The Wizard's Heir

by J. A. V Henderson

  There was a vicious roar, and the second Rifter ran toward him, hurling one spear and wielding a second in his other hand. Xaeland flattened away from the wild spear and shouted, “Caelhuin! Left!” From out of nowhere, Caelhuin lunged backward with his remaining rock elf enemy, crashing straight into the second Rifter. In a moment both were dispatched.

  Outside the periphery of Alik’s vision a stony shadow crawled. A flock of bats swerved in the air overhead. Piachras and Alik, with the leaders of the Essadden elves around them, reached Xaeland and Caelhuin. “Where went the girl?” Piachras asked.

  “The stairs,” Xaeland indicated the upward-winding stairwell nearby. “If she’s here, General Krythar’s at the top—and Thaurim is there with the shard.”

  Saying this, Xaeland took Alik’s hand once more and rushed for the stairwell—but no sooner had he done so than two colossal statues slid like shadows across the entrance ahead of him, slavering dusty foam and gleaming a cold glitter in their stony eyes. Without hesitation Xaeland launched into the gargoyle at the right door post. His sword flashed into the stone hide with an explosion of flame and a hail of stone. The gargoyle let out a harrowing, unearthly squeal and swung back with an iron fist, missing in its blind pain. Xaeland slipped in between the two guardians, pulling Alik with him. Two stone hands crashed together over them and a single bat swerved wildly through the gauntlet to be smashed out of the air by a blow from Xaeland’s fist.

  Piachras and Caelhuin reached the gargoyles the next moment, Piachras with his heavy sword, Caelhuin bare-handed. Piachras’ sword struck his target in the neck, a mighty blow that reverberated through the beast but could not penetrate its hide. Showers of sparks and red sword fragments rained across the floor, and when Piachras’ sword swung free, he found it shortened to the hilt.

  A third gargoyle loped along the wall toward them. Caelhuin and his opponent locked together, hand and claw, and staggered into the door post with a grinding crash. The gargoyle, already badly wounded by Xaeland, broke in two clutching desperately for its crumbling innards.

  Caelhuin stumbled past the disintegrating gargoyle as the second guardian opposite Piachras swiped at the elven quester with one huge, hoary-clawed hand. Piachras dodged and lashed back, catching the stone beast with his bare hand. Two of the Essadden elves closed with it at the same time, and the combined force was enough to knock the beast over. Piachras did not wait for it to recover, but dashed up the stairs in threes after the boy he was pledged to protect.

  In the great hall, dozens of gargoyles emanated from the walls and balconies and alcoves about the remnant host of Essadden. The Essadden chief turned purposefully back with an air of the glory of destiny. He mounted the bottom step of the staircase and planted his staff.

  Xaeland and Alik ran, hand in hand, breathlessly, wearily up the spiral curve of the tower staircase of Labrion. Piachras pounded up the stairs behind them with what seemed to be ever-increasing energy. Catching up with Xaeland he shouted out, “I thought you said the creatures were invincible to the sword!”

  Xaeland afforded only the shortest of backward glances and scowled, “I said your sword.”

  “And yours?” demanded Piachras.

  “Grasp is quite able to take care of himself,” Xaeland breathed.

  At the top of the tower, the girl Zaris threw open the doors into Thaurim’s chamber. “Zaris!” exclaimed General Krythar, rising but still trapped by Thaurim’s brick claws.

  “Silence the whelp,” came Thaurim’s croaking voice from his purplish heap of cloak.

  Whatever Krythar’s reply to this aspersion would have been would never be known, for Zaris herself answered, “Father, the tower is invaded; our guards are killed and the enemies follow close behind.”

  “Cowardly louts,” sneered Thaurim. The air around him burned with a wild purple light as though incensed—but he did not turn around. “We arring invincibility.” A pasty, thin hand extended to one side, and out of the heaps of wreckage of the floor scurried two clawed fragments of wood—bearing a rusted, decrepit sword.

  The bricks sunk back away from Krythar’s and Deran’s feet, and they both leapt away as quickly as possible. “Summon your drakes then,” Thaurim sneered at Krythar, having his bench-monster wheel him around. Krythar gladly gave these orders to the ravenous drakes, and they hurtled out through the window to summon their fleets. “They to finish the field,” Thaurim sneered, “and we, these: Xaeland.”

  At that moment Xaeland hit the top of the stairs with Alik behind his cloak. He stood tall, raising his head and his glowing red sword, now gone black as night.

  Thaurim’s face twisted into a smile like a grimace. The brick monsters rippled through the floor for Xaeland’s feet. Alik gasped, peeking from behind Xaeland’s robe, but Xaeland, without so much as glancing down, flicked his sword back and forth, slicing the brick creatures in half. Then Thaurim’s full onslaught began.

  The floor, where there had been only heaps of garbage and grime, began to seethe and roil. A long limb jointed with grasping, eyeless hands stumbled out of the dust and lunged at Xaeland. Caelhuin leaped past Xaeland into the debris and was lost. A second leg rose up, then a third and a fourth and a fifth. Xaeland whirled his sword to the ready and mowed through the first limb with a dozen strokes, each blow slicing the jointed limb in two places and sending the pieces flying like chaff. The creature, however, whatever it was, did not even slow down, and the next moment four limbs struck all at the same time as even more began to coalesce out of the debris. Piachras appeared at Xaeland’s side wielding the pick-axe they had used to scale the cliff. Alik himself slashed with his knife at a wounded, woozy gauntlet that had landed behind Xaeland and smelled his presence. But the main battle was Xaeland’s. Just when Alik thought the powerful knight would not be able to stand any more, he sped up the whirling of his sword, lengthened its stroke inhumanly, and sliced apart pieces of all four limbs at once.

  Caelhuin reared out of the midst of the rubbish heap on a huge head that pulled together almost all that was left of the debris. Legs, fully a dozen of them, flailed in every direction and twisted about to strike at Caelhuin. This only freed up Xaeland and Piachras, however, and Xaeland lunged straight for the beast’s body, plunging his sword into what he deemed its most vulnerable part. The limbs burst apart in pain, sending a wave of nausea through Alik’s body. Thaurim let out a scream of apoplectic rage and, faced with two page knights, lifted his own sword.

  Xaeland held out a cautionary hand toward his comrade, but no sooner had Caelhuin read his thoughts than he plunged forward, taking the full brunt of Thaurim’s attack. Thaurim’s demon sword, Igneis, cackled hollowly as it swung. Xaeland flung his own blade, Grasp, to deflect the blow just over Caelhuin’s head, but a wave of flame coalesced around Igneis as it swung and lashed out at Caelhuin, catching him full. “Roll!” Xaeland shouted, and kicked Thaurim square in the gut, hurling him away.

  Thaurim tried to shout something, but could barely gasp a sound. A pale purple glow flashed from his free right fist.

  From across the room, that pale flicker screamed in Alik’s ears. Caution and the whole world vanished to his senses, and he shot out straight for it. Instantly both Krythar and Deran saw him and recognized him. “The kid!” Krythar exclaimed.

  “By the depths!” Deran wheezed.

  “Take him!” Krythar growled. His daughter Zaris at once noched one of her black-flecked poison arrows and shot it. Alik saw the arrow too late and tried to dodge. The arrow caught in his cloak and hung there as Piachras charged for Zaris.

  Thaurim rose to his feet heavily, his dark cloak hanging in his eyes. Xaeland dodged even before the blow came and swung around from the far side, nearly out of range. A lash of flame licked out where he had been just as he swung Grasp the long distance for his enemy. Too late Thaurim lifted his free hand to shield his face, and Grasp sliced straight through it, hurling him back. The hand careened away free, and a purple flash flew through the air. Alik scrambled for the sha
rd and slipped in the debris. The shard’s landing was marked by a crystally tinkling sound.

  Two gargoyles burst through the open tower doors. Through the windows a stream of Krythar’s drakes finally arrived. Piachras reached Zaris only to be set upon by both drakes and gargoyles at once.

  Alik laid his hand over the shard and felt its malignant wisdom gnaw into him. He drew his hand back fearfully, then with greater resolve he grabbed it in the edge of his cloak. Already Krythar was marshaling his drakes in Alik’s direction. Piachras was battered back blow for blow by both the gargoyles at once. Caelhuin was up again but he and Xaeland, lucky at first, were lost beneath a rain of fire. And the drakes.... Fly, fly! Whispered a sinister voice within Alik’s mind. A shot of terror struck through him as he suddenly saw Thaurim’s severed left hand pulling itself toward him. He backed toward the window. An arrow shot through the air at him and then suddenly veered into the wall.

  “Raegai’ia!” Alik whispered weakly. “Sai’ia zorari au ce-iaez’v’n.”

  The shard Hydris jumped to life in the pouch by Deran’s side and flew free—flew, with crystally wings, like a sapphire dragonfly—to Alik’s hand. The drakes plunged for Alik and they too veered away suddenly on every side. He stepped back slowly, resignedly, held up the shards, and gently tumbled through the window to the certain death hundreds of feet below.

  VI.i. patris

  T

  he brutal Battle of Labrion Plateau continued deep into the night as a black sense in the back of the mind. The ground was slippery with congealing gore and treacherous patches of ice. Where the bodies of the dead were mingled in the thickest proportions—so thick that one could not have taken a step on solid ground—the blanket of the night’s mist hid the most gruesome revelations of the war. Only for the fog did any soul manage to escape that battlefield. The shrieks of drakes echoed back and forth all night as they uncovered still more bodies, living or dead. It was one such cry, particularly near, that eventually roused Arran Delossan from his numb unconsciousness.

  He found himself sticky, wet, cold, and dirty. A dozen things went through his mind at once, but the one he gave voice to—very quietly—was, “Master Sedhar?” To this there was no immediate response, and it was not long before he remembered everything of his present situation.

  His glasses, he knew, were gone. He had been set upon by a score of beasts not long after the general’s death...but was he hurt?

  A drake screeched in response. The general...General Pendrax. He had stayed by the general most of the battle—and Heao had been nearby as well. The general had commanded sternly to the last, and then when the last lines began to dissolve he himself had fought valorously. But when they had come across the body of his son, Arrythh...what a terrible sight! After that, everything, everything had fallen apart.

  Flash—the picture returned. He closed his eyes with a violent shudder. Hurt...no he was not hurt, not physically, but he would not be the same.

  Now it appeared the drakes had arrived on the scene. He could hear them, receding now, like carrion birds or like flocks of seagulls calling out from every direction around a catch. Those monsters must have come some time after his own fall, when the armies were already crumbling and the field was already turning to chaos. The question came to him, how had he survived at all? He knew there were no survivors higher up on the plateau, because the beast army had ripped apart anyone who had fallen or been culled out. But Stuart—had Stuart survived? And Alik? And what of Cerregan, and Piachras, and the red-haired man, Flan? And what about Heao, who had been right behind him when he had fallen? He was responsible for Heao as well as Alik. If the one was lost to him for the present time, short of a miracle, he might at least hope to find some sign of Heao. For his father’s sake. That, then, would be his resolve.

  He got to his knees, wiped away some of the gore and filth from his hands onto his grey cloak, and brushed aside—with considerable effort—a host of sudden doubts: that he would ever see Heao’s father, Master Sedhar, again; that he would ever see anyone of those old days on the island again; or Alik; or Heao; that he was so insignificant and humble in comparison to the noble Stuart or the great General Pendrax, the captains of fallen Anthirion or the heroes of Emeria, if they were still alive—most certainly than the powerful forces arrayed against them by the enemy. Even Alik, he suspected, the poor orphan he felt so obligated to help, was something far greater than himself. For after all, he believed the great things the Ristorians saw in him. It all fit together. These times, the end of the Twelfth Age, the beginning of a new one, were times of upheaval, of heroic strife, of legends, of feats of valor and villainy. And he was an aging scribe, filthy, alone, half-blind with the fog and with the loss of his glasses, surrounded by miles and miles of utter carnage and devastation, bodies heaped upon bodies, twisted, mangled, effaced in the leveling oppression of the vast night sky.

  He got up and began to search the area immediately around him. He did not think it wise to call out. If a drake stumbled into him.... His initial search revealed a troop of slaughtered monster horses that had been torn apart, either by themselves or by the drakes after their deaths. Then there were the trampled, slashed, and festering bodies of some of the Ristorian high guard. The corpses of beasts—rats, dogs, horses, scorpions, spiders, yak-men, goats, serpents, lizards, and some things too twisted to belong to any natural species—were heaped around the perimeter of the arc in which he had fallen. Westward and downward from there the field was scattered, though still thickly, with bodies. They must have broken and fled from here. The drakes must have come just after I fell. In truth, he could make out in the area below him a few of the drakes’ scaly hides among the other bodies.

  His eyes fell upon the body of his own faithful horse. There was not much left—exposed bone, matted hair and leather, gore. The stench was tearful.

  “Master Je-van!” came a voice as though through the fog. He stopped. Had he imagined it? It sounded like Heao, but could it be? And didn’t he know about the drakes? He must have waited five minutes. He was about to leave when he heard it again, now from a completely different quarter.

  “I am hearing things,” he murmured under his breath. But he headed toward where he predicted the voice would come up next: straight east up the plateau into the thickest of the bodies. The going was grim, but his light shoes were already fouled and he could go no other way. Still, he was nearly sick at his first step, trying not to think about what he had just stepped into. He stopped and searched his pockets for a handkerchief. And at that moment, the drake went by.

  It coasted soundlessly out of the fog no more than fifty feet away. He froze, completely off-guard. Then a moment later, it disappeared again.

  His heart pounded. It hadn’t seen him! It had gone right by—after what?

  Now he moved more quickly and more carefully. Finding an abandoned sword, he took it up. One of the plain Emerian blades, he identified. The blade was very gory but he had nothing cleaner to wipe it on. He had never carried a sword before. He held it out the way he had seen Rigel or any of the other soldiers carry theirs. After a few minutes, his arm was already tired.

  He stopped to wait for the voice and crouched down among the dead. If Heao was still alive at all, that drake might slaughter him soundlessly in an instant, slipping out of the fog like a ghost and.... And Jevan would hear nothing amidst the muted shrieks of far-off drakes and their reverberations in his ears.

  “Je-van!” It was close by now, almost directly in his path. He ventured forward again but stopped almost at once. A trio of hungry, glittery-eyed drakes swept in through the fog between the voice and him, moving straight for it. He ducked beneath the heaps of bodies as the drakes circled, no more than darker shadows in the darkness of the fog. Just ahead. A fourth drake sailed into view amidst the others and took a circling route around their search area. Four drakes: one he would have had difficulty defeating in his prime, with luck on his side. Four...no. If Heao was there...he could do nothing.


  The first two drakes landed and began clawing in the corpses while the second two tightened their circling to guard. Suddenly two spears shot out of the ground, arced over the heads of the drakes...and all four were jerked to the ground as though by an invisible hand. Six figures leapt up all around the drakes and began stabbing them with swords and knives and tritons. Then at last, Heao emerged.

  Jevan ran toward them and quickly gained their attention. Heao waved. As he came closer he recognized some of the others: Rigel, the Anthirian general; Eathril, the general of Emeria; and some of Eathril’s lieutenants. Just to know that they were still alive....

  “I am so glad to see you!” Heao echoed his thoughts, embracing him and speaking almost in a whisper.

  When they had embraced, Eathril spoke. “Heao told us he had seen you fall and thought you were still alive,” he said. Jevan noticed that Heao was covered from head to foot entirely in blood and grime. He winced. “He believed he could find you again, so came out about that.” Turning to his lieutenants, he added, “Good work, men.”

  “Are there other survivors, then?” asked Jevan.