Legend

by Robert J. Crane

“You seek to poison me and take my eye,” Bellarum said under the low rumble of his laugh. “As though I couldn’t hear you plotting it.” His eyes glowed once more, and he spoke with a deep satisfaction. “I have heard your plans all along, every one of them—against my armies, against me, and the only surprise you have managed is one you had no control over. You cannot beat me. You should not have even tried.” He straightened. “And now I shall have to show you the folly of your actions,” the God of War said, and he started toward them, the look in his eyes almost resigned as he stepped forth, Cyrus knew, to break them all at last.

  98.

  Alaric

  “You know, Alaric,” Rin said as we stared out into the engulfing darkness beyond the doors of the Citadel, waiting for something to come for us, “I honestly thought that if any of us made it to immortality, it would be Chavoron.” His eyes were fixed in the distance, staring into the darkness that cloaked the streets of Sennshann beyond the green veil protecting us. “He went farther down the road of spell discovery than any of us, and he was wise … and brave … He should not have died in this, our darkest hour.”

  “He was hardly infallible or all-seeing,” I said, looking at the blood that stained the front of my armor. In the short time I’d worn it, it had gone from looking brand new to battered from blows I didn’t even realize I’d taken. Rin looked up as if he wanted to argue, ripping his eyes from his watch on the darkness. “He saw farther than most,” I agreed quietly, “but that didn’t mean he was flawless.”

  “I never said he was,” Rin said, but he sounded half ready to argue with me.

  “He brought you out of Saekajaren Sovaren,” I said, running through my memory for some understanding of why Rin was taking this so hard. He’d shown emotions on so few occasions that this reaction to Chavoron’s death, especially after the exile that had followed our killing of the Eruditia, that his grief took me by surprise. “Gave you a higher station. But why—”

  “You didn’t see half of what he did for me,” Rin said sullenly, turning his face away. I glanced back and saw the remnants of my men—only half having survived the onslaught, Varren standing foremost among them, Rodanthar in hand—holding back and waiting for any sign of renewed attack. Stepan was looking over his shoulder, face covered with navy blood from our enemies. They were tired; I could tell from looking at them.

  “What did he do for you?” I asked gently.

  “What did he—” Rin cut himself off in frustration. “Do you know what hope a guardsman has of becoming more than a guardsman in this empire? Title is title, and your station in life at its end is barely a crawl above where you began, unless your magical talent exceeds the ordinary by a far margin. I was doomed to be a lesser member of House Gronvey, and counted myself fortunate for even that small blessing, until Chavoron raised me up. Especially after the debacle of teaching you how to fight—the mere association with a human who had learned magic would have had me cast out of most houses, even the majority of the anti-slaver ones.” He stared down at his feet for a moment. “Even House Gronvey must have thought twice about keeping me in their ranks after all that. Timmas might have played the noble anti-slaver role in the streets and councils, but he was just as obsessed about what the people thought of him as anyone else.” He shook his head. “Until now, apparently.”

  “Chavoron protected us both,” I said, “after that. Jena, too, I think.”

  “Of course,” Rin said with a faint trace of a smile. “He was unfailingly loyal.” The smile faded, replaced by a resentful anger. “Stupid, though, thinking his enemies would kill him and that would be the end of the threat to the empire.”

  “He underestimated their … avarice, I suppose,” I said. “He thought them better than they were, that the blood price they would command for peace would be simpler to pay than fighting this battle to its conclusion.”

  Rin looked up at me in disbelief. “What did he think would happen? That his death would unify all? That we would all gather around his sacrifice and make a martyr of him? ‘Come, let us unite with each other now that more blood has been shed and the best of us has been taken.’” He let out a scoffing snort. “I will never forgive them for this, whoever among them is involved. It is a sickness, this idea that all are guilty and sacrificial, that holding to blame those who had little to nothing to do with the matter at hand is acceptable.” He lowered his gaze again, and I could see a sullen self-pity take hold on him. “Damn him for not being here. If anyone could have prevented this … he could.”

  I started to reply, but a sound like thunder crackled in the distance, and my eyes were drawn out of the door as a red light appeared in the night. I could barely see it, but it glowed brighter, striking something—a tower—down the street, so brightly that I had to close my eyes against it as it coruscated around one of the towers of Sennshann, consuming it completely.

  When I opened my eyes again … the building was gone.

  “Did they just …” Varren was squinting into the dark. “What just happened?”

  “They scourged a building off the face of the land,” Rin said, horrorstruck, on his feet. His eyes glistened as he looked at me, and another flash lit the world outside, and another, the work of powerful magics. They hit their targets directly, and this time two towers were dissolved in blinding light. “This is … so much worse than what they were going to do before … Jena’s spell can’t protect the city against this … this craven destruction.” He looked out again as the fury of a red storm consumed another building. I had seen the faces of children staring out its windows only hours earlier, and I knew that whoever lived in its walls had been taken by the spell as well.

  We stared out into the darkness as the flashes came, one after another, moving out of sight. I watched Rin’s facade grow tighter around him, masking all but his anger, as the buildings of Sennshann fell one by one, replaced by nothing but smoking earth, and the Protanian Empire began to fall right outside our doors.

  99.

  Cyrus

  Another arrow spanged off Bellarum’s helm as he advanced slowly toward Cyrus and his war party. The God of War held up a bracer and blocked another, laughing as he walked toward them. “You are a fool, Cyrus. I know you. I have known you since you were a child. I sculpted and molded you through my proxies, your teachers, watched and listened to your plans and words and fears. All of this I have foreseen, and when I conclude our business here,” he blocked another arrow, and Cyrus could hear Calene frantically readying another behind him, the bow’s string whining at the rough treatment, “your army dies. Hmph!” he scoffed. “Poison me. As though I couldn’t hear you plan it, and see it coming.” He loomed large over Cyrus, drawing Vara’s sword in his mighty hand. “As though I don’t know you.”

  “Oh, you’ve known me,” Cyrus said, pushing back his allies as he carefully retreated from Bellarum, drawing the God of War forward, “that’s for sure.” Cyrus felt a calm assurance as he smiled, just to be infuriating. “But you don’t know my people.” He felt the smile grow wider as he saw a flash behind Bellarum, a hint of movement. “You may have heard me saying that we should poison you,” another arrow clanged off his armor, “but you assumed I was talking to Calene … I wasn’t.”

  Bellarum paused, just for a second, and cocked his head, a hint of uncertainty poking through. “But …” His eyes flashed, and Cyrus saw the hint of motion in his shadow—

  Aisling leapt up, barely visible under her weapon’s effect, and her dagger found the gap between breastplate and backplate that she’d once exploited on Cyrus himself to devastating effect. Bellarum jerked as she brought the knife home, and he howled in pain as she buried it deep and twisted, then ripped free her dagger and leapt out of the swing of his arm, rolling and running away, darting back in behind Cyrus’s party as the God of War bent nearly double, black ichor streaming down his back and hip. When he lifted his hand from touching the wound, it was covered in dark liquid, and his glowing red eyes found Cyrus, the fury obvious within t
hem. “You—”

  “As though I didn’t know you were listening,” Cyrus said, holding his weapons up, “I spoke every word you expected to hear, and you took no notice of poor Aisling, there but to provide guidance to an apothecary she’d never even visited before.” Cyrus laughed mirthlessly, as he saw the glowing eyes fade just a hint. “Oh, and another thing … that’s not poison.”

  Bellarum hesitated, then stared at his hand as the glow of his eyes faded another shade. “What did you …?”

  “It’s called black lace,” Cyrus said coldly, smiling all the while. “Surely you’re familiar with it? It’s not technically a poison. But it does sap the magic out of one’s blood.” He saw the God of War shrink by an inch before his eyes, and asked, “Say … that godhood of yours … that’s not some form of magic, is it?”

  Bellarum stood up straighter, murmuring something under his breath, but no hint of a glow appeared around his fingertips, which shook. He murmured something again, but once more no glow came to his aid. Cyrus could see the blood dripping down his leg now, the wound grievous in addition to its nullifying effects. “You are … more treacherous than I thought.”

  “Maybe you don’t know me so well after all,” Cyrus said, and he nodded at the sword in Bellarum’s hand. “But you started me on this path, Bellarum. We should come to the end together. So … God of War …” Cyrus stepped forward as Bellarum stopped shrinking, leaving him shorter than Cyrus by almost a head. “Why don’t we …” Cyrus pointed toward himself, and then at the Bellarum, “… have ourselves a sword fight?”

  100.

  Alaric

  Rin and I had journeyed to the top of the tower after a long hour of watching the flashes claim building after building, razing Sennshann as though ancient ancestors from the clouds were striking down and collecting souls to drag to the hereafter. We watched the lights blaze for quite some time before deciding to climb, wordlessly, back to Chavoron’s quarters where we’d thrown open the shutters and watched the land cleansed of any sign of the Protanian Empire, spell by scourging spell.

  “I can scarcely believe what I see here,” Curatio said, still holding tight to Jena’s shoulders. Jena herself was sweating profusely, droplets running down her forehead, her eyes fixed straight ahead in intense concentration. The glow around her hands had subtly changed and was now more red, though the spell continued to flow out in a green color, offering its silent protection from that which was scourging the city around us. When I looked at him questioningly, Curatio went on. “I had always imagined that matters between the Protanians and my people would come to a head in war, that some day I would be forced to cross the river with an army of my own folk and fight in this land, or else be run back into my own.” He looked into the distance as another flare of red lit the sky and another tower—one of the last—disappeared under the spell’s furious assault. “I never imagined it would be a war among their own that finished this unstoppable empire.”

  “It’s not finished yet,” Rin said, but he sounded strangled. “Even if they … they destroy the city … there will still be some of them left, presumably the worst of us … the architects of this slaughter.” He managed to get the last bit out with resounding disgust. His face flushed dark, and I thought I detected a hint of envy when he looked at Jena, with her powerful magics he could not nearly match with his own, and then he flickered with shame and glanced away.

  A moment of silence was followed by the flash of red again testing itself against Jena’s spell, and she cried out as though it had struck her instead of her barrier. Her cry was a forlorn sound. I watched Curatio channel light into her shoulders again, and her spell turned green at her hands for a moment before turning back to crimson. I had no idea what that meant at the time, of course, only noting that she looked more tired and heavily lined than before.

  “They are testing us,” Rin said, his blade in hand, looking outside as the red attack faded and Jena’s green spell reasserted its glow over the Citadel. He looked back at Jena. “I am not nearly as powerful as you, but perhaps I should try and make an attempt before—”

  “I will … be fine,” she said, hoarse, sweating, her hair dark with sweat upon her forehead.

  Rin looked as though he wanted to say something more, but did not. Instead he looked out the windows again, staring to the southeast, gaze fixed upon the Coliseum. “They haven’t destroyed it yet,” he said, when he saw me looking as well. “My protection on the place has long since faded, they would be able to raze it with barely a thought.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “Why do you suppose they hold back?”

  “Guilt, perhaps,” I said, not really sure. “If it is filled entirely with humans, perhaps they retain some vestigial memory about the purpose that they started this endeavor with?”

  “Hmph,” Rin said, nodding. “That makes as much sense as anything else in this storm of madness. A sop to their consciences—‘we wiped away the filthy slave state, but saved the slaves!’” He made a snorting sound of utter contempt. “What good does it do them to become masters of all that remains without anyone to admire their virtue and their good works?” A blazing glow of a spell burned, reflected, in his eyes as another building disappeared under a wall of magic. There were few left now of any size, the spells spreading wider to consume several of the smaller buildings of Sennshann with each luminous blast. There was little visible but rubble on any side of us, with even the causeways that led from the underground roads beneath the city buried in the destruction, channels in the earth obvious where those mighty tunnels had collapsed.

  I caught a hint of light from the east and saw orange illuminating the horizon. It took me a moment to realize amongst all the chaos and rampant spellwork destroying the city that it was the first rays of the sun rising in the east. I blinked; how was it possible that the sun could come up after what we’d witnessed this night?

  A flash of red turned the barrier outside another color, and I blinked involuntarily once more as the sound of magics going to war with one another was capped by Jena’s scream. I watched the cascading swirl of red and green clashing outside the window as Jena let out a long cry, like a plea for mercy. I looked back and saw her hair was leeched of its color, her face wrinkled with age that did not belong upon it. I knew in that moment that something was desperately wrong.

  “I … can’t hold her … up … any longer …” Curatio said, his face white and twisted with strain.

  Jena let out a last cry as the red flashes ceased, and we were left with a pure barrier of green for only a moment before her spell died, the red light from her hands winking out like a candle snuffed in the night. She fell against Curatio’s hands, caught by the elf as she collapsed, her eyes dull and staring as she fell, taking with us the only protection we had against the foes destroying everything outside the walls of the Citadel.

  101.

  Cyrus

  “So it comes down to this,” Bellarum said with a weak laugh, Vara’s sword in his hand. He faced Cyrus across the short gulf between them, only a few arms’ lengths separating their blades. “The student intends to take on the teacher.” He looked at Cyrus, the glow of his eyes replaced with red irises of a sort Cyrus had seen before in dark elves, though somehow Bellarum’s were more striking. “Did you know that I taught your mentor, Alaric, how to use a blade?”

  “Ten thousand years ago?” Cyrus asked, and then came at Bellarum with hard, frenzied strikes, driving the God of War backward under his onslaught. Bellarum blocked slowly and staggered under the fury of Cyrus’s assault. “It shows,” Cyrus said. “Your swordcraft is rusty, Bellarum.”

  “But my blade is pristine,” Bellarum taunted, holding up Vara’s sword so Cyrus could see it before laughing and retreating before the certainty of another strike. Cyrus did not follow immediately as the God of War dodged behind a pillar, hiding, putting it between them.

  Cyrus stared after the God of War, waiting. She’s still his last advantage … where does he have her?

  And what
is he going to do with her?

  “You’re a leech on a vein,” Cyrus said, darting around the pillar and driving Bellarum out with a wide, sweeping slash of the sword that the God of War barely blocked in time. “Drinking in magical energy in seats of power these last millennia, growing fat on this blood of life.” Bellarum ducked behind the pillar again and Cyrus struck it, smashing through the plaster with Ferocis and causing the God of War to leap back. “Meanwhile, I survived in a place where I was hunted nightly and dogged every day.” Cyrus looked through the wrecked pillar to see Bellarum staring at him from some distance behind it, retreating slowly backward. “Every day since I was old enough to wield a sword, I have lived the call to battle.” He dodged around the pillar and leapt like Vara always had, coming down only a few feet from his adversary and striking out immediately. “You may be Bellarum,” Cyrus said, driving his enemy back under furious sword thrusts that clanked against the sword held out as meager protection against his assault, “but I am war.”

  “You are what … I made you,” Bellarum said between grunts as he threw up another feeble defensive thrust. Cyrus let him, watching the god tire under the constant attack. He’ll make an error, and I’ll exploit it, and then another, and another … A troubling thought occurred to Cyrus. Unless he manages to pull that final surprise … I cannot be stopped by it. By her.

  I must go on until I win.

  This is the last thing that matters.

  “What you made me?” Cyrus laughed. “I get the feeling that as much as you say you revere war, you haven’t tasted the real bitterness of it in ten thousand years.” Cyrus knocked the deity’s weapon aside and slid the tip of Praelior under Bellarum’s breastplate, probing for weakness. He heard a grunt, and was rewarded with a weak dripping of black liquid. “But don’t worry,” Cyrus said, “today I’m bringing it—war—to you.”