Ruler, Rival, Exile (Of Crowns and Glory—Book 7)

by Morgan Rice

  “I’ll go,” Thanos said. “They need you here.”

  Akila nodded. “Take some of the new men. There will be less tension with the Empire soldiers.”

  It shouldn’t have mattered, right then, given the desperate situation, but even so, Thanos ran down to a spot where two dozen of Lord West’s men stood.

  “Come with me,” he said, and he was surprised by how quickly they responded to his instruction. They followed as he led the way from the town, heading for the next beach along. Thanos loped there, not daring to risk his strength running flat out, but not wanting to arrive too late either.

  Soon, the sounds of battle came to him, and he hurried more.

  There were ships pulled into a narrow cove there, warriors pouring out of them to try to make their way up onto the island. Some of the Empire’s former soldiers stood with their shields locked in perfect formation, creating a wall to hold back the invaders. The soldiers there stabbed with mechanical efficiency, and Thanos found himself admiring the discipline of their training even as he charged in to help them.

  He leapt past their lines with his men, striking out at the invading forces, cutting and thrusting without trying to stop. A man came at him with an overhand swing and Thanos brushed it aside, cut at him, and then shoved him away. Another thrust a spear at him. Thanos parried it and held it, letting the soldier next to him strike in the gap it left.

  “Forward!” Thanos shouted. “Push forward. Push them back into the water!”

  He led by example, hoping that the others would go with him. Thanos saw men fall around him, cut down by the assorted weapons of the men from Felldust. He snatched up a shield from a dead soldier and used it to push back the next man to come at him.

  There was a point where battles became less about the individual blows than about pressure, intent, and the will to win. Thanos forced himself to shove enemies back, stabbing from behind the shield he held, ignoring the blows that rained on it. An arrow punched partway through. Thanos kept his head low and stabbed at another enemy.

  Slowly, step by step, they pushed their enemies back toward the water line. Felldust’s men started to scramble for their boats, pulling back into the sea, obviously seeking easier pickings.

  “Stay here,” Thanos said to the Empire’s soldiers. “They might come back.”

  They probably would. That, or they would land at one of a dozen other spots. The island had seemed so secure when Thanos and Ceres had been touring it, but the truth was that it was riddled with small coves and spots where a force might land. They might not manage it all at once, but if enough got through, they would be like a net of violence falling on the defenders.

  Thanos felt exhausted now, the strength that came with battle starting to fade. Even so, he pushed forward, running for the main city, wanting to get back to deal with the next threat. The men who’d gone with him followed. Most did, anyway. Two had died in the attack, while one more could only move slowly, thanks to a wound to his leg.

  They were losing men already, and there were still far more enemies to come. Thanos found himself thinking of the way things had been in Delos, where there had simply been too many foes to defeat, and whatever the people there had done, there had always been more.

  Thanos pushed that thought aside. This wasn’t Delos.

  They made it to the city to find it in the midst of a fresh assault by the fleet beyond its walls. Thanos could see the rocks landing on the buildings within the city, and he was grateful that the population had already been evacuated. He saw men fighting on the hills around the city, and archers firing down at the enemies beyond the harbor wall.

  He saw the ships using their ballistae to fire grappling hooks up onto the wall, and he started to run for them.

  “Iakos!” he yelled, getting closer to the tower where Akila’s deputy was giving orders. “They’re going to pull open the gates!”

  Iakos looked round, and that was when a stone struck the patch of dock where he was standing, the boom of it ringing out as it shattered. The fragments must have killed him instantly.

  Thanos stood there in shock for a moment. It was as brief and as meaningless as that. No storybook ending, no chance to say goodbye. Certainly no chance to try to save him. That was the truly terrifying thing about battles: they didn’t respect rank, or heart, or even skill. The greatest of swordsmen, the most effective of leaders, could be killed almost by accident. In a duel, the day usually went to the most skilled warrior. In a battle, a blade or an arrow could always come out of nowhere.

  He ran forward, knowing he had to act, yet already feeling the cold dread that he might be too late.

  “The gates!” he yelled. “Defend the gates!”

  Some of the men there rushed to obey, but they either weren’t expecting to have to take orders from Thanos, or they were still staring at the spot where Iakos had been standing just moments before. Some of them ran with him, up the stone steps that led to the top of the harbor wall. Some of them hacked at the ropes there with Thanos, but not enough, and there were more chains than ropes in any case.

  Arrows fell amongst them like rain spat up from the decks of the attacking boats, killing the men who tried to disengage the chains. Thanos saw one man go down with an arrow in his guts, and another charge forward in his place. They knew how important this was. He held up his shield while another man cut at the nearest ropes, but there was only so fast they could go, and the galleys out beyond the gates were already taking the strain, their rowers driven on by the lashes of their slave captains.

  One boat couldn’t have done it. A dozen couldn’t have done it, but this was far more than that. This was like a giant hand tearing at the fabric of the sea wall. Thanos heard the bars that held the gate closed creak, and then felt the jolt as they gave way. It was too much to hope to keep his balance. He teetered on the edge of the gate for a moment, and then dropped.

  Thanos tumbled, and he threw his shield clear as he fell so that it wouldn’t drag him down. He flung his sword clear too, and turned the fall into a dive that drove the breath from him as he hit the water. He tumbled through it in slow motion for a moment or two while he scrambled to draw a dagger and cut the straps on his armor. Then he came up, swimming for the shore while the gates swung still wider.

  Akila was there to meet him, helping to pull him from the water.

  “Iakos?” Akila asked.

  Thanos shook his head. “What now?”

  He already knew the answer. There was only one thing they could do with the sea gates open. It was the thing they’d been hoping to avoid, but also the thing they’d been planning for. Thanos just hoped they’d planned well enough.

  “Now we pull back,” Akila said, “and we show them that the rest of this island is a lot more difficult to take than the city.”

  Thanos nodded. He couldn’t see any other way. They would fight, and they would keep fighting. The only problem was, looking at the number of ships starting to creep through the opening gates, he wasn’t sure if it would be enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Ceres felt as though the tunnels behind the waterfall were pressing in on her, narrow enough that she could reach out and touch both walls if she wanted. She’d been expecting somewhere grander from the sorcerers who had fought the Ancient Ones.

  It was only as the long dead past continued to flash into the present that she saw the reason for it. She saw the Ancient Ones’ magical creatures getting stuck in the small spaces, unable to turn as the sorcerers struck at them. Flame and lightning, poison and acid flickered down the tunnels in a kind of half-there memory. After what had happened with the man-cat, Ceres ducked out of the way each time.

  She saw them fighting and dying, the Ancient Ones and the sorcerers, perpetually locked together in something that was there and not there all at the same time. She saw an Ancient One turned to ash by magic, a sorcerer slain by a glowing weapon. Occasionally, things would flicker, and the ghosts there would repeat the things they’d just done, dy
ing and killing over and over through all eternity.

  “You begin to see,” the voice that had come to her at the gate said, whispering through the tunnel. “We are trapped. We are caught in this half-life.”

  Ceres pressed on, and now the tunnels gave way to a cavern. It was enough to make her gasp at the sight of it. It was large enough to hold a city, and it did, in its way. Houses spread out below her, strangely shaped, some built as pyramids or half spheres, others seemingly grown from living rock. A great circular section stood raised at the center of it all, as wide across as a city square might have been, worked with so many mystical symbols that they all seemed to run into one another.

  Through the city below the mountain, the battle continued. Long dead figures continued to fight one another, except in that quiet heart of the city. Ceres headed for it on instinct, walking through the hidden city while magic flashed around her.

  “We can give you what you want,” the whispering voice said. “And you can give us what we need.”

  There seemed to be a direction to it now, a location, and without being told, Ceres knew that she needed to be at the heart of the open space in the middle of the city. She walked for it, and by now she was starting to feel the effort of her journey. If she’d had the strength of her bloodline, it might have been nothing to her, but now she could feel her muscles starting to ache with the hiking.

  She reached the raised circle, and it was higher than her head. There were no steps set into the side, so to get onto it, Ceres had to leap up, catching hold of the lip of the dais and pulling herself up.

  On it, things seemed calmer somehow, and it took Ceres a moment to realize that it was because the images of the war weren’t crossing into the circle. They seemed to stop at the edge, caught there, or blocked.

  “This is a still point,” the voice said, and now there was a figure to go with it, robed and hooded.

  More stood beside it, spreading out in a half circle around Ceres, all hooded, all still. For a moment, she felt a flash of fear at their sudden appearance, but they didn’t appear to be attempting to do anything to her. Instead, they simply stood there, watching her from beneath their cowls.

  “Welcome, child of our enemies,” the lead figure whispered. “Maybe it is fitting that you should be the one to release us.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ceres said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Ceres felt the anger coming off the figures, and the disappointment. They said nothing, but there was still an air of expectation to them that she couldn’t ignore.

  “What is it that you want from me?” Ceres said. “I came here to get back the powers I lost. I didn’t even know that you were here.”

  The figures were still for several seconds. Finally, the lead one pushed back its cowl.

  “We want you to release us from this half-life.”

  It was awful to look at. The thing beneath had probably once been a man, but now his flesh was desiccated and paper thin, his eyes empty sockets.

  “Your people came, angry at us for daring to seek our own power,” the sorcerer said. “There was a war, and we chose the wrong side, so they came to finish us, but what they did was worse. So much worse.”

  Ceres could guess what had happened. “They trapped you here.”

  All of the hooded figures nodded in unison.

  “They tried to kill us, and we tried to protect ourselves,” the sorcerer said. “You have seen the battle. They realized that they could not truly kill us without greater violence and the loss of even more on both sides. So they unleashed the harshest of magic. They caught us here, between life and death.”

  “And you want me to release you?” Ceres said. Looking at the creature before her, it was hard not to feel a sense of pity. How long ago had the war with the Ancient Ones been? How long had these men and women been trapped in a space that was neither there nor gone, forced to relive their war? “I don’t know how. I came here because—”

  “Because you want to be what you once were,” he said. “There is a way to do that. The Ancient Ones left behind a lynchpin, a fragment of their power. Using that, you could recover. I will show you the way myself, if you help us.”

  Ceres dared to feel a hint of hope at that. She could actually do this. She could help the people she cared about. She could save them, and at the same time, she could save these trapped creatures, releasing them into the death that was waiting for them.

  “How do I help you?” Ceres asked.

  The former sorcerer gestured, and some of the symbols on the platform shifted. Light grew up from it, in a pillar that seemed insubstantial until Ceres brushed against it.

  “Place your hand on it,” the sorcerer said. “We cannot use it, but it will recognize you. Tell it what you want.”

  Ceres hesitated, wary that this might be some kind of trap. Still, she put her hand on the pillar.

  You want to free them?

  The words seemed to bypass Ceres’s ears entirely. They were almost more of a sensation than a sound. Images flooded through her then. Images of this place as it had been. She saw the sorcerers when they had been something more than half-dead things. She saw them laughing and working together, talking and alive.

  You want to give them life again?

  She saw some of the things they were working on. There were people there, struggling in bonds that held them so the sorcerers could extract organs, or blood, or just life itself. There were implements that seemed like the most hideous of torture devices, and Ceres knew that they were worse than that, because there was no answer these people could give that could make it stop. She saw creatures shifting and changing under the power the sorcerers used, the dead brought back as shambling things.

  You want to bring these things back into the world?

  She saw another image, of the sorcerers heading out into the world, trying to conquer. Of nations turned to ash beneath their spells. For a moment, she thought that this was an image of the long past war against the Ancient Ones, but no, she saw faces she recognized, places that she knew. Ceres understood then.

  This was a warning. This was what might happen if she freed the creatures there from their curse.

  Do you want to free them? I cannot choose. You must choose. Do you want this?

  “No,” Ceres said. “I don’t want that. I don’t.”

  She jerked her hand back and the connection broke. The pillar of light faded into the ground, and Ceres stood there, wondering what she’d just seen. But she knew the answer to that. She’d seen the truth of what might happen.

  She looked up to see the cloaked figures staring at her.

  “What did you do?” their leader demanded. “What did you do?”

  He lunged forward, swiping with clawlike hands. Ceres jumped back, drawing her sword as the others started to come for her.

  “You’d leave us like this?” he demanded, swiping at her again.

  “I won’t let you conquer and kill!” Ceres shot back. She thrust with her blade, feeling it slide in under the ribs of her attacker. It made no difference. He grabbed at her, and it was all she could do to pull back from those clutching fingers.

  “You are like all your kind. Trying to hold back those who seek knowledge. Trying to keep power for themselves!”

  They came at her then, and Ceres backed away. She cut at the arm of one as it clawed at her, managing to sever the hand long enough to get some space, but it only lifted it, reattaching it as easily as if it were a torn dress being sewn together.

  Ceres kept moving, dodging past clawed hands and open mouths. She cut at their legs and their arms, reasoning that she could at least start to slow them down. She set off through the underground city, dodging through the houses, trying to keep ahead of the chasing pack of enemies. She was faster than them at least, so maybe she could simply run.

  The first flash of magic came past her, and Ceres knew it wouldn’t be that easy. It wasn’t one of the great spells that they’d worked in the battle—she guessed t
hat they didn’t have the strength left for that—but there was still more than enough force to send flames licking over the nearby stonework, forcing Ceres to duck into an alleyway.

  She dodged and she wove now, trying to keep ahead of the creatures coming for her. More magic flashed, weaving in with the memories of it that still flickered in and out of existence in the cavern, so that Ceres couldn’t tell what was the past and what was real. Lightning arced off the metal of a nearby dwelling, grounding slowly.

  “If you will not help us, you will die!” the leader called out.

  Ceres kept moving. One of the creatures came at her from an alley, grabbing her and clinging on in spite of her stabbing it. Teeth closed on her shoulder, biting down and drawing blood. Ceres saw the cloaked figure pull back, and for a moment, it didn’t look like an ancient thing, but like a woman only a little older than her.

  “Your blood…” the woman began.

  Ceres kicked her away, then cut her legs from under her as she tried to lunge again.

  She found herself circling round, hoping to find a way out. She saw a tunnel entrance and ran in. Behind her, she heard the sound of shuffling feet, and the flash of magic lit nearby.

  “If you will not help us willingly, we’ll take your blood,” the leader called after her. “Jsanth says it helped her. We will bleed you dry unless you give back what is ours!”

  Ceres kept running, taking twists and turns at random in the hope of losing them. Around her, she saw more of the war, more of the Ancient Ones. There hadn’t been many of them left by this point. Just a few, trying to get deeper into the cave complex.

  What had they wanted there? What had they been trying to do? Ceres didn’t know, but on instinct she ran that way.

  More magic flashed behind her, and now it was slamming into the walls, taking out chunks of stone and bringing blocks of rubble down into the passages. Ceres ducked as flames shot over her head, then rolled as a blast of force struck the spot where she’d been standing. She dodged into a side passage, hoping to get clear…