Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue (The First Sword Chronicles Book 2)

by Frances Smith

  "Catulla," Miranda said. "She said... you didn't die because..."

  "If a god could be killed by having their throat cut there wouldn't be many of us left, would there?" Silwa asked.

  "You can be killed by this blade," Quirian said. He advanced upon her warily, sword held out and ready. "You did me a kindness once, my lady, but that was many years ago and the debt is all paid up now. You are mistaken if you think that I will let you leave here."

  "You are mistaken if you think that you can stop me, even with my brother's sword in your hand," Silwa replied.

  "You are unarmed," Quirian said.

  Silwa smiled. "I am a goddess, dear; I am never unarmed." Her whole body began to glow with an ethereal light, glowing like a star, glowing like the sun. Miranda turned away, closing her eyes and shielding them against the brightness. The light burned through her eyelids, as patterns of green and pink swirled before her eyes.

  She heard a tearing sound, like Lysimachus ripping apart the fabric of the world to travel through the spirit realm. Quirian howled in outrage. And then the light was gone, and so was Silwa.

  "She escaped?" Miranda asked.

  Quirian's face was contorted into a scowl. "She fled into the spirit realm. I could pursue her there, but... I confess, Filia, I fear that place. If only Metella were here."

  "You would match her against a god?"

  "I would have her do what she could," Quirian said.

  Miranda nodded. "Thank you, my lord, for sending her to look after Michael. It cannot have been an easy decision for you."

  Quirian laughed sourly. "Indeed not, Filia, and now look what it has cost me." He sat back down again, his long dark hair falling across his face. "I bid you leave me now, Filia. I am, as I told, very weary." Semper Fidelis dropped from his fingers, hitting the floor with a loud clatter as Quirian's eye became once more sealed up by the injury done to him.

  Miranda accepted the dismissal. Remaining was pointless anyway. Coming here had, in its own way, been equally pointless. The only things she had accomplished were confirming Abigail's words - though neither she nor Quirian had attempted to explain how Michael had managed the astonishing feat of raising himself from the dead - and blowing off her anger about being lied to. The latter especially had been rather unproductive.

  She turned to go, followed by Felix, Octavia and Abigail. Once they had left the solar, and the doors had closed behind them, Felix began to stammer. "I… I don't know what to say. I never imagined that he might...isn't it wonderful?"

  Miranda looked at him carefully. "Yes. It is. But it does not absolve you."

  "I know," Felix murmured.

  Miranda sighed. "I know we deserve to have a long talk, you and I. I think that we may even need it. But for now, I need time to think. You'll have to excuse me."

  "Of course," Felix looked grateful for the excuse to get away from her, a sentiment so obvious on his face that Miranda felt ashamed of her behaviour. "'Randa, you don't think too badly of me do you?"

  "That depends on what you do next," Miranda said, and she turned away and headed back to her room.

  On the way, Octavia leaned close and asked, "Are you alright? Really?"

  Miranda smiled fondly. "Of course. Both my brothers are alive. What do I have to be upset about?"

  Of course, if that were true then why do I feel so uneasy?

  II

  Lost Souls

  "Michael."

  Michael groaned. He felt afloat, as though he hovered in some void somewhere, wrapped tight in a blanket that would never be taken away from him, warm and safe, free from all cares and obligations. He felt as though he was lying abed, and he did not want the morning to come just yet.

  "Michael."

  Michael turned his head away from the soft voice. "One moment more, my lady, I beseech you."

  "Michael, wake up."

  Michael Sebastian Callistus Dolabella ban Ezekiel slowly opened his eyes. Then he let out a strangled squawk of alarm as he was abruptly dropped to land with a thud upon the ground. Frowning, Michael climbed to his feet and examined his surroundings. He was standing...nowhere. He was in, not a void precisely, but a grey absence of life and colour, a dull reflection of the living world. The domain of death and dreams.

  Perhaps Lady Silwa had called him here once again. The alternative...

  Gideon, help me, please.

  The alternative was that his resurrection had proven alarmingly temporary. "I am once more among the fallen then?"

  "Michael; look at me."

  Michael looked up. A woman who was, like Michael himself, possessed of black hair and earthy brown eyes stood over him, a woman with a Coronim complexion, wearing a plain dress ripped and patched and ripped again. A woman with a soft face and a compassionate smile. A woman he knew very well. "Mother?"

  Mother smiled fondly. "It's so wonderful to see you again. My brave boy has grown to be a fine man."

  Michael stepped closer to her. "Is this...is it really you?"

  She nodded. "I wanted to see you again. See how you had grown. Where are your brother and sister?"

  Michael fell to his knees before her, seizing the folds of her skirt with his hands. He bowed his head, letting his long black hair fall down around his face like a curtain between him and the world. "I lost them, mother. I lost them both and I don't know if I can find them again."

  "You will," Mother said as she ran her fingers through his long, black hair. "I know that you will."

  "How do you know?" Michael asked. His voice was soft and childlike, as though he were once more a young boy listening eagerly to tales upon his mother’s knee.

  "Because you are my son,” she said. “My boy, my brave man, my young firstborn. I know you'll find them both, and keep them safe from harm."

  Michael nodded. "Yes. Yes, I will. I promise, Mother, I... I promise I'll look after them. I'll save Miranda, and I'll get Felix back. I promise."

  "Michael."

  Michael looked around to see a young lady standing behind him, with skin white as snow and eyes blue as ice and hair black as night tied in a severe bun at the nape of her neck. He felt his mother slipping away from him, and when he looked back she was gone.

  "Mother? No. Please stay," Michael murmured, hanging his head.

  "Michael," the young lady repeated, more insistently this time.

  Michael stood up and frowned. "Filia Metella? Are you here to save my soul for a third time?"

  "I am indeed, I hope that does not shame you," Metella said softly. "You must come with me."

  "Come with you to where?"

  "The waking world, the real world," Metella replied. "Everyone is very worried about you."

  Michael blinked. "I am not dead then?"

  "No. Praise whatever god you worship you yet live."

  Michael smiled. "Good. I would hate to have returned to life only to leave again so soon. So, Filia, how do I rise from... this?"

  "Take my hand." Metella held it out to him. "I will bring you safely out. Come, they are all waiting for you."

  "Are they?" Michael chuckled. "Then I had best not keep them waiting." He reached out, and took Metella's hand inside his own. It was bitter cold.

  Michael's eyes opened to the glare of sunlight in through a smashed and shattered window. He sat up, finding that he was at or near the top of some kind of tower, ancient and long abandoned by the look of things. He had been laid upon a stone bed in a room otherwise devoid of furniture or decoration of any kind. The window had been broken by the decay of years, the stone around it cracked and fallen away making the window itself larger than intended by its builders. The ceiling was partly fallen away too. Vines and ivy had started crawling in from outside. Still, they coloured an otherwise very bare and sombre room, just as the sunlight and the lack of shutters gave it a bright and airy aspect it did not strictly deserve. There were, Michael concluded, far worse places to wake up.

  Metella was standing over him, still clad in her black leather cuirass and ra
iment of war, and she sighed as she saw him awake. "Finally."

  "Welcome back to the land of the living," His Highness said. "For the second time in a week." He smiled wryly.

  "Good morrow, Your Highness." Michael vaulted off to the bed and to his feet. Then paused, remembering what state he had been in when last conscious. He felt his belly, even lifting up his tunic. There was no scar there, nor visible mark of mortal injury. Nor anywhere else he had been injured in his first death or his later battle with the Voice of Corona.

  "We were all a bit surprised at that too," His Highness said, prising himself off the wall against which he had been leaning. His Highness - Jason Nemon Filius, to give him his legal name, but as he was in fact the illegitimate son of the late Emperor Demetrius the Fifth Michael found it more proper to refer to him by the princely style that was his due in justice if not in law - was a tall, skinny young man with the purple hair and eyes that were his imperial father's legacy, and the light brown skin he had inherited from his mother. A sorcerer’s wand and summoning rod were thrust into his belt, and in his hands he held a shepherd's crook, carved with the runes of sorcery, the magic of the mind. "For a while it was doubtful if you'd make it, even with all of Metella's talents. Then, one day, your injuries just vanished. It was the strangest thing. We weren't all so lucky, more is the pity." He winced, and touched his side.

  "I am sorry, Your Highness," Michael said solemnly. "I abandoned you in the face of great peril, and that is a failure I can never repay."

  "I'm willing to let you off on account of being dead at the time," Jason said, with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  "That should never have happened," Michael replied. "It was selfish of me. It will not happen again."

  "Oh, so you mean to be immortal now, do you? I should like to see that," Jason laughed.

  "Your Highness understands my meaning perfectly," Michael said. "I put you in danger through my thoughtlessness. I will not do so again."

  Jason smiled and patted Michael on the shoulder. "Don't let it bother you. Everyone stops thinking at some point or other."

  Michael bowed his head, knowing he had been let off more lightly than he deserved. "Your Highness is too kind."

  "So I've been told," Jason's smile widened. "Perhaps I'm just glad to have you back. Back, and back to normal what is more. I must say your old, absurd self is infinitely preferable to the morose grumbler you temporarily became."

  Michael cleared his throat. "That will not happen again either."

  "Good. That would be insufferable," Jason said. "I'm glad you're alive."

  "So am I, your highness," Michael debated whether to say anything else, but decided that he could not in all good conscience keep it to himself. "Your Highness. When I came back, when I fought the Voice of Corona... I saw Filia Tullia."

  Jason's widened. Filia Tullia Athenaeum had been a mage of the black, a bodyguard appointed to him by his late father the Emperor, before she had been slain in battle against Quirian, their foe. His Highness' mouth hung slightly open, and he looked as though he had been robbed of all speech. Michael continued. "She...fought with me, after a fashion. Princess Fiannuala, also. I thought you would like to know, she has not left us. Not fully."

  Jason was silent for a moment, before he said, "Then I can only congratulate you on your good fortune. I envy it."

  "And I mean to see her safely into Heavenvault," Michael said. "She deserves it." Filia Tullia had died unshriven, her soul not yet sanctified and forgive by a priest of the young gods, and thus for her sins her spirit had been consigned to the Black Abyss, where demons dwelt and the Eldest One writhed in torment for the crime of rebelling against his brothers and sisters. Those monsters were bound in that place for all eternity, but Michael did not mean to let Filia Tullia linger there for long.

  "Yes, she does," Jason murmured. "But do you really think you can?"

  "I do not know, Your Highness, I only know that I must," Michael replied. "She died at my side, and even in death she fights at my side. How can I not repay her?"

  His Highness looked very downcast. "I wish that I could help you. Help her, as she helped me."

  "I think, that as long as you live a life worth protecting, that will be enough for Filia Tullia," Michael said.

  "I hope you're right." Jason took a deep breath, breast heaving, and half turned away. "I really am very glad that you're alive, you know. It seems I have become rather fond of all of you, and it swiftly transpired that you are keeping us all together one way or another. Very, very glad. Now, if you'll excuse me." He ducked through the overgrown doorway and down the steps at a fast pace. Before the echo of His Highness footsteps died away, Michael fancied he heard a sob.

  "I fear his grief for Tullia still runs raw," Michael murmured. "But I thought it would comfort him to know that some part of her is with us still."

  "Less than he might like, I think," Metella said.

  Michael nodded, turning to face the hitherto silent Metella once more. "If I may ask, Filia, what is this place? And where is it?"

  "A watchtower built in ancient times, upon the frontiers of the forest of Eena," Metella answered. "Who built it I do not know, save that it is very old, from a time when dryads and fire drakes still ruled this land, yet it was crafted by neither. Still, for a derelict structure it has endured a long time, and still gives shelter."

  "And you live here?"

  "Sometimes, when my master requests it," Metella said.

  "Your master? Is he our host?"

  "No," Metella said. "I am all alone, and was all alone when I brought you here."

  "Then I am in your debt, Filia Metella Kardia," Michael bowed to her. "Triply in debt that makes it now if I recall. You must give me swift opportunity to repay else I shall feel most beholden."

  He half hoped that she would smile at his verbosity, if only because she found it absurd, but her expression did not change from its cold blankness. She said, "You have no reason to feel obligated. I merely did what I felt was right."

  "Simply because you acted without expectation of reward is no reason for me to dodge repayment, ma'am, quite the opposite," Michael said. "A gentleman should never take a lady's services for granted."

  He would have welcomed even a roll of those blue eyes at his ponderous gallantry, but Metella's face continued to reveal nothing to him. "Michael Callistus, may I ask you something?"

  Michael blinked. "This is your home, Filia, you may ask anything you like."

  "This is not my home, this is merely a waypoint, but I digress," Metella said. "Why do you speak and act thus? I have heard something about it from your friends. You are a young man but you speak like one much, much older. My master is older than any man alive, and he does not always speak as formally as you. Why do you affect the manners of an earlier era?"

  "Is there any reason why I should not?" Michael asked. "It does no harm, and does me good. I take from it a pleasure that does not impugn upon the lives of others. Not all men can say the same of their amusements."

  "Those are arguments why you should not stop doing a thing," Metella said, her voice a whisper. "They are not reasons for starting it."

  Michael frowned. "I do not like this world I was born into. I find it vulgar, crude and lacking in nobility. My objections, true, are as much aesthetic as anything else, but that does not make them less heartfelt on my part; nor superficial in the round for standing sometimes upon somewhat superficial stones. Nor does the fact that the past I idolise is as much imagined as real falsify the love and admiration which I feel for it, nor make the values I admire less admirable. If that is the world in which I would rather dwell that is my choice provided I do not neglect those who depend upon me in this world. If I were to be glib, ma'am, I might ask if 'because it pleases me' is not sufficient reason to do a thing which touches harmfully upon no other lives.

  "But if I were to be earnest, Filia Metella, I would say that I do these things and say these things and act these steps because I am a
better man when I don this costume, threadbare though it may sometimes seen. When I cast off this painted cloak I did vile things of which I am now greatly shamed. I have been told, by figures of great authority, that I am possessed of store of virtues. That may be so, but it is these ideals I learnt upon my mother's knee that draws them out and lets me wield them as I ought."

  Michael smiled. "I'll wager you did not expect a speech by way of answer."

  "It did not tire my ears too much," Metella said. "You should go find Gideon and Amy. I'm sure they will be anxious to know that you're awake."

  "I shall," Michael said. "Once more Filia, thank you."

  Michael offered another bow, to which Metella returned a curtsy.

  "You mock me and my affect ma'am." Michael smiled. "It is good to know you have a sense of humour, even if you do not smile. Farewell, for now."

  He turned away, putting on his old red cloak - that too was a piece of costume, the crimson cloak of a Coronim Firstborn and a hero, the cloak of Gabriel as he had aspired to be, the cloak of a gladiator as he had been. The cloak his mother had woven for him when he was a boy, as threadbare and fraying as any overused prop in the theatre - as his footsteps echoed on the spiral staircase down from the tower. The walls were as dull and overgrown as his tower top room, but without the sunlight that had to some extent countered the gloom up there. On the floor below there looked to be another bedroom, this one with four beds instead of one. Michael guessed he had been lodged in the officer's quarters, and this was the room shared by the men. Now that he was awake Gideon would sleep up top, as was proper and fitting.

  Gideon was sitting on one of the stone beds, clutching a crude hickory stick in both hands. Michael stopped in his tracks as he saw the splint on Gideon's leg. He knew that his good lord had been injured by the Voice, but he had never imagined that it would be so severe.

  He was about to go, to slink away in his shame, but Gideon had spotted him already and pushed himself onto his feet, gazing at Michael with his intense, piercing green eyes, his expression concealing everything of his feelings and thoughts upon the sight.