by Hal Emerson
“DUCK!”
She crouched down immediate and he swung through the space behind her, slicing into a man’s chest and sending him backward where another Kindred caught him and slit his throat.
“Gatehouse,” Tomaz grunted to them. “Get to the gatehouse. Can’t hold this much longer. GATEHOUSE – NOW!”
The Prince and Leah ran, dodging over fallen bodies. The door was barred. A Defender came at them and the Prince killed him. The man’s strength was added to him, and he used it to crash through the door, splintering the wood and depositing him on the floor inside. There were five men around him, but they stood no chance against Leah.
As the last man fell, they ran to the winch that controlled the portcullis and pushed it the other way. The Prince looked back out the door and saw it begin to rise. Tomaz quivered and fell to his knees, his huge muscle rippling and bulging. He had large, wide red marks on his shoulders from where the spiked edges of the gate had bit into him, but there were no cuts.
The Ox Talisman – it made his skin hard enough that nothing could cut it, only bruise it. Why is it working now when it didn’t before? What is different?
“Everyone!” The Prince roared, turning to them all. The battle was over for the moment; they’d won the gate. Half of the Kindred began to make their way into the Inner City, breaking down doors and dragging out the Most High who yelled and screeched in protest.
“Dysuna is leading an army from the south,” he said quickly. “We are about to be surrounded. All of you –”
He motioned to about half of the group, nearly a hundred men and women.
“ – go help secure the gate! We need to make sure everything is in place. We’re about to be under siege. The rest of you, find every last guard! All it takes is one man to sabotage us and we’re done. Go! Now!”
They all bolted.
“Leah, Tomaz,” he said quickly, beckoning to them.
“Is this true – Dysuna is attacking us?”
“Yes,” he said quickly, “I saw it with my own eyes – she’s coming up from the south. I commanded the entire camp to break down and retreat inside the walls. Ishmael and the other Elders are arranging it.”
“What about the Generals? They’re helping, right?”
The Prince looked at them both and tried to keep his voice even.
“Henri Perci betrayed us. When he saw I’d returned and knew this was a trap he killed Commander Wyck and ran. General Oleander was a traitor as well – worse, he was a construct, a plaything of the Visigony and the Bloodmages.”
For a moment they could only stare at him, stunned.
“No … no that is impossible.”
“I swear it to be true.”
“How? And how did you know this was a trap? How are you even here in the first place?”
“We took Formaux,” he said quickly. “Tiffenal is dead.”
Their mouths dropped open.
“The sambolin – do you have it?”
“No,” the Prince said. “By now Autmaran has it though, I didn’t think to bring it with me. Look, when I absorbed Tiffenal’s memories I saw it all – Geofred was planning for us to invade Banelyn. He wanted us to come here, he wanted to drive us all here.”
“Impossible – how could he know that?”
“The Eagle Talisman,” the Prince grimly. “He can see the future. He can predict everything we do, every move we make.”
“You absorbed the memories,” Tomaz rumbled quickly, “did you absorb the Fox Talisman? If we had that, it could counteract the effects, make us more unpredictable, correct?”
“No,” he said heavily, “Davydd absorbed it. He stayed behind with Autmaran to secure the city.”
“Davydd – what – is he all right?”
“I think he will be,” the Prince said. “He was badly hurt, but Lorna was with him when I left, and he was alive. He has the Fox Talisman – he has luck on his side. He’ll probably outlive us all now.”
“But then what about Geofred?” Tomaz asked. “Where is he?”
The Prince closed his eyes and reached through the Raven Talisman, searching around him, feeling for life.
“I don’t know,” the Prince said. “It would make sense for him to be in the Eyrie, to be out of the way. He doesn’t need to manipulate any of this anymore, it was all –”
And then he broke off because he realized something. He turned slowly toward the Cathedral, feeling the bright light in his mind, the chilling blue glow of the Eagle.
“He’s … he’s here.”
He took off running. What was his brother doing here – what did he have lying in store? He didn’t have time to wait to find out, he didn’t have time to be cautious – soon they would be under siege by Dysuna. He needed to confront his brother – it needed to end now.
Leah and Tomaz were running with him, flanking him, both telling him to wait, but he paid them no mind. He reached the Cathedral doors and threw them open. He passed the threshold, the amazing interior lit with glowing candles that reflected off stunning glass windows. Leah and Tomaz came up beside him and froze as they saw the man before them.
The Eagle sat draped over the magnificent throne that crowned the altar. His legs were crossed, his head was pulled back, looking blankly into the air before him, and the blue markings on his shaved head glowed and pulsed. He was clothed in simple blue robes with loose white pants underneath, his bare feet and hands pulsing with blue lines as well, as he stared off into the future. Raven came forward, Leah and Tomaz flanking him, and as they approached the Eagle’s eyes cleared and locked on them as he released the Talisman.
Memories came back to the Prince as he walked toward his brother. Geofred had been both the kindest of his siblings and the most remorseless. He did what he did for reasons that none but he could understand. The Prince, when growing up, had idolized him, far more than his other siblings. Far more even than his Mother. He was the man always looking to the future, ready to do what was necessary, even when that meant performing immoral deeds. He had the ultimate good in mind, one that transcended the rights of a single man or woman – he was tasked with guarding the good of an Empire.
But now that admiration was gone. Now the Prince had lived among the men and women his brother so carelessly disposed of. The men he had killed – were they the price to pay for a better world? Was such a price worth paying?
The Prince stopped several yards away from the altar, just outside a small wooden fence that no doubt kept even the Most High from transgressing the sacred space that only the Empress or Her Children could enter. Such things seemed so foolish to him now … they seemed so wrong.
He felt Tomaz and Leah come up to him on either side, and stop only an arms length away – just far enough that, should they need to move quickly into action, they wouldn’t be in each other’s way, but still close enough together to allow them to defend each other should the Eagle attack.
“Mother wouldn’t like you sitting in her chair brother.”
Geofred sighed and unfolded himself. He bore the look of a disappointed tutor as he stood upon the great imitation of the Diamond Throne.
“You never understood the first lesson I tried to teach you,” the Eagle said, eyes the blue of a cloudless morning sky. “Power is an illusion. Even Mother’s.”
“She is a God brother,” The Prince said, uneasy. Even with all of his time spent in Exile, he knew this to be true.
“And yet you fight against her.”
“I fight against the injustice the Empire has caused,” he responded.
“You do but equivocate,” the Eagle said, amused. “To fight the Empire is to fight the Empress, and to fight the injustice of the Empire, is to fight the injustice of the Empress. You cannot say it is otherwise – we both know that our Mother rules this land with an iron fist. If there is anything that can be said about Her it is that she does not let a day go by without putting Her personal stamp on the lands She rules.”
Geofred raised a hand and snapped
his fingers.
Three figures came out of the shadows, holding stones that glowed blood red, wearing robes with black hoods.
“Bloodmages!”
The three of them dove for cover but they were too late. The stones glowed red and strips of metal detached themselves from the walls and from the floor, bent, and flew toward the Prince, Leah, and Tomaz. The momentum of the metal threw them to the walls around the altar, where they were held fast as the metal dug into the walls, glowing red under the Bloodmage enchantment.
“Perfect,” Geofred said with a smile. “Now leave us. Kill as many of the Kindred as you can before you are taken. I didn’t intend for them to breach the walls in force – keep them from entering here until I am finished.”
The three mages bowed and left.
“How are you doing this?” The Prince asked, shocked. Bloodmagic couldn’t touch him – he had a Talisman. This shouldn’t be possible.
“Ah!” Geofred said with a smile. “My own little trick. Bloodmagic can’t hold you – or your friend there with the Aspect of Strength – but it can still manipulate things around you. So I had them embed the metal in the wall and fuse it with the stone, keeping the enchantment from touching you at all. Quite a neat little loophole.”
“I built these walls you know,” he said, looking at the Cathedral dispassionately, “as soon as they were threatened, I knew, and I came here.”
“You knew before then. You set this all up – you convinced Tiffenal to steal the Elder’s dagger.”
“Ahhhh … fascinating. So the Raven Talisman really does work on the other Children. I thought that, because of the way the Talismans interfere with each other, there might be some kind of problem. But no, it looks like you were able to get around that.”
“Don’t change the subject,” the Prince snarled, straining against the metal that held him pinned to the wall of the Cathedral. “You convinced Tiffenal to steal the dagger. To kill an Elder.”
“Very well,” said Geofred, raising an eyebrow at him, showing his disapproval at the Prince’s outburst, once again assuming the stance of a disappointed tutor. “You are correct - I did. But if we’re going to really get into it … you should also blame me for the death of General Oleander.”
“He was a construct,” said the Prince, watching his brother, trying to think of a way out of this predicament, but coming up with nothing. They were powerless – even Tomaz couldn’t break his bonds, try as he might. Geofred could kill them any time he chose and there was nothing he could do about it.
“He wasn’t originally a construct,” Geofred said, smiling, “but he was after Tiffenal’s little assassination. The original Oleander has been dead for months now – the construct could only work for so long, we knew that going in, so we had to make it count. I didn’t decide who to make it until we heard from the remaining Seekers about the situation in Vale. He was the most convenient … though Henri Perci would have served just as well.”
“How did you turn him?” Tomaz asked, murder in his eyes. “He’s one of the most loyal Kindred we’ve ever known – he would never betray us.”
“He made a deal with us,” Geofred said with a sneer. “The last remaining Seeker came to him after you’d been chosen Prince of the Veil and offered him a trade – if he would deliver you and the Kindred army up to us, we would give him Vale, and we would let the Kindred live in peace as a protectorate of the Empire. We lied of course, but he didn’t seemed to understand that was a possibility. Odd, really. I’m assuming he thought he could somehow retrieve the dagger and retrigger the enchantments, putting everything back the way it was. Foolishness really. Likely he is with Dysuna now, trying to make her hold up our end of the bargain.”
“But why?” Asked Raven. “Why did you do it all? Why did you want us here?”
Geofred looked at him with an expression both of pity and affection. It was the look a master would give a loyal family pet.
“Because I want you to win of course!”
For a long moment, the Prince didn’t say anything, and neither did Leah or Tomaz. In the stretching silence they could hear the distant sounds of battle as Dysuna attacked the walls.
“What?”
“Not the Kindred you understand – just you. I actually intended the Kindred army to be crushed by Dysuna – but I knew you’d sense me and come here. All Mother and Dysuna really cared about was crushing the Kindred – I know you think you’re somehow vitally important to Mother, but you’re not, you’re a means to an end. Long before you were born, there was a Portent that came to me while Mother was gone from the Fortress. I didn’t believe it at first, so I cast my own auspices. I checked and rechecked every possible variable; I even called the Visigony together to confirm it, though I had to go through the trouble of resetting their memories after – a long and painful process. Painful for them mostly, which is unfortunate, they don’t work well when they’re in pain. It was all for nothing though, the Portent was true. I should have known all along … the Eagle Talisman cannot lie. It can show branches and merges, dead-ends even, but it cannot show something impossible … no. And so when I saw this land bathed in blood I should have known right then that it was the future. Well … a possible future.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” Tomaz rumbled.
“Bloodmagic,” Leah said, her eyes flicking back and forth as if she were seeing some invisible book of answers. “This has to do with Bloodmagic.”
“Precisely!” Cried Geofred. “Oh good, I was so hoping that you’d be intelligent after all. You seemed the plausible candidate, but I had my doubts.”
“Plausible candidate?”
“Yes!” Screeched the Eagle, his blue eyes blazing furiously. “Do you not see it yet? No matter, you will soon.”
“What are you talking about?” The Prince asked harshly.
Geofred ignored him and pulled something from under his robes … something small and white … something that he quickly hid by wrapping it in a dark piece of cloth, which he handled very gingerly. It was as if were afraid the thing inside would burn him.
“What does any of this have to do with anything?!” Roared Tomaz. He pulled against his golden bonds, his enormous muscles bunching and stretching, the veins in his neck and head standing out, and the red light of the Ox Talisman shining from beneath his remaining armor. “Just kill us and be done with it!”
“Hmm … yes, he is very much like Ramael. Well chosen brother.”
He approached the giant then and studied him carefully.
“Ah yes … I remember you. The banished BladeMaster! You haven’t figured out the Ox Talisman yet, have you?”
Tomaz grew very still, and his eyes narrowed, turning hard as stone.
Geofred spun and pointed to the Prince, taking in Aemon’s Blade that he still held in his hand, though it was currently trapped against his side and useless.
“First you have to know about the Blade - the Blade you hold is not truly a Blade at all. It is an amplifier … and a way for the bearer of the Talisman to, in a sense, loan his own power. The reason the Raven Talisman exhausts you so much when you try to heal someone dear brother, is that you are giving the one you wish to heal your own power, and letting them drain your life in order to save theirs.”
“No,” Raven said, “no they said Aemon’s Blade turns the Talismans pure again, turns them into Aspects.”
“Only the giving of Talismans can turn them from dark Bloodmagic back to light. Your Talisman was never given … it was ripped from the soul of some poor unfortunate man, held by Mother, and branded onto you the day you were deemed worthy. Your Talisman will remain dark until you give it away – and your life with it.”
Trumpets sounded outside, and there was another swell in the sound of the far off battle. What was happening? Had the Kindred managed to close the gates?
“Our time grows short,” Geofred said. “I must be brief. Listen carefully, this is important. The Talismans exist in different classes – three
are equalizers, two are gifts, and one binds. The first three: the Raven, which grants the bearer power over life or death; the Ox, which grants the bearer strength. The Wolf brings stamina, endurance, and will. Each of these need a source – the Raven needs life to gain life, the Ox needs strength to gain strength, the Wolf needs will to give will. The next two: the Eagle gives clear sight of events to come. The Fox gives luck, allowing it to shape events in unpredictable ways. Neither needs to draw on others for their power, but they both have downfalls of their own. Arrogance, foolhardiness. In truth they are two sides of the same coin: order and chaos. Both lead to the same end if kept unchecked. Last is the Lion, which is the most powerful, for it is binds men and women, and can give hope or despair to all that hear its roar. It commands men, enslaves their souls, or breaks the chains and sets them free.”
