Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  Lightning flared terribly around hair and clothing, amid high screams of pain and amazement, then hurled their souls to infinity as their bodies drifted to the floor in puffs of ash.

  “I need you intact,” the Herskalt said to Ivandred, emerging once again from nothingness. “I have great plans for you. Glorious.” The word rang with mockery.

  Even if he was an image—a projected illusion—my cage of mirror wards could propagate up the link to him. As he passed underneath, I opened my lily, the magic streamed downward, twilight blue, and closed around him with a faint cobalt glitter as the Herskalt’s image looked sharply up. Then froze.

  Ivandred looked up, too. And saw us. “Lasva?” he whispered, face drawn with pain.

  “I don’t think that’s going to hold Hannik,” I said. “You’d better get out—”

  Ivandred didn’t hear me. “Lasva, why are you here?”

  “I had to see you,” she began.

  The cobalt figure pulsed with a ring of light, then began to coalesce into a different form: taller, more slender. Long hair, whiter than snow. Whoever it was had the skill to draw the magic from my cage ward and use it to build power. Layer by layer.

  “Get out,” I pleaded.

  “Lasva, I did everything for you,” Ivandred said. “I could have conquered all Halia. I held them all off, because you wanted peace.” He wasn’t bitter, or even angry—he spoke with the pain and bewilderment of a man trying to understand.

  “I know.” Lasva leaned dangerously over the carved rail. “And I loved you for that.”

  “But you loved him more. Is that it? You always did?”

  She opened her hands, an expression eloquent and disconsolate. “I tried—”

  Those words, simple as they were, impacted him with the force of steel.

  “Look.” I pointed at the figure not ten paces away, rippling with white-hot coruscation. Streamers of magic bled from the wards all through the room, purple and green and red, drawing power inward.

  Ivandred turned to Haldren at his side. “Get them out of here.”

  “No,” Haldren replied. “Where you lead I follow. Even into death. So I swore.”

  “Haldren, I am damned, but you can save yourself.”

  “Then the damned will ride together,” Haldren said, and from behind came shouts: somewhere underneath us, out of sight, the First Lancers had gathered to protect their king.

  “Show us the soul-eaters!”

  “We will fight!”

  “You can’t fight that magic,” I said urgently to Ivandred.

  “We can’t run from it either.” He looked around as if blinded.

  “You can.” I made my decision, clutching the transfer token in one hand, as I tossed my second cage ward down. “Ivandred, take this. It’s the only way to save your people. Get as far away from the castle as you can. The Herskalt might have a cage ward waiting somewhere on the road, just like this one. If he tries to close it around you, open this.”

  His hand came up automatically to catch the paper. The words “Save your people” forced him to act. He stepped back from the incandescent figure, glanced upward at us, as I called, “She will be safe!” and with that he began to marshal his followers as they clattered rapidly out of sight and away.

  I gripped Lasva. “Get the servants outside. What I am going to do might bring the castle down.”

  “What about you, Emras?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I lied. “See? Transfer token. But I can’t take servants, so go!” And as she started away, “Your lover’s cup—it’s in my trunk.”

  Lasva glanced back once, but decision cleared her brow. She’d seen the transfer token, which meant I could escape. But the castle servants had no such aid. She vanished down the stairs to lead them out to safety.

  I turned my attention back to the impossible glowing figure, evidence of magic far beyond my skills. But I had Adamas Dei’s chain of mirrors…

  A halo of magic formed around the figure, shrinking slowly toward the upraised hand, as I whispered over my transfer token, weaving a new chain over the layers already there. The magic halo thickened to a ring, forming into a ball of violet effulgence. Right before it touched that outstretched hand, I dropped the token directly into the center of it.

  The result could not have been more dramatic: my mirror ward smashed the coalescing power outward. Air hissed on a high note, like a shrieking wind, as the lightning exploded. Plaster blackened, tapestries whooshed into blue flame, then drifted in ash; the building rocked under the onslaught.

  I staggered, then gripped the balcony. Now it was time to release my wards bound to the Herskalt’s access ways: one up high, a second off the kitchen, the third in the tower over the garrison, the fourth in the basement. Everywhere I’d found spells ready to force a connection between Norsunder and the world I reflected the magic back onto itself, again and again, and in a random lack of pattern that it would be impossible for him to keep up with, wherever he was.

  Crack! Resounded from the biggest tower, where four hundred years ago Fox had sat on the battlements with Inda, talking about how beating did not bring out the best in the academy youth, but having a common goal did. The rampart exploded in a mighty clap, raining stone chips beyond the outer walls as below, terrified servants and stable hands fled.

  My balcony swayed. I nearly fell over the edge, so flung myself backward. A carved pediment with owls and vines and eagles crashed down at my feet. I transferred to the tower directly above the secret room, which overlooked the road leading down into the town of Darchelde.

  I rejoiced for about a heartbeat when I made out Lasva, her hair a tangle, leading a straggling band of servants—many clutching whatever they could grab up—as they exited the big gate in the wake of the First Lancers, who had leaped on their horses, weapons to hand, lances snapped into place, with drilled speed. Ivandred was leading his force away from the castle, obedient to my directive, because he had no defense against magic, only a driving need to save his people.

  I couldn’t breathe as every muscle and nerve in my body urged them faster. There’s going to be a cost, the Herskalt whispered in memory from the first time I heard his voice, as Ivandred and the First Lancers galloped in perfect formation down the road toward freedom—

  Toward a faint, forming shimmer. And there it was, the expected ward.

  Only larger than I had believed possible.

  Beyond the hill curving above the town the air glittered as if a gigantic hammer had smashed diamonds into a million shards. They winked and shimmered as they blended and then merged in a writhing rope of darkness that vibrated through the air, shattering rock, shivering winter-bare trees, and making my teeth rattle. It stretched between ground and sky, thickening into roiling darkness.

  In the road, Lasva’s group staggered, some falling to their knees in the snow churned up by the lancers, hands clapped over ears.

  The rope of darkness began to open into a chasm. Ivandred made one last gesture of defiance, flinging his hand high as he snapped open the little paper—which merely drew the focus of that vast access way to Norsunder.

  The entire column of lancers was swallowed by the chasm. Then it slammed shut and vanished in a tumultuous reverberation of thunder and a whirling gout of lightning that blasted those shaken trees, and set roofs aflame all through the town.

  I had won: Norsunder could not enter Marloven Hesea, and thence the world.

  But the Herskalt had won: Norsunder had captured Ivandred, and the best trained of all his warriors.

  TWELVE

  OF MY SURRENDER

  M

  y vision flared, darkened, then returned in blurs and shadows as in the town below the mountain, people boiled out of the buildings, running crazily. How could it be so silent? My ears itched. Furious with the futility of my efforts, anguished at my failure to save Ivandred from the Herskalt’s trap, I wiped impatiently at my ears. And looked down at fingers smeared with blood.

  Then the frigid air stir
red, and the Herskalt appeared next to me, his arms full of cloth—a fold contained a crookedly stitched ship. I’d seen that in Lasva’s memories… Inda’s wedding shirt?

  The Herskalt said—and though I’d been deafened, I heard the words inside my head—“Well done, Emras, for a beginner. But as you see, not sufficient. Come along.”

  I raised my hand in repudiation, and he laughed. “Do you really think that you would fare any better with Sartor when they catch up with you?”

  “Watch me,” I said—that is, my throat worked, but I heard nothing as I threw at his face the toe ring that I had been clutching in my hand.

  He disappeared before the ring bounced off the honey-colored stone, then it, too, vanished. I held my breath, expecting anything but more silence.

  Of course. First, the Sartoran mages had to discover that the border ward against transfer had been lifted. That, I’d set in motion the previous week, using Adamas Dei’s spell so that it would quietly propagate itself.

  Then they would have to dare the castle, which was still creaking. I walked inside and down the cracked stairway to the upper level of the residence wing, silt dropping from overhead. Here and there fires smoldered. The place was a ruin, the air purple with snarls of dark magic. Wearily, sore at heart, I forced myself to assess each of my access ways. Every one of the Herskalt’s transfer wards had been thoroughly obliterated. I was not going to be able to rescue Ivandred, but at least the Herskalt could not get back here without a very great effort.

  I kept walking, increasingly dizzy, through the empty castle. Lasva and the servants were somewhere on that slushy road between the ruined castle and the burning town. At least they were alive.

  I picked my way down the remains of the grand staircase, avoiding the great hall and the ash where those six men had died. I wiped at my cheek, where a bit of flying stone had scored, and daubed with my sleeve gently at my right ear, which bled sluggishly.

  My head was still ringing from the explosion, echoing on a high singing note as I slipped between the iron-studded front doors. One had cracked, flinging splinters clear out into the muddy courtyard below the two sweeping stairs. I lowered myself onto the first step, shivering. Presently the air stirred, and two figures appeared.

  Was that Olnar? Looking solid as our father—and a little apprehensive. Next to him was Greveas, also older than I remembered, hands up and ready for desperate measures.

  Greveas said something. I shook my head and pointed to my ears.

  Olnar’s expression of extreme reserve broke into wide-eyed dismay, and he said something, reaching out to me like a brother rather than a judge.

  “It’s done,” I whispered.

  And so, my judges, am I.

  THE END

  OF THE SCRIBES’ THIRD RULE

  T

  his last part, no one has yet seen. I was taken by Greveas and Olnar to Sartor as a prisoner. In my warded rooms deep in the Mage Guild, a healer was sent to me. She was able to restore the hearing in my right ear—one painful pop, and a rush of slightly flattened sound filled the silence—but my left was damaged so severely that it would take years to repair, I was warned. The implication was, who would pay for it, given my anomalous position? I said that it could wait.

  Half a year after my arrival, they brought me a letter from Lasva:

  Emras,

  I hope this will get to you. Your friend Birdy promised to send it to a herald in Alsais who knows your brother. Such a torturous route begins to sound like the diplomatic circles I grew up with.

  The truth is that I write to you for reassurance. I do not trust my memory, though I see those terrible final moments over and over in nightmares still. The disappearance of the First Lancers, that I heard about from too many witnesses to disbelieve, and I did see the skyward gateway to darkness, high above the trees.

  What I cannot believe is that Ivandred killed those six men, foresworn or not, and I am fairly sure I never heard him claim the Fox Banner as the “banner of the damned.” Rumor rippled out ahead of me, as it does, and by the time I had dealt with the people of Darchelde, establishing them with others in the farther reaches of Montredaun-An, I returned to Choreid Dhelerei to discover that Ivandred had become the evil king who slew his staunchest supporters then rode into Norsunder to escape retribution.

  Every jarl had sent a relative seeking justice, or pre-eminence; they were prudent enough (perhaps scared enough, after hearing what happened) to stay home themselves, to guard their own territories.

  Tdiran Yvanavar was there for both her adopted territory and for her brother’s, as Haldren and his cousin were with Ivandred. I told Tdiran that Ivandred sent the lightning at Hannik, then it leaped sideways to strike the six.

  She said, whether Ivandred killed them or not, would it do anyone any good to believe the dead foresworn, much less allies of Norsunder? I understand that, but my heart grieves to hear people justifying themselves by tarnishing Ivandred’s good name—the same people who praised him on every side during their foolish war game last year.

  But I understand the kingdom-wide sense of dishonor. Marloven Hesea has had enough trouble, and there is more promised. Gdan and Bluejay have stayed staunch, riding back and forth along their border with the Second Lancers (now called the Southern Wing), in case the King of Perideth carries out his threat to take revenge by carrying a war of destruction to my doorstep. I am going down there over Midsummer to win a treaty if I can.

  The Olavairs have allied themselves with the northern kingdoms by signing the Compact. I am told they made great ceremony of burning all their arrows and breaking their bows, though the Jarlan of Marthdaun muttered that every basement is probably stuffed with extras that can come out at a moment’s notice.

  Nanjir Olavair used her influence to get the allies to agree not to cross our border, as long as the Marlovens do not carry bows and arrows outside of our border. In spite of the heated words, I suspect none of them really want to test their prowess against the Third Lancers, who though not Ivandred’s chosen best, are deemed formidable enough.

  I closed the Academy just before spring. I do not think I could have done it had not the kingdom still been unsettled by the events of winter, and I believe somewhat reluctant to send their children here. Kendred is angry with me one day and glad the next. He brags about how tough they were, but oh Emras, when he flinches if someone raises a hand at the edge of his vision, or wakens crying in the night, my heart aches. He is also angry with his father in a way I cannot understand or explain, though to other children he brags about him.

  He talks of all the things he will do when he turns twenty and becomes king.

  Kaidas stayed true to his offer, so I sent him in his capacity as Duke of Alarcansa to Sindan-An when it looked like fighting was going to break out between Fath and Tlennen over that area. Kaidas has managed to make himself popular—the Iascan language retains enough Sartoran roots for him to have learned it fast. The remnants of old Iasca seem to value his being a Colendi, and they are united in not wanting to be subsumed under any of the neighboring jarlates.

  At New Year’s Convocation I am thinking of giving out medals and awards to ease the sense of dishonor. If people are going to re-envision history, let them get a sense of glory for protecting the border and working for the common good.

  Your brother Olnar sorted all your papers and sent them away. He said that he will make the ten year rounds of the protections, but that we will have to find another mage after that—and he trusts that we will go through accepted channels. I agreed, but I told Anhar that I quite understand my sister’s opinion of mage tact.

  Before Olnar left, I tried to make him promise to send for me to testify on your behalf. His reply was diplomatic, which is to say, polite but noncommittal. So I am writing in hopes that you will see this and be able to answer. As for the cup, it is back on my mantelpiece, but in spirit only, for now. I think you will understand what I mean.

  I thought I understood. She would defer to Kendre
d, so bewildered by these violent changes, and she would defer her own happiness because everyone in Marloven Hesea had to be expecting (or dreading) another mysterious opening between sky and ground through which the First Lancers might come thundering back at the head of a howling army of darkness. But she had given her word to Ivandred. Only the conviction that he was truly beyond life could release her.

  The mages let me write to Lasva, so I explained that I believed that Hannik deflected Ivandred’s magic to strike the six jarls, but I suspect no one will listen to her. I’m sure my reputation had also suffered. What Marloven would believe the peacock mage?

  Soon after that came a letter from Tiflis:

  Em:

  I never thought that you, of all people, would find herself at the center of all kinds of rumors. Did you really blow up an entire city with magic? Did you send the evil Marlovens into Norsunder, or did you escape when they tried to take you there? They won’t tell me anything, just sent me a formal notice that I have to travel to Sartor—at my own expense, though Mother said I can stay with the diplomats—to testify about that magic book I had managed to forget all about. And I will have to pay a thumping fine on top of it, Cousin Olnar says, for breaking the rules about magic books. I was peeved with you until Kaura pointed out how much notice we will gain from the whole affair, and that cheered me, you can imagine. If you write up what happened, remember your loving cousin—

  Tiflis

  Then came the one I had been waiting for. It was short:

  Your commission executed.

  Wherever we go, you will always have a home with us.