An Emperor's Gamble (Legend of Tal: Book 3)

by J. D. L. Rosell

  "Have it your way, you wise old shrew," Tal muttered to his long-dead mentor, and tried to keep his assumptions open.

  "What did you say?" Pim's expression was veiled by the mist, but his perplexity came through in his voice.

  Tal didn't bother explaining, but said instead, "I heard the voice of my dearest friend's daughter out there in the fog. But of course she can't be here." He shrugged. "Your account of syrens is the best one. But I've always assumed them to be mere myth."

  Pim let out a small laugh as he continued to look around them. "Ah, my wayward pilgrim, but they do indeed exist. And they pose one of the most potent threats in the Empire."

  Even with Elis' advice in mind, Tal had trouble believing that. "Can they threaten us if we don't go to them?"

  "No — they work by peculiar and particular patterns. Always, their victims come to them; they are anglers, not hunters. So long as we resist their call, we should be safe."

  Tal was finding that to be harder than anticipated — for even as they conversed, he strained to hear Wren's voice again. He wondered who else he might hear. Ashelia? Falcon? Garin? Or perhaps they'll play on a scorned son's misery and use Kaleras. He didn't like the idea of a creature who could pry memories from his mind, much less imitate his friends' voices. Despite what Pim said, he felt the threat looming all around them in the flat, formless World.

  "Let's move, then," Tal said at length. "The sooner we get out of this fog, the better."

  Pim nodded. "Just remember: no matter who you hear and what they say, do not go to them. Even powers like those you and I hold will not touch creatures such as these."

  As the Extinguished turned and motioned for him to follow, Tal hoped he'd have the resolve to listen.

  "Tal Harrenfel!"

  Wren shouted first, but Garin had quickly followed suit. Without Ilvuan's help, they were wandering blind through the valley and would be lucky to stumble upon Tal if they were silent. Their best bet was to call to him.

  "Tal!" Garin cried again. "You sun-dazzled dolt," he added in a mutter. The man had dragged him and the others halfway across an untamed wilderness on this wild chase. He deserved that much censure.

  At one point, he thought he heard a response, but it came back from the way they'd come; their companions, he assumed, coming after their shouts. Doubts assailed him with every step. He wondered if they should be straying so far.

  But Tal was near. How could he turn back?

  "Tal!" Wren was becoming indistinct as she moved farther away.

  "Wren!" Garin hissed, hurrying after her and slipping as his foot caught a spot of ice. He cursed under his breath and checked to make sure Velori hadn't slipped free of his belt before continuing. "Silence, but stay close, will you?"

  "If we split up, we'll have a better chance of finding him." But though her face had a stubborn set, he saw the worry lines creasing her brow.

  "And a better chance of getting lost. If he's here, we'll find him. The valley isn't that wide, at least not from what we've seen."

  Wren drew in a breath to shout again, but she hesitated. "You don't suppose… your devil would have lied?"

  "No. Ilvuan wouldn't. We have an understanding now."

  But privately, uncertainty plagued his assertion. What do you really know of his motivations? He hasn't told you his intended purpose. How do you know it isn't to lure you out into the wilds and finish what he long ago started?

  Desperately, he clung to what he thought he'd learned. He's an ally. He rebels against Yuldor. He does have a purpose for me. But even in his mind, it sounded like the insistence of a petulant child.

  "Besides," he said aloud, wishing to escape his thoughts, "if it's someone other than Tal, we've already alerted them to our presence. We're in waist-deep."

  "You would know about that, swamp boy." With a teasing smile, Wren turned her bright eyes back to the mists. "Tal, you damned oaf, come here!"

  "Wren!" Garin reached out and, grabbing her hand, yanked her toward him. She hissed like a cat whose tail he'd pulled, but as her eyes grasped on what he'd seen, she fell silent.

  As one, they drew their blades.

  Garin stared, eyes scanning their surroundings, blood pounding in his ears. Before, the fog had been flat and featureless as an overcast sky.

  Now, it had filled with shadows.

  He counted a dozen at a sweep. Too many to fight. Nevertheless, he held up his sword and called words of sorcery to mind. With Wren nearby, he couldn't risk the leaping fire. But he had several other spells at his disposal now.

  And if it came to it, he would die protecting her.

  Tal and Pim moved forward, their progress masked by the mists. He wondered how long they would be forced to wander this valley. It might have traveled the World's length for all they could see. Despite his resolution, his ears remained perked for further voices, and his eyes scanned all around them. But he only heard the scraping of stone and snow beneath their feet, and he saw nothing.

  Time had halted, yet still they walked. The dam on his sorcery trembled to hold, his focus on it wavering. He longed to open himself to it and fling aside the mists, to see what these prowling watchers looked like. The silence was worse than hearing Wren's voice had been. He did not know how much longer he could endure it.

  Silence, but you're a tormenting god, he thought in an ironic prayer.

  Then his veins prickled. Tal jerked back to awareness. His blood had always warned of sorcery before. Every sense was on high alert as he scanned the area around him.

  Shadows loomed out of the mist.

  Tal's hand darted to his side before he remembered he no longer carried Velori. Instead, he grasped for his looted knife and held it before him. The shadows multiplied as more of the watchers emerged from the mists: six, eight, twelve, and still more appeared.

  "Pim?" Tal hissed, turning to keep all the enemies in sight. But there were too many of them.

  "Tal! We're here! Where are you?"

  A shiver ran up his spine. Garin. He cursed the syrens for using the youth's voice. With their reconciliation so fresh, he ached to go to him and apologize for everything anew. It almost didn't matter that he knew the lad could not truly be there; the ache and pull remained just as strong.

  A firm hand gripped Tal by the arm and yanked him away from the shadows.

  "Do not go to them!" Pim hissed. "Or would you like to end as a spirit's succor?"

  Tal let himself be dragged forward, but could not summon the motivation to direct himself. "Garin," he muttered. "They used Garin's voice."

  "They will use every voice they can to lure you to them. They will use your dead mother's if they have to. Close your ears and heart to them, man. Or it will spell your death."

  Tal looked behind at the foggy shapes and felt that same compulsion to go to them. He did not feel it as a tug of glamour; he knew that touch, for Queen Geminia had exercised it against him often. This desire came from within him, a desperate need to confirm what he should already know: that Wren and Garin weren't really out there searching for him.

  You left them in Elendol, he told himself. They're not foolish enough to come into the East, you old clod.

  But some part of him couldn't quite douse the small part of him that hoped against hope that it was indeed his companions.

  Pim, perhaps sensing Tal's hesitation, kept his hold and continued to drag him forward. "It should not take much longer," he hissed through clenched teeth. "A half hour at most."

  "Tal, you damned oaf, come here!"

  Tal closed his eyes to the call — Wren's once more. "Damn you, wraiths," he muttered. "Damn you back to the hells you came from."

  "Hold to your sanity," his guide said wryly. "You are no use to me mad."

  "So reassuring that you have such altruistic motives." But Tal pried open his eyes and stared at the shadows. They're not real, Garin and Wren. They're just echoes from the past. Phantom voices to torment and haunt. This time, he started to believe it, even if the greater part o
f him didn't want to.

  He had left his companions back in Elendol to preserve their lives. But now more than ever, the feeble part of him he'd never been able to squash wished he had not.

  He heard shouts, then a shiver went through his blood. Sorcery again. He wondered what the syrens were up to now. But the less he thought of them, the better.

  "We are past the worst of it." Pim released Tal's arm, sensing his fading resistance. "Hopefully."

  "How glad I am that I followed you here, Soulstealer." Tal flashed him a wry smile, then hurried after his companion.

  The enemies stared at them through the mist.

  Garin's breath rattled in his throat. His heart fluttered in his chest. Every muscle pulled taut as he waited for the shadows to converge and strike.

  But they didn't move.

  "What are they waiting for?" Wren hissed.

  "How should I know?"

  But she was right; their assailants were acting strangely. They had them surrounded and outnumbered, yet they made no move to close in. And they had been oddly silent the entire time. The fog dampened sound, but he expected something from them — taunts, coordinating shouts, even just the rattle of armor and weapons. But there was nothing. They made no movements, no noises, only stood there and watched.

  A suspicion began to form in his mind.

  "I'm not waiting for them," Wren snarled suddenly. Thrusting out a hand, she shouted, "Kald bruin!"

  Flames roared forth from her hand toward the nearest shadow, cutting through the mist. The besieged shadow didn't try to move, but remained in place as the fire enveloped it. Garin tried to see how the flames affected it, but the fire was too bright. He was forced to look away and instead kept a watch on the other motionless enemies.

  With a gasp, Wren closed her outstretched hand into a fist, panting and shivering. Garin could only imagine how much heat that plume had drained from her without the Song to assist. But though he reached out a hand to steady her, he was distracted by the result of her spell.

  The shadow she'd attacked stood as it had before, untouched and unconcerned. Seeing it, he knew the truth.

  They'd been duped.

  "Yuldor's bloody prick." Garin released Wren and stalked forward, ignoring her cries of warning as he swept Velori through a shadow. The blade's runes sparked lightning blue as it cut through with no resistance. The shadow swirled and disappeared into the mist, the spell severed by the enchanted sword.

  Garin turned his back on the rest, letting Velori fall to his side. Anger replaced fear as comprehension set in.

  "It's a spell," he told her. "One we just learned — mist shadow."

  Wren, who was slowly replacing the heat she'd lost with a steady flurry from one hand, stared at him through the veil of frost falling around her. "Damn." The gold in her eyes brightened as she gazed at each of the shadows around them. "Damn. But why?"

  "I don't know."

  Maybe Tal still doesn't want to be found, he thought. But he couldn't believe that, if Tal knew they had come this far after him, he'd still spurn them. They were too deep into the East now. There was no turning back for any of them.

  Wren had a furious look on her face as she stared at the sorcerous shadows. "Well, what in the devils do we do now?"

  "The only thing we can," Garin answered heavily. "We return to camp."

  A moment passed. Then, the realization sunk in for Garin just as Wren spoke it aloud.

  "Which way is camp?"

  The Forest of Giants

  It seemed a full season had passed before Tal stepped free of the clinging mist.

  He sighed in relief as the World reasserted itself. Colors other than gray reappeared. His shoulders, knotted from held tension, slackened. The syrens who had stalked them were finally left behind.

  Strangely, he felt a hint disappointed as well. As if he'd expected his companions, whose voices he'd heard, to have emerged from the fog after all. But if he'd learned one thing in his years of misdeeds, it was that regrets were always best indulged later. Taking his own advice, Tal pushed them down once more.

  Their surroundings became more impressive the further from the mist they moved. Trees towered endlessly before them. While they could not match the girth of Elendol's kintrees, the forest of giants put him in mind of something he might encounter in the elven queendom. But though there were resemblances, the trees here were pine, evidenced by a carpet of brown needles and the scent rich in every inhalation. And the ground was nowhere near as marshy as in Elendol, despite a sticky humidity clinging to the air.

  Not Gladelyl, he thought with regret. Even if there are still elves roaming these woods.

  "How much farther must we travel?" Tal asked his companion.

  Pim, who had been staring behind them rather than ahead, swiveled around. What he'd been staring at, Silence only knew; Tal could see nothing but the shadows of mountains through the mist. Though he speculated that it wasn't what they could see, but what they couldn't that occupied his attention.

  The Soulstealer's familiar smile, half mocking and half boyish glee, found his lips. "Do not tell me you tire of walking."

  "I've had more diverting occupations."

  "Never fear, Skaldurak. Your time under the wheel will come soon enough." Pim's sable threads swirled like soot through a grotto pool.

  Tal raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Perhaps I would fear less if you told me more."

  Pim laughed, then started forward again. "Why speak of such things when I could show you? Or rather, when they show themselves?"

  Tal walked after him, ignoring the protests of his tortured muscles and joints, long aggravated by the sorcery he barely kept at bay. "Show themselves? You mean the Nightelves?"

  "Who else? Or do you think they would allow strangers to wander into their territory unchallenged?"

  Tal shrugged. "It seems they just did."

  Pim grinned over at him. "Do not be overly impatient, Tal Harrenfel. Nightelves do not like strangers."

  "Will they kill on sight?"

  "If the threat is great."

  "And what do they think of you?"

  Pim's smile gained a sharper edge. "What most Imperials do."

  Tal let the conversation lapse. He suspected the Extinguished would be lauded and praised by the worshippers of Yuldor. Just imagining the sight made his stomach turn. He questioned anew his wisdom in following Pim this far.

  As if I had a choice.

  The colossal woods seemed empty but for them. Tal barely heard any songs of birds or the flutter of wings. He wondered if even bugs occupied these woods. It seemed a bewitched place, preserved from time as if caught in amber, just as Elendol was insulated from the inconveniences of seasonal shifts. His thoughts turned down deeper pathways before he recognized a prickle of heat in his blood.

  Sorcery. He sealed his dam up tighter and, alert once more, scanned the forest with a sharper eye.

  He saw the archer a moment before the arrow came whistling between the trunks.

  With a half-uttered curse in his throat, Tal ducked. He didn't see just how close the arrow passed, his eyes remaining on the archer, but he heard the slight hum of air and the thwack as it lodged into the tree behind him.

  Without thought, the dam broke open, and molten sorcery poured into his blood.

  The World multiplied as the streams of power appeared to his eyes. He saw their attackers by the sorcery filtering into them: eight of them, by his count, unless there were more who could not tap into magic. As words of the Worldtongue twisted through his mind, Tal reached forward with his sorcery and severed the streams feeding their assailants. He heard a cry as one of them was forced to painfully relinquish a casting.

  He was beginning to advance, looking to catch a better glimpse of them, when Pim grabbed his arm. He'd felt him moving toward him, but had only thought the Extinguished was following to close in on their assailants. By reflex, Tal rebuffed the contact, a pulse of sorcery and wind that buffeted his companion on multiple fronts. He
heard Pim grunt, but barely spared a moment's thought for him before charging forward.

  Then razors began to slice him apart from within.

  He was vaguely aware that he fell, but the pain of collapsing against cold ground and tough roots was nothing to the internal assault. A scream clawed out of his throat as his blood boiled and burned. His hands throbbed, both seeming far too large for his gloves. He reached out blindly, trying to be rid of the killing power, and his hand brushed against a trunk. Not knowing what else to do, he thrust the excess magic into the tree.

  As the sorcery leaked away from him, his other senses reasserted themselves, and the torment faded to a stinging memory. Opening his eyes, Tal saw with blurry vision his outstretched hand and the bark it brushed against. Something seemed wrong with his hands, but it was the tree that occupied his immediate attention.

  Just as he registered how it looked blackened as if struck by many bolts of lightning, a thunderous crack boomed from it.

  Gasping, Tal rolled away and fled. He glanced over his shoulder to see the giant hurtling toward him, shoving aside other trees as if it had no other intention but to squash him like an insect. Fighting through the pain, gasping with the effort, Tal ran perpendicular to the trunk, hoping against hope to get out of its way in time.

  He threw himself forward as the tree boomed behind him, and the ground shook and rattled. Splinters pattered against his cloak. Debris choked his lungs.

  Long after the sounds had faded, he remained in a huddle, coughing and shivering with the aftereffects of fear and the canker. It took him several long moments before he uncurled himself and observed the damage he'd done. The great monolith lay on its side, blackened and dead, not half a dozen feet away. Ashy dust hovered about it in a cloud. A second could have made the difference between being smashed into pulp and survival.

  Thrice-damned fool. Yet despite himself, Tal found he was grinning.

  Pim approached from around the felled tree, his eyebrows raised. "I must admit, that was rather unexpected. What did you mean to accomplish by that display?"