Eventually his draining eyes fell upon Marciano, who hadn't flinched as the child advanced within his grasp. The General didn't smile, only bitterly spat, "Is that not the point of Emperors? To die?"
Despite it all Vasska had to laugh, he'd got him good with that one. And as his failing body slipped off the blade's edge to the floor, the Emperor of Avar finally went to perhaps a not as loving an embrace as he thought of the only Goddess to ever understand him.
Ciara raced towards Taban, who was trying to slide his jerkin off to tend to the wound. "Kynton!" she yelled before remembering he might be dead as well. "Hang on," dangerously practiced fingers split up the skirts of her dress and she wadded up what had once been "Real Dunlaw Kotton" and stuffed it into the gaping hole. The assassin turned dangerously pale but placed his own hand against hers, pressing the bandage deeper.
"What of you!" Aldrin rose up, pointing his bloodied sword at the immoveable General, "Will you seek vengeance?"
Marciano's gaze fell down to the Emperor, curled upon his side as if he took a nap in the middle of the day. He almost expected a thumb to be adhered to his mouth as he succored it for a peace the man could never achieve. "Not from me," he said in struggling Ostero, wishing he'd paid slightly closer attention to that ambassador before he had to cut his head off.
"But...he leaves behind a son," Marciano said wearily, his eyes staring into the youth forced to play the part of adult. A never-ending cycle, it seemed.
Aldrin nodded slowly, taking the burden upon himself. He had killed a boy's father...and a brother's brother. Slowly, he lowered his sword, taking the General at his word. Taban would have cursed at the child's ignorance, but he was too busy trying to not die. But Marciano made no move, only crossing his arms.
As the blood rage rushed from every head (and one still bleeding shoulder), from deep below them a lone voice broke above the din of marching unblinkers, "They're about to break through!"
The General paled momentarily, "Boy King, we must stop the...the..." blast it, what was the word for unblinking, walking dead? Unable to come up with it, Marciano raised his hands in front of himself and moaned while tossing his head back. A gesture not a single unblinker ever made, but the point got across regardless.
Aldrin nodded and looked back at the startled priests, who were trying to hide behind each other, "You! How do we stop the unblinkers?!"
But it was Isa, staggering to her feet and gritting through the pain of a shattered bone, that answered him, "Me. You must kill me."
"What?"
"You had your instructions Princeling," Isa said, looking the ragged boy in the eyes, "I had mine."
Aldrin shook his head, trying to shake away the musty hair that must have clogged his ears. It sounded like the witch wanted him to kill her. This was proving to be a very trying day.
"That...man," Isa nodded to the crumbled corpse of the Emperor, "he was close to stopping us," her white eyes descended upon Ciara whose hand fell away from the assassin slipping into a faint, "but he failed, didn't he?"
Ciara's eyes jaunted to the plain sword clattered to the ground when Vasska blocked her attack. For such a squirrelly little shit, he packed a wallop when he wanted. It lit up with the dancing fires of magic still pounding into the night like the one guest at a party who's certain something is "Getting Started!" if he keeps waiving his hands about and whistling.
"Shouldn't you be killing me?" Aldrin pointed out to the witch, and then peered into the fire, "Unless you'll accept the sword with some minor assembly required."
"He never had it," Isa's voice cracked as words she didn't want to say escaped from her lips. Self-preservation fought and lost against decades of grooming.
Ciara leaned Taban back, holding his cold fingers up to the wound and stood. Slowly she edged around him, and leaned down, lifting up the sword of Cas. Liam hummed in the night as she turned to face down the broken witch sliding towards her.
"You have it, then?" the witch asked. Ciara nodded slowly, watching the furrowed brow of confusion claim Aldrin's face. She could explain it to him later, assuming they still survived whatever came next.
Isa laid out her only functioning hand, waiting for Ciara to deposit the sword in it. But the girl didn't move, her eyes following the lone tear slipping from Isa's vibrant blue eyes. Slowly Ciara shook her head, "No."
"Do not make me force you to beg, sandworm," the witch hissed.
"It's 'don't make me beg,' actually."
"I am aware of what I said. Every moment of my life has been preparing to face this final cliff, to bring order to the chaos. It's why my mother chose me."
Ciara didn't back down, "She adopted you just so you'd die."
"No," Isa muttered icily, hating herself for getting emotional, "she chose me to free the world."
"By dying," Aldrin muttered.
"Yes, boy, to sacrifice my life for the sake of others," Isa turned on the King, who shrunk back from the martyr's glare. She returned to the owner of the sword, "It is the greatest gift one can give."
"It's bloody stupid is what it is," Ciara cursed. To Isa's shock she said plainly, "You can't do anyone any good when you're dead. You take every chance, every opportunity to live and fight."
Isa brought her good hand back, about to try and snatch the sword away while she still had the wherewithal to complete her life's task, but the glint in Ciara's eye stayed her hand and she tried a new approach, "What of your father? Did he not sacrifice himself for the good of the many?"
Ciara muttered, but didn't say anything. Her father was a problem to be diagramed and dissected after a few years of ignoring it until something inside popped. But still she clung hard to the sword.
"And," Isa continued, pointing towards the rising tide of screams as the main door finally buckled under the pile of corpses, "how many shall perish tonight at the unstoppable hands of the unblinkers. One life for the rest? Is that not something your kind love to say?"
"I keep telling you, I'm not a Dunner!" Ciara shrieked, trying to scream away the sense the witch was making. Aldrin's face was a mask of pity, but a hard edge shown in the folds of his face. His eyes narrowed as if he'd already accepted the witch's death as fact.
The forgotten General shifted his feet, confused about the change of events, and only understanding a quarter of the words. But he could hear the cries of his men fighting the dead walkers and itched to join them. Only the dangerous magical flare of the short one gave him pause.
"Give me the sword, and I can stop the unblinkers and save us all," Isa said, laying her hand out for the last time to Ciara.
"No, no, no," the voice, hidden behind the flock of priests, carried across the tower. They parted like a particularly obstinate sea and a very short priest appeared, his robes piled about his grey, clawed toes.
"You," Ciara said to the approaching goblin as he leaned over to peer into the fire.
"Yes, me, myself, and I. Hm, interesting mix of Halton's Number and the constant of 'Owe, Why Is My Bum On Fire?'" the Caretaker muttered to himself as he leaned over the stone pit still dancing with light like an underwater city. He extracted something out of his priestly pockets and dumped the red crystals into the fire. At first, nothing happened.
"Bugger it, the acid levels are off," he looked back to the scattered priests and asked loudly, "Do any of you have some baking soda I may borrow?"
One of the youngest ones, his tonsure a fresh shave instead of a bald patch, slid forward, and skittishly dumped a small packet of white powder into the Caretaker's clawed hands. He smiled and thanked the man before tossing half into the fire.
The lavender exploded into a rainbow of shifting blues and greens, each trying to overtake the other until they coalesced with a shimmer to a dual state of bleen. Everyone not over a millennium old gazed at it in wonder. The Caretaker skirted over to Ciara and the witch, and looked up at them.
"As I was saying, no, no, no, no. You are a strong mage," his lip curled at that word, an old scar that never fully he
aled, "but you cannot alter the course of magic."
"What do you know of it? You're an anachronism," Isa scowled, gazing at the grey head in contempt.
But he jumped and pointed his finger at her, "Exactly! Witches, can never see the wart on the end of their own nose. No, you can do nothing but move some magic," at her sneer he acquiesced, "All right, yes, move much magic, and make such a mess all over the floor."
"You cannot trick me, foul creature. It is nearly SpringDay, or it is, I can never tell at night...regardless the prophecy was clear, use the blade to cut free the magic within."
A curious grin overtook the Caretaker's lipless mouth. It was like a child who caught his parents in a lie. "A prophecy that someone had to put down."
"Yes," Isa said, trying to not roll her eyes. This wasn't supposed to take so long. She should have been dead hours ago.
"A prophecy someone thought of, and put down in a handful of books."
"YES!"
"Oh no, no no," Ciara slipped back from the witch and the goblin, her hand covering her mouth as a shocked giggle tried to escape.
"What?!" Isa snapped, ready to welcome death if it got her out of this conversation.
"It was you, wasn't it?" Ciara pointed to the Caretaker, who still grinned curiously, "You put down that prophecy, you set it all up, you wanted someone to be here at this tower tonight, to finish your…spell."
The Caretaker smiled wide and nodded, clapping his hands together, "I must say, I never expected it all to be so messy. Over five hundred years and still you humans complicate things so."
"What are you on about?" Isa asked, trying to piece back together her shattered life's work.
But the goblin fielded that, "Magic. Convince humans that it can only be brought back with some magical incantation or, better yet, a sword! At midnight, on top of a tower," he looked out across the night air, savoring the sweet smell of a sprouting world, "I always enjoyed the view here," he said to his invisible companion, "even if you were so terrified of heights, or was it snakes? Tall snakes?"
"And you humans," he broke free from his madness to return to the matter at hand, "so gullible, you fail to see the very evidence before you. For decades you witches grew in numbers and strength, men of gods could raise fires and ice from simple incantations, and corpses walked freely among your fields. But still, so certain you had to be right, you claimed there was no magic."
"What's the bat eared priest saying?" Marciano asked, trying to still translate from the "no no no" speech.
"That is the best part, there was no magic to free or slay," the goblin grinned at the aging General, "The princess rescued herself."
"But the sword, the Liam, the sword of Casamir!" Aldrin pointed to the goblin, trying to wrap his mind around this about face of events.
The Caretaker ran his finger along the edge of Liam, slicing it deep, and let a small trickle of deep blue blood roll down the edge, "A sword. Oh, it is a very good sword, she'd never have nothing but the best or you'd hear about it for a century or so. But in the end, it is naught but steel, forged in fire, quenched in water, and bound by leather. It is not the making that gives it magic but the wielding.
"Yours for instance," the goblin pointed to Aldrin's blade and he lifted it up, "polished with the blood of Kings and Emperors. It shall have a power perhaps mightier than that of any other blade of legend."
He tried to drop the blade, given to him by a young girl that heard voices, carried across his kingdom, and used to end the threat to his throne, but it gripped back upon his hand and refused to be released. Instead, Aldrin looked into the deep black eyes and steadied his soul, but the Caretaker turned to Ciara.
"If the swords are worthless, and the prophecy is nothing, then why?" she asked the goblin.
He patted her hand the same way her father did when he was about to ask her to do something her mother ordered, "The 'unblinkers' -- such a fascinating choice of phrase, by the way -- the unblinkers move because the current is incorrect. I am...no, there is no proper term. I am wrong. I have brought you all here to make it right."
"How do we do that?"
The goblin smiled softly, "By letting me die."
Ciara pulled her hand away and muttered, "By the gods, not this again. I'm not about to kill someone asking me for it."
"Your witch is correct about one thing, the walking corpses will not stop until blood is shed."
"Wait, I watched you get sliced and stabbed, yet here you walk as if nothing's changed."
He nodded his bulbous head slowly to an imaginary beat, "I never said letting me die would be easy." Slowly, he slid to the stone pit surrounding the still bleen fire. He held his hand out into it and flinched as the flames caught upon his flesh, but he did not utter a sound or flail about as his limbs caught like kindling. Instead, he pulled it back in and blew out the flames.
"I have watched mountains rise and fall, seas ebb and flow, empires expand and contract, and one very obstinate woman make a mess of everything she touched," he chuckled at a decaying memory, "and it is time. A demon gifted me the curse of immortality, so I ask an angel to rid me of it."
He bowed deeply to Ciara, his burnt hand still clinging to the stone's edge as it amazingly healed itself. Grey skin creeped back across what was singed and blackened flesh.
"What do you need of me?" she asked, her eyes shifting from the fire to the goblin.
The Caretaker gazed up at the stone ceiling as if he could see the stars through it, "A Duneclaw woman, a head strong creature who would bend under no one, she...well, that is another tale." Black eyes fell upon Ciara and softened into a plea, "To set it right, to rebalance the magic in the world, I need a sacrifice of you."
"No!" Aldrin shouted, his sword rising towards the goblin.
"Hm, oh sorry, no, not sacrifice, I always get the word wrong...essence? A tiny bit of you. Like a drop of blood, or a wad of spit, or some very turbulent mucus if you're feeling a cold coming on."
"Oh," Aldrin looked over at the girl he'd traveled through briar and fire with. She in turn looked upon him, trying to ask a million questions with a single glance. Was this right? Did any of this make any sense? Magic? In the world? Gods what would the consequences be?
Slowly, Ciara stepped forward, bringing the sword of Cas to her finger. Holding her hand stretched out over the fire, she dashed the blade across her finger. A gasp slipped into her throat as she worked a drop of blood up. She turned back to the goblin, who nodded emphatically, and Isa, who shrugged her shoulders. If it didn't work, they could always fall back on killing her.
Finally, she looked at Aldrin, and he tried to hold her gaze but something, something new in his eyes pulled them away. Ciara turned back to the fire, when a warm, familiar hand clutched around hers still gripping the sword. Squaring her shoulders she nodded, "Right" and turned her bit of essence into the fire.
The blood left a wake of red light behind as it wafted slowly into the flames, winding and twisting with each dance while blending amongst the blues and greens. It pulsed with the heart of the fire, bursting and eclipsing with the beat of Ciara.
The Caretaker peeled off his priest's robes, tossing them aside. Then he unhooked his midsection pack, letting it fall heavily to the floor. He looked back at the girl still holding his only friend's sword and a wide smile pulled upon his mouth. Death, the last experience he could achieve in this world. It felt comforting to think it was the same for everyone from worm to King.
"Right," the goblin said cheerfully, "if anyone asks what my last words were, tell them I came up with something really smashing."
And rising his hands up above him, the Caretaker dove headfirst into the fire.
A bolt of lightning burst from the fire, shattering the tower's dome. Rocks and chunks of ceiling flew high into the air and crashed around. The light of the fire burst open, blinding the few people still clinging dangerously to the firing range of some ceiling shrapnel.
Ciara clutched Aldrin's hand hard just as the final vest
iges of the Caretaker caught and the goblin exploded into dust. Darkness enveloped them all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Her eyes fluttered open with the hazy rise of near dawn, that moment in time when you can almost feel the sun yawning to the new day. A steadying hand rose to her forehead and Ciara slipped from the bed and threw open the shutters. Cries rose from the courtyard, as a pair of horses stamped and whinnied against the harness hooked to the cart. Even they could sense the madness of the body loaded behind it.
The Queen's army, led by their old friend Bedros, circled around the remaining Empire soldiers, but kept their distance as the body of the Emperor was recited over by each of his slightly dented priests. A man, attired much the same as the other exhausted and broken Empire men, stood apart. He stared out across the horizon towards the south, where his home hopefully remained. There was going to be a lot of explaining and re-explaining to do. Slowly, a warm wind rose from the south to sweep back his grimy curls, the promise of a new future.
"Head 'em out!" the horseman cried, wanting to get back to civilization.
The General turned toward the keep, hoping to catch a glimpse of the boy king who pardoned each of them. "Blood doesn't wipe clean blood," he said. Marciano would have called him a fool before, but now...now he could use some foolish optimism. Leaning down, he trailed his fingers across the few clumps of snow untarnished by the trample of corpse boots. It'd taken most of the night to pile the re-dead bodies onto the pyres. No one wanted a repeat of the night of the unblinkers.
Weary fingers cupped around a handful of the snow, as Marciano pulled out an old frost box. The peddlers liked to say it could keep anything cold for days. Of course the peddlers also said every woman was the most beautiful they'd ever met and a single drop of this mixture of turpentine and linseed oil would cure the pox/acne/headaches/unrequited love. Still... Thinking of promises he had to fulfill, Marciano stuffed the Ostero snow into the frost box and slipped it back into his pouch. Rising to attention, he called to his men, "We're done here. Let's go home."
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