Passing Through

by Kalliver, AJ

  Despite herself, Lyra gave the man an incredulous look.

  “Your brother? The local lordling?” He nodded, looking a bit sheepish, and she leaned back in her saddle as she considered that. “Well, now.” It was an interesting bit of information, though at this point it changed nothing. “Remember that I am unused to pleasant receptions once my true nature becomes known.” She lifted her hair away from one ear as a reminder, and waited for his nod of understanding before letting it fall back into place. “Few will accept such as I, and few of those have need of my skills. Until very recently, I was a cavalry scout for the Barons of the South, a part of the army they sent into Lady Shalarra’s lands.” He looked to be somewhat confused by that, and striving not to show it. She chose to be merciful, rather than carry on with descriptions of people and events about which he would have no knowledge. “It matters not, really, who is who and why they did what, save for this: I served fools, and they paid the price their stupidity demanded.”

  “Your army was defeated?” he asked her, something like compassion in his voice. She shook her head firmly.

  “No, not merely defeated; they were annihilated.”

  He made as if to reach out and touch her leg, and she jerked the reins aside, ingrained reflex nearly putting her foot –and the iron stirrup—into his jaw before she caught herself. He never flinched, instead looking upon her with pity in his eyes.

  “And so you deserted, and fled to these hills.”

  Her lips thinned as she regarded him; compassion she could tolerate, sometimes, but never pity.

  “I removed myself from the Baron’s employ, and paused in these hills so that my horse could recover from her wounds, and so that I might gather funds enough to make my way to the domain of the Mountain Lords. I’ve heard that they are somewhat tolerant of mixed-breed folk, and I mean to go and see for myself.”

  It was his turn now to wear a hard expression.

  “How many innocent folk died thanks to your ‘fund gathering’?”

  She only shrugged.

  “How many folk chose to be wise, and gave me their coin, and lived to tell their tale to you and your brother? If I had been colder, and more practical, then I would have slain them each and every one, and you would not have known where to come looking, or that the one you sought was a woman with black hair.”

  To that he had no reply, and they journeyed on for some time in silence.

  * * * * *

  Long miles lay behind them now, and the road had climbed nearly to the top of the last steep ridge shown on her map. The forest was thick and silent all around, with no signs of habitation anywhere to be seen. Even so, Lyra stayed alert for certain signs, and soon enough she spotted one.

  “What is it?” Beyen asked when she drew rein. The woman did not answer immediately, instead studying the spells strung across the road like a loose-woven web.

  “There is magic here,” she eventually replied. “A spell that is intended to warn of anyone passing this way.” Though the glowing lines of energy were plainly evident to her, she knew his eyes could see nothing of them. Straightening up to stand in the stirrups, she could see spell linked upon spell, extending off into the woods to either side as far as she could see. “I can see no way around it.”

  “A shame,” he said, not sounding in the least disappointed. “Perhaps the best course would be to return to town with me. I will do my best to intercede with my brother on your behalf. With only a little luck he will give me your parole, and you can live here in peace while you make amends for your crimes.”

  In another time and place it would have been amusing, this determination of his to have her for his own. In the here and now, it elicited only a brief twitch of her lips, and then she began her spellcasting. It was not spectacular, there were no flashes of light or screeches of otherworldly powers being invoked; and quite deliberately so. There was obviously a spellcaster somewhere close by; best if she kept her own workings as stealthy as possible, lest some advantage be lost. Any use of active magicks created a sort of ripple effect in the higher planes, one that other mages could sense for some distance. Going softly, as she was now, spells took somewhat longer to complete, though they were also nearly undetectable save at very close range.

  “What are you doing?” Beyan asked, his voice slightly hushed as he watched her. Lyra continued with her casting, her fingers guiding the magical energy she wove. The elvish words she chanted softly helped lead her through the intricate mental sets required to properly manage the forces she wielded. This was no minor spell to light a campfire, this one was powerful, and fiendishly complex. Nearly ten minutes after she’d begun it, the elf-woman finally completed the working. Immediately she felt a wave of weariness, though it was easily mastered. Here, sitting on a quiet trail with all the time she’d needed, there had never been a question of losing control of the magic. While she waited for her strength to fully return, Lyra occupied herself with pulling on her leather bracers. Tanned black to match the rest of her harness, they guarded her arms from wrist to elbow. Doing up the laces without aid was a difficult task at which she was well-practiced.

  “It’s a protective spell,” she said aloud, answering his question of some minutes earlier. “One of my best-developed areas of magic is the creation of barriers, shields, wards… that sort of thing. I can cast them so as to repel physical attacks, or magical ones. Since I now know there is a mage about, I’ve chosen to use the one that turns aside magic. After all,” she thumped the leather and metal that encased her body, “this is here to ward against the physical.” He looked surprised; perhaps he really had expected her to turn back at the first sign that her escape would not be effortless. She had, after all, run away from the last real battle of which she’d been a part. There was, however, a world’s difference between that and what she expected to face here.

  She found herself a bit surprised to find that some pride still remained to her; she would not hesitate now, when doing so would make her seem the coward in this man’s eyes.

  “Come along now, if you will,” she said to him as she settled the bracers into place. “You’ve seen only the worst of me thus far; I’ve a mind to show you what I really am.”

  With that she put Derofehr into a slow walk, and took her through the alarm spell’s web. The strands pulsed as she passed through them, though they neither harmed nor hindered her. That was not their function. A glance behind showed Beyen hesitate, then trot after her. A few hundred yards ahead, just visible now through the thinning trees, she could make out a small stone structure.

  “Turn back,” he said when he followed her gaze.

  She did not look down at him, the outpost was still too far away to see clearly, so she occupied herself with locating a particular bit of ribbon amongst her equipment. It was only a scrap, woven from heavy green silk, frayed and badly faded now after several human lifetimes. She caressed it briefly, running it through her fingers as she recalled a childhood so distant that it seemed to belong to someone else entirely. Finally, with a sigh, she gathered up her hair and used the bit of silk to tie it back from her face in anticipation of battle. Her steed’s steady pace was bringing them closer to the structure now, and she studied it carefully.

  The ridge steepened ahead, becoming a vertical rock face nearly thirty feet high. The road ran alongside this as it climbed, with the cliff-face on the left and an equally-sharp drop off to the right. Some distance beyond, the road surmounted the ridge and descended to the lowlands beyond, but at the point where the passage through was narrowest, some long-ago lord had built himself a tower. It was small, and partly fallen into ruin, and yet it still did an admirable job of blocking her way, with one shoulder merging with the cliff, and the other hanging over empty space. The road itself passed through the base of the tower; she could see that much quite clearly, though just now a heavily-rusted portcullis barred the way. Before it stood a single man, leaning at his ease upon a long pike. She briefly considered retrieving her bow from its place
beside her saddle, then dismissed the idea. They, too, would have bows, and from within those stone walls all the advantages in such a duel would be theirs. Better to get close, and deal with them face to face. From beside her, Beyen spoke once more.

  “This border is closed to you, can you not see that? The soldiers will have had you described to them, and they will not allow you to pass. Come back with me.”

  It was fifty paces between them and the tower now, no more. She drew rein one last time, and regarded the man there beside her foot.

  “Your brother’s kingdom is a small one, and poor. If he has more than a handful of swords in that ruin then I am an ogre’s daughter. They cannot stop me.” Her final piece of equipment was a round steel buckler, which she took up with her left arm. “Though if you wish to save their lives, you will order them to let me through.” She smiled then, a sad little expression. She had seen too many battles to go into this one without a prickling awareness of her own mortality. “Perhaps it is even my own life you’ll save; all of us have unlucky days, and this may well be mine.”

  He did not return her smile.

  “I cannot. I find myself unable to do as I should, and drag you from that saddle here and now to go back and face justice, but neither can I turn traitor to my brother, and aid you.”

  She nodded, unsurprised.

  “So I thought.”

  And that was all; there was nothing left to be said between them.

  She kneed Derofehr gently, and the horse carried her forward, toward the confrontation, and she faced it alone.

  As always.

  * * * * *

  As she drew near the worn stone structure, Lyra felt the unmistakable sensation of spellcasting. It did not have the feel of someone especially powerful, unless they were attempting to deceive her. Such trickery was certainly possible, though she doubted it was the case here. No, this was merely a low to middling-strong mage, casting in haste, and from somewhere within the tower just ahead. She braced herself for some manner of attack, wondering for a moment if those who garrisoned the border here would not even trouble themselves to be sure of her identity before unleashing both spells and arrows.

  Such did not come to pass, however, and she continued forward at the same slow walk.

  A slow, deliberate approach like this went against everything she was accustomed to do in a battle; a mounted warrior relied on speed, and the shock of a charging warhorse overbearing and trampling the foe. Here, with the portcullis down, she would gain no advantage at all from being mounted; it would in fact be better to dismount and fight afoot, especially when she could not risk further injury to Derofehr.

  Twenty paces now, and the lone guard was no longer leaning on his weapon; he had it held ready in both hands as he peered at her.

  “Here, now,” he said loudly. “What business have you in this place?”

  Lyra raised her empty hand, and gave him her most winning smile.

  “I wish only to pass through, sir gatekeeper, nothing more.” Fifteen paces now separated them, and for a moment she dared hope he would be the only opponent she would face.

  Such was not to be. A stout wooden door set inside the tunnel that accommodated the road suddenly burst open, and two more men hurried forth to stand beside the first. Both were armored as the pikeman; poorly, with ill-made leather reinforced here and there with bits of chainmail. These two both carried bared swords, and both also bore enchantments, one as a shimmering aura around his entire body, the other as a fierce blaze centered upon the sword in his hands. It also did not escape her attention that there were several arrow slits in this side of the tower, on both the upper and lower levels, and that there was movement to be seen in at least one of them.

  “Hold there, and dismount!” One of the newcomers called out, and she nodded amiably—even as she let Derofehr take another few steps forward before bringing her to a halt.

  “I’ve no wish to cause any trouble,” she began, her mind racing as she studied their placement relative to the tower. The small door they’d emerged from was also still ajar, which was a mistake that would cost them dearly, assuming she lived long enough to exploit it. “I’m only now after taking up a life of soldiery since my father has died and left me his weapons and armor….” They were five paces away, which was nearly within striking distance of the pike man. She made a show of dismounting clumsily, with much swaying of her long ponytail so as to exaggerate her status as a less-threatening female. It was her hope that they wouldn’t think too hard on the fact that she stepped down on the far side of her horse from them, which hid her hands from view for a few vital seconds.

  One of the men, the one with the magical aura surrounding him, came around the front of the mare to meet her.

  “We’ve some questions to ask of you, girl; come here and we’ll see about—“

  “’Ware magic!” came a shout from within one of the upper-level arrow slits, though by then it was too late. Lyra’s sword was in her right hand, and a swift-conjured orb of lightning the size of her fist was crackling within her left. The man took a hasty step backwards, not quickly enough to escape as she lunged forward. The tip of her sword met a stiff resistance well short of his chest; the shielding he wore was of the sort to blunted the force of physical attacks… which of course meant nothing to the lightning-ball she flung at his face from her other hand. It struck home, fully engulfing his head for a moment before it faded, and he fell to the ground convulsing and struggling to scream through tight-locked jaws. A shrill whistle from her sent Derofehr cantering off to wait at a safe distance, and she charged the remaining two men.

  Fighting both at once was a good way to get killed, so she feinted left, towards the swordsman, then cut right and ran hard at the one with the pike. As she’d hoped, he wasn’t very good. One strike was all he managed, and she deflected that with her buckler, causing the cruel blade to slide harmlessly past her shoulder. When he tried to bring his weapon back into line, she was already within its reach, and the shaft merely grated against the armor covering her upper arm as she ran down it’s twelve-foot length. A more experienced foe would have had a handier weapon ready, just in case someone did as she had done; this man did not. She took him in the throat with a single, economical flick of her sword, and flung herself backwards even as he fell, to evade the attack she knew was coming from the remaining swordsman.

  She managed it, if only just. The tip of his mage-enhanced sword flashed only inches from her eyes, and now she was the one stumbling back to gain some room. The man didn’t bother with any technique; he hacked and hewed at her with wild, two-handed swings better suited to a woodcutter’s axe. Lyra stayed completely defensive, working desperately to evade him, and once when a blow missed her it struck a large stone that had long since fallen from the tower. With a shower of sparks, the blade carried all the way through the block, and rested for a moment deeply bedded in the ground before he yanked it free and came at her once more. She knew she could not afford even a graze from that weapon; it would cleave through anything it hit, armor or no. The obvious thing, of course, was to not cross swords with him at all; she danced round him and raised her left hand to summon another lightning orb—and a buzzing arrow skipped off her side. She gasped, ducking another wild swing of the sword while trying to see which of the arrow slits in the tower the archer was hiding behind. Only her armor had saved her from a severe injury just then, and even that would not have sufficed if it had been a better-aimed shot.

  At that moment, a bad situation grew even worse; she felt the ripples of a spell taking shape close by. There was nothing to be done about that, either she would survive it or she wouldn’t. Ducking, rolling, risking a parry when she judged she could do so glancingly enough that her own blade wouldn’t be hacked in two, Lyra worked her way back towards the tower. Another arrow hissed by; mercifully this one came nearer her foe than herself, prompting him to snarl a curse at the unseen archer above. That got a laugh from her; sharp, and almost lost amid her grunts of
exertion, yet a laugh all the same. Almost as if in response, a torrent of flame fell from the sky and engulfed her completely.

  For the length of a long breath, the magic-born inferno blazed, then it imploded with a loud –pop-, leaving Lyra standing there, unharmed. She saw the incredulous look on the swordsman’s face shift to one of pure rage, and then she was running once more towards the tower. This time she made it; even the archer had apparently been taken aback by the way her protective spell had shielded her from their mage’s spell.

  Not so surprising, really; young spellcasters always went for the flashy fire effects, despite their inability to effectively penetrate a competent defense.

  Once she reached the base of the tower, she made her stand in the mouth of the tunnel which carried the road through the structure. The lowered portcullis gave her only a small amount of space to work with, and that was a concern. More important, though, was the way the overhang effectively blocked the archer and mage’s sight lines. As long as she stayed here, there was only one foe to worry about. When the soldier with the sword came at her, she was ready to meet him. A conjured lightning ball flung as he closed forced the man to hurl himself to one side in order to avoid it. Before he could regain his footing, she had darted forward and landed a light slash to the outside of one thigh. When he swung an overhead blow he misjudged his position, and the blade hit the lower, side portion of the tunnel’s arched ceiling. Even the enhanced-sharpness spell on the weapon wouldn’t let it chop that much stone, and he spent a split second pulling it free… during which time she inflicted a bone-deep cut to his left arm, leaving it nearly useless. He screamed, with rage or pain, she wasn’t sure which, and came at her again. This time, though, the enchantment upon his sword faded suddenly, and she caught the blade with her own in a square-on parry. The weapons rang as one, both held, and her eyes met his.