The Far Far Better Thing

by Auston Habershaw

  Myreon needed to find a way to kill Xahlven Reldamar.

  Arkald the Strange was many things—a coward, a shut-in, a freak—but he was not a fool. He knew every piece of information he exchanged with Lyrelle Reldamar constituted a lethal risk from two potential avenues. On the one hand, he had no doubt the woman was a viper who would kill him at the first opportunity, thumbs or no thumbs. On the other, if Sahand found out he had exchanged more than pleasantries with the arch-sorceress, he would find himself in a gibbet hanging from the battlements of the Citadel with ravens tearing out his eyes.

  Arkald should have stopped answering Lyrelle’s questions. But he didn’t. He found he didn’t want to. As much as his rational mind understood what was going on, he could not help but look forward to his daily meeting with her. As she was beaten, bloody, battered, and gaunt, Arkald had trouble rationalizing the threat she posed with the benefits she might conceivably offer. Chief among these, it seemed, was the defeat and embarrassment of his own captor—Banric Sahand.

  Arkald knew—knew—that Sahand had some terrible trick up his sleeve for the encroaching Saldorian army. It was the only possible explanation for the Mad Prince’s buoyant mood. He strutted around the Citadel like any man newly engaged, a grin permanently affixed to his half-ruined face, even while rumors of his impending destruction mounted. Arkald had been in Sahand’s service long enough to know that the only time he smiled like that was when he was about to do something truly terrible to his foes. Arkald recalled that once had included him.

  It took Lyrelle to remind him that it still included him.

  If Lyrelle was representative of the Arcanostrum—the authority that had hounded him ever since he found his calling among the dead—Sahand was representative of the kind of petty, cruel bullies that had driven him to that calling in the first place. In the Mad Prince’s vicious smiles, Arkald could see reflections of the mean little brutes who had kicked and beaten him for daring to learn to read and for loving books over wrestling and stone-throwing and also, sometimes, for no reason other than Arkald, with his lazy eye and pale complexion, was just an easy target. Arkald the Strange, the easy target—the story of his life.

  Arkald handed Lyrelle a cup of hot broth and noodles. The old woman, her arms trembling, sipped from the bowl eagerly and hugged it close with her mangled hands. “Thank you so much, Arkald.”

  Arkald knew the gratitude wasn’t genuine, but it warmed him much like the broth warmed her. “More soldiers are mustering beyond the city walls. These bore the banners of the most distant garrisons—from the Ogre Hills and even as far as Junor Keep.”

  “He is recalling all his bannermen, as I predicted,” Lyrelle said. “He is making a gamble on one final battle.”

  “Where he will use the weapon again.” Arkald shivered. “If only I could get word to . . .” He caught himself.

  Lyrelle’s eyes twinkled. “To the Sorcerous League?”

  Arkald gasped. “You . . . you know? How—”

  “Arkald, my dear, it is the purview of the Archmage of the Ether to know secrets and to keep them.” Lyrelle reached out and patted his hand gently. “The Black College of the Arcanostrum has known about the League for ages. We permit it to exist since, from time-to-time, the world needs heretics and madmen to make things orderly and sane again.” As Arkald’s mind reeled at this revelation, Lyrelle went on. “Besides—I am fairly certain the League would be on Sahand’s side in this one, even if it isn’t already.”

  “But . . . the weapon . . . the League would never—”

  “The weapon will be used on several armies in the field, one of which will be exclusively comprised of the League’s most hated enemies. The League’s desire for their members’ anonymity and modest distaste for indiscriminate violence is eclipsed by the fact that the persons they are seeking anonymity from will be obliterated. Don’t look so shocked, Arkald—you can’t have thought the Sorcerous League was an institution with a firm moral grounding, can you?”

  Arkald considered this, and in so doing found his heart racing in his chest. “What . . . what kind of man would devise such a weapon? What kind of man would use it?”

  Lyrelle adjusted herself atop her stool with a pained grunt. “You want to know why Sahand is like this?”

  “I know that you know,” Arkald said. “Tell me.”

  Lyrelle smiled, her sharp blue eyes growing distant, focused on events long past. “Banric Sahand was a mercenary captain and I, then a young mage, employed him on several . . . well, let’s just call them adventures. You should have seen him then—the very picture of manhood, dashing and bold and confident. I liked him very much. He was a trifle cruel and not overly given to mercy, but, being young, I took these qualities to be hallmarks of his profession more than his character.”

  Arkald tried to picture a young Banric Sahand, but failed. He tried to picture a young Lyrelle and, while that was more plausible, it still fell short. The idea of these two young people working together was beyond him. “You . . . you were friends?”

  “Yes, we were.” Lyrelle sighed. “We were equally ambitious—I wanted to sit atop the Arcanostrum as Keeper, and he wanted to rule as a king. I taught him battle sorcery and helped him attend the War College of Ramisett. He, in turn, taught me much of what I know of military strategy. Unlike me, he always had trouble connecting the two disciplines.”

  “Is that why he hates you?”

  Lyrelle laughed. “Great gods, Arkald—you really don’t understand people very well, do you? No, no—Sahand learned to hate me for a very, very old, very very simple reason.”

  “You . . . you killed his brother? You stole from him?”

  “No, my dear,” Lyrelle shook her head. “I married someone else. For his money.”

  Arkald gaped at her. “He . . . Sahand . . . he . . .”

  “Yes. He loved me—or he felt what he believed was love. Time and distance have shown me that it was nothing of the kind. And anyway, we both got what we wanted, after a fashion—he with his crown and I with my staff. He hates me now for entirely other reasons. I wonder sometimes if he even remembers those days.” Lyrelle’s gaze drifted out the window. “And none of that changes what we have to do, does it?”

  Arkald rubbed his face. “Of course. She is almost ready. I think I can make the switch tonight.”

  Lyrelle looked back at him, the wistfulness gone and replaced with that same precise glare. “Have you practiced the glamours I showed you? Can you make the shrouds stick?”

  Arkald nodded. “Yes. Of course. But there’s a lot left to do.”

  “And you’ve let me natter on like an old washerwoman all this time?” Lyrelle shooed him toward the door. “Get moving, boy! Don’t let me keep you!”

  Arkald staged a hurried retreat. “Don’t worry!” he said. “You can count on me!”

  Lyrelle grinned widely, revealing the teeth Sahand had knocked out like black gaps among perfectly white tilework. “I believe in you, Arkald. Hurry!”

  He retreated, his heart still racing, his whole body tingling with the terrifying thrill of speaking with her. Don’t be a fool, one corner of his mind snarled, she’s manipulating you!

  It was true, but it didn’t matter. Lyrelle had already given him things he hadn’t known he needed. In the first place, he had purpose—stopping Sahand would be an adequate reward for her escape, or so he told himself. In addition, speaking with her had rubbed away some of the terror he bore of Sahand. He was no longer this monster—this insurmountable danger—he was an ambitious man who made mistakes. Lots of them, apparently. It made trying to stop Sahand seem more achievable and less suicidal. It gave him strength he never knew he had.

  Last, and most important, Lyrelle Reldamar had brought him back to his work. When he arrived in his chambers, he quickly pulled the sheet off the dead body he had lying on a slab in the center of his bedroom. It was the culmination of almost two weeks worth of labor—carefully selected from recently interred bodies in city cemeteries, she was the
perfect height, the perfect build. He had stitched up her fatal wounds, stuffed her collapsed stomach with sawdust to give her some heft, crafted new eyes from polished stones, and expended his supplies of authentic brown hair to make a wig that would match. All that remained were the finishing touches—a few replaced teeth, a few fingertips re-fleshed—and then he could work on raising her. Arkald quickly glanced at the formulas that Lyrelle had helped him sketch out—yes, they could be managed before nightfall, and the ingredients were all on hand. With those glamours and shrouds in place, no one would be able to tell Arkald’s animated beauty from the real thing.

  At least, this was his hope as he threw himself into his work for the next seven hours. As he was slipping her into a dress, he knew that this was his masterpiece—a true work of necromantic art, one rarely achieved. Each of the rituals was completed and the delicate mixture of the Lumen (for imbuing life) and the Ether (for deceiving the eyes of the living) locked into place, an Astral ritual of binding working as a medium keeping the two opposing energies from intersecting and obliterating one another. At last it was time.

  Arkald extended his hands and spoke, his voice hoarse from hours of chanting. “Arise, Michelle.”

  The dead thing—the physical simulacrum of flesh and bone—sat up at once, smoothly and gracefully. She was the perfect, spitting image of the Lady Michelle, prisoner of the Mad Prince Sahand and consort to the Young Prince Artus, the future king of Eretheria. Arkald couldn’t help but giggle. It worked—it worked!

  He swallowed his mirth and gestured for the animated corpse to stand up, which it did. Snatching up a candle and lighting it with a wave of his hand, Arkald went to the door to his rooms and poked his head out into the corridor beyond. No one. Perfect.

  He turned around and gestured for the simulated Michelle to follow him. “Come along, milady—let’s get you to your cell, eh?”

  The creature said nothing, but followed him without hesitation. Arkald led the way.

  Though it was the middle of the night and hardly anyone was about, Arkald’s heart hammered against his ribs as he led the corpse-double of Lady Michelle down out of his tower and across the keep to the tower where the real Lady Michelle was held. If anyone were to see him, the double would be enough to condemn him to an immediate death, and that would be if he was lucky. Worse, they might simply capture him and bring him before Sahand. Just the thought made Arkald want to faint with terror, so he resolved not to think of it.

  His candle was the tiniest flicker of light in the cavernous darkness of the Citadel, but Arkald knew the way. He had been going over it in his head for days, paranoid that now, when it mattered most, he would get lost in the dark.

  At last he was at the door. The one guard on duty was leaning against the wall, dozing off. Arkald cast a simple sleeping spell to aid him along, and then slipped past with his undead charge.

  Up the spiral stairs, up up—the stones cold beneath his slippers and the double silently following. He was going to do it—he, Arkald, was actually going to defy the will of Banric Sahand. He unlocked the door to the cell and pushed it open.

  His candle illuminated a cramped room with a big bed, an armoire, and scarcely space for anything else. The Lady Michelle, clad still in that same simple linen dress, sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide. “What is it? What do you want with me?”

  Arkald laid a finger to his lips to indicate quiet. “You must come with me. Bring nothing. Come now.”

  Michelle saw the shadow lurking behind Arkald—her double. “Wh . . . what is that?”

  Arkald executed a half bow. “Your freedom, milady. Come. Come.”

  Michelle wrapped herself in a shawl and took a few trembling steps past Arkald, her eyes fixed on her doppelganger. “A . . . a simulacrum?”

  “No.” Arkald permitted himself a smile. “Better.” He took her by the hand—she was as cold to the touch as any undead construct—for a moment, he worried that he had perhaps overdone it on the glamours—but this Arkald, what he was coming to know as the new Arkald, did not hesitate. Did not doubt. He acted.

  Down the stairs they went, quickly and quietly as they could. Past the sleeping guard, his key returned.

  “Wait!” Arkald stopped dead. A light was coming. No candle or torch, either—a feylamp. That meant it was no mere guard.

  Arkald’s heart froze. Sahand is coming!

  He pushed Michelle back into a defensive alcove and doused his candle, praying to Almighty Hann himself that the Mad Prince had not seen their light before they saw his. He put a hand over Michelle’s mouth and whispered, “Be silent as death, or dead we will be!”

  Sahand’s heavy boots echoed through the vast corridor. He passed close by—close enough for them to see his face. He was grinning, his teeth flashing from the hole in his cheek. He walked with an almost jaunty step.

  He turned toward Michelle’s tower. They heard him shout at the sleeping guard and then heard the door bang open. He was going up. Arkald’s work was about to be put to the test.

  “Oh gods,” Michelle moaned. “Oh gods, he told me he would do this. Oh gods!”

  “Do what?” Arkald asked.

  But she only shuddered. The two of them remained in the alcove for some time, Arkald listening for the shout of alarm that would come when Sahand realized the truth, and Michelle imagining whatever horror Sahand had intended for her on this night.

  But nothing came.

  The trick had worked. It actually worked—it fooled Sahand himself! It was all Arkald could do to keep from laughing, both from glee and from intense, physical relief.

  He took Michelle again by the hand. “Come, milady. There is someone who wants to meet you.”

  And off they plunged into the midnight dark of the Citadel, Arkald’s feet feeling lighter than the wind for the first time in years.

  Chapter 30

  The Scorpion’s Nature

  Tyvian noticed they were being followed the day the rations ran out. They were camped on a broad ledge along a sheer cliff of dizzying height, going through their packs again, making sure a ration bar hadn’t gone missing. It hadn’t—they were out. “Kroth’s bloody teeth,” Tyvian shouted, kicking an empty sack. “Carlo cheated us! There should have been enough for us to get there! I counted the bars myself!”

  “You mean the thief king of Freegate lied to you? What a shocker.” Artus scowled at him. The boy hadn’t stopped scowling since that mountain pass, four days back.

  “No. No, that can’t be it. I saw them—I counted them!”

  “Phantasms,” Voth offered, picking her fingernails with a stiletto. Her face had grown gaunt during the journey. Her eye sockets seemed sunken. Tyvian hadn’t gotten her to speak to him in days.

  “Carlo is no wizard, and even if he was, conjuring phantasmal food is even more expensive than actual food,” Tyvian said, rubbing his beard.

  “Maybe—” Eddereon began, but then stopped and cocked his head.

  A horn echoed through the thin mountain air. All conversation died; they listened as one, the breath caught in their throats.

  Threading faintly among the peaks, barely discernible from the wind—the baying of hounds.

  Tyvian stood up. “Rodall!”

  Eddereon shaded his eyes and stared down the path they had come. “Can’t see him yet—he must be miles off. Maybe caught our scent from last night’s campsite. Told you we should be carrying out scat.”

  Tyvian began to stuff things back into his pack. “And I told you it would be a cold day in hell before I walked about with shit in my pockets! Get packed and let’s go!”

  Eddereon knocked a pot out of Tyvian’s hand. “No—leave it. Bring only the hearthcider and the blanket rolls. We need to travel light.”

  They were up and moving in moments, most of their packs abandoned behind them. The air was too thin to run, but the small party moved at a brisk pace, carefully threading their way along the narrow ledge. Behind them, the horn blew again. It sounded closer.

 
“You expected this, didn’t you?” Voth growled from behind him. “You said you knew Carlo would sell the map to Rodall. What’s the plan, Reldamar?”

  Tyvian pulled the map out of his sleeve. “According to Carlo, there’s a suspension bridge at the end of this ledge—we cross to the other side and we cut it and Rodall will be out of luck. We just need to keep moving.”

  Voth nodded. “Sounds simple enough.”

  Eddereon called from ahead. “Less talk. Rodall’s probably used potions so he and his men can run up here without getting winded—they’re gaining!”

  Tyvian put his head down and pressed on. Eddereon was in the lead, then Voth, then Artus. He glanced back to see Artus falling behind. “Focus, Artus! Come on!”

  Artus was pale—the altitude was hard on him. Tyvian realized it was because he didn’t have the ring to drive him onward. “Coming . . . coming . . .”

  “Eddereon!” Tyvian shouted. “Help Artus!”

  The big mercenary nodded and edged past both him and Voth along the narrow and uneven path, forcing both of them to press against the rock wall behind them. Once Eddereon had Artus’s arm over his shoulders, they carried on.

  Again, in the distance, the sound of the horn. Again, it was closer. The horn was a psychological game Rodall was playing, Tyvian knew. He wanted them to panic, wanted them to exhaust themselves and make mistakes so that when he inevitably caught up, the kill would be all the easier.

  But Rodall hadn’t counted on Carlo’s double (triple?) cross.

  Tyvian increased his pace to nearly a run. His heart pounded at a rate fit to break out of his chest and he felt dizzy, but he made it to the bridge. It was as the map described—three thick ropes that crossed a broad canyon at the base of which roared a white-capped river. Tyvian wasted no time—he took a rope in each hand, stood atop the third, and began to cross.

  Voth made it to the bridge next, but collapsed beside it, panting.

  “Voth!” Tyvian yelled back. “Come on—we’re almost clear! You can rest on the other side!”