Estin?”

  The question took him by surprise, destroying his resolve. He found himself fighting emotions and thoughts he had tried to suppress for a very long time. Sniffling, he looked down at his feet, trying to avoid letting Mairlee see the pain he knew would be evident on his face.

  “Please, Estin. I want to know if I have made a mistake.”

  Nodding, Estin kept his eyes anywhere but on Mairlee. “My childhood was spent hiding in Altis from people who would have killed a child for sport…”

  “Before that. You know what time period I mean.”

  Estin snarled and glared at her, wondering what game she was playing with him. There was no malice that he could see on her face, no mockery of him.

  “My parents were beaten and eventually killed while I watched,” he confessed, struggling to keep his tone emotionless. “I fled…ran for as long as I could.”

  “Details, please. Starting from when you left that hut.”

  Estin blinked in surprise. Mairlee could have been guessing, but it felt so close to home that he knew he had flinched. “I took everything I could carry and ran. I remember…I saw bodies everywhere. It’s all a blur. I don’t remember any of it clearly. Even after we found the village where I was raised, I can’t piece much of it together.”