by Jim Galford
Then, Ilarra’s eyes fell on the undead around them. Once proud and powerful orcs stood drooling on themselves, their shoulders slouched and eyes staring blankly at the ground. Wildlings of several breeds looked to have been dragged through mud and filth, their fur matted with dried blood and gore.
“Why do Turessians hate wildlings and orcs so much?” Ilarra asked, staring at a wolf that resembled Raeln a little too much for comfort.
“Some betrayals cannot be forgiven easily. We must protect ourselves from the barbarians who would destroy us, even if these were not the ones that did or meant to wrong us,” replied Liris, giving the undead a sad glance, as though she truly felt sorry for them. “That was why your village was targeted…your alliance with wildlings could not continue.”
Ilarra’s attention snapped to the woman and she realized her mind had been made up for her. She searched her memories—even those vague memories from others’ lives—trying to find anything that might kill someone like her. Hundreds of spells swept through her thoughts, but most she could not be sure would even work against a Turessian more powerful than Ilarra.
“Undead,” Ilarra announced, eliciting a momentary smirk from the Turessian, “attack her!”
The group of zombies rushed at the Turessian, who hesitated out of surprise. She tried to raise her arms to begin casting a spell, but every corpse that could reach her began clawing at her arms and back, trying to drag her down but managing only to interrupt her attempts at magic.
“Stop!” the woman shouted and every zombie froze where it was.
Ilarra took the brief moment she had available and began forming the symbols in her mind to unleash spell after spell at the woman. Flames and ice exploded in front of her, but Ilarra kept her eyes half-closed, trying to maintain her concentration so she could go from one spell to the next without pause.
Weariness began to creep up on Ilarra as the magic slowed, her breathing becoming labored. She stopped casting to catch her breath, and stumbled backwards as she opened her eyes and wiped at sweat that ran down her forehead. In shock, she realized that blood, not sweat, was leaking from her scalp and near her ears.
“You try too hard,” Liris said, throwing aside one of the zombies and standing back up, her clothing steaming and wet. She looked as though nothing more than a rainstorm had hit her. The zombies stood eerily still, waiting for new orders, though many had been burned or knocked down by Ilarra’s magic. “Child, you force my hand. Perhaps this is for the best. I will not need to hunt down your wildling if he dies with you.”
Suddenly, Nenophar was between Ilarra and the Turessian, using his body to block the woman’s first spell. Lightning crackled around him, then faded away as he grabbed Liris and ripped her head from her body. Kicking the body aside, he dropped the head at Ilarra’s feet and turned to face her.
“She will mend,” he told Ilarra, nudging the head with his boot. “What of us while she does? What is your decision? Fighting her does not mean you will follow me or trust me. Either we are allies or we are enemies, Ilarra. What I know of the consequences to the fabric of the world prevents me from choosing otherwise.”
Ilarra backed away from Nenophar, trying to buy herself time to think what she could do. She honestly did not trust him, but she saw few options. Her eyes kept darting back to the disembodied head at his feet. The man was dangerous beyond words…but so was she, if what she had seen of the Turessians was any indication.
Her attention went next to the undead, still waiting for orders all around Nenophar. She could easily command them to attack him, buying seconds for her to flee. It was tempting, but she knew it was not what she wanted to do.
“Undead…die,” she ordered, getting a slight rise of Nenophar’s eyebrow.
The zombies let out a raspy breath in unison and fell over. Almost immediately, their bodies began to fall apart, the gaping wounds held together only by the magical forces that animated them suddenly opening wider. Even the faint feeling of the zombies being “creepy,” as Ilarra put it in her own mind—a reflection of the dark magic required to make it continue walking around—had faded to no more than one might expect of any other corpse.
Looking down at the bodies around him, Nenophar told her, “This changes nothing. The prophecies spoken to me say the order of our deaths determines a great many events and sets the fate of my people. Will you kill me or will I kill you?”
“Your people?” she asked nervously. “Nenophar, I’m not going to hurt you or your people. I’d hope you felt the same…”
Before Ilarra could react, Nenophar was on her, his hands clamped onto her neck with incredible force. He hoisted her off the ground and tightened his grip until she could feel the bones in her neck popping and shifting.
“If you join with the Turessians, all of my kind die,” he roared at her, a raw hatred burning in his eyes. “Their lives will be forced onto the fabric, and one by one, they will be killed and used against the nations of mortal people.
“If I kill you, I can save my own life, Ilarra. I remain immortal and will escape the Turessians. I had to know if you would work with them, and you have considered it.”
Gasping to get air through her crushed throat, Ilarra wheezed, “I didn’t…join them. Does…killing me…save your…people?”
Abruptly, Nenophar dropped her at his feet. “No, it doesn’t,” he told her, hanging his head. “Neither your death or mine changes that outcome. That was what I was told, but we are both outside the fabric…I cannot see it for myself. Even if we do not kill one another, the order of our deaths sets those events in motion. My mother and the others have chosen to disbelieve, but I see one element after another of the prophecies coming true.”
“Then don’t kill me and I won’t kill you,” she croaked through the bruising of her throat as she scooted a little farther from Nenophar, lest he change his mind. “We work together. No one dies because neither of us is mortal. What happens then?”
Closing his eyes, Nenophar answered, “Then thousands more will die. There is no good solution. Every direction I turn, the prophecy entraps me. If we help one another and attempt to cheat the prophecy I was given, eventually your brother will die of old age and you will turn on me anyway. You falling to the Turessians dooms him, him dying dooms you, and your death signals one of the death knells of this part of the world.”
“Nenophar, I will not fight you.” Ilarra got up onto her knees and grabbed his hand. “Kill me if you have to, but we’re in this together. I will fight the undead as long as I’m able.”
Nenophar opened his mouth to reply, then choked as hands closed over his throat. Picking him off the ground and yanking him from Ilarra’s grip, Liris hurled Nenophar into the corn field, flattening out a long swath of the dry crops.
Looking down at Ilarra, the Turessian smiled at her work and touched the white scar that was fading where her head had just reattached itself. “Your friend is not as strong as he thinks,” Liris said, sounding hoarse. “The discussion was touching, but ill-advised. My instructions are simple, child. I bring you home and either teach that imbecile to leave us alone or kill him if he will not relent. I have the backing of a hundred or more brethren and their combined might is far more than either of you can stand against.”
Ilarra tried to get up, but her arms and legs froze. She strained against the sensation of her body turning to stone and realized the woman had cast something on her that prevented any movement whatsoever. She could not move, and more importantly, could not manage to cast a spell of her own without either movement or the ability to speak. Ilarra could work around either, but not both.
Liris watched Ilarra a little longer, apparently gauging whether Ilarra would be able to get free. Once she seemed satisfied, she turned and headed into the fields after Nenophar.
Ilarra knelt there, struggling against the magic that held her, trying to find any way to free herself. It was painful and demeaning, knowing Nenophar was in danger while she could not even turn her head to wat
ch him or force her eyes to strain toward the edge of her vision in hopes of a glimpse. All she could do was listen.
The first indication of the two beginning their fight came with a roar of flame washing over the field, warming Ilarra’s left side. Explosions sent dirt and flaming remains of the corn stalks flying past her face. The sounds of magical battle continued for a while, growing louder each minute, until the area suddenly went still. Every so often, mud or rocks pelted her back, stinging her. One particularly large clump of what felt like mud slammed into her, knocking her over onto her side, still unable to see what was happening.
Ilarra strained against the invisible bonds, her whole body shaking as her muscles fought to obey. Finally, she managed to turn her head slightly, then one by one, her muscles unlocked and she fell over as the spell ended.
Looking around, Ilarra was amazed by the damage the two spellcasters had done. The entire field was gone, burned black and smoldering, with huge sections of the ground ripped open. At first, she thought maybe the two had managed to kill one another, then saw a single body lying near the far side of what had been the field.
Ilarra ran across the uneven ground, tripping multiple times on her way to the lone figure. She could see it was Nenophar before she was halfway across the field, but he was not moving. The Turessian woman was nowhere to be found.
Coming up over the lip of a crater the two combatants and created, Ilarra dropped beside Nenophar and put a hand to his neck. She could not find a pulse, but he was still warm and seemed to be breathing. Nearly every inch of his body was torn and covered with blood leaking from burns, cuts, and other ailments. His leg was bent at an odd angle that she worried might indicate broken bones.
“Nenophar,” she whispered, patting his face. “Wake up!”
The man groaned and his eyes opened briefly as he croaked out, “Must…rest. Cave…”
“No time to travel. I can do this,” Ilarra assured herself, trying to remember the healing spells that she had “learned” over recent months. She had mostly ignored them, preferring the elemental magic she had intended to learn on her own before her life had taken such an odd turn. For once, the random information that she gained from her link with the Turessians was proving useful.
Summoning all of her strength, Ilarra struggled through the dramatically different way healing magic pulled the actual spell from the realm of spirits, rather than shaping raw energy into a form that could be used more easily. It took her longer than she would have liked, the magic feeling almost slippery as she strained to keep it working as intended. Finally, it took shape and poured into Nenophar, and his body began to heal.
Ilarra smiled in relief as she felt life begin to rush back into Nenophar, but as her magic continued to flow unhindered into him, she soon began to wonder if she had done something wrong. From what little she knew of the healing spells, the more of her own strength that went into the target, the more of their injuries would be healed. Any man should have been in perfect shape after the amount she had already pushed into his body, even if every bone in his body had been broken, but energy continued to drain from her. All of her magic was draining into Nenophar with no end in sight.
The discomfort and exhaustion of the powerful spell soon turned painful as Ilarra’s endurance began to wane. She feared letting up before Nenophar showed any sign of waking, but her muscles and then bones began to hurt as the limits of her body were exceeded.
Tears soon ran down Ilarra’s face as she fought to keep the spell from ending. Through bleary eyes, she could see the skin of her arms had begun to take on a chalky pallor and her veins were darkening rapidly. No matter what Nenophar had said about her being already dead, the pounding in her chest as her heart strained to keep up told Ilarra that if she could be killed, she was getting very close to it. Still, she could not let Nenophar die.
Ilarra did not even realize she had fallen until she had to lift her head to see if Nenophar was beginning to wake. Her vision was blurring badly, and the world wavered around her as if she had had heard happened with excessive drinking. Cold sweat ran down her back, but she pushed on in the hopes she had to be close to waking him. He had already absorbed enough healing to save the lives of dozens of men his size, so she had to believe she was close, no matter what he might be behind all of his illusions.
Finally, Nenophar’s eyes flicked open and he looked around, and then he focused and he turned to stare at Ilarra. His eyes went wide when he realized what she was doing, and he pulled away from her, ending the spell abruptly.
“Are you mad?” He caught her as she fell over, keeping her head from hitting the ground. “You could have destroyed yourself.”
“I just wanted to heal you. I promised I wouldn’t be the reason you died first,” Ilarra whispered in reply, barely keeping herself awake.
“I could have healed without your help after a few weeks of rest. If you fully exhaust your magic, you will die, and that doesn’t help either of us.”
Ilarra smiled weakly and shrugged. “That should bother me more than it does. You’ve been telling me for months I’m already dead and you and Raeln are all that is keeping me from going crazy. Dying to save someone else sounds so much better than the alternatives…”
Nenophar sat up and looked over Ilarra’s exposed skin on her arms, where the flesh had darkened and her veins appeared to be filled with ink. Shaking his head, he picked her up in his arms. “We both need rest,” he told her, and then the somewhat familiar rush of winds washed over Ilarra. “We will talk more once we heal.”
*
Ilarra woke slowly, feeling the clammy cave floor under her. She could not see at first, but her whole body ached.
“I had begun to wonder if you were going to wake at all.” Nenophar’s voice came from nearby. A dim light appeared, floating over his hand as he sat against the cave wall. “I slept a week and you were still unconscious. I do not think you would have lived much longer, had I not stopped you. You have been asleep for nearly three weeks since the battle.”
Groaning, Ilarra pulled herself upright and examined her arms. The skin there had returned to normal, even if she felt as though she had been trampled by a herd of animals.
“I owe you an apology,” Nenophar added, setting the light down on the cave floor between them. “When I saw you with that…with her…I believed the prophecy had come true and you were ready to try to kill me. I was not thinking clearly and jumped to an improper conclusion. You did not need to try and save me back there, and that means a great deal to me.”
Ilarra nodded weakly. “Did I earn the right to know what’s really going on?” she asked him, smiling. She did not actually expect a reasonable answer, but knew it was worth a try.
“You very nearly destroyed yourself to heal me when you had no understanding why that was so risky or why that Turessian tried and failed to capture me,” Nenophar replied, looking down at the floor. “Yes. I think you have earned some of the answers I did not intend to give you.”
Nenophar took a while before speaking again, but Ilarra was too tired to push him. She figured he would go on when he was ready and it gave her time to wake up more fully.
“More than two thousand years ago,” he finally began, “a human came to me to find an answer to a dilemma he had caused. In truth, I did not believe or trust him…mostly because his troops had attacked me a week before. He pleaded and offered me wealth, magic, any number of things I had no use for…then he offered his life in exchange for knowledge.
“I have lived a long time, Ilarra. Despite being a child in those days, such an offer was surprising, to say the least. I have never known mortals to willingly give up their lives for wisdom and the idea fascinated me. That made me more willing to hear him out. I am glad I did. This tiny human had created a tear in the walls of the world through which we pull our magic. Had he made matters any worse, I can only guess at the destruction that would have come. What he wanted to know was how to fix his mistakes…something I had no answer to
. He would need a kind of foresight, much like my people possess innately, if he had any hope of seeing how he could save his people and lands from his errors.”
“I thought mortals couldn’t see the fabric?” Ilarra asked.
“They cannot without the help of one who can and a certain detachment from their own lives,” explained Nenophar. “I gave him the visions he needed in exchange for the answer to one question of my own. A mortal’s sight of the fabric had the potential to be far different from my own. The chance for new knowledge for myself was enticing.”
“You asked him how you die, didn’t you?”
Nenophar smiled and nodded. “A childish wish, but one that captivated me. I thought I had the man trapped. I proposed I would help him however I could if he could answer that one question. My kind do not die unless they grow tired of living and choose to slumber forever, but even then, it is not truly death. We are born, but do not die. I believed this question was an easy way to deny the human any aid I chose not to give him. However, he answered my question.”
Ilarra waited on Nenophar to continue, but he took quite a while, fidgeting the whole time.
“He explained I will die one of several ways,” the man finally went on. “If I find a Turessian who still resists the others through a bond of magic, I had the chance to challenge the doom that would befall my people and the lands we inhabit. Had I not found you, my fate would have been sealed to my kin. All of us would have been hunted down by the Turessians in our sleep and killed. Given the Turessians were no threat in those days, I found this idea baffling.”
“Why not avoid the endings he told you about?” Ilarra inquired. “You told me your people can change fate because you are not bound by it. If that’s true, you could simply choose to be elsewhere and change everything. Take your family and run.”