Stormfront

by John Goode

  Only a fool would follow him deeper into his own stronghold.

  I’m pretty sure we’ve already established how big a fool I am.

  Instead of jumping over the banister, I began to chant, lowering my mass and increasing my speed. Usually I did this to make my body move faster in combat. I had never tried to do anything like this before, but I knew I was following the Wolf King into a trap, which meant taking a risk. I took a leap up the side of the wall and began to run. Normally gravity would slam me to the ground for attempting such a move, but at the moment I weighed less than a feather, which meant gravity was having a hard time getting hold of me.

  Looking down, I could see the Wolf King crouched, a wicked-looking dagger in his hand, waiting for me to leap down as he had. When he saw me running along the wall and then down toward him, he reoriented his aim.

  Pushing off the wall, I let the spell go, my mass returning all at once.

  My feet slammed into his chest as he threw the knife where I had been seconds ago. We tumbled down the last long flight of stairs; I shifted my strength into my arms and legs, holding him helpless, making sure he stayed beneath me the entire time as we bounced farther and farther downward.

  I will admit, I expected him to be at least winded after that ride, but instead of pausing he grabbed my ankle and threw me across the room as if I weighed nothing. The world passed by me, blurred by my speed. I sailed into the far wall, then to the floor, where I lay, groggy and uncertain which end was up. Unlike the Wolf King, I was not so quick to recover.

  “No one here to save you this time, whelp,” he shouted, leaping toward me.

  He was right; I was out of tricks.

  I scrambled to my feet and held Truheart ready, both my hands locked around the hilt. “I don’t need anyone,” I said, praying the ringing in my ears was not showing in my voice because that impact had me rattled. “I’m going to kill you.”

  His laugh was sinister as he held out his arms and displayed his claws. “I think calling you a fool is insulting to actual fools.”

  “And calling you a king is insulting to monarchs everywhere.”

  The fury that flashed in his eyes made me wonder when I would learn to keep my mouth shut.

  We circled each other. I looked for an opening, and I had the feeling he was waiting for me to attack. We both knew this fight was one I couldn’t win. Any damage I inflicted he would heal and, save cutting his head off, there was no way for a clean kill. On the other hand, there was a multitude of ways he could kill me, none of them pretty, most of them slow and painful.

  “Second thoughts?” he asked, his lips tugging up into a sneer.

  “About killing you? Never.” I lunged, and he moved nimbly out of the way. It was a feint and we both knew it. Instead of following up on my forward motion, I backed up, and he swung at empty air.

  “Running already?”

  Now I sneered at him. “Just trying to keep the fleas off me.”

  He attacked.

  I ducked under his claws but his foot lashed out, catching me in the shoulder, throwing me back. I rolled with the blow, knowing he was going to be right behind me. Not wasting time on a glance, I swung Truheart up in front of me and was rewarded with a howl as he impaled himself on the blade.

  Before I could follow up, however, he batted me aside, scooped me up, and threw me across the room, all in a single motion. I needed all my remaining strength to hold on to my sword as I once again sailed through the air. After rolling, I landed on my feet and charged at him. This time I could see him actively dodging my strikes. He might be able to heal from his wounds, but he didn’t want me to inflict any more than were absolutely necessary.

  Truheart was a blur as I sped up my reflexes and pressed the offense as hard as I could. No longer able to dodge, he used his hands to block the flat of my sword as it came at him. No matter how reprehensible his morals were, his combat skills were second to none. Worse, I knew he was just gauging my skill level, waiting until he saw my full repertoire before actually responding.

  Which meant I was running out of time.

  Shifting my spell from speed to strength, I turned the angle of my blade and swung, waiting for him to soft parry again. As his hand moved to intercept it, I twisted the blade again at the very last second. The cutting edge of the blade contacted his palm.

  And sliced right through it.

  Blood splattered both of us. He let out a deafening roar and backed away. I stepped inside the reach of his arms, going after him to injure him and slow him down. However, he used his uninjured hand as a weapon, lashing forward, striking me with his open palm in the center of my chest. My ribs compressed and my heart staggered under the stress, and the world dimmed. I slid down the far wall, the breath knocked out of my lungs.

  As I struggled to breathe, he reached down, grabbed the severed half of his hand, and placed it against the open wound. “I have a feeling that was your best shot,” he said, pressing the parts against each other. “I also have a feeling that you thought that blow would do more damage. Wrong on both counts!” Within seconds the blood had stopped. Seconds after that, I could see his fingers moving. “Now, let’s see how you deal with severed limbs.”

  He prowled toward me, openly letting me struggle to my feet.

  “You should have just let me mount you,” he told me as I brought my sword up. “After a while you’d learn to like it… just ask your mother.”

  Oberon told me the worst thing you can do in the middle of a fight is get angry. If you let your emotions get the best of you during combat, you are at the mercy of your enemy. If you let your opponent have control of the fight, the battle is already lost. The concept was simple, basic, and one I had tried to follow most of my life. But when those words fell from the Wolf King’s lips, I knew three things.

  One, he was a dead creature still walking, and, two, I would regain control, regain the advantage, because he was a dead creature walking. Three, I knew the cost to myself for winning the battle. Knew it clearly and resolved to accept it.

  The Wolf King stepped backward just out of my reach while I swung again and again. Each strike would have been deadly if it had connected, but there was no chance of that. I wasn’t executing a plan, and this wasn’t a maneuver. This was a little boy trying to defend the honor of his mother and failing badly. When he had nowhere else to retreat, he hunched down and waited for my attack.

  He struck my hand midswing with his paw. Everything below my elbow went numb, and I knew I no longer held Truheart only because I heard it ricochet off one of the other walls. He slashed me once across my face and then delivered a truly magnificent punch to my gut. Again the room dimmed, but even in my daze, I knew he was toying with me. If he had struck with his claws, I would be dead now instead of simply unable to breathe.

  He bounded at me, and I summoned Truheart to my hand again. Using it as a cane, I pushed myself to my feet and braced for his attack. My moves were automatic now; he swung, I parried; he swung, I parried. He might have been saying something, but I was past hearing anymore. All I knew was that I was about to fail not only my mother, but Kane as well.

  That only left one option.

  “Enough!” he roared and moved forward, willingly plunging my sword into his gut. “No more games,” he said, looming over me. “Now you die.” He put his claws to my throat and began to squeeze.

  Closing my eyes, I whispered a quiet “I’m sorry.”

  He began to mock me. “What’s that? You’re sorry—?”

  I detonated Truheart.

  If you are asking yourself why I didn’t do that before then, you have no idea how Soul Blades work. Truheart is not just a weapon but an extension of my very soul. It is as much a part of me as my arms and legs. And I had just willed it to detonate.

  The Wolf King’s midsection exploded, and we went flying back in opposite directions. I slammed against the wall, but I couldn’t feel it. I was numb to anything but the burning pain in the middle of my chest. It felt a
s if I had inhaled pure flames, and I screamed out in agony. I wondered if I was going to die anyway. My feet slipped out from under me, and I fell to the floor, my vision a bloody haze.

  I think I heard the sounds of people shouting, but I wasn’t certain. The noise didn’t mean anything.

  The pain wouldn’t stop. I had killed part of myself… and Kane…. Kane, what was this doing to him? Part of me was gone, and I was never getting it back. Kane… gods, he’d had no warning! What…? Unconsciousness was a mercy.

  When I woke up, time had obviously passed.

  Someone had returned me to the throne room. Turning my head required almost more strength than I had, but when I did turn it, I saw the Crystal Court and its troop of ambers and opals. Seated on her throne, Olim studied a three-dimensional map, apparently unaware I had regained consciousness. The Wolf King’s guards were gone, and I couldn’t hear the sound of battle anywhere. I tried to sit up and felt a terrible wrenching in my chest, as if I had pulled a recently stitched wound open. I cried out more in surprise than pain—and if you believe that, I have a quaint swamp in the eastern part of my lands that you would just love. The price is very reasonable.

  “Don’t move!” Olim commanded, looking up from the magical projection she had been studying. “Lie still, will you?”

  I checked under my shirt for blood, but I could feel nothing; no cut, or abrasion.

  “Where did he cut me?” I asked as the pain blossomed anew.

  “He didn’t,” she said, sounding oddly sympathetic.

  And then I remembered.

  I had literally ignited a piece of my soul, destroying it. I had thought the pain of it happening was going to be the worst of it, but as I lay there, I knew it was never going to go away. It might lessen and I might learn to work around it, but the pain was always going to be there because that part of my soul was never coming back. Ever.

  I won’t lie; my first impulse was to start crying at my loss. The desire to crawl into a hole and never come out was powerful, but I couldn’t. Too much was at risk for me to collapse into self-pity. Instead I needed to be strong for them, and if I couldn’t do that, I at least had to pretend I was.

  “What’s the situation?” I asked Olim, slowly sitting up. The pain felt like I had swallowed a dozen knives, and with each movement they stabbed into the soft interior of my stomach.

  “You are severely injured. You need rest,” she said quietly. “You cannot just put dirt on a wound like that and walk it off.”

  “I can and will,” I retorted, standing up, one hand steadying myself on the back of a couch they had dragged into the throne room. “You cannot tell me anyone in this room believes that was the only battle we are going to fight today.” No one spoke. “I didn’t think so, which means I don’t have time to rest. So again, what is the situation?”

  Caerus floated nearer to me. “The Wolf King’s forces have fled the capitol, but they aren’t going to stay gone.”

  “They can take it back when I’ve found my mother.”

  Caerus’s silence told me the news wasn’t good.

  “Is she dead?” The pain made me abrupt; I knew that, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care.

  Olim shook her head. “She isn’t here. According to the guards we interrogated, she was never here. The Wolf King had her held by an ally.”

  “Why not ask the king himself? Did he get away?”

  Olim looked at me with amazement. “Hawk, you killed him. What you did blew him apart. There wasn’t anything identifiable left.”

  “A fine maneuver,” Adamas called from across the room. “I am not ashamed to say I underestimated you, boy. Underneath that hair, there’s a warrior after all.”

  A backhanded compliment if I had ever heard one. I took a shallow breath; deep ones were denied me because of the pain they caused. In time I would adapt, but until then, until then I’d do the best I could do. “What ally and how do we find them?”

  “He is called Jack, and he is something of a legend around here,” Caerus explained.

  “So was the Wolf King,” I reminded her.

  “Jack is a giant-killer, it seems. He lives in a castle built on a cloud far above the world. Just finding it is going to be a problem.”

  “I thought your people spied on everything! Now you are telling me you can’t find one castle!” I snapped.

  “I am saying our people in their observations never flew above the clouds; they move through the earth.” Caerus sounded offended, but honestly I was far too apathetic because we were no closer to finding my mother than before.

  Since no one wanted to say it out loud, I did. “We don’t have time to search this realm for a floating castle.”

  “We might not have to,” Olim said, going back to her magic. “A small band of rebels fought the Wolf King. They learned everything they could about his government and his enemies and allies. If anyone would know where Jack’s castle is, the members of that group would.”

  “If they decide to help us,” Adamas added.

  “They wanted the Wolf King gone. He’s gone. Why wouldn’t they want to help us?”

  I knew I’d made a point, if a small one.

  “So how do we contact these rebels?” I asked, wincing with each step I took toward the conference table.

  “I already have. Their leader is coming to meet with us.”

  “Who?” I asked, taking a seat on the Wolf King’s throne.

  “His name is Lord Charmant, and he claims to be the true heir to the kingdom.”

  “If this Charmant knows where we can find Jack, he can have the whole realm for all I care. Every day we are here an hour passes for Kane, and that is too much time for my taste.”

  Caerus floated up to me. “This lord is our only chance to find the location of your mother in time.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I snapped again. Gods, I’d stopped moving, so why did my chest still hurt?

  “I wanted you to be aware we need his help far more than he needs ours. We’ve already done what he wanted, and he has to know a force this small isn’t planning on occupying this realm. So we need to convince this man to help us at all costs.”

  “Your point?” I growled as I tried to adjust to a less painful position.

  “My point is that you need to be less irritable.”

  Before I could answer, she glowed and said, “Sommeil.”

  My eyes slammed shut, and I was instantly asleep.

  With sleep came dreams.

  ONCE THERE was a goddess who decided to be mortal.

  Cursed with the ability to know the future, she had seen a time when the Nine Realms would be in such peril that all life would be in danger. Because of the greed of one woman, countless others would suffer, and there was nothing she could do about it as a goddess.

  So she became a mortal.

  Using a forgotten portal, she escaped from the upper realms and moved to the lower realms, searching for a way to save all that was in mortal danger. She knew others would come after her since her kind were forbidden to engage in the affairs of humans, but she knew her pursuers’ ways and could avoid them for a time. Traveling via ancient and long-ago-forgotten portals, she found her way to Helgard, the realm known as the River.

  Gaining passage on a ship of steam, she made her way to New London to meet the smartest man in the realm, Ignatius Doyle, royal historian of the River. She explained her problem to him while he paced his study, listening to her tale in silence.

  When she was done, he took a long draw on his pipe and told her, “Whoever threatens to destroy the realms must be a god as well.” His voice was clipped and proper. He was obviously well schooled from the way he structured his words. “If they were a lesser being, you would be able to see their fate.”

  The goddess was shocked; she hadn’t thought of that.

  “If we are to uncover our mystery god’s plan, we need to think outside the box. Tell me, my dear,” he said, leaning in toward her, “have you ever tried to r
ead your own future?”

  I WOKE up with a gasp, the memory of the dream fading the instant I tried to focus on it.

  “Hawk,” Olim asked, sounding concerned. “Are you well?”

  I could remember there had been a woman… a woman whose face reminded me of Kane’s. And though the details were fading, I knew she was his mother. Just like that, my memory of the dream evaporated, but I knew, I knew in my bones that was Kane’s mother and that she was connected to all this.

  “I am now,” I snapped, angry that I had lost the thought.

  “Lord Charmant has arrived. Stand up and make yourself presentable.”

  I stood and instantly regretted it. “Woman, I am always presentable.”

  She rolled her eyes at me, and I couldn’t blame her, but it got her away from me, which was my goal. The pain was… well, it was still just as bad, but I could feel my mind accepting the reality that part of my soul was gone and it wasn’t coming back. Those were facts; the pain was a fact. And I was going to deal with both facts without letting either of them overwhelm me.

  Adamas and the Court were huddled ten feet off the ground, discussing tactics, and reviewing what they knew of Charmant, I thought. Olim paced deliberately between the main door of the throne room and the throne itself, casting some last-minute defensive spells, a backup in case things went south.

  I realized I had nothing to do. Worse than that, I was unarmed. I was less than effective, I was in the way. If this negotiation went bad, what could I do? Threaten to bleed on them?

  Now normally I don’t suffer from bouts of self-pity like this, but I had just killed a part of my soul with the net result that I was no closer to my mother or Kane. I was seriously beginning to doubt the choices I had made in life so far. We push and push, putting everything on the line, sacrificing anything we need to for the moment and then realize it still gets us nowhere. This was the way of Oberon and my mother. My mother sacrificed everything to steal the World Tree, and now look at where we are. Oberon sacrificed our kingdom to gain power for himself, and now Kane’s world is in trouble. Who pays the price for our next sacrifice?