Casket of Souls

by Lynn Flewelling

  Thero smiled. “You’re most welcome, Mika. Can you tell us more about what this old woman looked like?”

  “She had a long nose and whiskers on her chin, sir. And things hanging from her belt, skulls and stones and things.”

  “Very good. Anything else?”

  Mika thought hard. “Just that she smelled of onions.”

  Micum chuckled. “That’s a useful detail. Are we done here, Thero?”

  “I need a moment alone with the parents and the boy. Will you wait for me downstairs?”

  When Micum was gone, Thero turned to the parents. “May I speak with you away from the boy?”

  “I don’t want to leave Mika alone,” the mother said, putting an arm around her son’s shoulders.

  “We can talk in the sitting room. It’s just across the hall here,” said Aman.

  He led Thero into a comfortably furnished chamber. “Please, sit. May I offer you some mead, my lord? I made it myself.”

  “Much appreciated.” Thero accepted a cup and sipped politely. “This is excellent! And please, call me Thero. No need for titles.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  Thero sipped the honey wine politely. “Are you a mead maker by trade, Aman?”

  “I am. I have a shop in the Harvest Market.”

  “You must do very well.” Thero took another sip, then rested his cup on his knee. “Tell me, when did you know that Mika is wizard-born?”

  Aman sighed. “I figured you’d see it.”

  “Are there wizards in your family, or your wife’s?”

  “Not that we know of, but her great-granddad and my great-great-grandmother were ’faie, so Mika has the blood from both sides. But he’s the only one to show any sign of magic.”

  “What have you observed?”

  “Well, sometimes things move when he’s in a temper. He sent a bowl flying just last week. And he can turn fire blue if he stares at it hard enough.”

  “Why haven’t you presented him at the Orëska House?”

  Aman turned the cup in his hands. “He’s our only child, you see. And Yriani couldn’t bear to part with him.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, I’m sorry to say this, but if Mika has the ability to move things without any training, then his power is very strong, and unless properly taught, he could hurt people without meaning to as he grows older and his gift more powerful. He might start fires without meaning to, or even kill. A gift like his won’t just go away. And I’m sure you know that he’ll not have a normal life span. He needs to have contact with his own kind if he’s to be happy.”

  Aman stared down at the floor between his bare feet. At last he sighed. “What must we do?”

  “I would like to take him on as my apprentice. He would live with me at the Orëska House, but be free to visit you and his mother anytime he likes, so long as it doesn’t interfere with his studies.” He could see the man warring with himself, knowing Thero was right about Mika’s future if he went untrained, but heartbroken at the thought of giving up his son. “A wizard’s apprentice is like his own child, and treated as such. My master was very kind to me, and I would certainly be so with Mika.”

  “Is that the real reason you saved him?” Aman asked.

  “Not at all. He’s only the first of what I hope are many to be restored.”

  “But you’ve only just met him. How do you know if you’ll get on?”

  Thero smiled. “A wizard knows when he meets the right child.”

  Tears stood in Aman’s eyes. “We only just got him back from the sleeping death. I don’t know what his mother will say. It will break her heart!”

  “You and your wife will always be welcome at the House, and Mika can visit at home. Besides, I wouldn’t take him away so abruptly. He’ll need time to get used to the idea, just as you and your wife will. After Mourning Night and the winter festival is soon enough. In the meantime, you will all be my guests from time to time, and I will visit with Mika here, with your kind permission. I can teach him a few of the basics, and help him control his abilities.” Thero set his cup aside and stood up. “But I’m afraid I must have your answer now.”

  “He could really kill someone?”

  “Untrained wizard-born have no skill at controlling or channeling their powers. And if Mika is spontaneously manifesting that kind of ability at so young an age, then yes, he will be dangerous and is likely to be killed. You have my oath on it.”

  Aman cast an unhappy glance in the direction of the bedchamber, where Mika was chattering away with his mother. Her weeping had turned to laughter. “Not until after the festival? Perhaps that will be enough time for her.”

  Thero resisted a loud sigh of relief. “Thank you, Aman. I promise you, Mika will have a very good life with me. I must go now, but I’ll return soon, and ask Mika myself if he wants to be my apprentice. Will you explain it to him in the meantime?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Thero extended his hand and Aman took it. The bargain was struck.

  “What took you so long in there?” Micum demanded as they set off down the street.

  “Discussing a few last details with the father.”

  “Do you think Mika will be all right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you learn from your magic? I saw the way you reacted.”

  Thero explained the brief vision and what he’d felt.

  “So we know how to cure Illia!”

  “We’ll see.”

  Micum’s face fell. “What do you mean by that?”

  “The child is wizard-born. That might have had some effect, as well as the conditions under which I released him. He was very confused at first. I more or less told him how to get home. We must keep that in mind with the next one.”

  Thero and Micum returned to the inn to find Seregil asleep on the couch and Kari pacing the sitting room carpet. Elsbet was asleep beside Illia. The little girl had been tucked into bed in one of Seregil’s nightshirts.

  “Did you find the boy?” Kari asked.

  “He’s alive!” Micum said, going to her. “Thero saved him.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder as his arms went around her. “Thank the Maker!”

  “And Illia?”

  “Still the same.”

  Thero went to her and took her hand in his. “We will save her, Kari. Even if it costs me my own life, I swear to you, we’ll save Illia.”

  FROM where she sat her horse in the front ranks that morning, Beka could see Klia just down the line, conferring with the queen and the other officers of her army. Phoria’s gold-chased breastplate and helm glinted in the light, and her tabard was the color of flame. Between that and the great white Skalan stallion she rode, you didn’t need the royal standard to find her in battle. Klia said something to her half sister and Phoria laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. Everyone was in good spirits today. Or almost everyone; down the line Beka could see Danos, grim and haggard as he sat his mount. In recent battles and skirmishes he’d been bold, but not foolish, yet it was clear the disgrace of his family and his severed relationship with Princess Elani weighed heavily on him.

  The cold autumn wind off the Inner Sea made the myriad army standards snap on their poles, their varied colors bright against the blue Plenimaran sky. Black-headed gulls sailed overhead, mingling their shrill cries with the hiss of the wind through miles of long dry grass. Before Phoria’s massed army, the rolling hills of the Plenimaran frontier stretched into the distance, becoming foothills and then the jagged mountain ridges of the peninsula that connected Plenimar to the mainland. Between the Skalan army and the crucial pass there, what was left of the Overlord’s army stood in full array.

  In less than three months since Klia’s troop had captured the vital ford, Phoria and her combined regiments and warships had made a concentrated push, decimating the Plenimarans, and driving them back to their own doorstep.

  Looking south, Beka could make out Plenimaran warships far out at sea, trying to stop a flot
illa of Skala’s navy from making landfall. From this distance they looked like toys in a great tub.

  There was movement in the rank behind her. Nyal emerged from the press and reined in his bay beside hers. His dark hair flowed loose beneath his scarred helmet, and Aurënfaie chain mail glittered above the front of his corselet.

  “It’s a good day to fight, and good ground,” he remarked.

  “It is.”

  Their eyes met briefly, conveying all that they could not say here.

  “A damn good day!” Sergeant Rylin exclaimed just down the row.

  Others started to cheer, but Beka held up her hand for silence.

  The Overlord left his lines and rode forward with a phalanx of officers under a flag of parlay. Phoria’s standard-bearer raised another and the queen galloped out with Klia and her guard to speak with him.

  “This is it!” someone said among the ranks. “He’s got to capitulate now! We’ve got ’em!”

  An excited murmur spread out from there, but Beka kept her eye on the queen. Klia had spent hours with the other officers in Phoria’s tent last night, and come away tight-lipped and silent.

  The queen and the Plenimaran Overlord spoke for some time, small figures at this distance deciding whether or not any more blood was to be spilled.

  They parted at last and each group rode back to their own lines. Klia rode back to Beka and Nyal, while Phoria remained out in front of the line.

  Turning to face her army, Phoria addressed them in a ringing battlefield voice.

  “My Skalan brothers and sisters, the Overlord has refused to surrender, despite our greater numbers. This—” She swept a gauntleted hand dismissively at the not inconsiderable Plenimaran line. “This ragged company is all that stands between us and Benshâl—between us and total victory!”

  A great cheer rippled back through the ranks. The queen’s words were passed back over shoulders.

  Phoria held up her hand again and silence fell. “You’ve all fought brilliantly this summer. Thanks to your valor, we have come farther than any Skalan army since the days of your great-grandparents. I ask you now to go farther still. Give me another victory today and I promise you, you will see the hidden lands of Plenimar through the eyes of conquerors!” She paused as another cheer went up, not quite as enthusiastic as the last one.

  Beka glanced over at Klia, but the commander kept her gaze on the queen. She wasn’t smiling now.

  More than the Plenimaran forces stood between them and Benshâl; the mountains loomed ahead, the passes perhaps still crawling with defenders, and winter coming on. Snow showed on some of the higher peaks already. Even without resistance, it would take more than a few days to traverse those heights—and who knew what lay beyond? More troops in reserve? An armed populace? Unless they captured the Overlord and paraded him before the army, the chances of resistance were high.

  “My brothers and sisters!” Phoria continued. “This day we have the chance to secure the lasting safety of Skala. No more will Plenimaran armies march on us. No more will their ships plunder our vessels and coast, carrying Skalan citizens off into wretched slavery. No more will they choke off the Gold Road and starve our treasuries, our people. In our beloved homeland, people are suffering now, this very day, from the deprivations caused by Plenimar’s boundless aggression. Our people! Our loved ones! And those who have spilled their blood to keep us free of Plenimar’s yoke! My brothers and sisters, will you stand with me this day to preserve the future of our homeland?”

  This was greeted with a roar of acclaim, Klia and Beka with them.

  Across the field came more cheering, but Beka thought it must be driven by desperation.

  Phoria drew the Sword of Gherilain as she shouted, “For Skala!”

  “For Skala and the queen!” the soldiers roared with one voice, banging shields and waving weapons. “For Skala and the queen!”

  Brandishing the great sword, Phoria wheeled her horse and gave the signal. The battle trumpets blared out on both sides of the field and the armies began the dance of battle.

  The two forces clashed like surf against the rocks. As the morning wore on, lines broke and pockets of little battles formed across the field. Outnumbered as they were, the Plenimarans fought with the fury and zeal of defenders. It went on through the morning and into the afternoon. Beka and Nyal stayed at Klia’s side, with Myrhini and most of Beka’s troop. So Beka was close enough to hear when Klia let out a ragged cry of dismay.

  “The queen’s horse is down! To the queen!”

  Just ahead of them, the queen’s standard, close by Danos’s pennant, wavered over a seething sea of battle for a moment, then went down. There was no sign of Phoria or her horse. Getting to the queen was nearly impossible but somehow they hacked their way through.

  As they neared where they’d last seen her standard, Beka realized that Nyal was no longer beside her. In the crush of battle there was only an instant to look around, but there was no sign of him. Heart warring with duty, she had no choice but to press forward with Klia, who was still shouting, “To the queen!”

  Suddenly the press gave way. Before them, Phoria lay over her dying stallion’s heaving withers with half a dozen dead or dying riders around her. Her horse’s hindquarters were badly hacked and its throat was slashed, Beka noted in an instant, but what filled her heart with ice was the sight of the queen’s headless body, and the laughing Plenimaran marine standing over her, holding her head by her pale hair in one hand and the bloody Sword of Gherilain in the other.

  As voices in two languages shouted the news Klia let out a scream of pure rage and leapt over the horse. With a single swing she sliced the marine’s head from his shoulders, then caught her sister’s before it could strike the ground. She placed it reverently beside the body, then took up the queen’s sword and held it high, yelling “For the queen! Avenge Queen Phoria!”

  The cry spread and the battle went on, the Skalans driven now by vengeance. The army loved her, the queen who led from the front, and the warriors fought beyond the edge of exhaustion, slaying every Plenimaran they came against or dying in the effort.

  The lowering sun was painting the clouds a bloodstained red when word spread that the Overlord was wounded and suing for peace. Still at Klia’s side, Beka and her troop had to wade through the dead and dying to reach the place of parlay near the shore.

  The Overlord was already there, lying on a litter. He was a worn, haggard man, no more than thirty. His wounds were hidden under his red-and-silver robes of state. He wore no armor, but he clutched his crowned helm under his left arm. As Klia and her entourage entered his retinue went to one knee, but the Overlord remained where he was.

  The proceedings didn’t take long. A scribe drafted the terms of surrender under which Plenimar relinquished all claims to any lands outside their own borders, including the sacred isle of Kouros, which Plenimar had held for decades, and vowed to pay yearly tribute to Skala for one hundred years.

  Beka paid scant attention, worried sick over Nyal. It was nearly dark before she was released to search for her husband with the help of twenty of her riders. Working on foot, she tried to retrace her steps to the last place she’d seen him. In the ruddy light, it was a hellish sight. Camp followers moved among the heaving piles of bodies, stripping the enemy and killing those who still lived. Drysians and soldiers were already sorting the dead, helping the wounded, and speeding on those too badly hurt to survive.

  At last Beka heard a shout to her left and followed the familiar voice to where Sergeant Rylin and a rider named Sori were kneeling on either side of a bloody body. Beka ran the last few stumbling steps and went to her knees beside Nyal. Someone had taken off his cuirass and mail and cut his left sleeve open. The upper bone was broken and protruding through the skin. His face and neck were covered in blood, and his right leg, but his eyes were open and he raised his right hand weakly. A jagged cut had laid his left cheek open to the bone. That at least accounted for some of the blood.

  S
he clasped his hand, fighting back tears. “How bad?”

  “The leg wound is deep,” Rylin told her, already wrapping strips of cloth cut from someone’s tabard around that wound. “But it’s his arm I’m worried about.”

  “Talía,” Nyal croaked. “Don’t cry, my talía. It’s not so bad.”

  “It doesn’t look good,” Beka said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

  “Cadeus and Samani are off looking for a healer. In the meantime, I can set that arm,” said Sori.

  Nyal squeezed her hand and she nodded.

  “Are you wounded, Beka?” Nyal asked as the others gathered rags and cut splints from a broken halberd.

  “Not a scratch,” Beka managed. “The queen is dead, Nyal.”

  His eyes widened “Then we’ve lost?”

  “No. Klia took up the sword and led us to victory.”

  The wound on his cheek gaped as he tried to smile. “Then we’ll go home at last!”

  The healer didn’t find them until dawn, and by then Nyal’s wounds had begun to fester, though they’d been washed with what water Beka and the others had left.

  The exhausted young drysian came to them with a servant hauling his cart of simples. He dressed Nyal’s wound and those of the other riders who had them, and gave them healing blessings. When he was done, Beka pulled him aside.

  “Thank you, Brother, for all you’ve done. Please, will my husband survive his wounds?”

  “The infection wasn’t too bad, but if that bone doesn’t mend well, he could lose the arm.”

  Beka nodded and turned back to the others. She’d love Nyal just as well with one arm as two, but what it would do to him, not to be able to hunt or draw a bow anymore, she couldn’t imagine.

  Phoria’s body had been rescued and lay in state in her pavilion under a black shroud. In front of it, the bodies of fallen officers were laid out on cloaks with their hands clasped on their breasts and their swords beside them. Danos was not among them, Klia noted. Either he’d taken Phoria’s words to heart, or been lucky.

  There was no time to mourn her fallen sister yet. She first sent word of the victory and the queen’s loss the fastest way she could, with a message sphere to Thero, asking that he bring word to Korathan. Then she spent a weary night conferring with General Moraus and her surviving officers, taking in the number of dead, and trying to reapportion commands. By right of birth, she was now Marshal of the Armies, assuming Phoria’s command until the new queen could do so.