Before the Dawn

by Kristal Lim

"Damn," Trevor muttered. "They're too far away. I wanna know what they're talking about." His eyes were completely focused on the distant figures of Raven and his brothers as they discussed something intensely. Meran, too, was looking rather frustrated that her curiosity wasn't being satisfied. Finally, after several minutes, the other Princes nodded at something Raven said and inclined their heads in a little bow towards his mother, and then they walked back out. The great doors slowly closed after them and complete silence reigned in the hall once more.

  Raven turned and unerringly met Meran's gaze across the room. It was like he knew she had been in the balcony with Trevor the whole time. Then, his voice magically amplified, he said, "If you would please join us?"

  The stone beneath their feet suddenly shifted and melted away, making them back away from it in a panic. As they watched, the stone continued to transform, eventually creating narrow steps that led down to the hall. Tentatively, Meran tried putting her weight on the first step. When it held firm, she proceeded with caution and walked down to where Raven waited for them. After a few seconds of hesitation, Trevor followed after her.

  Raven seemed to have forgotten that he had argued with them both earlier, or he was just very good at pretending he had forgotten, because his face was smooth and unreadable once more when they finally stood before him. His mother, though, regarded them with a sharp watchfulness, her amber eyes glowing with power.

  "Those were my brothers," Raven told them. "They are marching towards Benwyr's castle with their soldiers and they expect me to join them by twilight. We need to make our plans now because we would not be able to do so once we are in their company." He waited for them to nod in assent before he continued talking. "You will travel with us and I will tell them that you are my servants or some such nonsense that will explain your presence. You will stay with me at all times, especially when we break through Benwyr's defenses and enter his castle. I had hoped my mother could get us in, but my brother has apparently closed all doorways leading to Silverhaven. So we need to actually walk or ride there now. We will find Aline and your other friends, and then my mother will ignite the silver leaf she once buried within Aline and let's all hope your friend heeded her advice and remembered something of her old self. You will need it to convince her to go back to your world. My mother will take you back home while Trevor and I stay till the battle's finish and Benwyr's execution. It's a simple, straightforward plan that should have all the chances of succeeding–unless you have reservations about going into my brother's domain when he is fully prepared to kill anyone who is not on his side."

  They were silent for a moment, then Meran said, "If it's the only way, it's the only way. Though why do we have to go even before Benwyr's dead? If he dies, shouldn't his spell dissolve or something?"

  "The magic he worked upon your friends would be undone upon his death, yes," Raven responded, suddenly somber, "but we will not have an easy time killing him. He's a seventh son. The only one more powerful is the King, and that is only because he has had more time and experience to refine his skill. In terms of pure power, Benwyr outstrips him though he has yet to gain full mastery of magic. It's going to be a very bloody battle, of that I have no doubt. So, on the possibility that it would take us a few days to kill him, we need to follow an alternative plan of breaking the spell binding your friends, and that is to get them away from the Court before the dawn of the next day. This is the last chance we have, or they will be bound again for another seven years if Benwyr survives. Or," he shrugged, "it could be worse for them."

  "If he survives and Aline refuses to go, what's going to happen that would be worse?" Trevor asked.

  "She stays under the spell, war will break out, and we'll all likely die. But you must understand one thing," Raven's voice had hardened. "My mother and I are committing treason by disobeying the King's command to destroy everyone in Benwyr's Court. We will help you get your people back, but if we are discovered doing this, we will be put to death. So this is the best and only opportunity you will have to rescue your friends. If you don't get them back to your world, even if Benwyr survives and holds out against any siege, they will all still be under the King's sentence of death. Any second they remain in the Strangelands leaves them vulnerable to the King's subjects who will not hesitate to kill them."

  "I will kill them myself rather than be exposed as a traitor," Raven's mother declared. "My son is being extremely foolish in his desire to help you, and it is only to ensure his safety and his succession to the throne that I have agreed to assist him in this scheme. If his right to the Kingship is threatened in any way by his association with you, I will slit your throats." Maybe it was because she spoke in a very matter-of-fact, even pleasant tone, but her words made the two humans gulp in sudden nervousness.

  "Mother, please," Raven said, sounding weary. "You've already gotten what you wanted. There is no need to threaten them in this manner."

  "Once you have been named as the Crown Prince, then I will consider I have gotten what I wanted," she replied. "Until that time, I will answer any danger to you with death." She smiled coldly at the mortals then gave Raven a little nod. "I go to awaken our soldiers." She turned and vanished.

  Meran crossed her arms and glared at Raven. "Your mother's a bitch," she said flatly.

  He barely managed to suppress a sigh. "She is of an older age," he told them. "If you think the people of the Strangelands in this time are amoral hedonists, be thankful you were not alive when she was young. Her people hunted down and killed humans for sport."

  "I don't really see that as being much different from enchanting young girls and trapping them to dance until their feet bleed," she retorted. "It's all still a sport to you, right?"

  He stared at her for a moment before answering. "Yes, it is all still a sport," he said slowly. "But at least we don't eat humans anymore." When she made a revolted noise, he smiled quite nastily.

  "Okay, that's enough." Trevor stepped between the two of them. "The two of you can work out this strange, tense whatever it is between you after we accomplish what we came here to do." He looked at Raven. "Is there anything else we need to know before we get caught up in a battle of superpowers?"

  There turned out to be quite a lot. Maybe Raven was still smarting from their accusations during their argument, but he had suddenly become incredibly candid with them. He answered all their questions easily and honestly. For instance, when Meran wondered why Raven's mother had buried a silver leaf within Aline, he gave them a frank explanation, which also offered an uncomfortable insight into his mother's character.

  "She is always on the lookout for any advantage she can have over others," he said. "So when it became clear that Benwyr was about to win Aline, she made sure that he would not be able to completely possess her. It served to frustrate him and drive him even madder than he already was, which was a good thing as far as my mother was concerned because it weakened his standing in the eyes of the Courts. So, please, do not give her any cause to think that you might be an enemy, or that she can gain something by exploiting a weakness of yours. Just keep your distance from her as best as you can manage."

  "Okay, this bears repeating then," Meran stated. "Your mother's a bitch."

  Trevor flashed her a look that warned her to stop it. He then asked Raven for more details about the battle they were going to fight.

  They, meaning Meran and Trevor, would not be fighting or going anywhere near the fighting as much as possible, Raven told them. He would shield them as well as he could while he and his brothers would batter at Benwyr's protective spells around Silverhaven. Then, when Trevor could no longer contain his curiosity and asked for more information about the Strangelands and the Courts, Raven gave them a brief history lesson about magic and his people.

  Manipulating the different forces that made up the universe was essentially what magic was all about. How well one could do that depended on one's bloodline and accumulated knowledge. The people of the Strangelands were particularly adept
at it because they had been the first ones to learn and experiment with the skill and, unlike humans, they had never developed shortcuts such as an overabundance of technology to impose their will upon the world. "It's harder to learn how to fly than to create a flying machine," as Raven explained it, "but knowing how to fly on your own is knowledge that will never fail you. So it's worth the few centuries of effort at mastering it."

  After a few thousand years, the people with the strongest magicks had waged war on one another until only the most powerful survived. The victors eventually became the first kings and queens, and established the different Royal Courts. Their offspring were born with great powers, too, and a system of royalty came into being where magical ability was an important quality that determined one's standing. Then, since they were all essentially immortal, it became the custom for Princes and Princesses to have their own Courts to rule over when a few heirs and heiresses in the distant past had decided they could not wait for their progenitors to die naturally before they proclaimed themselves as monarchs.

  With such powerful people, it was natural that rivalries would continue to fester through ages and small-scale wars would break out from time to time. But the feuds never attained the same level of bitterness and destruction of old until the birth of Raven's great-grandfather. He was the seventh son of a seventh son and, as he grew, he exhibited an astonishing ability to wield magic like no other. Soon, the other Courts had banded together to put an end to the threat he presented, but even their combined powers were no match for his. Once the battle ended, his own father gave up his throne and crowned him King, and all the surviving royals of the other kingdoms watched him warily and never showed any overt aggression again.

  In his turn, he had a seventh son who was even more powerful than he was, and the fears of his enemies and rivals grew. When this son grew to manhood and fathered Raven's sire, also a seventh son unbelievably gifted in magic, those fears worsened. Finally, when Raven's father had two sons born at the exact same time, making them both seventh in order of birth among his children, talk of assassinations, rebellions and wars became common not only in other kingdoms but also within his own Court. Everyone feared the power the two princes possessed.

  "Some courtiers actually suggested to my father that he should drown one of us," Raven said, sounding amused as he shared this recollection with them. "We threatened everyone, and the other Courts were saying that our Kingdom had become too powerful an enemy and that we all needed to be destroyed. But no one dared openly attack us, though the assassins never stopped coming until Benwyr and I grew old enough to know how to defend ourselves. It was also around that time when my brother and I began to differentiate ourselves from each other. We had grown up together, according to our father's decree, and we knew each other better than anyone else in all the worlds. But we were growing up as different people in spite of our closeness. Benwyr was the good, dutiful son while I was the wild, troublesome one, and I had absolutely no quibble with that. He could be the good one and go on to be proclaimed the Crown Prince and become the next King for all I cared. Except that some people still preferred it if only one seventh son of our generation existed, and they wanted me dead."

  Raven only told them the barest, most important details but it soon became clear to his two listeners that he had spent most of his long life being viewed as a threat and an outsider. This was due to the circumstances leading to his birth. His mother had been a battle maiden, one of the warriors tasked with protecting the Kingdom. She had taken vows never to lie down with a man, let alone conceive a child. But then she had seduced Raven’s father, the King she had sworn to protect, and the Noble Houses had immediately branded her as an ambitious schemer. Their contempt for the offence she committed extended to her son, and as he grew up, Raven’s own reputation wasn't helped by the fact that he did pretty much as he pleased and that usually meant causing one kind of mischief or the other.

  But circumstances had changed now.

  "So when Benwyr dies, you'll be the only seventh son hanging around, and that means you'll be King?" There was an odd note in Meran's voice when she asked the question.

  "By our Court's traditions, yes," he confirmed, frowning. "It has been the practice since my grandfather's time. The strongest gets the crown and that usually happens to be the seventh son, or sons, as it stands right now."

  "Seriously, you really don't want to be king?" Trevor was a bit skeptical. "All that power? All yours?"

  "I have power enough," Raven retorted. "And being King would mean having responsibilities I do not care for. You wouldn't understand."

  Meran didn't say anything more after that, but a distant expression came over her face and she seemed to be thinking seriously about something that Trevor could only guess at. Raven looked a bit concerned by her silence, but he didn't get to speak whatever was in his mind because a horn suddenly blasted out a sharp note that cut through the air.

  "My mother comes with our soldiers," he simply declared and watched as the stones of the floor before them began moving and sliding back like collapsing cubes. A platform rose up out of the rectangular hole in the ground, revealing row upon row of soldiers wearing glittering armor with Raven's mother at their forefront.

  She smiled when she saw the thunderstruck expressions on the faces of their mortal guests, and looked completely fearsome as she did so. "I hope you are ready for war," she said.

  The feminine gown she had been wearing earlier had been replaced with cruel-looking armor made of black steel. Sharp little spikes jutted out from the sides of her arms and her fists. Meanwhile, her dark hair was tied back from her face and fashioned into small braids. In her left hand, she held a mask made of silvery metal adorned with raven's feathers while her right hand rested on the hilt of a sword that seemed too big and heavy for her to wield. However, Trevor had no doubt she could use it with ease. But it was not merely the change in her appearance that unnerved him all of a sudden. It was the presence of the soldiers at her back.

  The armor that covered each soldier's body was made of dull-looking silver engraved with runes and scarred with sword strokes. Their helms had no openings that they could see out of, yet they thrummed with a watchfulness that made Trevor certain they could swiftly move to intercept any violent action he made without trouble. But what he found particularly unsettling was their complete stillness. He didn't think they even breathed.

  When Raven's mother gave a sharp command in an unfamiliar language and they all moved as one to bow down before her son, Trevor figured out what was so weird about the soldiers.

  They were mere creations of metal and magic.

  ~~~

  Chapter 26