by Jim Galford
“You waste your time,” said On’esquin sadly, pointing to another part of the camp where a huge bonfire had been built and was beginning to smoke. “I had them burn the dead. There was no point in bringing them.”
“Are you insane? The circles—”
“The circles are gone, along with much of the magic in the world,” On’esquin said sharply. “Your sister saw to it. Look to the north, Raeln, and tell me what you see.”
Squinting toward Lantonne, Raeln could faintly make out a plume of smoke beyond the city, out near the quarry. At first, he thought it to be the dark cloud that had hung over that place for months, but he soon realized it was almost mushroom-shaped and rising slowly into the sky. The black cloud he had expected was gone, replaced by this.
“Your sister and the dragon have done the impossible. They closed the tear between our world and that of magic. The repercussions will be dire and doing this has cost us greatly. It may still tear Eldvar apart, but it bought us the time to deal with the problems that remain. I can say from experience they have bought us no less than a year. If we are very lucky, they have turned the tide of these wars.”
A faint glow near the cloud seemed to elude Raeln’s attempts to make it into shapes or colors. The longer he stared, the more it seemed to flicker. “What does that have to do with the healing circles?”
“We lost much of the magic that bled through naturally. The circles fed on the ambient magic of Eldvar, but with that gone, I do not know if they will ever exist again,” On’esquin explained as he unrolled the leather cover on the parchment. Touching the stack of paper to his forehead reverently, he placed it on Raeln’s lap. “Without the circles, the Turessians are greatly weakened and will depend more on Dorralt than before. For his own part, Dorralt has felt the change and is likely running for Turessi to get as far as he can from the mists.”
“Mists?”
“The dark cloud of magic that came through that tear is not the only one in the world, thanks to the war. People did many foolish things to try and stop the Turessians. When Ilarra closed the door, some of what had slipped through was cut off. Now, it is searching for magic to sustain itself, blindly consuming everything in its path. Before, it sought to gorge itself…now it will travel, seeking to find anything to keep itself whole.
“My people saw those mists once before, but they were contained to one place, where we foolishly experimented. Turess went to Nenophar to find ways of preventing them from ever forming again, but that has been a lost cause. The mists are now bleeding into Eldvar all over, trying to collect enough power to punch holes back through to the place they come from. The one formed here today mirrors one in Corraith…the very one I will step into to come here in a year or so.”
Raeln looked sharply at On’esquin, but the man’s devious smile told him he had no intention of explaining. Instead, Raeln picked up the leather-bound parchments and opened the cover, hoping to find his own answers.
Inside, the weathered old parchments were covered with black rune symbols resembling the ones tattooed on On’esquin’s face. Raeln could make no sense of them and finally closed the bundle and tossed it back onto the orc’s lap. “I can’t read any of that,” he said, though he knew it was probably obvious and might have been the orc’s intent from the start. “What does it say about all of this?”
Flipping open the parchments, On’esquin touched a spot partway down the first page and read, “Betrayer and abandoned will join to collect those touched by myself—Turess, that is—and prepare to die for what they hold dearest. Two of those already dead in the eyes of fate will change the fates of those who still live.”
“Abandoned?”
“In hindsight, I believe that refers to your sister choosing to leave in order to save us all,” answered On’esquin, tapping another set of runes. “He was right…the old god died to save mortals. I never believed it would happen. That statement I must have read a hundred times, trying to find a hidden meaning.”
Raeln eyed the parchments, then stood up and moved to stand directly in front of On’esquin. With him standing on the ground and On’esquin sitting at the top of the steps, Raeln still had a head’s height on him.
“Did you know?” he demanded, motioning at the papers.
“Know what, Raeln? That descendants of my people would turn on the world and march to conquer the cities across Eldvar? Prophecy is certainly not that clear.”
“Did you know he would die?”
“I had a hunch,” the man admitted, turning back a page in the stack. “The six are to be bound by loss of what they cherish, and through that loss, become alike despite all differences, Turess said. He saw our pain, though likely not the details of what would happen.”
Raeln struck at On’esquin swiftly and without thinking, his fist connecting with On’esquin’s cheekbone and knocking him off the porch and onto his side on the muddy ground. Raeln’s hand went numb, feeling as though he had punched a tree trunk.
“I deserve that,” On’esquin said, chuckling as he touched his face. “You have more strength with anger than you did when calm. I am impressed. I had expected your calm was what gave you strength, but I misjudged.”
“You could have saved him!”
“I could not have. If Greth lived, you would have died and he would have taken your place. That is the way of prophecy, Raeln. When it is meant to come true, it will, regardless of what is done. The details will change to fit the prophecy. In this case, I doubt I could have saved him anyway. We could have surrounded him with an army, and he would have died to something, whether it be a stray arrow, disease, infection, or starvation. You were the one marked to come with me and he was to be the cherished one lost to you.”
Raeln opened his mouth to demand more answers, but then instead stared down at the silver bracelet he still wore. When he looked up, On’esquin was smiling, looking straight at the bracelet. With a snarl, Raeln tore at the jewelry, trying to pry it away. His claws ripped at the fur and skin there, covering his arm and the silver with blood, but the metal itself would not move and did not suffer the slightest scratch. It felt as firmly attached to his arm as the bones under his skin.
“That is Turess’s wedding band,” On’esquin told him as he stood up, brushing mud and water from his armor. “I would know, as I placed it on his wrist and a matching one on his wife’s wrist during the ceremony. It was lost for twenty centuries and now is worn by a wildling. Dorralt would have burned nations to keep you or I away from it, given his dislike of our races and fear of the prophecies. Even if the bracelet means nothing on its own, having it here is a symbol of certain events beginning.”
Raeln gave the bracelet one last frustrated tug and let his arms drop to his sides as he sat down hard on the porch. “Why me?” he asked softly, sitting down hard. “What is so special about you or I?”
Smiling in what Raeln could only think of as a fatherly way, On’esquin sat down beside him. “Had Dorralt not spent two thousand years devising a way to lay claim to Turessi and turn it against wildlings and orcs, I doubt we would have mattered in the slightest. By villianizing us, Dorralt forced us into the roles we now must play. By opposing the prophecy, he caused it to come true. Thankfully, it is not for you and I to do this alone.”
They sat in silence a long time, until the smoke from the funeral pyres had begun to die down and the survivors started coming into sight all around the building. More than a hundred strong, they looked at Raeln and On’esquin as though they might have the answers Raeln knew he did not possess. Soon, the military forces remaining joined them in waiting.
“Do you need to say any words to him before you are ready to go?” On’esquin asked gently, nodding toward the open door. “I do not know your people’s customs on these matters when there is a body left behind.”
Raeln shrugged and kept his eyes on the ground. “My people would mourn for days and have somber speeches about those who are gone in hopes the living might remember them.”
�
�We do not have days, Raeln.”
“Too many people are dead to stop and grieve,” Raeln countered, getting up. He turned to face the quiet building and its dark interior with its still darker memories he knew would haunt him for years. “He died a warrior. Nothing more needs to be said. I will honor him the way his people would, by living…and tearing the ones who did this apart.”
Before On’esquin could say anything more, Raeln walked just inside the door of the building. He picked up the lantern that had blown out during the brief scuffle with Varra and shook it to be sure it was still full of oil. Tilting the lantern, he poured oil across the dry old boards inside the doorway where the night’s rains had not reached.
“Light it up,” he ordered the nearest man as he descended the steps and began walking away from the building. “Burn everything to the ground and leave only memories. I want nothing left for the enemy.”
Raeln never looked back as he marched west, but he could smell the smoke from the burning building for hours after he should have escaped it. Every determined step he took was followed by the memory of Greth’s battered and bloodied body.
As Raeln forced himself to keep going, he reached into one of his pouches and clasped his hand around a tuft of Greth’s fur. He had promised to take Greth back to the mountains and at least that much of him would be returned to his homeland. There was little more he could do, but it was a promise he had no intention of allowing any power on Eldvar to stop him from carrying out.
After that, he would kill Dorralt at any cost, even if he had to fight through a thousand Turessians to get his claws on the man. Someday, he would feel that man’s life ebb under his hands. Until then, he would hunt the enemy like the savage animal Dorralt believed the wildlings to be.
Epilogue
Sharp winter winds tore across the man’s exposed face despite his best efforts to keep his hood as far forward as he could. With his companions, he waited at the entrance to a massive cave that had been torn open in the side of the remote mountain by something far larger than themselves. Warm, damp air from the cave blew back against them, making the outside air seem all the more bitter and creating long sheets of ice between the snow-covered slope and the dark maw of the cave.
He had traveled for weeks to arrive here at the edge of the realm, in an area barely mapped in all the years the region had been held by vast armies. It had been those armies who had told him of the cave, begging for permission to march in and secure it in his name. They had reported losses greater than any he had seen in battles all across the known world during their last attempts.
“Feels like the capital out here,” groused the similarly robed and hooded man to his right, stomping his feet to keep them warm. “I liked the desert far better. One of the locals said this place isn’t so bad in the summer months. Maybe we should return then.”
Keeping still, he answered, “You know why we are here, Dorralt. No one has ever held lands as large as ours for more than a decade in all of recorded history. I owe it to these people to ensure their safety long after I am gone. We’ve made mistakes and I have to set them right.”
“No one can ensure anything after they die. We can only work to keep you and the empire safe, Turess. Once all of us are gone, it will be someone else’s problem. The magic we’re working on will ensure a place for your lands in history.”
“That is what I’m afraid of,” he admitted to his brother. “What I saw of those experiments does not seem to be working as expected. I need to know if we are doing the right thing. There are too many risks to leave this to chance.”
“Trusting this creature seems far more risky than pulling more magic through the veil. The cloud is contained. We are no longer in danger.”
Turess turned to gaze over the mountain descent they had climbed to their current location, struggling against both the weather and dizziness that came with the altitude. Far out past the last of the mountains, the faint flickers of his army’s campfires were beginning to appear for the evening. Those yellow-red dots sprang up one after another until they lined the entire foot of the mountain range. Almost a hundred thousand men and women waited down there for his command, ready to march halfway across the known world if he asked them to.
“When I die, there will be chaos and war if we are not careful,” he told his brother, turning back to the cave. “We conquered all the lands within reach with a minimum of bloodshed. All my care will be wasted if the next generation’s rulers cannot hold it all together. Millions of innocents might die, unless I know how to ensure peace. The very tools we collect to hold this empire together might be used against its people for bloodshed I can hardly fathom.”
“To ensure peace, they will want an heir…”
Without hesitation, Turess swung his staff across to his right, intentionally missing but surprising Dorralt so he fell onto his back, raising a puff of light snow. The man rolled and sat back up, rubbing the white powder from his otherwise black clothing. “Do not bring it up again, brother!” warned Turess, laying the staff down in the snow in front of him. He made a concerted effort to ignore the muffled snickers of his other companion. “There will be no heir unless I understand my own limitations entirely wrong. Accept that and know your place.”
Dorralt shoved his hood back and glared at the cave, motioning toward it with one arm. “You want to know the answer? Have an heir. That is the answer. An heir will want to continue your legacy rather than burn it as others might. Besides that, do as I have begged for years and name me your sword in these lands, so I can do what is needed to hold things together, no matter what happens. Waiting for things to fall apart is no way to prepare for the future.”
Touching the staff as a reassurance that it was close if he needed to strike at his brother again, Turess shook his head, thankful the biting wind helped cool his temper. “We will wait for a reply from the dragon.”
Spitting in the snow, Dorralt came over and knelt beside Turess. “Brother, this is not any way to lead,” Dorralt pleaded. “You rule all of the lands the races of man have laid eyes on. No one will fault you if you cast aside your wife and pick someone suitable. Someone worthy of being the spouse of the most powerful ruler ever known. Most importantly, someone who can give you an heir. No dragon’s words will ever give you a different answer than the one you know is correct.”
The woman to Turess’s left reached over and clasped his hand with her own gloved one, lending him enough calm to keep from striking at Dorralt again. Her touch had always had that effect on him. She leaned close enough her silver bracelet tapped faintly against his matching one, the public symbol of their vows.
“This!” snapped Dorralt, hopping to his feet and gesturing at Turess and his wife’s clasped hands. “Our people shun contact where it can be seen by others as pride, yet you put yourself above their ways. This beast has changed you…”
Before Turess could catch her to prevent violence, his wife leapt to her feet and grabbed Dorralt by the front of his robe, hurling him against the stone wall of the cave. He tried to recover, but she was on him instantly, slamming him against the wall a second time hard enough he went momentarily limp and his eyes unfocused as she caught him by the throat with her other hand. “Speak of me that way where I can hear you again and I will tear you apart with my bare hands,” she warned from somewhere in her deep hood. “Your people may believe in this nonsense about avoiding contact, but mine never did. If I wish to touch my husband miles from anyone’s eyes but yours, I will do so without being called a beast.”
“You are a beast,” spat Dorralt, trying to subtly move one of his hands to cast a spell, but Turess’s wife grabbed his hand and banged it against the stones. When Dorralt finished wincing, he added, “The rest of us rely on our magic and our wits, but still you fall back on brutality. I would expect no less of you.”
Kharali threw back her hood and let the fading light fall on her feline features and stark-white fur. Other than where black spots made up her fur’s patterning, the
tattoos that marked her as a wise-one of their lands, and her glistening black nose, her body blended into the snow all around them. “I am as much a beast as you have always been with your words of hatred,” Kharali snarled, baring fangs nearly as long as Turess’s little finger. He honestly wondered if this would be the time she drew blood. Deep down, he debated if it would help or hurt the animosity between the two. “The more you treat me and all of my people that serve your brother like monsters, the easier it is to oblige. A true snow leopard would never have given you so many chances. I have brothers and sisters demanding I tear you open and leave your entrails spread across the snows as warning to others.”
After several tense seconds, Dorralt clenched his hands into fists and lowered his eyes, signaling his surrender to Kharali’s will. He was not an idiot, even if he was hot-headed when it came to the wildlings.
Turess smiled, relaxing as the two glared in general, as they had many times in the past. To date, there had been no blood actually shed, but sooner or later he knew there would be. More likely, this day it would be as usual, with both coming to him later to complain about the other.
“This is why you will not be my sword, Dorralt,” Turess said as gently as he could. Kharali eased her grip on Dorralt’s throat and smoothed her robe and fur to calm herself. “My wife is more than capable of being that for the empire, when pushed to act. You will be what I have always wished you to be…my shield. When I am gone, you will swear your services to her, out of loyalty to me and the empire, regardless of how you feel about her. Trust me, she is as unhappy about this as you are.”
Dorralt scowled at Turess, but turned to look Kharali in the eyes as he answered, “I swear to shield this empire from anyone who might cause it harm or break apart what you have created. The nations you united will be ours so long as I walk Eldvar. No one, no matter how much of a savage, will destroy that.”