The Prince of the Veil

by Hal Emerson

  “We can only count the cities we’ve saved,” Raven said, pushing forward with the conversation, trying to keep the discussion focused on the details, and on the pragmatic approach to dealing with them. “We know it wasn’t done in Formaux, nor Banelyn. Roarke is gone, though we saved most of the population. The Kindred lands are safe – they wouldn’t have had time to attack them while we were marching north.”

  He looked around, inviting the others to volunteer anything they had to add. When no one spoke, he started to count the other list, the one none of them wanted to think about.

  “We know Lerne is gone,” he said, forcing his voice not to catch as he thought about what such an oblique phrase truly meant. “We have reason to at least suspect the same happened in Tibour. The Eyrie was Geofred’s domain and I highly doubt he left behind plans to give the Empress more power after betraying her to save me. The only major city left is Tyne – and we have no intelligence about the situation there.”

  He turned to Ishmael.

  “Do we?”

  “None since the destruction of Roarke,” he rasped in reply. “Some of our agents escaped the Lion and returned. Many have not been heard from since.”

  “So we’re blind.”

  Ishmael nodded.

  “Not for long.” Davydd stepped forward, leaning on his crutch.

  “I was hoping you’d volunteer,” Raven said.

  “No,” Leah responded immediately.

  “Yes,” Davydd retorted.

  “No,” she said again. “Absolutely not. You are not going back there, into the heart of the Lion’s den, just to make yourself look brave!”

  “No,” Raven said, his voice calm and hard as iron, “he’s going back to get us the information we need to move forward.”

  Leah stared daggers at him, but before she could speak, Tomaz broke in.

  “He is the best choice, Eshendai,” rumbled the giant. “He has the Aspect of Luck now, and he –”

  And then something strange happened – light seemed to burst inside Raven’s head, and Davydd inexplicably dove to the floor. Leah’s eyes went completely blue, like glowing sapphires, and both Ishmael and Spader had pulled out their sambolin, holding them as if ready to do battle. Men in black cloaks came through the tent opening bearing crossbows, and arrows lanced across the room, striking both Tomaz and Leah in the chest.

  “NO!”

  Raven pulled out Aemon’s Blade before he had time to think about what he was doing, and struck the hands off the man closest to him, sending the crossbow to the ground as the man cried out in pain and crumpled.

  A golden eye on a golden chain fell from his black cloak.

  Seekers.

  Tomaz, his armor outlined in glowing red, roared out a challenge and cut down two of the men with his greatsword Malachi, unseaming them side to side. Both the Generals and the Elders had been pushed to the ground, tackled by Autmaran and Lorna. Leah stood and broke off the shaft of the crossbow bolt where it had glanced away and gotten stuck in her leather armor; she unsheathed her daggers and threw them in opposite directions, killing two Seekers simultaneously.

  Shouts and cries came from outside the tent as well.

  How many are there?

  Raven reached out through the Raven Talisman and found himself blinded by a sickly green light that pounded into his head behind his closed eyelids. He opened his eyes again just as his sister, Symanta, rushed into the tent. She wore no armor, and was flanked by two men in black robes, wearing both the Eye of Truth and a Bloodmage crystal around their necks. They raised their hands and shouted words in a language Raven couldn’t understand, and a crushing weight fell on them all, pushing them to the ground.

  Leah flung her arms out wide, and brought them fast together in a loud clap.

  Her daggers shot through the sides of the tent and struck both men in the side of the neck, downing them in an instant. The pressure disappeared, but she was too late; the men had served their purpose, and allowed Symanta to close distance with Raven. She strode forward, knelt over him, and stabbed downward with her dagger.

  The razor sharp point pierced Raven’s neck, and blood sprayed across the room. Pain shot through his body, and then a strange numbness that seemed to cover it. He was so shocked all he could do was stare up at her, helpless, as his life rushed out of him.

  “YESSSS!”

  The cry was a hissing, boiling shout of triumph that filled the tent and set off a frenzy of movement even more frantic than what had been before. Leah dove for the two men in black as they tried to rise; Tomaz came for Raven, but it was too late.

  “Die! Die you wrecked bastard! You traitor!”

  She spat the words at him, spittle flying from her lips as her hair cascaded in front of her wild eyes.

  “Die for everything you’ve done to us! DIE!”

  She stabbed him again, once more in the neck, and then once in the chest and twice in the gut before Tomaz grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and flung her across the room to crash into the map table, sending papers flying and breaking the table itself into kindling. Raven gasped and bled where he lay on the floor, knowing he should be dead, but even as the thought crossed his mind, the Wolf Talisman drew on the energy stored within him, and his wounds closed and began to heal.

  He heard a shout of incredulity, and realized Symanta was watching him.

  “NO! No – that’s impossible! You’re the Raven, not the Wolf, you can’t do that!”

  She continued raving as she came back to her feet. Tomaz went to grab her once more, but she looked at him, the green lines glowing sickly along the sides of her neck, and dodged his arms and tripped him, sending him sprawling to the floor. Leah ran for her next, with Davydd right beside her, but Symanta evaded them both, sending Leah sprawling as she read the truth of her every move, and striking Davydd in his wounded leg, her own Talisman cancelling out his Luck when he got too close.

  Raven pulled out Aemon’s Blade and emptied his mind of all emotion, staggering back to his feet.

  She’ll read any emotion I have and use it to predict my movement. I’m an open book – there’s no way I can regain enough composure to fight her fairly.

  And then a thought occurred to him, and he reached down inside and pulled out an emotion he’d been holding down since Lerne: fear. He let it show on his face for a split second, and she caught it just as he knew she would. She came at him with her single dagger, already reading him, knowing what he would do next in his fear –

  He stepped forward and rammed Aemon’s Blade through her stomach.

  The last emotion he ever saw on his sister’s face was surprise. She slowly crumbled around the Blade, and as she died she looked him in the eye, opened her mouth to speak …

  And spat in his face.

  She went limp. Memories flowed to him. He pushed them away, tried to hold them down, and realized he could. She was nearly eighty years old, and though the memories were hard to bear, it was manageable. He saw the images flash before his eyes, but at the same time was able to stand up, wipe the spittle from his face, and look around at the others.

  They were all alive, all still standing. The bolts that had hit Leah and Tomaz had been deflected just enough by armor that they were bruised but fine. Davydd was alive, and Lorna and Autmaran had forced the Elders and Generals to the ground, saving their lives. They were all there, all except for …

  “Tym,” he said, looking around everywhere. “Where is he?”

  “Who?” asked Gates, confused.

  “The boy – the boy – where is he?”

  “Raven,” Leah said. He turned and saw her bend over to pick up a small, unmoving form that had an arrow sprouting from his chest.

  “No,” Raven said immediately, “no no, no no, no NO NO NO NO!!!”

  He ran to Tym and pulled him from Leah’s grasped with a ferocity born of madness. He didn’t know what was happening – the world was leaping by in flashes, and his mind wasn’t able to catch up.

  He�
��s going to die, just like Goldwyn, just like Keri, just like everyone –

  “No,” he whispered. “No, not this one. Not this time.”

  He reached to his side and grabbed the hilt of Aemon’s Blade and pulled strength through it. He pushed it into Tym, taking his own life and giving it to the boy the way he’d done months ago in the city of Vale. He ripped the arrow from the boy’s chest, using his new stolen strength, and blood welled up immediately. He pushed his hand down over the hole and reached deeper through the Talisman.

  But the boy was too far gone. The mouth of the wound crawled and pulled together, but Raven had no reserves left to finish it. The blood continued to flow, and Raven knew that even if he closed the mouth of the wound, he couldn’t heal what was inside. He didn’t have the strength for it.

  The Talisman.

  “Raven, do it!” Leah said, reading his thoughts, spearing him with her eyes over the body of the boy. “Give him the Talisman – it’s the only way!”

  But there are two Talismans. Which one do I give?

  The Wolf would save him, but even as the thought crossed his mind he knew it wasn’t right. The Wolf belonged to Lorna, it always had.

  But he had Symanta’s now … he had the Snake.

  The Snake Talisman … always sees the truth … always knows the truth … honesty … integrity?

  The Aspect of Truth? The Aspect of Caring? The Aspect of –?

  Innocence.

  And just that quickly, Raven knew it was Tym, knew it had been him all along. The boy had been drawn to him, just like all the others. He grabbed Aemon’s Blade and reached down inside himself like he had done with Tomaz at Aemon’s Stand. He pulled the Talisman up and out and through him. His neck and mouth closed off and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe, but the sensation passed and he gasped for air, pushing himself to keep going.

  The boy’s body began to twist and contort itself beneath him, and though his throat and mouth were closed off, he was still trying to scream. He began to grow before Raven’s eyes, his body going through the gawky, lean phases of puberty and early adolescence in a matter of seconds. His legs stretched, grew, his arms shot out, his round, chubby face narrowed and hardened into a shelf of brow line and the beginnings of a strong jaw.

  In horror, Raven tried to stop it, tried to pull the Talisman back through the bond he still shared with the boy, but it was no use. The Talisman was his now, and there was nothing Raven could do.

  The aging finally stopped, and Tym’s mouth and nose cleared. He gasped a huge, rushing breath of air like a drowned man bursting through the barrier between sea and sky. Coughing and hacking, the boy looked around.

  The boy … the young man.

  He was searching for someone, and Raven grabbed hold of the boy’s hand, so big now it was nearly the size of his own. Tym felt the pressure of the touch, and his fingers sought and held Raven’s pulse. The tips of his fingers glowed green, and so did the area along his neck.

  Tym turned and looked up at Raven with his bright, clear blue eyes. His throat glowed a pure, sparkling emerald, and he reached out a hand to touch Raven’s face.

  “Please,” he said, “don’t be sad.”

  Raven began to weep.

  Chapter Thirteen: Innocence

  Raven fled the tent. He left Tym where he was, dropping him unceremoniously to the ground before turning and rushing blindly out into the falling night. There were still shouts and cries sounding around him, but they were calls for Healers and guard patrols, not the sounds of battle. The attack itself was over.

  It was meant for me alone – she wanted my head and nothing else, and we stopped her.

  But the cost was too high.

  He heard vague movement behind him as someone else left the Council tent, but he kept moving, trying to get away. He passed into the first row of buildings, making his way through a confused ring of soldiers searching the area, dragging brown- and black-cloaked bodies across the courtyard into the light so as to count the number of their attackers. Barely any of them recognized their Prince; in the darkness, he looked to be just another man.

  He would have kept going, and who knows how far he would have gone, but a hand grabbed and stopped him.

  Raven’s impotent rage boiled up inside him and blew the lid off his temper. He spun and struck the big hand from off him, only realizing it was Tomaz when he’d turned to face the man.

  And it was only then that he realized he’d let go of the Raven Talisman.

  I … I let go of it when we were fleeing Lerne too. If I had kept hold of it like I said I would, I would have seen Symanta coming. Just like Tiffenal – I let them both in close when I could have given warning far ahead of time.

  The fight disappeared from him. He felt his shoulders slump, and his stomach muscles released. His knees wanted to buckle as well, and he thought longingly, for one glorious moment, of his warm bed back on the cliff side of Vale.

  “Hey,” Tomaz rumbled, his voice soft and soothing. “Hey now, hold on.”

  The big man came forward and caught Raven before he fell to his knees; he held him in a tight embrace, and kept him standing.

  “I’m sorry,” Raven said, his words slurring almost as if he were drunk. “I don’t know why I – I don’t know what I’ve been doing. I really thought I could do it all myself, I really thought that if I tried hard enough, I could … I thought I could…. For the past few weeks it’s as if I’ve been sleep walking. I’ve been living in a dream of some kind … I don’t understand, I don’t know why. I’m so sorry, Tomaz.”

  He buried his face in the man’s broad chest. Tomaz wrapped his thick arms around him and just held him there, knowing not to say a word. Raven heard someone approaching them, and didn’t need to look to know it was Leah.

  “Tomaz,” she said quietly, “bring him in here.”

  They moved, but without any real sense of urgency. It was as if they were floating: Raven’s feet barely even touched the floor. They entered through a door into a large room that smelled of sawdust and alcohol, and then up a set of wooden stairs to the top floor of an inn. They were in a hallway now with a long brown carpet running down the center of the floor, and a row of doors to either side. Leah opened one, and Tomaz led Raven toward it. Inside was a big four-poster bed with clean linen sheets. There was a vanity of good, polished wood, and a stone washbasin. The sounds of the army floated in through the window until Leah pulled it closed, wrapping them in their own private cocoon of space.

  Tomaz gently pulled Raven away from him and sat him down on the bed.

  “Raven,” the big man rumbled, “how are you feeling?”

  “I am feeling … old.”

  Leah and Tomaz exchanged a glance before the big man continued.

  “Are you … are you whole?”

  “What?”

  “After what just happened, are you whole? Are you injured?”

  “My body is fine.”

  “I was asking about your mind.”

  Raven swallowed and shrugged. He felt uncomfortable. He reached down and felt Aemon’s Blade still at his side, and saw both Leah and Tomaz follow the gesture. They all relaxed when he touched the hilt and nothing happened.

  “I shouldn’t have kept the Wolf,” he said without preamble. “I kept it for all the wrong reasons … kept it to try and give myself an edge. But it didn’t work.”

  “It worked to save you,” Leah said softly.

  “Something that could have just as easily been achieved by having Lorna pass me the Aspect through the Blade,” he said. “It’s hers, and always was. I was foolish to think I could keep it from her. I will give the Wolf to Lorna. I will. Now that Tym has the Snake Talisman, it doesn’t matter. I can’t keep collecting the rest of them. It didn’t help … it didn’t prevent any of this, and it won’t prevent anything in the future.”

  He realized he’d repeated himself a number of times, and that he was rambling. He began to stand.

  “Raven, slow down,” Leah sai
d, grabbing his arm and preventing him from rising. “What are you saying? Please – let us in. Let us know what’s going on with you. You haven’t been the same since … Banelyn.”

  The words “Elder Keri” hung in the air, and they all heard them.

  “You argue with everyone about everything,” she continued, “none of us ever know when your temper will snap, and you barely sleep. What’s going on? Let us in.”

  “Like you let me in after Goldwyn died?”

  The words were out before he could stop them, and she withdrew from the venom in his voice as if she’d been slapped. But her shock gave way to sadness, not to anger, and that was enough to make him pause.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, holding his gaze. “I shouldn’t have taken my grief out on you.”

  Silence fell between them, and Raven was the first to break the moment.

  “I’ve killed another of my sisters,” he said simply, his eyes far away, seeing again Symanta’s life. It was strange – she had lived for almost eighty years, a very long span of time all things considered, but no more than a mortal man or woman. Where he had been crippled by the memories of the other Children, this time he could stand back and examine them as they came to him, flashing before his mind’s eye.

  “I didn’t understand it before,” he said.

  “Didn’t understand what?”

  “The Snake Talisman. I didn’t understand what it really was.”

  “It’s the Aspect of Truth, right?”

  “No,” Raven said, shaking his head. “It sees truth, yes, and it sees emotion, but it also sees everything else. And that’s just the effect, not the cause.”

  “Tym,” Tomaz rumbled slowly, putting the pieces together. “You don’t think it was a coincidence he was there. You gave it to him on purpose – you gave it to him because of how he is, the way his life feels.”

  “Yes.”

  “But what is he?” Leah asked, confused. “He’s none of the things Symanta is. He’s the opposite of her – he sees only the good. He doesn’t have a deceiving bone in his body, he’s –”