Age of War

by Michael J. Sullivan

  With no place left to look for Tesh, she headed back, but each step she took hurt. She just wanted to see him one last time, needed to say goodbye, share a final kiss. She didn’t think that was too much to ask. She didn’t think it would be so hard. As she ran back to the upper courtyard, she felt her heart breaking—her desire to say goodbye had become a genuine need. She had to see him once more before…before the end of the world.

  It’s not fair!

  Others had years. Padera had been blessed with decades. What did she and Tesh have? Not much, just a few days to love, to fight, to hold, and to cry. Brin wanted nothing more than to grow old with him, to live the life her mother had. She wanted to spend day after boring day in a tiny home and suffer endless nights listening to him snore. When he was sick, she would’ve brought him soup. On his birthday, she would’ve surprised him with a new pair of mittens she’d spent months knitting. Brin wanted to be cooped up through long winters beside him, the two of them curled up like a pair of chipmunks in a den. She wanted to give him children, watch them grow up, see them marry and have their own children. How would Tesh look with gray hair? How would it be to sip tea in front of their own home watching grandchildren play? She would never know.

  I got one kiss, one lousy kiss!

  “Brin!”

  She whirled and saw Tesh running at her.

  Brin flung her arms out and pulled him to her. Squeezing as hard as she could, she kissed him. Then she did it again and again. Her lips still against his, her hands making fists in his hair and shirt, she said, “I wanted to say goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?”

  She let her cheek slide next to his and spoke in his ear. “You’re going to fight with the rest, and by morning, we’ll all be dead. I had to see you. I had to say goodbye. I had to—I have to tell you…I love you.”

  She hadn’t planned on saying it. Brin hadn’t even thought it before. The words just came out, but the moment they left her lips, she knew it was true. That was the real reason she’d been so desperate to find him.

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  He loves me! She kissed him again.

  Horns were blaring. She heard shouts and the clang of metal. She ignored it all. The world could fall apart, she no longer cared.

  “Brin! What the Tet are you doing here?” Moya ran at them along with an onrush of swordsmen and archers. Her face was fierce, her bow strung. “The lower yard is overrun. They’re coming up the steps. Get to the Kype! Move!”

  * * *

  —

  Padera was just making her way down when the whole world started coming up. She was on her way to find Raithe, and the best place to start looking was the barracks. That was across the corbel bridge, through the Verenthenon, and down the long, narrow stairs to the upper courtyard. She only got as far as the bridge.

  “Don’t go out there,” Grygor said. The giant stood guard beside the bronze door, which, for the time being, was left open so he could look out.

  “Persephone wants me to get a message to Raithe.”

  Grygor shook his head. “Too late for that. The fane’s army is across the ford.”

  The old woman stood with the giant in the doorway of the Kype, looking out at the end of the world. The sky was swirling again. Dark, unnatural clouds covered the stars, folding and unfolding, making threatening faces at the living. Lightning flashed between the shades of gray, brilliant bolts of white that cracked and boomed.

  “I wish it would rain,” Grygor said.

  Padera glanced at him. No matter how she tilted her head, or how tightly she squinted her one eye, she could never manage to fill her expression with enough incredulity. “Did you say you wished it would rain? Why in the world—”

  “Because it’d only be a storm then, wouldn’t it? Just a spring rain. We could shutter the windows and bolt the doors, and it would blow over as all downpours do. But this isn’t one of those storms, is it?”

  From beyond the dome, she saw streaks of red light coming from the far side of the ford. One struck the remaining forward tower and sheared off the top.

  “No,” she said. “No, it’s not.”

  Screams were carried on the wind. Cries of pain and horror rose up from the village and the lower yards. They were faint enough to be the wails of ghosts.

  “My relatives have arrived.” Grygor pointed down at the seven bridges as huge Grenmorians lumbered across, wielding great clubs that they used to bash chunks out of anything still standing.

  “Why aren’t you with them?”

  “Don’t get along with my family.” He looked down at her.

  “No one gets along with their family,” Padera replied.

  “They tried to kill me—twice. Sheer luck saved me the first time. Second time it was Nyphron. Didn’t look back after that.”

  The world shook, and both Grygor and Padera staggered, reaching for the door frame for support.

  “They’re doing that again,” she said. “Treating this fortress like a dog treats a rabbit caught in its teeth.”

  Another shake and the dome of the Verenthenon cracked like an egg. Just a tiny spidery line, but the fissure, jagged and terrible, declared a prophecy. A moment later, a horde of people spilled out from under the dome. A sprinting line of evacuees raced across the corbel bridge toward Grygor and Padera. Most were soldiers, including the chieftains Tegan and Harkon, but leading the pack were Moya, Brin, Tekchin, and Tesh.

  The prophecy fulfilled itself as the dome fell. Dust of broken stone belched from the belly of the Verenthenon, a cloud that obscured the length of the span. Padera lost sight of everyone for a long awful moment. Then Moya appeared, slick with sweat, pumping her arms, her bow held high in one hand.

  Grygor and Padera moved clear as dust-covered soldiers poured in.

  “Seal the door!” Tegan shouted when the last survivor dove inside.

  Grygor looked more than pleased to slam the bronze door shut and lay the metal brace.

  “Everything on the other side of that door is lost to us.” Harkon wiped the dust and grime from his face.

  “They crushed us at the front gate.” Bergin panted for air. “There’s no stopping them.”

  Tegan placed a hand against the closed door as if willing it to hold. “There’s too many.”

  “And then the light show started,” Harkon grumbled.

  “And now they have giants,” Moya said, glancing at Grygor. “I’m going up to Persephone. I’ll die with her.”

  The others didn’t say anything, but many nodded.

  “I’ll stay here and hold this door,” Tegan declared. “I hate stairs.”

  “Me, too.” Harkon pulled his sword and weighed it in his hands. “Stairs are the gods’ curse to men.”

  “I’m going to stay,” Tesh told Brin, who took a step back as if she’d been pushed. “It’s the best way to protect you.”

  “Why are you down here?” Moya asked Padera.

  “I was sent to find Raithe.”

  Moya shook her head and pointed at the door with her bow. “There’s nothing on the other side of that door now except bodies.”

  * * *

  —

  In the smithy, heads jerked at the sound of another explosion, but Malcolm seemed unconcerned. Tressa and the dwarfs stared wide-eyed at the door as screams came from directly outside. Raithe knew those sounds would come back to them in nightmares for the rest of their lives, if they survived the night. There were other sounds, too: deep booms, clangs, and the howl of whirlwinds.

  Something banged against the little wood door, eight vertical maple boards held together by a Z brace with a simple brass latch.

  Roan worked a foot pedal similar to a spinning wheel, but this one rotated an arm of soft cloth. Then she stopped and, pulling a rag from the waist of her leather apron, wiped the sword in her hands. T
urning, she held the weapon to the light of the forge and nodded to herself. Then, still chasing down smudges with the rag, she carried the blade across the room and handed it to Raithe. Holding it out with both hands, she used the cloth so that no part of her skin left a print.

  “I did my best,” Roan said.

  Long, shimmering, and with a rich black color, the sword was perfection. Roan’s skill at a forge and anvil had grown beyond imagining. The object she placed in his hands wasn’t a sword, wasn’t a weapon at all; it was a work of art.

  Everyone in the room stared at him as he looked at it.

  This isn’t a sword for me to wield. I’m looking at—I’m holding—my own death.

  “I…” Roan’s voice cracked, then just stopped. She bit her lip and started to cry.

  “It’s beautiful,” Raithe told her. “The most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you.”

  She began to sob, to collapse; she ran back to the worktable but pushed the stool aside and sat on the floor, drawing her knees up. That’s when Raithe realized the obvious. The sword had been her support, and not just the one he held. All the swords, the shields, and armor that Roan had made were the pillars she had lashed herself to in order to remain standing. The work had been her distraction, her world within the world, her retreat, but this blade was the last, and the war was finally knocking.

  Raithe weighed the sword in his hands: heavy, well-balanced, and magnificent. He turned it, and the glow of the forge shone across its face.

  More screams came from beyond the door. He heard a man cry, “Help me! Help me!”

  Promise me, Raithe. He recalled his mother’s voice, shaking with the cold and coming out in puffs of frost. Promise me you’ll do something good, that you’ll make your life worth something.

  He walked across the room to Suri. She was sitting on the floor in the same cross-legged manner she had in Dahl Rhen, only now her hair and skin were clean, and she wore a lavish asica after the fashion of the ranking Fhrey. She looked up at him as he held out the sword.

  “I guess this means I’ll never learn to juggle.” He meant it as a joke, something to break the tension.

  Suri started crying.

  “Sorry,” he said and sighed. “So, how does this work? Will I remember who I am? Who I was? Will I have memories?”

  “I don’t know,” Suri said, sniffling. “Minna…” She shook her head. “It really wasn’t Minna at all—and yet I felt that part of Minna was there.”

  “And this sword.” He looked at it again. “This will be used to kill me after I get done fighting the Fhrey?”

  “You’ll be killed in the making. I honestly don’t know how much of you may linger in the beast. Maybe none. It might just have been what I put into the conjuration that made it seem like Minna. The sword will break the weave. If any part of you is trapped, it will be set free by the sword.”

  “So, what do I do now?”

  She reached out and took the blade. “Just lie down,” she told him.

  He did, and she placed the fabulous sword on his chest.

  “Doesn’t it need my name on it?”

  “Yes, but that…” Suri squeezed her lips together, turning the pink white, and her eyes tightened, squinting as if in agony. She took a deliberate breath. “When Minna died, I didn’t have a sword or anything, so her name was imprinted on my mind by her escaping spirit. When your spirit leaves your body, it will pass through the sword and leave your name there. It will be you who writes it, using the language of creation.”

  Raithe nodded.

  Something hit the door to the smithy again, something hard. The hinges rattled.

  “We’re running out of time. They’re going to break in,” Flood burst out, his voice an octave higher than usual.

  “No,” Suri said calmly, softly. “That door won’t open until I allow it.” She looked at Raithe. “And when it does…they’ll wish it hadn’t.” Suri ran her hands along the blade. “Such a beautiful thing to be created for such an awful purpose.” She shuddered and brought a hand to her face.

  “I don’t know who this is going to hurt more,” Raithe said. “Me or you.”

  Suri lifted her head to look at him, tears running down her face. “Me,” Suri told him without a hint of humor. “You—you won’t feel a thing. But I will.” A tear fell from her chin and splashed onto the shimmering blade. “I’ll feel it every day. Every. Single. Day. For the rest of my life, I’ll see your eyes as they are right now, the same way I still see Minna’s. She had blue eyes, bright blue eyes—so very, very bright.”

  “Just so you know, I’m not leaving anything behind,” Raithe told her. “In many ways, you’re doing me a favor, if that makes this any easier.”

  Suri placed her hand upon the black shimmering blade. “It doesn’t.”

  * * *

  —

  Persephone sat up in her bed. Propped by a pillow against the carved headboard, she listened to the sounds of battle. Explosions rumbled the stone so hard that the canopy above the bed quivered. In Persephone’s right hand she held the little sword Roan had made; in her left, she squeezed the blanket. She held both so tightly her hands ached.

  She was scared. It will be over soon. Everything will be over.

  At any minute, a Fhrey would break in the chamber door, someone not unlike Nyphron. Her mind told her that. Her emotions imagined monsters: fangs, glowing eyes, claws, something similar to the raow—only bigger—much bigger.

  Shouts, cries, the thunder of feet, then it finally happened. The door to the outer room of her suite burst in. Persephone flinched—almost screamed.

  “They’ve crossed the corbel bridge,” Moya said, panting as she entered. Her face and arms were shiny from sweat, the longbow held in her left hand, the sack of arrows slung over her right shoulder. Brin and Padera followed her. The old woman shambled through the archway and around the end posts with her famous frown and squinty eyes. In contrast, Brin was terrified. She raced in, cheeks streaked with tears.

  “Up on the bed!” Persephone shouted, waving for them. Brin leapt up and hugged her tight. The girl was shaking.

  Padera sat herself on the other side of the bed, and, taking off one of her sandals, she rubbed her foot.

  Moya stood in front of the door, her bow out, an arrow fitted to the string, four more in her draw hand in between her fingers, five bunched in her left along with the bow shaft.

  “What’s going on?” Persephone asked them.

  “The bridges are finished, and the elven army has crossed the ford,” Brin explained.

  “They came with hardly a warning,” Moya said. “Hundreds pouring over the chasm, both beautiful and terrible, wearing shining gold and shimmering blue. With them came whirlwinds and giants. Nothing can stop them. They’re coming still.”

  Boom!

  “They’re here,” Moya said, looking out through the archway into the sitting room as if she could see them. “That would be them hitting the bronze door downstairs. Tegan and Harkon are trying to hold it with a handful of men.” She looked at Persephone. “Gavin Killian and Bergin are with them.”

  Persephone didn’t know why Moya told her about Gavin and Bergin. Maybe she felt it would be comforting to know that men of Dahl Rhen were defending her. At the sound of their names, Persephone remembered her home of long ago and far away, a world of another time that was only a year lost. She saw the stone table and Mari between the braziers at the foot of the lodge steps. She recalled the summer fairs where Bergin served honey mead, barley ale, and strawberry wine and the dark winter nights when Gavin told his ghostly tales around the lodge’s fire, scaring Habet into adding more wood than was needed. That whole existence was gone. Even its memories were being hunted down and erased.

  I came to tell the chieftain we’re going to die. Suri’s voice came back to her, eerily innocent, spoken in that de
tached-from-reality manner that had so confounded Persephone.

  Who’s going to die?

  All of us.

  All of whom? You and I?

  Yes—you, me, the funny man with the horn at the gate, everyone.

  Persephone had thought the girl was merely looking for food. She also believed Suri was lying. Persephone had been wrong. The only thing Suri had lied about was the possibility of hope—that heeding the counsel of the trees could help. Persephone had done everything Magda had said, but none of it had saved them.

  Suri had been right. We’re all going to die. You, me, the old woman. The young girl. The people outside. Everyone.

  Raithe had been right. They couldn’t win, but he had been wrong, too. Even knowing how it turned out, Persephone would have still chosen to stay.

  Death is inescapable. Everyone spends their days, buying unrealized dreams. I gambled mine on hope, not for myself, but for all those who would follow.

  The Kype rocked as something powerful impacted its base. Dust fell from the rafters, and out in the sitting room, a golden cup fell from its seat on the stone molding and rang on the floor.

  “I’m so scared.” Brin hugged Persephone tightly, pressing her head against Persephone’s side. “Will it hurt terribly, do you think?”

  “No, child,” Padera answered for her. “The Fhrey are not ones for sport.”

  “She’s right,” Persephone assured, although she had no idea if it was true, and she knew Padera didn’t either. “It will be quick, and we’ll all be together again. Your mother and father, Mahn, Reglan—”

  “Melvin and my boys,” Padera added. “Been too long since I seen them.”