by Guy Antibes
“I have my Ropponi and Ashiyo and Yushidon know how to teleport and there are others here, including an old friend, Desiku, the assistant weapons master from my Guild days. We can more than match their sorcerers if we go all at once. Do it after the Emperor is distracted with the battles.”
Anchor nodded. “I agree.”
“I can teleport in as well,” Lotto said.
“It’s an advantage we have,” Mander said. “Valetan agrees.” He waved his hand in the air. “Let’s be bold. It is something we are all known for, is it not?”
Lotto felt the tension fade into resolve. He hadn’t noticed it build. “We are, Mander.”
~
“The stones were together. Close,” Daryaku said. “I’ll finally regain enough power to rid myself of you!”
You have my permission, should that happen, Grand Empress. It’s been twenty-five years of living in the head of a madwoman. I’m ready for release. You were unstable before you died and you’re even more unstable now. Vishan jerked her neck and she screamed. I only wish I could do more. My greatest wish is for your demise. He had said enough.
She would know he spoke from his heart. If only he controlled it physically, he might will it to stop.
~
The sun rose on a dusty plain. Anchor looked down from the North. They had filled the battlefield during the night. The Dakkorans had set their encampment up so they had the high ground on an army coming from the South. They would this day, but Anchor’s main force would attack from the North, following the small Dakkoran force that had just joined up with the Dark Lord’s main army.
He had his buglers call across the valley to the other side and to create massive squares alternating with empty space. His marauding sailors would run into the spaces once the soldiers clashed, ready to create chaos. That was what he wanted. Antzen’s force would pour in from the East over a saddle in the hills. Restella’s force would enter the battle from the West. The Ropponi, supported by Lessa’s Prolans would fight from the South. The Dakkoran’s were hemmed in and would likely be annihilated. Anchor didn’t really want that to happen. He’d rather kill the Emperor and make all of Zarron into an ally. The result of their efforts at Foxhome were successful. He wanted this to mimic that victory. If only he could create that outcome, it would nearly be worth all of the inevitable deaths.
Anchor wanted five or more small battles in the large valley to distract the Emperor, each one beginning at a different time. He now had the numerical edge, but the Dakkorans had the advantage of preparing the southern field for battle.
Pits and mounds covered the ground closer to their tents. He had seen the same in the South except these pits were deeper and the mounds higher. Anchor had done much the same thing in the Battle of Sally’s Corners.
Create chaos. That was his final strategy. Shiro knew that he didn’t have to foolishly rush the attack through whatever the traps the Dakkorans had devised. Slowly advance, but fight with a vengeance. The Dakkorans had no place to go. The Alliance could afford to move slowly.
Anchor wouldn’t fight with his sword on this of all critical days, but with his wits. His hand went to the Bloodstone, in Sallia’s silk pouch. If he survived, his fate would depend on the nature of the spell that had turned him into Anchor. He didn’t know what would happen. Shiro didn’t care, since the Sunstone hadn’t changed him in any way. Lotto was clearly frightened beyond belief.
He raised Sallia’s ragged red token and waved. The battle for Goriath would begin. A world war, represented by the three sentient continents. The savages of Ayrtan had finally learned not to fight the invaders on their soil, but he could see pockets of them on the tops of the hills looking on. What went through their minds?
The battle had begun. A Red Rose used some of her precious magic to teleport to Shiro, who led the Ropponis. Lotto looked on, his face impassive. Mander Hart stayed back at camp. A Ropponi stood close to summon him when the time had come.
It took half an hour before the forces began clash. The Dakkoran’s had segregated their units. At least half were conscripts and just as they had with the western and eastern hidden armies, the marauders were quickly sent to the less experienced units as soon as they were identified, chewing them up. A battle began to rage on the other side of the Dakkoran’s camp as dust rose to obliterate the South end of the valley.
Bolts of fire flew over the heads of the Dakkorans and landed amongst their earthen works. The pits and mounds helped to shield each army from the other. Smoke began to drift eastward in long trailing streams. The pits erupted with flames. The Dakkoran supply wagons had obviously included combustible oil.
Anchor called a retreat and sent a Ropponi south to Shiro. How many trips could a sorcerer make? The Dakkorans who pursued the Bessethians were cut down. Anchor hadn’t unleashed Restella or Antzen yet. He waited for two hours, his position out of bow range. An occasional Ropponi ballista bolt flew into the Dakkoran army, but the where the enemy stood observant and calmly moved out of the projectile’s path was where the more seasoned soldiers had congregated. Anchor now knew where to concentrate his forces.
After the fires had died down, they advanced once again. This would not be a feint. He didn’t have to worry about men hiding in the pits. They still sent up thin tendrils of smoke into the clearing sky.
The expected bolts of wizard fire blazed into the soldiers. Men fell. Anchor felt guilty that he couldn’t hear their cries from his vantage point, just the overall clamor of war.
A few bolts shot out from his soldiers. Just enough to give the sorcerers pause.
More flames came from the enemy’s ranks but even Anchor could see the diminished size of them. The Dakkoran sorcerers’ actions had quickly emptied the power from their bodies. No Affinity was available for them to recharge their strength. Their longer stay on Ayrtan had depleted their power.
His commanders had been briefed to look for the bolts that shriveled in intensity and that was the signal for his soldiers to advance. He used another Ropponi to teleport to Restella’s position and Antzen. Those two would execute a strategic retreat and fight the experienced Dakkorans that he had just identified from two sides. His forces finally were in position and began to attack the camp from the slopes of the valley’s hills. A few half-hearted bolts ended up among them and then the real fighting began.
Anchor looked at Lotto. His friend’s face was ashen, his thoughts far away. Perhaps if given the opportunity, Anchor might think of other things as well. He sought in his mind for a typical Unca quip. “I do believe it is time to spoil Daryaku’s party.” He smiled at Lotto. His friend barely smiled back.
“Whatever happens, I will make sure we are victorious,” Lotto said. He looked sick as he said it. Anchor didn’t ask Lotto what meant. They had no time for talk.
Chika stood next to him. “Take us to their leader,” Anchor said, dismounting. Lotto joined him.
She nodded and they stood in front of Shiro, Mistokko and the two Ropponi. Anchor had his back to the battle.
“Can you do that again?” Anchor asked.
“Maybe once or twice and then…” she shook her head.
That would be enough. He turned and looked at the fighting. Anchor didn’t know if his numbers would be enough. Did he make a mistake splitting his forces?
“Lessa sits with his forces a half hour away. Should we bring them up?” Shiro said.
Anchor nodded. “I’d like to let the Ropponi take a few of their troops home.” His sentiment reminded him of something Unca would say, he thought.
He turned to Chika and five others of the Red Rose. “You know what you have to do.” They ran towards groups of Ropponi troops and disappeared. His major advantage lay in teleportation. He’d use it until his Ropponi ran out of the ability to do so.
“Now we wait.”
They saw flashes of sorcerer bolts in the camp. Four Ropponi returned. “We are in position.”
Anchor nearly lost his breath. He nodded and stood with Lotto and a
group of Ropponi. Lotto closed his eyes and opened them up again. Did Anchor detect a shimmer around his body? Could the Moonstone be doing something?
Shiro walked to his group. Yushidon and Ashiyo did the same. Mistokko walked to another group. He’d let the captain witness the final drama that was to come. Two hundred teleported at Anchor’s nod.
They broke out of their teleported clusters and created a perimeter. Troops sporadically attacked them, but as Anchor expected, most of the Dakkoran soldiers had left to fight. They didn’t have far to walk to the Emperor’s tent.
A Dakkoran officer ran up and stood outside the Emperor’s tent. Anchor knew a smattering of the language. He said something that he thought meant ‘you have visitors’.
Emperor Daryaku sauntered out. Anchor had never seen the man. He looked middle-aged, but something appeared wrong. He had never been notified of effeminate characteristics. The Emperor had long fingernails. Something more of what he would expect of a Ropponi. Daryaku’s eyes burned with intensity, almost tinged with madness.
“We have come for your Darkstone.” Yushidon said. He knew the language much better than anyone else.
“You will not have it, Yushidon. I sense the Warstones among you.” The Emperor threw back his head and cackled. The man’s laughter sent chills down Anchor’s spine.
“Bring them to me,” Daryaku said in Bessethian.
Anchor felt a tugging in his mind. He blinked and shook his head. Shiro and Lotto did the same. Something clouded his mind. He reached up and put the Bloodstone in his hand. Shiro did the same. Yushidon and Ashiyo visibly fought off the onslaught. He noticed a ring of Dakkoran sorcerers around them. He knew the enemy had plenty of illusion spells, but this was different. He struggled against the compulsion to move forward, but his body still brought him, unwillingly, towards the Emperor, Bloodstone in hand.
Lotto’s eyes widened as he looked at Anchor and took out his Moonstone and held it out like Shiro and Anchor. He walked stiffly, and took Shiro’s stone and Anchor’s. He looked into Anchor’s eyes.
“Forgive me, but I won’t go back to being like I was,” He said quietly and turned, standing in front of the Emperor, the three stones clenched in his hand.
“Hold them out!” The words came out like shrill scream.
Anchor continued to struggle. He moved his foot and another and began to shuffle towards the emperor, he couldn’t pull out his sword, but he had to do something. Shiro began to do the same. Only the pair of them moved at all.
Lotto still clutched the stones in his hand.
“Open your hand!” The Emperor shouted every word.
Anchor would never make it, nor did he think Shiro would. Their fate was now linked to how much resistance Lotto could put up.
The Emperor yanked at his neck and put the Darkstone in his hand.
The jewel seemed to suck all of the light into it, looking more like a hole in the Emperor’s palm than an amulet of power.
Lotto began to shake as he fought to keep his hand closed. Anchor wanted to cry out, but as soon as he tried, he lost control of his legs and stood frozen, unable to move.
Anchor watched with horror as the Emperor began to chant. No! He couldn’t have fought for years and travel to Ayrtan to suffer the ultimate defeat. Emperor Daryaku would have the ultimate power on Goriath and Anchor couldn’t move a step forward. He would see the enslavement of the world, first hand. He forced out a cry. It sounded like a wounded animal.
His eyes were transfixed on the Darkstone, but then it began to shake in the Emperor’s hand as the chanting continued. No. The gem didn’t shake, the Emperor’s hand did. It began to jerk, making the Emperor stop his spell recitation. He tried to steady his hand, but it continued to shake. Anchor heard the man wail as the Darkstone dropped to the dust of Ayrtan.
Lotto leaned over, all stiffness gone from his body. It had to have been an act. He gave a mournful look to Anchor and grabbed the Darkstone. His gaze shifted to Mander Hart as he put it together with the others Warstones and squeezed.
~~~
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
AFTERMATH
~
ANCHOR BLINKED THE DUST OUT OF HIS EYES. He rose on his elbows and saw bodies strewn for a hundred paces. All of the tents were blown down. He crawled to Lotto’s body. The man’s features had softened and thickened. His hands were missing from the explosion. Lotto’s clothes no longer fit his smaller body. Anchor checked for a pulse, but he knew the stones had killed him. What must have been the Emperor’s body lay nearby. All of the flesh had shriveled instantly from Daryaku’s bones. The man’s form had changed like Lotto’s. In fact, he looked like a corpse, long dead. Something was wrong with the shape. The corpse was much smaller than Daryaku. In fact it looked more like a female corpse. He shivered.
The others began to revive. Shiro woke up. The first words out of his mouth were in Ropponi. He looked at Anchor and grinned. “Power. The nexus is restored. Ayrtan lives again!” He stood and pumped his fists into the air.
Anchor helped Mander Hart to his feet and they, in turn, helped the others. Yushidon helped the Dakkoran general to his feet, if he was still that.
“Your emperor is dead. Leave in peace,” Yushidon said.
The man had uttered what Anchor had intended to say if they were successful. He nodded at the general. “Tell him to get the word out quickly,” Anchor told Yushidon.
“I’ll tell him myself. I’ve spent plenty of port time on his continent.” Mistokko grinned.
~
Few of the soldiers still fought and soon Dakkoran officers stood with Anchor’s men at the Emperor’s tent discussing what would happen.
It seemed that General Bishyar hadn’t been a full supporter of the Emperor, especially as Daryaku had, from their opinions, descended further into madness.
Anchor inspected the Emperor’s remains before they were to be boxed up for burial in Dakkor. The skeleton was indeed that of a woman and he verified the considerably smaller stature. He doubted that mystery would ever be solved.
He now knew what the shimmer meant that he had seen around Lotto. The man had once told him of the anti-magic that the Sorcerer Peleor had used to keep him in his cell and what he had used to defend himself when he fought the Dakkoran sorcerer. The spell had been similar to the wards on the Dakkoran swords. Lotto must have suspected foul play and came to the final confrontation secretly prepared. He had pretended to be affected by Daryaku’s compulsion spell until the right moment came to combine all the stones. Lotto’s sacrifice would be proclaimed in all of the histories that would be written about the Warstone conflict with Daryaku. How fitting! A Dakkoran spell used against the Emperor. If Lotto’s action hadn’t resulted in his death, Anchor would be grinning. As it was, he looked on Lotto’s sacrifice as one of the great tragedies of the Warstone battles.
He invited General Bishyar, along with Yushidon as interpreter, to a final meeting of the alliance before everyone went their own way.
Mander Hart arrived in the camp with a noticeably smaller, slighter Restella. Shiro and Chika escorted Hart, Lessa, Restella and Kenyr underneath the Emperor’s command tent, which now had the walls rolled up. Their victory had done nothing about the ever-present dust, but Shiro adamantly claimed that next year, Ayrtan would be more green. They all sat down wearing the same color of dirt. Lotto’s body still lay covered on Ayrtan’s soil.
“Lotto’s dead and the link is finally gone,” Restella said as she let out a big sigh. “His body looked more like that when I first encountered him and,” tears glimmered in her eyes, “so do I.”
Mander knelt at Lotto’s side and helped Kenyr put him into a hastily-made coffin. He grimaced as he did it. “I’ll take him to be interred at my family plot in Beckondale. He was like a son to me.”
“And to me,” Kenyr said, tears in his eyes. “I am proud of him. I’ll remember Lotto as he walked the earth after his transformation. His parents would have liked to see him as Lotto Mistad, rather than as the vi
llage fool.”
Shiro nodded. “He was a great man and saved us all.”
Emotion filled the air. Anchor took the time to look at his youthful hands. The Bloodstone was gone. He had expected to see the hands of an old man—Unca returned. But his hands were youthful and strong, still sporting the remains of the wound that Chika had healed.
Despite the sadness at Lotto’s heroic passing, he had tears of joy. He had no magical power, but he now knew that the heart of a young man beat inside of him. He thought of Sallia. Perhaps he really could be her consort. No, he still doubted such a thing could happen, regardless of what she said. Perhaps she only told him that to provide some courage for the last battle with Daryaku.
“I don’t know what prompted all of this,” Anchor struggled to say. He waved his hand out towards Lotto and nodded to Yushidon and Bishyar. “Perhaps it was the day Daryaku retrieved the Darkstone. Some of the gods might have abhorred such a thing or maybe Goriath itself wished for the release of the curse on Ayrtan. We’ll never know. Something moved Shiro from northern Roppon to southern Roppon and onto the prison island to retrieve the Sunstone.”
“Not Ropponi gods,” Yushidon said.
Shiro smirked. “My ancestral gods are not yours, Guildmaster.”
The older man shrugged and translated for Bishyar, who presented a wry smile and began to talk. Yushidon provided a running translation.
“The Darkstone captured young Vishan. The Emperor was not the valiant soldier I knew many years ago when I commanded a remote outpost in Dakkor. He would not have done the things the Emperor did. The person, who died earlier today, wasn’t the Vishan Daryaku that I knew. I can guarantee you that. We have our gods in Dakkor and I am sure few of them condoned the Emperor’s actions. They were petty, selfish and if I had a choice I would not have served.” Bishyar shrugged. “The Emperor had his own ways to persuade. I will return to Dakkor and assist in its transformation. It’s not just Dakkor that the Emperor ruined, but all of Zarron.”
“Well said.” Mander Hart stood and bowed to Bishyar. “As the representative of King Goleto of Valetan, should you need any assistance, we would be happy to help.”
