The Equilibrium of Magic

by Michael W. Layne

  “My son?”

  Merrick’s eyes welled up, as he felt the highest elation mix with the lowest sense of dread. Terrada had seen fit to grant him a child—a potential heir to a crown he had not yet accepted. But Prince Takehiko had decided to put Mona and his son’s life at risk—in an attempt to force Merrick to surrender as the Prince’s prisoner.

  Merrick was prepared to do anything and everything in his power to remove Mona from harm’s way, even if it meant going back to the Cloud City with the Prince. But he also knew that the Prince could not be trusted. Merrick would also need the backing of the Earth Clan and its fighting forces to successfully turn away the Prince and his army.

  Without another word, Merrick pushed open the door and left.

  “Where are you going?” Jonathan sputtered as he ran to catch up with Merrick. “You can’t take on an entire army. You heard what Adriana said!”

  “I should have done this sooner, but now it’s the only way I can think of to save Mona.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jonathan said, his words coming between staggered breaths as he ran.

  “It’s time to face my destiny,” Merrick said.

  Merrick and Jonathan soon arrived outside the Chamber of the Earth Council, and as usual, the door was guarded by two of the Queen’s Fianna.

  Merrick approached the door, his hands balled into fists. One of the Fianna stepped forward to block his access.

  “Don’t,” was all Merrick said as he flared his nostrils and pushed his way past the guard and through the doors.

  Merrick opened the inner doors to the council’s meeting room and walked in on a heated debate between the council members and the Queen.

  The four Fianna guarding the room readied their spears as Merrick walked to the front of the table and turned his back on the Queen. Even though most of the council members had already quieted down, Merrick pounded his fist on the table.

  “Enough!” he said. “I’ve just come from Annoon, the holy land of the dragons, and I have something to say to the Earth Council. My name is Merrick, born of Terrada, the Earth Dragon and of Sigela of the Fire. I am the son of Queen Nabharia and bastard son to a member of the Fire Tribe. I am a follower of Ohman, the last true ruler of the Earth Clan, and I am here to claim my right as Ard Righ of this clan.”

  Stunned silence.

  “Our people have suffered long enough under the rule of this witch behind me, a woman who does not deserve to live amongst you, much less to rule over you. If you will have me, I will lead the clan. I will make us great again.

  “Tell me now what you say, because if you are not for me, then I will consider you to be against me.”

  “Guards, arrest my son!” the Queen said, but the Fianna looked at each other, uncertain of what to do. “That is an order from your Queen!”

  Merrick ignored the Queen and continued to glare at the council members who were staring back at him in silence.

  Merrick held up his right hand in the direction of the Fianna.

  “Stand with me, and you shall be my trusted guard,” he said. “Take a single step against me, and it will be your last.”

  Merrick addressed the council again.

  “Time is short,” he said. “Decide now. There are intruders at our door, and I will not let that stand. I either go by myself to face them only as Merrick or I go with our soldiers and with the Fianna as your Ard Righ. Either way, I will turn them away.”

  “He just wants to save his human wench!” the Queen said.

  Merrick closed his eyes, resisting the urge to turn around and release his rage upon his mother. He knew without a doubt that she had played some part in Mona’s capture, and he pledged to himself that he would deal with her later.

  The first council member to speak was a short, skinny woman with long, flowing hair of gold. She stood, with her chin held high as she cast a glance at the Queen.

  “I will stand with you, Merrick of the Earth Clan. I will recognize you as my Ard Righ.”

  The others around the table looked up at her, many of them half standing and half sitting in their chairs, undecided.

  Next, a white-bearded man in a black tartan with a gold sash stood. He slammed his fist onto the table.

  “What is wrong with you fools? There is an enemy at our gate and a leader in front of our faces. I too will recognize you as my Ard Righ.”

  Finally, a large muscular man stood, dressed in the red tartan outfit of the Queen’s Fianna. The man appeared formidable, but Merrick focused his glare on him, and silently dared him to rebuke his claim to the throne.

  “I am Konrath, Captain of the Fianna. Guards, take your positions on either side of this man.”

  Two of the Fianna stepped up to either side of Merrick as the council members waited to see what would happen next.

  After a two-second pause, Konrath raised his hand in salute to Merrick.

  “Uthra and Penn of the Fianna, I order you to protect the Ard Righ. The Queen is no more. Long live the Ard Righ!”

  A cheer went up from the council members, and when Merrick turned around to the Queen, she was gone.

  “There will be time for celebrating later,” Merrick said, as the council settled down again into their seats. “Captain, rally the army and your Fianna and meet me on the road a quarter of a mile from the enemy. Those wind bastards are in our city, and they have Mona. Neither of these things can stand.”

  Konrath made his way to leave the room, but Merrick shouted out to him.

  “Captain,” Merrick said. “Tell your men that under no condition are they to attack without my command. Am I clear? Mona must not be harmed.

  “She bears your Prince inside of her.”

  “Yes, my Ard Righ,” Konrath shouted as he ran out of the room.

  “Council members,” Merrick said. “I thank you for your trust in me. You will not regret it.” He and Jonathan raced out of the room, leaving the excited council members behind. He knew they were on their way to the main road that led out of the mountains, so they could watch the conflict that was preparing to unfold.

  All around them, Drayoom warriors and citizens ran at top speed, preparing to either engage with the enemy or to stand clear of the upcoming confrontation all together.

  As Merrick moved farther down the road, he slowed to a purposeful walk. A small part of his brain realized that he held no weapon, and that he only wore the bottom half of his battle suit with only a simple shirt from Balach to cover his torso. He knew that he didn’t look the part of a king, but despite this, as he walked, warrior after warrior filed in behind him.

  A mile from the Prince’s reported location, Merrick looked back and saw what must have been thousands of Fianna and warriors of the Earth Clan marching in loose formation behind him as their commanders shouted orders for them to form up more tightly.

  Within minutes, Merrick was only a quarter of a mile from the invader—so close that he could make out the details of the Wind Warriors and their weapons.

  He stopped and waited there until Konrath arrived and stood next to him. Surrounded by Fianna, Merrick continued walking forward.

  Only twenty-five yards from the Wind Army, Merrick held his hand up and stopped in the middle of the road. The massive array of troops halted in unison behind him.

  From a quick count, it looked as if only a few hundred of Prince Takehiko’s Wind Warriors were with him. With such a small force, the Prince must not have counted on having a full-blown war on his hands—yet another indicator to Merrick that the Queen was complicit in the Prince’s actions.

  At the head of the Wind Army stood the Prince whom Merrick had figured for dead, but Mona was not in sight.

  “Release Mona,” Merrick shouted across the divide, “and I’ll let you and your warriors leave with your lives. This is the only offer you will receive.”

  Behind Merrick, disparate shouts of Ard Righ rang out.

  The Prince laughed as he unsheathed his sword, a deadly blade made completely of win
d that could easily cleave a boulder in half.

  “We will leave, when you have surrendered to us, Merrick. The Emperor sent me to collect you. You are wanted for the attempted assassination of a member of our royal family. Come with me, and your woman will go free.”

  With a wave of the Prince’s hand, a large warrior, with hands each the size of Merrick’s head, pulled Mona to the front of the army. She was wearing a white robe that Adriana must have given her and was doing her best to pull away from the tight grip of the solider who held her fast.

  “Make a move against us and she dies,” the Prince said.

  Merrick felt his heart beating so hard in his chest that it hurt. The adrenaline flowing through his system was so intense that he struggled to speak calmly and clearly. Despite his desperation, Merrick strove to remember all that Cara had taught him about how to speak to members of the Wind Family.

  Decorum dictated that he didn’t speak in a direct or forceful manner to the Prince, but Merrick was tired of adhering to their rules.

  He decided instead to be blunt.

  “Let’s speak honestly with one another, Prince. I would gladly go with you if I thought you would honor your word and set Mona free afterward, but we both know that you would not do that. As soon as you let her go, there would be no way for you to hold me, and we both know that as well.

  “I also know that you don’t want me for anything other than my knowledge of the Rune Corp divinium. What you don’t know is that I did discover the source of our divinium. There’s more of it than you can even imagine, and I will tell you exactly where to find it and how to get there. But first you have to let Mona go, or there will be no deal. Am I clear?”

  The Prince tried to be discreet about it, but he glanced behind Merrick to assess the sheer size of the force he would be up against the second he lost his only bargaining chip—Mona.

  Mona looked up at Merrick and mouthed three words to him that she followed with a smile. It took all of his will to not let his face reflect how his heart felt at seeing Mona mouth those words to him still, even after all he had put her through.

  As Merrick was about to push the issue further with the Prince, he saw Mona reach into the sash of her robe and pull out something small that shimmered with a white glow. In an instant, he recognized the shape as the throwing star made from the Wind Family divinium that he had given her for safe keeping back at Rune Corp.

  His chest grew cold as he realized what she was about to do, and he saw the next few seconds unfold in slow motion.

  Mona used the throwing star to slice the arm of the warrior who was holding her, and he released her with a loud groan of pain.

  The Prince, still holding onto his wind sword, reached out to grab Mona with his free hand. She shrugged him off and made a break to run toward Merrick just as Merrick started running toward her.

  And finally, the scene that Merrick could not comprehend even as he watched it happen.

  As the Prince struggled to secure his grip on Mona’s robe, his other hand came up behind her and thrust his deadly wind sword into her back, piercing her heart with its blade before bursting out of her chest.

  Mona looked at Merrick—the last sight she would ever see. Her mouth hung agape and her eyes opened wide as she fell forward onto the ground, halfway between the Prince and Merrick. Her blood spread out in a dark pool that soaked the ground around her prone body.

  The Prince looked stunned by what he had just done. He stared at the sword in his hand and glanced over his shoulder as if expecting an evil shadow to attack him from behind. Even his own warriors were clearly surprised by his actions—their astonishment quickly turning to fear as they calculated their diminished chance for survival now that their only hostage was dead.

  Merrick dove to the ground where Mona lay, unconcerned by how close he was to his enemy and how vulnerable he was to attack.

  He gently turned Mona onto her back and buried his face in her bloody bosom, overwhelmed by grief, anger, and guilt as his face opened up in tears.

  His first instinct was to call for the healer, but he knew that Mona was too far gone to be saved, even by the strongest of words from the Earth Dragon’s tongue.

  Instead, as Mona’s blood soaked into the ground, he started chanting, calling on Terrada as he had done when his guardian tree had given up its life the day before.

  He knew he was pushing his welcome with the Earth Dragon even with a matter as desperate at this, but he had no other choice. As he felt Terrada’s presence, he asked her to take Mona and his unborn son into the Earth as a part of her own elemental body. He silently pleaded with Terrada to give them a new life somehow in another part of her expansive body—to let their energy survive beyond this existence.

  As was the way of dragons, Terrada did not speak her answer. But although Mona’s body remained where it had fallen, Merrick felt something pass from her dead body into the stone of the mountain under their feet.

  Merrick wept and silently thanked the Earth Dragon for her kindness even as he asked Terrada for one last favor.

  Once again, Terrada did not answer with words, but in his gut, he knew that this request had also been granted.

  He carefully closed Mona’s blank staring eyes and tried to control himself while standing up. He was bristling with power—the kind of energy that even a Drayoom was not meant to contain for long. It was all Merrick could do to keep his thoughts focused on the Prince and his small army or warriors and not to think about how he and Mona had been robbed of a chance to raise their son together.

  Before the Prince could cross the few feet that separated him from Merrick, Merrick’s mouth flew open and released a strange, discordant mix of sound that originated neither from Terrada nor from Sigela’s tongue. The barrage of tones felt ancient, and they manifested in a blast of fire and rippling earth that spread out in front of Merrick with the explosive power of a nuclear bomb. The air rippled and Sigela’s full brightness filled the inside of the mountain for a single deadly instant.

  In the span of a single heartbeat, the Prince and all of his warriors lay still, their bodies flattened into one another—melted together by the blast into a single expanse of death.

  Spent, Merrick fell to his knees and held his head in his hands. He thought before that he had reached the limit of suffering that one person could experience. But now, his past losses seemed as mere grains of sand in a desert of misery that was destined to be his life.

  The only thing that approached his level of sadness was the degree of his rage. The hundreds of dead enemies in front of him did nothing to satiate him or to lessen his furor. Even though the Prince deserved his fate a thousand times over, the real villain had not yet been made to pay.

  Cheers rang out behind him as the forces of the Earth Clan recovered from the shock of the utter destruction they had just witnessed. Even as Merrick grieved, he also tried to comprehend all aspects of what had just happened.

  A part of him was aware that he had claimed leadership of the Earth Clan. He would make them great. He would give them a vision to follow for themselves and for the Drayoom species as a whole.

  He would also lead them into battle against the Wind Family until either he or the Emperor was dead.

  Merrick gently brushed more hair from Mona’s forehead. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the divinium ring he had given her to mark their engagement.

  He closed his hand around the ring, swearing to always keep it close.

  “I told you that I’d let you know when I was ready to be king, Mona. That time is now. I only wish you were here so that you could be my Queen.”

  CHAPTER 85

  EVERYTHING HAPPENED so fast that Prince Takehiko had to improvise and hope for the best.

  The first surprise was that the Earth Clan was amassing their forces against him, even though the Queen had assured him that his single unit would be treated as a diplomatic party seeking the extradition of Merrick as a criminal.

  The second surpri
se was that Merrick was commanding the forces of the Earth Clan.

  Regardless, the Prince still had Merrick’s woman as leverage, and he knew that as long as he kept her alive and under his control, Merrick would not attack.

  That was the plan at least.

  All that changed as the Prince saw the blur of a divinium throwing star out of the corner of his eye while he was trying to negotiate Merrick’s surrender. Mona slashed the arm of the warrior who was holding her and tried to escape.

  With his free hand, Prince Takehiko reached out to grab Mona by her robe, to pull her back, and to retain the only advantage he had over Merrick given the superior number of warriors under Merrick’s command.

  In his other hand, the Prince held his mighty wind sword, made from their finest divinium and filled with the awesome and savage power of Araki himself.

  Even as the Prince caught hold of Mona’s sleeve, a powerful gust of directed wind took the Prince by surprise and forced his sword arm forward, angling his blade up and into Mona’s back with deadly force.

  The Prince had done things in his life of which he was not proud, but he had never struck, much less killed, a woman or even an unarmed opponent. Today he had done both, even though he had not purposefully done either.

  He briefly looked behind him to see who was guilty of such a horrid misuse of Araki’s magic, but he saw no one.

  When the Prince turned back to face his enemy, Merrick was on the ground in front of him, cradling his dead lover.

  Merrick lay in front of the Prince, vulnerable to attack. The Prince knew that his younger brother, the Emperor would have seized the opportunity and either taken Merrick as his hostage at sword point or simply ended his life then and there.

  But Prince Takehiko was not his brother.

  When Merrick stood, his eyes wet with tears of both mourning and rage, the Prince knew that the fearsome look on the Ard Righ’s face would be the last thing he would ever see.