Lovers and Beloveds

by MeiLin Miranda

All but the Brother screamed for mercy; instead, the cleric stood still and silent, and the flames shone bright on his steel chestplate and helm. Warin waved his hand. The fire leaped back into his staff, leaving only the smell of scorched air.

  The Brother dropped to his knees. "Your Majesty," he said, presenting his sword. "Kill me for my offense."

  "Never would I do such a thing, Brother," answered Warin, raising him up. "Keep your sword, and use it for Tremont."

  The townfolk had dropped to their knees along with the Brother. The scarred man spoke up: "Only seen Old King Gethin and his sons do sumfing like that, or the Black Man"--he and the other men made Amma's sign--"and that's the truth. Please forgive us, Your Majesty. I am your loyal man, and always was!"

  "Rise, please, rise, all of you!" Warin took the scarred man's hand, lifted him up, and said, "What is your name?"

  "Willum, sire."

  "Willum, you were with me in the north?"

  "Aye, I was a chief pikesman, my lord, under Brother Gerral of the King's Own. After Montesurbis and Dordemon, I'd follow you anywheres!" His face contorted with emotion, puckering the slash down his face. "Sire, we thought you was dead. We thought as how your brother would rule and we'd be under a rougher thumb than we was already. Now you've come back from the dead--it's a miracle, sire, the hand of Amma come down and give us a miracle!"

  "No miracle--I was never dead, nor will be until I see my brother in the Hill," said Warin. He leaped nimbly onto the fountain's rim again to stand above the crowd. "My father is dead of old age, not by my hand. The prophecy is broken, and I have come home to find my brother has lied to you, stolen from you, and taken the throne. Will you stand by me and take it back?" A full-throated howl of assent went up from the crowd. He nodded. "These men around me--Brother Cor, these Travelers and their Prince, and Willum here who was with me at Montesurbis and Dordemon"--Willum swelled with pride, and his fellows elbowed him--"are to be accorded respect as my companions. Listen to their counsel. Cor, send the Brothers at Farr's Temple the news, I'll need them by my side."

  "I'll send a Guardsman to the Armory as well, sire," said Cor, but Warin stopped him.

  "No. There's a chance we may not get there in time to stop the coronation. If they see the offering fire smoke rise from the Temple, the Guards will turn against us." Warin turned back to the gathering. "All you women, spread the word throughout the city--I am home! I go to the Father's Temple to oust the usurper and take my rightful place. Let my people come with me!"

  Clumps of men joined the crowd as they passed through the City until there were at least a thousand, with twenty Brothers beside and more on the way. Warin led them on towards the steps leading to the Temple of Pagg, on the highest and sheerest of the six Temple-crowned hills within the city's walls—a bluff, its long, steep switchback roads wide enough for four to walk abreast. It would be a long climb; he walked faster.

  Warin let the people's love, relief and trust wash over him. Any doubts he'd had about becoming King vanished.

  Atop its steep, oak-covered hill, Pagg's Temple flew the flags of the King, dark red with three triangles in gold; in the shade of the trees surrounding the sanctuary, the bearers who'd carried the nobility up the long climb rested beside silken and gilt litters. At the entrance to the Temple, hidden in shadow, Hildin, Gian and the Little Father watched the mass of people already climbing the sharp switchbacks. "Is it him?" said Gian.

  "I'd wager it is," answered his master.

  "Him who?" said the elderly Little Father, looking from one to the other.

  "How many do you think will side with him?" said Gian.

  "Not enough. I have purchased the Brothers over years with donations to Farr's Temple--the Guards, too, and the Fathers. He won't find much support after all this time."

  "Who are we talking about!" said the old high priest, peevishness wrinkling his face further.

  "A man pretending to be my brother, Little Father. He says he is Warin, but Warin is dead."

  "A pity he besmirches your dear brother's name, Your Majesty," said the Little Father, his head shaking more than usual. "But you have your father's power now. Surely there will be little difficulty? What is that bright flashing I see down below?"

  It was the sun glinting off polished steel, the kind that made up the Brothers' armor. Hildin said, "Little Father, go. Make your preparations. We shall start the ceremony momentarily. I wish to take a moment here and watch this pretender." Once they were alone, Hildin hissed, "Pagg damn him, he has Brothers! They're standing in front of him! I see Teacher, too. How did that old bastard get out of the library?"

  Gian considered for a moment, then answered carefully. "You are no longer Regent, sire, and not yet the oldest brother, despite what we say. He obeys Warin because he must."

  "You're challenging me, Gian. Don't," said Hildin, not bothering to give his cousin a glance. Gian dropped to one knee, and kissed the deep red brocade of his master's tunic.

  Hildin ignored him, scanning the crowd far below. At the head of the rabble, Teacher stood beside Warin, who looked more like a Traveler than a prince; that could hardly endear him to the people, but then how had he gathered such a crowd? Peasants with sticks, but so many of them--at least a thousand, maybe twice that. Directly behind Warin and Teacher were about twenty Brothers; more were joining the back of the crowd. Troubling.

  Hildin waited until both Teacher and Warin turned to speak with a Brother. He took a deep lungful of air, let it out between his hands, and threw it before him.

  A fierce wind rushed down from the Temple toward Warin and his men, still some 300 feet down the nearly-vertical slope. At the sound, Teacher and Warin turned and threw up their hands just in time; the wave of air broke around their magical shield, but still sent the several dozen Brothers leading the pack crashing into those behind them in an avalanche of men and armor; one, bowling sideways, knocked Warin off his feet.

  An appreciative mutter broke out among the Guards looking down from the Temple. "That's for traitors," said one to his neighbor. "Though the Black Man is with them," he added, troubled.

  "Knowing Warin, he'll stop to care for his wounded," puffed Hildin, his hands on his knees. "Then he'll come charging up the hill straight into the teeth of the Guards. They'll mistake any magic of his for Teacher's. Bar the door behind us--I've already warded it with most of my power, but that blow took the last of my strength for a while. By the time Warin breaks through the Guards, the ward on the door, and the bars, it won't matter. I'll be crowned, and everyone across the City will see the smoke from Pagg’s altar and know that it is so. Let him watch Fredrik and Emmae die, and then I'll be recovered enough to kill him. Help me inside, I'm tired now." With a final order to his Guards to defend the Temple to the man, Hildin leaned on his cousin and entered the Temple.

  Scores of men lay still or groaning on the steps at the forefront of Warin's impromptu army: among them, Warin himself. Calls for Sisters filled the air.

  "I failed you," said Teacher. "I did not see him."

  "I didn't see him, either, and I hardly thought he'd waste such a goodly amount of power this far down the hill," said Warin. "You and I took the brunt of it, but I couldn't get my defense up fast enough to protect all of the Brothers."

  "Nor I."

  Brother Cor gently prodded Warin's shoulder; Warin paled and choked down a heave. "Broken collarbone," said the Brother. "Your Majesty, you cannot stay. We must find you a Sister."

  "Would you let a broken bone stop you?" said Warin, dragging himself to his feet. "No, not as long as you could walk. Sling it. How many hurt?"

  "That I saw? One Traveler, two Brothers, a good handful of townsmen, all dead outright. Maybe more. Perhaps a hundred wounded, some badly enough they might yet die. Broken bones, split heads, many bruises." Cor sighed. "Our armor made us better weapons than anything else the Usurper could command."

  Warin shuddered as Cor helped his left arm into a sling. "Call the Sisters for the wounded. The dead Traveler--fin
d Connin and tell him--there you are, Connin. Are you all right?"

  "Unhurt. I don't know how I'm going to tell Tom's mother, is all." Connin eyed the Temple, its windows shuttered tight. "The Usurper has about a hundred Guards around the Temple, fifty bowmen on the roof, who knows how many inside, and the entrance magically sealed. We'll get through the ward among us."

  "The King's injury weakens his ability to wield magic, and I cannot break a seal that Hildin has set," warned Teacher. "It will be up to you, Connin."

  "We will rely less on magic, then," said Warin, "and more on persuasiveness." He ran up a few steps, shaky at first, then more confident as he pushed pain aside; he faced his few hundred remaining men—armored Brothers and unprotected townfolk intermingled, armed with swords, spears, daggers, axes, kitchen knives, staves, and nothing at all.

  Without thinking, he tried to raise his unslinged right arm; he nearly swooned with pain and kept himself upright with an effort, though he hid it as best he could. "Men of Tremont!" he shouted. "We have suffered at my brother's hand. But now, his magic is weakened. He will not be able to strike such a blow again before we reach him, and I hold my father's magic now." Warin stopped for breath; his shoulder ached, reminding him that though he held the magic, he might not be able to use much of it.

  "Hildin has barricaded himself inside Pagg's Temple," he continued, "but we will breach his enchantments, and his Guard will join us when they see their true King has returned. Many in the Leutish nobility, their King Fredrik, and his daughter the Princess--the Princess Edmerka are also inside," he continued, his voice catching on Emmae's title. "They are not to be harmed. Is it understood? Respect King Fredrik as you would me!"

  "The Leutish woman is the Usurper's wife," called a townsman. "Don't spare her, Your Majesty, she may carry his child!"

  "She is innocent in this," said Teacher in a surprisingly loud voice above the murmurs. "Protect her." Teacher drew sullen, frightened looks from the crowd, but the cries for Edmerka's blood died down.

  "We outnumber the Guards, but I will not have them die if I can help it," called Warin. "Stay well behind until I call for you, and then be ready. Be sure your fellows understand what I've said!"

  As Brothers and townsmen shouted his orders, bawling in relays to the back of the crowd, Warin walked up the road, with Teacher a step or two behind and the men following at a distance. Strange how quickly he'd put the Woodsman aside and taken up the King, he thought, as he and Teacher raised a shield of solid air before them. Just as he feared, arrows from the Temple's roof rained down on them as soon as they came within range.

  This time, they were not caught off-guard; the arrows cracked against a barrier of air, but a few lucky shots passed over their shields to land with resounding thunks far behind them. A strangled cry told Warin at least one of the arrows had hit its mark; he looked back to see a dozen men, arrows protruding from arms, legs, throats, eye sockets. "Stay out of range!" he roared, and climbed faster up the switchbacks, Teacher and Cor keeping pace.

  When he was sure the Guards could hear him, he shouted, "Cease fire! I am Warin, returned to take up the throne!"

  "Warin is dead, pretender!" returned the Guard commander, a burly man with a many-times-broken nose.

  "Would the Black Man stand with a pretender?" countered Brother Cor. "Would the Brothers stand with a pretender? Look to the bottom of the hill. Even now, more Brothers join the rightful King."

  The commander shifted uneasily as he eyed the growing assemblage of shining steel on the long ascent, and then the massive door to the Temple. "We're locked out, sir," muttered a Guard behind him. “The Regent has locked us out.”

  The commander scowled and straightened his great shoulders. "Prove to me you're the Prince come back."

  Warin climbed the broad, white Temple stairs, stopping within arm's reach of the commander. "What would prove it to you?"

  The commander considered, hand flexing nervously on the hilt of his sword. "I--well..." He cast about. He straightened, more confident, and pointed to a white boulder, its top flat as a table; rusty stains flowed down its sides, as if blood had run down it over and over again. "The Father's Rock. Lift it."

  A gasp went up from the crowd. The Father's Rock predated the Temple itself--in fact, it could be said it was the original Temple. Sacrifices to the Father had bled down the sides of the Rock until Temmin the Great built the white marble Temple sanctuary nearly two hundred years ago. Warin strode up to it and placed his good hand on the dull white stone, surprisingly warm against his skin. How much magic could he muster, with his broken bone, and still have enough left to see the day through? He closed his eyes and focused his newly-inherited, still-unfamiliar power around the rock. He gathered it up, and pushed with his mind.

  The Rock shifted under his hand. He opened his eyes and stood back as it rose from the stones around it. Up, and up, until it hovered in the air at the height of a man. His control wavered, new power and his injury combined against him. "Enough," he said brusquely, and let the Rock drop as if he'd meant to do that all along. The Rock struck the stones beneath it with such force that it split in two. Stillness, then murmurings of astonishment, until a roar broke out from every Guard, Brother and townsman.

  "Only a Prince--or a King--could do such a thing," said the Commander, head bowed. "You must be Warin. Forgive me." One by one, the Guards joined him on their knees.

  Warin felt the long climb and the broken bone; he swayed on his feet, and Teacher steadied him. "I'll be all right," said Warin. "I have to be. Teacher, once we're inside, protect Emmae. I order you to protect her at all costs."

  "Unless it endangers you, I will," replied Teacher. "But I must defend any man close to the throne first, even your brother, much as it pains me. I must allow only you to kill Hildin. I cannot lift a hand against him."

  Behind the barred and warded door, a hundred members of the Tremontine and Leutish nobility sat on padded benches in the Temple, the Tremontines on the right, the Leutans on the left. All wore subdued colors for the old King's passing, but not Hildin. He wore a cloth-of-gold mantle encrusted with jewels over his Tremontine red silk tunic, and fairly danced up the aisle to stand before the Little Father, Emmae following behind.

  The great door shook with a force that scraped the wood against the stone lintels, though the door would not give way. Nervous murmurs began in the crowd; more than one lord snuck his dagger from its sheath, and the hundred Guards within took defensive positions.

  Three Fathers ran up to their high priest and whispered in his ear; the Little Father whispered loudly to Hildin, "I don't understand. They say Prince Warin is outside, with a great crowd of Brothers and commoners who say he is the rightful king. Teacher is with him, too. A good hundred are dead, but ten times more are coming up the stairs!" His words reverberated off the Temple's stone archways; the murmurs turned to astonished and alarmed babble, punctuated by the shaking of the doors.

  Hildin hissed, "Shut up, you old fool! Prepare to light the altar fire." He turned to the nobles in their rows. "Warin is dead," he said over the noise. "Anyone who claims to be Warin is a pretender! Now, Little Father, get this over with!" He kneeled, dragging Emmae down next to him.

  The cleric abandoned his planned chant after a glance into the Prince's face, and switched instead to a quick blessing. He took the crown from Gian's hands, held it up before the assembly, and settled it on Hildin's head. Hildin stood, took the queen's crown from an attendant, and placed it none too gently on Emmae's chestnut hair, the weight of it bearing down on her brow. Hildin raised her up beside him. Whatever was trying to open the doors slammed against them again, sending a tremor into the stone that Emmae felt through her slippers.

  "I don't care for this, at all," said Fredrik. "Who is this man who claims to be your brother? You told me he was dead!"

  "This man is a gross pretender!" shouted Hildin over the increasingly anxious crowd. "A pretender has come with Travelers to kill us all!" he continued. "Guardsmen, defend
your King!"

  The Guards tensed. The lords herded their ladies toward the altar, as far away from the doors as they could get them, and drew their own swords; the hilts and scabbards were covered in gems, but the blades were sharp and deadly all the same.

  The door complained against competing enchantments, until the ward broke, then the bars, and it finally gave way. Connin stood in its ruins; Warin strode past him into the Temple. The assembly drew a surprised breath all at once, and even the Guards stood still, uncertain.

  Warin looked nothing like the smiling, happy man Emmae had seen last; his skin was waxen, dark hair plastered to his forehead. A sling held his left arm, and pain flashed over his already spent face with each breath. His eyes met Emmae's, and shone with hope and purpose. He stepped toward her, but at the sight of the crown on her head, his spirit seemed to droop. His gaze both implored and doubted her.

  Emmae flung the crown to the floor.

  Warin smiled then and strode further into the hall, the Brothers and Travelers fanning out behind him. "I am Warin, and I have come back with the Brothers beside me for my crown and my wife," he shouted.

  The hall erupted into arguments and exclamations. Many of the benches were overturned as some Tremontines dropped to one knee and declared Warin king; others cuffed them to the floor and cursed them as idiots, while the Leutans stood uncertain.

  Hildin grabbed Emmae by the arm and threw her at Gian. "Guardsmen, you are sworn to obey the crowned king," cried Hildin. "I wear the crown--kill this pretender and his rabble!" The Guards took a step forward.

  Suddenly, Brothers swarmed past Warin, their armor shining in the sunlight now streaming in; beside him, an absence of light but for pale skin, appeared a figure in black. The Guardsmen hesitated, taken aback at the Brothers' strange allegiance, the presence of the Black Man, and the sheer number of their opponents, until Hildin gave a flicker of a signal to the high gallery of the Temple. A hidden archer sent an arrow into King Fredrik's throat; he crumpled at Emmae's feet, his blood spattering Hildin's mantle. "They've killed King Fredrik!" yelled Hildin.