by Rex Jameson
“It was like I was falling,” Thomas whispered from beside her. “If I looked up, I could see this opening—like a doorway, I guess—and it was closing. Through that doorway was the world… I… I could see my body. The portal was right there, on top of me, and I felt myself reaching up toward my broken form. But I kept falling… until I didn’t anymore. I could see him reaching down…”
“It was my fault,” Cassandra said. “I ordered—”
“We must protect that man,” Thomas said.
She felt hurt and less important than she had just a moment ago.
“I—” he said. “Please don’t misunderstand me, milady, but I felt things around me in the darkness… Things that harbored ill-will toward him and all of us. Jealousy, maybe. I think they were people once… or creatures, I reckon… I… I’m finding it hard to explain, Princess. I just know that I got this feeling—”
“It’s OK,” she said, burying her feelings of inadequacy in the act of comforting someone else. “You don’t have to—”
“He’s very important to them,” Thomas said.
“To who?”
“The dark creatures in the blackness,” he replied. “They hate him like they hate everything, but they need him.”
Alfred rejoined them.
“You could feel them too?” Thomas asked. “The things in the darkness?”
Alfred shook visibly and suddenly, like a cold shiver had gone up his spine.
Thomas pointed at the reanimated tournament champion Frederick Ross in front of them. “Like him. They felt like him. Black coldness… Like death incarnate reaching into a crib…”
Alfred nodded, but he didn’t say anything else.
“But that man was like a light,” Thomas said. “Like this warmth…”
“There’s someone up ahead,” Ashton called.
A man in a hood walked toward them from the east along the forests. His brown hood was pulled low, covering his face in shadow, or so it seemed at first. As they came closer to him though, Cassandra became confused by the darkness there.
“A dark elf this far from Uxmal?” Thomas asked.
Alfred noisily jogged ahead in his plate armor. Thomas went with him. Gregory Thompson and Jormund Vanimund stayed behind with her. Again, that feeling of inadequacy came back—that these longtime personal guards seemed connected more to this famous, possibly evil man than to herself. She cursed at her pettiness and neediness, but as a girl growing up in a library, friends were hard to come by. That they were servants and assigned guards hadn’t mattered. They were the only ones she ever felt like she was allowed to talk to, as a princess who might be betrothed to any highborn man at any time. Like her sisters had been: groomed, bred, and auctioned off like cattle.
“Prince Jayden?” Ashton asked with excitement. “Is that you?”
“Ashton?” the elf asked as he came nearer. He pointed at the Necromancer’s eyepatch. “What happened?”
The dark elven prince of the Etyria Empire had appeared distracted and sullen before being hailed, but he was smiling now. He grinned good-naturedly and with earnestness, as if his whole day had been brightened. And again, she felt this feeling of invisibility and uselessness creep in. Only her father had ever greeted her with eyes that earnest before. Her mother had always been colder—like a tutor disappointed in her charge’s scholastic progress.
For many years, Cassandra had used her father’s warm affections as an emotional crutch—a small spark that was usually enough to get her out of bed, knowing she was on a path that made at least one person happy. And now, even that comfort was gone. The demon in front of her had killed the only man of importance who had rooted for and noticed her.
The dark elf stopped just before he reached Ashton—at the instant he noticed the knight beside the Necromancer. Prince Jayden pulled something that looked like an ivory-handled, bladeless knife, and then there was an intense whooshing sound as the handle expanded into a bright blue shard. The dark elf charged at the creature.
“Wait!” Ashton said. “No!”
Frederick Ross did not draw his sword. He simply shook his head in warning. Jayden slid to a halt and held the device at shoulder length, ready for a lunge.
“Ashton,” Jayden said, his anger growing, “what have you done?”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Ashton said as he moved between his demon bodyguard and elven friend. “OK, actually, yes. I guess it might be what it looks like…”
Jayden grimaced and gritted his teeth.
“But I can explain,” Ashton finished.
Frederick dropped a gauntlet to the ground in a wordless challenge. He raised his hand, and the elf growled as the dark energy rose and swirled above Ashton’s shoulder.
“Get out of the way,” Jayden commanded.
“Stop it!” Ashton said, glaring at the demon with a promise of harm. “I said stop it.”
The demon paid no head to the threats. Ashton planted his right foot. He reached out toward the demon, and Cassandra almost called out in alarm, remembering about what had happened the last time the Necromancer had touched the demon.
Again, that familiar pulse of energy, but this time Ashton seemed ready for it, as his hand touched the former champion of Surdel. The demon was not. Frederick flew twenty feet away, impacting the ground like a boulder from a catapult, tumbling and rolling far off the hard-packed dirt of the well-trodden path to Edinsbro.
Jayden lowered his ice shard in bewilderment.
“How did you do that?” Jayden asked in awe.
“I put him to sleep for a minute so that we could talk.”
Jayden shook his head. “You can do that?”
“A lot has happened since The Sleeping Pony,” Ashton said, “and we don’t have much time to explain.”
He removed his eyepatch and revealed a yellow stone within it. “I’ve been selected.”
“You didn’t!” Jayden accused.
“I was being held in a tower,” Ashton explained. “You were supposed to protect me. I didn’t have a choice—”
“You didn’t have a choice?” Jayden asked in outrage. “You were held in a tower? My people have been waiting for death in underground cities for thousands of years. We wait alone in a single city, threatened by demon lords, and you don’t have a choice? The woman is a demon. Do you have any idea the cost of what you’ve done?”
“I don’t think—”
Jayden rammed the glass-like shard into the ground. Cassandra approached it, mesmerized. She rummaged in the folds of her simple green dress for the two rods that she had found in the library. She looked at them and wondered.
Can this be what they do? Once I get to the glacier, is that how this device will work?
“She’s murdered almost everyone I ever cared about—” Jayden said.
“Orcus—” Ashton started.
“Is one of her creations!” Jayden said.
“And she fights him,” Ashton answered but with less conviction than in previous statements.
“For what purpose?” Jayden asked. “For what gain? Do you know what she’s done to me?”
Ashton seemed transfixed. He didn’t say anything. He just nodded.
“No, you don’t,” Jayden said.
Ashton pointed at his eyepatch. “She calls it the Eye of Maddox. Well, I guess she claims it’s my eye now. She says it fell to Nirendia millions of years ago. It gives me a kind of vision… a way to see hidden truths… I can see into the past… Witness things like Xhonia… and Chejit… and Daydira.”
Ashton took the cloth off and offered it to Jayden, and the dark elf stared at it. His facial expressions phased between curiosity and horror. Ashton withdrew the offer.
“She says something else fell around the same time,” Ashton said. “A weapon… a piece of her—”
“A piece of her?”
“I don’t think she’s what she seems,” Ashton said.
“The understatement of the millennium,” Jayden said sarcastically.
<
br /> Cassandra stopped walking toward the prince’s weapon when he finally took notice of her movement. Jayden looked from Ashton to her in confusion. The elf looked over her shoulder at the four guards and the scholar.
“We’re on our way to Edinsbro,” Ashton explained. “She’s supposed to meet us there.”
Jayden pulled his hood back, exposing his matted white hair. She gazed at his handsome face and light-red, almost pink pupils. He seemed remarkably unkept, almost intentionally so. His head drifted backwards, and he closed his eyes as the sun beamed down on his face.
“Is that where you’re coming from?” Ashton asked.
Jayden rubbed at his eyelids and lowered his head. “Just came through there. Town’s excited. There’s a rumor of a war party of orcs heading north through Bowersby. They say the town’s been torched, and the fiends are headed this way.”
“You were passing through there from the east?” Ashton asked.
“I came by way of Lake Coinen,” Jayden said with a sigh. “I wanted to look upon Daydira.”
Ashton nodded, but Cassandra didn’t understand.
“What’s at Daydira?” Cassandra asked.
“The future of Uxmal,” the prince said. “I had just visited my mother, Queen Jayla, to ask for reinforcements for south Surdel… I knew the answer before I even entered the throne room.”
He chuckled, overwhelmed by exhaustion or despair. “We don’t have any men. We’re just waiting for Demogorgon to come finish us off.”
Ashton continued to nod empathetically. He reached out and held the prince awkwardly by the shoulder. Cassandra opened her hand to show the prince the metal rods she had brought with her.
“Where did you find those?” Jayden asked with a mixture of accusation and wonder.
“I’m Princess Cassandra,” she said, as if that was any kind of answer.
Her entire vocabulary seemed to fail her. He was filthy, and he smelled, but he had a shapely face. She had seen his noble likeness in portraits in the library. She had read some of his poems to an elf named Keshanae, which occupied a whole shelf. And here he was before her, a magical ice weapon in one hand, looking at her.
“I know who you are,” Jayden said, “or at least, I’ve heard of you. The youngest of Aethis’ children and taken to libraries.” He seemed to straighten his back for a moment, more like an ambassador, and spoke like one too. “We mourn the loss of your father. Your family has been an important ally of ours for ages. We value your continued support… if we are to survive this age.”
She nodded and tried to not sound too excited. In truth, she found it hard to piece together her thoughts in his presence.
“We too value your family,” She said quickly. She tried to catch her breath and slow down. “Your ancestors gave these devices to mine over 10,000 years ago. They’ve sat in a restricted section of our library ever since, waiting for a chance to be useful again.”
Jayden rolled his eyes, and she grunted in frustration—misinterpreting him. She thought he might think her an idiot—that the device’s operation was child’s play for the magically gifted children of Etyria.
“It’s not my fault I don’t know how to use them,” she objected.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s just that, something like this… it might have helped. The pair is so rare—precious and irreplaceable really.” He retrieved his ice shard from the ground and dusted the soiled surface with a gloved hand. The leather stuck to the frozen surface, and she saw pieces of the ice breaking away.
“I didn’t come east to visit Edinsbro,” she said. “I came this way to plant one of these in the Chejit Glacier. My scholar friend back there, Christian Somerset, lives in these parts. He says it’s the coldest place he’s ever visited. I—”
“You wanted to fight the naurun with it,” Jayden said with admiration and understanding. He smiled at her. “It’s a noble thought—an appreciated one.” He held the shard up sideways between them, but when she tried to touch it, he motioned for her to stop. “The conduit between this rod and its sister is special. It’s not from this world. The conditions needed to make it work are hard to replicate—that’s why Khelekhoon is so precious to me and my people, and why I can’t believe a similar weapon has been sitting in a library for over 10,000 years. I guess that’s better than what we thought had been done to them. We thought your ancestors had melted them down into something stupid and useless—an ornament on a mantle somewhere.”
“No,” she said, feeling a deep need to apologize. “My family did not. I’m sorry we haven’t been more helpful—that we’re joining this fight so late.”
She looked at him with heartfelt sorrow and remorse, and he shared the moment with her. Ashton looked past and between them. She followed his gaze over her shoulder to a hill where two figures stood in the sunlight. One of them wore red paint all over her face and torso. Her light brown hair blew wildly in the wind, whipping into the face of her brown-haired companion. The woman on the hill seemed to reach absently behind her for something that wasn’t there. Her companion placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, and the two figures descended the hill toward the party on the road.
The sound of plate mail clanging together announced that the demon was finally waking. It rose from the high grass far to the side of the road, shaking its head and banging a fist against its visor.
“What are wood elves doing here?” Jayden asked, looking at the two people approaching them.
Ashton shrugged his shoulders, but Cassandra grew excited. She had never seen one of the reclusive wood elves. She had hardly seen a dark elf before, except for the Etyrian ambassador Valedar.
“I’ve heard of that one,” Jayden said. “They call her Liritmear, a captain amongst their royal guard. They say she slaughters orcs by the hundreds and bathes in their blood. She wins every tournament and leaves a trail of broken hearts in her wake. I’ve wanted to meet her for some time. In another life, I would have written sonnets about her. That crimson liquid on her face… That’s blood… Probably from some beast or orcish chieftain.”
“Gross,” Cassandra said absently but mesmerized by the woman who approached.
The elven woman looked formidable. She held a recurve bow at her hip. Two empty quivers swayed behind her back. She was covered in dried blood. It clung to her cleavage and light, flexible armor. It had drained down her arms in random streaks to her elbows and all down her legs. Her outfit was very revealing—as if she had no shame or discomfort in her nakedness. Cassandra felt even more inadequate than she had when her guards had focused on Ashton.
Beside Captain Liritmear was a gorgeous elven man. His dark brown hair flowed down the length of his shoulders, which peeked out through tears in his soft leather armor. Spikes had been embedded into the sides of his archery harness, and she wondered if the cleats were used as weapons in close quarters. She found herself imagining being close to him, in the heat of battle, and then she coughed lightly at her sudden discomfort. She looked at Prince Jayden instead, but he watched the approaching pair. As usual, Cassandra felt she was the least interesting person in the world.
But then she looked at Liritmear, and there was a deadly venom in the woman’s eyes. Cassandra had seen this kind of look between women in the courts, vying for the affections of men, but never directed at her. She had never thought of herself as a rival to anyone—she was just another a princess to be given to any man whom her father or family had desired, not a free woman with choice of love and companionship. So, she had rejected the very notion of competition amongst women.
She looked at the elven man beside Liritmear, to see what the object of the daggers might be, but the woman’s eyes didn’t change. Cassandra looked again at Jayden instead, and lingered there for a moment, and then back to Liritmear. The irritation became more pronounced, and she chuckled at the ridiculousness of the animosity.
She hardly knew the dark elf, and her feelings were hardly matrimonial in nature. He just had knowledge she wanted. And
maybe she hoped he’d write a sonnet about her and dance the way they described in dark elven poetry in the books. Fingertips on pressure points. Pleasure beyond possibility.
“Captain Liritmear,” Jayden greeted her as she came within hailing distance.
The elven woman stopped in her tracks. Her mouth grew slightly agape. “You… remember me?”
“Your legend precedes you,” Jayden said, smiling genially. “The scourge of the Orcs. The Bane of the Brood. The Defender of the Northern Passes. I just came from Uxmal. You would probably be surprised to know that your painting skills and rituals have spread to the underworld.”
Liritmear seemed confused and overwhelmed. “Excuse me?”
“Our little ones… they kill cave rats,” he said, motioning toward his face and spreading his hands around his shoulders to indicate spreading blood.
“Oh, blessed Cronos!” Liritmear said in sudden panic. She reached absently toward her face.
Cassandra giggled, and the woman glared at her again. The princess couldn’t help it. She’d had a crush like this once herself. A no-name knight in a contest. He had lost, but he’d actually paid attention to her—asked her for her favor before his match. She had almost leapt from her place of honor in the joust to comfort him when he was unhorsed. Many a time in bed since had she thought about him, but in truth, she couldn’t even remember his face—much less his name. She only remembered that she had wanted him, in the moment, and profoundly and stupidly so.
The shadow demon brushed himself off and then walked toward them. Liritmear repeated the absent, groggy motions she had made on the hill, and Cassandra realized the captain had been reaching for her empty arrow holsters. The elf beside Liritmear placed a hand on her shoulder, and the captain’s hands stopped moving again. She stared off into space, somewhere between Frederick and Jayden.
“Please excuse her,” the male elf said. “We’ve had a rough day. My name is Belegcam. We’re coming from the battle with the Dragon Prince to the south.”
“How’s it going?” Jayden asked professionally.
