24.
Alaric
“This is …” I closed my eyes. It was night five of trying to learn the things that Jena had been trying to teach me for all these evenings. We always began shortly after sunset and ended just before sunrise. The first few days, I had found it easy to ignore the lack of sleep, but the fatigue was slowly grinding me down. Even during the days I was finding sleep in the noisy barracks elusive. All I wanted to do was throw all of the complicated notions she was trying to force into my mind away, and ease myself into the bed in the corner of the small room so that I could set sail into blissful sleep like a boat on the Elmoreth river back home. “… This is impossible,” I finished, opening my eyes once more.
“It is impossible for a child to walk upon the first attempt,” Jena said, her eye opening just a crack to look at me. She had striking blue irises, impressive in their coloration. Humans, of course, had blue eyes, but I’d never seen anyone with eyes like hers. Of course, in most of my arrogant, princely pursuits of women, I hadn’t cared much about the color of their eyes.
“It may be that your people consider us an inferior form of life for good reason,” I conceded, wondering after almost a week’s solid effort with nothing to show for it that perhaps everything Rin said about me was true. Maybe I was an animal compared to the Protanians. Maybe I was only a step or two up the ladder from a sheep, or a mule, or any other beast of food or burden that humans raised for consumption and work. “Perhaps I am simply not capable of it.”
“This is something that our people go through as well,” Jena said, closing that eye again. She looked calm, sitting there in the middle of the room, her cloak barely covering the thin, silken undergarment she wore beneath it. Five nights and she’d worn five different … I wouldn’t have known how to describe them at the time, but now I can say negligee and know what it means. We didn’t waste time or cloth on fancy nightclothes in Luukessia, not even in the rich halls of Enrant Monge.
But after five days of staring at Jena’s body through thin cloth, I had vowed that if I ever made it back to Enrant Monge, there would be a seamstress assigned entirely to negligees.
“Perhaps your mind is on other things,” she said, not opening her eyes.
That accusation stung for some reason I couldn’t put a finger on. It might have had something to do with working in close proximity to such a—well, I hesitate to say indecent, because in Protanian society it certainly wasn’t, though I wouldn’t learn that until later—scantily dressed woman who had more than caught my eye. “I’m tired,” I said, and that was, honestly, at least part of it.
“There will be plenty of time to rest once you’ve been killed by the Butcher,” she said, and I closed my eyes once more. There was something about her teaching method I found somehow more infuriating than Rin’s.
“Yes, Sabushon,” I said with some sarcasm.
“You needn’t be so harsh as to call me that,” she said, one eye springing open.
“I thought it was a mark of respect?” I asked.
She frowned. “Who told you that?”
“Rin did. He said it was something akin to ‘teacher.’”
“It something akin to … unspeakable. It is our gravest insult, a challenge to one’s honor and decency.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I … I didn’t know.”
She stared back at me, thinking it over. “Why would Rin ask you to call him that?” She seemed to be speaking mostly to herself. “Ahh … to get you to say it to a guard, perhaps, while trying to curry favor.”
“That makes sense,” I said, reaching a new level of wariness for Rin. It seemed he’d wanted to throw a little more difficulty into my life. More pain to purge my weakness, I supposed.
“Put aside thoughts of Rin,” Jena went on, closing her eyes again and drawing breath. “These things I have taught you these last few nights … they are the fundamentals of what we call magic. The mental exercises, the disciplines that allow you to access the power and shape it to your will. Will is the force, the inner strength used to exercise it; the power itself reshapes reality, but it is best used along certain pre-defined paths.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because our ability is life itself; interchangeable with life, with some inner reserve and strength that we all possess.” Her eyelids remained firmly shut, with only the occasional twitch as she seemed to consider her explanation. “At the most basic level, a child could learn to manipulate small fires, to summon and invoke out of air itself. But as your mastery, your confidence grows, so too grows what you can access.”
“You make it sound like a matter of faith.”
“It is a matter of faith.” One of her eyes sprang open again. “You cannot use this energy if you cannot believe in it. Ritual is the entry point. Faith is the key to the door. Once inside, the saying of certain words, tied to your thoughts repetitiously, allows you to access this power at will. As I said,” she closed her eye again, “even a child can use the basic levels. And they do.”
I let out a slow, painful breath that I’d been holding. “Well, I’m not a child.”
“No, you’re most assuredly not.” She kept her eyes tightly closed. “But try to clear your mind anyway.”
I closed my eyes as she’d suggested, and focused on seeming nothingness. I listened to my breaths coming in and out as she’d told me to, tried to focus on the darkness beyond my eyes, tried to lose myself in it. The taste of the conjured bread they fed us in the camp was lingering on my tongue after the last meal, and the smell of the small room was slightly stale, with an underlying hint of sweat and other, baser scents. I saw Jena spring before my mind’s eye again, soft, sensual, her blue skin grafted in my vision over the face of a lover I’d had in Luukessia. In my mind, her blue flesh swayed before me as that chambermaid had when she’d come to me, eager and excited to be with a prince—
I snapped myself mentally, like a slap across the wrist to jar me out of my fantasy. I drew a sharp breath, trying to pull my thoughts back to a center place. I had almost been there for a second, Enrant Monge and my tower room bleeding in around the edges of my fantasy with Jena. I took a deep breath, then another.
I could picture myself in the middle of the throne room that last day, my father before me. He had to know by now that our army had been lost in the north. Had he sent others after us, I wondered?
Or had this been part of his plan all along?
“What are you thinking about right now?” Jena asked, and my eyes opened to find her staring at me, much more relaxed than I was.
“Home,” I said, my breaths coming a little quicker, like I’d just been on a jog around the yard. “I was thinking of … of my last day at home.”
“By your reaction, it does not sound like a pleasant memory.”
“It wasn’t.” I paused. “But … it’s hardly relevant to what we’re doing here—”
“You can’t seem to keep your mind on what you need to learn,” she said softly. “So it is relevant. What happened?”
“Among my people,” I said, “among the princes of Luukessia, on our eighteenth birthday, we choose words to represent our house, ourselves … our vision for the future. When I announced mine to my father, he … was displeased, and ordered me sent away with the army to investigate the disturbance your people were causing in the north.”
“Hm,” she said, staring deep into my eyes with her nearly glowing blue ones. “What were the words you chose?”
I actually considered lying, because saying them out loud in front of her felt somehow shameful. But I didn’t. “Order, to rid ourselves of chaos. Faithful, as both friend and enemy. Strength, to forge our order. Unyielding, in pursuit of our goals. Merciless.” I held my chin up as I said each one.
“I think you would find yourself in good company here among our leaders,” Jena said quietly, almost a whisper.
“You don’t agree with them.” I didn’t need to ask; her tone told me everything.
“I suppose I
have seen enough mercilessness, unyielding, faithfulness in pursuit of order … and of course strength, towering over the weak. I have seen enough of these things, these virtues you would call them, to doubt the wisdom of them as core values.” She closed her eyes again.
“What would your words be?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“I can think of only one,” she said. “Decency.” She opened her eyes. “I would simply have each of us be decent to others. No slaves, no masters trying to tread on others, to whip them into line, to batter them into doing what is wanted … just decency, and cooperation. The helping hand instead of the striking fist.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling a steely resolve come over me, “but that’s simply naïve. It would be impossible to run your empire in that fashion.” There I was, the statesman, the prince, so sure.
“I wouldn’t want to run our empire,” she said, eyes coming open again, this time glistening. “I have seen the part of it my father runs, deeply, intimately, and I would not care to be involved, not in any capacity.”
“What is your path, then?” I asked. “Your people’s? Do you have to follow him—”
“No,” she said, “and yes. I won’t be taking over the mines, but there are certain expectations I’ll need to live up to. Certain paths available to me that I’ll have to follow.”
“And they’re not … decent paths?”
“They’re better than running a mining camp of slaves,” she said, her voice cracking. “We should—we should try to clear your mind some more. The sun will be up soon, and …” She brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “We don’t have much time … or many days left.”
“I think I might be a hopeless cause.” I came to my feet and looked down at her, still sitting with her legs crossed. I didn’t even notice the negligee now.
The corner of her lips twisted upward. “I don’t believe that.”
“Of me or in general?” I looked at her, wondering. There was so much in my question—did she find me special in some way, worthy of this attention when the others were not? Or was I just an emblem of her resentment against the land she lived in the way I was of my father’s governance?
“Both, perhaps,” she said.
I didn’t know quite how to reply to that, so I sat back down and took three long breaths, in and out. I looked at her as I did it, and then closed my eyes. I tried to imagine the darkness in the room before the arena gates, the sight of sun-drenched sand lurking behind the bars, the crowd waiting for me to come out and fight.
It was so unlike the days spent in similar sand with a practice sword in my hand, beating instructors too cowardly to strike a prince. I had played childish games, was a child—and now I was not anymore. I had gone from prince to slave, from leader of an army in title and in my mind to leader of nothing but a few dozen slaves who were as good as sentenced to death.
And there, sitting across from me, was a gorgeous blue-skinned girl with her bosoms nearly bare, and all I wanted to do was to touch her, hold her, caress her, wipe the tears from her eyes and lay her down on the bed in the corner … and yet here, for the first time in my life, a woman I wanted was beyond reach. She was master here, and I was slave.
It was all so damned unfair.
Somewhere, in the moment beyond dwelling on all that, my mind emptied, and there was naught but darkness and quiet and the sound of my own breathing. I had almost reached this point before, but my mind always raced ahead at the moment of freedom, like a horse running after being turned loose from the harness.
Not this time, though. This time I kept myself under control, calm and thoughtless, only a creeping thing working its way through my mind, three words that Jena had taught me for just this occasion.
“Vadradei, Urushidei, Oronadei.”
The darkness disappeared, a light flaring before my eyes. I snapped them open and found my hand glowing white, a pure effervescence like staring into the sun on a cloudless day. I gaped at it in astonishment, a sudden tightness in my chest, a soaring feeling of accomplishment, of victory like I had felt in the arena, a realization that—
I looked up at Jena and she met my gaze, her own just a little more guarded now. “It would appear …” she said slowly, something between fear and relish layered thick on her words, “… you and your kin are not the animals they have believed you to be.”
I stared at my glowing hand, and lifted it up, pure white light illuminating every corner of the room. “Apparently not,” I said, my astonishment now giving way to … possibilities.
“Soon, they all will know,” she said, still calm, her eyes fixed on mine, only the hint of a smile for her part in this triumph. “And then … nothing will ever be the same again.”
25.
Cyrus
He watched Fortin die. With no time for sorrow, Cyrus sprang into action, driven forward by a hot-burning rage.
Levembre, the Goddess of Love, looked up at him as he came at her, charging hard, his face quivering with fury that threatened to explode. There was heat in his cheeks and in his forehead, and as he ran he could feel the tension coiled in his muscles. He desired nothing but an opportunity to stab the goddess in the face with his blades until there was nothing left of the flawless white flesh, until her flat and formless chest was split open and all the black of her guts and innards was spilled out like a barrel of oil he’d seen upturned in the Reikonos market, covering the dirt in inky ebony.
Levembre flung a hand to meet his attack, but Cyrus whipped Rodanthar out to slash her. She pulled back her hand, her face already showing the pain, and he took advantage of the opening to stab her deep in the chest, hitting her with a knee once the blade had sunk in all the way up to the guard.
“You evil, worthless, cowardly shit-stains!” Cyrus screamed in her face, ramming Rodanthar into her shoulder as she shook and withered under his assault. He was close enough to see her mouth, and he brought his head forward and slammed his helm into her jaw. It didn’t even faze him, the rattling sense of shock that ran through his body on impact. On the contrary, it was satisfying, beyond pain in a way he remembered feeling in some of those first fights in the Society. He brought his head back and slammed it into her jaw again, knocking her head back. She staggered, and started to fall, but Cyrus didn’t care; he would ride her to the ground, beating and stabbing her to death until there was nothing left but a stain on the forest floor. “You—you vile, cruel, pernicious—”
A cat’s howl cut him off, and a bellowing fury hit Levembre from behind, halting her fall. Cyrus kept stabbing, undistracted, even as he saw quartal-covered cat claws ripping and shredding the goddess’s shoulder. Her flat line of a mouth was black with her own blood and open in pain. He brought a sword up and slammed it into her neck. She was getting smaller by the moment; now the savanna cat was as tall as she, standing up on its back paws. For a moment he thought it was merely avenging its master, but then he heard the bellow again, and her head moved slightly to reveal a green face, demonic with rage and grief of a sort Cyrus was all too familiar with.
“Zarnn!” Cyrus shouted, and the troll’s gaze snapped at him. Zarnn was taller than even Cyrus, but his reach was such that he was flailing ineffectually at Levembre with a pitiful sword, strikes doing little to nothing. The troll looked at him, paused for just a second in the midst of vengeful bloodlust, and Cyrus raised Rodanthar where Zarnn could see it—
And he tossed his father’s sword to a troll, who caught it one-handed.
Zarnn let out a bellow loud enough to wake all the dead that had ever lived in Arkaria, surely loud enough that the scourge could hear it across the Sea of Carmas, and he raised up Rodanthar, Saber of the Righteous, and planted it firmly in the back of Levembre’s head.
The Goddess of Love jerked as all her muscles tensed, and then went slack, topping over under the weight of a cat and a troll on her back. Cyrus let her fall, kicking out from beneath her before she could trap him under her falling carcass. He rolled out just as her chest hit
the ground beneath the troll and the cat. Zarnn buried the sword in her head a few more times as she continued to shrink to normal size.
Cyrus watched the desecration of the corpse without emotion. He felt a soul-deep weariness as the cat clawed and scratched. An arm came loose and was snatched up by hungry jaws. Zarnn watched the creature do its work with a cold detachment, still clenching the sword in his hand.
“Zarnn,” Cyrus said, and the troll looked up, a dangerous anger on his face until he saw Cyrus, at which it subsided and grief replaced it.
“Master Fortin,” Zarnn said, his lower teeth sticking out and somehow making his sad expression more poignant, “… is dead?”
“He’s dead,” Cyrus said solemnly, and turned his gaze back to where Calene was dodging an attack from Nessalima. “But the others aren’t and they need our—”
“Help on way!” Zarnn said, and he had the cat turned around in an eye blink, roaring into battle once more with Rodanthar held high. Cyrus watched the bizarre spectacle of a troll warrior carrying his father’s sword, and then locked his gaze on Lexirea, who was striking at Terian, oozing and chasing him, her slimy form now only twice the size of the dark elf.
Cyrus held tight to Praelior, surging back toward the battle. Terian was overmatched, that much was plain; Lexirea swung at the dark knight and he caught her blow, but below his blade, on the haft of Noctus, where it did no damage. He strained as she pushed at him, her arm against his axe’s pole. Terian stood there, face hidden save for the parts of Alaric’s old helm that revealed teeth gritted in strain.
Terian was starting to flag; there was no mistaking it. With the strength of a god matched against a dark elven man with a godly weapon, the contest was decided easily. A fragment of power against the power itself is a poor match, Cyrus thought, but his legs could carry him no faster, and he was still considerable distance away.
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