She Who Has No Name tlt-2

by Michael Foster

  ‘Poison!’ she said, and she gasped, clutching at her throat and gagging. Her lightning spell ended as her attention was distracted. She staggered away from the deadly vapour and came stumbling further into the room, coughing and throwing out spells to whomever had harmed her. A length of wall collapsed and Utik’cah could be seen standing there in the hall. ‘Damn you traitor!’ she squealed. ‘What are you trying to do? Poison cannot kill me. I am your god!’ Already, she was using the power of her ring to expel the toxin from her body. It would only distract her for a few moments at best. She sent out a whip of magic and used it to drag Utik’cah near to her. ‘You will die by your own hand, traitor.’

  And at once he, too, began to choke, caught in the toxic fumes that clung to her. ‘You have not saved our people, but cursed them with your evil plans,’ Utik’cah told her. ‘You brought us in from the deserts only to use us for your selfishness. You have no honour and you are not a god. You deserve to die!’

  ‘Shut up!’ she bellowed. She empowered her fist with magic and slammed the man down to the floor, snapping his back and leaving him writhing in pain.

  Something silver glimmered in his grasp,something slender and cylindrical. Utik’cah could not speak for,even as she held him,he clutched onto the thing with both hands and looked at Samuel desperately. Samuel knew what it was and he realised Utik’cah had no idea how to use it. Within it was a hideous spell. It took an instant for Samuel to passthe mana message-a feeling of twisting planteditselfin the Paatin’s mind and he knew that Utik’cah understood. He held the thing as Samuel had prescribed and readied his palms to turn it.

  Samuel needed no more indication than that and threw himself out the broken window, stillholdingthe pregnant woman in hisarms. She gasped as they fell, but he would not let them be harmed. He tore his shields down and salvaged the power to cushion their blow, landing softly.

  ‘You can’t escape me, Samuel!’ Alahativa cried out after him, still spluttering. ‘I vow to destroy you for what you have done to me. Even if you kill me, I will be reborn. I will find all thosewhomyou treasure and destroy their lives. Nothing you touch will ever feel happiness. I curse you as I am cursed! I curse you forever!’

  Without a pause, Samuel continued vaulting away, with the Koianmoaningin his arms. He cleared the city in three desperate jumps and set out into the twilight of the Star of Osirah. They landed amidst the pastures beside the gentle river,although it was now strewn with the dark shapes of floating debris and corpses. He dreaded seeing the Paatin Queen pursuing them, but he need nothavefearedfor,in that moment,Utik’cah must have managed to twist the object in his hands. The terrible magic trapped within it was unleashed and Samuel felt the Great Spell’s wrath escape in one awful moment.

  The palace vanished in a ball of white light, just as the fortress of Ghant had been destroyed, but this sphere of destruction kept growing, swallowing the city and moving out towards them with incredible speed. Samuel took another leap, bounding away with all his strength, but the wall of blinding fire was behind him. He made the first set of dunes but landed roughly. He dropped to one knee and cradled the woman in his arms as he turned his back to the blast. He threw up the strongest barrier he could muster, and held on tightly.

  The wave of destruction struck and it seemed that he and the woman became two blended silhouettes in a world suddenly white. His shield held, but the wind and fire of the Great Spell of Destruction tore by, buffeting them wildly and singeing his cloak at the edges. He held the woman as close as he could but,as the mayhem continued, his magic began to fail. He felt his shields beginning to waiver and jets of boiling air tore about them. He searched within himself for more power, dreading what would happen to the woman in his arms if his magic failed.

  The heat crept in and it felt as if it was about to engulf them, when magic came flooding into him-not from himself or any dark source, but from the woman he was protecting. She was looking at him eye to eye and pushing her own energy into him. His shields bloomed back to life and she only stopped aiding him once the decimating light had faded and the night desert was once more around them. The hills and dunes had been flattenedfor as far as the eye could see.

  As they stood and surveyed thehorizon to theeast, they could see that nothing remained around the mountain but a massive column of rising smoke that rolled towards the heavens. Every house and home and structure, every wall and tower of the city,had been reduced to nothing more than charred rubble strewn across the ground.

  ‘Are we safe?’ she asked him, looking at the devastation with concern.

  ‘We are. It’s over,’ he said. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Good. Now, I’m about to have our baby. Can you get us to somewhere more appropriate?’

  He nodded and, as gently as he could, he lifted her up once again andhurdledaway across the desert.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Starfall

  Samuel continued bounding across the rippled sands in the eerie silver twilight. He landed softly, cradling the woman in his arms as well as he could, before springing away again towards his goal. She kept a steady stream of energy flowing into him, keeping him going when he would otherwise have failed from weariness. It was not hard for him to pinpoint the Valley of the Ancients, for the gathering of magicians there sang to his senses. Cang’s aura alone formed a blue glow upon the horizon and Samuel kept on towards it throughout the night. What had taken them days to traverse on camelback, now took only hours as he flew above the difficult terrain on wings of magic. All the while, the Star of Osirah hung above him, with its tail spread across the heavens.

  ‘How much further?’ she asked, flushed in the face.

  ‘Not far,’ he told her. ‘Can you hold on?’

  ‘I think so. The pains have stopped. I think our baby does not want to be born in the desert.’

  ‘I will hurry.’ And with that he pushed himself on with renewed vigour, with the cold desert wind blowing in his face and setting their clothes flapping wildly around them.

  ‘What will we do with this child?’ she asked him.

  ‘Why do you ask? We will raise him together, of course.’

  ‘I would not ask you to stay with me if you do not love me,’ she said.

  ‘Of course I love you. My thoughts for you are all that have kept me from going mad. Every day of my confinement, my body was kept under the mountain, but my spirit was always with you.’

  ‘Was it really you I could feel?’ she asked. ‘I thought perhaps I was going mad. I heard what they did to you, and I almost died from despair.’

  ‘I don’t know how it happened, but somehow I fled from the pain of my body, and you kept my mind from losing its grip. I was with you, more often than you could know, and my only hope was that we could one day be together. I could not see past our differences at first, but I have come to realise it is only when I am with you that I am complete. After all our time together, it is my greatest regret that I did not realise it sooner.’

  She smiled at his answer and closed her eyes. ‘I felt you with me, but I could not see you. In my dreams, I thought I could hear you screaming and,at times, I could sense your pain.’ She opened her eyes again and looked at him with worry. ‘I wanted to kill them all and cometosave you, but the witch was full of lies. She said if I harmed anyone,they would kill you. I was not powerful enough to defy her. I couldn’t bring myself to even try. If not for the kindness of Sir Ferse, I don’t know how I would have survived. What became of him? Did he perish in the city?’

  ‘He escaped and is making his way back to his family.’

  ‘That is good. He missed his family as much as I missed you and every day was equal torture for him. I hope I also made his time a little more bearable-and he did teach me so much. He knows a lot about people and the ways of the world. He was very patient and understanding with me. I could feel he was troubled, but he is a good man.’

  ‘He is, but I am not sure how long that will last. All of us have changed in many ways. Tell me,’ he t
hen asked her, ‘do you think we will be happy together?’

  She smiled at him warmly. ‘I cannot think of anything else.’

  ‘Then I will help you return to your land.’

  ‘I do not care about going back any more,’ she told him. ‘I have learnt much of who I am and I know I am not a god-and I do not want to be one. Perhaps one day we can find a way to save my people from the Eudans, but for now, my only need is to be a mother.’

  They spied the top of the Temple of Shadows, jutting above the sands, just as the sun was dawning behind him, and Samuel took one final leap into the canyon, landing lightly at the foot of the stairs that led up to the entrance.

  Master Celios was waiting there at the mouth of the temple, donned in his best Order blacks with silver-hewn hems, and he beckoned to them with urgency. ‘Come! Come! We have been waiting for you all night. Come quickly! The Demon King’s return is upon us. The time is nigh.’

  The Koian woman wriggled out of Samuel’s grip and she began up the stairs, holding her belly. Samuel climbed after her, but she stopped him before he could speak. ‘I want to walk a little. It will help the baby to come out. And I’m tired of being carried.’

  So Samuel followed her hobbling ascent, with his hand at her back to catch her should she fall, as she took the stairs,one at a time.

  ‘Master Celios, how did you know we were coming?’ Samuel asked the old seer. He knew he should be angry with the man, but he couldscarcely blame him for his madness. Others had compelled the unfortunate old magician to peer into the future more often than was safe, cracking his sanity in the process.

  ‘Cang could feel you coming,’ old Celios revealed, craning his head to look at the star above. ‘He has learned how to find you. He tried to explain it to me, but I have no mind for such talk. My mind is ever filled with the visions he asks of me.’

  Theyadvancedinto the dim, adorned passageways of the temple.

  ‘What has happened in our absence?’ Samuel asked the old magician. ‘Something has happened to allow the demons to return. It seems the rings were not the relics we were seeking. Something else must have been responsible.’

  ‘Yes, yes,we know. Cang will tell you everything,’ was all Celios would say, and they followed the plodding Koian woman to the end of the hall, where she stopped in place.

  She began panting quickly and bent her legs, as if looking to sit down. Samuel rushed to her side.

  ‘Enough walking!’ she said urgently. ‘Carry me!’

  He scooped her up and started away, but Celios called them back to the opposite passage. ‘This way. We have readied a room for her this way. The others are waiting. Come.’

  Samuel turned about, careful not to hit her head against the walls, for the passageways were quite tight in places. They turned a corner andwentdown some dusty stairs,and Samuel was surprised to find a large chamber, almost as wide as the temple itself, built beneath the temple. The great space was entirely vacant, save for a circular pattern of stones laid into the floor at its very centre. A gathering of people waswaiting upon it.

  Cang was foremost there, with his simple smock hanging on his skeletal frame and tied tightly around at the waist. Lomar and Eric also waited beside Balten,and they all turned to see the visitors arrive. Cang called out on sight of the new-comers’ approach and three Paatin women came scurrying from a side chamber and began beckoning Samuel over. He took the Koian woman past them to find a bedded room, stocked with linen and a washbasin, obviously prepared for their arrival.

  ‘Come, lady,’ one of the women spoke in a Paatin dialect and helped the pregnant woman from Samuel’s arms and into the bed.

  No sooner had she lain back than she screamed, with her pained face turning beetroot red, and the women rushed to her side, pushing Samuel out of the way.

  ‘Come, Samuel,’ Balten said, waiting at the door. ‘They will care for her. We need to speak.’

  Samuel reluctantly followed the man across the echoing chamber, where the others waited at its middle.

  ‘What happened to all the relics here? The books and shelves? The temple was full the last time I was here,’ he noted.

  ‘Plans have changed, Samuel,’ Balten said. ‘Everything has been carefully packed and removed, sent to other Circle hiding places around the world. The temples have always served as insurance, to pass future generations the knowledge to combat the Demon King. Now, we will not be needing it. Tonight we will achieve victory. Let Cang explain the rest.’

  They reached the centre of the room and Samuel stepped up onto the raised stone circle with the others.

  ‘Samuel!’ Lomar said. ‘You are alive! It is good to see you.’ And he gave him a great engulfing hug. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save them. Because of my failure, you had to endure all this time in your prison.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you, too,’ Samuel tried to return, but the words were lost in the crush. ‘It doesn’t matter about before. You did what you could. We are well, now.’

  When Samuel could tear the man away, he saw Eric waiting beside and shook his friend’s hand warmly,and then, too, gave him a great friendly hug.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said. ‘I bet you thought I was dead.’

  Eric smiled sheepishly. ‘No. Cang seemed confident the whole time that you were alive, until just before. Then, Celios was stricken as if blinded and could not see anything. There was a great light shining to the east. We ran outside to see it. What happened?’

  ‘Hol is destroyed: the Paatin Queen and all her people with it. Only the Emperor escaped.’

  ‘He was here, not long ago, but he looked…different.’

  Samuel nodded. ‘There is much more to his story than we will probably ever know.’

  ‘When we told him we had seen the Empress and Leopold safely to Cintar,he rushed after them before we could stop him. I don’t know how he will manage crossing the wastes by himself.’

  ‘I don’t think he will have any trouble,’ Samuel suggested.

  ‘Cang sent her back months ago with a squad of his Circle agents. Word returned later that they had arrived without too much trouble. She wanted to wait here until you and her husband were saved or released, but it was just too dangerous. We did not want to risk a rescue until the time was right. Somehow, the time just never became right.’

  ‘I can understand. I managed by myself.’

  ‘Master Celios has also been filling us in on the occasional events in the palace, but mostly he has been focussed on the rest of the world. He has kept us busy cataloguing and dispersing all his treasures and relics.’

  ‘Why? What has been happening?’ Samuel asked.

  ‘Lin’s return,’ Cang said, stepping up and baring his jagged teeth. ‘The Demon God’s coming is always heralded by a time of war upon the earth. There are few places now untouched by violence and it will only worsen with each day.’

  ‘What about Cintar?’ Samuel asked.

  ‘Under siege for many months, but the city still stands,’ Lomar said. ‘Alahativa’s forces are black around it, but the city is holding well. Since the Empress’ return, the will of the people has rallied. They have access to the sea and more than enough stores to survive many months more. The city has lived up to its reputation, even after its dreadful loss.’

  ‘What loss is that?’ Samuel asked the dark-skinned man.

  ‘Forgive me, Samuel. I forget you have been away from us for so long. The Council of Magicians is no more. All the Lords have fallen. Still, the great city perseveres. General Ruardin and his men, along with the remnants of the Order, are holding their ground. You and I are last of the magician Lords.’

  Samuel accepted the news without any hint of emotion. ‘Then that is why Alahativa forged her alliance with the Grand Master,’ he mused. ‘No matter what efforts she made, she could not take Cintar. She lured us here to thin the ranks in the city, but still it was not enough.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Eric asked with interest, picking up on the mention of the old L
ion.

  ‘Anthem was here, in the Queen’s city.’

  ‘And what else, Samuel?’ Cang said with a toothy, knowing smile. ‘What happened to your old teacher and friend?’

  ‘I see you already have some idea,’ Samuel replied darkly. He then turned back to Eric. ‘Anthem had made a pact with the Paatin Queen. He was going to give her Cintar.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Eric said. ‘Even if it were true, how would he accomplish such a thing?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he knows its weaknesses, or some secret that would get them within the walls. The Grand Master and I had something of a disagreement. We fought and he performed a spell of Summoning. In the end, the spell engulfed him and he was lost within it.’

  ‘He’s gone?’ Eric said with disbelief.

  ‘Yes. He’s dead.’

  Cang ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘I always thought the old fool would meet such a bitter end. Perhaps that is one of the worst deaths, if,indeed,he had the luxury of dying. In some realms, the things that live there would be feasting on him for centuries to come.’

  ‘But why would he do such a thing?’ Eric asked. ‘I thought he had been in Garteny all this time, seeking a treaty with King Otgart?’

  ‘We did not have time to discuss his journey to the north, but it seemed he had only just arrived when I met him. As you can see, the Koian woman and I are having a child. Anthem wanted that child and,to that end, he made his pact.’

  ‘That’s your child?’ Eric said with interest.

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Eric said. ‘It’s just that you are a magician.’

  ‘The Koian god-woman and Samuel are both unique,’ Balten explained. ‘Joined to any other, they will not produce offspring, but together it seems they are both fertile. A rare and momentous coincidence.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cang said. ‘So it seems the upstart Anthem has been hard at work with his own plot. Shame on him and his Order for pointing their figures at me so many times over the years! They could not resist themselves when the woman appeared, for it was obvious that the two of you were made from the same mould. They began at oncetoconsider what would happen if it turned out you could generate young. While all magicians eventually lose their eagerness for the opposite gender, it was obvious that you were not similarly affected, Samuel-a thing unheard of amongst magic-wielders of every description.’