The Wizard's Heir

by J. A. V Henderson

  Still Alik could not manage to move a muscle, even to cry out. Words raced through his mind but all seemed impossible to speak. Zarya surveyed her handiwork and slowly, inexorably moved toward Alik and Saria. The drakes slowly drifted toward Heao. The rifters slowly closed on Xaeland, stepping or passing over the form of the beast. The reddish-violet rifter leared over the beautiful sword glowing like fire in Xaeland’s hand. Slowly, inexorably, he pulled it out of Xaeland’s hand. Slowly, inexorably, his malicious grin turned into terror. The fingers of the hilt of the sword dug into the rifter’s hand. Its mouth seemed to open in a silenced wail. The milky-white partner of the first rifter moved to try to intervene. But the sword leapt into the air, spinning with a terrifying slowness against the darkness, and sliced twice through the rifter’s body: once at the jugular, then passing through even more slowly, more inexorably through the hip. The sword let out a real roar that suddenly seemed to permeate the entire space of the blackness at once and to continue without end in every direction and dimension.

  Suddenly words shouted through Alik’s head. The shards came alive at every level. Lights traced out every part of the blackness: currents, eddies everywhere, flowing: the lines binding and connecting all creation. Lines of energy, lines of power, lines of time, lines of brokenness, lines of chaos, twitching, frayed, like live wires dancing across the surface of the blackness. Alik willed the lines about the feet of the girl in black and planted his unspeakable word in the heart of the old blue shard.

  Color and blackness instantly blurred and then exploded into reality. Alik found that he could breathe, could move, could feel reality around him. He staggered to his feet but collapsed halfway, exhausted. The roaring of Xaeland’s demon sword rang through his ears, deafening. Then everything sprang into action all at once.

  The two rifters toppled to the ground bloodlessly, the head of the second rolling across a sleek obsidian floor. Xaeland’s beast howled and sprang away, crashing through them and on down the long hall around them. Jevan collapsed to the floor. Zarya rushed Alik, suddenly a second knife appearing in her off hand and rising over his head to plunge into him, but then Heao crashed headlong into the girl, knocking her to the floor with his momentum. The drakes slashed down through Alik and Saria, raking across Saria’s back and slicing through Alik’s arm with their claws as they passed.

  Xaeland was up in no time. The drakes whipped around for a second pass but swerved out of the way as the great man charge at them barehanded. The drakes looked again: this new enemy was defenseless, his sword still roaring and dancing back and forth above the pieces of the hapless rifters. Their eyes lit up with an evil sparkle and they swooped in on him as one. Xaeland boxed the first out of the air, sending it spinning across the shiny black floor. The second veered downward, going for his midsection, only to become lost in a swoosh of his cloak. Xaeland pulled the cloak together and hammered it against the floor with a crack.

  Bleeding profusely, Alik crawled to Heao. He could sense the energy building up around them like a huge spring. He grasped the foot of Heao with one hand as tightly as he could and dug in his mind into the most sure thought he could find: “I love you.” He found her hand also beside him, holding onto him. “Heao, letting go!” he cried out. Then the world and he could see sideways through a great black slit through the fabric of the world. Zarya screamed. The tendrils of the rift were wrapped taut around her feet. Before the sound of the scream could even reach her lips she flashed out of the hall with a muffled thud, leaving only a powdery black residue on the glossy black wall. Heao accelerated and smashed against the wall heavily, and Alik and Saria slid after him in a tangled mess.

  In the distance there was shouting and the sound of an animal enraged. Alik glanced up and down, blinking with pain. They were in a long, empty hallway tiled in obsidian or some such substance. There was a grand but disused double doorway immediately opposite them. Windows lined the wall opposite the doorway but the light was not bright.

  Alik crawled toward his old guardian. “Master Jevan,” he spoke out, his voice seeming small and frail.

  Xaeland knelt beside him. “Brother, let me bandage your arm.”

  Alik paid him no heed, but he set about making a bandage anyway. “Master Jevan?” Alik repeated.

  Jevan rolled his head slightly in Alik’s direction and smiled weakly. “Ah, I have found you at last,” he said. His breath was shallow.

  “Not yet,” said Alik. He withdrew the white shard from his pouch and held it over Jevan’s wound. “Iessave’ia,” he whispered in his own language. Then to Jevan he explained, “It should be…perfecting, to its nature.”

  “You would rob me from death?” Jevan questioned.

  “I am not robbing you,” Alik answered. “You were not meant to be dying yet.”

  “There,” said Xaeland, “that should hold you for now. And now you, Saria.”

  “I am barely scratched,” Saria retorted, picking up the staff of the fallen rifter, carefully avoiding Grasp laying amongst its gruesome handiwork. She flipped the staff and turned it, but finding no obvious way to activate it (if it still worked at all), she dropped it.

  “Heao?” Xaeland asked. “We have little time here.”

  “I’m okay,” said Heao, picking himself up gingerly. “I think….”

  Alik stood, absent-mindedly holding his injured arm. He looked up and down the corridor. “That way,” he finally said, indicating the direction from which the greatest commotion was coming.

  “Not that way,” Xaeland contradicted. “Inside.” He indicated the double doors opposite them. “Quickly.” He threw open the doors and ushered them all in as quickly as he could, then shut the doors quietly. No sooner had he done so than the sound of double-time marching filled the hallway behind them.

  They found themselves in a vaulting room of black obsidian, towering pillars, and dust motes floating beneath the lofty skylights. It was as empty as murder. The only furniture was a massive obsidian chair sitting like a carved boulder upon the shrouded dais. Golden stars of various sizes and shapes were strewn across the whole length and width of the room, etched with strange characters and numbers.

  In a hushed tone Heao sang, “He must walk across the stars into the blackness of full night, to where the living fires rise, through the fractures of the world into the dragon’s deathly dreams, upon the purest of light-beams.”

  The old throne room of Morin the First.

  “He is here,” Alik whispered at once.

  “Who?” asked Saria, regretting the question even as she voiced it.

  In deference to this, Alik neglected to answer. He cautiously stepped forward.

  There were voices behind them, a conversation in the corridor. “What on earth happened here?” “Rifters.” “What’s left of them.” “The lyodon must have done this.” “Maybe. You nine check out the old throne room. We’ll go this way. There may be rebels in the palace.” “The old throne room?” “Get on it, Sergeant, and quit whining.” “But….” “Now, Sergeant.”

  Alik and his company receded into a long hallway leading out of the back of the throne room. Alik took the rear, glancing backwards and still clenching the white shard.

  “Anyone would be insane to hide in here,” a voice muttered.

  Alik receded into the darkness. The dim light of the throne room seemed to wither and die at the entrance of this passage. There were torches on the walls—the first pair was visible—but all of them had been quenched. One or two were still smoldering, beady red eyes in an otherwise pitch darkness.

  First came the voices: “I was Athrel Macarthis: I died in this place. Please tell my family….”

  “I was Mikon Evereles: I died in this place seeking justice….”

  “I was called Ereni: I died in this place. Please look after my baby….”

  “I was Rothin Berelas, a captain of the guard. I was unjustly condemned….”

  “I was Perreth Perrell: I saw him. Look out….”

  “Alik,”
came Saria’s voice. She took his hand where he was holding the shard. “Alik, you’re bleeding,” she said. He found that he was: he had clenched onto the shard so strongly it had cut him.

  A wind whipped past them like a ghost in the darkness. Then another snaked past in the opposite direction. “Halai’ia,” he whispered. The shard lit up white and red. But there was nothing there: only Xaeland, glancing back, Heao, Jevan, and Saria. He glanced around. Apparently the passage was not completely straight, for the entrance behind them could no longer be seen at all. The passage, he saw, was more than a simple corridor. Doorways crowded both sides of the passage. An icy wind licked his feet from under one of the right-hand side doors.

  Xaeland shrugged and motioned him to continue. He followed carefully. Lives lay in the balance. He couldn’t help but look, however, when they passed an open door on the left. Bones were strewn across the floor in the hall; bones were stacked up behind the door. He looked quickly away.

  Then quickly, a cloak wrapped around the shard, plunging the corridor back into blackness. He felt the shards yanked out of his hand. Hands pushed him to the wall and a low voice suddenly cut through the tumult: “Anyone move and you’re dead. I can see you all very clearly and we have you surrounded and outnumbered. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Narrissoreans,” cursed Xaeland.

  “That coming from a Brolethirian outlaw,” the voice retorted.

  Alik heard a quick struggle, then the Narrissorean asked, “Which one of my prizes should we kill off first?”

  “Alik, you have to go with them,” Heao spoke up.

  “No, Alik, you can take them all here,” Saria urged. There was a shuffle and she grunted in pain.

  “No,” said Alik. “We will go peaceably to Morin with you—Deran.”

  “Ah, my boy, Alik, so you do remember me. Well as it is, you haven’t much choice. But I do feel sorry for you. I shall put in a good word for you with the emperor. Yes, and your friends, too. In the end, history can be construed in any number of ways. This war is the history, but what remains is how we live with it—or die.”

  “Are those the sentiments of your great sire, Channon?” asked Jevan.

  There was a rush in the darkness. Alik was yanked towards Jevan. There was a heavy thud against the corridor wall and the voice of Deran hissed, “I will kill you here and now, old man, if you so much as whisper a word against the name of Channon. I am the last of his line, the last of Narrissor. All that I have done is for the support of his cause, and no one may fault me, least of all you. As for you…,” he backed off a little, “what has all you have done been for in the end but the deaths of many who would otherwise have lived? Your futile little war—for what? Move out: we have no more time to waste.”

  “All those who have died are not so dead as you,” retorted Saria.

  There was a sound of a slap. “I said move it!” Deran growled.

  “I’m moving, I’m moving,” Saria fizzled back.

  “You know, Alik,” Deran talked as they made their way through the pitch blackness, “I knew you would come this way. Call it intuition, call it luck…. The prince of Tomeria thinks to find you fortified in with the so-called guardian prince, who by the way they have already found in his little hide-out and have probably already destroyed. General Dog Krythar thinks to meet you leading an all-out assault on the city—as though that were even possible—but then again, there is Labrion to support his view. He thinks you’re desperate. Well, perhaps you are, coming here to the heart of your enemy, three children and an old scribe and an outlaw. Perhaps we are all desperate.”

  “Join us,” Alik said quietly.

  “No, I didn’t think you were desperate,” Deran chuckled. “But you should be. Even you have a debt to pay with death, and you’ve cheated him already far too many times. Perhaps you think you can conquer him. Perhaps the rush of death has gone to your head. Or…do you think of the shards? Well, I have them now. It is my turn to cheat death.”

  “The shards will not answering to you,” Alik spoke.

  “No: they will answer to Morin, the heir of the great wizard, the mastermind of the Stone,” replied Deran.

  “And he to you?” asked Jevan.

  “I shall have my desire,” answered Deran. “I shall see the tribe of Narrissor resurrected from the dead and wealth and peace established forever.

  Alik spoke. “For this dream would you sacrifice the world?”

  Deran answered, “In an instant.”

  Alik nodded reflectively and held onto the desperate light of that dream as they wound through the blackness. He could sense Saria trembling, Xaeland smoldering, Jevan waiting, and Heao as quiet as a mouse. At last they came to a stop and Deran ordered one of his soldiers to open the door. The air was dense, buzzing. “Now all things come to their fulfillment,” spoke Deran.

  Fire licked through the city of Taravon, the last prince. Covered with blood and ash, Stuart and Sianna reached the bridge over the waters of the tarn surrounding the towers. Piachras and Lady Anaerias greeted them.

  “We had a stiff battle from street to street with the Aerisians covering us from the rooftops,” Piachras told him, “but when the fire began to flank us, we were forced to give way. We have saved our people. They are across the moat.” He added, embracing each of them, “I am heartily glad to see you once again alive. But…is this all you have brought back with you?”

  “Only this handful,” breathed Stuart. “Of the rest, those who did not die at the wall, died in the retreat, and those who did not die in the retreat, died when the flames o’erarched the walls and chased us down through the city.”

  The flames behind them overtook the last row of houses across the street from them all at the same time.

  “What of King Ciarthan and Malaoenidea?” asked Piachras.

  Stuart shook his head. “When last I saw, they stood upon the outer wall with arrows flying.”

  “Then they live,” declared Piachras.

  “And Prince Taravon? Is he safe within?” asked Stuart.

  Piachras hesitated. “His lieges have carried him up to the tower in high fever. They say he might not see the sunrise—but then again, neither might we.”

  “Then he lives, at least for now,” sighed Stuart.

  “Look! The knights!” exclaimed Piachras.

  Through the haze of smoke, the figure of a mounted warrior appeared on the right, curtained by fire. Then another appeared, and another, and another. At last there were a few less than a dozen. The leader of the knights reared up, brandished his sword at the flames, and charged.

  “We need to support them,” declared Stuart—but the houses opposite them were already fully engulfed in flames and beginning to crumble over the streets. Flames were licking out across the paving stones of the street, flashing on scraps of debris and eyeing the survivors across the water greedily.

  “We need to hold the bridge!” replied Piachras. “Bring water! Water, my comrades!”

  “The Ristorian cloaks you wear are waterproof,” Stuart told him. “Use those.” And he demonstrated by taking off his own cloak and filling it at the moat with as much water as he could quickly carry. He scrambled over to the fire and hurled the water onto it. The water hissed on the fire and the fire recoiled. The water seemed to draw back toward the moat. Was the ground there so sloped?

  Behind him, Piachras and his soldiers began to arrive with their cloaks full of water, and when they had emptied them onto the fire in front of the knights, they began to beat back the flames with their wet cloaks. But the fire lashed back. Stinging sparks flew through the air like wasps. Flames raced up the sides of the buildings on either side of them. “More water!” someone shouted. “More water!” Sianna came with her own cloak filled with water, and with her, a group of her Emerian soldiers. The fire arched over her, peeling away from the side of the building above her and crashing over her before she could get out of the way. Stuart ran to her, but she waved back, not a sign of burning anywhere on her. Stea
m rose from her in clouds; burning or steaming coals covered the ground around her…but she was untouched.

  The knights rode hard for them. There was no clearing a path all the way through to them in time, if at all. Behind them, firestorm; to the left and to the right, walls of flame; before them, one city block, the houses towering in flames, the street littered with blazing debris. The horses reached the fire and plunged in, ears back and eyes rolling in terror.

  “More water!” shouted Stuart. He waited breathlessly, holding his cloak in both hands. One horse and rider vanished in a rain of fire. Smoke billowed across the street. All the riders vanished in blackness…then blasted through the wall of smoke and cinders into the open street. The horse of the leader let out a furious neigh and leapt the low wall on the opposite side of the street into the moat. The riders tumbled from their mounts to the pavestones, covered with flames. Stuart rushed to the closest with his wet cloak and beat out his flames.

  Nine riders survived. Nine of a hundred.

  As they stood in disarray beneath the flames of the haven, the lieutenant of Lady Anaerias ran up to meet them. “Hurry,” urged Raephael, “Get yourselves to safety behind the tarn! Behold!”

  Looking up, they could see a wave of smoke like an avalanche consuming the city, approaching at an alarming speed. Stuart rose. Sianna stared. Raephael was already starting back across the bridge. “All right now!” said Stuart. He did not need to say anything else. At once everyone was running or hobbling or moving towards the bridge. Behind them pursued the sound of crushing timbers and roaring flames. Piachras ushered all his soldiers over the bridge, then met Stuart and Sianna with a quick clasp of hands. Sianna’s soldiers crossed over, then the knights pulling their horses or being pulled by them. Last of all, Stuart stepped onto the opposite side of the bridge and looked back. The wall of billowing, glowing blackness struck the last row of houses and rocketed into the air toward the moat. Stuart covered Sianna and raised a hand before his eyes.