Among the Fallen

by NS Dolkart

  The temple wasn’t the only building that had been transformed during the “Great Uprising.” The armory across the square had once been the Ardisian Hall of Records, where the Dragon Touched and the royal family had kept all the documents of state, from histories and rare, precious texts of academic wizardry, to tax records and bills of sale. When Bestillos and his followers had come to power, pillaging the Hall of Records had been their second act after tearing down the temple of God Most High. They had burned every document in the building, torn out half the shelves, and turned it into an armory. Narky could only imagine how much that would have horrified Phaedra.

  Though his position seemed secure enough for now, he’d have felt better about it if he’d had better relations with the priests of Elkinar. He was too afraid to even meet with them, after the way Mother Dinendra had humbled him. They were staying neutral for now, and if he made it through the year, they would have to accept the merger of the Gods and become his underlings. But a year was a long time. In the meantime, he ought to make sure they didn’t hate him.

  Here Ptera was indispensable. She acted as his liaison to the Elkinaran priesthood, representing his gospel without insulting their faith or intelligence, which was likely more than Narky could have done. Narky envied her tact, and wished sometimes that he could secretly go with her just to see how she did it. He hoped he’d learn from her over the years.

  A second bloody week came and went, and Magerion sent Narky a messenger saying that he would be needed for the coronation. Probably owing to Narky’s youth, Magerion was handling all the details himself, and the messenger intimated that Narky would need to do little more than show up on time to crown and bless the new king. That sounded easy enough, so Narky asked no further questions and sent the messenger back with his acceptance.

  After all, the coronation was probably the least of their worries. Magerion’s takeover came at a particularly perilous time: the Dragon Touched were on the move. The latest reports were that Criton’s army was already marching for Ardis, bent on destroying the city. With any other people, the notion of such a small army threatening Ardis would have been laughable. With the Dragon Touched, it was credible. Criton’s people had yet to lose a battle, despite their modest numbers, and though the bulk of their army was northern plainsfolk, it did not take many flying soldiers to imperil a city’s defenses.

  Narky worried about his inevitable confrontation with Criton. Such a confrontation would come, he knew – he would have to somehow convince his friend to leave the city alone, despite the very real claim the Dragon Touched had over it. It wouldn’t be easy – he and Criton hadn’t always gotten along so well. He still had memories of Criton’s clawed fingers closing around his throat from when the two had argued over a scroll, and in the case of Ardis, all of Criton’s strengths and weaknesses as a person were aligned: his insane bravery, his short temper, and that childlike confidence that he was the hero in his own story. They all pointed toward a confrontation.

  Narky hoped he would be able to appeal to Criton’s overall decency and generosity. If Ptera had taught him anything, it was that flattery really did work. Maybe he could appeal to Criton’s sense of himself as a hero, by telling him that only he could bring peace to the region. Narky hoped that would work, especially since it might well be true.

  He supposed he ought to be thankful that Criton was in charge at all. It was hardly a given that the one foreigner among the Dragon Touched would be the one to lead them, but just as the islanders’ reputation had once led to doors being slammed in their faces, now their reputations were opening new doors. People didn’t even call them by their names anymore: they were the Black Dragon and the Black Priest. In theory, this latter title could have been a reference to Narky’s robes – Bestillos had been known as the red priest, after all – but everyone knew that was nonsense. Narky would have been the Black Priest even if he’d been wearing mauve.

  Magerion wore him like a talisman. Narky was doubly strange, the foreign priest of a foreign God, and he got the impression that he was expected to bring some kind of foreign magic to the service of Ardis. He was their answer to Criton.

  But Narky knew better. He had no magic, and his powers of persuasion were limited at best. He was friends with Criton, sort of, and that was all.

  What’s more, Magerion seemed to be under the false impression that Ravennis could protect the city against God Most High. Narky, who had spoken to elves, to a wizard, and to the dragon Salemis all face to face – well, he knew better. God Most High had not gotten His title by accident.

  If they were all lucky, Ravennis might be a high-level servant to the dragons’ God. He was allied to the Goddess Eramia, after all, and she was married to Salemis. If they were unlucky then that alliance might have been merely temporary, but either way, Narky did not think his God could ever stand up to Criton’s in battle. He would be crushed like a bug.

  He could see how, from Magerion’s perspective, it might seem as if Criton and his God had prevailed in war only because Magor had been terminally weakened, caught between two stronger Gods. Magerion thought that by aligning with the other of the two, he would be on even ground against the marauding Dragon Touched. He was so, so wrong.

  Was Ravennis powerful? Definitely. He had lost Laarna and its Oracles, and still lived – if you counted being Lord of the Underworld as “living”. But God Most High had power on a different order of magnitude. He had abandoned the dragons, on purpose, without fear of being consumed by His rivals. The dragons, who had themselves killed Gods in battle! If there was a comparison to be made between the two, it was not to Ravennis’ benefit.

  The trouble was that Narky was terrified of explaining this to Magerion. If he thought he had chosen the wrong side, the new king of Ardis might well execute Narky and start all over again. He might ally with the Dragon Touched and welcome them into Ardis, just as another king had done generations ago, and lift them up as his prized advisors and lieutenants. It would cause much whiplash for his other subjects, but they were all afraid of him now, and they would not stop him. Then Narky would have failed his God completely, and he would reach the underworld as the most hated of creatures. He would probably be tortured and tormented until the day Ravennis was destroyed by some other rival, and then the new God of the Underworld might well torture him too.

  Narky had no intention of failing his God. One way or another, he would have to dissuade Magerion from battling the Dragon Touched, without revealing the true supremacy of God Most High.

  But first, the coronation. Magerion held it in front of the armory, an unsubtle message if ever there was one. Though it was drizzling, citizens flooded the square to watch Narky place the old crown of Ardesian kingship on Magerion’s head. The crown was an interesting story in itself: it had been sitting atop the statue of Magor in the temple, and Narky had assumed that it was gold leaf over stone until someone told him that it was in fact the real crown. Magerion’s men had removed it before the statue was destroyed, and the old artist had explained that it had been placed there after the tyrant king’s death, as a symbol of the end of the kingship and the beginning of Magor’s reign. Of course, it had taken many months to carve the statue, so the red priest had held onto the crown until then. That didn’t surprise Narky in the least. Council of Generals or not, it seemed that Bestillos had been in charge all along.

  Now Narky placed the crown on Magerion’s head, and blessed him in the name of Ravennis below. Magerion rose to deafening cheers, whether genuine or forced it was not clear to Narky. To some degree, it didn’t matter. Magerion didn’t seem to care about his city’s love, only its obedience.

  The city would be safe under his rulership, the new king told the crowd. The weakness of Ardis had been vanquished with the last of the red priests, and the city would soon know glory again. The crowd loved that, and they roared their approval. Narky had to hand it to Magerion: the man knew how his city wanted to be ruled.

  The tyrant king of Ardis had once had
a great palace within the richer quarters of the city, but this had long been torn down and disassembled for its stone. Magerion instead invited Narky and Ptera back to his house, a mansion two stories tall with beautiful decorative weapons and shields adorning the walls. There they dined on choicest veal and discussed their next moves in the war.

  Criton’s army had come all the way to the Dragon Knight’s Tomb, and Magerion wanted to strike at him there despite the unfavorable terrain. He was afraid that given time, the Dragon Touched would summon the great dragon that had once lived there, and which had incinerated so many Ardismen. The Dragon Touched had won all of their battles so far, despite their army’s unimpressive size. With a dragon, they would be unstoppable.

  They were unstoppable anyway, but Narky didn’t say that. Instead, he suggested that Magerion offer a truce. What if it was too late, and Salemis was already on his way? Better to make peace now, when the terms would be more favorable and the Dragon Touched might be convinced to settle for the territory they had already conquered.

  “Peace?” Magerion scoffed. “There can be no peace with the Dragonspawn. They will not have forgotten that Ardis was once theirs. They will not have forgotten what we did to them.”

  “No,” Narky admitted, “but they can’t hope to rule the city through armed occupation. Even if we surrendered, a few targeted murders a year would chase them out again.”

  Magerion shook his head. “You are naïve. They have found allies in the north, allies who would be happy conquering our territory and tilling our fields. They could burn our houses, slaughter every last man, woman, and child, and start from the beginning. Ardis isn’t the buildings, boy, it’s the land.”

  That was sobering. If such widespread slaughter was an option, how could the Dragon Touched ever be persuaded to give up? Criton might hesitate to sentence another Tarphaean to death, but that didn’t mean he would turn his people away from their only goal just because a friend’s life was at stake. Besides which, Narky had always been a mediocre sort of friend.

  Yet surrender was impossible with Magerion as king. “Let me pray for guidance,” Narky said. “The God that outmaneuvered Magor will have an answer for us.”

  Magerion shook his head. “Pray while our soldiers march. With the Keeper of Fates’ blessing, they will destroy our enemies before any dragon comes to their rescue.”

  “No,” Narky begged, “please. Ravennis hasn’t given us His blessing yet. At least wait until He sends us an omen.”

  “He sent us an omen,” Magerion said. “He made me king.”

  39

  Phaedra

  The apprenticeship was everything Phaedra had imagined it to be. Having discovered the essence of magic theory for herself, Phaedra was able to skip directly to the practice of individual techniques and the elucidation of the theory behind each. Psander was not a patient teacher, but neither was Phaedra a patient student, and their progress was rapid. If magic was poetry, Phaedra was finally being taught composition.

  That was certainly how she thought of it, though Psander took a different view. She talked of magical “resonance” as if it was a natural force, when to Phaedra even that choice of words suggested poetry. The more a composition resonated with the natural ugliness or beauty of its context, the more powerful it became. The trick – and the thing that set academic wizardry apart from any less rigorous form – was controlling one’s composition with such precision as to yield the desired effect and no more.

  This had been the major work of the academics: testing and retesting individual techniques in specific contexts until the effects of their magic could be reliably predicted. Many of the scrolls Psander gave Phaedra to read dripped with the tedium of their authors’ work, and yet there were few things more exciting than to read about a discovery in a book and to be able to prove its worth within minutes.

  Under Psander’s tutelage, Phaedra quickly learned how to replicate the ghostly light that had once impressed her so; she constructed her own flawed illusions and practiced her wizard sight; she even learned how to call books down from the impossibly tall library shelves. This last task turned out to be deceptively easy: all the effort had gone into threading the ghostly tethers that connected each book to its spot on the shelf and to the library floor. Pulling on those tethers was as simple as widening one’s weak magical field and calling out the right name.

  Phaedra’s training was not all rote, of course: the principles of magic theory allowed for plenty of improvisation. This improvisation was most effective in areas where the wizard had a deep knowledge of the related symbology, and for Phaedra, that field was travel magic. She had spent a year of her life deeply obsessed with Atel the Messenger God, and she knew the imagery of His domain better than she knew anything. Whenever she read about a travel-related spell, her mind would fill with dozens of modifications that could make the spell more effective under varying circumstances.

  The hardest training, and the most necessary, was in the realm of mental defense. There were two components to such a defense: detection, and willpower. Pushing a known intruder out of one’s mind was actually fairly easy, Phaedra discovered – one fought that fight on one’s home turf, after all. It was detecting the intrusion in the first place that caused all the difficulty. It was like training oneself to recognize a dream before anything implausible happened. It did not come naturally or easily, no matter how often Psander attacked. She had the humiliating habit of slipping past Phaedra’s defenses undetected while Phaedra was studying a book, and then reading aloud from its pages using Phaedra’s own eyes. Psander might be across the room and facing the other way, but all of a sudden she would speak the very words Phaedra was reading, and Phaedra would know that she had failed her test yet again.

  The elves, Psander insisted, were stronger in their mental attacks and at least as stealthy, but Phaedra had reason to believe that she was exaggerating their subtlety. For one thing, it was much easier to catch an intruding Psander when Phaedra knew she was being tested. The elves could be expected to make an attempt on Phaedra’s thoughts any time they were present, so she would already be on the lookout whenever she was near one.

  “True,” Psander said suddenly. “But that’s no excuse to leave yourself unprotected in the meantime.”

  Phaedra groaned and pushed her out again.

  She was glad, though, to be learning from Psander. Phaedra’s spellcasting on Tarphae had had the desired effects, but it had relied entirely on God Most High’s willing intervention. This state of things, it turned out, was to be avoided.

  “You used the most inherently dangerous form of magic there is,” Psander said when Phaedra told her of her exploits. “Gaining the attention of a God is extremely perilous, Phaedra. You’re lucky God Most High didn’t smite you on the spot.”

  Phaedra looked at her incredulously. “Might He have?”

  “Of course. The Gods are made of such powerful magic that They are liable to burn any creature that gets too close to Them. They are made of magic, you know, as far as we can tell. Corporeal bodies may or may not be sustainable on Their side of the mesh. In any case, we must keep our distance whenever possible, even those of us who don’t already have a target on our backs. The attention of a God can be disastrous at any time, especially if you are attempting to perform a feat of magic. The fact that you may be practicing devotional magic is no defense. One false move, one mislaid cue, and They will destroy you.”

  That was alarming, if true, but it didn’t seem to match up with Phaedra’s experience. “I don’t know,” she said. “God Most High kept the sea at bay on our behalf even before I learned to enhance my prayers with magic. He went to the trouble of keeping the merchantman from leaving Mur’s Island until we were aboard. Do you really think He’d have turned on me a few weeks later over a poorly executed spell?”

  “Yes,” Psander said. “And it wouldn’t have been the first time, either. God Most High in particular is said to have once struck down His own high priest over a misw
orded sacrifice. You are intensely lucky that you didn’t get burned.”

  While Phaedra spent her days learning from Psander, she was happy to see that Hunter was putting his time to good use too, training the villagers how to fight with staves and spears. She doubted the training would do the villagers much good, but no one could deny its positive effect on Hunter. Gone was the brooding, melancholy man she knew – Hunter had a project now, and he was as focused on it as Phaedra was on her own. She thought this must have been what he was like when he had first learned to use his sword – intense, tenacious, obsessive – except that he was also making friends among Psander’s villagers, set as he was on training them. In her few breaks from studying, she would watch him from one of the tower windows as he drilled his students or practiced by himself, or even helped out in the garden. She could tell he was growing into his own, and she was glad.

  Psander used much of Phaedra’s reading time setting up new wards in an attempt to dissuade the elves from attacking. It was a miracle that they had waited this long, but Phaedra supposed they could afford to be patient. From what Psander told her, it sounded as if Silent Hall had arrived in this world much nearer to Castle Goodweather than to Illweather, and the Goodweather elves might well have been concealing Psander’s arrival from their enemies. Either that, or the two elven camps were still negotiating what to do with Psander and her people once the fortress was breached. Phaedra hoped not.

  Phaedra told Psander about Auntie Gava, and how the old woman had warded the “demons” away with her own blood. Psander was impressed.