The Amber Legacy

by Tony Shillitoe

  His companion unhooked his hunting horn and blew three sharp blasts. ‘That should make for some fun back there,’ he said, lowering the horn and winking. Behind them, Redsword knocked Truth to the ground, but when the soldier with the horn saw Redsword advancing, he turned to confront him.

  ‘Makes no difference to me if I slash through the kid, lady,’ the soldier facing Meg sneered. Fighting her instinct to hold her son as she glanced down at the tiny dark eyes looking back at her, tears staining his pink cheeks, she lowered the bundle, watching the soldier for treachery. ‘Smart choice, lady,’ the soldier said, lifting his sword to strike.

  He didn’t expect Meg to attack first. He didn’t expect to have a rat leap up his leg. Distracted by Whisper’s sharp bite, he couldn’t stop Meg as she barrelled him to the ground, and rolled aside. When they got to their feet the sword was lying on a flat slab of rock between them. The soldier glared at her, and warily eyed the rat circling to his left. ‘Lucky first time, lady, eh,’ he scowled and grinned fiercely, welcoming the unexpected challenge. ‘Now I know.’ He took a tentative step towards the sword, his eyes daring her to try for it. ‘Come on, now. Don’t be shy. You wanted to have a go. Have a go now.’ Whisper charged again, leaping up a rock to launch at the soldier’s shoulder—but he saw her coming. He swung and caught the rat in midair with the back of his armoured forearm, and Whisper spun away, hit the ground and was still. Meg felt sick. ‘Your filthy bloody piece of vermin is dead, lady, and now it’s your turn,’ the man taunted. He picked up his sword, grinning with anticipation.

  Over his shoulder, Meg saw Redsword wrestling with the other soldier close to where Jon was lying. The Leader pushed the soldier away and stood over Jon protectively, ready to meet the enemy’s next attack, but blood was gushing from a massive gash in his side. How long could he last? She had to act. She pointed at the taunting soldier and an arrow of fiery energy tore through his chain armour and threw him backwards. She pointed at the soldier pressing Redsword and loosed another magical arrow that ripped through the man’s chest. Redsword’s expression showed his astonishment. He looked from the dead soldier to Meg and back again, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d witnessed.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. Gathering his senses, Redsword scooped up the bundle and checked that the child was uninjured. As Meg reached them, she scrutinised the limestone rocks for danger. And froze. Blood matting his dark hair, flowing down his face and onto his blue robe, Seer Truth stood, rocking unsteadily, staring at her. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ he said. ‘The power of the Conduit, and all you can do is call up a pair of puny flame arrows?’

  ‘It’s over,’ Redsword warned.

  ‘Over?’ Truth scoffed. ‘Over?’ He laughed, and coughed and spat a gob of blood. ‘Out there my troops are tearing your pathetic party apart, Leader whoever you are. Oh, it’s over all right. It’s over for you.’ Truth wrenched his hands up, bellowed an Aelendyell word that Meg recognised from the texts, ‘Haerani!’ and Redsword erupted in a ball of flame.

  Thrown sideways by the explosion, Meg scrambled to her feet in time to see Redsword and a fiery bundle tumble over the cliff. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘NO!’ and threw herself to the edge, peering down as the roiling surf extinguished the flames and swallowed the tiny bundle. ‘Jon!’ she screamed desperately. ‘Jon!’ The pain crushed her chest. Truth had wrenched out her heart and hurled it from the bluff. She clutched the limestone, crumbling it in her agonised grip. On the horizon, the tiny rim of the sun melted into the ocean, plunging the world into grey.

  ‘Sometimes,’ a deep voice said, through her sorrow, ‘you have to sacrifice everything to get what you want.’ Meg rolled onto her back, glaring up at the shadowy figure looming over her, tears blurring her vision. ‘Jarudha works through us,’ the voice said. ‘If we are to pave the way for His kingdom, we have to cleanse it of heresy.’ The words meant nothing to her. The words meant nothing. ‘And now He has chosen you to do His work. The ways of the Righteous Path are always mysterious. So let it be.’ Noise. Nothing but empty noise above her. ‘This should have ended when I killed that old village fool who was guarding the Conduit. It would have been mine and Jarudha’s Will would already be done. But somehow he gave it to you.’

  You killed Samuel. You killed my son! Then came the surge of white anger, like a raging river—and she rose, closing her hands around the noise, crushing it relentlessly. Lightning flashed, searing the world white, and the rain thundered down, drowning everything in darkness. The solidity between her hands cracked and melted to warm pulp between her fingers, and as the warmth seeped down her wrists and arms she dropped to her knees and laughed hysterically.

  On the cusp of the white rock, momentarily lit by the jagged lightning, her hair was slicked to her skull by the rain streaming down her body, rain that turned pink and stained the limestone as it washed blood from her hands and arms. She lifted her arms and spread them wide as if she was embracing the entire dark landscape. Lightning flashed again, revealing the tragedy unfolding on the slopes leading to the rocks. Redsword’s surviving Elite Guards were banded in a tiny group, back to back, surrounded by a circle of northern soldiers who were closing in through the drumming rain for the kill. Only darkness and the torrential downpour impeded the inevitable. The anger seethed unabated through her veins like cold fire. The images of Jewel’s fall, Redsword’s fiery death repeated over and over—and her son, Jon. Little Jon, who couldn’t have understood why his life had been so brutally cut short, the tiny flaming bundle extinguished in the seething foam. The images flashed like the lightning. The anger roared. And she said the words, words she’d sworn never to learn, never to utter, never to use. She screamed them at the sky.

  A soft blue light appeared in the storm clouds, bathing the entire battlefield. Stunned by the unearthly transformation, the soldiers lifted their heads, shielding their eyes from the driving rain, and gaped in awe. And their faces melted in horror. Out of the blue haze rode two armoured horsemen, their steeds’ nostrils filled with dark blue flame, their hooves thundering, as they descended. They swept over the battlefield, galloping on the air as bolts of white lightning arced across the boiling clouds, and rose again in the south, wheeling for a second pass. The soldiers panicked. They dropped their weapons and fled.

  Perched on the white rock, the soldiers’ screams reached Meg as one long anguished sigh, before it was drowned by the rolling thunder. The Demon Horsemen swept over the battlefield in a storm of blue fire, and she drove them. Her anger drove them. Her pain drove them. They passed over the battlefield three times, a burning blue vengeful wildfire, consuming everything they touched in their path—foe, friend—their vengeance spreading outwards as they passed, until the entire battlefield was a raging blue firestorm. Then she drove them back into the blue light, willing them to recede. She made the light vanish. And they were gone.

  She stood in the sluicing rain for a long time, the darkness broken by sporadic flashes of lightning and thunder, the wind ripping at her, letting her anger subside. She knew it was cold, but she was numb. She was numb without and within. And the storm was closing in again.

  Everything was about waking, she thought, as she slowly opened her eyes. She was lying on wet earth at the foot of a limestone rock. A numb grey fog blanketed the world, settling like a listless kangaroo. As she sat up, a drop of moisture slithered down her neck and she shivered. She was cold. Goosebumps covered her arms. She got to her feet and peered into the fog. The battlefield was somewhere in there. What was left? She shivered again, not from the cold this time, but from the memory of what she’d done. What had she done? What had she done?

  She shuffled back along the narrow path between the rocks towards the bluff and stopped when she entered the space where she’d fought Truth. The fog masked the edge of the cliff. The ocean softly lapped at the rocks far below like a distant whisper. Directly ahead, four corpses were strewn across the ground, like discarded rags. She walked past Chance’s body and the so
ldiers with the fatal holes burned by her magic—but she veered from Seer Truth’s body, afraid of what she would see. She stopped at the edge of the cliff, her toes touching the air. There was no wind to soothe her face or touch her tears. ‘Jon,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’ The urge to step into the air welled and she stretched a foot tentatively into space, wondering what it would feel like to fall. There would be no more need to fear or worry or suffer. But there would be the moment of dying. She pulled her foot back, stepped away from the edge, and sank to her knees, overwhelmed by her sorrow.

  The fog slowly cleared as her tears ran dry and her numbness returned. She rose unsteadily, and walked from the bluff, back through the rocks onto the slope. She didn’t see the ash grey dust crushed by her passing feet. She didn’t see the bodies of men and horses scattered through the grey dust across the open field, or the clusters of corpses frozen in the rictus of violent death, empty eye sockets staring skyward, hands clutching for lost hope, legs bent in the act of escaping. She walked like a ghost across the battlefield, bearing east-north-east, into the wilderness. She didn’t even see the tiny black shape limping through the dust in her wake.

  ‘Men, horses, everything. Like a fire burned through, only worse,’ Seer Diamond said, unblinking. ‘No survivors. Not a single one.’

  Queen Sunset stared at the rain pattering against the War Room windows, her back to the men in the room to hide her tears. ‘And Lady Meg? Any news at all?’

  ‘I found this, Your Majesty.’

  The Queen carefully wiped her cheeks and turned to look at the object that Diamond was holding towards her. ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘A soldier found it on the bluff, among the bodies, near Truth’s body,’ Diamond explained.

  Sunset took the horse pendant and stared at it. ‘This doesn’t mean that she’s dead,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Diamond. ‘But—’ and the Seer seemed reluctant to continue. He swallowed and nodded to the others gathered in the room. ‘There were two bodies on the rocks at the base of the bluff, Your Majesty. One—was a child. I’m certain that it was Amber’s—Lady Meg’s son.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘Leader Redsword, Your Majesty.’

  ‘But not Meg.’

  Diamond cleared his throat. ‘Your Majesty, there was at least one other body. A woman’s leg and some articles of clothing were caught on the rocks as well. The men who were lowered down the cliff didn’t find anything else. The body parts they found had been mauled by a shark, it seems.’

  After dismissing the Seers and the Guards, the Queen sat on a chair and cried for a long time. She’d lost her sons, Future and Treasure, to the fanaticism of the Rebel Seers. Treasure was dead. His son—her grandson—Jon was dead. Meg had been her best hope at saving her kingdom, and now she was dead. How long did she have until the Rebel Seers and her lost son, Future, fought her for the kingdom again?

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  The vision of the big man leading the roan horse, the horse hauling a travois, followed by curious villagers, startled Dawn, and she quickly ushered Peter inside with, ‘You wait in there until I call,’ before she stepped off the veranda to confront the stranger. He was the biggest man she’d ever seen, at least a head taller than the tallest man in Summerbrook, and his chest was the size of a beer barrel. Unshaven and unkempt, he looked like his brown hair could do with a serious wash. As he halted, she saw that he was breathing heavily and his brow was awash with sweat. ‘Dawn Farmer?’ he wheezed, wiping perspiration from his nose.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  The stranger grinned, revealing a missing front tooth. ‘Burrows,’ he said, ‘but everyone calls me Wombat so that can do for you as well, eh. I take it you could spare me a drink?’

  ‘How did you know my name?’ Dawn asked, suspicion in her eyes.

  ‘If you look on the travois you’ll get your answer,’ he said. When she didn’t move, he urged, ‘Go on. Nothing there will bite you, eh.’

  She looked for her sons in the crowd, but neither was in sight, so she gave the stranger a glance that warned he shouldn’t try any tricks on her, and approached the wood and canvas contraption dragged behind the horse as a wheelless cart. When she saw what was on the travois, she gasped and knelt. A shiny black rat sat up, sniffing the air, and dropped to nuzzle a lock of red hair poking from the edge of the dark blue blanket. ‘Meg,’ Dawn whispered. ‘Oh, in Jarudha’s name. Meg.’

  The fire crackled in the hearth throwing shadows dancing across the ceiling and walls. Dawn glanced at the doorway to Meg’s bedroom where her daughter was soundly sleeping. ‘Another scoop?’ Wombat asked.

  Dawn tilted the blackened stew pot and ladled a serve into Wombat’s bowl. ‘Anyone else?’ she asked.

  The boys shook their heads. ‘Go on,’ Mykel begged. ‘Tell us what happened.’

  Wombat swallowed a mouthful of the warm fare, licked his lips, and said, ‘Well, I looked at the rags heaped against the shed wall, wondering who’d dumped rubbish on my property, and bugger me if the rat’s head popped out. Now, I’m not one for rats, eh, quick to send them packing, but this one sat up on the pile of rags and looked like it was begging to me. I mean, I’d never seen a rat do that.’ He paused to eat another spoonful of stew. ‘I haven’t eaten food this good in years,’ he announced after he swallowed again.

  ‘Story,’ Peter insisted.

  Wombat grinned and reached out to ruffle the little boy’s blond hair. ‘Well, the pile of rags turns out to be Meg. Couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen her since we’d parted after the Battle of The Whispering Forest. Saved my life, she did. You boys should be proud of your sister.’ He winked at them and ate another mouthful of stew. ‘Anyway, I knew that she came from these parts, so I hitched up the horse and travois and brought her home.’

  ‘But what’s wrong with her?’ Daryn asked. ‘Why’s she sleeping?’

  Wombat looked at Dawn, a mournful expression fleeting across his face, before he replied. ‘Your sister is exhausted, lad. She’s been on a long journey, and I think she’s seen and done things that might just have been too much for one person.’

  ‘Like what?’ Mykel asked.

  Wombat shook his head. ‘Guess I don’t really know the answer to that one. She’s the only one who knows. And she might not be willing to tell you everything when she’s better, so don’t be pushing her, eh. She’s got a lot of healing to do.’

  ‘She didn’t look hurt to me,’ Mykel argued.

  Wombat leaned towards him. ‘The hurt is on the inside, and that can take a long time to heal.’ When Mykel’s expression showed that he didn’t understand the stranger’s message, Wombat let the matter go and returned to eating.

  ‘Tell us about the Battle of The Whispering Forest,’ Daryn requested.

  ‘She never ever told us about it,’ Mykel chimed in. ‘Did she really kill a famous soldier?’

  Wombat grinned. ‘I’ll do better than that, gentlemen. I’ll sing you a ballad about it.’

  The dreams were always there. They waited like flies on a windless Fuar day and when she slept they swarmed around her. Some of the old ones were gone. She no longer dreamed of Treasure or Jon. Some of the old ones were more insistent. Almost every time she slept she dreamed of the green shaft of light, the glyph, in the strange underworld chamber. The voice came and went with the dream. ‘Free me and I will free you,’ the voice promised her. Always she asked, ‘Who are you?’ and always the reply was ‘You know who I am.’ But she didn’t know. How could she know? And she dreamed of the Demon Horsemen. She watched them tear through armies, their eerie blue light burning everything in their path to empty ashen dust. She stood on the battlements, staring at a swirling bank of dark clouds, knowing that the people beside her were people she was yet to meet, and saw the tiny blue dots riding towards her out of the teeth of the storm.

  And there were new dreams, too. She saw Button Tailor caught in a battle and pinned to the earth by a lance through his l
eft thigh, but he was always smiling as if his cruel fate pleased him. And she dreamed that she was standing in a lush field of golden wheat, holding a baby in her arms as she watched two more children playing with a dingo pup under the shade of a broad gum tree.

  I’ve had many names, a voice said. She was perplexed because she was sure that she was awake, yet she was immersed in complete darkness, as if her eyes were shut on a moonless night.

  Who are you? she asked.

  Whichever name suits you best.

  I don’t know you,’ she said, and she didn’t recognise the voice. It wasn’t the one that called to her from the glyph. There was a timbre to it that reminded her of Truth, but she knew it wasn’t his voice either.

  I’ve had many names, the voice repeated. You carry me inside you and no matter where you hide I will be with you.

  What names? she asked desperately.

  Many names, the voice said.

  ‘Look, Meg!’ Peter balanced on a log strung between two stumps, his arms swinging for stability as he stumbled towards the end. Challenge mastered, he dismounted proudly.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ she told him. He ran to her and embraced her waist with gusto, ignoring her wet bundle of washing. He released her and ran towards the chickens, scattering them as he charged through the flock, with Whisper the rat scampering in his wake, enjoying the chaos. Meg laughed at her little brother’s antics, and the rat’s juvenile behaviour, before returning to hanging out the clothes. The morning was not at its midpoint, but it was hot and it reminded her of the days, three years past, before her adventures changed everything. Then, it had been a hot dry season, and everyone was waiting for the rains. It seemed odd that nothing had changed much in Summerbrook in that time.