Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1)

by Frances Smith

  Michael backed away, "I never realised, I never thought..."

  "No," Aegea said. "Because you never think of anyone but yourself, do you? Have you ever cared for anyone but yourself?"

  "Yes!"

  "Then it would grieve you to see them this way," Aegea showed him another vision, of Amy and Jason wounded and defeated, with the Voice of Corona about to slay them both, and Gideon and Wyrrin too. "This is happening as we speak."

  "No," Michael cried. He turned to the Divine Empress, daring her blazing fury, "No, please, you can't let them die. Do something, save them!"

  "I can do nothing for them," Aegea said calmly.

  "Why not, you're a god," Michael fell to his knees, grasping hers in supplication. "You are right in everything that you accuse me of: I am weak, and a coward. I sold myself a slave for my own benefit. I died for my own benefit. I abandoned my friends, my family because I would rather end it all than try and do better another time. I complained that I had not been born a better man rather than trying to make myself a better man. All this I own to but do not let them suffer on my account. Save them, please."

  "I can do nothing," Aegea said. She looked down at him. "But there is something you can do."

  Michael blinked. "I?"

  "You are in many respects a worthless maggot, but in others you are not without the qualities that would justify the faith that Gideon placed in you. You have confessed your faults, but words you have spoken before. Are you willing to prove with deeds that this time you mean what you say?"

  Michael nodded. "I will do anything to save them."

  "Then cast aside the worst part of yourself and live the purer with the other half," Aegea said. "Live. I have the power to send you back to life, to defend your comrades, but you must live from that day on as selflessly as you claimed to do in days past. No more courting of death, no more vainglory, no more fury. You must live a virtuous man in my name, and devote yourself wholly to a higher cause than your own aggrandisement. That is the bargain that I offer you, do you accept?"

  Michael said, "The path your majesty asks of me is high and hard, will you help me walk it?"

  "If you will have it," Aegea replied.

  "Then I will go."

  Aegea smiled. "Would you live in a world of honour and chivalry, Michael Callistus? A world such as your fantasies came from?"

  "I would, Your Majesty, but that world does not exist."

  "Then make it exist," Aegea said. "There was no Empire when I came to the throne as Princess of Eternal Pantheia, but I and my descendants made an empire out of squabbling city states and petty kingdoms. Make the world that you would live in, whether by words or by swords. And on the way you may find that life is not so ill a state in which to while away the years. And now you must go."

  "No," a man shouted angrily from behind him. A hooded man upon a pale horse who gestured at Michael with a pale hand. "He is not yours, Aegea, to hide him and to cheat me of my rightful prey. He is not yours, you have no power over him. Leave to me that which by right is mine!"

  "I would sooner leave you a bone to choke on," Aegea said. "Be gone, Lord of the Grave, he stands under my protection."

  "He is not yours," Tanuk shouted. "No god may protect from me any but their own worshippers. That is the law laid down by my cousin, and a mere demi-god such as you would not dare traduce."

  "Would not dare?" Aegea's yelled as her eyes flashed with anger. "I am Aegea the Great, Empress of All Pelarius, there is nothing I would not dare. Now go, lest you would fight against the power of the Empire itself."

  "The power of the Empire?" Tanuk laughed. "You have less than a thousand believers left in all your Empire. With what power shall you oppose a trueborn god?"

  "Try my patience and you will soon discover," Aegea replied.

  Tanuk hesitated, then snorted angrily. "There will be repercussions from this. Mark my words!"

  As he rode away Aegea turned to Michael. "You must go quickly. There is not much time." She placed a hand upon his forehead.

  Michael ran, his feet pounding over the ash. The gate of gold lay before him, at the end of an ashen path up a grey hill. Through the gate, he could see Amy fighting for her life against the Voice of Corona. He would reach her in time. He had to.

  Michael heard pounding hooves behind him, the angry cries of Tanuk. He did not look back. He had no time to look back. He would not fail, not this time, not when his family was in danger.

  "Stop!" Tanuk yelled. "You are mine! Aegea cannot defy me!"

  Michael paid the Lord of the Grave no heed. He had more pressing concerns. He had to reach the gate in time.

  The sound of galloping hooves was drawing closer. Michael could hear the snorting of the spectral steed. He could almost feel the pale hand reaching for him.

  Michael pressed his legs faster. On. On. He was almost to the gate. There was not much time. In a moment the Voice would strike his Amy dead.

  Michael could allow that. He leapt, his leap carrying him through the golden gate-

  And then he stood between His Highness and the Voice, his hand pierced by the Voice's sword but grasping his hand in return.

  "I swear to God," Michael said, as a breeze whipped through his hair. "I will not let you hurt them." He drew his green blade, the sword that Fiannuala and Cati had given him, and sliced off the Voice's arm in one smoothe stroke. He stared at the blade, dead man's blood dripping off it.

  Princess Fiannuala. For my behaviour, I apologise. From now on, I will honour your sacrifice in the manner in which it deserves to be honoured.

  The Voice retreated, the stump of his arm hanging limply by his side. "Michael Callistus. I thought you were dead."

  Michael smiled, in spite of the pain of his wound that was now returning to him after his brief moment of blissful relief from it. "Your powers of observation were not at fault. I died of foolishness. Now I am returned, less of a fool. Are you all right, our Amy?"

  "I'll live," Amy muttered. "Is it really you?"

  "It is, and yet is not," Michael replied. "I am not the Michael who died, for I have returned a better man, if the Empress in her grace shall sustain my virtue now and after. Though I will never be able to repay your kindnesses, or atone for my own cruelty, you have my apology." You are my sister, even as Miranda is.

  His Highness groaned, and stirred to wakefulness. As he looked at Michael his eyes widened and his mouth worked silently. "Y-you?"

  "I am sorry, Your Highness," Michael said. I am sorry for abandoning him, Filia Tullia. From now I swear I shall protect him and your little sister both. Michael looked at Gideon, staring at him in shock. "I am sorry Gideon. Everyone, I am so very sorry for all the wrongs that I have done."

  Gideon said nothing. He just stared. Michael, feeling shamed, looked away and focussed his attention upon his enemy. He glowered at the Corona's Voice, the man responsible for so much misery. "We will not meet again, once this is done."

  "So confident," the Voice replied mockingly, as a new arm of blue spiritual fire replaced the mortal arm that Michael had severed. The Voice picked up Amy's sword, Magnus Alba, and hefted it as easily as he would have held a breadknife. "But returned from or not you are still just a man. I am an ideal!"

  "A man? No," Michael replied. "I am an instrument of divine will. I did not return from death by my strength alone but at the command of a great lady, that I might do her work."

  "A great lady who would not or could not heal your wound, who sent you back to bleed to death?" the Voice challenged.

  Michael placed one hand over his injury, and fought to ignore the throbbing pain of his wound.

  "That matters not," Michael said. "Nothing matters that stops me from protecting these good folk, the people I hold most dear to me. I died because I thought that life had lost all its meaning. Because I thought that things like honour, duty, family were things that I could see, could find if I looked hard enough. But I got tired of looking, and so I convinced myself that they were never there at all. An
d because I could find nothing to live for out in the world, I saw no reason in continuing to live. But the Empress, who had herself nothing to live for until she made it with her own hands, reminded me that you find the things worth living for in the way you live. I was never going to find a place in the world for myself by looking for one that destiny had prepared for me, I shall make a place for myself, with my own swords, by choosing a place to suit my heart to be then carving out a hollow there to dwell in.

  "I choose them. My family in spirit if not in blood. I left them before because I cared not enough about them to stay with them, I cared too much about myself and not enough about others. But now I understand how lucky I am to be accepted by all of them, loved by them; and now, if they will forgive me, I shall never leave them again for as long as they need me to stand by their side.

  "They are my family, and I vow before Lord Turo and the immortal Empress that I will keep them safe from now until the very ending of the world."

  As he spoke, Michael felt himself getting stronger. The pain of his mortal wound receded into nothing. The weight upon his shoulders fell away. The light in his eyes dimmed, he felt taken out of himself in a way that he had only ever felt once before.

  At Davidheyr.

  Fiannuala appeared before his eyes, a shimmering spectral shade. "Get him Michael, knock him on his back!"

  Tullia appeared beside her, her eyes shining as she smiled. "Win. I know you can."

  "You are both here," Michael smiled. "Is this the true power of spirit magic?"

  "In a way," Fiannuala said. "You couldn't be as powerful as you are, we wouldn't be here giving you our strength of soul, by the power of spirit magic alone. We're here because we want to be here. For you."

  "I do not deserve such fine companions," Michael said.

  "Maybe, maybe not," Tullia said. "But no one ever gets the friends that they deserve, in life or death."

  Michael grinned, drew both his swords, and settled into one of the guards Gideon had taught. "I know the revels started without me, and I did not reserve your company, but good sir, will you do me the honour of the last dance?"

  The Voice chuckled. "Good sir? So you play the lovely maid do you? I confess a face less lovely I have rarely looked upon. Yet I shall dance with you, though do not think that chivalry shall spare you from my sword, homely maid.

  "We were not so different once, were we?" Michael asked. "You, too, aspired to the ideals of Old Corona. Like me, you found the world of today unsuited to such ideals."

  "Perhaps," the Voice admitted. "So what makes us different, do you think?"

  "I will neither flee nor compromise," Michael said. "Not any more."

  "Do not talk as though your victory is so certain," the Voice snapped. "I will cut out your heart with this naiad blade, then I will use it to behead the knight, then with this symbol of God's blessing in my hands I will lead Corona to liberty and a golden age."

  "Only if you defeat me, sir," Michael said, settling into an aggressive stance, the spatha and the Eena blade at the ready.

  The Voice settled into a stance of his own, Magnus Alba pointed towards Michael's heart. "Begin!"

  They sprang at each other like two dragons of the elder days meeting in battle during the wars amongst the gods. Like crashing rocks they came together with a resounding clash of blades, sparks flying as Magnus Alba met the dryad blade. The Voice of Corona was strong and swift, he hurled his fury against Michael in a flurry of heavy blows that would have severed limbs or carved his body into pieces had they struck as they were meant to. But Michael let none of them strike as they were meant to. He fought with the speed and strength not only of himself and of his own soul but with the power of all his friends and comrades, all the family he had assembled about himself. Tullia and Fiannuala stood with him in this battle, lending speed to his feet and might to his arm. The most the Voice could deal to him were small cuts and petty wounds, things that drew blood but did not stay his progress, even while Michael beat past his foeman's guard again and again to deal injuries that would have slain a mortal man.

  I understand now. I realise what Gideon was trying to teach me. All his life Michael had fought with fury. Even when his cause was just he had let his anger and his rage lead him by the nose, fighting with a strength born from his wrath at all the world. That was how the Voice of Corona fought, with anger at the Empire and at all who would support her against Corona. But now Michael fought with blazing virtue, his movements precise, his blows sure, his head clear even as his soul resounded with unassailable righteousness. He pressed the Voice backwards, beating down his guard again and again, wrenching Magnus Alba from his unworthy grasp, hounding him, slicing through the spectral blade he summoned.

  "I will not lose to you!" the Voice thundered, spirit magic forming in his hands. "I am Corona's voice and soul!" He fired an enormous burst of spirit magic straight at Michael-

  - who let his spatha fall to the ground, and caught the blast in one hand. He squeezed, and Corona's magic was crushed in his palm like a bird's egg.

  "If Corona has no nobler souls than you," Michael said softly. "Then it is truly lost." Then he attacked.

  "This is for Mater Doraeus," he said, his voice quiet and low as he plunged his hand into the Voice's chest and plucked out a heart rotten with bitterness and futile struggle. For a moment Michael held it in his palm, staring at it, praying that when some spirit warrior gazed upon his heart it did not look so foul. "And this is for the rest of Lover's Rock." He squeezed it, and destroyed the Voice's heart.

  The Voice gasped. Then, like a puppet with cut strings, the body fell to earth as the soul, no longer bound to this world, fled into the shadowlands until the due funeral rites were administered.

  And then the pain of all of Michael's wounds returned at once. His sight returned to normal, his friends disappeared, Michael's legs buckled under him as he was struck with a tidal wave of sheer pain which drove him to the ground.

  Michael collapsed to the ground beside Corona's Voice, squirming and writhing and screaming at such pain, such intense pain all at once. He could feel now where the Voice's spectral blade had bitten into his hand, where Magnus Alba had bitten him over and over again, where what he had taken to be nicks were really great gouges in his skin. Tears of pain were running down his face, and all he wanted was for it to end, for it stop, for something to take away the pain he couldn’t stand any longer.

  “Gideon, help me, please,” Michael whispered, as even writhing became too painful for him, used up too much strength he no longer possessed, all of that which he had used to defeat the Voice having proved as fleeting as a summer breeze. But he wouldn’t know if Gideon could help him or not, because the pain was too much even for him to stay awake any longer. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Filia Metella advancing upon him from out of the trees.

  Metella knelt beside Michael's body. He was still breathing. Whether he would remain so for very long, wounded as he was, was another question altogether.

  She looked at his companions. All hurt. It would be the play of a child to slay them all.

  She could feel her knives heavy on her belt, and yet she made no move to draw them. She did nothing to fulfil her orders from her Lord Father.

  Metella found that for the first time she did not want to obey.

  She looked down at Michael. He was not so handsome as his brother, and yet his homely face was not without its charms. Lucifer loved him well, she could tell that for a certainty. He also loved the red-headed girl, Amy.

  If she slew them, and he found out, it would break his heart and sunder all bonds between them forever more. If she slew them and he did not find out, then she would have to live with that to the end of her days. She was not sure she had such powers of endurance.

  The bastard and fire drake...there was no excuse for sparing them, save that if she killed him then why would she not dispatch the other two?

  And she could not do that. Metella could not bring herself t
o hurt Lucifer so, and she could not find it in her to judge Michael worthy of death.

  Let Lord Father punish her as he would, in this she would not follow his command. In fact she would flagrantly transgress it.

  She looked up, and regarded Amy firmly. "Be not afeared," Metella said calmly. "I am a friend of Michael, and I am here to help."

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for taking the time to read this, the first book in the First Sword Chronicles. I hope that you enjoyed this tale of mine, and were entertained by Michael’s valour, by Miranda’s wit and keen intelligence, and by the tarnished, fading glories of the Empire that I have endeavoured to lay out before you.

  If you enjoyed this tale of mine, please consider leaving a review on Amazon so that those who come after you will know that this book comes recommended, and may feel moved to read it in their turn. If you are not prompted by your device you can follow this link to review.

  Thank you again for reading, and if you are hungry for more you will be pleased to know that the story of Michael and Miranda continues in Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue, now available on Amazon Kindle. The synopsis lies directly below, and the first chapter can be read on the next page.

  Michael has survived his battle with the Voice of Corona, and is determined to walk the path of service to the immortal Empress Aegea. But opposing him is none other than his own beloved brother, Felix, who was thought dead but is the chief servant to Michael’s enemy, Quirian.

  Meanwhile, the quarrels between the Empire's feuding factions continue as Miranda finds herself increasingly entangled in the treacherous currents of Imperial politics. As plots multiply, Miranda finds herself increasingly unsure of her loyalties to anyone but her lover Octavia and her dear friend, Empress Portia. But as the Empire hurtles towards civil war the day approaches when she will have to choose a side once and for all.

  The roads of Michael, Felix and Miranda entwine in Eternal Pantheia, the Empire’s capital, where betrayals and revelations try their resolve. As the city burns around them the three divided siblings must reunite and put their faith in one another, for only together can they save the Empire, or let the fires of its hubris consume the nation.