by Jack Heckel
Everyone spun around, reaching for their weapons. Without thinking, I took a defensive posture and raised the wrapped battle-axe before me.
Chapter 28
NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
The sun was in our eyes, and we blinked as the riders came up the side of the mound toward us. Rook and Seamus had their own axes at the ready, Ariella had her daggers out, and Sam had pulled his little bag of sand from his pouch and was beginning an incantation. Luke held a sword and closed his eyes as if he were trying to focus.
Despite my recent failures, I fixed a pattern in my mind that would form a wall of fire between us and them and began to draw in the power I would need to energize it. I knew that something was wrong at once. A feedback of magical energy seemed to run through the air around my body, and a jolt of pure magic raced through my hand to the battle-axe. A brilliant white light burned through the wrappings that had been covering the weapon and shooting into the sky like a beacon. Above our heads came a mighty peal of thunder.
When the light finally died away, the covering had been reduced to ash. I found that I was holding Death Slasher’s twin, save that this one was made of brightly polished silver instead of pitted black metal, and where the evil battle-axe had an eye that always watched, this one had a symbol of the scales of justice etched into its handle.
“I, Justice Cleaver, am come!” said the battle-axe in a voice that shook the ground beneath my feet.
I had no time to ponder the fact that I was holding a talking battle-axe, because at the same moment I felt the reality of the world jolt as though it had been struck by a tremendous force. A hot wind came howling across the wasteland and swirled up the mound. It tore at my clothes and rose into the sky in a whirlwind. My vision blurred, the background music swelled and then suddenly stopped. Not silenced momentarily for dramatic effect, but really gone. I knew at once that Trelari had now shifted perilously close to Mysterium. I sagged to my knees, the battle-axe forgotten in my hand.
A dark figure loomed above me. I started to lift Justic Cleaver. “A simple hello would have done,” said Drake in his so familiar gravelly rasp.
“Drake?!” I shouted with joy, and soon everyone took up the cried of “Valdara!” and “Drake!”
Valdara ignored the cheers and came straight to my side. She stood above me, staring down at me in silence. “You survived the semi-lich. And I see that you found Justice Cleaver.”
From her tone I wasn’t sure if she was happy about either, but there was no time for a proper explanation, her words brought everyone’s attention back to me and the battle-axe. All eyes were fixed on the weapon. Above our heads dark black clouds massed. Inside those clouds, flash after flash of lightning could be seen.
It was in this solemn and eerie moment that Justice Cleaver thundered, “I know, there are not words. You are all in awe, which is only right and understandable. I’m certain that none of you have beheld another battle-axe nearly as impressive as I am, and you can’t even begin to comprehend even half of what I can do. Fix the memory of this moment in your mind, because you will cherish it for the remainder of your life. Your descendants may choose to sculpt you in this exact position, because today is the day the greatest weapon for justice in the history of time was unleashed upon the world. Let us have a moment of silence to properly honor this occasion and give your followers a chance to note where they stood for posterity.”
This speech, as ridiculous and ill-timed as it was, was exactly what we needed to break the tension.
“Someone thinks a little much of himself,” Seamus snorted.
“Dwarf,” Justice Cleaver boomed. “Do not be downcast. Though your own axe is but a child’s plaything compared to me, the mightiest battle-axe in history, as a friend and companion of the wielder of Justice Cleaver, I will defend you against all foes. All will fall before my justice.”
“I think I can see why Aldric wanted to get rid of the thing,” Rook said, eyeing the battle-axe with distaste.
Justice Cleaver shook in my hand. “Aldric knew that his evil would eventually falter against my virtue. In time my will would have bested his and he would have dedicated himself to the cause of justice. What a brilliant pair we would have made! No one could have stood before a half-vampire/half-lich champion of righteousness!”
“Can you shut that thing up, kid?” Drake asked.
“I . . . I don’t think so,” I said honestly. I looked at the battle-axe and said, “Justice Cleaver, could you give us a second?”
“None can silence Justice Cleaver!”
“I’m not trying to silence you,” I assured it. “I just need to talk to Valdara and Drake for a moment, and then I promise we will discuss your greatness and what enemies we need to defeat and all the rest.”
“We will interrogate them together. Even the wicked fear to lie when faced with the might of my splendor!”
I shook my head in frustration, took off my pack, and shoved Justice Cleaver into it. Dropping the bag at the feet of Rook and Seamus with strict instructions to watch it, I led Valdara and Drake down the mound away from the rest of the group. The violence of the wind lessened as we descended and was just a memory of the earlier torrent when we got to where they had their horses picketed. We stood in silence for a few moments.
Drake spoke before I could gather my thoughts. He looked up at the clouds, which still hung heavy, and said, “I take it that the light show wasn’t your doing.”
I had no idea. It might have been. Perhaps trying to use Mysterium magic with the battle-axe in my hand had yanked on the connection between the worlds. Perhaps I had, once again, made things worse. Eldrin would have known. I didn’t. I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but it wasn’t my intention.”
Valdara, who had said nothing for a while, threw her arms into the air in disgust. “Intention, intentions, who cares about intentions, Avery,” she said sharply. “This is what has troubled me about you from the beginning. All that matters are your actions—what you do, what you have done, and what you will do.”
I looked to Drake for support, but he fixed me with his dark eyes and said gravely, “No one thinks that they are evil, kid. Even the Dark Queen probably thinks she’s doing good.”
I wanted to argue that intentions did matter. I wanted to tell them that I had come to Trelari for the best of reasons. I had selected this place because it was already aflame with violence and chaos. Everywhere people lived in terror from the monsters of their nightmares. A band of these blood orcs had killed Valdara’s family and burned Drake’s village years before I had even conceived of the Dark Lord. I unified the forces of darkness; I moderated and weakened them so that ultimately the forces of good could defeat them. If I had not come, civilization, likely all life, and possibly the reality of Trelari itself, would have been wiped out. My intention was to stop that, and to make a golden age on Trelari. That was my intention now also. But the music was gone. We were nearly out of time, and here we sat arguing about intentions. Besides, Drake had struck too close to home with his comment about Vivian.
Frustration rose in my breast. “All I want to do, Valdara,” I snapped, “all I have ever wanted to do, is find the Dark Queen and stop her from bringing ruin to the land.”
Her eyes burned into me. “I asked you once before, and I will ask you again: Why?” I pointed to the sky for an answer, but she shook her head. “Who is the Dark Queen to you, Magus?”
“She’s . . .” I began, but couldn’t finish. I didn’t want to answer that question. Even now I couldn’t bring myself to speak the whole truth. That I was responsible for everything that had happened after the fall of the Dark Lord. “She . . . she’s a threat to everything you and Drake and everyone else in the Army of Light fought for,” I stammered, “and every moment we bicker here the danger grows greater.”
“Always you deflect and deny, Avery?” Valdara said. “Answer one question truthfully for me: Why does that battle-axe make the world tremble and the sky boil?”
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I started to answer. I honestly don’t remember what I was going to say, but it wasn’t going to be the truth. Before I could speak she held up a hand and said, “Avery, know that I forgive you for every mistake you have made. I believe, important or not, that intentions do matter. But no more lies.”
She sounded like a queen, the queen I had hoped she would become, but now she was judging me and finding me wanting, and I felt rather small. “Fine,” I said chastened. “No lies.”
I told them to wait and then retrieved my pack and brought it back down to where they stood. With a deep breath I opened it. Justice Cleaver shouted, “AHA!”
“Be quiet,” I commanded. The battle-axe quivered, but did not respond. Perhaps I did have a level of control over the thing.
As I pulled it forth, there was another peal of thunder and the wind whipped around us, throwing up a cloud of sand. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise and a chill run up and down my spine. I gazed up at the sky. The clouds were churning again and growing darker and more sinister with each passing second. Butterflies twisted in my stomach. This whole experiment had gone so terribly wrong, and every time I held Justice Cleaver it was only further confirmation that my original sin, using Mysterium magic, still haunted Trelari.
I held Justice Cleaver up before them. “I told you before that I am from another world.” They nodded in response. “For reasons I don’t fully understand—” and the gods help me that was the real truth “—my world and this one are affecting each other. It is my belief that the battle-axe we recovered from the tomb and the one you fought against are responsible.”
“Do you mean Death Slasher, the axe of Morgarr the Slaughterer?” She spat both names.
“Yes.” I really hoped that this wasn’t going to end with Valdara leaving again. “I’ve got to reunite Justice Cleaver with Death Slasher. I don’t know what will happen when I do that, but I do know that if I don’t, and if I don’t do it soon, terrible things will happen. I’m not sure what, but this world could be destroyed.”
“That’s a lot of ‘I don’t knows’ and ‘maybes,’ Avery,” Valdara said.
“You wanted the truth.” I let the axe drop to my side. “The truth isn’t always neat or sure.”
“Kid’s got a point there, Valdara,” Drake said, raising one eyebrow.
“Okay,” she conceded. “So, we need to get you to Death Slasher, but it was lost when the Dark Lord was defeated. Do you know where it is now?”
“My world,” I said without explanation.
Her face stiffened and she locked her eyes onto me. Questions lay behind her gaze. Questions about Death Slasher and the Dark Lord and their connection to me. If she had asked I would have answered—no lies—but somehow I think she knew that the answers to those questions might mean making an enemy of me, not that I would have considered her an enemy, but that she would have felt compelled to count me as one.
A sad smile turned the corners of her mouth. “After the world is saved there will be a time for questions and answers, and consequences. Right now I believe that your intentions are good, and I will let it pass.” She exchanged a look with Drake, and something unspoken passed between them, like an agreement had been reached. “Return to your world with the battle-axe, Magus,” Valdara finally said. “When you are done come back and help us defeat the Dark Queen.”
“Just like that you would send away your best weapon for defeating the Dark Queen?” I asked.
“Now who’s getting big in the head,” Drake said in his best growl.
“That’s not what I—”
“Stop teasing him,” Valdara chastised as he chuckled. “Can’t you see he and I are trying to have a meaningful and significant conversation about significant and meaningful things?”
Drake snapped his mouth closed and crossed his fingers over his heart.
Here was the thing. I had been thinking about this possibility since I’d learned about the connection between the battle-axes. As Dawn reminded me in our last conversation, I have the ability to cast my return spell at any time. I could take the battle-axe, return to Mysterium and be done with this whole damned adventure. But I knew I wouldn’t.
The question had never been about getting home; the question was what happened when I got there. I would never be able to cast the spells necessary to destroy the battle-axes without telling Griswald everything, which meant getting magi from Mysterium involved. They would destroy the axes. They would send in a squad of disciplinary magi to stop Vivian. It goes without saying that my dissertation would never be accepted, and that I’d probably get banished from the university entirely. Yes, I was selfish enough that my academic career often entered into my internal debates.
To my credit, my very little credit, had those been my only considerations, I probably would have gone back home anyway. But something had happened to me while in Trelari: I had fallen in love. Not with a woman, although I had great affection for Ariella and Valdara. I had fallen in love with this land. I loved the place and all its infuriating quirks, and I hated what I had done to it. I had come to Trelari with the inherent belief in my own superiority, and it led me to create the Dark Lord, and Death Slasher, and the Master, and the golems, and all the other monstrosities that continued to haunt the world. I hadn’t brought peace. Vivian or no Vivian, things were already bad when she arrived. In short, I had come to the conclusion that I couldn’t be trusted to save Trelari, and the reason was because I thought like a Mysterian. This also meant that I couldn’t trust anyone else from Mysterium to save Trelari.
I was a symptom of a broader problem: a fundamentally flawed view of what was real and what had value. I had to face the possibility that if I went back to Mysterium now, they might determine, in their wisdom, that Trelari represented a real and present threat to the stability of the Mysterium and/or the innerworlds, and that would be that. No further hearing. No appeal. No more Trelari. Subworlds were inferior realities. They were expendable. It was what you were taught from day one. If my original goal had been to save Trelari from itself, now my goal was to save it from Mysterium.
“Tempting” is what I said as I tucked the battle-axe into my belt. “But we need to stop the Dark Queen first. With Justice Cleaver we should be strong enough to resist her power.” I realized with my new no-lying policy that I should moderate that a bit. “At least possibly?”
“Possibly?” Drake said, and cocked an eyebrow.
“Possibly,” I repeated.
Drake shrugged. “I always like playing the long odds anyway.”
“It is a certainty,” boomed Justice Cleaver.
“But I could learn to bet the favorite,” Drake amended with a twisted smile. “What about you, Val?”
She tapped a finger to her chin and then tucked her arm in his. “I have nothing else going on today.”
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand. “Before we go on, why did you come back?”
Valdara half smiled. “Well, we were on our way home when Drake reminded me that the Dark Queen still needed stopping.”
I was pretty sure she was kidding. I took a deep breath and looked between the two of them. I felt tears in my eyes. “It’s good to have the two of you back.”
Drake gave me a pat on the shoulder. “In all seriousness, kid, you know we’ve been trying to catch up to you for a week. We even hired a tracker, but you guys never slowed down, even on the mound when we were shouting at you to stop.”
“I understand that now,” I said a bit sheepishly. “We got it in our heads that you were Hooded Riders.”
The both looked at each other and then back to me. “Well, technically I guess we were,” Valdara said. “We were wearing hoods, but it was only to keep the sun off our heads.”
“You can get a bit paranoid if you ride all day through a wasteland with the sun beating down on you, kid,” Drake advised about a week too late.
I cleared my throat and tried to change the subject. “Since time is pressing, shall we be off?”
“Thanks, JC,” Drake said with a chuckle.
We wandered back up to the top of the mound and called the Company of the Fellowship together. I knew that this was the sort of moment where a real leader would say something to rally the troops. I held my hand aloft dramatically and began. “Company of the Fellowship, I call you here at the beginning of the last leg of our journey. We have been through many hardships—”
“I thought you said time was of the essence, kid,” Drake interrupted.
“Well, I did,” I said uncertainly, “but I thought that we should tell everyone that we’ve decided to go after the Dark Queen.”
“We’re going after the Dark Queen?” Sam asked eagerly.
“We’re with you, Avery!” announced Ariella and Luke in an attempt at a combined pledge.
“About time,” Rook huffed, and pointed to the sky. “I’m gettin’ tired of this mound and this awful weather.”
I followed his gesture up; the clouds were beginning to spin and coil together in a great funnel, and lightning was streaking outward from the maelstrom in flashes of red and blue. I didn’t have the heart to tell Rook that this was not weather; it was the reality of Trelari fraying and flying apart, and that as long as we had Justice Cleaver with us it was unlikely to get better.
“How do we get there?” I asked Valdara and Drake in the hope that they would know.
“We could go back the way we came,” Sam suggested. “That’s the quickest route.”
“I don’t think so,” said Valdara with a shake of her head. “According to our tracker the Dark Queen’s armies marched in behind us. The land near the village will probably be an armed camp now, and hooded riders . . . real Hooded Riders will be patrolling the Sea of Grass day and night. We’d never survive that way.”
“That’s okay,” said Seamus. “We can go the overland route. You and Drake know it pretty well. At least that’s what the legends say.”