Squire of War

by M. H. Johnson

  “And the corridor you found. You yourself saw that it extends only for a few yards, with no door at all to speak of.”

  “But sir. Duggin, the boy we found. The blows we’ve taken. It has to mean something, doesn't it?”

  Eloquin gazed at Malek and the boy’s forms, crimson sigils painted to their flesh, one all but naked, the boy seriously injured, all of them the worse for ware.

  “I am afraid not, Calenbry. We have a head proctor eager for your fall, and an injured boy who, for all we know, was injured when you two went careening down the hall under the most illicit of hallucinogens

  “That’s crazy.” Jess shook her head.

  Eloquin frowned. “That’s the story your foes will swear to. That’s the reality of the battlefield. You know better than to criticize it, Jess. I will do my part, but your story, unfortunately, sounds like raving delusion.” He flashed a wintry smile. “No one would believe a rift into Shadow could form here in this school, entrenched as it is with wards reinforced over decades, which is what your madness implies. Any professor, even the dean, will be all too eager to dismiss whatever it is you have to say.”

  Jess squeezed shut her eyes. “Then what can I do?”

  Eloquin sighed. “After you visit the healer? You will head to your bedrooms, and sleep just as long as you need to, preparing yourself for the days ahead.”

  And after being tended to by a tutting healer who declared Jess and Malek remarkably lucky and not at all under the influence of intoxicants, though quite thoroughly battered, they retired to their quarters, Eloquin himself promising to return the boy to his parents.

  Jess shared a final bittersweet smile with her battered brother-in-arms, fondly tousling his hair as she stood outside her door. “This could be it, you know.”

  Malek smiled, warm brown eyes twinkling merrily as he held her close. “Then to hell with them. To hell with them all. A boy we saved from awfullest torment, somehow, I remember that, and all we got for our troubles were insane proctors trying to beat us both to death. If this is how we are treated after fighting so long for king and Crown, then good riddance to them all. We will pack our bags, saddle up our mounts, and head off to lands filled with wonder and adventure, without a single lick of regret, savoring each and every day. See if we don’t.”

  Twilight nodded. “Our Hound makes good sense. There is a whole world out there to discover, my mistress, wondrous and grand. Eloquin has served us well enough, teaching a plethora of useful skills, and we have served him in turn. So, feel no regrets if it is time for us to leave at last. Even the most halcyon of summers must end sometime, and we do so with many seasons of life left for us to savor whatever adventures we might find."

  Jess gently kissed Malek’s cheek. “There is nothing I would love more than exploring the world by your side. But what about Jacob?”

  Malek sighed. “There is the rub. We shall have to make pots of gold as glorious adventurers, then, so I may set my sweetheart up in the most luxurious of apartments, and he may shower me with adoration whenever I come to visit him in the capital.”

  Jess smirked. “You’re terrible.”

  Malek winked. “And you love me for it.”

  “True.”

  He held her close. “Sleep well, shieldsister. We will get through this, you will see.”

  A final kiss on his cheek and she slipped into her rooms, quenching her thirst then washing off sweat and grime as best as she could with a single pitcher of water before slipping under cool cotton covers, sinking into soft, downy bedding, and letting merciful sleep claim her at last.

  Dreams flooded through her then, twisted and strange.

  She was racing down endless corridors that stretched before her, the end lost in shadows, malicious and cruel. She felt the need to run ever faster, knowing if she slowed down for even a second, they would consume her, body and soul.

  Eloquin speaking before half a dozen soberly dressed professors, Proctor Hatsk shouting in turn, shaking both fists in fury, injuries healed, though his ugly scowl remained. Dean Echobart, with his rich mane of white hair and bearlike frame watching over it all. Jess had only seen him with a cheerful look of bonhomie whenever he had deigned to speak to her before, skilled at putting everyone at their ease. Here alone he looked grim and stern.

  Jess quailed before the sight, then was sucked into the spinning vortex of yet more endless dreams.

  Hideous laughter in shadows, the gurgling cry of a dying man, the shrieks of innocents suffering at the hands of monsters. The stench of blood and ruptured entrails, the cries of bandits and slavers dying to her blows. All of it washed over her, and desperately she tried to flee. But the harder she ran, the more it consumed her.

  Forcing her to accept a truth that shamed her to the core.

  She had been afraid.

  In that awful room of darkness and shadow, feeling the hideous kiss of vile energies washing over her, through her, knowing she was but a heartbeat away from sinking into true Shadow, pulled from gentlest reverie to the darkest of dreams, she had fought with every iota of her will not to imbibe that madness.

  She trembled at the thought of what it would do to her.

  Of the horror she would become.

  Remembering in that odd moment other corridors twisting strangely through reality she had stumbled upon, Malek and Mord both by her side.

  And how Mord had smiled with darkest satisfaction when glistening silvery tendrils of alien appetite sprouting from possessed flesh had quested for fresh prey, before darting back, shriveling before her eyes.

  For darkest Shadow preyed upon everything that dared its depths, save those mad souls that could feast upon that darkness, parasites in the vilest sense of the word.

  When Jess had touched that haunted wood, she had been afraid.

  Surrounding by the shrieks and screams permeating the grain, trembling as she dissolved the door, she had never been more uncertain, never been more overwhelmed.

  Surrounded by horror as her foe took on the mantle of spectre, sucking down such foul powers, enraptured by it even as it twisted him into something utterly free of humanity. Power he had gained, yet Ubel would never walk the halls of Highrock again.

  And the poor fool hadn’t even understood, until the hideous monster behind him claimed his due.

  Even in her dreams, Jess hunched into a ball, loathing that sweet madness, the power that would have consumed her as well.

  “Are you so sure, mistress?”

  Jess flinched at the words.

  “Are you so sure that power would have made you its puppet, like that foolish Aspirant who lost everything he ever was or could have hoped to be, as he surrendered to the darkness?”

  “Yes, Twilight. That’s why I hesitated so. That’s what I feared.”

  Jess forced herself to accept that ugly, horrible truth.

  She could have fought faster, she could have fought harder.

  She had not simply been waiting for the perfect moment to strike, waiting for Glist to commit himself to his taunting lunge, not realizing how off-balance that left him, with no shield to parry as he recovered, having no sense of just how well Jess had mastered the art of drawing and striking in one fluid motion, at far greater range than most fools realized.

  Glist's lunge easily dodged, instinct forcing her to seize the moment at last.

  But the ugly truth of it was, she could have seized the Vor and claimed the initiative at any time. She had waited for Glist to over-commit not out of calculation, but out of fear.

  Fear to face the horror of Ubel. Fear to face his darkness.

  To embrace hideous Shadow; hissing, burbling, laughing all around.

  Horrified at the thought of opening wide her maw of shiny teeth, consuming the sweet treasures all around her, embracing that darkness and all its power.

  Becoming that darkness, body and soul.

  “So, you resisted. You sensed the mad chaos of the powers all about, and fear kept you uncertain, off kilter, afraid to emb
race the terror. To feed upon it. Afraid of what it would do to you.”

  Sapphire eyes blazed like twin suns in the depths of blackest space, fierce, crackling energies sucking her in, drowning her in solar storms more terrible than anything she could imagine, drowning in a sea of plasma and eldritch flame.

  “Afraid of what you would become.”

  “Yes!” Jess cried out, blinking in the darkness, trapped in hideous storms of fiery violet no longer, merely peering into the sapphire gaze of her familiar once more. “I feared that awful madness. I feared what it would do to me!” She sobbed. “I’ve read Alex’s accounts, I understand the tomes. Shadow, we skirted it, almost dipped into it. It was all I could do to skirt above it! Had I drunk from that awful power, had I dared Shadow in truth… it might have driven me mad. It might have destroyed me!”

  Her familiar, fur shimmering with starry fire, nodded solemnly. “Or you could have embraced it, the dark stuff of living dream. Embraced it and claimed it, even as it changed you in turn.”

  Jess shuddered, squeezing back tears as she nodded. “Even if I could survive boldly sinking into Shadow. Even if I could… oh gods, feed upon it, it would change me. I know it would!”

  Twilight nodded. “Such is the price of power, my mistress. All things have a cost. For to sip of dream and wonder is to lose yourself to a heady sort of madness, forever drunk on reverie, living a life of dream and fable, forever appearing fey and strange to mundanes who understood your trials not at all.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better, Twilight,” Jess sobbed.

  “But the prize, Jess, is power over reality itself. At least in the realm of dreams. Shaping it even as it would shape you. Feasting upon those who would oppose your story, making your legend, the tales you forge all the stronger. And Jess? That strength would carry over into mundus as well.”

  Jess shivered, desperately shaking her head. “I have trained so hard to embrace a tactician’s mind, Twilight. Forever alert, forever aware, balancing all sides to any tactical equation.” She chuckled softly. “For all that I flip numbers and letters around when I try to write them, for all that my head spins with the esoteric formulae our teachers dissect that make no sense to me, when I see depictions of the battlefield, it all becomes crystal clear. When I sense the undercurrents of intrigue, even in the palace proper, I can feel its ebb and flow. I know where I must stand to stop the killing thrust.”

  Twilight nodded. “And the Crown owes you a debt, for all that you had to play a role that still fills you with shame.”

  Jess cringed, even in her dream.

  “Don’t be silly, mistress. However, they would mock, half the nobility would kill for a chance to savor the fruits you did.”

  “Please, Twilight, let it go.”

  Twilight nodded. “And you, Eloquin’s darkest dagger, always struck true. Yet no matter how bloody your grip, when you washed the dye from your hair, when the revels died down and all was as if it had never been, you put aside that bitter, ruthless mask, and became sweet Jess once more. Still able to laugh at your friend’s jokes, still able to wrap half the boys around your finger, thinking you a naive tomboy in need of their care, for all that you could become Eloquin’s deadliest assassin at the snap of his fingers.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Twilight?” Jess sobbed. “Don’t you think I know the monster I really am?”

  “No monster at all!” Twilight snapped, shocking Jess to stillness. “You kill when you have to, and don’t think that bastard Gruntig would have settled for anything less than ravishing you like he had his other victims, perhaps even trying to slice your throat when it finally dawned upon him, hungers slaked, that he had violated the daughter of a named lord.” Twilight sighed. “I know his death haunts you. I know that is one reason why you so feared losing control. But Gruntig was a monster, and none save his father will mourn his passing.”

  Jess shuddered, even in her dream. “Twilight, please don’t tell me...”

  Twilight frowned. “I will say nothing on that, then. And you are missing the point. You are a Squire of War, Jess, and no one can take that away, no matter what those browbeaten professors declare during your trial.”

  Jess shuddered. “Oh gods, the trial.”

  “Which you are sleeping through even now. But focus on the thrust, not the distraction. What is the cardinal rule of any Squire?”

  “Seize any opportunity that presents itself, no matter how grim, how dire. Brotherhood and victory at all costs, the motto of a Squire of War.”

  Twilight nodded. “And what is that storm of madness permeating Shadow that you so fear embracing, but a means to an end? Power to crush your enemies if you dare to consume it, and a hideous death only if your soul is too weak to endure its weight.”

  Jess trembled. “Even if I’m strong enough not to be consumed by Shadow, or warped into some hideous living nightmare… still, madness is the price I pay.”

  Twilight nodded. “The lucid madness of a poet lost in reverie or a perpetual drunkard, gazing at the world as if it were but living dream he could shape to his will. Yet whereas the drunkard or madman is but a delusion-wracked fool, you will be so much more."

  “By Justice, you don’t actually mean for me to embrace that, do you, Twilight?”

  Brilliant sapphire eyes fastened tightly upon her, no matter how she blinked or looked away. “Ultimately it is your choice, my queen. I, at least for the moment, see some of the cards in play. It is all about the sacrifice you are willing to make. How many loved ones you would let fall, for fear of embracing the terror of Shadow.”

  Sapphire eyes grown to stars, vast and terrible once more.

  Jess shrieked silently as she was helplessly drawn down, down, down, into that fiery madness.

  “It is your heritage. Your birthright. Claim it, feast upon it, let loose the monster within. In the end, my queen, it is what you were always destined to be.”

  Jess screamed, horrified by her familiar’s terrible words, struggling against them, fighting to block out the awful laughter she heard creeping along the corridors, coming for her.

  Jess ran, lost in a fog of shadow and dream. But she could not escape the hideous cackling creeping closer, all around her, roaring into her.

  The laughter, her own.

  42

  It is time to awaken, my mistress. Come, let us greet the dawn.”

  With a jolt Jess awakened, heart racing, mind blank of all but sheer panic. Her hand grasped for a sword that was not there as she drew a shuddering breath, seeing nothing out of the ordinary amongst woolen rugs and tapestries of castles, unicorns, and pristine forests she had decorated her quarters with what now seemed a lifetime ago. Her hardwood table lay covered with its comforting array of tomes and wax tablets, a fortune in fine vellum and paper, the familiar pattern disturbed only by Alex's borrowed tomes, still flipped open to the last page read. Folded Highrock uniforms and other attire all but spilled out of her dressers.

  Her eyes wandered at last to her trunk of armaments, girding herself for what she knew was to come. Squeezing back bitter tears, she turned to her familiar, gazing at her so solemnly from her tousled covers, ever comfortable lounging about her luxurious bed.

  A solemn nod. “It is best we assume the worst, my mistress. We both know grimmest events preceded your surrender to nod.”

  Jess took a deep, shuddering breath, nodding as a soldier would before gravest orders, never mind that she was queasy with dread.

  Endless days of fighting fiercely by the side of all her brother and sister Squires, accruing glory and honor to accompany bitter tears and memories she would rather flee. Only to be brought down by one conniving proctor would had despised her on sight, and had never forgiven Eloquin for his response to the most fanatic of beatings Jess had received, so crushed with shame that she had thought it her due, not having locked eyes with the serpent who had so reveled in lashing her back bloody and raw. A savagery Hatsk had relished raining down upon Highrock's most vulner
able under any pretext, Jess only understanding far too late in the game. He was a monster who should never have been allowed in this school in the first place.

  And he had won the board.

  Jess gazed at her own trembling fists.

  Knowing she would be expelled the minute she opened her door.

  If she saw Hatsk’s mocking smile, she would strike him dead faster than he could blink, consequences be damned.

  “Easy, my mistress,” Twilight soothed. “We will take care of our foe, one day. For now? Let us best prepare ourselves for what is to come.”

  Jess nodded, quickly and methodically kitting up in gambeson and cuir bouilli, the rigid plates of rawhide mimicking ancient suits of steel armor near perfectly in design and function. For all that her chosen armaments were so thick as to actually be heavier than thinner steel plates, she had trained endlessly under their weight, forgoing the exquisite masterwork of steel that was her breastplate and helm for those rawhide equivalents, knowing the former items would be considered too precious to leave with an expelled student.

  She looked in the mirror when she had finished, taking longer than it should doing it all herself, yet it all fit perfectly as it should, her movements free of hindrance, her steps flowing effortlessly when she donned saber and longsword, flowing from one movement to the next in dances ancient and deadly both.

  Twilight gave a slow, approving nod. “Though it would be better still to face your cuir bouilli with breastplate and helm of bronze, your armaments will ward the bite of most weapons made of steel. Polearms and charging lances, the bane of any warrior not covered entirely by plate, will cause you no harm; wooden shafts forbidding steel tips from pricking your flesh, no matter how savagely your foes charge or swing."

  Jess grinned. “Thank you, Twilight. But you and I both know that a greatsword that caught me flatfooted could cleave right through cuir bouilli. And Eloquin’s exotic sabers, or even the longswords we train with, in the hands of competent enough fighter, could still make a fatal cut. Besides, warriors in full plate haven't been seen since the cataclysm."