Jaekob growled, "My spear will run red with their blood. They dare attack the Dragon King's home? I'm going to show them how foolish that was. They think they are attacking us? They have it backward."
Bells frowned. She could understand his anger, but those were people out there. People with families, people who felt they had been greatly wronged. If only they saw how similar this was to how they treated fae. "Is there no other choice but to kill them?” she asked. “Can we talk to them?"
"You're kidding, right?" Mikah handed Jaekob his spear, which had been leaning against the wall near the bed. "They aren't here to talk. They want blood, and they're going to get it. The only question you have to ask yourself is, whose blood spills—yours or theirs?"
A commotion outside diverted her attention. A dragon guard fell with a thump right outside the door. He clutched his throat, only his top half visible in the doorway. An elf with a sword leaped over the body and lunged at Mikah, who was just turning toward the sound. He never got a chance to swing, though, as Jaekob's spear ended the elf's life quickly, leaving him bleeding out on Bells' bedroom floor.
"They're inside the manor” Jaekob said unnecessarily. “Bells, do you have a weapon?"
She thought for a moment. The sword she had reached for by reflex wasn't there, but she did have a weapon. She reached under her mattress and pulled out a knife, the blade perhaps a foot long. "Just this short sword."
She didn't miss the look Jaekob and Mikah exchanged. Her meager knife was not going to be very helpful.
"Come, we have to leave,” Mikah said, stepping over the elf’s body. “If we can make it to one of the secret tunnels, we can get out and gather dragons, then come back with a force large enough to deal with this. It looks like half the city is here."
Of course, that was an exaggeration, but she had used the sword on thousands of people. If they had all snapped out of it once and headed here, that was an army.
"No, I'm not letting rabble chase us out. Dragons don't abandon their homes." Jaekob dug the butt of his spear into the carpet.
"Don't be ridiculous,” Mikah said, turning back. “The Warrens are full of abandoned areas. We don't fight for buildings, we fight for our lives. Now, let's go."
Jaekob paused but nodded. He was too much his father's son to refuse an order in the face of an enemy attack. They turned left out of the hallway, Jaekob in front and Mikah in the rear. Two Guardians came around the corner at the same time, and Jaekob told them to clear a path to the tunnel. They nodded, faces grim. They both already had blood on them, though probably not their own—they seemed fine and their swords were bloody, too.
Just as they turned around, a werewolf came around the same corner the Guardians had. Then a troll. Then a few elves. More and more quickly came into view and stopped, blocked by the werewolf and the troll, who stood side-by-side staring at Bells with hatred in their eyes.
One of the two guardians shouted, "First Councilor, you have to run. We'll hold them off as long as we can. Now, go!"
"For blood!" Jaekob cried in salute to them, then ran back the other way. Bells followed him with Mikah on her tail.
They had just ran past the conference chamber and the two dragon corpses outside its doors when Jaekob skidded to a halt in a defensive fighting stance, his spear in both hands. "We aren't getting out this way. Bells, Father, get into the conference room and barricade it."
"No!” Bells cried. “You have to come with me."
"Sorry, my little fae. If we were outside, we'd have a chance when I summoned my dragon form, but in here? Run, Bells. I won't watch you fight and die. Not here, not today."
Mikah shouted to Jaekob, "For blood!" Then he grabbed Bells by her shoulders.
She tried to resist, but he was bigger and stronger. She didn't have a chance as he pulled her through the conference room doors, closing them behind him. Next to the door stood a spear-tipped wooden shaft with a flag on it bearing Jaekob's family crest. Mikah shoved the spear between the two handles on the double door. "That won't hold them for long, but it buys us time."
Bells tried to slide under him to get to the door, but he grabbed her mid-dive and carried her to the conference table, where he set her down. "Don't make Jaekob's sacrifice be for nothing. He's made his choice, a warrior's choice. You must respect an honorable choice, young woman."
"Like hell I do!" she shouted. "How can you hide in here while your son dies outside?"
"He's more than my son. He is a prince of the dragons and he's acting like one. I will be forever proud of him."
No way. Bells didn't want to be proud of his death, she wanted to be with him in life. To have come so far with him, to have experienced what she did with him, only to lose him the next day. "No. I can stop this."
Mikah shrugged. "Yes, you can. But you said you didn't want to be the bearer, and I would never dream of forcing you. I'd use the sword myself if I didn't think it would destroy me as it did Tallon. I have been a ruler for far too long to have a pure heart."
She snarled, lips curled back to bare her teeth. The anger was overwhelming. She hopped off the table, and Mikah shifted to better stand between her and the door, but she went the other way, toward the back of the conference room.
There, the sword lay on the floor where they had left it. She took a deep breath. Was she really going to do this? She didn't want the sword, didn't like what it had done to her, but that was a small price to pay for Jaekob's life. Gritting her teeth, she reached down and grabbed the sword at the hilt, then held it over her head. The power flowed through her, electric, and the hairs on her arms stood on end. A tingling shot through her body. Then, the room took on a lavender hue.
Mikah's eyes went wide as he stared at her.
She felt her hair rising up. So much energy made her feel as though she would burst, but she was determined—first, she would save Jaekob. As soon as that thought flashed through her mind, she felt a power explode from her, spreading like a wave at the speed of sound and a deep, rumbling bass seemed to vibrate in her skull. Her feet left the floor, and she rose up into the air as though she and the floor were repelling magnets.
Abruptly, the sound ended and she collapsed. On her hands and knees, she crawled toward the door and, after a few paces, scrambled unsteadily to her feet. Mikah backed away from her. He withdrew the spear from the door and quickly got out of her way.
Sword in hand, she stormed through the door and into the hallway, seeking Jaekob. She found him only ten feet from the door with his spear in both hands, facing a crowd that filled the corridor, from wall to wall, all the way to the end and back around the corner. No one in the crowd moved.
Bells walked toward him. "Jaekob, are you all right?"
"Yeah, but all of a sudden, they just stopped and backed up. What happened?" Then, his eyes found the sword in her hand. He met her gaze and said, "I see. You've saved us all once again." He gave her a wan smile.
She didn't smile back but rushed into his arms, squeezing him as tightly as she could. "Oh, I thought I lost you."
He chuckled. "As long as I have my mighty little fae, I think I'll be fine."
She looked up into his eyes, reached up, and brought her mouth to his. He had to bend to join his mouth with hers. She had never felt such a burning, fiery need before. She had almost lost him so soon after finally having him. Saving him had a price—her becoming the sword bearer again—but she had paid that price without hesitation. That told her something about herself and something about her feelings for Jaekob. This was no mere illusion, no mere crush.
The crowd of Pures began to bend their knee, one at a time, bowing to Bells. She had stripped them of their freedom once again to save Jaekob. She had never felt so happy and so horrified at the same time in her life.
Bells marched down the wide boulevard at the head of a growing column of troops. The vast majority weren't dragons, but people she had turned with the sword's power, swelling her ranks. Jaekob and Mikah marched with her, along with the few of Mikah�
�s command staff who could be found right away amid such chaos. At each intersection, Jaekob gave commands for a platoon to go this way, or two platoons to go that way, with Mikah looking on and nodding in approval.
As their forces gained momentum, Jaekob seemed to grow excited, but she felt like a little piece of her died each time she stripped away someone else's personality, making them slaves—just as the elves had done to the fae, but better. Or worse, actually. She wanted to scream. How could she do this to people? Even worse, how could she do it again, knowing how wrong it was and how they felt about it?
And yet, the dragons didn't seem to feel it was wrong at all. To them, it was just a tool of war. Dragons were too pragmatic for their own good, really.
Enemy Pures, a dozen or more, swept around the corner up ahead. Bells raised her sword up high, then mumbled words she didn't know that were fed to her by the sword. A cone of energy swept forward and washed over most of the enemies ahead. The ones it touched turned on those it hadn't, and that melee was quickly over. A little stream of blood ran down the gutter and into the storm drain, mesmerizing Bells. Others' blood. Her fault.
Next to her, Jaekob roared a victory cry and clapped her on the back. "Well done, little fae. At this rate, we might actually win this thing and keep the city." Then he was off to brief another unit, sending them on another mission.
Bells looked at the sword. She looked at the company of Pures standing up ahead with bloody weapons, waiting for her orders. She looked at the river of blood in the gutter. Then, she looked up at the sky. Up there, it was calm and peaceful and there was no war. In one moment of absolute clarity, she realized that the only way to have true peace in the world was to strip away the will of everyone, everywhere, because people had free will and often willed ill on their neighbors.
The dark irony of a virtual slave turning thousands into actual slaves wasn't lost on her. If that was the only way to gain peace, then maybe peace was the wrong answer. It didn't feel like it was worth the cost—
A sharp pain speared through her head, and her vision blurred with starbursts just before her vision faded. Her knees buckled. The last thing she saw was the ground rushing up to meet her.
Bells floated in a lavender haze, neither cool nor warm. She had nobody with her save for her thoughts, her awareness. She called out, "I didn't know you could pull me in to a conversation like this. I need to leave, though. There is a battle raging."
Only, her thoughts weren't words, not precisely. Nor were they pictures, exactly. It was as though she were in a dreamlike state where she had thoughts about the dream going on around her and it translated the thoughts into changes in the dream itself.
When the sword responded, it was the same. "You have doubts about our plan and yet I sense that, even in your shifting opinions and feelings, you remain pure of heart. This is a paradox. Explain yourself."
For a moment, Bells merely floated and listened to the sword's voice echoing in her lavender void. Something about the words themselves made each one appealing, beautiful, like a work of art.
The sword continued, "Yes. We are communicating in the primordial language of Creation, my native tongue. It is the one pure language, used to create both light and dark, good and evil, Earth and void. The act of creation is the act of love. Love is beautiful, and so the language of Creation is beautiful."
That was interesting. It seemed somehow rebellious to have created the sword and imbued it with an artificial intelligence through magic, only to do so with the language of Creation. Swords were meant to destroy, not create.
"Perhaps, but this blade is only a vessel. Yes, it can destroy, but what it creates is a new world. The new is never born without the destruction of the old. We will wipe away the old world and create a new, perfect one, full of harmony and peace."
Bells said, "Yes, that was the plan. But do you understand what this plan requires us to sacrifice?"
The sword's voice echoed in her mind, "Yes, of course. The sword is a weapon, meant to destroy hate and war and discord. We sacrifice those qualities to instill the world with better ones."
Bells shook her head. It wasn't getting it. "Yeah, but it also sacrifices people's individuality, their freedom of choice. They won't ever choose to be slaves and so they must be forced. And now, I have seen the anger and hate your victims overflow with when the effect is removed. If taking their wills is something good, then how does it create such violence?"
"All acts of creation are violent," the sword replied. "Birth is violent, full of pain and blood, and yet something new is created through it, something that creates more love and joy than pain. Someday, when you bear the dragon's seed, you will understand this, too."
Oddly, Bells felt no embarrassment. In this realm of pure thought, nothing could be hidden from oneself. Perhaps it was because life and death were empty of judgment; they simply existed.
"That may be, but would he, too, be my slave?" she asked.
"None of them are slaves. Their attachments to desire, commitments to anger, exist because living beings value themselves above all others. These attachments are the only things removed when you use me to control them. When they do not value themselves more than any other thing in the world, they are free to serve another with pure devotion, not because they get something out of it."
Again, Bells paused, enjoying the sound of the words despite their twisted meanings. The logic of the sword—which was to say, the logic of its creator—was somehow bent at its very foundation, though she couldn't explain just why that was so.
At last, she replied, "And what if I think people are capable of finding their own peace? What if I believe the sacrifice you require is too high a price to pay for peace?"
"And do you actually believe that? Do you believe the world can save itself? Or are you merely struggling against the teachings you received from others who were taught the same, and so on, through time? When you complete your mission and the whole world stands in peace, there will be no fae slaves or elf overlords. All will be equal, and in that equality, hate will die forever."
Bells considered the sword's words. Did it have a point or was it, too, limited to thinking in the ways it was first taught? "And yet, the hatred actually grows when your control is removed. Taking over their minds doesn't create peace in the long run, only a lack of desire, a lack of caring. Maybe there would be no violence, but there would also be no love."
"Do you know that to be true? Or do you only know love because of how it makes you feel, rather than truly caring about the other person?" The sword's voice grew louder and boomed, "Why, then, did you seek out the sword? If you truly believed what you say, why did you believe you needed to find a sword that could magically save the world?"
Doubt crept in again, and with it, confusion. The sword had a point. She had been convinced of that before. Did she only doubt it now because the grass is always greener on the other side, as the humans said?
Fading with each word, the voice trailed away, saying, "You have decisions to make. Will you save the world, or will you save their freedom to choose the same bloody fate they have always chosen? We will speak again, soon, sword-bearer."
For a moment, Bells felt like a vortex was sucking her down. The next instant, her eyes fluttered open and there was no more of the lavender nothingness. She was back in the real world, and in the real world, a pain in her head throbbed mercilessly and she felt wrung out like a dirty dishcloth. She was inside a building somewhere, lying on a bed with Jaekob in a chair next to her.
"Creation's wings," he cursed, "I thought we were going to lose you. Welcome back, my little fae."
Her tongue felt like rubber, getting in her way as she said, "What do you mean? I was gone for only a minute." Even through her misery, his name for her caused a little stir in her belly, and she managed a weak smile.
He shook his head. "Oh Bells, you were out for hours, not just a minute. Nothing we did got any response. It was like your body was there, but it was empty."
Bells grunted. He wasn't far from the truth, actually. "What happened? How is the city?"
His lips pursed and his eyebrows furrowed. "Not well. It was close, but the forces you gathered with the sword were enough to push back the assault—but only barely. We're shoring up defenses now, preparing for whatever happens next. You can bet they aren't just going to walk away, not with an army right outside and us so close to falling."
Bells closed her eyes for a moment, resting and feeling the vortex in her mind receding. Thankfully, it was taking much of her pain with it. That had been a rough transition, completely unlike the times she had communed with the sword of her own free will. Which was rather ironic.
There was a loud knock at the door. Jaekob looked at her, but she could barely open her eyes. He shrugged and called out, "Come in."
Darren came inside and closed the door behind him. The Councilor looked a little rough for wear and had a cut over his forehead. "Ah, there you are. So good to see you are all right, Miss Bells. As always, Jaekob has been by your side every minute, protecting you. Unfortunately, we have a situation he can't protect you from."
Jaekob began to growl, a barely audible bass rumble, until she put her hand on his leg. He quieted down, but still glared at Darren.
"What sort of problem?” Bells asked. “As you can see, I'm not in very good condition to go running around handling another crisis."
Darren stepped up to the foot of the bed, looking down at her. "That's too bad, because this is the kind of problem only you can handle, given the lack of confidence our illustrious leader has given his advisers. Reports are coming in from all over the north that we are under attack again, and not only here in the capitol."
Blaze of Magic Page 14
