The Prince of the Veil

by Hal Emerson

  She cut off and looked at Raven.

  “That’s what you’re talking about isn’t it?” she asked, watching him carefully. “He’s pure. He’s innocent.”

  “And without pretension,” Raven continued, still examining Symanta’s memories. “The Aspect isn’t about an actual gift of extra sight. I thought it was, but I was wrong, we all were. Symanta guarded the real secret of it so closely none of us understood it – it doesn’t give anything, it takes. It strips away the blinders we put over our own eyes – it makes the bearer see the world unaltered, free from prejudice or subjectivity. It gives us the sight we were born with, and forces us to see the world as it is, not as we want it to be.”

  He looked to Tomaz.

  “And that’s why it had to go to Tym,” he sighed. “That’s the way he sees the world already, at least in part. He’s like you, Tomaz, but on the inside – he’s got a strength that none of us could even imagine. He sees the world exactly as it is, and still believes it’s good, still believes in good people. The Aspect heightens it, makes it much more potent. It was the same with Symanta, from what I can see in her memories, but in reverse – her strength was that she had no desire to hide from the world’s evil. She saw everything – every flaw, every imperfection, and knew how to exploit it. But Tym – he sees the good. He sees every virtue, and knows how to bring it out of you. He sees each of us … I don’t know how he does it. How can you see the world that way all the time? How can someone be that brave?”

  He shuddered, and slid off the edge of the bed onto his knees.

  “Whoa there,” Tomaz said, catching him as Leah circled around behind him and kept him upright. “What happened there? Is it the memories?”

  “Memories, yes, but not Symanta’s. Mine.”

  “What does that mean? You have to let us in, princeling.”

  “I saw myself and what I’ve been doing,” he said. “I saw who I’m becoming … I’m becoming like my Mother.”

  He had to give them credit: both Tomaz and Leah took this comment in stride, without batting an eyelash. But maybe that was worse; did that mean they had seen it too?

  “Part of why I wanted to avoid Lerne was to avoid killing her,” he said abruptly, unable to look at them. “I didn’t want to kill Symanta – it’s not necessary, I thought. I don’t want to kill anyone anymore … and with the Wolf and the Raven combined, and you with your Talismans and Davydd with his, I thought it would be enough. I thought we’d find a way win anyway, despite all the odds. But what’s the point? What’s the point in fighting Her, if I can’t control the outcome of anything I set my mind to? Everywhere we turn, there’s another trap laid, another complication. Nothing is ever the same; nothing is ever easy. And now we have this impossible task before us, killing a god. How do we even go about that? How do you go about killing something that has been here, like a fixture of the earth, for a thousand years?”

  He broke off and realized his hands were shaking terribly. He clasped them together to keep them still and started rocking back and forth, his whole body aching.

  “I just … I’m so tired.”

  And with that final admission, he sagged into Tomaz’s arms, and the big man slowly lowered both of them down to the floor; Leah kept her hand on his back, but made no move to come closer. She seemed to know he needed support, not affection.

  “What do you mean when you say you feel tired?”

  “I can’t sleep, even when I try to,” he said. “I sit up, every night, holding onto the Raven Talisman, feeling the lives of everyone in the camp, reaching out farther and farther, trying to sense an attack. And as I sit there, my mind just … it goes to dark places … “

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I think of killing my Mother, like I’ve killed all the others.”

  He swallowed past the lump in his throat.

  “And I realize I want to. I want to kill her. I think about killing her the way I’ve killed Tiffenal, Ramael, Dysuna, Geofred, and now Symanta. The way I killed Keri. The way I kill everyone. And I realize I’m becoming like them. With every one of them I kill, I go a little farther down the path they’ve all traveled themselves.”

  He fell silent, and for a long moment neither Raven nor the others spoke. He heard the sound of soldiers calling to each other through the glass pane of the window, felt the warmth and heat radiating off of Tomaz along with the strong, overpowering masculine scent that was just him.

  “The first time I went to Elder Goldwyn,” Tomaz rumbled, the sound like a giant leopard’s purr against Raven’s ear as his head rested on the giant’s chest, “I said something similar. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think without reliving what I’d done. I drowned myself in any bottle I could find … and when he brought me out of my stupor long enough to speak with me, he told me that running from it all would never help. He said over and over that dark times happen to everyone, to one degree or another, and that the people who triumph, the people of true courage, are the ones who suffer through what they have to, and are strong enough to face their weakness. That’s the phrase he used that’s always stuck with me … ‘strong enough to face their weakness.’ I’d never thought about strength and weakness like that – not as a scale, but as relative terms.”

  He shifted Raven and pulled him up so he was looking the smaller man in the eye.

  “You see, you’re not one or the other,” the giant rumbled. “Strength comes from accepting your humanity, not denying it. It comes from accepting what’s been done, and knowing no life is perfect. You can only control so much, and your plans will only take you so far. Looking back, there’s no way I could ever have guessed I’d be where I am now. I bet a year ago you never would have guessed you’d know me – or that you’d have met Leah, or joined the Kindred, or any of it. We can only see so far into the future.”

  Tomaz slowly stood, pulling Raven up with him.

  “Strength is standing up after weakness pulls you to the ground,” the big man continued. “It’s knowing that glorious light casts terrible shadows. It’s the way life is.”

  “How do you know that?” Raven asked softly. “How do you know it will get better, or that it will ever be anything other than this? We could all die in this war –in the next week. I could become my Mother, or could go back to being that thing, that creature. How can you hope for something better when everything is terrible?”

  “Because I have to,” Tomaz rumbled. “Because sometimes the only way to keep the glass half full is to fight gravity. There are some things you cannot change; there are some things you can; great men and women know the difference. You are your Mother’s son – that you cannot change. You’ve taken many lives – that you cannot change. But what you choose to do next, what you choose to do – that you can change. And remember, always remember, that right here, right now, we’re with each other, and until the end of my days I will remember you and what you’ve changed in me.”

  “What?”

  “You gave me the chance to redeem myself,” the giant said, “a chance I was convinced would never come. You gave all of us a chance to stand up and be counted for what we want our lives to be, what we want people to remember us for. You are not this image you have in your head of a Black Prince; you are not the cast-off heir of an all-knowing queen. You didn’t have to come to us; you didn’t have to take up the mantle and lead the Kindred. But you did, and you became the stone that caused the mountain to split in half. You have changed, forever, who the Kindred are, and what we believe we can do. You have changed me, and what I think about redemption. And if for nothing else, I love you for that. I love you just for being, and for showing the world that someone who’s lived through horrors, who has every reason to quit, keeps going, keeps living, keeps caring.”

  The big man squeezed his shoulders in his huge hands, and Raven was shocked to find tears forming at the corners of the man’s eyes.

  “You are everything I ever hoped you’d be when I found you in the Elmist Mountains.
Everything I hoped and more. You’ve changed my life. You’ve changed everyone’s lives, and we’ll follow you to the end for that. I will follow you to the end for that.”

  He gave Raven’s shoulders one more hard squeeze, so hard it hurt, and then he stood and moved to the door. Leah came forward, taking the spot Tomaz had left empty, and embraced Raven, holding him tightly.

  “You matter to me more than I can say,” she said softly in his ear. “Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever forget what I feel for you; and if you ever need a reminder, ask me for it.”

  She let go of him, and smiled with her lips and eyes.

  “Get some sleep tonight,” she said. “We’ll take care of what needs to happen.”

  Raven opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out. He was so numb, so tired, he couldn’t even string a sentence together. He nodded, and she nodded back. Tomaz opened the door and stepped out, and Leah followed him.

  When they were gone, he felt like a part of him had left with them.

  Not knowing what to do, he went back to the bed and simply fell to his knees before it. He sat back on his heels, the tops of his boots digging into his calves and upper thighs. It hurt, but it was good. His eyes began to sting, and as he sat there, as the night rolled past him and the world didn’t stop, he found himself thinking about how easy it would be to simply let go. What would happen if he did? Would they miss him, and mourn him? Or would they consider him a coward for taking the easy way out, when they still had a war to fight?

  You matter to me more than I can say. Don’t ever forget that.

  He scrubbed a hand across his face, trying to wipe away the thoughts plaguing his mind as easily as he could wipe away the tears clinging to his cheeks. And from deep within him, he realized that he wanted to be a part of it. He wanted to hold Leah, to laugh with Tomaz. He wanted to banter with Davydd and apologize over and over to Lorna for keeping what should have been hers all along. He wanted to earn the trust Autmaran had put in him when he’d nominated Raven Prince of the Veil, and he wanted to give Tym back what he could of his childhood.

  But there was a final barrier between him and them, something that still held him back. Every time he tried to push through and reach them, it was as if his fingers were wrapped in a film that left him unable to feel their touch.

  You know what it is, though. You know – Symanta knew.

  He felt the black markings that comprised the Raven Talisman on his back begin to heat as he thought about it. Those markings weren’t the true Talisman, only a Bloodmage rune modified by the Visigony that gave him the Talisman’s power. The physical form, the actual stone talisman itself, resided in the Diamond Crown of the Empress, along with each of the other six. Symanta had seen it, had known from the start: the Children were bound to their Mother not through blood or ambition, but through the Talismans themselves. And the reason Raven felt the way he did, the reason he felt as though the Empress was a part of him, that she was in his blood, was that she was.

  Something fell into place with a strange thunk in his head, something he hadn’t been able to understand before. But still the final conclusion lay just out of his grasp. Something about the Talismans, about Aemon’s Blade … but it was gone, and he couldn’t think of it. He moved to the bed, his head in his hands, pressing his palms against his temples.

  There’s an answer here … there’s a way to win.

  But the sudden flash of insight had left him as quickly as it had come. He sighed and fell back on the bed; immediately, the weariness of countless sleepless nights rushed over him. He managed to remove his boots and clothing before crawling into bed, but as soon as he hit the pillow his mind blanked out, and he fell into the deepest sleep he’d had since leaving Vale.

  Chapter Fourteen: The Final Road

  The next morning, Raven woke with a shock, jolted out of a dream he couldn’t remember. His lips felt dry and strangely heavy, and his body was stiff in the way that only came from a full night’s sleep. He blinked a few times, trying to start his mind up, and idly noticed that bright, golden rays of sun were streaming in through the window in a beautiful cascade of light, playing with dancing motes of dust and lint.

  Sunlight. Shadows and light!

  He threw back the covers and started pulling his clothing on, wondering groggily how long he’d been asleep. He hopped over to the window as he thrust a foot into his boot and looked outside. The tents were being taken down, and a number of soldiers were already walking toward the edge of the town, lining up in formation. A bolt of panic went through him – why didn’t someone wake me up?! – and he turned to run for the door.

  It opened inward just as he reached it; he ran into it face-first.

  “AHH!”

  “ARGH!”

  “P-prince Raven, I’m so sorry!”

  Raven pulled back, holding his nose, which was throbbing terribly, and looked at the source of the voice. It was a young man, about seventeen, with fine blonde hair and blue eyes –

  “Tym,” Raven said, remembering in a rush what had happened the previous night. The boy was only a few inches shorter than him now, and somewhere someone had found him new clothes – green and black soldier’s gear over a thin leather cuirass, likely the only thing anyone had on hand big enough to fit him. A sword had been strapped around his waist, though by the way he was standing it was clear he wasn’t used to wearing it, nor did he have any experience using it.

  “Prince Raven, sir,” he said, his voice still tenor in quality, but with the deeper roots that showed he’d passed through most of his adolescence. “I – I was sent by Miss Leah and Mr. Tomaz to tell you we’re leaving. They’ve taken care of everything. Well, Commander Autmaran has taken care of everything, but either way, it’s all done. All you need to do is dress and eat, and then meet them in the square.”

  Raven nodded silently, still examining the boy.

  “Oh-okay,” Tym said, turning to go.

  “I’m sorry, Tym,” Raven said abruptly. “I never meant for –”

  Raven cut off as the markings along Tym’s neck glowed a soft, soothing green, and the boy turned back to him, suddenly seeing through him.

  “You saved my life, Prince Raven, sir,” Tym said. “And now I have a way to help you – you gave me what I’ve always wanted. A way to be good.”

  Raven felt a lump forming in his throat, and the boy continued on, seeing and understanding the emotion immediately.

  “You don’t need to regret anything, sir. You’ve saved my life twice now.”

  He smiled a brilliant smile, his full white teeth making Raven smile too, even though it was partially against his will.

  “I should be going,” he said, and bowed his head. Raven nodded back and watched him go, walking slightly awkwardly on his new long legs, but with a swift surety of purpose.

  Maybe … maybe something good came out of this after all.

  Raven gave his nose a final rub, decided it was still intact enough to live with, and turned back to examine the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He glanced through the window once more and saw Davydd and Lorna ride past. Surprised, he crossed the room and watched them go, a large group of soldiers riding with them in Rangers uniforms of black and gold with hints of green. They crossed to the edge of the town and disappeared into the morning mist that still cloaked the edges of the land despite the sun’s overhead splendor.

  They must have agreed to leave early for the distant city of Tyne with their handpicked men and women. The two of them, now with a pair of Aspects collectively, were likely a match for anything they might come across. Even a full group of thirteen Bloodmages would have trouble with them, and between Davydd’s luck, Lorna’s healing, and both their Valerium weapons – Davydd’s sword Titania and Lorna’s newly hafted battle axe – they were a deadly force all on their own; when a hundred Rangers were added to the mix, the result was potent indeed.

  Except … they were going up against Rikard, the oldest and most powerful of the
Children, in his own city, in the middle of a war, when he had to know someone was coming. Raven knew his brother very well because he feared him more than any of the others – all the Children did – and Rikard would be ready for this. There was no type of battle he hadn’t been a part of, no tactic he hadn’t rehearsed. Geofred, the former Prince of Eagles, had been the one who could see events before they unfolded; Rikard was so battle-hardened he’d already seen the events unfold, and had come up with a response for each of them.

  Something tickled the back of his mind, and Raven realized he still had the Wolf Talisman, not Lorna.

  He shot back across the room, out the door, and down the stairs, oblivious to any of his surroundings. He looked around frantically outside, saw Melyngale tied to a hitching post nearby, undid the reins, and heeled the horse through the surrounding soldiers, who leapt out of his way.

  He pulled up just outside the city, where Lorna and Davydd had stopped their group and were doing a final equipment check before heading out. When he arrived in a swirling of mist, they all looked at him as if he was crazy.

  “What are you doing here, princeling?” Davydd asked. He was not sitting comfortably on his horse, and Raven realized there was one last thing he had to do before he gave up the Wolf. “I’m not kissing you goodbye, so don’t ask.”

  Raven rode up to Davydd, ignoring the man’s quip, and reached for him. Taken by surprise, the Ranger tried to pulled his horse out of the way, but the angle was awkward, and there were others behind him blocking his path. Raven caught the man’s head in his right hand, and touched Aemon’s Blade with his left.

  Gray light outlined his fingers, and energy moved through him, passing to Davydd. The Ranger’s eyes widened in shock, and his mouth opened in a silent shout of alarm, looking almost as though he’d been dunked in a freezing stream. The others closed in around them, some even going for their swords, but in the next second it was over.

  Raven pulled back, and Melyngale was happy to go, eyeing Davydd’s edgy horse with distrust. The other Rangers stopped moving and simply watched on, completely bewildered. Davydd was breathing heavily, and his eyes, both red and gold, were staring at Raven as if only seeing him for the first time.