by Remi Michaud
The bulwark had repelled the invaders for a short while; several stakes still sported shredded cloaks and broken armor, but the sheer weight of numbers made a breach inevitable. The forces that had manned the bulwark had retreated inside the walls. The moat had been bridged by whole trees cut down and brought hastily forward from the surrounding forest, the traps, well a few of them anyway, had been bridged by the broken, gored, and now trampled bodies of those who had first discovered them.
A wave of exhaustion rocked him back on his heels. Dizzy, he clutched a crenelation, closed his eyes. He was overdoing it. He had been warned to keep control, to not exert his new powers too much until he grew stronger. His armor flickered momentarily, threatening to leave him unprotected. He concentrated through the wave of torpor that threatened to drop him, felt the comforting weight solidify again.
The dizziness held him, spun him, nauseated and disoriented him. It was quite a shock, then, when he opened his eyes and found himself facing the opposite direction, right into Gaven's rage fueled eyes.
“Where the hells have you been?” Gaven shrieked. “You bloody coward. Why did you abandon us?”
And just like that, Jurel felt like he was ten years old again, and Daved was upbraiding him for yet another foolish boy's stunt. Like the time he and Darren and Trig had used the massive piles of corn in the silo as a slide. Oh, they had had a rip-roaring good time clambering up the golden slopes and throwing themselves over the edge. It was bumpy and sometimes none too comfortable but after the first couple of slides, which had amounted to little more than tumbling head over heels until they reached the floor, they had built a good layer of corn juice on themselves and their slide. That was when it had gotten really interesting. Until he had arrived home and Daved had demanded to know where the hells he had been and why the hells was he covered in corn.
“That's food, you dolt!” he had shouted after Jurel had excitedly explained. “What the damned hells were you thinking?”
His answer then was the same he offered to Gaven now. Sheepishly, ashamedly, he looked at the worn flagstones between his feet. “Well, I-I...” and he trailed off, looking up to stare plaintively into his friend's fevered eyes.
His instincts kicked up. It felt like a sudden cold wind on a hot day, or maybe like an itch he could not quite reach. It was not very comfortable; he still had to get used to the feel of it. He glanced over Gaven's shoulder and saw the ends of a ladder slam into the stone wall.
The boyish feeling fled, chased off by his new metal determination, his exhaustion evaporated as a new wave of adrenaline coursed its fiery trail in his veins.
“Never mind that now. Can you let it lie until the end of this?”
Gaven looked over his shoulder, hesitating for an instant as several soldiers rushed to meet the new threat.
“Look, Gav, if we survive this, I promise I'll tell you everything.” He extended a hand.
Gaven's hard eyes bored into him. He seemed on the verge of demanding the explanation right now but his eyes flickered, he gave one curt nod, and gripped Jurel's wrist.
“Fine, but you will tell me everything.”
He was still angry. Jurel understood that. He had a right to be angry. They all did. Jurel had not understood before. He had run like a coward. He had been a fool. But now...
Now, he was no fool. Now he was rage and fire. He was the storm. He was divine vengeance. He would see his brother's gate in the underworld had a very long line-up before this day was done.
With a feral grin Jurel raised his sword, calling the blue fire, sending it licking up the blade.
“Let's do this.”
And they, along with the rest of the squad with them, rushed to rejoin the fray, swords high, one blazing like a star, bellowing their war cries like a hymn.
He had been mistaken earlier, he thought as his sword found its next target. It was not that he was finally fully awake. It was that he was finally fully alive.
* * *
The battle progressed as battles do. Men and women rushed forward, through the smoke and blood, over broken bodies of comrades and opponent alike to meet with a clash in the middle. After the swords and pikes stopped their brutal work, some staggered away to join in the next fray, some stayed to join with their comrades and opponents on the cold ground.
The sea of white moved inexorably forward, the sheer numbers brought by the prelacy inexhaustible. More ladders went up and siege towers rumbled forward, emerging from the choking fog and smoke like demon lords from the lower hells. No one, not even the most hardened veterans, looked too closely at the ground where the massive timber towers covered in hardened and wet leather passed. A few of these towers burst into spontaneous flame, or exploded, or simply collapsed in on themselves, sending those tasked with moving the great, lumbering beasts running...unless they collapsed as fire engulfed them, or sword-length shrapnel impaled them.
But more and more towers reached the walls as the Salosian priests grew tired and had to concentrate their remaining energy stores on staving off the Gaorlan priests. More and more Soldiers of God made the battlements, and though the defenders remained successful in repelling the attackers—with a great deal of help from Jurel and his mobile crack force—they were beginning to flag both from sheer exhaustion and from loss of numbers. It took them longer and longer each time their defenses were breached to wipe their walls clear.
Jurel's constant presence and devastating efficacy had buoyed their spirits, and lent them the strength to cause incredible casualties to the Grand Prelate's forces. When the sun dipped beneath the trees in the west and night blanketed the world, the Soldiers of God fell back to lick their wounds and rest for the next day's continuance.
That reprieve, however, gave the Salosians ample time to discover just how badly things looked. They had managed to stave off the beast for one day, but with their forces cut in half—and Mikal's force still waiting for the call, a call that, more and more seemed likely to be made out of desperation than for any tactical advantage—things did not bode well for the coming dawn.
The evening and night were spent cleaning up the bodies and the blood of friends and foes under the bone cold moon, shoring up dwindling supplies, seeing to the wounded who filled not only the infirmaries but the Council Hall with moans of pain, and the occasional call for a mother.
Occasionally, someone would look over the crenellations, past the bloody churned earth, hidden now by night's cloak, and quail at the number of fires that flickered in the distance, fires that flickered like a night full of stars, that still spread for miles end to end.
The general consensus—never spoken, no, never made real by giving it voice—was that Jurel's presence, no matter how powerful, was not enough. They needed reinforcements. A lot of them. Now.
But hard on the heels of that thought always followed a bitter question, an inevitable question, one that each exhausted fighter or healer or wielder of arcanum tried to suppress even as it took form in his or her mind: who would support a dying army of outlawed heretics against an overwhelming force sent lawfully by the kingdom's sanctioned church?
And some few, a very few, wondered deep in their heart of hearts if Jurel had been worth it.
Chapter 52
Jurel's room was dark. He had not bothered to light any candles, though knowing what he did now, he could light every damned candle in this damned building—set them all to blazing like the fires beyond the wavering defense perimeter in the forest beyond—with little more than a thought.
He had spent a year living in this room, and it was sparsely furnished. A bed, a rickety chair near a small table, a bookcase; he did not need light to navigate safely. Besides, along with a distinct lack of need for nourishment, he found he could see much better in the dark than he used to, as though the moon was always out for him.
The absence of light suited him, matched his mood. In darkness, all the joys and wonders of the world were muted, hidden. Each night, that which is laid bare in the brightness
of day becomes a mystery again, an enigma buried like a lost civilization in the sands of time. It was the perfect time for the worries and the angst that ever lurk, peeking furtively from just around the first corner of the soul, fearful of the scouring sun, to come out and play.
Weak, shaky with exhaustion, Jurel raised his cup to his lips and swallowed the last of the water. Just water. This was not a time to be drowning his miseries. There was too much at stake.
An image of Metana floated up from the burial ground deep in his mind before he could stop it. He growled, pushed her image away. It could not be. He understood that now. It just could not be. Because of who he was, or, more precisely, who he had to be.
How could there possibly be room in his life for love and laughter when he was the god of all things hate? Metana did not deserve that kind of life. She did not deserve to be with the monster he had become. So filled with light and life and grace, while he was blood, violence, darkness. No, she did not deserve that. He did not deserve her.
Besides, he thought that by the end of the next day, at least one, and probably both of them, would be dead.
A timid knock at his door sent ripples through his bruised thoughts. Shaken more by his not having anticipated the knock—his senses had heightened to a point that he enjoyed a vague form of prescience—than by the knock itself, he focused. And though he should have anticipated this, he had not and was shaken all over again.
As if she had been summoned by merely thinking of her, she now stood outside his door, uncertain, hesitant. It was a Metana he had never before encountered. The Metana he knew always moved, spoke, did everything with an air of confidence that often bordered on belligerence. It was one of the things he loved about her—had loved, he corrected himself viciously, had loved. And there she was, hesitance and second thoughts notwithstanding. Of course.
He breathed deeply, getting a grip on the surge of emotions evoked by memory of her. He must speak with her, that he knew. But he thought his goals and hers were likely to be quite different. She, of course, would demand to know where he had been the last few weeks before professing her love for him, and then demanding that he be sensible and get over himself.
He, on the other hand, knew that was not possible. She did not deserve to be stuck with him. He did not deserve her love.
He breathed deeply again, centering himself, finding that place within his soul where he could do what he needed to do without thinking too much about it. It was the same place, he realized, where he went when he was charging into battle.
At the same moment the second timid knock came, he spoke.
“Come in, Metana,” he said, and though his voice was barely more than a whisper, he still felt her jump as though he had screamed.
He did not rise as a bar of torchlight—the energy required to keep the corridors illuminated by arcane means had been diverted to the defense of the Abbey—widened, revealing a cloaked silhouette framed in the doorway.
And she did not move, though he could feel the power of her gaze like a blast of sun in a darkened room, peeling away the layers of shadow, banishing mystery of what might be, laying bare the truth of what was.
Even though he could only see the formless outline of her cloak, his heart clenched. He savagely suppressed the tenderness that threatened to unman him.
Hardening himself—
I don't deserve her. She doesn't deserve the horror I bring to her life.
—he said, “What do you want, Metana?”
Yet, still, she remained a statue in his doorway, her unseen gaze gouging him, flaying him, threatening to cleave open his armor as effectively as any sword or ax.
Gathering his tattered resolve, he stood.
Then he did the most painful thing he had ever done. He glared at her and said, “Did you not hear me? I asked you what you wanted.”
Better if this were done in a way that made the growing rift between them uncrossable forever after. Perhaps it would ultimately be easier for her.
He had expected anger. He had expected sparks of her wrath at his callous demeanor. Instead, her posture softened, her hands reaching tentatively to him across the darkness. Finally, she did speak, her voice cracking with emotion.
“Oh, my Jurel. What has happened to you?”
It was by the thinnest of threads that he managed to remain still, that he managed to not rush to her and kneel before her, that he somehow, gods only knew how, did not weep and beg her forgiveness.
Instead, marshaling himself, he straightened his shoulders and leveled a glare that was polar opposite to the one she aimed at him. He suppressed the pain it caused him, the pain it must have caused her. He sniffed quietly.
“Jurel.” Forlorn, oh so forlorn, she took a hesitant step forward. Just a small one as though something pushed against her, kept her from crossing the threshold, from crossing the barrier between her world of light and his of shadow. “Jurel, please.”
Inside Jurel, something gave way. Exasperation, anger, borne of fear, of...love? But no, he had tamped down all those weak feelings. The truth poured from him, every word of it hurtful.
“What do you want, Metana?” he demanded. “What do you want me to say? You do realize that in a few hours, we're going back to battle, don't you? You realize that with the way things stand, we won't survive the day.
“The Gaorlans brought enough Soldiers of God that, if nothing else, they can simply grind us to dust with sheer numbers. Metana, our only hope was that we destroy them quickly and decisively. That hope died when the sun set.”
“But with all their numbers,” she countered, stepping further into his room, “we still managed to fend them off. We could do it again today.”
“We have at best four thousand soldiers left, and that includes the refugees and Mikal's men out there,” he gestured vaguely, wildly. “The walls are weakening, the gate shows cracks, everyone is exhausted, and damned bloody hells, the Day of Shadows is past.”
Now that she was in the room and not framed by the bloody torchlight, Jurel was able to see her expression turn to confusion.
“What does the Day of Shadows have to do with this?”
“Come on, Tana.” That one slipped; he chided himself silently for letting the intimate nickname get past his guard. “You're not stupid. Everything really important in my life always happens on the Day of Shadows. All the prophecies say so.”
He probably should not have insinuated she was acting foolishly. Even buried in his armor, he flinched when her eyes flashed dangerously. Striding forward, she raised one dagger-like finger and jabbed him in his chest.
Her voice perilously quiet, sharp as razors, she said, “You great bloody oaf. You stupid damned buffoon.” Like a dueler pressing an advantage she advanced, and he, hard-pressed under the onslaught backed away until his chair halted him. “I'm going to let the bit about me being stupid pass for the moment. But we'll get back to it after I've managed to knock some sense through that thick bloody stone you call a skull. Let's start with this ridiculous notion you have about prophecy, shall we?”
He slumped into his chair, blank-faced dazed, and she spun away from him. Waving her hands frenetically, she nearly shrieked.
“Haven't you listened to anything you've been taught since you arrived? Have you not yet understood that prophecy is just a vague idea? Just a guide? Are you that bloody stupid?”
It was his turn to flare angrily. He rose to his feet in one swift motion.
“Now see here,” he roared. “Who do you think-”
As graceful as a swordmaster, she spun on her heel; as quick as a striking serpent she lunged forward; as strong as an ox, she pushed and he fell floundering back into his chair, his outrage suddenly quenched by shock.
“Sit down and shut up,” she hissed. Her eyes were slitted bits of diamond, her teeth bared in a snarl.
“I don't care who you are,” she continued more moderately—if plain fury could be considered more moderate. “Right now, all I see is a spoiled child. One
who is too busy pouting, wrapped up in self-pity to see anything beyond the tip of his poor, sanctimonious little nose.
“Tell you what: I will, perhaps for the first time, spell it out word for word. I will tell you in short, easy to understand words. I'm too tired to care about getting you to think for yourself. Let me know if you feel you're in over your head.”
Her scathing tone shocked him, seared him with anger and shame.
“First, a little light.”
He felt a surge of power, tiny compared to what he could call forth, but enough. His candelabra and his hearth erupted into sudden flame, casting away the darkness that had enveloped him and comforted him like a warm blanket, leaving him bare and unprotected against this new winter blast.
No longer obscured by the banished night, the full force of Metana's glare cut into him.
“Now then,” she stood with her fists planted on her hips, her entire posture screaming choler, glaring down her nose at him. “Let's start with something easy.
“You want to know what prophecy is? It's a series of broad statements about what's going to happen at some undisclosed point in the future. It's meaningless drivel at worst and at best an entertaining story. Until someone gives it worth...and that worth is normally not given until after the prophecy is fulfilled.
“Do you understand what that means? No, of course you don't.” Jurel just did not think he warranted such a contemptuous sneer. “You're a bloody oaf.”
“Imagine—if you can,” (he really did not think he deserved this kind of treatment) “that I were to make my own little prophecy. I might say something like, 'On the day an old man dies, a grandson will find his fortune.' Now, to everyone who hears it, it will sound pointless and absurd. But what if an old man happens to die? What if he was, say, a wealthy merchant? And what if he bequeaths his estate to his grandson? Imagine the grandson's reaction if he were to hear my words. He would say, 'By the gods, the prophecy was true!' My prophecy is given worth because it happens to fit the circumstances.”
