by Dan McGirt
“I see the problem.”
“I wanted Mercury by my side anyway, but powerful interests had other ideas. The nobility urged me to marry Halogen in order to preserve peace. The League also desired the marriage, believing a combined kingdom would be better able to resist the cabals of the Society. Mercury was at that time a candidate for League membership. High-ranking members pressured him to forget me. Mercury refused to bow to their will and Pencader backed him. Then Pencader was expelled from the League and later died under mysterious circumstances. Mercury believes he was murdered on the orders of the High Council.”
“That would explain his dislike for the League all right.”
“With Pencader gone, the League and the nobles launched a campaign of lies, threats, and extortion to drive us apart. Eventually they convinced each of us that the other truly desired an end to our relationship. Mercury departed to become the bitter wanderer you know. I threw myself into my rule, consolidating my power and beginning my reforms. Each of us believed we had been abandoned by the other, and it was only three years ago that we began to discover the truth.”
“How awful.”
“Our rapprochement has been slow and difficult. He still blames the League for our troubles. I have not forgotten what happened, but feel the threat of the Society is more important than holding a grudge. Halogen still believes that my kingdom and I are rightfully his. His father, King Lanthanide, kept the peace between our nations, but he recently died. Halogen will soon come to claim me with an army at his back and many nobles still feel I should marry him and avert a costly war. Do you see more clearly now the complex web of relationships you must navigate?”
“Indeed I do, Your Majesty.”
“Please call me Raella, Jason.”
“Thank you, Your—Raella. I understand what you’ve told me. What I don’t understand is why the League thinks I’m some kind of savior.”
“That is largely wishful thinking. You are probably unaware how many signs and omens in the past year have indicated your great importance in the struggle against evil. The High Council interpreted these to mean you were sent by The Gods to destroy the Society because the League is currently losing its centuries-long struggle.”
“Why?”
“The Society’s new Overmaster, Erimandras, is a brilliant, subtle, ruthless leader, and a magical genius. He has revitalized the Society and taken the offensive throughout the Eleven Kingdoms. A savior of darkness, so to speak. The League suffers a leadership crisis and loss of will stemming from what they did to Mercury and me. The High Council craves a strong leader. They hoped it would be you as a reborn champion from the past.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“Don’t be. We were foolish to look to legends for our strength, but defeat upon defeat has quenched the fires of hope within many. Having lost faith in themselves, they are ready to lay down and die.”
“You obviously aren’t, Raella. Why can’t you lead them?”
“Leading my kingdom comes first. I cannot effectively lead the League.” She paused, then said softly, “But Mercury could.”
“Merc?”
“He has the skill, the daring, and the will to fight. If his analysis of Society’s plans regarding Asmodraxas is correct, then the League needs to adjust its strategy. Unfortunately, they won’t listen to him and vice versa.” She smiled. “But if your aura holds the location of the Superwand it could change everything. Enough of this chatter. Let’s find out.” She directed me to stand before a black tapestry on the wall. “The contrast helps the clarity of your aura,” she explained. She gazed intently at me. “Interesting,” she said after a moment. “It isn’t in the Standard Auric Alphabet, but the style looks familiar. Stay put.”
The queen pulled Opthamalio’s Guide to Unusual Auras from the bookshelf and leafed quickly through it, occasionally glancing at my aura as she searched its pages. “Aha!” she said suddenly. “Your aura is done in the Old Archaic Style of High Primitive Celestial Proto-Auric.”
“What’s that?”
“Very obscure,” she said, as she walked to her desk and withdrew a pair of wire-rimmed crystal spectacles from a drawer. When she put them on, her blue eyes appeared to be as large as hen’s eggs. “Magnification glasses, for the fine script,” she explained.
The queen stared at my face and read my aura aloud, frequently consulting the Guide for pronunciation. I didn’t understand a thing she said, but the words did sound very old and obscure. At the desk, an animated quill pen wrote a translation of my aura on a sheet of parchment.
Raella removed the spectacles when she finished reading my auric script and looked at the transcript. Her eyes got almost as big as they had been with the spectacles, and her mouth fell open in astonishment.
“Is it the secret of the Superwand?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“It’s a message,” she said softly, gazing at me in wonderment. “To you.”
“From whom?”
“Read it for yourself.”
She handed me the sheet of parchment and I read my own aura. It said:
Dear Jason,
The Dark Magic Society is eager to locate you and willing to devote great resources to that purpose. It is urgent that you not fall into their hands. The future of all people depends on this. Quite frankly, if the Society gets you, no one will have much of a future.
We have done what we can to protect you. We’ve watched over you from birth and have done much to confuse and divert your enemies. If we may say so, we’ve done a pretty thorough job of looking out for you. For example, your ancestors were wealthy and powerful, monarches in their own right. Had that trend continued, such prominence would have made you easy to locate. So we reduced your forefathers to grinding poverty and led them to obscurity in the land of Darnk, thus wrapping you in a protective blanket of anonymity. You can’t beat planning like that.
Still, we are limited in what we can do by the terms of the Great Eternal Pan-Cosmic Holy/Unholy Non-intervention Pact, (as modified and revised by the Pantheonic Committee on Modification and Revision) which governs the extent of our direct involvement in worldly affairs. Nonetheless, we’ve tried to send help your way. We’ve issued a flood of omens, signs, oracles, and prophetic warnings to encourage our earthly servitors to render you any needed assistance. Once your enemies find you, we will make a hero of you. That will be a big help in your efforts to stay alive.
We urge you to go to the Shrine of Greenleaf at the juncture of the Hidden River and the Arbenflow in the midst of the Incredibly Dark Forest. There you will find the means to ensure your survival as well as more complete information about what is going on. The Keeper of the Shrine is awaiting your arrival.
We would like to tell you these things in a dream or by divine messenger, but the Demon Lords have means of monitoring such communications and would quickly locate you if we did. We’ve imprinted this message in your aura in the hope that each man is intuitively aware of the content of his own aura and that you will therefore get at least the gist of what we’re saying.
We hope this works.
We apologize for any inconvenience all this may cause you, but those are the breaks. Good luck. We’re all pulling for you up here.
Sincerely,
The Gods
I put the letter down. “I did sense part of the message! Enough that mention of the Society made me uneasy.” I looked at the letter again. “But it doesn’t really explain much. If I don’t have the secret of freeing Asmodraxas, then why does the Society want me?”
“It does seem quite probable that you are directly descended from the Mighty Champion even if you are not the Champion incarnate. Perhaps they believe you know the location of the Superwand by virtue of your ancestry.”
“What’s this Shrine of Greenleaf?”
“I have never heard of it.”
“Great. The Society wants me because they think I know the location of a magic Superwand they need in order to free the greatest
of all demons. The Demon Lords want me dead in order to thwart the Society. The League expects me to save the world and The Gods won’t explain all this to me until I visit a non-existent shrine in the heart of the Incredibly Dark Forest, which no man enters without suffering death or at least great bodily harm and mental anguish.” I shook my head in dismay. “Did I leave anything out?”
Before Raella could reply, the study door burst open and a babbling crowd of lords, generals, and court officials stumbled into the room, shouting about war, doom, blood, and disaster. I could make out nothing amid the hubbub, nor could the queen.
“Silence!” she commanded. The uproar ceased. “Thank you. General Hawkinstern, what is the matter?”
The supreme commander of Raelna’s armies stood at stiff attention and spoke briskly. “Invasion. News just in. Multiple fronts. Brythalians from the east. Orphalians across the Longwash. No accurate battle reports as yet.”
“Well, get them!” snapped Raella. “I want complete estimates of enemy troop strength, an analysis of their strategy, an update on the disposition of my forces, and a list of response options. Convene the High Command immediately. I will be there in a moment.”
Her officers scrambled from the room to carry out her instructions. Raella faced me sadly. “The moment I feared has arrived.”
Mercury swept into the study and embraced the queen. “This is not one of your better days is it?”
“No,” said Raella, glancing at me.
“What did your aura reveal?” Merc asked me.
I started to reply, but was cut short by the return of the babbling generals and court officials.
“I thought my commands were clear,” said Raella, silencing them.
“New development,” said General Hawkinstern. “Rae City under attack.”
“By what force?” demanded Raella.
“Demons, Majesty. Winged marauders.”
Mercury looked at me. “That must be some aura you’ve got.”
* * *
12
The tower at the pinnacle of the Solar Palace was surmounted by a dome of magically unbreakable glass and gave an unimpeded view of all Rae City and the green countryside beyond. Queen Raella observed the attack on her city from the center of the bubble, standing calmly amid a swirl of alarmed military officers and scurrying aides. Merc and I stood out of the way to one side.
The winged marauders, perhaps three hundred in number, did not venture this high; instead wheeling and darting amid the lesser towers of the city and diving to attack anyone they spotted in the streets below. I studied one through binoculars as it swooped down to street level and gleefully impaled a fleeing pedestrian on its spear. It was an orange, scaly, man-shaped creature with a long spiked tail and membranous, fan-like wings. The shape of its face reminded me of a jackal. The rest of the horde was identical, though some were armed with large iron hooks or sacks of oblong metal balls which exploded violently when hurled to the ground.
“From the direction of their attack, I’d say the marauders gated in north of here,” observed Merc.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Someone had to open a gate to the Assorted Hells for these demons to reach Arden. It would take a dozen sorcerers to summon a force this large, unless you had the Horn of Hockessin or something like that.”
“What’s the Horn of Hockessin?”
“A magic horn that summons demons. It was created by Hockessin the Unclean, the greatest demonics expert that ever lived. He was so powerful and wicked that even the Society feared him. In fact, the Demon Lords themselves paid him homage. Which raises the question of who is responsible for this attack.”
“Whoever has the Horn of Hockessin, right?”
“Wrong. The Demon Lords could have sent this force, the Society might have summoned it with or without the Horn, or it may have nothing to do with you at all.”
Rae City’s defenders battled the marauders with amazing weaponry. On the roofs of fifty towers were batteries of automatic arbalests, referred to by the soldiers as ack guns. These were large, powerful crossbows that cocked and loaded themselves after each shot and could fire a stream of ten steel-tipped quarrels in as many seconds. Each ack was manned by a skillful crew of four. The gunner, seated in a reclining chair, sighted his target through the scope, worked the elevation gears, and pulled the trigger. Two more strong men wheeled the turntable on which the gun rested, always keeping it aimed in the right direction. They pushed to and fro, changing direction or making a complete circle as needed, all without looking up. Through long training or sheer instinct they knew which way to go. The fourth man rode on the platform and fed the belts of quarrels into the weapon. The crew was supported by several more men who spotted targets and brought up fresh belts of quarrels.
The ack crews were highly accurate and brought down numerous marauders—it’s hard to miss a bright orange target—but were too few in number to get them all. The bomb-throwing marauders disabled several ack emplacements and others were overwhelmed by squadrons which swooped below the level of the tower tops and thus out of range, then swarmed upward to attack the crews with their hooks and spears.
“Why isn’t AMOK engaged?” demanded Raella angrily. “The acks won’t last long!”
“Unknown, Your Majesty,” said General Hawkinstern.
“Find out!”
“What’s AMOK?” I asked Mercury.
“Automated Magical Object Killer system. Something Rae’s technowizards dreamed up to protect the city from aerial attacks such as this. It cost millions to develop and is supposed to automatically destroy every airborne attacker in range.”
“Then why do they need the ack guns?”
“AMOK is unproven. It’s an expensive technomagical gamble that doesn’t seem to be paying off. I warned Rae she was throwing her money away and merely lining the coffers of her researchers.” He glanced at the queen, whose now tense face was drawn into a worried frown.
A new force entered the battle, flying out from the Solar Palace to engage the marauders. This was the Gryphon Corps, an elite force of twenty soldiers mounted on gryphons. A gryphon is a large beast with the body and hindlegs of a lion, but the wings, head, and forelegs of an eagle. In the wild, they nest on mountain tops and prey on horses, cattle, and other animals, not hesitating to attack men as well. These, however, had been stolen from the nest while still in the egg and trained from hatching to serve as mounts. Nonetheless, they remained dangerous. The Gryphon Corps were brave men to ride such monsters into battle against a force of vastly superior numbers.
They acquitted themselves well, keeping in tight formation and pursuing those marauders that had flown low to evade the ack guns. It can’t be easy to fire a bow from the back of a swift-flying gryphon, but the Corps did so with great skill. Still, even they were not enough to check the oncoming demonic flock.
“Say, Merc, if this AMOK system starts up, won’t the Gryphon Corps be in trouble?”
“They wear charms to identify them as friendly.”
“I hope the charms work.”
“So do they.”
The first marauders were reaching the lower terraces of the Solar Palace when the sky lit up with streaks of brilliant red light emanating from those selfsame terraces. The scarlet beams lanced through the nearest marauders, blasting them out of the air, and kept up a constant flashing against the rest of the intruders. They dropped by the dozens. Within our tower, the general staff cheered and Raella allowed herself a brief smile.
General Hawkinstern reported. “Light pump required excessive warm-up time.”
“That could have been costly,” snapped the queen.
The beams came from ruby crystal rods, a yard in length and collared by curved mirrors. The whole apparatus was mounted on a swivel to allow it free motion. It was called a resal, short for regulated emission of sorcerously amplified light. There were two hundred of these resals firing from the terraces of the palace. According to Merc, the devices magica
lly converted sunlight into destructive energy to be projected from the tips of the rods. The sunlight, however, was not directly from the sun, but was stored in liquid form in great tanks beneath the palace and pumped through insulated tubes into each individual device. This allowed AMOK to operate at night or on cloudy days. The details were too technical for me to fully understand, but I gathered that liquefaction of sunlight was the breakthrough which made the system possible and that the process was a closely guarded state secret.
“And no one is guiding these resals, you say?” I found that hard to believe as I watched the beams cut down more and more of the retreating marauders.
“Each is guided by a magic smart crystal, which tracks targets based on instructions imprinted in the crystal with an imprinting spell.”
“Whatever. I think the instructions were a little unclear, though.”
The marauders had flown down amid the towers of the city to evade the resals as they had the ack guns, but AMOK was not letting them off so easily. The resals concentrated fierce barrages on the buildings that blocked their targets, sending huge chunks of debris falling to the street. AMOK also opened fire on the Gryphon Corps as well as soldiers and citizens on the ground.
“I knew it!” exclaimed Merc. “AMOK has run amok!”
“Stop it!” commanded Raella. “Shut it down!”
“Your Majesty!” protested General Hawkinstern. “Estimate over fifty percent kill ratio. Counterproductive to disengage now. Let us finish them.”
“With protection like this, we don’t need the marauders at all,” said Merc.
“Shut the system down!” said Raella, more forcefully than before. The command was relayed downstairs. Long moments passed, bringing more destruction to the city. The bad news was relayed back upstairs to the queen.
“The pump is jammed!” exclaimed an excited lieutenant. “We can’t shut it off!”
AMOK had pulverized the upper floors of the towers nearest the palace and was starting on the next circle. There was already panic in the streets as citizens fled the crumbling structures and headed for the outer fringes of the city, gradually becoming a rampaging mob as fear and anger took control.