by Hal Emerson
“NO!!!”
He threw the second sword end over end and saw it sink into the form of one of the pursuing men. Swords and axes cut in at him from all sides as the Guardians and even two Blade Masters attacked him as one, using Gunn Axe Forms and Szobody Sword Forms with the skill of true masters. But even when the blades found their way to flesh, they were repulsed. His skin had become as hard as steel, and no sword could cut it.
I just saved thousands. I could pick up the damn Fortress if I wanted to.
The fighting was hot, and it continued that way for long enough that Tomaz lost track of time. He slashed and cut about him, using every last trick and sword form he had learned as a Blade Master, until finally it was done.
The Kindred gave a ragged cheer, and rushed forward. The section of tower the Guardians had covered was a wide opening with no door – it could easily have fit fifty men in a single line entering it, and inside they found training rooms and equipment. Tomaz led them quickly through it all toward the place he remembered, all the while fighting back old memories that threatened to overwhelm him.
The place was the same, though it seemed smaller: a dark passageway in a distant corner, a simple stone stairway that led down in a circle to distant, unknown depths. Tomaz took a single, deep breath, and then plunged downward, the Kindred force still led by the Rogue pair Tehanyu and Likal hot on his heels.
The passage took them down, down, down, so deep that Tomaz began to feel the same claustrophobia he had suffered from in Lerne begin to encroach upon him here. He balled his hands into fists and scraped them along the sides of the underground passage as they went farther down, telling himself over and over again in his head that he had air, that he could breathe, that he had space, that he would eventually be free.
There were torches every other turning, which helped, but not much. Three times he encountered bloody red runes that disappeared as soon as he touched them, giving way with a grudging but complete obedience. Once, the shadows moved about them and Death Watchmen sprang from concealment, hoping to take them unawares; but they were unlucky to come first across Tomaz himself, and then a knot of Rangers with Valerium weapons that cut them to pieces.
It was the changing quality of the air that Tomaz sensed first, and he realized they were almost there. It smelled ancient somehow, and full of a crackling energy that put him in mind of the air after lightning. Fear began to build inside him – were they too late to save those that had already been forced down here? Had his fight with Valmok taken too long?
He turned the final rounding and emerged into a cavern even larger than the one beneath Lerne. Bodies covered the ground, and shouts of fighting came from the other side where Guardians were engaged with the last of a Kindred force that had been routed. They were fleeing up through another passage.
Davydd and Lorna.
He moved to go to them, but a glimmer of blood red caught his eye and he glanced to his right. Three Bloodmages had appeared from a side passage on the far side of the platform in the center of the room, under which had formed a pool of blood. The Bloodmages were running for three crystals held on the platform – crystals that were all three glowing with the light of activated Soul Catchers.
“Tehanyu!” he shouted. “Get the others!”
She nodded and shouted for the Kindred to follow her toward the embattled force, as Tomaz ran for the platform. The Bloodmages bent over the crystal, and didn’t even see him coming.
He ran the first one over, throwing him off the platform entirely. The other two scrambled away with shouts of alarm as the body of their fellow plummeted down to join the bodies of their victims. Tomaz saw they had drawn runes on the largest crystal in the fresh blood drying on its surface. One of the Bloodmages turned to him and unsheathed a black knife, while the second continued chanting. Tomaz dispatched the first with a backhand that sent him flying over the crystals to the far side of the platform; he stepped forward and pulled the second man up, grabbing him by the throat, just as the man’s chanting ceased.
He pulled his arm back and threw the man into the ground, where he stayed.
Tomaz stood over the Bloodmage; his cowl had fallen back to reveal a head twisted and scarred: he was missing an ear and both lips, while other self-inflicted scars covered his skin like the cracks in a desert floor. The man began to wheeze, coughing in a rhythmic way…
Not coughing. Laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Tomaz asked the man, staring down at him.
“We’ve finished it!” He coughed, spitting blood that trailed down his lips and smeared across his cheeks in the shape of a fan. “The Soul Catchers are complete, and the Empress has all the power of a million souls! And your … your Prince, stands no chance against Her!”
Tomaz felt the blood drain from his face, and he looked up to the place where the crystals rested, each pulsing with a terrible blood-red light. The Bloodmage took advantage of his indecision and spat a word of power at him, one that cut away the stone at his feet. Tomaz dove forward, rolling toward the man, who had anticipated the move and pulled out a concealed blade etched with glowing runes. The blade came for Tomaz’s chest –
A form came out of nowhere and dove between him and the attacking Bloodmage, wielding an axe made of white metal. The man died, and Lorna fell to the ground beside him.
Tomaz grabbed her up and immediately saw something was wrong. Somehow, the Aspect that was supposed to heal her had stalled, as if something was holding it back. There was a blade stuck deep in her neck. It looked as if it had been twisted there, and blood was flowing freely. Lorna locked eyes with him, and he realized his friend was dying. He reached for the knife and tried to pull it, but she cried out in pain and her whole neck bowed out. Shocked, he realized it had been twisted and caught in her spinal column itself. The only reason she wasn’t completely paralyzed or dead was that her Aspect was spending every last scrap of energy it had gathered to keep her body working even when it shouldn’t.
If I try to pull it out … she might lose her head.
The scrape of a boot on stone behind him – he turned and cut a vague figure in two, leaving a frayed robe and two flapping halves of a body that fell into the waiting lake below. Two more Bloodmages had arrived, and as Tomaz watched, the last of them stuck his hand to the crystal and shouted a single word. A hissing sound came from the center of the platform, and as the Bloodmage raised his hand, Tomaz saw that the skin was smoking but uncharred. The world seemed to tighten, and the crystals glowed with a renewed intensity.
The man was smiling, his bald, tattooed head covered in glowing runes that were slowly turning a shade of deep, midnight black.
“You’re too late,” he rasped. “The connection is complete.”
“No,” Lorna said, grabbing at Tomaz. “No – we’re not!”
Tomaz didn’t understand what she was saying, but she pointed frantically at the man and the crystals, coughing as she did, her eyes rolling back in her head as she fought for consciousness.
Tomaz looked down at the crystals, and then back at how the Bloodmages had been conducting the ritual.
Bloody hands …
He stepped forward, removed his gauntlet, let go of the Aspect of Strength, and drew Malachi across his palm; blood blossomed instantly, and he smeared it across the crystals, all three, one after the other.
The Bloodmage ran at him, shouting for him to stop. Lorna levered herself to her feet and sunk her axe deep into his belly as he passed; he died still gasping, trying to shout, screaming through a mouth full of blood. But Tomaz paid no mind to the man; he finished smearing the crystals, stepped back, and grabbed the Aspect of Strength again, knowing deep inside that he would need it. By the gods, he would need it.
He caught Lorna as she fell on him, and her blood fell and mingled with his as she coughed again, spewing something from her lungs. She had other wounds that hadn’t healed yet; wounds the Aspect hadn’t been able to attend to as it kept her alive despite the dagger buried in her nec
k.
Both of us then, thought Tomaz brutally. Both of us into the fire.
The crystals began to pulse at a different rate; first one, then the others, like flames flickering out of synch, before they started to pulse to the same rhythm once more. Tomaz felt a tug on something somewhere behind his navel, and his mind went blank.
Pure light and power roared through him in a way he’d never thought possible, flowing through the bond he now shared with Raven, splitting the power the Bloodmages had gathered to feed the Empress and funneling it in equal measure to the Prince.
Light radiated out of him, blasting all thoughts aside, all hopes, all plans. The cavernous room shook with a light both red and white, blinding Tomaz and the few remaining Kindred and Imperial fighters still there to look at him. He pulled all the strength he could manage from his Aspect, and he knelt, resting the point of Malachi upon the ground, his hands and head upon the sword’s pommel, as if praying to the gods of old.
Please, let it be enough. And please, whatever gods may be, grant me the strength to hold this bond until the battle is won.
He silenced his mind, and waited, kneeling like a mountain, immovable.
Chapter Thirty-One: Prince of the Veil
Raven ran for his Mother. She raised a hand and flicked it at him, speaking a word of power that should have sent him flying across the room into the blackstone walls, but instead flew past him. He saw her eyes widen, and then she hissed, and her eyes burned red and she uttered the word again. This time it rolled out of her with such power that the air between them wrinkled like a piece of fabric, twisting and warping as the world bent to her Command.
Raven flew through the air twenty feet to crash into the blackstone wall, and spun back to his feet immediately, but didn’t attack again. His heart had sunk somewhere between his knees and stomach, and suddenly Aemon’s Blade felt like a dead weight in his hands. He saw again her eyes, glowing with a blood red light so brilliant he was forced to squint his eyes to narrow slits. She had thrown her head back and was laughing at nothing, her body racked with the ecstasy of such overwhelming power, the sound of her voice crashing over him like waves.
The Bloodmages had finished the ritual. She had the power of three slaughtered cities at her command, and there was nothing he could do to equal it.
The others failed, he realized, and I was too late.
“That power is not yours,” Raven said, still fighting with all his might to keep his nerve, locking his knees so they wouldn’t shake. “Release it!”
“Too late,” she whispered.
She threw back her head and thrust her arms out to either side. Light the color of blood flooded the chamber, shining from the cruel Diamond Crown she wore, and Raven, still reaching through his Talisman, felt a light burst in his head so bright it paled the sun a thousand times over.
He drew as deeply as he could on the Crown of Aspects, throwing up his hands in front of his face, and suddenly power such as he had never imagined was flooding through him as well. His vision broadened, expanded, until he could see every crack and crevice in the stones around him, every swirling current of air, even the impossibly small flaws in the Diamond Throne itself. He saw how everything fit together, how the weight of the vaulting ceiling was dissipated by the blackstone pillars, how the beautiful gown the Empress wore had been sewn together, even the spells that gone into making the Diamond Crown itself.
He saw the entire world and knew its workings.
How is this possible?
“No!” shouted the Empress. “No! It is mine – I need it all! Give it back!”
She spat a word of Command and a black sword that drank in the light from the Crowns materialized in her hand as she bent reality to her will, tearing the Veil. She flew across the chamber at him, moving so quickly it was as though she’d simply appeared before him. Raven raised Aemon’s Blade more by reaction than design, and caught the black sword, turning it aside. Her eyes widened as she truly saw the white blade for the first time, and as her gaze fell on it the Blade glowed even brighter, its shining white light eager for the battle.
“Aemon says hello,” Raven snarled at her, and threw her away. She shouted a word of power as she fell to her knees, and flames encompassed him. The pain was so intense he almost blacked out, but in the split second it took him to understand what was happening, he’d already opened his mouth and shouted another word back at her, a word that was more of a raw sound than anything else, full of intention but unformed. The power in him took the sound and twisted it, conforming reality to his will, and the fire winked out as a huge wind rushed away from him on all sides. The force of the gale was so intense that pillars around him cracked down their entire length, and pieces of marble and blackstone fell around him as dust hazed the room.
He raised his head and met his Mother’s eye.
“Die!” she snarled at him.
The sound pierced him and his heart skipped a beat as his mind shorted out. For the time of a long, indrawn breath, he saw the yawning abyss that was set to swallow him whole. But in the space of that breath the Crown of Aspects flashed and threw the Command away, freeing him. Air rushed into his lungs, blood pumped through his veins, and the world exploded back into focus in beautiful, vibrant light. He staggered forward, regaining his balance, and raised Aemon’s Blade. The Empress shouted a wordless cry of anger, and the sound of it shot a rippling wave of energy out from her in a huge, building swell that passed him by unscathed and instead broke against the walls with such force that it blew them out in a shower of stone and mortar that rained down on the other towers, breaking through the buttressed roofs and caving in beautifully constructed walls.
She raised her midnight blade, the darkness of it drinking in the light, and started forward. He raised Aemon’s Blade and did the same, spinning the sword in his hands, feeling its comforting weight even as his heart and stomach clenched in fear.
They met with a ringing clash of metal, amidst a building, crackling energy that stood ready to consume them both.
* * *
The Imperial army was decimated, and as Autmaran watched, the remaining soldiers threw down their weapons and fled. A ragged cheer went up from the Kindred on the walls, a cheer that the rest of the soldiers on the ground behind him took up as well.
Shadows and fire … we just defeated the Imperial Army.
He felt an energy run through him as if fire now burned in his veins and his weariness momentarily left him. Their casualties were high, he knew that much for certain, but they had won.
“Polim; Palum!” he called down to the mounted Ranger pair, “take a thousand Kindred and hound them all the way to the Elmist Mountains!”
They shouted back their affirmations, and called their troops to follow them. The portcullis was pulled up, the battered gates opened, and a sizeable chunk of the remaining Exiles departed – nearly half the ones that still had mounts – and raced across the Plains of al’Manthian. After the Visigony had been dealt with, it had been the Kindred’s fight to lose. Their position was superior, their force better deployed, and they were fighting for their very lives in hostile territory. The Imperials had attacked as if they were expecting at any time for the Kindred to be ambushed from behind, but no such attack had ever materialized.
And if it hadn’t been for Tym.…
Autmaran felt a lump forming in his throat and realized the corners of his mouth had pulled down. He pursed his lips and shook his head.
Honor his sacrifice. There will be time for mourning later.
He paused, and turned.
Sounds were coming from further in the city, building slowly. The sounds themselves were distant and thin, but they were many, and as they began to crescendo, Autmaran realized the attack that had never materialized might just have come.
Dammit – I should have kept Polim and Palum here!
He began to shout out commands, not using the Aspect, simply ordering the officers to form up their troops with their backs to the gat
es. He ordered the gates kept open – if the worst occurred, if Davydd, Leah, Tomaz, and Lorna had all failed, then they needed a retreat. They needed to stretch this battle as long as possible to give time to Raven –
A huge vibration shook the city, causing the entire capital to ring like a gong struck by a mallet, and suddenly the top of the highest tower of the Fortress exploded outward, walls simply blown out like glass under pressure. A ripple of sound washed over them, a sound like a distant roar, and Autmaran felt his heart skip a beat in his chest and his knees go weak. He only just managed to keep himself from falling by grabbing onto the wall behind him. The rest of the Kindred and Commons had been similarly affected, and in droves of thousands, they clutched at each other and tried to stand again, their eyes wide with fear.
The battle has begun in earnest, Autmaran realized with a stir of fear.
But the moment passed, and the sound that had been building inside the city, the first sound, the slow crescendo, started up again and continued to build, and soon it was clear that a huge mass of people was moving toward them. Autmaran heard shouts and cries ring out as he descended from the top of the wall where he had been directing the flow of battle. The Kindred were forming up as he had commanded, this time with pikes and spears in front, infantry in the hard center, and what remained of the cavalry held in reserve. There was an urgency to their motion, and he knew they were as suddenly fearful as he was.
This city is not a place for mortal men.
