The Amber Legacy

by Tony Shillitoe

  ‘But still at a war,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here either.’

  ‘There’s a war and I’m a soldier in the Queen’s army,’ he said, with a sharp glance at the troop of Elite Guards. ‘Interesting company you keep nowadays.’

  Leader Strongarm appeared beside her and looked down at Blade, saying, ‘We’re short of time, Lady Amber. Marchlord Longreach is waiting.’

  ‘You are Lady Amber?’ Blade asked in amazement.

  ‘That’s what they like to call me,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘You are full of more surprises than a carnival magician!’

  ‘Lady Amber?’ Leader Strongarm interrupted, annoyance in his tone.

  ‘Don’t keep the Marchlord waiting,’ Blade remarked, meeting Strongarm’s gaze.

  ‘I’ll come and find you afterwards,’ she promised, as she wheeled her horse and rode away.

  ‘Don’t leave it too long,’ he called after her. ‘Beranix the Butcher’s keen to get on with the fight.’

  ‘How do you know that man?’ Strongarm asked as they approached a large tent bearing the Royal crest on a black banner.

  ‘I fought beside him at the Battle of The Whispering Forest,’ she answered, ignoring the astonished expression on the Elite Leader’s face as they halted outside the Marchlord’s tent.

  Marchlord Longreach was older than Meg had expected, a frail man well into his fifties, but his eyes had the steely resolve of someone who had endured. The audience with him was terse and brief. He didn’t believe in mumbo-jumbo magic, and if he had his way he wouldn’t have brought a woman to the battlefield to fight where men were meant to fight. The enemy’s shaman were proving to be nuisances because they instilled superstition in his soldiers, so he pragmatically accepted the Queen’s decision to send a Seer. He’d expected a man, not a woman—and especially not a beautiful young woman—so he remained sceptical. ‘You can expect to earn your keep very soon,’ he told her. ‘The Butcher’s men are warming up right now. They’ll be on us at dusk, and if they don’t get what they want then, they’ll be back first thing in the morning. You set up wherever you see fit, but stay out of the way of my soldiers doing their job. You understand me?’ So Meg left his tent knowing that he wasn’t overly appreciative of her presence and that, if she didn’t perform to his expectations, he’d be ordering her out of the battle as soon as he legitimately could without offending his Queen.

  She stood on a watch point with two Queen’s soldiers and her personal bodyguard of four Elite Guards, looking into the valley at the enemy camp nestled in the bush, and saw soldiers busily moving like ants. Marchlord Longreach said an attack was imminent. She glanced up at the shadow of the sinking sun behind the clouds. Dusk was only a short time away. What does a shaman look like? she wondered. What kind of magic would the shaman with this army generate? She considered her choice of spells. The enemy in the valley would be susceptible to a localised weather change. That might be her best option.

  ‘There!’ a soldier yelled. Shadows moved through the bush. The second soldier unhitched his horn and sounded the alarm, and shouts and orders erupted along the ridge as soldiers ran to defend the palisade. The shadows took form as soldiers in grey cloaks advancing silently up the slope towards the defences.

  ‘Archers ready!’ a Leader bellowed. ‘Eighty paces! Fire!’ Arrows whistled across the space into the ranks of the enemy, and to everyone’s horror they passed through ineffectually.

  ‘Ghosts!’ a soldier beside Meg gasped in horror. ‘They come as ghosts!’ His jaw hung slack.

  His companion faltered and stepped back from his post. A second volley of arrows had no impact. ‘We’re done for!’ the second soldier cried, and bolted.

  All along the palisade soldiers started to fall back in terror. ‘It’s an illusion!’ Meg yelled. With a quick motion of her hands and three whispered words, the advancing enemy dissolved like morning mist. She heard a cry of ‘They’re gone!’ ripple through the Royal ranks. Then out of the bush came a volley of arrows, thudding into the palisade and bringing down a handful of unlucky soldiers, and a bloodcurdling war cry echoed across the valley as the real enemy burst from cover. Meg retreated several paces, checking whether she was under threat, and her bodyguards closed protectively around her.

  The enemy crashed into the palisade and the weight of their numbers breached a section at the centre, flattening the poles to expose the defenders. Closer to Meg, a small knot of enemy soldiers were heading purposefully along the perimeter in her direction, their intention to flank the defences and come in from the side. She ordered her bodyguards to step aside, focussed, pointed at the enemy, and a massive fireball engulfed the entire group. The explosion had a simultaneous effect on the nearby enemy soldiers, who turned and fled down the slope. Encouraged by the response, Meg conjured a second fireball, this time exploding it harmlessly near the main attacking force. Again, the enemy soldiers panicked and retreated, leaving their wounded and dying in their wake. Their fear spread through the ranks like wildfire, and within moments the battle ended as the enemy ran for safety.

  The Queen’s men regrouped on the ridge in the fading evening light. Satisfied with the effectiveness of her spells, Meg watched three parties emerge from behind the palisade to search for survivors among the enemy. To her horror, as they found men in need of care, they slaughtered them. Anger quickly replacing revulsion, she headed for the killing parties with her bodyguard in tow. Leader Strongarm stepped into her path. ‘What’s wrong, Lady Amber?’

  ‘They’re killing helpless men,’ she told him.

  ‘Marchlord Longreach wants to see you,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard her protest.

  ‘Can’t you see what’s happening?’ she asked. ‘They’re slaughtering them.’

  Unperturbed, Strongarm said laconically, ‘Fortunes of war.’

  ‘I can heal them.’

  ‘The Marchlord is waiting, Lady Amber.’

  ‘Let the bastard wait!’ Meg snarled, and started towards the killing, but her bodyguards intervened. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked angrily.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do for them,’ Strongarm said. ‘Marchlord Longreach has sent you an order. I’m to see that you obey it.’

  She glared at the Elite Guards Leader, who met her green-eyed stare with equanimity, while the bodyguards held their ground. With an exasperated sigh, she acquiesced and let them guide her to the Marchlord’s tent.

  Marchlord Longreach was fully dressed in his battle armour, the metal shining in the torchlight, and his long grey hair was tied in a ponytail. He nodded to Meg as she arrived, saying, ‘So you’ve proven me wrong, have you? Well then, I admit you have a unique Blessing. Congratulations. What else can you do to make this barbarian filth give up and run home with its tail between its legs? Hey? Make it quick. I don’t have dallying time, young lady.’

  ‘I don’t like seeing soldiers killing the wounded,’ she protested.

  ‘Oh, really? Then don’t look,’ Longreach replied, and the Leaders and soldiers smirked at his retort. ‘I asked you a question. What’s your answer?’

  ‘I can turn the weather against them.’

  Longreach’s bushy grey eyebrows rose mockingly. ‘You’re going to make it what? Wet? Cold? So what?’

  The old man’s arrogance infuriated her. In a clipped tone, she answered, ‘They’re based in a valley. The slopes feed water to the bottom. In heavy rains, my guess is that the creek down there runs deep and quick. The right weather will drive them out.’

  ‘And you are going to make the right weather?’ Longreach asked. ‘Who are you—Jarudha?’

  A droplet of rain touched Meg’s face. A Leader remarked, ‘She’s already started,’ and the men laughed.

  ‘I don’t have to do this,’ she muttered, unable to restrain her anger.

  ‘By Jarudha, girl, you don’t have to do this. Unless I order it,’ Longreach snapped authoritatively. He coughed, spat and wiped his mouth, and looked around the circle o
f torch-lit faces. Misty rain drifted through the evening air. ‘Go and drown the rats, if you can,’ he said. When he saw her staring, he growled, ‘That’s an order!’

  The spell was easy to recall, and the weather conditions were perfect. Rain was already falling softly, and she had seen heavy clouds sweeping in from the south-west before sunset. It was the time involved in the casting that exhausted her. Unlike other spells that she’d learned in the past cycles, weather conjuration—according to the texts—was an unstable, fickle spell requiring patience and luck. She regretted suggesting it as she sat in the light rain in the dark above the watch point, painstakingly reciting the Andrakian script. She had no idea if the spell would work, and if she failed she knew the Marchlord would revel in humiliating her. Her bodyguards waited in the dark, sheltering under a pine tree, and she guessed that they were as miserable as she was. Irritating rain trickled down the back of her neck, disrupting her concentration, making her repeat lines, which only slowed the process. Nothing seemed to change as she reached different crucial stages—until she began the final phrase. Lightning cracked overhead, flooding the bush in white light, and an instant later rain poured down as if a huge water bucket had been tipped on the world.

  By the time she reached her tent, slipping on the sodden ground in the dark because all the camp torches had been doused, she was drenched and shivering. Water was flooding into her tent, so she cast a light spell and frantically tried to stem the flow with her hands and a small earth wall, but the water kept coming in. She shifted her possessions to a dry corner, dispelled her light sphere, and stood in the dark, listening to the roaring rain that she had unleashed. She had no idea how long the rain would fall. According to the spell book, that was dependent on how much accumulated moisture was in the atmosphere at the time of casting and how much continuous additional cloud passed through the localised area. She could do nothing but wait. Then she remembered that she hadn’t seen Leader Blade like she’d promised. Tomorrow—when the ridge was secure.

  Sleep weighed on her. She wanted to lie down, and close her eyes, but the tent floor was awash, and the rain seemed endless. She wondered how the soldiers were faring in the torrential downpour—whether or not they, too, were stranded in flooded tents, cursing her for calling in the rain. She created a light sphere and fished in her bag for the spell book, and reread the weather conjuration entries, hoping to find an overlooked key to ending the spell, only to discover that her original understanding of its longevity was accurate. Disappointed, she closed the book. The corner where her possessions were stored was dry, but water still seeped in along the base of the tent flap. Have I learned any spells that could dry my tent? No. Can I modify the fire spells to create heat to evaporate the water? She wasn’t sure, and it still wouldn’t solve the problem of the flooding. Patience. That was her only tool.

  The rain stopped just before dawn. Through her fog of exhaustion, when she emerged from her tent, legs and body aching, she saw grey ghosts of soldiers trudging across the muddy earth carrying shovels they’d used to dig channels to guide the water away from their tents. No one had dug a channel for her. She watched them blankly, through tired eyes, unable to move, until Leader Strongarm came from the direction of the Marchlord’s tent, and said, ‘Good morning, Lady Amber,’ as he halted before her. ‘Marchlord Longreach has dispatched scouts to ascertain the state of the enemy after the rain.’ He stopped as he realised her condition. ‘Would you like to rest in my tent while we await the report?’ She gratefully accepted his kind offer. Inside the Leader’s dry tent, she shed her wet clothes, curled up in his warm blankets and fell asleep.

  ‘There were bodies hanging in trees and jammed in the rocks along the creek,’ Leader Strongarm told her, as the early afternoon sun broke through the clouds and lit his face. ‘Half the enemy soldiers perished in the flash flood, and the rest have fled. Marchlord Longreach is confident the Royal Marches can now drive the surviving barbarians out of the kingdom from this region. He asked me to commend you for your work, Lady Amber, and wishes you a safe journey south.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘How many—died?’

  Strongarm shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Six or seven hundred. Maybe more. No one’s counting.’

  Meg nodded, but didn’t say any more. Instead, she mounted her horse. She hadn’t expected the Marchlord to personally thank her for flooding the valley to defeat the enemy, but she was annoyed that he remained dismissive of her. Her spell had saved the lives of hundreds of his men—possibly even his own life—and he arrogantly chose to remain aloof, as if her presence had been an annoyingly necessary interruption in his course of affairs. And if she’d been a Seer—a male Seer—then how would Longreach have reacted? And she hadn’t managed to speak to Blade—and now it was too late, and she was too tired. She urged her horse into a walk, glad to be leaving. Her spells had worked, but her heart was heavy because she was coming to terms with being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of men. Is killing the final consequence of having power? she wondered, as the Elite Group descended the escarpment. Is my only real value to the Queen as a weapon? If that was all she was becoming by acquiring magical skill, then she had no desire to learn anymore. There were enough legitimate killers in the kingdom, in the army ranks, and she would not be one of them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The south-west journey took three days of steady riding, and Meg was exhausted and in real pain for most of the time. The nights were restless, despite her tired body, and she dreamed endlessly, caught between images of a tortured figure pinned cruelly to a dragon statue and men drowning in a flash flood as it ripped through a valley. Each morning she struggled to wake and had to be helped onto her horse, but she refused to be carried or for the Group to lose time waiting for her. The amber crystal healed injuries and illnesses, but not fatigue.

  When they reached the battle front line, midmorning of the fourth day, they discovered that constant fighting had savagely mauled the Queen’s army, and Beranix’s army was within a day’s march of Port of Joy. Warmaster Waters’ command post was stationed in Greenhill, a farming town straddling Settlers’ Creek. His army was camped on the southern side, facing Beranix’s troops. Smoke billowing from house fires along the outskirts of the town’s southern quarter testified to fierce fighting that morning. ‘So, you’re the infamous Lady Amber,’ Warmaster Waters said, as Meg was introduced. ‘You’re every part as beautiful as Her Majesty described.’ Surprised by the Warmaster’s compliment, after dealing with the Marchlord’s arrogance and Leader Strongarm’s indifference, the flattery made her blush, which broadened Waters’ smile. ‘According to my reports, you dealt very effectively with Beranix’s force at Kangaroo Ridge, Lady Amber. I hope you can do the same here before we lose everything.’

  ‘I’d prefer to resolve this without magic,’ she said.

  ‘And I’d like to end it without fighting. But Beranix has other ideas.’ Waters ordered his attending soldiers to return to their posts and nodded to Strongarm.

  Understanding the Warmaster’s hint, the Elite Guards’ leader bowed, and said, ‘Warmaster Waters, please excuse me, but I need to organise my Group in preparation for Lady Amber’s comfort and protection. I will leave her in your care.’ He motioned to Meg’s bodyguards as he turned to depart.

  Waters took Meg’s arm, as she remembered Follower Servant taking it to condescendingly lead her, and he said, ‘Forgive my forward manner, Lady Amber, but I want to explain the current situation to you, privately.’ He led her across the street from his command post to an empty alley, released her arm, and said, ‘Lady Amber, I have a problem.’ He glanced into the street before explaining, ‘Her Majesty has sent me orders to accept your advice and to use your skills to defeat Beranix’s army. Of course, you know this. That’s why you are here.’ He checked the street again, and asked, ‘Are you a disciple of Jarudha?’

  That question, she thought, and didn’t answer.

  �
��So,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘My brother said that might be how you would answer.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘You know him,’ Waters said. ‘We look alike.’

  Meg stared at the Warmaster’s weathered face, the exhaustion in his lines, the peppered beard, and saw a likeness emerge. ‘Seer Diamond?’

  Waters gave a brief, ironic smile. ‘My brother told me that I can’t trust you. He says you’re a heretic, a work of evil.’ Meg tensed, suspecting that she was in danger. ‘It’s all right,’ Waters told her. ‘You don’t know whether I’m worthy of your trust now, any more than my brother would have me trust you.’ He glanced again in the direction of the street, and, voice lowered, he said, ‘I’m not a religious man, Lady Amber. My brother has enough religion for the two of us. I’ve seen religion’s poison and I took the cure. Killing men in battle can do that. You either see the hand of Jarudha in your sword, or you don’t. I don’t. Jarudha, if he exists, is not a murderer. My brother, unfortunately, sees Jarudha as his excuse to kill those who would not follow in his way. I can’t believe in that kind of god. Even Her Majesty has more compassion.’ He looked at the street again.

  ‘Why are you so nervous?’

  ‘In the middle of a war, accidents happen. Death in wartime is random, and everyone can conveniently blame a death on the enemy.’

  ‘Someone is trying to kill you?’

  ‘Not just me, Lady Amber.’

  A soldier appeared in the alley entrance. ‘Warmaster?’

  ‘What is it?’ Waters demanded.

  There was a thud and a fireball curled over the rooftops. ‘Sir, the enemy are mounting another attack.’

  Waters swore. ‘I’m coming,’ he told the soldier, who promptly left. To Meg, he said, ‘Stay close to your bodyguards. I’ll come to discuss tactics when this little interruption is over.’ He led her out of the alley, into a river of soldiers running to positions. Leader Strongarm appeared with twenty Elite Guards. ‘Look after your charge!’ Waters bellowed, before he plunged into the river of men heading for the defences. Another ball of fire mushroomed.