by RG Long
But no sound came, save for the creaking of a couch and the soft movement of a pillow.
She turned to see that Cory had sat himself in the chair nearest the door, eyeing her with a look she had not yet seen. Above him was a painting of Androlion himself, riding a horse into battle. It would have been a regal painting, were it not for the subject of it.
It wasn't anger, nor curiosity. Was it doubt?
“You'll be surprised to know, Miss Dearcrest,” he began, not moving from his seat. “That you and I desire the same thing.”
Blume scoffed.
“I seriously doubt that,” she replied, still clutching the inkwell.
“Miss Dearcrest–” he began.
“Stop calling me that,” she spat back at him, interrupting whatever he was about to say.
He stopped for a moment and considered her. It was as if there was something, a beast down inside her, trying to escape. The hatred she had for this man, what he had done, the country he had betrayed, the hate and violence he had allowed to continue, was fighting inside her chest to burst out at any moment. She had stuffed down her feelings long enough; she had to let the creature loose.
“Don't you dare sit there and act like what will happen doesn't add more blood to your hands!” she shouted, not caring who heard or what happened. “I met your brother! I know what you did! I heard how you betrayed and killed friends just because you wanted to follow this lunatic! Because of him my family is dead! Because of him, thousands will die! Maybe tens of thousands! And you just sit there and follow him like he's the savior of the world!? He's not! You all deserve to die!”
With this last statement, she threw the inkwell at the framed painting of Androlion. It shattered into a thousand pieces and sent black ink spilling out all over the wall, the picture and the couch Cory sat upon.
Despite this last act, he sat motionless, not even blinking, as he held his gaze on Blume.
“Stop looking at me!” she shouted, angered by the lack of any reaction from him.
Cory smiled.
It was not a twisted and wretched smile, the kind someone of the army usually gave Blume or her friends.
Instead, it was kind and understanding.
He stood with slow purpose, taking out a cloth and dabbing off the ink from one of his sleeves.
“I'm glad to know how you feel, Blume,” he said as he walked over to the table with its large map and pins.
Looking down, he closed his eyes and spoke softly.
“This was not how I intended to fight against the enemies of Thoran, but it's the path fate dealt to me.”
His words were heavy and sad. Blume, still not wanting to let her guard down, was hesitant and unable to let herself let down her defenses.
She couldn't bring herself to look at him, but she listened.
“Narvi and Finwe were my friends. I would have died for them rather than have them killed. But, I knew that if I was to be able to infiltrate Androlion's army and sought to undo him from the inside, I would have to do what I did. They knew, too. We spoke of what it would take to escape from our bonds. It was really their idea. If Androlion gave us a chance to pledge allegiance to him, I should do it. No matter the cost.”
Blume felt sick.
How could anyone say they would be willing to die for a chance, however small, to spy on the mad man without knowing exactly what it could mean for them?
Words died in her throat, even as she tried to form coherent thought.
“They all called you a traitor,” she said finally, after a few moments of silence. The words fell out of her mouth without conviction. Was he telling the truth, or was he lying? She brought herself to look at him. To see if in his face she could tell if there was any hint of falsehood.
She only saw a single tear.
“I know. They would have to think that of me,” he said remorsefully. “But if what I've got planned works, if the ones I have now on my side, the side of sanity and of peace, are able to do what it'll take to undo the violence and hate spread by Androlion, I may be able to atone for all of my sins.”
He turned to Blume. His face was serious and his eyes narrowed.
“You're more important than Androlion lets you know, Blume. More important to him than I think he even wants to admit himself.”
Cory let a smile edge onto his lips.
“There's something about you, Blume. Something...”
He stopped short and held his breath. There were feet walking down the hallway. Heavy footsteps and many of them.
“Under the table, Blume,” he said quietly and quickly, looking at her with urgency.
“But,” she protested. “I'm allowed to be here, aren't I?”
There was, apparently, no room for arguing. Cory took her by the shoulder and pulled her down. She fought the urge to punch him in the face.
“Quickly!” he said, still more frantic. “It might be...”
The door began to creak open and Cory stood up quickly.
Blume did as she was instructed and crawled under the table a bit. There was some parchment that hung off of one end. She scooted over behind it and lay flat so that she could see out, but not be seen.
In walked three pairs of boots Blume did not recognize, all the same color black as was common for those in the Southern Republic's army. There was also a pair of black armored boots that she knew very well.
Rayg.
Blume barely dared to breathe.
If everything Cory had said up to this point had been a lie, she could tell they at least had one thing in common: both of them feared this man.
“General Rayg,” Cory said in as casual of a voice as he could. “Ready to discuss tomorrow's plan?”
For a moment, there was no answer from any who had just come into the room, just the sound of Rayg's boots pacing back and forth.
“What's troubling you, Rayg?” Cory asked again, his voice betraying his uneasiness.
“I haven't a care in the world,” he said, as Blume saw the tip of the sword that was once pointed at her. Rayg's sword was the largest one she had ever seen. While she shuddered at the thought of how many lives had been ended by that blade, Blume also had the wild notion of trying to get at Rayg while he was unaware.
She began to think of words to say that would do him bodily harm, only to be reminded that her necklace was far from her and that she didn't have the key to the chest it was in. A feeling of helplessness began to creep over Blume.
What was she, when she wasn't a Speaker?
Her question would, for the time, remain unanswered.
The sword tip left the floor quicker than she could blink. Two separate grunts of pain were followed by bodies hitting the floor on the far side of the table. Blume didn't need to worry about being seen by the former commanders. Their heads landed in different places than their previous owners.
Blood began to stain the rug and Blume did her best to stifle her scream.
“Rayg!” Cory shouted. Blume couldn't tell, but it sounded like a struggle was occurring.
It wasn't long before another slice of a blade was heard as well as a groan.
Rayg spoke.
“Your little game ends here, Cory Greenwall,” he said with a controlled anger. “What hope did you have at rebelling against me?”
“You mean against Androlion?” Cory retorted, chuckling grimly.
Blume could see both of their feet. Red was running down the boots Cory wore while Rayg took a step closer. Another groan escaped the former Thoran native's lips.
“He is a fool who will meet his demise soon enough,” Rayg spat. “This is my army now. I'll do with it as I please. No more interference with my greater purpose. Chaos has come.”
Rayg's boots turned and Blume heard the blade being drawn out. A trail of blood hit the papers she hid behind and Cory dropped to a knee.
“Where is the girl?” Rayg said. Blume could tell he had bent down to Cory and was speaking directly in his ear.
“Why do you car
e?”
A smacking sound told Blume Rayg had hit Cory. The sickening thud sounded like bone snapping. There were more grunts of pain.
“You took her earlier, the guards told me. Now where is she?”
Cory was breathing hard.
So was Blume.
Was she about to meet the same fate as the others in the room? Split open with a sword?
“I sent her off,” he finally managed. “She's probably a mile from here by now.”
Rayg spat on the ground.
“And the key?”
“With her,” Cory managed, though it seemed like every word was becoming harder for him to say.
“How very noble,” Rayg said, getting to his feet.
His sword rang out again. This time Blume saw blood spill onto the rug. Cory let out a cry of pain. Blume bit her knuckles to keep from screaming.
Rayg crossed the length of the room in two strides after withdrawing his sword from his last victim's body. Blume was panting so hard she feared he would hear her.
“What will you gain?” Cory groaned as Rayg continued out of the door. “How will this serve you?”
The door creaked as Rayg put his hand to the handle. He must have turned back because his voice was clear and strong.
“This does not serve me, but those whom I serve,” he said with indifference. “As to what I gain?”
He made to leave and Blume heard him turn back and speak into the room as he closed the door.
“You'll never know. Bleed and die, filth.”
As soon as the door closed, Blume crawled out from underneath the table. She did her best not to look at two bodies and focused on Cory. A wound on his shoulder was bleeding furiously. He held his stomach with one hand as blood seeped through his fingers. His other hand went to a chair. Cory tried to raise himself off the floor, but he stumbled and fell.
Blume helped him to the couch stained with black ink. It wasn't long before red mixed in with it.
His breath was rasping from his chest and he was struggling to reach into his jacket.
Too many things were swirling around in Blume's head for her to make a true sentence come forth. She finally asked one of the hundreds of questions she had.
“Why did you protect me?”
Cory didn't answer. He was still struggling with his jacket.
He coughed up blood onto his shirt. Blume wished she could help. She wished she had her necklace.
Then Cory finally seemed to find what he was looking for. He pulled from his jacket a small silver key and handed it to Blume.
“The chest... is in Androlion's room. In... his desk.”
Every word was a struggle for him. Blume could see his eyes fluttering and his pupils dilating.
There wasn't much time for him.
“I'll tell your brother what you did,” she said, not sure why it was what came to her mind or if she would actually ever have the chance to pass along this last brave act to any of her friends in Thoran.
Surely they were all dead by now, slain by the goblin hordes who she had seen burning everything in sight on their way to the capital.
Cory smiled.
“For Thoran...” he coughed. “And the Swords.”
Blume reached out her hand. She heard footsteps in the hall, running one way and another. She couldn't stay long. But she couldn't just leave Cory here alone. Every breath escaped his lips with a wheeze and a horrible gurgling sound. He wasn't long for this world.
It would be impossible to retrieve her necklace and come back in time to save him, so she did the only thing she knew how to do well that didn't require a magic stone.
She sang.
Onward sailing
Towards the west
Away from Ruyn
And to your rest
Cory's smile remained, but his eyes were unseeing. Blume reached her trembling hands up and closed them. Clutching the key in her hand, and steeling herself for what trials the rest of the day would bring, she left the room without looking back.
25: Quick Council
"I knew coming out of the shadows was a bad idea," said Verid, one of the surviving members of the Council of Seven.
She had to stand on a chair to be seen. Her dwarf stature did not enable her to be visible over the table and Poc, the other dwarven member of the Council, who was not surviving quite as well.
A knife protruded from his back as he lay unceremoniously sprawled out on the table over which the remaining Council argued.
Today was not a day to argue with Bryne. The Council was gathered in the second story of a shop near the wall of Beaton. The shop's owner had protested when the seven of them barged their way in and taken up space in the apartment above. He wouldn't need to worry about selling leather goods for the rest of the day. He lay unconscious among several bags of his own making.
They had quickly turned his living quarters into their meeting space. Bryne sat on one of the few chairs, while the others sat on odd dressers, boxes or overturned crates. Curtains drawn and table between them, they had been discussing what to do about Androlion's proposal well into the morning. The suns beat down on the city, making the upstairs hot and stuffy. Bryne sniffed her nose at her council. They had been arguing and unable to come to any agreement and she was becoming more enraged by the minute. She felt as though the triumph of yesterday was stolen from her. What should have been her finest moment was quickly becoming her darkest hour. Every moment that passed made her more irritated and ready to pounce.
Poc had learned this too late to save his own life.
In Bryne's mind, Verid was also a slow learner.
"Need I remind you," she said through clenched teeth to the dwarf who seemed to forget her own vote on the decision, "that we all decided to throw down the governor and the guard as one? How were we to know that the entire bloody south would march against us as soon as we did them in?"
"Not the entire south," Alric chimed in. "I saw no colors of my own kingdom."
"What good does it do, defending your own? Still want to be king?" another member countered. Jerrick had awakened from his drunken slumber enough to attend this important meeting. "You're not likely to become one if you don't make it out of this city with your head."
Alric looked casually over at the source of the argument.
Bryne respected his coolness. She would have stabbed the wretch at this point had the insult come her way.
"And what, pray tell, prospects have you of becoming more than king of a dung pile outside a latrine, Jerrick?"
The sword was out of its sheath in a breath, but Alric was quicker and more skilled than the half-elf, who, at the present, was also half drunk.
Fencing blade met broadsword just above Poc's dead body.
Bryne was up to her neck in blood and would suffer no more delays.
"Enough!" she shouted, pounding her fists on the table and sending her many bracelets into a musical jingle.
"We've no time to quarrel anymore," she continued as both Alric and Jerrick stared at one another, hate filling both of their eyes. "There is a decision before us."
"One I'm sure you're none too concerned about making," Quell Pondera said with a sigh.
If I only get to throw one elf over that blasted wall, it'll be you, thought Bryne. Alric and Jerrick returned their swords to their sheaths and returned to their positions.
Everything was a tragedy to the female elf. If it weren't for her skill with a vial of poison and with men who had too much to drink, she wouldn't be on the Council at all.
Yet here she sat, seemingly unperturbed by everything going on around her, picking at her nails.
“You may end this struggle in a heartbeat by simply casting us off the walls at the invading barbarians,” she continued in her depressed voice. “Yet if you decide to fight, we must fight alongside you as well.”
She sighed deeply and examined her hands.
“We lose either way, really,” she finished in a somber tone.
Bryne was
annoyed. Quell was hardly ever completely right about things because she was always so downcast. If she weren't the deadliest alchemist and user of poisons in the entire north of Ruyn, she wouldn't be the least bit threatening.
But here she was, a brilliant, deadly chemist, and absolutely right.
The room went quiet.
After a cough from Verid and a sigh from Quell, Alric spoke.
“I may be the newest member of this council, and therefore the least trusted among you,” he said smoothly. Bryne looked at him and saw more than one head nod, agreeing that he may be the last person to have his advice heeded at the moment. “But heaving a chunk of our population over the wall, only to the surrender control of the city to the invading army, doesn't quite sound like a victory to me.”
“Does losing half our population to a fight we're not sure we can win sound like a better plan?” Bryne replied.
“We could steal a ship and sail to the other end of the Red Sea and return when it’s convenient,” Jerrick suggested.
Bryne almost liked that idea.
She wanted power. She wanted control of a city. In a hundred years, Beaton had never faced an enemy from the outside. The Red Guard had annoyingly taken care of any of the goblin raids that occurred beyond the walls. She was nearly certain that the city would have fallen to its own devices before an army came to its front door.
Still, Alric had a point.
Would the Silver Suns, as the new leaders of the city, take up and defend it in a first test of leadership or would they cower and yield to the demands of slaughter?
It wouldn't matter.
A terrible quake began to shake the building they sat in.
“What the devil!?” Bryne shouted out.
Alric had shot to the window and thrown back its curtain.
“Looks like the Southern Republic got tired of waiting,” he said as Bryne raced to the spot and threw open the window completely. Dust filled the air. Giant rocks were being hurled over the wall and into the buildings nearest the southern defenses. Those who had stood upon the wall were now consolidating over one spot. Screams shot out as a surge of people began to run in all directions.
“Siege catapults.”
