The Shattered Shards

by Stephen J Wolf

  It was that way of life that brought him here. He cherished every aspect of his life in a town that saw no actual fighting in his time there. He wanted the war to end so all children could grow up as he had. Too many of the men and women he met had lost relatives to the fighting. Gabrion’s own mother was dead from a skirmish in Savvron. Dariak’s father had died over twenty years beforehand in the War of the Colossus. Randler’s father had also fallen in that war. He didn’t know of Kitalla’s parents, for she never mentioned them, but he assumed they too were gone. Ervinor felt unique in that his entire family was still alive. His sister had married some local tailor and they had three children. His brothers were still schooling themselves on the world and would come of age soon enough if the war allowed it.

  Indeed, he hadn’t really dealt with much loss, but some part of him took that as a means of preserving the life around him. He was confident that he could protect people and it was his confidence that made him such a leader among the rest. They recognized his heart and his dream, and though the army was following Gabrion’s fantasy of ending the war, they resonated well with Ervinor, who instructed them in the ways of teamwork and cooperation when Gabrion and the rest were away.

  As he thought of these things, Ervinor meandered through the castle town and tapped various colleagues on their shoulders, asking about the selections at different booths. The merchants eyed them all suspiciously but barely bothered to interact with the Kallisorians. Some thought they could turn a profit from the newcomers, but most realized that the men and women were there for another reason. A cloth merchant nodded at Ervinor abruptly, signaling that he had no intention of selling to a Kallisorian even if he had money.

  Ervinor didn’t care. His goal was to keep his army calm and dispersed. Assembling them in the courtyard would be seen as a threat, but letting the men and women wander for too long without word wasn’t safe either. He didn’t know why he understood this, but he did. Perhaps it mimicked the way his parents had kept him and his siblings in line. So as he waited for Gabrion’s return, Ervinor made a few circuits of the promenade.

  Time passed slowly for the troop and Ervinor worried that Gabrion and the others had been taken prisoner. He perked up his ears, trying to listen for any unrest within the castle itself, but he knew that was a fruitless venture. The king knew full well of the forces stationed here and he wouldn’t risk the security of the castle by alerting the army to danger.

  Though Ervinor stayed on alert, he worried that he had missed some sign. He started pacing and had to consciously control himself to stop. Pacing would only make his soldiers restless. He needed to wear a face of aplomb. He could practically hear Herchig prattling on about some errant general who had paced himself off a cliff in his worry.

  Ervinor chuckled to himself, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. He wandered to a signpost and leaned against it, keeping a wary eye on the castle gates.

  Chapter 29

  The Metal Jade

  The noontime air was tense for a reason Kitalla could not explain. Though she was imitating another woman, her own skills were still finely tuned and she realized that something was about to happen. Ignoring the chain of command, she shouted for the troop to hurry on their way. “To the tower!” she cried. “Waste no time! We must hurry!”

  Panic spread and the captain ran over to Kitalla and demanded an explanation.

  “There’s no time!” She tried to turn away but the captain caught her arm. The thief squared off sternly and insisted, “If I’m wrong then reprimand me after it’s over, but I assure you that we have to go now.”

  The unease had already prompted too much action from the resting army for the captain to call them to stop. Besides, it would be better to complete this errand quickly and return to the castle. Grudgingly, she growled and focused the men and women as they prepared for fast travel.

  Kitalla couldn’t shake the feeling. Something within her was trembling and she couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t as prone to nerves as others and simply being close to the tower would not have agitated her so. No, there had to be something more to it, but there wasn’t time to ponder. She grabbed her haversack and rushed ahead, pushing past others who were still preparing to leave, carving a trail for the rest to follow.

  Jogging through sand wasn’t particularly easy, but they were determined and trained well enough to endure the strain. They only paused briefly when they needed to, and not as a unit. Kitalla’s drive compelled the rest to press on. She wondered if they all thought she sensed some calamity against their country and that they would all be heroes for overcoming it. It didn’t much matter, especially as she had no idea what drew her either.

  As evening set in, the army crested the last dune and they could hear commotion from behind the mages’ protective barrier. It was enough to propel them onward in a mad sprint to the main gates, Kitalla still at the lead. She wondered idly if any members of the army would be taken up into Trials or if, perhaps, they had all been cleared of such an ordeal. Spellfire flew from a window high overhead, and Kitalla reassessed the situation; the mages were simply too busy to call the Trials into effect.

  The first floor of Magehaven was sparsely populated. Only a few specialists remained, ready to blockade the stairways and other passages. The army was greeted with welcome relief.

  “Hurry! There are intruders upstairs and no mage has been able to contain them. We need your help! Go!”

  Kitalla ignored the captain’s orders when she split the forces to various points of entry, for the thief had her own destination in mind. The captain didn’t much care, for Kitalla had chosen the stairway that seemed closest to whatever danger lie ahead, and if she died in the process, it was one less thing for the captain to deal with later.

  Up the stairs Kitalla leaped, taking them three at a time with ease, even after the hurried journey here. Her pulse was rushing faster and faster, and the driving force compelled her more strongly now. She couldn’t understand the urgency of the innate call, but she accepted it and flew through the tower.

  Lightning bolts crested the air near her as she hit the fourth floor. Glancing quickly, she could see two mages aiming for her, but relaxing once they noted her armor. “Over this way!” they directed. “Please hurry! We’re taking casualties!”

  Sounds of battle were closer and closer as she approached the next floor, but she felt that she wasn’t near her goal yet. Lupinoes and mages were running wildly, and she couldn’t tell if they were working together or if they were themselves engaged in a fight. Fire erupted in front of her and she leaped into the air and rolled to safety a few feet away. Another blast of fire followed and she realized that she was under direct attack now. She looked and saw two older mages stalking closer to her, alternating their spells to keep up a more regular fighting pattern. She guessed that these mages had seen her with Dariak previously.

  One mage altered his attack frequency by unleashing staccato blasts, similar to Dariak’s old fire dart spell but with much greater intensity and accuracy. The other mage spread her arms wide and obscured the fire darts with larger orbs that crackled and sparked as they approached Kitalla.

  Avoiding the attacks was simple for the experienced thief. She rolled to one side and pounced over three darts, then landed with a twisting motion to avoid a larger orb. With each step she took, she drew closer to the mages, challenging them to try harder. Daggers launched from her hands and caught the man in the chest. The woman beside him screamed and released a massive burst of flame.

  Kitalla couldn’t avoid it, so she stamped her feet on the ground and extended her hands before her. Thinking quickly, she recalled one of the songs Randler had taught her and she applied the beat to her steps, pulling with her hands, spinning in a twirl, and then thrusting her hands forward again. She repeated the process once before the fireball struck her and smashed her to the floor. She winced in pain but it didn’t linger. She pushed herself up and looked toward the mage, who also la
y in a heap on the floor. It had been a quick pulling of the energies, but her innate dance skills had helped her reflect some of the power. Wasting no time, she struck the other mage to disable her and then continued up to the sixth floor.

  She didn’t quite understand what she saw when she approached the landing. Numerous bodies were sprawled on the ground in awkward positions. Some looked as if they had been struck by errant spells, while others appeared to have been smothered to death. There was a clear path through the destruction which led upward, so she followed, stepping cautiously over human and creature corpses alike.

  She could hear fighting somewhere nearby, but she was listening to her instincts, so she ignored the other noises and followed the path of bodies that led higher up into the tower. She risked a glance behind her, wondering where the rest of the army was at present, and whether any of the survivors on this floor would rise against her. She didn’t have time to subdue any of the writhing bodies; not if she was going to complete her mission.

  Mission? She shrugged the idea off, wondering if it was a remnant of her recent stint in the Hathren guard or something else entirely. Even if she had wanted to consider it further, the moaning ahead of her drew her focus. She crouched low, trying to remain unseen as she made her way up yet another flight of stairs.

  Mages were sprawled all over the floor, some in worse shape than those she had seen already. A quick assessment, however, showed her that fewer mages had tried confronting the mysterious enemy on this floor, perhaps because there were less of them in the area, or more likely because they had fled in the face of a foe they could not defeat. For all their grasp of the energies, Kitalla often felt that mages were cowards at heart, fighting from afar and rarely ever engaging in true battle. It was the proximity to another life that gave a fight true meaning, of trying to anticipate and overcome reactions within a moment’s passing, without distance offering any time for contemplating a defense.

  This wasn’t the time for such thoughts, she reminded herself, as an ice dart crashed against a wall. She looked around and saw a young mage on the floor, badly hurt and dying, but still trying to defend his home. He summoned whatever spells he could, but Kitalla could already see the light fading from his eyes. He was reacting instinctually now. She flipped him over so his magical flailing wouldn’t inadvertently strike her down.

  Only a few of the bodies remaining here were alive, but those that were seemed to be heavily seared from spell blasts of every variety. It looked to her as if the mages had turned against each other, fighting to the death, however unlikely it seemed. She hurried on.

  Another flight up revealed a similar setting with fewer bodies to avoid. Kitalla heard screaming and she hid against a wall as a young mage ran away from some unknown enemy ahead. The mage was in a terrible panic, looking over her shoulder and casting spells when she could, but the mage she battled was quick and returned her volleys of energy with utmost speed, knocking her down. Kitalla hesitated for only a moment before running ahead and looking at the foe who had taken her down. She wasn’t ready for what she saw.

  Five mages had surrounded a writhing metallic blob. They launched spells toward it and some were reflected off its outer surface while others were absorbed. Kitalla wondered if there was some pattern to it, but there clearly wasn’t time to determine one. There were no sounds of struggle behind her so she felt temporarily safe from being flanked. Instead, she focused on the anomaly before her.

  The silver sludge splattered forward and struck one of the mages. The woman had no defense against the attack and she crumbled in a heap, apparently dead. The other mages panicked and started backing off. Kitalla sprinted ahead calling for a ceasefire, only to receive a few spells aimed in her direction. A lightning blast struck her left shoulder and bit painfully, but she focused her strength on avoiding the rest of the barrage of attacks.

  Turning away from the metallic ooze led to the detriment of two of the other mages, who succumbed to the being’s wrath and died at its touch. Kitalla noticed that it lurched ahead with each victory as if it had been boosted momentarily by the kill. Something about it was eerily familiar to her; she followed but remained cautious.

  The other mages had given up trying to stop either Kitalla or the silver liquid. They bolted away, shoving against each other in their haste to escape. Moments later, Kitalla was the only person close by. The metal blob responded by turning its attention toward her. She nimbly leaped away, wondering at its ability, while mindfully seeking an exit for herself. The ooze pursued her almost instinctually and with a sense of desperation. She could use that to her advantage as long as she was careful.

  She debated trying one of her dance skills against the sludge, but she remembered that the other mages’ spells had either been absorbed or reflected and the creature had only been bolstered by them. She made her way to the nearest stairwell and the ooze followed her, becoming more and more sluggish with each rolling step. Curiously, Kitalla grabbed a candlestick nearby and lobbed it at the goo, but nothing happened. The blob kept heading for her and the candlestick remained behind after passing through the silvery mess without any hint of effect.

  Kitalla stepped carefully up the stairs and reached a storage chamber. There were several exits in the room, but she didn’t open them. Instead, she watched intently as the metal made its way toward her, struggling up the stairs. By the time it reached the top, it moved languidly. Kitalla decided that it was feeding off the energy blasts and the lives of its victims, so all she needed to do was stay out of its reach until it had exhausted its resources. She scrambled up a number of crates and kept a close eye on the silvery blob that could not follow. Though it had been able to ascend the stairs, the crates were too tall for it to climb. It tried several times to reach her, each attempt more feeble than the last, until finally the puddle settled on the floor and started to change.

  The silvery luster faded first and Kitalla tensed in anticipation, but she started to suspect what was happening. As the metal hues were lost, the ooze coalesced into a more human shape. Before long, Dariak lay coiled on the floor, barely conscious. Suddenly, the urge to reach her goal subsided, and she thought she knew why. The metal jade had been active and after all the time she had spent with it, she had felt a resonance with it, even from outside the tower.

  She approached Dariak cautiously, in case there were some residual energies cascading around him, but she need not have worried. The metal jade drew her attention and gave her a sense of safety and completion. She withdrew it from Dariak’s possession and held it tightly, despite its increased temperature at the moment. After placing it into her own pocket, she rolled Dariak over and tried to awaken him.

  He looked terribly weak and undernourished. The jade at her hip was pulsing and she could feel it trying to help despite its own exhaustion, though she wasn’t entirely sure how she understood its intent. She fumbled through Dariak’s belt and retrieved the other jades, placing them at key locations on his body, as guided by her metal jade. She let her hands hover over the mage’s body until her jade pulsed, and then she set the gem down. The earth jade was set at Dariak’s belly and the water jade on his heart, with the nature jade over his forehead. She held the metal jade aloft over his body and she could feel a series of pulsations emanating from it, reaching down and interacting with the other crystals.

  Free from the restraints, the jades were able to draw energy from the air and their innate abilities strengthened the life force within Dariak. Moments later, his eyes opened and he breathed deeply.

  “What?” he said dryly. “Kitalla?”

  “Rest for a moment. You look like you need a break after your ordeal.”

  “What… happened?”

  She looked over her shoulder and listened for signs of pursuit, but there were none, though the tower itself was far from quiet. “I’ll venture a guess,” she said a moment later. “Remember when you turned into that electrical pulse when you battled Sharice? I think you underwent a similar change with t
he metal jade.”

  “I—” he started. “Yes, that… makes sense. Where… are we… now?”

  “Temporarily safe. The jades are trying to heal you.”

  “Randler. I saw Randler. Is he with you?”

  Kitalla shook her head. “I was essentially summoned here by the metal jade. This one was guiding me.” She withdrew the fire jade and flashed it before Dariak’s eyes.

  His jaw fell open. “How?”

  “I’ll fill you in later when there’s time. It led me straight to you. How are you feeling?”

  He tried to sit up but could not. “Heavy. Very heavy. I don’t think I can stand.” He breathed deeply for a few minutes but he still couldn’t move. “How did you come to be here?”

  She laughed. “It’s a long story. I’m more concerned about getting you out of here, and if Randler is here, then we have to find him as well. I just hope he wasn’t—” she stopped.

  “Wasn’t what?”

  The thief cleared her throat. “There were a lot of casualties on my way up here. And there were sounds of fighting elsewhere, which still seems to be going on.” She looked at him intently. “I should go and see if Randler is there. But I can’t take you with me if I do.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, trying to sound confident but failing miserably. “Just tuck me out of the way.”

  “I’ve retaken the metal jade for now, in case you start missing it.” She said it sharply, almost challenging him to resist.

  But he didn’t. “Take it. It’ll let me find you when this is over.”

  She smiled despite herself, then set about sliding some crates in front of Dariak and disguising them to look untouched. On her way out, Dariak could hear her moving the other bodies away from this room, covering the traces that would lead others here. Before she left, she called to him, “Rest up as much as you can, mage. There’s no telling what’s coming next.”