Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Oh, I will have it, but only after reality mirrors my art." He raised his left hand and extended it forward, his fingers splayed. His body shook as if in the midst of a convulsion, then his fist closed and I felt a titanic hand grip me. It lifted me bodily into the air and held me as if I were as weak as a new-whelped pup. My armor groaned and my chest grew tight. Breathing deeply sent daggers through my chest. Every muscle in my body spasmed, and my limbs drew themselves in toward my torso.

  Takrakor glanced upward, then shook his head. "Not at all a match." He brought his left hand down and touched it to Wasp, then used his right hand to pry his little finger out straight. As he did that, my left leg came down and almost touched the floor. Straightening his thumb brought my other leg down, two fingers brought my arms out at my sides, and his middle finger brought my head up.

  He gently cuffed the edge of his right hand over the tip of his left middle finger, and my head snapped back as if I had been punched. My helmet flew off and my mask fell away, but I heard no clatter of their landing against the floor. I tried to turn my head to see if they hovered behind me, but I could not move at all. I hung there, crucified, my ears still ringing from the magickal blow.

  Takrakor held both hands out in front of him at arm's length with palms facing each other. He kept them spread apart as if they lay on either side of my chest, and when he curled his fingers in as if making a fist, I felt his nails dig into my back. I coughed in spite of myself, and he laughed, then slowly pulled his hands further apart.

  My Elf-made breastplate tore down the center and spine as if cheap cloth. He continued to move his hands sideways until a gap three fingers in width formed. My pauldrons stopped progress at my shoulders, so the sorcerer yanked down with his hands once, twice, three times until the leather straps snapped crisply and the armor fell away.

  Each tug ground my shoulders around in their sockets. My body gave with the pulling, but his magick held my arms in place. I felt things shift and heard things pop, then pop again as my left shoulder noisily returned to its place in the socket. I wanted to scream, but the pain in my chest stopped me from drawing in enough of a breath to allow me even a weak whimper.

  He must have seen my jaw working, because the pressure that kept me breathless eased. "Scream if you wish, Neal—I will hear your screams. I will delight in them, and I see no reason to delay my gratification."

  I coughed again. "Not a scream."

  "You will."

  I wanted to say something foolishly brave or tough, as did all the heroes of song and legend when in such dire straits, but I could think of nothing. I could not even muster a stoic air, which I am certain would have inflamed him more than insolence. I had grossly underestimated his power and was paying heavily for my stupidity. Even so, I had no intention of giving him satisfaction by admitting that fact.

  I could feel his puzzlement through the dagger in my left hand, and I let it fortify me. Every minute he spent changing me into the image hovering above me was one more minute in which his powers were denied to the Reithrese army.

  Takrakor hooked his fingers over into claws, then raked both his hands down. Finger-width rents appeared in the armor on my legs, and it fell away in a curled, twisted tangle. On the bracers and vambraces he took more time. In them he cut a spiral that left them hanging like a ribbon on my arms. He carefully tugged that ribbon off, letting the metal uncoil across my flesh. Blood dripped from countless cuts on my arms, and sweat burned into them.

  With the wink of an eye he made my gauntlets disappear, yet my weapons remained in my hands. Except for my tattered boots, scraps of the gambeson and breeches I had worn, and the circlet of Larissa's hair on my wrist, I hung naked and gore-spattered before him. My stomach pushed out toward him with each labored breath I took.

  I looked up at him. "Why don't you take the blade and be done with it?" I'd like to think I asked the question in hopes of luring him in close where I could strike at him, but I cannot say it was so. Held there and stripped so completely while I remained impotent to stop him, I felt worn and tired. I had told Larissa that I would not be coming back, that I would die in this campaign. So this was it, and I was willing to give up. I had been beaten by this Reithrese sorcerer, and I knew my time was at hand.

  "Take it?" He shook his head slowly. "No, no, no, Neal Elfward, Neal of the Mountains, keeper of Cleaveheart, Scourge of the Reithrese, Murderer of Tashayul and Butcher of Jarudin, no. I will not take it. You will give it to me. You will want to give it to me."

  His thumb and little finger came in on his left hand, and my knees immediately bent so I hovered in a kneeling position. He nodded his head slightly, and magick slammed me down against the floor. I felt my left ankle snap as it curled beneath me. The pain shot up along my leg, and I reached back with my left hand to touch the ankle; then a numbness entered me at the base of my spine. In the same instant I realized that he had freed me from the grip of one magick, then had used another to render my legs lifeless.

  "There, now you know what my brother felt for the last bit of his life." Low laughter roiled from his throat, but the snap and whispered roar of the fire in the pit behind him swallowed it quickly enough. "I would have preferred to hold you as before, but a greater magick requires me to resort to a lesser one. And do be assured, though your legs are numb and useless now, I will let them share in your body's agony."

  He stared down at me as he raised his hands. He folded thumbs and fingers into fists, then brought his index fingers out. He crossed them, middle knuckle against middle knuckle, right over left. "You will find this very painful, and the only way to end it is to offer me Cleaveheart." He raised his hands toward his face and placed his crossed fingers against his skull, where he had inserted the bit of tooth on Marta and Aarundel. Then, facing me, he whipped his fingers apart.

  Pressure like a mule kick hammered me right below my breastbone. It drove the air from my lungs, then the pain started. I felt the panic of being unable to breathe, but the blow forced me back enough that my chest stretched and I involuntarily pulled some air in. As I leaned back consciously, to breathe more deeply, lightning-like agony stabbed through my chest and brought me forward again.

  I looked down and saw a cruciform bruise forming between and below my breasts. The two lines barely an inch in each direction, where they met marked the focus of the pain. I hugged my hands to my chest, pulling my face back so the blades would not slice me up, but touching the bruise only increased the pain.

  "It will hurt more if you rub it." Takrakor stared at me, his voice strained with exertion. "Over the next twelve hours, unless I stop it, that spell will slice you into four parts." He rolled his eyes up to look toward the ceiling. "I will ease the pain for you if you give me the sword."

  Anger and fear and frustration came through the dagger to me as he spoke. Despite the pain and my weariness, I found his conflicting emotions fascinating. How was it that I was able to trouble him when he had me in so disadvantaged a situation? I could understand his wanting me to endure the mental torture of surrendering the blade to him—his treatment of Marta had displayed his cruel streak—but he seemed to need me to submit to him.

  His confusion and need sparked in me the one thing he did not want. I thought I had detected a weakness in him, and that gave me hope. That hope and my pain twisted through bitterness into defiance. If I was going to be tormented, so would he be, and I could do that by refusing him over and over again until I died.

  "I will never . . . surrender . . . this sword . . . to you." I forced myself to control my breathing.

  "Bold words." He brought his right fist down like a mace, and an invisible fist smashed me to the ground. Stars exploded when my forehead hit the floor, and blood started flowing from my nose. "You will take a long time to die, Neal."

  I snorted, spraying blood down my chest. "And you will never . . . ever . . . get my sword."

  Outrage spiked through the dagger, and Takrakor flailed at me from across the room. I could no more keep
track of the blows than I couid move to avoid them, but few hit solidly. After his flurry petered out, I felt as if I'd been tossed around in the hold of a ship in the midst of a storm, but other than a twinge in a rib that got hit twice, I wasn't that much worse off than I had been before.

  Takrakor stood back and folded his arms to his chest to consider me. In doing so he touched Wasp again, and I saw him smile most cruelly. My physical pain grew, and a new, sinister influence started to creep into my mind. Whereas he had been subtle before, teasing out thoughts that I wanted to believe, now he moved in to disrupt my thoughts and weaken my resistance to him.

  He keyed on my frustration and despair, and I felt a smug superiority trickle in through the dagger I held. He had briefly lost control, but when he regained it, he knew I was a thing beneath him. He could compel me to give him the sword, and that would not do for him. If he peeled my mind like an onion, soon there would be nothing left to defy him, and the second this course of action suggested itself, he pounced on it. My frustration at being unable to strike back at him became twisted, and he used it to slice away options and plans as they came up, isolating me from anything but submission to his will.

  Takrakor stepped closer to me. Our proximity [tjpth] increased the power of the link we had and heightened my frustration. Having my arms free and not being able to hit him when he was across the room was one thing. Remaining impotent to strike as he crept closer and closer was entirely another. With each step he ground my spirit away beneath his feet, and I could do nothing but watch my life leak away from the wounds he opened in my mind.

  He used my frustration against me and slowly warped every memory of past victories to which I clung. I used them as armor for my sense of hope, and he peeled it away layer by layer. My defeating his brother in our first fight became nothing more than a fluke, something that would never be repeated in a million years. The emperor had died less by my effort than by his own foolishness because he remained behind when the wisest of Reithrese had abandoned Jarudin.

  Takrakor used his own special knowledge of events to show me how hollow my life had been. I saw myself through his eyes at Aarundel's wedding and felt his derision at my pitiful arrogance that day. With each step nearer multiplying the strength of our link, he managed to deconstruct my life, making each victory the calm before a Reithrese storm that would destroy Mankind. Each thought he changed, every remembrance he destroyed, cut away at my ability to resist his will. While he did come closer to torture me, I knew he would not close within Cleaveheart's striking range.

  Agony racked me as he hit my last line of defense. He burrowed into all my memories of Larissa. He clutched at them, pawed them, and soiled them. He showed me images conjured from dreams where he substituted a rutting goat for me, then let me live through each and every tableau from Larissa's point of view. He turned everything all around until he got to the point where he started to make me believe she saw me as her perversion.

  I pressed my hands to my temples, and enough anger flowed through me that my fists should have crushed the hilts of my weapons. Takrakor, sensing victory, pushed harder and harder. He rearranged things so I would think that Larissa, seeing herself soiled and degraded, would kill herself—already had killed herself in shame when I gave her the bracelet over which I had labored.

  That did it. Standing barely five feet from me, he pushed one last time and broke through. He touched my hope and I acted.

  I smashed the hilt of the dagger into the floor, shattering the fragment of his tooth. Takrakor screamed in mortal pain. Both hands shot to his jaw as he reeled away in agony. He stumbled back and half fell, screaming anew as I pushed off the floor and ground the little pieces of tooth into dust.

  Pins and needles shot through my legs and new pain slammed up through my left ankle as I lurched forward. I staggered as a man drunk and dying. Clenched against the pain, my teeth ground against each other. With the diamond broken I no longer could feel his emotions, but the expression on his face as he scrambled to his feet needed no magic for translation. In his eyes I saw fear. And the reflection of Cleaveheart.

  I whipped the blade across his chest with all the speed and strength my desperation could muster. I hit him solidly and would have split him in half, but my blade caught on Wasp. Takrakor spun away from me, more from the impact than by his will. A scarlet froth and big bubbles marked where I had cloven ribs and torn a lung. Blood dripped from his mouth and nostrils and sprayed out in a spiral as he pirouetted around.

  I stumbled to my knees and barely caught myself with my hands. I saw his blood splattered across the floor and heard the swish of his cloak as he fell back. I heard a muffled thwump, then the scraping of metal on stone. As I looked up again, I saw the last of his legs and the soles of his sandals as his body slid down through the hole to the firepit. For a second the room went dark, then sparks rose up. I watched them float toward my battered face on the ceiling, twisting around and flopping onto my back as I did so.

  The stone felt cold, but the blood on my back and chest burned. I raised my head enough to see that the bruise on my chest had grown a half inch in all directions; then I lay down. Looking up at the image Takrakor had fashioned of me, I reveled in the fact that though I knew I was dying, I was not dying defeated. As black oblivion swept over me, despite the pain, I managed a laugh that I intended to ring in my ears through eternity.

  Chapter 29:

  To Come Home Again

  Late Autumn

  A.R. 499

  The Present

  ***

  WITH EACH MILE closer to Cygestolia, Gena felt a sense of urgency building in her. When she first felt it, barely a week into the month-long journey, she dismissed it as spillover from Berengar's nervousness. At his insistence they had borrowed four horses from the emperor and money enough to see them through the trip to Cygestolia and back. Seeing Cleaveheart's resting place had focused Berengar tightly on his goal of obtaining the blade, and she knew his anxiety came from not knowing what was happening back in Aurdon.

  As the sensation grew in her, she managed to name it. Homesickness. She had been gone from Cygestolia, wandering the face of Skirren, for a dozen years. For an Elf that amount of time passed in an eye blink, yet she felt a growing hunger inside her again to see the groves and vales of her homeland. Whereas before she returned, she would have dismissed Cygestolia's importance to her, as she drew closer, she wondered seriously why she had left in the first place.

  Now, well inside the domain claimed by the Elves, she wished she had the implements necessary to use the circus translatio. She had not taken such things with her when she rode away because she was uncertain she would ever want to return. She slowly began to realize that her time among Men had worn on her because she had constantly been treated as a threat or a prize to be won. Never had she been given time just to be herself, and Cygestolia became a sanctuary where she could do just that.

  No, not never. With Durriken I found sanctuary. She nodded to herself as she remembered hours and hours spent languorously entwined with her Human lover. When they were together, he treated her with deference, but she knew he would have acted so with any female, sylvanesti or Human. Rik had a way of looking into people's hearts. He pushed past what they appeared to be, or what they were supposed to be, and saw what they were. In his arms Gena had been able to be herself, and, she realized, as long as they had been together, she had not been looking for sanctuary anywhere else.

  Berengar still remained solicitous and polite to her. Small kindnesses such as complimenting her on meals when it was her turn to cook or taking on more than his share of the heavy lifting and carrying marked his concern for her. Their conversations, after all the time they had spent on the road together, had grown deeper and more philosophical, yet somehow divorced of emotion. They even spoke of what it would be like if they were to become lovers or to actually marry, but that conversation seemed concerned more with cultural customs and mores than the attraction they felt to each other.
r />   And there was an attraction. Gena blushed when she thought about it, less from prudishness than from her feeling that she was betraying Durriken in some way. She gave Berengar chances to approach her, and clues that she would be receptive to his advances, yet he did not act upon them. She was interested in the way he watched her sometimes at night—Men generally being forgetful at how good Elven sight is in the dark—but he held himself apart. She gathered it was from a sense of duty to his family—his willingness to marry for an alliance as much as for love—and she chose to respect that.

  She also acknowledged that his focus upon their mission put her off at times. Durriken had been positively Elven in his attitude about time; his sense of urgency had not been driven by the passage of hours. Rik desired the correction of past wrongs—as with the return of Marta and Aarundel's wedding tokens to them—and was willing to take the time needed to make sure his missions would succeed.

  In his single-mindedness concerning Cleaveheart, Berengar exhibited what Elves found least desirable about Men. Even so, she had no doubt he would be able to control himself when he reached Cygestolia. She smiled. Berengar will charm everyone he meets. Still, some Elves might balk at turning Cleaveheart over to a Man, and that was a possibility that made it hard to predict how Berengar would react in the long run.

  Cygestolia had not much changed since she had been away. The groves appeared to her eyes to be more stately and grand than any Man-home she had seen. She felt a sense of anxiety slip away as once again she saw the island with the council tree on it. She smiled and pointed toward that island.

  "Do you see that stone structure there, at the base of the tree?"

  Berengar nodded. "Surely all the Elves in Cygestolia do not live in that one small house."