Blessed Blades (The Elven-Trinity Book 5)

by Mark Albany

  The blade was cold to the point that I could feel it burning my hands as they touched them and I tossed it away quickly.

  The man tried to break free as Lyth rushed over to him, hitting me in the side with his fist, knocking the breath out of me again, giving him just enough space to reach for where his sword had fallen to.

  His hand was stopped as something silvery and full of fire wrapped around it, and suddenly brought his hand down to the ground. I looked over to see Faye, who’d turned her sword into something like a whip that was keeping the man in place. For the moment.

  I used both my hands to grip down on the emperor’s remaining free wrist, pinning him down as Lyth came up to him, closing her eyes and placing her blade on his right shoulder. She ran through the incantation quickly, but it sounded precise anyway.

  The reaction was different from Faye’s. Where she had suddenly calmed as the blade was placed on her shoulder, the emperor reacted like she was touching him with acid, fighting back, pushing away, screaming and shaking, frothing at the mouth as she continued, speaking in a language that I couldn’t understand until Lyth place the blade on the other shoulder, completing the incantation.

  He suddenly fell slack, his eyes rolling to the back of his head and dropping forward to plant on the marble floor, face-first. The weight of him pulled me to the ground with him. I sprawled, coughed and pulled myself up quickly, slipping a bit on the sweat and blood on the marble, looking down at the man before me.

  “Did… did it work?” I asked, more than a little breathless as I turned to look at Lyth.

  “I think so,” she said, but a bit of confidence suddenly crept into her features. “Yes. Yes, it did.”

  I nodded, looking over to Faye, who was slowly pulling herself back up to her feet. Braire and Norel were still on the ground, appearing to have passed out.

  A crack was heard, and I looked up. The massive doors to the room were starting to swing open. They started slowly, but quickly gained in momentum as more people started pushing it. I could see a group of mages standing near the doors, looking spent over having broken the seals on the room. I assumed that we wouldn’t have to worry about them.

  Not that it mattered, I thoughy. Literal hundreds of Lancers were rushing inside, quickly filling the room.

  I looked around. My sword was gone, but I could still feel that awesome power coursing through my body. Sword or no, I knew that I could take at least five or six of the bastards before dropping. Lyth could handle a dozen or so more, and so could Faye.

  Which would still leave about three hundred or so to cut us into ribbons.

  It didn’t matter. Our mission was finished. Damned if I was going to go down without a fight, but our mission, as it was, had been seen through.

  The Lancers paused, looking down at the bloodied and battered corpse of their Emperor, as well as the bodies of the Lancers that we had left behind. The Wolf and Snake were standing over where Braire was still prone, likely ready to defend her to their deaths.

  A lot of that going around, I thought, pushing power into the runes in my hand. Lyth raised her weapon, and as did Faye, ready for a fight.

  “Stop!” came the booming voice, echoing through the chamber, heard over the clattering of weapons and the thudding of boots.

  I looked down at my feet, seeing the Emperor on his knees, slowly shaking his head. He seemed to be recovering. He didn’t bother standing, turning around to sit on the ground, looking around at the hundreds of men that had come to his rescue.

  “Well, kill them if you must,” he growled. “But do so knowing that they were here to help and save me, just as you are now. It seems a little hypocritical of you, but I’m not one to judge. Overmuch.”

  The Lancers all looked confused. One of them stepped forward, offering the seated Emperor a hand to help him up, which was accepted. “Are you all right, my lord?”

  “Well, I’m alive,” the man said, standing slowly. “But my head hurts like a motherfucker, and I think my nose is broken. If you’re all done with your violent tendencies now, I think I should like a fucking physician summoned.” He paused, looking over to where Lyth and I were still standing, and noting the wounds that we had both sustained. “You know what? Make that two physicians.”

  20

  It was a long night.

  Braire and Norel woke up sometime around sundown, looking confused and angry at us for tending to their wounds instead of trying to find Aliana. They knew she was alive, somehow, and it wasn’t up to me to prove them wrong. Hell, I was all for proving them right. But while they were both exhausted, my attempts to try and get them to get some rest instead proved futile. They spent most of the night working to try and find out where Aliana had secreted herself to. Various tracking magics were attempted, and even a summoning spell that Norel had concocted on the spot. The woman was a stone-cold genius, I realized at around midnight.

  But as dawn started approaching, there didn’t seem to be any solution in sight. Instead of trying to convince them to get some sleep, Faye and I tried to comfort them, find some way to assuage the pain. Braire had sobbed into my shoulder for longer than I cared to remember. The pain was there for me as well, a dull ache in the pit of my stomach that just wouldn’t go away, compounded and exacerbated by the stiches that had been applied to my back and shoulder. Moving was agony. Staying upright all night had been agony.

  But for Aliana, it would have been worth it. And it still might be, I thought, hugging the beastmistress into my chest as tightly as I could, trying as hard as I could to stop the pain that was coursing through my body with every beat of my heart. I needed to focus on helping Braire and Norel now. I was afraid that if I took the time to inspect the damage done to me, I would be curled up in a ball for weeks.

  As the sun started to creep up into the sky, a young page made himself known in the antechamber of Faye’s quarters.

  “Apologies, my lord, my ladies,” he said softly, bowing profusely. “The Emperor has requested that you join him for a morning meal in the throne room.”

  As exhausted as I was, it took me a moment to realize that the ‘requested’ part of that request actually meant that we were being summoned by our Emperor. Well, maybe not Lyth, but the fact remained.

  Lyth had managed to get some sleep, which I envied her for, but I didn’t begrudge her. It had taken everything that she had in her to break Abarat’s hold on the man, and while she hadn’t been hurt by the bond breaking, she had still put every ounce of effort that she could into helping before curling up on her ottoman and getting a few hours of rest.

  She didn’t look particularly rested as she woke up, puling herself up from where she had been sleeping.

  “We’re being summoned,” I whispered in Braire’s ear, and she nodded. She had cried herself all out during the night, and her eyes looked red and irritated. I had never seen an elf look the way she and Norel did now, and I hoped I never would again.

  We took a moment to make ourselves somewhat presentable, though that was a lost battle from the start. It wasn’t going to matter anyway. After the ordeal, I doubted that the Emperor would be a stickler for the tradition of dress codes in his presence.

  The page guided us through the halls toward the room that we had left behind the day before. As the doors were pulled open for us, I took a moment to appreciate the fact that not a trace remained of the battle that had occurred. The blood and bodies had been taken away. The marble had been cleaned and dried to the point of perfection. There was no denying the industriousness of the palace servants.

  Well, one trace remained, I realized, looking into the chunk of pillar that the Emperor had cut away using that… thing that had come from his sword. I supposed that there were some things that just couldn’t be washed and scrubbed away, no matter how hard you worked.

  There was a table set up in front of the throne, with a handful of empty chairs that were waiting for us. There were a handful of advisers standing nearby the throne, none of whom I recognized fr
om the day before. They all eyed us with a hint of interest, tempered by the man whose presence they were in.

  It was annoying, I realized. Even with a bruised jaw and a broken nose, with the purple starting to spread to his eyes, the man still looked as impressive as he had the day before. It wasn’t fair. I felt like a scarecrow, about to keel over, and utterly lacking in appetite for the delicious meal that had been set before us. I still took my seat, with Braire and Norel sitting on either side of me, Faye sitting next to Norel.

  As Lyth took her seat next to Braire, the Emperor stood, bowing gently.

  “Your Grace,” he said, with something like reverence in his voice. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course,” Lyth said, sounding perfectly regal as she took her seat.

  “And thank you four for coming as well,” the man added, almost as an afterthought. “You have no idea what this time has been like. Trapped in my own body, following orders that I couldn’t understand, and sometimes didn’t even hear in person, performing the will of another with no control over my own actions. I… you can’t imagine.”

  “Actually, I can,” Faye said softly, raising her hand.

  “Ah… apologies, of course, my Official Faye,” he said with a nod. “I… forgot. The night has been something of a flurry for me. I’ve barely had time to treat my wounds.”

  “I just wanted to apologize, by the way,” I said, not sure how one was supposed to properly apologize to an emperor for breaking his nose with my forehead. I just tapped at my nose and he nodded with a soft chuckle.

  “I suppose it was necessary, after everything,” he said shaking his hand. “The trust of the people in me to protect them has been shattered, and while Abarat has faced defeat in this arena, I doubt that his plans ended with me as his puppet. The man had a great deal of machinations at work. Machinations that I intend to disrupt. He tried to use me to steal my own empire away, and that is something that won’t be forgotten, or forgiven. From my time under his thumb, I can remember a fortress, deep in the north of my empire, where he has made his home and where he appeared to be sending all of his forces. We will begin our attack there.”

  “You should focus on that, your grace,” Faye said softly, looking like she didn’t have the appetite for food either. “Our efforts will be going into another arena. Aliana has been lost, and we intend to find her.”

  “Naturally,” he said with a firm nod, toying with a cream-filled pastry between his fingers. “The djinn that opened a portal and pushed Abarat, and herself through it. Memories of what happened do not escape me. I was also told of a bond that was shared between her and her two sisters, and that the bond was broken after she disappeared through the portal. My mages have told me that can only mean one thing. Are you sure that she’s even still alive?”

  “She’s alive,” Norel snarled at him, showing the first sign of anger that I’d seen in her since last night, hissing at the Emperor through her teeth, tradition be damned. “Believe me when I say that she is still alive and waiting for us to find her.”

  “Of course,” the Emperor said, narrowing his eyes and letting his eyebrows drop, apparently not used to being spoken to like that, but deciding to let it pass for the moment. “I owe you all my life and my empire, and I owe it to the djinn as well. If you say that she is still alive, I will follow through on that claim. Everything under my power that can be done to find her and restore her to your arms will be.”

  I could feel a hint of the rage that had been rushing through me the day before. I wasn’t sure if it was coming from Norel, who’s annoyance had made itself openly obvious to all present, or if it was just something that was coming from deep inside of me, but at this point, I didn’t care. It was all that was driving me forward at this point, and there was nothing that I wasn’t going to do to make sure that the piece of me that was missing was made whole again.

  I pushed myself up from my seat and softly cleared my throat, taking in a deep breath before looking firmly into the Emperor’s eyes.

  “All due respect, Your Grace,” I growled, “but you’d fucking better.”

  I could hear soft gasps from the nearby servants and advisors, but I lacked any semblance of care for their precious protocols. I turned back around and headed toward the door.

  About the Author

  Mark Albany is fan of epic fantasy and living life to its fullest. He hopes to embrace such story telling as Game of Thrones and Venom in this tale, and add one more spot of fun in your life.

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