Betrayer's Bane

by Michael G. Manning

  Tyrion’s gift had finally come to fruition.

  Gouts of fire went up, along with other subtler uses of power, but while they killed some of his diminutive krytek, they couldn’t kill them all. The Prathion krytek died, the She’Har with them died, and as the wasp burrowed into the bark of the elders, they began to die too.

  The buzzing of tiny wings became a roar in his ears as the dark clouds of Tyrion’s vengeance grew and filled the sky.

  Tyrion’s mind collapsed inward, until he was merely a man again, and he lay down, letting his tiredness have its way. Laying in the dry leaves and churned up soil he watched the world die around him.

  Many of his tiny children flew over to him, intrigued by his aythar, but once they had sampled it and recognized him, they flew away again. He watched the clouds pass by, white against the tiny blue spot visible through the canopy. Occasionally his view was obscured by the buzzing hordes, but that only made him smile. Drifting, he finally closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  The She’Har could finish dying without him.

  ***

  Thillmarius sat in the small room that had served him for many years while he oversaw the training of Prathion slaves. He could still remember clearly the first day he had seen Tyrion enter the room. It was not because the day had been special to him, it was a byproduct of being a lore-warden. The loshti granted perfect recall along with the knowledge of all the generations it had passed through before.

  A loaf of bread sat on the table in front of him. He had never been sentimental, it wasn’t a trait his people prized, but it held a world of meaning for him now. It embodied a failed dream, his attempt at rising above the wrongs done in the past, to find a way forward for both his people and those they had wronged.

  The bread was perfect, lovely and light in its texture. It would have tasted wonderful, but he would never eat it. No one would.

  He had thought it was just the Centyr that were being foolish, ignoring the accord and letting their paranoia and xenophobia spoil the accord, but today he had learned differently. Tyrion had never intended to honor it either.

  He had planned all along to destroy the She’Har, he had admitted as much with his own words and the hidden chamber that held Lyralliantha had been proof that he had not been making empty threats.

  The Illeniels were no better. They had refused to help guard the humans, choosing instead to sit quietly in their grove, waiting for the destruction that they had engineered. It went without saying that they had some plan for survival, even if it came at great cost, but he doubted that their salvation extended to the Prathion Grove.

  They were the ultimate betrayers, and Tyrion had been their tool, unwittingly at first, but willingly at the end.

  But how will they do it?

  He didn’t know. The Prathions were not in a good position no matter how he looked at it. Having put themselves at the forefront defending Tyrion and his people they were now firmly in the sights of the Centyr and Mordan Groves, and probably the Gaelyn as well. Did the Illeniels plan to use them as scape goats?

  Thillmarius shook his head, that didn’t make sense. Whatever Tyrion was planning, even a civil war wouldn’t be big enough to give him what he wanted, which apparently was the destruction of all the She’Har.

  He had left his door open, and when a small insect flew in, buzzing as it homed in on him, his eyes spotted it immediately. He knew exactly what it was.

  Throwing himself backward he avoided its first zooming dive at his head. Panic almost robbed him of reason, but he managed to fry the tiny creature with a small burst of fire before it came back for a second try.

  With a thought, he closed the door just as two more flew in. He fried them just as quickly. For the moment, he was safe. But for how long?

  At last he understood Tyrion’s plan, though how the man had accomplished it eluded him. Had the Illeniels created these forbidden krytek for him? If so, why? From the behavior of the wasps it seemed obvious that their original inclinations had been restored, which made them as great a danger to the Illeniels as it did to the other groves.

  Why would they do such a thing?

  A buzzing grew outside his door and his magesight showed him an ever greater collection of the creatures gathering there.

  They weren’t content to wait. They were already burrowing into the wood of the building, which after all, was made from the extrusions of one of the Elder’s roots. Most of them were digging into the door, though, weakening it as they sought to get to him.

  His mind ran through a quick succession of defensive spellweaves, but none of them would be sufficient. From what he knew the creatures would eat through any magical defense he created and the more aythar he used the more they would be drawn to him.

  He could kill some of them, but eventually he would lose.

  A feeling of helplessness swept over him, followed soon after by anger. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair! I tried to fix it. But Tyrion hadn’t cared. All the human wanted was revenge, narrow, short-sighted, revenge.

  “Just like any other baratt, just like an animal,” he intoned softly. “And now he’s killed us all.”

  He had never been given to strong emotion, but his anger grew ever stronger. For the first time in his life, Thillmarius felt his anger burn hot. For the first time, Thillmarius hated.

  And then he had an idea.

  He would die, that was certain, but that didn’t necessarily have to be the end. The kionthara were constructed using Centyr spellbeasts and a spellweave that made them effectively immortal. He couldn’t create a spellbeast, but he could do something similar using his own mind as the substrate for the magic.

  Of course, it was forbidden, and for good reason, but who would be left to gainsay his choices? He could already feel the building he occupied dying, along with the Elder that it was comprised of. The rest of the Elders were almost certainly suffering the same fate, and if the krytek plague was here, he was certain that Tyrion had made sure to spread it everywhere else as well.

  He could already see holes appearing in the wooden door. Time was running out.

  Drawing on the memories of his ancestors and feeding aythar to his spellmind he quickly began knitting the necessary spellweave together. He felt a pain in his leg as the first wasp bit into his flesh, burrowing inward. It felt like a fiery ember tunneling through his body.

  Ignoring the pain he continued working. When the weave was finished he swirled it around himself, letting it sink in over his shoulders like a shawl. The magic passed through his skin and went deeper, bringing with it a cold darkness.

  The pain of the krytek in his leg faded and then his heart shuddered. Everything went dark for a moment as oblivion overtook him. Thillmarius died and his eyes closed.

  But seconds later, they opened again.

  Did I die? Am I still me? he wondered. He still felt like himself, but his rationale mind said otherwise. He knew that the true Thillmarius had to be dead. He was a replica, frozen in time by the spellweave, tied forever to a body that would never live again.

  But he certainly felt real.

  And he definitely felt hatred.

  He remembered the krytek that had burrowed into his leg. What had happened to it? Examining himself he found the entry hole, but the tiny krytek’s body was dead. Using his aythar Thillmarius carefully worked it free, and then watched in amazement as his leg healed itself afterward. He hadn’t known that would happen.

  He also didn’t understand what had killed the krytek. He hadn’t been sure how it would react to his transformation. His first expectation had been that it would simply carry on eating him without being able to kill him, but that definitely wasn’t the case.

  More of the little creatures were buzzing around him now, but they showed no interest in him. Reaching out he caught one with his hand and then watched with interest as it died in his hand. He felt a tiny surge of aythar as the krytek’s life force was sucked out.

  “Oh,” he said simply. So that was how
it worked. A slow smile spread across his face. Unable to die, no longer of interest to the weapon that Tyrion or the Illeniels created, he should have no difficulties now.

  He had only one goal. To kill the man that had undone a civilization that had lasted for millennia.

  Chapter 48

  Tyrion woke to silence.

  Something had tickled his nose, but his magesight detected no one nearby. Opening his eyes he saw snow falling. Reaching up he wiped it away only to find a grey smear on his finger. Ash.

  Emma did a good job, he thought, for the ash to fall this far away.

  He sat up. The air was bitterly cold, which was one reason he had expected snow. Shivering he took to his feet, staggering a little as he found his balance. If he hadn’t woken when he did he might never have woken at all. It was freezing.

  With an almost unconscious effort of will he surrounded his body with a blanket of warm air. Having solved that problem he stretched out his senses, letting his magesight explore the world within its reach.

  He found nothing alive.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There were animals, and small plants, even a few stunted trees that had somehow survived amid the tall Elders of the She’Har. But beyond those things, he found—nothing, no She’Har, no shining towers of aythar representing the elders, and no humans. The Prathion Grove was a graveyard, filled with the husks of dead trees and fallen bodies.

  “Well, that’s a nice change,” he said aloud, mostly just to hear the sound of his own voice. It was deafeningly quiet. He had no idea what to do next.

  Walking home was the obvious choice, so he did, but he had hardly taken two steps before he thought of the emptiness he would find there. The only people in the house were Lyralliantha and Garlin, and he could talk to neither of them. He didn’t dare. Awakening them now, before he was certain that the krytek he had created were gone, would be a death sentence.

  “I’ve been alone before,” he told himself. But never this alone. Even during his solitary confinement in Ellentrea there had been Amarah, coming several times a day to bring him food. At the moment, he was quite literally the last man left to walk the face of the earth.

  He kept walking, filled simultaneously with lonely dread and a curious lightness. His burden was gone. His trials were over. He had succeeded, and now he had nothing left to do. An empty future stretched out before him.

  It was when he finally entered his home in Albamarl that he remembered the spellweave over Lyralliantha’s stasis box. He couldn’t waken her, not in three months, when the krytek were gone, not in years, when the world began to recover, not ever. Not unless he discovered the key to disarming the spellweave that kept her trapped.

  Unable to stop himself he opened the way to her chamber. He spent the rest of the evening simply staring at her and Garlin. At least he could waken Garlin, eventually. But how could he raise the child with no mother.

  Thinking of Kate sent his thoughts into dark downward spirals that revolved around her and his lost children. He had gained exactly what he wanted and lost everything that he had ever had.

  “Having second thoughts, baratt?” said a familiar voice over his shoulder.

  His magesight told him no one was there, but he knew the voice. Thillmarius. Tyrion didn’t move. How did he survive? The spellweave, that was the clue. The lore-warden hadn’t just locked Lyra away from him, he must have hidden in the chamber.

  Tyrion activated his defensive tattoos.

  “Did I startle you, animal?” asked the lore-warden.

  “I guess all your talk of humans being a sentient species was just for show, eh Thillmarius?” growled Tyrion in a low voice.

  “Don’t even begin to think to judge me, traitor!” spat the She’Har.

  Tyrion turned slowly around, facing the empty space in which he knew Thillmarius must be standing. “Oh, but I do! You call me a traitor? You blame me for the death of your people? You started all of this, when you tortured me in the name of ‘training’. When you forced my children to fight one another. When your people took a world that wasn’t theirs and nearly wiped humanity from it.”

  “My only mistake was in thinking we could bridge the gap between our people. I acted in good faith, trying to forget a better future for your kind.”

  His voice was moving as he circled, trying to keep me from knowing exactly where he was. “You were a fool,” taunted Tyrion.

  The lore-warden appeared then, spellweavings flying from his hands to encircle Tyrion. He was standing five feet to his right. Tyrion leap toward him, and before the magic could close around him, he thrust his right armblade completely through the She’Har’s chest.

  Which accomplished exactly nothing.

  The Prathion never flinched, and his face showed no sign of pain. Tyrion might as well have been stabbing a straw dummy.

  Now that the veil of invisibility was gone he could see something else as well. Thillmarius looked normal enough to his physical sight, but to his magesight the man was a black void, an emptiness where a living body should have been. Something was wrong.

  Some kind of weird illusion?

  The spellweave around him had tightened now, like a strange thorny vine, and its power tore at his shield. He kept it at bay by continuing to put more energy into his defensive tattoos, but he couldn’t keep it up forever.

  Shifting some of his power to his now trapped arms, he strengthened them, until he could force them down and out, slicing through the magic that held him. Then he ran.

  The chamber that housed Lyra and Garlin was no place for fighting.

  Thillmarius followed him, laughing softly. “Do you think you can win, baratt? You only delay your defeat, and make it more enjoyable for me.”

  Up the stairs and through the front door, Tyrion ran into the yard. There was space there. When Thillmarius stepped through he sent a blast of raw aythar, in the form of fire, to engulf his body. The lore-warden had been overconfident and hadn’t bothered to create a defensive spellweave, and he would pay for it.

  But the fire died the moment it touched him, the flames winking out as though they had never been. The aythar he had used to create them simply vanished, sucked into the void that was Thillmarius.

  How is he doing that?

  “Do you like fire, baratt? You use it like a child. Let me show you how it should be done.” Magic flowed from the Prathion’s fingers, weaving itself into a flame that seemed alive. It spiraled outward in ropes that grew and writhed around him, burning with intense heat—and then it converged on Tyrion.

  His shield kept it at bay, but it was mere inches from his skin, and the heat radiated through, baking him within his protections. Tyrion didn’t have long. Frantic he spun, using his armblades in an attempt to destroy the spellweave, but the fire simply let them pass, reforming behind them as they passed.

  Reverting to old tactics, Tyrion ripped the earth from beneath Thillmarius’ feet, or tried to, but the moment the aythar he sent into the soil touched the lore-warden’s feet, it vanished. A blast of wind failed as well, and his skin was beginning to blister inside his shield.

  Desperate, and knowing he was only seconds from death, Tyrion lifted his arm and channeled a blast of force through the tattoos on his arm. This time he was rewarded, for the magic didn’t die when it reached the lore-warden. It sent his opponent hurtling backward to smash into the stone wall of the house.

  Tyrion heard bones snap when the She’Har impacted the wall. The flames around him vanished, and he knew he had found victory.

  Thillmarius slumped to the ground and then, impossibly, he stood up again. Tyrion watched in astonishment as the lore-warden’s upper arm straightened, the bones realigning. A large depression in the side of his skull swelled outward and then took its normal shape again.

  And still the She’Har was a black blot of nothingness to his magesight.

  “What have you done to yourself?” he asked.

  Thillmarius laughed. “Wondering why I won’t die? You alrea
dy killed me, baratt. But I decided that I wouldn’t let that stop me from returning the favor.”

  Tyrion couldn’t help but think of Brigid’s chain. It would have been an ideal weapon. He wondered how his foe would fare if he were cut into a dozen small pieces. The chain was in his bedroom, a memento he had brought back with him, to remember Brigid, but he couldn’t use it. No one could, it would respond only to her aythar.

  But he knew his armblades still worked, even if stabbing wasn’t the best attack. Slashing should work much better. And for some reason power channeled through the runes on his arms worked when raw aythar failed.

  He started to level another channeled blast at the She’Har but Thillmarius vanished, falling back on the talent of the Prathions again.

  Tyrion created an aythar laced mist, to hide him from Thillmarius, but it died as soon as it contacted the skin of his already dead opponent. He couldn’t tell where the contact had been. Changing tactics he sent a lacework of energy through the soil beneath his feet.

  He had used the technique in the past, to discover where hidden enemies were standing. It would likely fail this time, but he would at least know where Thillmarius was when it contacted him.

  The spell died almost instantly, Thillmarius was standing immediately beside him.

  Before he could react a spellweave with the force of an avalanche struck. It was almost the same thing he had just done, seconds before. Except Tyrion’s body couldn’t recover the Thillmarius’ had. He felt something crack deep in his chest when he struck the wall, and then the world went black.

  Opening his eyes, he knew, somewhere in his fuzz laden brain that he must have lost consciousness. His shield was gone and Thillmarius was kneeling over him. He struggled to move as the lore-warden’s hand reached for his throat, but his body was sluggish and reluctant to obey.