Third Power

by Robert Childs

  The flaming section of the door disintegrated then and Haldorum stepped through. Kamarine was a moment behind, leading an entire host of Resistance soldiers through the burned out entrance just in time to see…

  Azinon plunged his sword through the young wizard’s heart in a vicious thrust that did not stop until a half meter of the blade stuck out from his back.

  For Steve, everything slowed down. Haldorum stopped short in horror and Sonya fell to the floor at half speed, free of the sorcerer’s will at last, reaching out to him and screaming his name. It was odd, really. The pain was only momentary, brief, like striking a match in a strong wind. What he did not understand was why the room was growing dark; after all, the sun should still be high overhead, shining down through the shattered remains of the glass roof. Perhaps it was just…

  Azinon withdrew his blade and Steve faltered where he stood for just a few moments, the blood pouring out and staining the front and back of his tunic dark crimson. Then, in silence, he fell.

  “Nooo!” Sonya screamed. She clambered to her feet and ran, ignoring Haldorum’s calls behind her. She had barely gone two steps when Azinon hurled her backward with the force of his will. Haldorum was there, however, and he caught her in his arms even as she struggled to try again.

  “Sonya! Sonya, listen to me!” he said, trying to restrain her. He grabbed her jaw and forced her to look him in the eyes. “Listen to me!” She paused in her thrashing for a moment when she looked at him, her eyes wide and maniacal. “He is already dead, Sonya. He is gone.” She looked at him as though the very words defied logic, defied belief, but then her face split with grief and she closed her eyes, collapsing into the old wizard as the sobs wracked her body.

  In contrast to Sonya’s grief, Azinon rejoiced. It began as a low chuckle, gradually building in cadence until he threw back his head and laughed full and loud. Tossing away his sword, he clapped once in his revelry and blood splashed off his fingers with the action. “It is over,” he said looking down at Steve’s lifeless body, looking nearly as though he couldn’t believe it himself. “I have won.”

  Turning over the sobbing young woman to Kamarine, Haldorum turned back, his eyes narrowing at the Dark One. “Your troubles have only just begun.”

  As one, the soldiers of the Resistance advanced toward the sorcerer, then drew back as flames roared up in a line dividing the chamber in two.

  “Well, come on then!” Azinon said, turning up his hands as though wondering why they hesitated. The fire died to a level no higher than a man’s knee but roared to head height when any tried to approach. Azinon stepped quickly to the center of his half of the room, stopping a short ten paces from the flames and put up his fists, as though prepared to box with every last one of them. Then he burst out laughing again at his own joke.

  “Your petty threats are less than nothing to me, old man,” he said at last. All humor left his countenance then like water from a sieve and he said, “Enjoy what precious little time you have left in the castle, for tonight, at midnight, my army will return and overrun this place!”

  A look of shock then swept across everyone in the room. Haldorum alone was able to find voice enough to say, “Oh my God. How is it possible?”

  “Yes,” Azinon hissed through his smile. He slowly pointed at them all across the fire. “That’s right, you’re all going to die! Pray it happens in the siege, less the next time you see me be through a shangee’s eyes!” He laughed uproariously then in the face of their stupefied expressions.

  “Azinon!”

  The sorcerer whirled at the sound of his name and screamed as a meter of steel plunged through his chest and erupted out his back. Steve cupped his other hand around the back of the Dark One’s neck and shoved the sword until the hilt rested against his breastbone. Azinon looked up incredulous from the blade in his body and then into the eyes of the Fourth Power of Mithal. Steve returned that gaze with eyes that burned like twin stars in their sockets, their brilliance and color an exact match to the crystal’s own light.

  Even as death closed on him, Azinon’s face betrayed his inability to understand. The man he faced, after all, was dead; killed by his own hand. Azinon shook his head, trying to form the word ‘no’ but only managed to spit blood.

  Steve twisted the sword as he withdrew it and the sorcerer grimaced horribly. Before the body could fall to the floor, Steve spun, the blade tracing a horizontal arc through the air. Azinon’s head flew from his shoulders and then hit the floor a dozen feet away with a wet, sickening thud. From there it rolled into the all-consuming flames of the fire.

  EPILOGUE

  It did not take long.

  By the third night, water and rations were running low and, with the extended disappearance of their great sorcerer, rumors began spreading among the vast redcrest army like brush fire. Fights broke out amongst those who doubted their emperor still lived and those who remained fanatically loyal. Morale plummeted as the hours stretched, and desertion became rampant until, by the third evening, a full third of the infantry had seemingly vanished into the night.

  Before dawn of the fourth day, the raids began. Jisetrian warriors descended from the sky and rained down their deadly bolts from out of the darkness above, the light of the redcrests own campfires assisting in their aim. Hundreds died, thousands were wounded. Chaos erupted among the already stricken forces of the Dark One, and it was all the officers could do to keep the bulk of the army from deserting under the assault. The next morning nearly half of the army was missing, a quarter of the dark mages, gone for parts unknown.

  On the fifth night, however, discipline was found in its shortest supply. On that night, the howls of the wolves echoed through the valley.

  “I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” Steve said, peering at it. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Sonya moved from behind Haldorum and around General Duva. Turning her shoulder, she squeezed between King Gorium and his daughter, Princess Vessla, and moved past Scott and Kurella, debris of broken glass and ceramic crunching underfoot, to stand beside her friend.

  She moved alongside him and placed her right hand on his left shoulder, her free hand finding his. “This mirror might not tell you anything. Haldorum finding you might have just been one big coincidence and nothing more.”

  Steve smiled without looking at her and squeezed her hand. He wished he could believe that. “That would be one helluva coincidence,” he said.

  King Gorium, looking impatient, was about to comment but one look from his daughter silenced him.

  Steve took a deep breath and exhaled. “Okay, then.” He moved away from Sonya, reached for the blanket he had used to cover the mirror nearly a week ago, and then pulled it down. However, instead of the flaming vision of himself he had expected, his own normal reflection stared back at him. The young wizard stepped back from the mirror confused. “I don’t understand. The last time we were here it—“

  Deep, booming laughter echoed in the room from everywhere. Then all around them, the light faded, pitching the room into darkness deeper than a moonless night. Scott and Kurella looked about in alarm, their footsteps stirring the debris underfoot, for even their keen vision was useless in total blackness. They were not long in the dark, however; and when again the lights flared, it was instead the yellow dancing flames of great wall sconces imbedded in the natural stone of the cave walls about them that allowed them to see.

  General Duva looked about at the incredible wealth arrayed before him. “Am I delusional or are you all seeing this as well?”

  The cavern was filled with hills of riches, gold and silver coins, gems, figurines, statues, goblets, ancient weapons, and so much more, glittering as far as the eye could see.

  At his feet, Duva saw his boots no longer crunched upon shattered debris, but rather clinked upon the gold coins he stood upon. “What is this place?” he asked. “There is more gold here than in all the known kingdoms combined.”

  “Father,” Vessla said leaning closer to him,
“where are we?”

  “I do not know, my dear,” he answered, offering her a reassuring squeeze with one arm.

  Steve turned around, facing opposite the rest, and indicated behind them all with a nod. “But I know.”

  Everyone turned about and nearly all, Haldorum included, fell back and hastily drew weapons at the sight of the massive golden dragon—all, that is, save Steve.

  “It’s all right, everyone,” he said, moving forward and easing their weapons down with a hand on each individual wrist. Seeing Steve’s ease in the presence of the monster, they lowered their guards. “This,” Steve said indicating the gigantic creature, “is the Oracle of the Blue Mountain.”

  The dragon did not respond, only regarded them sagely with its great golden eyes.

  King Gorium pointed up at the tremendous dragon’s head with his mace. “This is the Oracle?”

  “In the flesh—though not what people see when they come here. As I understand it, he rarely makes personal appearances. If the seekers who come to the mountain are found worthy, they get their answers…just not the audience.”

  “Well spoken, halfling child,” the dragon said, its voice like a rumble of the mountain itself. “And congratulations on your victory, foretold though it was.”

  Steve stepped forward, craning his neck to look up into the face of the dragon towering over him. “Don’t think it isn’t nice to see you again, but why exactly are we here? I was trying to get Azinon’s mirror to—“

  “It would have told you nothing,” the Oracle stated flatly. “It is only a mirror, nothing more.”

  “But you told me it would answer all my questions.”

  “I told you to find the sorcerer’s mirror in order to find the answers you seek. I said nothing of where those answers would come. You needed to know the truth was waiting for you, but I needed to ensure you did not lose focus. Your belief Azinon possessed a talisman made sure you did not.”

  “And the burning reflection it showed me? That was your doing, wasn’t it?”

  The ancient dragon huffed a plume of smoke into the air in what appeared to be a laugh. “Yes, it was I, but illusion it was not. The fire is your own, hidden on the spiritual plane from your mortal eyes. I merely showed you what I see.”

  Steve held up both hands with palms out, shaking his head in confusion. “Wait, wait, back up. I don’t understand. Why show me that at all?”

  The dragon sighed but said nothing.

  Steve looked to Haldorum, who shrugged in response, and then back to the dragon. He knew the question he wanted to ask. It had been burning inside him ever since he first stepped onto this world, burning brighter as his own doubt grew about what he thought to be the truth. At first they named him the Third, only to discover he was not; they believed his power came from the crystal, only to discover it did not; but then surely the prophecy must mention a person like him somewhere in the ancient passages, only to discover it did not.

  “Oracle, I do have one question,” Steve said finally. There was really only one thing he truly wanted to know. “Who am I?”

  The Oracle nodded once. “Very well.”

  Light exploded from the crystal around Steve’s neck, radiating outward in a hundred bands of shooting rays. Steve was as startled as any, not only for the suddenness of it, but for the sheer nature of the crystal itself, as though the magic inside had gone wild. Haldorum and the others shrank away from the young wizard for, although he could not himself see it, the wild magic shined through his body as though he were not even there, blinding them all.

  And then each of the bands of light merged into a single shaft, shining forward from the crystal to gather at a point in the air between Steve and the dragon. But it was more than light. Something moved within it, gathering at the very core of the growing radiance between them, changing, becoming larger, morphing every second into something more human in shape but glowing with an aura that obscured any detail. As suddenly as it began, like the trailing tail of a comet, the last of the light left the crystal and emptied into the being standing before the young wizard, full and complete in its humanoid shape. To Steve it looked very much as his reflection in Azinon’s mirror had appeared, though this being glowed with an intense aura that differed from the flames he had seen upon himself.

  The glowing entity turned slightly to regard the dragon behind it and nodded its head once, a gesture the dragon returned. “It has been long,” the entity said in a voice that sounded as though not one, but three men spoke at once. “Long since I last looked upon the world from this side of the crystal’s walls.”

  “Who are you?” Steve demanded without preamble. Without waiting for a reply, he looked to the Oracle and said, “I don’t understand. How does this answer my question? What—“ Steve stopped, unable to continue as his eyes fell to the being standing before him. This luminous creature was smiling at him, Steve could tell, though he could not see its face. But what unnerved him most about it was the fact he could feel the warmth of that smile and everything it communicated. There was joy in that smile, and pride at what the young wizard had accomplished but, above all else, there was love.

  “Who are you?” Steve asked again.

  The entity spread its arms wide and made is if to approach, to welcome the young man into an embrace, but then stopped as though thinking better of it. Instead, he lowered his arms again and replied with the voice of three, “I am what the human race has termed—“

  “A daemon,” Haldorum said coming alongside Steve.

  Steve looked alarmed at such a statement. “Haldorum, don’t ask me how I know it, but I can tell you without a doubt that, whatever this is, it is not evil.”

  The older wizard glanced down with a good-humored chuckle and then said, “Not demon, my young friend, daemon. Though they sound nearly the same the definition is quite different.”

  “Quite,” the being agreed with a nod, mirroring the old wizard’s humor. “Unlike our angelic counterparts who serve on the spiritual plane, daemons serve here upon the material plane.”

  As Haldorum had appeared to Steve’s left, so now did Sonya appear to his right. “You serve God?” she asked incredulous.

  The entity nodded. “I do.”

  She pointed upward with an index finger. “As in God God?”

  The daemon’s shoulders bobbed in a chuckle in reply.

  Steve’s mind raced with one thought after another in the face of this shocking revelation. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What was something like you doing in something like this?” He held up the crystal hanging around his neck, now appearing as lifeless and empty as any natural piece of quartz.

  Though none of them could see it physically through the radiance, the entity’s face became serious again, and an awkward silence fell as he considered his next words. “The explanation for that,” he said at last, “is a long story indeed.”

  Steve let the crystal fall from his fingertips. “I’ve got as long as it takes.”

  The entity nodded slowly.

  “It started before you were born,” he began. “Twenty years ago the empire was at the height of a glorious reign, and the Emperor was the proud father of a sixteen year-old girl, one who showed great promise as the heir to the throne. Aside from the blessing of great beauty, she possessed a fair and just mind, and was not afraid to tackle hardship in whatever form she found it.” The entity paused then, smiling inwardly, then said, “The Emperor had much to be proud of.”

  “Back then the kings of the different races of Mithal gave deference to the Emperor, for each owed the very existence of their peoples and kingdoms to one of his grandsires four thousand six hundred and thirty-two years past, to the first Emperor of Mithal. With the leadership and magic of this great man, and the help of daemonkind, the various races fled here, for their old home was no longer a place they could survive.”

  “Earth?” Steve blurted out suddenly and the glowing figure nodded in the affirmative.

  “Haldorum spoke to yo
u of the time long past, when the parallel worlds, Earth and Mithal, deviated from their parallel paths. One continued on following the ways of science, the other the ways of magic. On Earth, Steven, inherently magical beings exist now only in fairy tales because, without magic, they could not continue to live. So in an effort to save the dying races, the first Emperor and daemonkind rent open the barrier between the worlds and brought them here to Mithal, where the Emperor welcomed them with open arms. In an act of supreme generosity, he gave entire kingdoms to the newly arrived peoples and bid them live in peace among humankind.”

  “Incredible,” Steve whispered. “All of Earth’s legends...”

  “Were born of these races.” The being then canted his head in apology. “I know this does not answer your question about the crystal, but it seemed like something you should know.”

  Steve nodded. “Please, continue.”

  The daemon nodded. “As you wish. As I said, the Imperial Princess, the one you have been searching for, showed great promise as a future Empress, but it also became known amongst my kind her life was in great peril. Though I did not know why, I was charged with looking after the life of this mortal. And so I did, always keeping a close eye and watching for any who might do her harm. It was not until a year later I would realize the scope of her peril.”

  “When dark beings seek a soul, they first try to corrupt it, turn it toward evil subtly, as the choice to follow evil must be made freely in order to damn a soul to Hell. But such was not the fate evil had in mind for her. Late one night a true demon appeared in her bedchambers—appearing here, upon the material plane itself,” the entity said incredulous, gesturing with his hands as if to encompass the whole world. “Not caring why such a foul thing would take physical form in the presence of a mortal, I stepped out from the spiritual plane and attacked. I was victorious, but not before the Princess awoke and saw me in my true form, as I appear to you now. With the demon’s body already melting into shadow, I fled back to the spiritual plane, hoping she would dismiss me as a bad dream.”