War of the Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  Zell turned to me. The firelight danced in his soft dark eyes. “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  He stepped toward the pyre, and raised out one hand. When he spoke, it was in Zitochi. “Khezhta koral zal toro. Khezhta van rella zar. Khezhta per tel mar dezhta kharr.”

  “Was that a prayer?” I asked as he stepped back.

  “A poem,” he replied. “May the winters stop freezing and the fires stop burning. May the beasts sheathe their claws and the warriors hang up their blades. Then, at last, may the tortured man find peace.”

  I leaned into him and he put his arm around my shoulders and held me there as the pyre burned and burned, as the smoke grew and night fell. I don’t know how long we stood there like that. An hour, maybe two. But soon the sky was dark and the camp was still, save the distant murmur of a whispered conversation and the rustling of the wheat fields. In the distance, the light of the Godsblade cut through the night, a pillar of illumination driven into the earth. One way or another, my journey would end there.

  “What’re you thinking about?” Zell asked.

  We were sitting at this point, side by side in the dirt, staring at the flickering embers of the pyre. “Just what happens next,” I replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what to do, Zell. There’s so much pressure on me. Galen wants me to use the crystal. Hell, everyone wants me to use the crystal. And I want to defeat Miles and save the world but…but I’d be killing thousands of people. And everyone else could go on with themselves, talking about how it was the right choice and they would’ve died anyway and all that. But I’m the one who’ll have to live with it. I’m the one who’ll have to go to bed every night picturing their faces. I’m the one who’ll carry the weight.” I swallowed deep. “And I don’t know if I can do that.”

  Zell was quiet for a long time, taking it all in. When he finally spoke his voice was low, haunted. “It’s not right,” he said. “It shouldn’t be you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t deserve to have this pressure on you,” he said. “You didn’t do anything to deserve it. I’m the one who aided the Ragged Disciples. I’m the one who helped your father take over. I’m the one responsible for all this.” He shook his head. “If anyone should have to carry that weight, it’s me. I deserve it.”

  I turned to look at him. He’d shaved in the Skywhale, so his face was smooth, and in the dancing orange light of the pyre, he looked young, younger than usual. In that moment, he wasn’t the hardened world-weary killer he so often looked like. He was just a boy of eighteen, my boy, looking sad and lost and scared. “You deserve it?” I repeated. And in that moment, it was like…like I somehow truly and fully understood him. I’d been with Zell for a year and a half. I’d fought alongside him, slept in his arms, stared into his eyes as our bodies became one. But somehow it was right there, in that field, with the moon bright overhead and the pyre glowing faintly, that I really truly knew him. “Holy shit. This is how you cope.”

  “How I cope?” he repeated.

  “With the uncertainty of the world. With all the chaos and fear and the pain. You put it all on your own shoulders. You think everything bad that happens in the world is a punishment for mistakes you made. You feel like you have to solve it all, like it’s all your fault and responsibility, like everything awful is about you and the only solution is for you to fight and suffer…because that’s actually easier than the alternative.” The words were just coming out, spilling forth, and I knew they might seem hurtful, but that’s not how I meant them. These were just truths, truths I was seeing for the first time, the most important truths there were. “What you said about my father, how he had to just keep swimming forward, how he can’t stop for a moment or he’ll die…you’re exactly the same way, aren’t you? You have to believe this is all your fault and you’re the only one who can fix it. You have to keep fighting and bleeding and suffering. Because if you stopped then you’d have to face the real truth.”

  Zell stared at me in silence. I could see the emotion in his face: the hurt, the anger, the defensiveness. His nostrils flared and his brow furrowed, and I could see the moment where he was about to turn away and storm off, to push back against what I was saying by throwing up a wall between us. I could see him struggle.

  And then I saw him shove that away. I saw him swallow his pride. I saw him breathe deep and push through the defensive instinct and force himself to take it in, to hear my words, to really listen to me. I’d never loved him more.

  “And what is the real truth?” he quietly asked.

  “That life’s not fair or just or meaningful,” I replied. “It’s just random. Bad things happen for no reason. Good people have to carry burdens for no reason. And you’ll never ever ever be able to solve everything or take it all on yourself. You can keep on going, always fighting till you bleed, always searching for the next battle, just stewing in your guilt and pain. Or…”

  “Or?”

  “Or you can let go,” I said, and I somehow knew I was talking to myself even as I was talking to him. “You can let someone else take over. You can let someone else carry the weight.” I closed my eyes, feeling the night’s cool breeze, the pyre’s distant warmth. “This isn’t about you, Zell. It’s about me. It’s my choice.”

  “And what do you choose?”

  “The only thing I can,” I whispered. “It’s not fair or just or right. I don’t deserve this, and I haven’t earned it. But it’s fallen on me, so I need to stop running and whining and hoping someone else will have the answers. I need to stop thinking about my feelings, and start thinking about everyone else. It doesn’t matter how I’ll feel when it’s done. It doesn’t matter the burden I’ll carry. I need to think of the greater good.”

  “The greater good,” Zell repeated.

  “Back in Tau Lorren, I had this talk with Ellarion about how he always wanted to be this big hero. How he dreamed of being honored with statues and songs and fawning crowds. But that’s not what being a hero is, is it? Being a hero doesn’t mean getting rewards or praise. Being a hero means suffering so other people don’t have to. Being a hero means pain.”

  “Heroes don’t get happy endings,” Zell said.

  I turned to look at him. “Another Zitochi saying?”

  “No.” He smiled, just the tiniest bit. “Just one of my own.”

  I took a deep breath, and at once felt the relief of having finally made a decision and the crushing burden of what that meant. “I’m going to have to do it, aren’t I?”

  Zell nodded. His brown eyes never looked kinder, gentler, more appreciative. “I love you so much,” he said. “Whatever you choose, I’ll be right by your side.”

  “I love you too,” I replied. “And you’d better be.”

  Then I pulled myself to my feet. I had a fire burning in me, a sense of momentum, and I had to keep it going before inertia and doubt could set in. I walked back into the main camp, away from the pyre, toward a little campfire in the middle. My friends were seated around it, Ellarion and Lyriana and Galen and Syan, and they all looked up at me as I approached.

  “Well?” Galen asked.

  I opened my palm and the crystal appeared, hovering, rotating, clear for everyone to see. “I’ll do it,” I said. “Get me to the Heartstone, and I’ll use the crystal. I don’t want to, but I don’t have a choice.”

  Lyriana let out a heavy breath, and Syan glanced away. Galen nodded, pleased. “Then we just need to find a way to get you to the Heartstone.” He turned toward the city on the horizon, its ominous looming walls, its grasping pillars of smoke. “That’s…the hard part.”

  “Luckily for all of you,” Ellarion said, “I have a plan.” He rose to his feet and stretched out his arms, his knuckles cracking with a metallic scrape. “We build our own Skywhale. One that’s small and fast, a slick attack craft for a small team. Galen, you and the Southlanders wage an assault on the other side of the city, drawing their guard.
We fly up, over the wall, and then Syan uses her Cutting Art to warp us into the Godsblade itself.” He glanced at her. “You can do that, right?”

  “It would be difficult to land a Cut that precise,” Syan said with some consideration. “But if you could get me close enough…yes. I think I could do it.”

  Ellarion grinned and folded his arms across his chest. “Well? Admit it. It’s a good plan.”

  “No,” Galen replied wearily. “It’s a terrible, doomed, suicidal plan that puts our most valuable assets at risk on a completely unproven strategy. But at this point, I’ve learned better than to doubt you lot. If I tried to stop you, you’d probably do it anyway.”

  I nodded. “Fair. Totally fair.”

  “Just one last question,” Galen asked. “Say it works and you manage to get your team into the Godsblade. What then? Miles will be holed up in there with dozens of his best men, his best bloodmages, and Archmagus Jacobi. They’re all going to stand between you and the Heartstone. What’s your plan for them?”

  “Same plan we’ve always had,” Zell said, walking up to our group through the dark of night. “We fight.”

  “You’ll die,” Galen replied.

  I turned toward him, and then my eyes flitted beyond, to the edge of the camp, where the captured bloodmage prisoners still sat slumped in the dirt. An idea formed in my mind. A terrible idea, something awful and dark and monstrous, the kind of idea you felt awful for even thinking. The kind of idea a good person would never voice. The kind of idea you could never take back.

  But we were past that threshold, weren’t we? What mattered now wasn’t being good. It wasn’t being heroes. It was doing whatever it took to defeat Miles and save the world. And I knew this was the one thing he’d never see coming.

  I took a deep swallow. “Actually,” I said, “I think I have an idea.”

  IT TOOK TWO DAYS TO get us ready for the mission. Two days of Ellarion working with some blacksmiths to fashion a vessel. Two days of Lyriana and Syan practicing their magic together out in the fields, giggling as they found new ways to synchronize their Arts. Two days of sparring with Zell and drinking with Marlo and staring at the specter of the city in the distance, at the looming tower that held the inevitable. Two days of savoring every moment before the world changed forever. Two days of trying to ignore the screams coming from the tent on the outskirts of camp, the one where Galen took the most irredeemable of the bloodmage prisoners. Two days of feeling like two days wasn’t enough.

  You know what I definitely did find time for? Catching up with Lyriana. I ambushed her the first night in her tent, while Syan was busy, pulling the flap shut behind me and plopping down on the bed beside her with an expectant grin.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, but even she couldn’t hide her smile.

  “Uh, yeah?” I replied. “You and Syan! Tell me everything! How long has this been a thing?”

  “I’ve had feelings for her for some time,” Lyriana admitted. “I just wasn’t sure how to act on them.”

  “I’d say you did a pretty good job.” I grinned at her. “It’s just…I thought you liked guys.”

  “I do. But I also like girls,” Lyriana said. “I’ve always felt some…attraction. But I never thought to act on it. For one, the Queen of Noveris has always married a man, as per the custom, so it felt…I don’t know. Inappropriate or something. There would’ve been gossip and rumors and all that.” She leaned back on her hands, grinning so wide it made my heart swell. “I don’t care anymore, though. To hell with what anyone thinks. I really like Syan. She understands me in a way no one ever has. She makes me so happy. The way I feel when I’m with her…” She let out an adorable sigh. “I don’t know. It’s just something else.”

  “You two look just unbearably cute together,” I said. “The last few days have been awful, but seeing you this happy makes it worth it.”

  Lyriana smiled, but I could see some worry behind it. “I know it probably won’t last,” she admitted. “I mean, we’ll probably die during the mission. And if we don’t, then there’s still my engagement to Rulys Cal. I know this will probably have to end.”

  “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past two years, I think there’s nothing we know with any real certainty,” I said, feeling weirdly profound. “If you like her, if she makes you happy, then fight for her. Make it happen.”

  Lyriana cocked an eyebrow. “You sound like Zell.”

  “Zell’s usually right.”

  Lyriana looked down, but I could see a faint glow in her golden eyes. “Let’s hope so.”

  Then those two days were up, and it was go time. We gathered together in a clearing southeast of the city as the sun slipped behind the horizon, framed by fields of swaying wheat, the beautiful sunset swallowed by the chaos and smoke of the city. In the end, after a lot of debate, we’d decided to send six of us on the mission: me, Zell, Ellarion, Lyriana, Syan, and Aeron, a former Hand of Servo and the most qualified mage we could find to man the ship.

  At Lyriana’s insistence, we told him what the plan would entail: that if I got the crystal to the Heartstone, he would die. To my surprise, he accepted it.

  “I was always ready to die for you, my Queen,” he’d said. “And at least this way, I’ll take all those bloodmages with me.”

  We’d been given the pick of Galen’s stores, and were strapped as hell and ready for war. I wore tight leather armor, thick bracers around my forearms, a chain-mail undershirt and tall new boots. A brand-new short sword (also named Muriel, because I’ve never been creative) sat sheathed at my hip, and I have to say, after weeks of traveling in chafing clothes and fighting with cracked swords, it felt pretty damn good. A pair of curved nightglass blades crossed Zell’s back in an X; Ellarion’s hands hovered over his shoulders, ready to strike; and Lyriana had a look that I could only describe as badass battle Queen, wearing a black leather tunic with long gloves and tall boots and a little dagger at her hip.

  I just wish our ship looked remotely as impressive. It was either the Skydolphin or the Skyshark, depending on who was talking about it, but lying out in the clearing, it looked more like a Skyminnow. It was a narrow metal half cylinder maybe the length of a longboat, with two wooden benches on each side and barely room for six people. Two flat cloth wings jutted out of each side, wings that could rotate a full 360 degrees through poles that jutted into the ship.

  Looking at it, I felt a knot of fear tighten in my stomach. For the last two days, this had seemed abstract, a good plan on paper that some other people would do. But now, gearing up to get in the ship, the reality was setting in. I’d made a lot of reckless decisions the past two years, but this probably took the cake. We were running—no, flying—headfirst into the single most dangerous place in the entire kingdom. We’d made it this far through courage and cunning and a whole lot of luck, but that had to run out someday.

  And I had a really bad feeling today was that day. “We’re really doing this, huh?”

  “The battle’s under way.” Zell nodded toward the city’s western side. A massive cloud of dust blocked off most of my vision, but I could see jagged bursts of fire popping through the hazy lightning in a storm, could hear the clang of metal and the crackle of magic and the shouts of commanders. The Southlanders were attacking, and true to Ellarion’s plan, it looked like most of the bloodmages were focused on protecting the city from them. The flank was clear. “We’re not going to get a chance like this again,” Zell said.

  “Then let’s do it,” Ellarion replied. His hands fluttered down to his wrists, clicking on, and he took a seat toward the ship’s rear.

  Lyriana and Syan sat at the front, Ellarion and Aeron in the middle, me and Zell at the back. I was the last one to go, but for some reason, my feet weren’t moving. It wasn’t just the fear, though yeah, there was plenty of fear. But it was also knowing that as soon as I sat down in that ship, I’d cross the point of no return. I was going into the Godsblade. And I was either dying there or killing thousands
of innocent people. The Tilla I was, the Tilla I liked being, the life I’d built, the friends, the love…none of it would ever be the same.

  “Wait,” I said, and every head turned to me. “I just…I just want to say thank you. To all of you. For the support and the friendship and just everything.” Lyriana gave me a soft smile, and Ellarion tipped his head. “The world is a raging trash fire. But you all are amazing. And no matter what happens next or what the future holds, I’ll never forget what we’ve had. I love you all.”

  They all nodded (even Aeron, which, thanks) and let the moment hang. I stepped over the ship’s side and took my seat on the bench next to Zell. Heavy purple clouds blotted out the sky overhead, and in the distance, I could hear a thunderous blast as something exploded, something big. The ground trembled, and screams, so many screams, cut through the air. “Let’s do this,” Ellarion said.

  Aeron nodded his head and, with a sharp breath, began. He flexed his palms out, twisting them around. The air around us hummed with magical energy, sending a weird, warm tingle down the length of my body. The ship beneath us began to vibrate and I felt that rush once again, and now we lifted off the ground, first just a few inches, and then, with a whoosh, up into the sky, the ground vanishing below us. As Aeron pushed the air up under the wings, we rose and rose, higher and higher, until the wheat field below us looked like a child’s playhouse, until the top of the city walls looked level.

  “All right,” Ellarion said, and I could almost, almost, feel him pushing down the fear. “Forward! To the Godsblade!”

  Aeron reached down, grabbing the pole that controlled the wings, and turned them 90 degrees, so they were perpendicular to the ground. “Hold on tight!” he yelled, and a second gust hit us, this one pushing us forward, toward the city. The wind rushed through my hair, even as the vessel under me trembled and wobbled. We were like an arrow fired out of a bow, plunging at the Godsblade, and nothing could stop us.

  The city grew bigger, closer. As we streaked its way, I could make out all the little details that were obscure from afar: the bloodmages patrolling the walls, the lights flickering in the Godsblade, the sweeping fires raging within.