The Prince of the Veil

by Hal Emerson

  He saw the form of Elder Keri rushing toward him. Her white robes were splattered with blood and gore, the accumulation of the last minutes of countless lives.

  Some of that blood is fresh.

  And that thought triggered another memory – of the Exile girl howling in pain as hundreds of years worth of memories that weren’t hers rushed through her mind, memories to which she should never have been exposed, memories for which she had no way to be prepared.

  Leah.

  “Where is she?” he asked Keri; along the periphery of his vision he saw her hands stiffen and he knew she understood what he was asking. She grabbed for his hand, but he pulled it away; she grabbed for it again, claw-like, her eyes suddenly holding his gaze, telling him he would get nothing out of her until he was examined.

  “Tell me,” he breathed.

  She ignored him and grabbed his hand; he let her. She took his pulse, eyes closed and counting under her breath. Satisfied, she released his hand and grabbed his chin, covered one of his eyes and then revealed it. The light hurt, little though there was. She grabbed him and dug her fingers into his head, pushing at pressure points that made him wince; she pulled back and nodded; while psychologically fuzzy, he at least seemed physiologically fine.

  “Bend over, then back up,” she commanded. Raven did as asked and felt his stomach do backflips as the world spun. He held on and concealed the feeling, standing straight-backed and easy.

  “Dizziness? Nauseau?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “You can see fine? Hear?”

  “Yes. Where is she?”

  She looked him up and down. “Then there’s no reason for me to keep you here. Except that you just lied to me. Twice.” She pushed against his chest at just the right angle and he lost his balance and fell back on the pile of blankets on which he’d awoke. “You’re not going anywhere – no, shut your mouth, I won’t answer that question.”

  Raven’s anger must have shown on his face, because she came closer and stood over him, trying to keep him where he was by force of will alone.

  “You’re not just some soldier who switched sides like you were at Aemon’s Stand,” she said. “You’re the Prince of the Veil now, the leader of the Exiled Kindred in this war.”

  She saw his hard, stony expression, and she knelt in front of him, her eyes wide and bright, and her look emphatic. Something shifted as she looked at him, and softness crept into that look, a softness that drove fear right through his heart. Her eyes changed, and Raven realized she’d made a decision.

  “I know you want to help her,” she said quietly. “But you can’t.”

  “Why not?” he asked immediately, challenging her with his eyes and tone.

  “She is beyond help,” she said softly. “Her heart stopped an hour ago.”

  Raven felt a stone drop down into the pit of his stomach, and his hearing faded away until only a sourceless ringing surrounded him. Before he knew what was happening, he was up again, shouldering his way past her –

  An iron bar of an arm stopped him, grabbing his cotton tunic and the skin beneath. He tried to push away, tried to get past her, but in the haze of his mind he couldn’t make his arms and body work the right way –

  “Stop it!” she hissed at him, throwing him back away from the opening of the partitioned area that enclosed them. “I told you because you needed to know, not because you could do anything. She’s gone – even you cannot bring her back. You don’t have her memories, you don’t have her life – you cannot save her.”

  The fight went out of him; she was right. His vision blurred as his eyes relaxed, focus slipping away, and he staggered sideways. The memories from Geofred came back to him once more, the images of blood and death choking him, drowning him; and the admission Geofred had made that even he, the far-seeing Prince of Eagles, didn’t know if the transfer would work.

  She might not even survive the transfer … that’s what he said.

  Elder Keri was speaking to him, and with a huge effort of will he managed to focus on what she was saying.

  “… you aren’t healthy enough to leave. I need you to lie back down; something has happened to you; I can see it in your eyes. And I’m not talking about the obvious concussion; I’m talking about whatever you saw when you went through Geofred’s mind. The same thing that killed her must have injured you. You must stay here, Raven. You need time.”

  His upper lip curled in disgust. Time? What did one more second matter when the people you loved could die? Time only brought on more chance for pain, more chance for others to be taken too.

  Time is not our friend.

  His jaw was clenched so tightly it had begun to ache. With a supreme effort of will, he relaxed the muscles and managed to form words.

  “I’m leaving this place,” he said to her, speaking in a stark, level tone. “People are dying out there because of my plan. If I am their Prince, then it is my duty to be with them. It is my duty to die with them.”

  “You will do nothing for them or anyone else by dying,” she said quickly. Her eyes were wild now, and she looked as though she realized she’d made a grave miscalculation by telling him about Leah.

  “I am your Prince, and you cannot hold me.”

  “I am an Elder of the Exiled Kindred, one of those who gave you your power, and I am the Healing Elder besides,” she said, spearing him with eyes full of authority. “There is something wrong inside you, and if you take one second to examine yourself, you will see it too.”

  I do see it; it’s what makes me want to die.

  “Move, or you will be moved.”

  “Raven,” she said quickly, “I understand your pain. But there is nothing you can do – killing others will not bring her back; even dying yourself cannot change what has already –”

  As if in a dream, Raven saw himself from the outside. He watched from up and behind as he reached out and struck the beautiful, matronly woman in the throat, cutting off her words. Her eyes were round in shock, and her mouth worked wordlessly. She tried to turn and get past the partitions for help, but with one quick motion Raven struck a nerve cluster in her back, spun her around, and dropped her on the pile of blankets where he had lain recovering. She didn’t move – she couldn’t. She still breathed, but her limbs would remain paralyzed for an hour, maybe more.

  He turned to leave, and realized he felt no remorse. In truth, he felt nothing at all. News of Leah’s death had drained everything from him, leaving behind a ringing, hollow note that spoke of apathy. And even this thought, even this recognition, couldn’t sway him.

  He just couldn’t care anymore.

  He stopped at the entrance to the small, secluded space he’d been given to recover and saw his armor had been placed at the entrance, carelessly thrown there by whomever had removed it. He bent and grabbed it, slowly slipping it on over his tunic and cotton pants. The motions were all mechanical, and when he’d settled the black cloak in place over it all, he left without looking back.

  Strange, he thought to himself in a vague, distracted way, my sword is missing.

  He walked through the grand hall, between sheets and piles of blankets. Screams were everywhere, like mortal things, and they clawed and scratched at him, pulled and tugged at his mind, but he was impenetrable. The thought of Leah touched the corner of his mind, the Exile girl with the green eyes and midnight hair, and he wondered vaguely if she’d died in pain.

  Geofred said she might not survive the transfer. He said it – I just didn’t believe it.

  He left the room, passing by Healers talking frantically to reserve officers, runners delivering messages, more wounded being carried in on stretchers. The more grievously wounded were rushed immediately upstairs to the second and third levels of the house, and the marble staircase was buried in a mad rush of frantic humanity. He left by the front door.

  The first sight he fixed on was the sky, which had deepened into the early stages of twilight. He’d been out almost a full day. His gaze then fell
on the ruins of the Cathedral of the Empress. Destroying it was a huge symbolic blow to her power and cause for Kindred celebration, but as Raven’s eyes slid past, the sight stirred no pride or joy in him. It was a heaping pile of wreckage; he had caused many such ruins, and doubtless would again. He lowered his eyes to street level, and saw men and women rushing about the large square between various manor houses. Their frantic movement and anxiety seemed pointless.

  A command post had been set up in the center of the courtyard, equidistant from the major Kindred-occupied houses, and maybe fifty yards from the open gates that led to the rest of the city. Figures moved there. He walked down the mansion’s steps as men and women in the plain cotton homespun of the Commons, brown and gray and off-white yellow, were being herded past him into houses. Children cried in the arms of mothers and fathers or sometimes what could only be brothers and sisters barely a handful of years older. Many of them were carrying what salvage they had pulled from their homes: clothes, shoes, maybe a pouch of copper coins. They looked terrified, but at least they were inside the gates. He had saved them when he’d run from Formaux to Banelyn to warn the Kindred of Dysuna’s approach.

  My sister, the Prince of Wolves.

  Emotion finally came to him, and it was a bleak hopelessness that settled into his very bones. He continued moving, though; some part of him was still driving forward, out of habit or routine. But that first emotion led to others, ones he didn’t care to interpret, and at the center of it all was something that seemed to stir inside him, awakening as if from sleep, like a formerly sedated beast.

  “My Prince!”

  The voice drew him from his musings, and he looked up as he approached the command post. There were five hunched forms huddled around a large wood table that spilled yellow scraps of parchment and wide unrolled maps. Various runners in silver and green came and went, leaving reports and taking orders. One of the five hunched forms was waving frantically to him; it was one of the Generals, in their stately green and silver uniforms. There were two of them left, Gates and Dunhold, after Henri Perci had killed Wyck, and Oleander had been revealed as a Visigony-made construct.

  Geofred said Perci betrayed us it to save the Kindred. Is that possible?

  Dunhold was waving; it must have been he who shouted. Gates looked to have been recently patched up: his arm was in a sling and his cheek had a bleeding bandage held in place with a thick strip of linen twisted around his head. Raven remembered vaguely that he was the one who’d rushed into the Cathedral just before it collapsed to tell them Dysuna was invading. The three other figures became clearer as the oil lamps that lined the streets were lit, their flickering fire pushing back night’s swift descent. But as the light brightened, it caught something else: smoke. The sky was full of it – that was strange. Looking up, he realized the whole of the night was painted with a billowing haze that seemed to roll across the city from the south like an evil miasma. He could smell it now too – it was so thick in the center of the courtyard Kindred were choking on it as they ran.

  He crossed the threshold of the command post – really nothing more than the command tent they’d used for months now modified so that the sides were open to allow runners in and out – and the other huddled figures were revealed: Elder Ishmael, the head of the Kindred Rangers and Rogues; Elder Spader, the Elder of Law; and a tall square-jawed captain he knew from sight alone, wearing a black cape with silver threading. Likely the man was Autmaran’s replacement until he returned from Formaux.

  Autmaran and the others will never make it here in time to help. They’ll be a day away at least by the main road, even if they ride their horses into the ground.

  “It is good to see you awake, my Prince,” Gates said, with a strained effort at courtesy; the man’s thick mustache always seemed to bristle with impatience.

  “It is good to be awake,” Raven said. He looked down and saw they were pouring over a map of Banelyn. The others each said something to him as well, something he didn’t care enough to hear, so he let the chorus of voices wash over him and pass by as he poured over the map. One of the gates had been compromised – the Formaux gate. The entire Imperial army, indicated by stones the tan and gray of Dysuna’s colors, was located on the other side. He looked up again.

  “Are they through the gate?”

  “No,” Dunhold said immediately, running his hand through his thick black-gray hair as if calming an anxious pet. “We are holding them, but I don’t know how long we can go on with a compromised gate.”

  Raven nodded. He wasn’t surprised Dunhold and Gates were in charge here. Both were experts at defense, and between the two of them, the Kindred could hold the Black Wall for months with proper supplies. But neither general worked well under pressure, and as they were, undersupplied, undermanned, and facing Dysuna, Raven was much less confident.

  She will be at the forefront of the next attack. As soon as something opens up, she will be there.

  A runner came up and the others turned to listen to the report. Raven ignored her and focused on the maps. There weren’t enough men at that gate to hold it if the gate itself was compromised, which would be the only reason to focus there and nowhere else.

  “ … Henry Perci –”

  Raven looked up and faced the runner immediately.

  “What about Henri Perci?”

  “He – he’s led an excursion force over the Wall through a hidden stairwell, the same one we used to surprise the Banelyners when we attacked, my Prince.”

  “Why wasn’t it guarded?”

  His voice came out flat and cold, without emotion.

  “My – my Prince, it was guarded, but when Henri Perci came he brought soldiers with him, and there are men in the rest of the army that have flocked to him, his own men from when he was a commander –”

  Raven turned to the others.

  “Did you spread the word of his betrayal?”

  They stared at him with open mouths, with a sudden wariness in their eyes. That was strange, but Raven didn’t care enough to question it. He was floating in a blank emptiness brought on by Leah’s death –green eyes that would never see again, a hard, angular face that would never again break into an unexpected smile – and the only thought that seemed able to draw him out was the prospect of facing Henri Perci in battle and making him pay for what he’d done.

  He deserves to die, Raven thought without remorse. He had always viewed death as terrible; he knew too much of it to think otherwise. But not this time. This time he found himself relishing the idea of killing the man, even taking his memories so that he could live the deed a second time.

  “We need to lead a counter-attack,” he said. He dropped a hand to his side and realized again he was weaponless. His sword, Aemon’s Blade, was gone.

  “I will lead it,” he said, striding forward. “General Dunhold – I require your sword.”

  The General complied immediately, unbuckling the simple broadsword on an ornate, silvery belt and silently handing it over. As he did, Raven caught movement out of the corner of his eye; Spader had glanced at Ishmael, and the two Elders had shared an unreadable look that had likely been a whole conversation of its own.

  Why should I care about their secrets? Let them have them.

  “Captain,” he said to the man in the black and silver cloak, “gather what men you have in reserve and come with me.”

  The man saluted sharply and turned to call for his troops. Elders Spader and Ishmael exchanged a second glance, and this time it was sharper, and spurred the former man to action. Spader approached him, his amber robes and short, brown-gray hair both more ruffled than usual.

  “My Prince,” Spader said, speaking much more formally than he usually did, and standing further away than Raven would have expected. The man usually treated Raven like a favored nephew, one that showed promise and was often good for a laugh. But as Raven looked up and caught the tawny eyes with his black ones, holding them, it was clear to both of them that relationship had changed.
Spader’s face turned gray, but he did not drop his gaze. “My Prince,” he repeated, “what has happened to you? Are you certain you are well enough to lead a charge yourself?”

  “I took a walk in my brother’s mind,” he said. “And didn’t like what I found.”

  Raven tried to smile, and felt his mouth move in response, but the expression made Spader take a step back, which amused him.

  “Did Elder Keri clear you?” Spader asked slowly, his eyes flicking back and forth across Raven’s face, looking for something that wasn’t there. “She said she wouldn’t let you out here until you were well enough to endure the stress of your position. I assumed you’d spoke to her and passed any kind of examination she might have administered –”

  “She knows I left,” he said simply.

  “I am sorry to insist,” the Elder said, his usual dry, amused tone completely absent. “But that is not the answer to my question.”

  “No, you are right. It is the answer I gave you.”

  He pierced the Elder with his stare, doing nothing more than gazing at him, and Spader swallowed hard. The Prince tried to smile again, but once more the motion seemed to have the opposite, unintended effect.

  “Raven,” Spader said, his voice pitched low so no one else could hear. “What has happened? You are not yourself. What has gone out of you? Something is wrong, can’t you see that? Look inside yourself; what have you lost?”

  Memories of Leah flooded him in a rush; his jaw clenched and his eyes stung.

  “What I lost there is no way to find,” he said levelly, looking away as he finished buckling on his borrowed sword, trying to hide the pain until he could safely stow it away once more in a corner of his heart. His hands were shaking; he forced them to stop.

  Elder Spader opened his mouth to ask another question, but before he could do so, Raven brushed past him in a brusque, formal manner; the black-cloaked captain stood at attention just beyond the edge of the tent, ready to depart. There were at least a hundred men and women with him, many newly stitched or patched, some old and grizzled, all clearly reserve units. That was much less than he had anticipated, but it made sense. The bulk of the troops would be at the Wall: he was left with whatever could be scraped together. Raven nodded to the captain.