The Warlord and the Bard

by Eric Alan Westfall

  The memory is cut off and the crystal that carried it banished back to the cavern. The link to my sister is gone, but it is far too late. The Rage knows, has heard and felt that sliver of long ago reality, demands that I set it free, and roars when I refuse that release.

  I shiver inside myself. The Rage is always there, certainly, a presence I cannot escape, but still, it is buried, locked, warded. Far, far below. Level upon level down. This time the security is sufficient. This time, it cannot....

  It does.

  Again.

  The triple-locked steel box in which it is caged blows apart from the inside, and the chains holding it to the floor are severed into separate links. The berinwood door and the woven layers of Power-backed wards tremble as the Rage pounds them both with first one monstrous invisible fist, then then other. Then again. And again and again and again until the door creaks, then cracks, then splits almost neatly down the center. The spells shatter, and disappear. A startling shove of both enormous palms and the door pieces fall to the stone floor. The chains that had been bolted deep into the walls and crisscrossed the door are ripped from their moorings and shoot outward, hitting the opposite wall and sliding down.

  Rage needs no torches on the walls, no mage globes to guide it; it has traveled this way before, and far too often. It knows the way well. Down the short corridor to the winding stair. Then multiple-step leaps, spiraling up to the next small landing, with another locked and warded door. The shattering happens again, then up and again, and again, as the Rage runs, howling upward from the sundered room where I had so safely locked and hidden it away.

  The Sword howls, too, there in the dimness in the belly of the mountain. The jewels flare in a flash of light that blinds no one in the empty room, and when it is gone, there is a worn, battle-scarred black scabbard hanging on the wall. The black jewel in the pommel glows, the souls slam the lids of their coffins open, and HellFire, ever HellFire, rises first, then the others. Angered by the earlier denial, they rise shouting, too excited to merge. The discordant jangle of their Voices cajoles, demands, argues, pleads, orders me to summon the Sword, to use it, to use them.

  Silence! I scream at the souls in the Sword, a soundless command backed by a wave of compulsion slamming into them. I am the Bearer. I will be obeyed. They are silent, but they will not stay that way for long unless I contain them.

  But I have no time to deal with the Voices now. First, I have to deal with the Rage.

  I unlock, un-ward, the barricaded door that is just below the surface of me. We step through, the monitor and I, ward it, lock it, barricade it behind us. We stand in darkness at the top of those winding stairs, the stairs that go down an infinity of levels, so deep and far the Rage could never escape. Or so I thought and prayed to the Goddess, just I did that endless day when She ignored my prayers, and all the endless days since, as She continues to ignore me. But the levels are only finite after all, and every time the Rage has broken free in this past year and more it comes closer to the surface before I can defeat it. Closer to me. And each time it becomes more difficult to win.

  Let me do it! I scream at the monitor, listening to the not so very far off sounds of the Rage racing upward, upward.

  The No! in response is familiar, yet different. All the times before, the monitor has been in charge of the fight, so that even though my Gifts, my Power, contributed to every battle, to every win, it was still as if the battle was happening to someone else. I was isolated. Insulated.

  But tonight, for the first time in all the times in all the years, the monitor is...uncertain. There is a thread of fear, that perhaps one day, one night, perhaps even this night, the Rage will not be contained, and we, the monitor and I, will be consumed. There has always been that other fear as well, that if I were in charge, I might simply surrender. Tonight, the monitor has a new fear. That perhaps this battle will be lost if I am not in charge.

  If we were in that quiet place I could find on the maps, I might surrender.

  But not this night, not here, now now. Fucking duty and fucking honor call. There is a traitor to destroy.

  The monitor hands the control over to me.

  And so, like the fucking fools of Imperial Security—Goddess! The fucking fools of all those who guard us, who throw themselves toward a weapon that might hurt or kill a dar Andrae—the monitor and I run toward as well. Down and around and down yet again, sure-footed in the darkness, locking and warding the levels behind us, profligately drawing on Power to double, triple, quadruple the barriers. All to do battle over something as worthless as the soul I am certain I no longer have.

  We meet the Rage only four levels down. Four. It has never been so near before. But then we have no time to worry, just time to battle. And this is no battle of swords and mortal blows. It is my will against the seething clamor of blackness that is the Rage.

  My back is to the wall in every sense. For if the Rage reaches me, if I cannot bring it under control before it touches me, then the wards and locks and levels above will have no meaning, for the Rage will have the keys, magical or mortal, to them all.

  And once...if...I give in to the Rage, or if it wins and takes control, I will in all probability doom not only those immediately around me, but many others. If the Rage gets control, it will, I am certain, set Hellfire and all the other Voices free.

  I stand motionless in my aunt’s packed ballroom, with everyone—guests, the discreet staff, my family—oblivious to the death that will hurtle out from me like a floor hugging avalanche, grinding them into nothingness if I lose. I would scream at them to run, but cannot break my concentration, nor spare the energy.

  We fight a silent battle in that stairwell, the monitor and I, working for the first time as a team. Step by step by step down, we force the Rage back, unraveling its whirling power as six other mages and I had unraveled the winds of Hurricane Katriana six years ago, barely before it reached land and the port. In the briefest of pauses I nearly laugh as I recall the storm was named after an ancestor of mine, a particularly powerful and vicious princess. And then the monitor and I resume the downward fight, ripping off pieces of the Rage and dissolving them, compressing what is left, weakening it as we lock and ward behind us, level by level until we are at last at the bottom of the steps.

  A weak mage globe flares. It is all I can manage. I wince at the debris the Rage has made of everything I had done to lock it in, to protect myself. With surges of Power we remake the shattered door, shattered chains, shattered locks and box. And force the Rage, nothing more now than a nearly invisible speck of black, into the box. Shaking, exhausted, we lock and relock and create yet more locks and chains, strengthening each of them, strengthening the wards on the door. And then we do it all again as we go up. Each increase demands I leave behind a larger, stronger sliver of my self, more than ever required before, as we work our way slowly to the final door.

  We step through. Bind and ward and guard that door.

  I turn my attention to the Sword, but there is no real need. The souls sensed the taming of the Rage, temporary though it may be, and though Rage is not required for the Sword to be summoned and used, the souls know that in the absence of Rage only duty or honor will make me use their Voices. They have sullenly returned to their crystal coffins. Only HellFire, First of the Voices, foremost still even after all the millennia since his binding, remains standing, defiant.

  Go!

  He stands at the front of four rows of coffins that stretch far behind him, into a seeming infinity. He and they are all translucent, the Sword Room visible through them. As is the Sword on the wall, once more gaudily, vulgarly bejeweled. He stares up and out across the City to where I stand in the silence of my mind, staring back. He waits just long enough to make it clear that he is deciding to return to the coffin, to sleep, and is not moving because of my command.

  At this moment I am so exhausted I don’t give a good Goddess damn. The result is all that counts. With the closing of HellFire’s coffin lid the Sword is
finally quiet. I allow myself a single sigh. Or is it the monitor that allows only one and prods me to return my awareness to the Ball?

  I widen the eyes I never quite closed, glance around, and see no appalled or greedy stares aimed at a prince who has just made a spectacle of himself with some sort of fit or seizure. Nor stares in another direction, because the man who touched me made his escape, probably with rude shoving, while I was...otherwise occupied.

  I turn my head to the only person near me, because all the others have drawn away, exactly as they did when that fool used the memory crystal. The distance saying, “It was not us, your Highness. We are not involved.”

  Goddess. It was my redhead who touched me.

  My redhead?

  What the fuck?

  And why am I certain he was staring at me just now, only I didn’t catch him? And now his head is down. But there is no shame, no embarrassment, not even a whiff of fear rolling off him.

  Jerril

  Are they all blind? Or merely fools? They stand and watch as their Crown Prince goes through several, some, all of the Nine Hells in a short span of time, and they do nothing. You do not let someone endure whatever in all the Hells he just endured, and do it alone.

  Fuck them all!

  I barely manage to drop my head as he comes fully back to himself. I do not think I can bear it if he feels shamed because someone knows, because I know, the pain he has just survived. Whatever its cause.

  I try, desperately, to regain my own control.

  Serenity. I groped him and that can’t be changed.

  Courage. To not run away.

  Wisdom?

  Wisdom.

  To know that I am where I must be.

  Though apparently only the Goddess knows why, and She isn’t telling.

  DarkFire

  I listen to the music, and though I know less than nothing about musical intricacies and fine points about sound, I at least recall having heard this melody before. It was just beginning as the battle began. It sounds as though the notes that have been played and vanished into the air have not taken the melody very far.

  A moment was all it was, the merest intake of a breath. Then why do I feel as if I have battled for a week without rest? There is a heavy sheen of perspiration on my face. Heran has, I believe, a princely perspiration principle, but I cannot recall it. I will simply ignore the wetness, and if anyone has the audacity to ask I will explain its cause as mere body heat from the dancers and bystanders. After all, even the best of mages, or linked mages, cannot maintain cool air within the palace in the face of this many bodies crammed so tightly together and generating so much heat.

  I remain still as the monitor coats me in protective ice. Rage is useful on a battlefield, but not in the middle of an overly crowded party, and not with my younger sister only a dozen or so feet away. I cannot risk a repeat just now. Primarily because I am not at all certain that I could defeat the Rage again.

  I manage a smile when she winks at me over the shoulder of one of the men inevitably hovering around the very eligible princess. If only they understood how they bore her. But even if they did, the prospect of an alliance with the Great House which has ruled the Kingdom and Empire for more than nine thousand years would compel them to go on. A different approach, another futile attempt to intrigue her, perhaps, but rarely a surrender. Her expression changes, subtly asking “what’s wrong?” She accepts without question the “not now” in my eyes.

  I straighten to my full height. I am in control again. No one touches me unasked. No one.

  And dealing with this man...no, not my redhead...in the way he deserves to be dealt with, punishing him as he deserves to be punished, will be both enjoyable and consistent with what the traitors expect from seeing Niallan wearing the red.

  The exchange with ‘Kiri was no more than an eye-blink. The struggle for myself was barely longer and barely won. I do not allow myself to contemplate the lifetime ahead of me of endless repetitions of these battles with the Sword and Rage. Nor do I contemplate the possibility of how short that life might in fact be. The Rage was only four levels below. My head-shake to slough off the disruptive thoughts is only internal.

  I focus on what is important, here and now. Punishment for the insult.

  I deliberately unleash the triple personas of Crown Prince, Heir Presumptive and Warlord. My stance, everything about me, conveys both the best, and most definitely the worst, of each persona. Silence ripples outward from me.

  Goddess. He is just standing there.

  Why am I certain that if I could see his face, it would be serene?

  Why am I certain that it is an act of courage, and not supreme idiocy that keeps him here?

  Where he is supposed to be.

  What?

  Jerril

  I look down at my hand, which has recently, so very, very recently been where it did not belong, where it so very, very much did not belong. I wonder if it has somehow acquired a will of its own, because I am certain my will had nothing to do with what it just did.

  The plan, my excellent plan, was merely to pass by him in the crowd, perhaps a little more slowly than the others behind me, beside me, might prefer me to walk. But suddenly those before me, beside me, behind me were gone. And there he was, walking toward me. And there I was, walking, if not precisely toward him, at least by him.

  And there was...a lull in the observation of him. Like a moment of silence that suddenly strikes an entire room. He wasn’t looking at me, certainly not seeing me. No one was looking at either of us. And my body moved, and my hand moved.

  Now I am standing still, when I could be running. And him...he is just three paces beyond me. I must have been right in my estimate of how much he has been drinking. Without all that liquor inside him, I might not even have been able to touch him, or if I did succeed...if my hand succeeded...I would have found myself in severe pain, possibly with a fist in my belly, or a very large, very powerful, hand around my throat, choking.

  But he has, and I did.

  They used to chop off the hand of a thief. Is touching the Heir Presumptive, particularly if that touch involves caressing and lightly squeezing that, ah, magnificent fullness between his legs, considered a theft? Of Royal and Imperial something-or-other?

  Can a one-handed bard earn a living?

  At least it wasn’t the Warlord I touched. Even drunk, he might still have been deadly. And the Heir Presumptive is clearly not as, well, imperial as the Crown Prince. So if I had to touch...if my hand had to touch...anyone, the Heir Presumptive is undoubtedly the best choice for touching. The least likely to be lethal.

  I wish someone would slap me hard and remind me that these titles all belong to the same man. The title he chooses at any given moment doesn’t change him. He is still the most dangerous-to-my-future man I could have chosen to touch for any reason.

  And yet...and yet...it seemed so right. So very, very right.

  It still does.

  DarkFire

  I guess the courage not to run, does not extend to the courage to actually look at me. He just stands there with his head down, staring at his hand, as if he is a man trying to distance himself from an untoward event he merely happens to have been too close to.

  Silence spreads as more and more people turn eagerly to watch the unfolding scene. I can feel the shine of glittering, well-bred malice in numerous eyes.

  The silence, the near-tangible coldness emanating from me, finally seems to reach him. He drops his hand to his side, but does not look up. Afraid, now, are you? When your fear is far too little and far too late? Where was your Goddess-damned fear when it might have done you some good?

  The monitor observes the man dispassionately, evaluating, calculating. My view is, for a reason I cannot explain, more...passionate, less calculating. According to the results of my calculations, he is...spectacular, or likely to be so, as spectacular can’t exist without a face to match all the rest, and his head is still down.

  He is a foot
shorter than me, but then, I have always been considered excessively tall. Hair the color of a forest fire, a bright, red-orange glow that ripples down to his shoulders, the combination of head angle and hair hiding his face. Tight, body-molding clothing, a fact the monitor and I both note. A deep, complexly-woven gold for the fashionable sleeveless jacket that sweeps to his knees, with a short, stiffly upright collar; a brighter gold shirt, with equally fashionable loose sleeves and a tight cuff buttoned with amber. Like mine, his collarless shirt is unbuttoned in a vee, but his displays a fine layer of deeply red fur on a muscled chest. It is not unbuttoned enough; I want visual confirmation that his belly is as flat as I believe it to be. His trousers are a darker gold, but I see that only peripherally, because I refuse to allow my eyes to drop to where that vee of gold and fur is pointing. But I want to look. And I refuse to let myself know why.

  Except there is this odd certainty that of all the men with all the variations of red and auburn and orange and flame hair I have ever had, and there have been many in not quite forty years since I started fucking...and using...men, there is something that sets him apart, not merely apart, but above them all.

  Although elegant, even I can tell his clothing is inexpensive, which means he is not part of any of the High Houses; they would not shame themselves by dressing in anything less than their finest and most expensive for tonight. Modest jewelry, at least in terms of vulgar display. I wonder which of the Lower Houses or Families will claim him, or perhaps reject him loudly when they learn he has crashed the Summer Ball and grossly offended each and every one of my fucking titles.

  While I wait for the him to gather the courage to finally look at the man he has insulted so well, I say fuck-it! to my refusal to look and deliberately check all of him that I can see. That checking would, of course, be far more effective, far more intimidating, if he would just lift his Goddess-damned head so we could see each other’s eyes. But you make do with the resources you have. Another fine set of bulges to notice tonight. Very fine. Not as muscular as me, but lean, and between his legs, a definite potential for spectacular, depending on whether he grows or merely shows.