Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists)

by Giacomo, Jasmine

  “Hold on, everyone. Next stop, Akkeraad.”

  Timbool leaped forward into a sprint, bounding over the arena wall and onto the street beyond. His paws crushed cobbles; his tail broke sign poles and statuary. Pedestrians screeched and bolted for safety at his approach. Timbool turned left from the main road and ran for the hills, leaving undignified squawks and cries of confusion and amazement in his wake.

  ~~~

  The hours flew by as swiftly as the scenery. Calder and the others had opportunities to look at passing towns, imperial coach depots, and surprised bystanders while there was still daylight, but once the sun set and the color left the sky, there wasn’t anything for Calder to do but brood on the imminent crisis.

  He found himself examining every large group of people they passed on the road, wondering if it might be the Aklaa assassins, even though he knew there was no way they would still be anywhere near Muggenhem.

  How far ahead could they be? Are they halfway? Closer? Are we going to be too late no matter what?

  The depth of the chilly night pressed in on him. They hadn’t passed anyone on the High Way for some time, and the isolation of the dark made his world feel unreal. Then, in the dark hour just before dawn, Timbool flashed past a caravan of night wagon trains delivering perishables overland to the Akkeraad markets by morning. The jingle of the wagons’ traveling bells and the surprised cries of the wagon drivers were oddly reassuring.

  He glanced at Bayan. His friend’s head was dipping in sleep. His arms were slipping—

  Calder lunged out of his stone seat to grab Bayan’s arms before the cross broke, but it was too late. Bayan slipped fully into slumber, slouching sideways and banging his head against Timbool’s back.

  The avatar crumbled as he rounded a bend with a grassy slope on the outer curve. Calder shot one frantic glance toward the grass, hoping he flew that far rather than scudding along the road. Then he was airborne. The others cried out as they fell, and together, everyone skidded down the dew-damp grass of the slope, tumbling out of control toward the river that wended its way through cattails at the slope’s base.

  Finally, Calder came to a stop, face up, head toward the stream. Adrenaline shot through him as his body frantically took stock of itself. Pain hadn’t started yet; was he badly injured? He vividly remembered the moment of bewilderment before the pain of his severe burns had kicked in over a year ago. He wouldn’t be caught surprised again.

  He braced himself for agony, but discovered only a few scrapes and bumps. Carefully, he climbed to his feet, testing his joints. Finding himself relatively whole, he looked around for his hexmates. Tarin pulled Eward out of the river shallows, and Kiwani stirred slowly a few strides from Bayan, who wasn’t moving at all.

  “Bayan!” Calder ran over and knelt beside his friend, shaking his shoulder. “Bayan, are you hurt?”

  “Shh,” Bayan said. “Sleeping.”

  Calder snorted and stood up. “Everyone else all right?”

  “Aye.” Tarin came up beside Kiwani. “Eward’s gotten his morning bath, though.”

  “Bayan needs to sleep,” Kiwani said. “If he drifts off again, we’ll just crash, and probably into something much less forgiving than a nice grassy slope.”

  “We’re almost to Akkeraad; we don’t have time for him to sleep!” Eward shivered with the cold water that soaked his legs.

  Tarin pointed toward the sound of a distant rumble mixed with jingling on the road above. “The night wagons could take us.”

  Eward shouted as he ran up the steep slope, and Tarin and Kiwani joined him. But the noise from the approaching caravan grew very loud; the drivers probably couldn’t hear a thing over their own wagons and bells.

  They need to see something to realize we’re here. A sudden flush of confidence filled Calder as an idea came to him. Before he could question whether he’d just gone mad or not, he summoned his magic and invoked Flame, followed by the avatar summons. Red mist lit the grass around him with a sunset glow.

  Come, I need you. I need you to look like this.

  The red mist vanished. A wave of heat rushed down from above Calder’s head, warming him. A bright form coalesced, filled with flickers and pops. The avatar’s body was loosely humanoid, formed of multicolored flames and random showers of sparks. Beneath the colorful light show, his friends cheered and whooped.

  “Firedust,” Calder called, thrilling at the sight of his beautiful new Flame avatar. “Go hitch us a ride!”

  The flickering avatar arrowed toward the corner of the road. As he hovered there, Calder ordered him to clap his hands together in the traditional request for help.

  Firedust slammed its fiery palms together, setting off a massive firework each time. The road above lit up as if it were daytime. The approaching wagons stopped. Horses neighed. Voices raised in wonder and alarm. Firedust pointed down the slope, and soon, caravan guards tossed ropes over the edge.

  Calder grinned, eyes still full of his beautiful creation. “One ride to Akkeraad, as requested.”

  The front wagon in the night caravan, loaded with glass-bottled goods, now contained five extra passengers. Bayan was sound asleep in an extra blanket, despite the incessant but musical jingling of the bells that festooned the wagon’s sides. Tarin and Eward dozed as well. Only Kiwani and Calder remained awake. Calder wasn’t sure what drove Kiwani, but he was riding the high of his new avatar, who hovered a few dozen strides ahead on the road, lighting the way.

  The lead driver kept glancing up at Firedust from his bench seat, as if he were worried the avatar might crash to the road and impede his galloping horses. The caravan master rode beside him, just in front of Kiwani and Calder.

  Calder had told the master of their mission, and that they should make for Akkeraad with all haste. To Calder’s surprise, the man had complied with alacrity, ordering his people to rearrange a few crates to make room. Belatedly, Calder realized that the caravan master was even more impressed with Firedust than he was. That, and Calder was now an official member of imperial law enforcement.

  In the glow of Firedust’s multicolored light, Calder watched the synchronized galloping of the huge draft horses that pulled the heavy wagon along the wide High Way. Four manes tossed in the wind, four backs rippled with thick muscles. Of course I love the horses. I’m descended from the Tuathi.

  Dawn streaked the eastern sky with a cool orange hue as the wagon rumbled beside endless fallow fields. “Another hour at this pace,” the lead driver called over the bells, “if my animals don’t collapse.”

  “If they do,” Kiwani said, leaning close to his ear, “you may petition the emperor for replacements. Losses suffered while aiding a servant of the empire are fully claimable under the law.”

  That brightened the dour man up.

  Calder kept his gaze on the road, straining for the first glimpse of Akkeraad’s walls. When he finally saw them, his stomach flipped and dropped.

  Maybe the rebels are already inside. A wagon like this could have covered the distance from Muggenhem in a day and a night. He squinted for a glimpse of rising smoke or masses fleeing in panic, some sign that he and his hexmates might be too late.

  The city lay quiescent.

  Until Calder’s sparkling avatar shot past, dragging a night wagon whose lathered horses pounded at full gallop. Bells tinging madly, the wagon charged toward the city gates. A double line of night wagons had filled the gate entrance as the drivers registered their wares with the city. Though the wagons only stopped for a few moments each, dozens of them blocked the way.

  “They’re not going to clear out in time,” Calder cried.

  The caravan master stood up in the seat and shouted at the top of his lungs, attempting to direct the line of wagons out of the way.

  The waiting wagons’ drivers noticed the madly rushing avatar and its wagon chaser bearing down on them. Some pulled off the road into the dirt, but there was no room for everyone to get out of their way.

  “Don’t slow down!” Kiwani
stood up behind the caravan master. “Whatever you do, keep driving straight ahead. Follow the avatar!”

  Calder looked at her in surprise, but she was concentrating on the city ahead. Raising her arms, she invoked Earth. Then she cast Rising Mountain toward the gates.

  The center of the road slowly rose between the two rows of scrambling wagons. The earthen ramp rose as high as the top of the city gate, but its far end fell dozens of strides short of the city wall to avoid destroying the clustered wagons and frantic horses and men pinned against the gate by the disorganized flight of other carts. The narrow ramp’s edges fractured, however, and began to crumble.

  “That rock might get us high enough, but we’re too far from the gate,” said Bayan from behind.

  Calder spun. “You’re awake!”

  “Kiwani’s ‘I’m in charge’ voice is very loud.”

  “Aye.” Tarin held on and squinted in the growing light. “Looks like you could use a lift. Scootch.”

  Calder moved aside so that Tarin could stand behind the wagon’s bench. The rising hill of sheer-sided stone was approaching fast, and the wagon driver and caravan master alternated between praying and swearing.

  Tarin summoned Mistbow just as the wagon rumbled onto the cracked stone ramp. A fierce, stinging wind shoved the wagon from behind and surrounded its occupants with fog. At the top of Kiwani’s narrow ramp, Mistbow hurled the wagon forward into empty air. The flying wagon’s occupants cried out in fear and excitement. Mistbow guided the wagon over the gate portcullis’ sharp iron points while the horses neighed in confusion, their hooves flashing through empty air. The wagon clattered and thumped down on the cobblestone road lining the far side of the gate. Mistbow faded away.

  Calder grinned and clapped Tarin and Kiwani on their shoulders. “That’s the way, hexmates!”

  The wagon driver began to laugh hysterically. The caravan master slapped him and pointed at the street ahead, demanding he reach the Kheerzaal with all speed.

  “What do we do when we get there?” the driver asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Bayan said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The Impossible Enemy

  “Sung wine.” Empress Femke clasped her hands in demure excitement. “I can’t believe it’s that time of year already.”

  “We always use up our annual gift from the Temple too quickly.” Jaap smiled at his wife as she herded their two small boys down the colonnaded walkway. Around the imperial core hovered several scribes and advisors. As they moved along the corridor, other eunuchs and nobles stepped aside and bowed.

  “Perhaps you should be stingier with it.” She arched a dark eyebrow at him.

  He saw the smile playing around her lips, though. “You don’t mean that, Femke. If Lady Iyanu didn’t serve sung wine at my fine Balanganese feasts, that would mean our guests wouldn’t be as happy. And if they’re not happy, they’re not going to come back. And then we’d be all alone in this enormous palace. Just the two of us.” He waved a hand out at the open square their walkway bordered.

  “I ’tay wif ’oo, Dada.” Little Juriaan took his father’s hand.

  “A noble sentiment, my son.” Jaap bent down and lifted the toddler as they walked along. Jaap let the boy dangle over his shoulder, making faces, no doubt, at his older brother, who walked along in serious imitation of his imperial father.

  At the end of the colonnaded walkway, Jaap could see the Temple wagon accompanied by a few Temple singers in their white tabards. The singers’ wagon was tall and simply constructed, and resting in its bed were a dozen large barrels of wine whose grapes had been sung into existence in the middle of winter by the Temple singers up in the Spineforest. He could hardly wait to try a glass. The wine was free of every flaw: insects, rot, heat, cold, cloudiness. The grapes were perfect, and so was the experience of drinking their wine.

  A dull thud drew his attention to the right. Jaap looked across the square, and his feet drifted to a stop.

  An enormous orange stone dog had thumped his forepaws onto the ornate wooden palisade that surrounded the Kheerzaal. And people sat in his back.

  “Duelists!” one of the emperor’s advisors cried. “Summon the Imperial Duelists!”

  As several people went scampering, Jaap waved his family back from the columns. He didn’t see any other threat nearby, but an avatar usually meant some sort of urgency.

  He studied the people riding in the dog. Two were clearly women. One had bright red hair, but the other’s long dark hair caught a memory.

  The dog leaped over the wall with a great, effortless bound and stood still in the center of the open square. The girl he thought he recognized stood up and called out. “Beware! Assassins sent from Aklaa are coming to kill the emperor! Is he well? Are we too late?”

  Jaap stepped forward between a pair of columns, feeling bafflement and recognition mixing in equal portions in his mind. “Lady Kiwani?”

  ~~~

  Bayan stood with the others in the hollow of Timbool’s back and bowed to the emperor. He was surprised how little it mattered now, this subservience to the man responsible for his fate.

  I’ve made my choice.

  A score of Kheerzaal duelists bolted into the square and surrounded the emperor with their bodies.

  “It’s all right, stand down,” the emperor told them. “No immediate threat has shown its face. These student duelists have come to warn of an attack.”

  “Goggy? Izza goggy, Mama!” Juriaan pointed at Timbool.

  “It’s ‘doggy’, Juriaan, not ‘goggy’,” Sebastiaan corrected him, though he too stared up at the enormous avatar.

  The empress held her sons’ hands and followed her husband as he approached the stone dog. Bayan Idled Timbool into laying down, a position which placed him and his hexmates just above the emperor’s eye level.

  To Kiwani, Emperor Jaap said, “Please, some details.”

  She explained that an unknown number of assassins had left from Muggenhem for the Kheerzaal, intent on bringing war to the empire. Before she could elaborate further, however, the sung wine wagon seemed to explode with bodies.

  Bayan nearly lost his cross-arm formation in surprise as a dozen men burst from wine barrels or ripped off Temple garb disguises. All drew wickedly long, shiny blades or bore crossbows loaded with steel bolts.

  “They’re already here!” Bayan cried. “Beware! Those weapons are forged of steel!”

  In spite of Bayan’s warning, the Kheerzaal duelists threw themselves at the assassins, and summoned their magics. Bayan and his hexmates shouted more warnings, but their voices were lost in the sudden outcry across the courtyard.

  Before the Imperial Duelists could engage the assassins, a thunderous noise erupted from the sung wine wagon as it crumpled in two, crushed by the weight of a swiftly expanding black-and-red serpent.

  Everyone froze, except for the assassins. Bayan’s mind crystallized around a single thought.

  Anima magic?! How—? But that’s impossible!

  The serpent swooped down with a lightning-fast strike and sank its fangs into the wagon driver. The man screamed a terrorized denial as it flung him across the courtyard, where he ended in a tangled pile of limbs.

  “Archers! Archers!” The cry went up around the square. Bayan saw the empress and her two small sons huddling beside Timbool’s paw; she looked terrified, trying to protect both her children at the same time, while demanding that her husband take cover. Steel bolts arced into the air.

  “Hexmates, get the empress and her children up here!” Bayan called. “Make haste with our lord and master too, whether he wants to come or not.”

  Tarin called on Mistbow, whose powerful Wind spells destroyed the trajectories of the metal bolts flying toward the royal family.

  Calder stood and summoned Firedust. The crackling avatar shot out Flame spells that melted the steel bolts one by one, splattering the hot metal to the patterned gray bricks of the open square.

  Kiwani and Eward cast Briarflame, each plucki
ng a young prince from the ground with the long vines of their spells and pulling the boy up to Timbool’s back. Eward brought the empress up next.

  The serpent hissed through a broad mouth that could have swallowed its wagon whole and then swished out from among the wagon’s shards, towering over the Imperial Duelists and rebel Aklaa alike. With a flick of its tail, it sent two more Imperial Duelists skidding up against a stone wall, where they stopped with audible thuds.

  “Jaap!” The empress leaned over Timbool’s side, stretching an arm toward her husband.

  “Yes, my darling.” He held up his arms. Kiwani and Eward entangled him in more roots and hauled him up.

  Bayan looked at the duelists engaging the assassins; they’d reverted to nonmagical combat techniques, belatedly realizing their enemies were steelwielders. But that left them fighting unarmed against men who wielded blades a stride in length.

  A high, familiar voice trilled in the Bantayan tongue from across the square. Bayan looked over in surprise. Philo, wearing a bright orange wig, waved a long purple sash at him. The eunuch crouched behind a podium on a wide, elaborate platform that extended out several strides into the square from the second story of a nearby building.

  The emperor saw Philo too, and called, “Over to the announcement platform! We can reach safety from there.”

  Bayan turned Timbool toward it, coaxing a swift trot out of the avatar.

  Several of the assassins, seeing their primary quarry escaping, tried to disengage from the duelists and chase after Timbool. Bayan felt both fear and pride as he watched the valiant duelists on the ground fight with desperate ferocity to prevent their enemies from pursuing the emperor. Even without magic. Even if it meant their lives.

  Some of the Aklaa warriors drew close enough to fire their bolts into a high arc at Bayan’s avatar. The little missiles of death reached their apogee and fell back toward Timbool. The Empress cried out and sheltered the bodies of her frightened children with her own.