"We stand on opposite sides of this battle ma'am, but that does not mean we must be as warring dogs. For my part, I cannot consider you an enemy after what you have done for me. But, while you saved my life the first time in ignorance, you must have known who I was by the third time."
"Of course," Metella whispered. "But I knew that Lucifer, whom you call Felix, would regret the blow struck in anger and repent of it once his rage cooled. So, when you returned to life, I saw an opportunity to soothe his conscience by keeping you alive. When I return to my Lord Father's side I shall persuade him of the same reasoning. Although..."
"Although?"
Metella said, "I know your plans now. Should you not tell your friends that they have a viper clutched to their bosom?"
"I would count you friend also, if you will allow it," Michael said. "And no, I should not. They would kill you, and that would be the same as striking you dead myself. I'll not do that. You are close with Felix, you are his friend?"
"He is my captain, my commander. He orders, I obey," Metella replied. "But yes, I am his friend."
"What is he like, your captain Lucifer?" Michael asked. "What has Quirian made of my brother?"
"A fine man. A good man. He is brave and skilled in arms and sorcery," Metella answered. "He talked often of his brother, of whom his memories were very indistinct but who had clearly inspired and influenced him greatly." Metella looked at Michael. "He loves you still, however he may have spoken. He admires you. And he is a good captain, a capable leader. He is what you might call an officer and a gentleman. You would be proud of him."
"No doubt," Michael smiled. "I always knew our Felix was destined for great things. You know a comet heralded his birth?"
"I did not know," Metella said.
Michael nodded. "Mother called it a portent of greatness. Miranda's birth was announced by a shower of shooting stars so great that the whole sky seemed to burn, but I never thought less of Felix for the lesser omen."
"And what of you?" Metella asked. "What portents attended on your cradle?"
"None," Michael replied tersely. "Only a lashing winter storm that broke up many fishing boats."
"Lucifer... Felix... he is very fortunate that you are still alive," Metella said. "No other of the Lost can say the same."
"The Lost?"
"We serve Lord Quirian, who took us in when no one else would and raised us as his own," Metella murmured. "My family owned a fuller's shop in Arpio, on the Mavenorian frontier of Prolixia province. The village was destroyed by Mavenorian raiders when I was six years old. I was the only survivor. I would have died, but Lord Quirian rescued me and brought me to his home. He taught me how to fight, to defend myself, to defend others. Your mother died when you were young, didn't she?"
"She did," Michael said. "But my home was not attacked until I was old enough to defend it."
Metella nodded. "And your friends: Amy, Jason, Wyrrin, Gideon, those two dead girls in the spirit world, do you consider them to be as close as your family?"
"They are my family, in every way which matters," Michael said.
Metella nodded again. "I thought so. We are two of a kind, you and I. Lord Quirian, Lucifer, the Lost, they are my family now and I fight to protect them. I owe Lord Quirian my life, but more importantly I owe him my family. I fear the day will come when we must pit our familial devotion against each other."
"But not yet, Filia," Michael said.
"No," Metella replied. "Not yet."
"For that I am thankful," Michael hesitated a moment. "Filia Metella, when you go home will you tell Felix that I am sorry for everything I said: he has no need to prove himself a man to me or any other. I love him whoever... whatever he is. Even if he chooses to keep calling himself Lucifer and deny our kinship I will love him still. Will you please tell him that, from me?"
Metella smiled, the first time he had ever seen such grace her face and render it lovelier than before, "I will tell him, gladly."
III
Michael's Failure
Michael let out a deep sigh of frustration. "I am sorry, Gideon. It appears I am a poorer student than you deserve."
"I'm not sure that I can call myself deserving of anything at this point, Michael," Gideon said resignedly. "I will confess that I had hoped that we could have made better progress-"
"Or any progress at all," Michael muttered.
"Less of that, Michael," Gideon said sharply. "We'll have no despair, thank you."
Michael bowed his head. "As you say, Gideon. I apologise."
"You'll get there in the end," Amy said, from where she sat a few feet off, staring into her bucket of water. "And probably before I get this bloody water magic. Move you bugger! Do something!"
They were assembled in front of old watchtower to which Metella had brought them, though Metella herself had disappeared a few days ago. Michael suspected, though he said nothing of it to the others, that she had gone back to Quirian. He wondered what she had told her master of them?
"You may well get there in the end," Jason said. "But will it be fast enough to save the Empire?"
"If God wills it, then it will be so," Amy said.
"And if He does not will it?" Jason asked from where he sat with his legs crossed, studying the runes carved into his wand, staff and rod.
"Then we never had a chance at stopping Quirian and this was all just a summer's vanity," Amy replied.
Jason climbed to his feet. "Does it really not bother you in the least?"
"What?" Amy asked, looking up at him. "I don't like to lose, if that's what you're asking. But if God has set his will against us there's not a lot we can do about it. I thought you would understand this, what with you keeping the old gods and all."
"I also believe that we are more than puppets carrying out a play that the gods have written aeons ago," Jason said.
"I never said we were, but that doesn't mean that there are not powers greater than we can comprehend shaping the world, unseen by us," Amy replied. "If Turo, in his wisdom, has seen fit to ordain the fall of the Empire then the Empire will fall regardless of what we do. If he has seen fit that the Empire shall not fall then it will not though we sit here for a hundred years enjoying the sun. And if God has not yet made up his mind if the Empire will fall or no then it may be that our valour or our piety will be the thing that convinces him."
"How very vague," Jason remarked.
Amy glared at him. "Then what did your human priest of the Eldar say in regards to such things?"
"That the gods sleep, not dead but not alive, and only their dreams touch the world now," Jason said. "Therefore they can ordain nothing, see nothing, judge nothing. They can only...nudge, from time to time."
"I will endeavour to be a better study, Your Highness, that such a nudge may not be required," Michael said.
"Indeed," Gideon said. "We will try again shortly."
Michael nodded. "As you will, Gideon." He watched Amy staring at the bucket for a while, kneeling uncomfortably in front of it, staring into its depths, until with a growl of frustration she batted it aside with one hand, spilling the water upon the overgrown courtyard and sending the bucket bouncing along the ground.
"Stupid blood thing," Amy growled. "Why is it so...gah!"
Wyrrin coughed. He had his back to the rest of the group, but turned and sheathed his swords as he began to speak. "It is possible that you simply do not have water magic."
"Oh, my grandfather would love that, wouldn't he?" Amy said. "I am a descendant of Turo himself through Niccolo, his seventh son. Water magic is my birthright, and every single member of my family has some talent for it, great or small. I will not be the only exception. I won't prove them right about my...never mind."
"It will come, our Amy," Michael said. "It will come as strongly as it was in Niccolo himself."
"Don't get your hopes up," Amy said, but a small smile crossed her face all the same.
"Do you have no fire magic, Wyrrin?" Jason asked. "You only seem to
use your swords."
Wyrrin shook his head. "Since the gods were wounded, magic has become much rarer in our peoples than once it was. It occurs most often in the higher castes, and never at all in the slave caste. We have no need of it."
Gideon said. "Michael, we will try again. Close your eyes."
Michael did as he was bidden to do, plunging himself into darkness.
"To master spirit magic, to be able to summon it upon command," Gideon's voice was soft, like a lullaby in the night. "You must elevate your mind and soul both. You must vest yourself of worldly concerns, and focus your spirit upon higher principles. In order to leave your body behind you must cast off the ties the bind you to the dull earth.
"Imagine a great city, glittering and golden, sitting upon a field of verdant green, astride a river of sapphire," Gideon continued. "Imagine the most perfect city that has ever existed or ever will exist. Imagine the ideal of a city, with high walls of marble that shine when the sunlight touches them, with tall, proud palaces rising above the lofty dwellings of the high and the humble residences of the low. Imagine beauty wrought in stone, imagine-"
"Is this supposed to be Eternal Pantheia?" Jason asked. "It does not match the cesspool of my recollections."
Gideon gave a growl of frustration, but made no comment. "Now, Michael, picture that city in your mind. Can you?"
"I...I think so," Michael ventured. He could see something like it, golden and glimmering, but it was indistinct, a hazy image glimpsed through fog or heavy clouds. He could not conceive of it as a real place. It was no earthly city that he saw before him, nor even an earthly ideal, but Turo's halls, were his mother waited and danced with the great heroes of Coronim legend. He did not think that it was what Gideon had in mind.
"Now, picture a tide of darkness sweeping towards that city. Picture the hordes descending upon paradise, intent on looting its wealth and defacing its beauty. Picture the people crying out in terror. Picture the army going forth to do battle for the fate of the Empire, their banners flying over their heads, the wolf-howl ripping from thousands of throats, the beating of the drums driving our soldiers on. Now picture the two armies meeting, the hosts of light and darkness crashing together in bloody fray.
"Now picture yourself at the head of the host of the Empire, blades drawn and glittering in the sunlight. Put yourself in that place, standing between the Empire and destruction. You are the difference between victory and defeat, life and death. Can you feel the hopes of a nation resting on your shoulders? Can you feel the Empire's need inspiring you? Can you feel it stirring up great power within you?"
Michael's shoulders slumped with defeat. "I fear not, Gideon."
Michael opened his eyes to see disappointment etched into Gideon's face so strongly that it made Michael feel ill.
"You do not love this realm at all?" Gideon asked.
"I do not know this realm, Gideon, nor know its people," Michael said. "I do not doubt the Empire is every bit as fine and great as you say it is or can be." Jason snorted at that, but Michael ignored him. "I know it fair well enough that without the Empire the dead would be piled in mounds ten feet high across the land as our cities were laid bare to the depredations of the savages to north and west. But I cannot love a people who are strangers to me, any more than I can imagine a perfect city when I have not seen even an imperfect city."
"Then why are you doing this?" Gideon demanded. "Why do you wish to follow in my footsteps?"
"For love of you, Gideon," Michael murmured.
"Not enough, Michael, not enough!" Gideon said. "You must cast off such worldly ties."
Michael's brow furrowed. "Begging your pardon, Gideon, but worldly ties are why I need spirit magic."
"That is insufficient," Gideon said. "You must find higher reasons, a higher calling."
"He didn't need a higher calling to defeat the Voice of Corona," Amy said, climbing to her feet. "And frankly I'm very dubious of all this 'cast off worldly bonds' stuff. I don't reckon it works."
"And you are an expert on spirit magic now, are you?" Gideon asked.
"No, but I know warriors, I know how to motivate different kinds of people to fight, I watched Ser Viola do it often enough," Amy said. "Your levies, your peasants sharked up out the fields and given spears or tridents, them you get to fight by telling them that if they don't fight then their homes will be destroyed, their families killed, all that charming stuff that folk will risk death to avoid. For warriors, for people who actually go out and fight time and again even though the fight be far from home and their kinsfolk in no danger, you need something more than that. What that is, it depends. Some fight for glory, some fight for God, some fight because they take their oaths of fealty seriously; some fight because they get off on the bloodshed. I'll fight beside anyone who fights for any of those reasons, and most naiads I know fight for a bit of each of those reasons. But I never met anybody on campaign who fought because he'd stopped caring about anyone but an ideal world that existed in his head. And I'm not sure I'd want to."
"You fight beside me," Gideon said.
"If Michael hadn't introduced you, I wouldn't trust you as far as I could pick up a mountain," Amy said. "You and your cold eyes, like a snake. Besides, you tell me that you have no feelings for anyone in this world and I'll spit in your eye and call you a liar."
Gideon chuckled. "I did, once."
"I repeat what I said about not wanting to meet you on your own," Amy said. "The point is, different people fight for different things and for different reasons, and your cause might not be Michael's. And it isn't a sin to not be able to muster much fellow feeling for fellows you don't actually know. Michael, would you ever let an innocent suffer because they were a stranger to you?"
"Gabriel's wounds, Amy, what do you take me for?"
Amy grinned. "There. See? That's good enough for me."
"That doesn't actually get us any closer to..." Gideon trailed off for a moment. "Wait a moment. Ameliora, I think you may have a point."
"Thanks very much."
"Michael, you were able to use spirit magic to defeat the Voice because we were in danger," Gideon said. "All of us, threatened by him."
"True enough, Gideon," Michael said.
"Could that be it?" Gideon murmured. "Could it require some immediate peril to trigger your spirit magic? Can the magic sense that you have no need of it now?"
"It's magic, not a living thing," Jason said.
Gideon shook his head. "In many ways it is alive. It sees, it judges - not in the moral sense of judging righteousness or purity of heart, but in the sense of judging commitment and purpose - and spirit magic often involves not only ones own soul, but the souls of others also. I do not find it hard to believe that it would require real danger, real calamity, to summon forth Fiannuala and Tullia from their rest."
"And glad of it I am, Gideon, for what kind of brute would I be to disturb a lady's sleep upon a whim?" Michael asked.
Gideon shook his head. "I have been a fool. Ameliora, I stand corrected. I cannot teach Michael as I taught myself."
"Not that that helps us very much," Jason said.
"Mmm," Gideon murmured. "I must think on this for a moment. Excuse me." He turned away, his crude walking stick thumping on the ground as he hobbled away, his gait uneven. Gideon was recovering from his injuries, but he was still far from the magnificent warrior that he had been before.
Michael bowed his head. "I have let him down."
"You are who you are," Amy said. "Your reasons for fighting are your own. You might as well seek to change the courses of the stars as change what's in your soul."
"I do wish to change what is in me," Michael muttered. "I have sworn before the Empress that I will change, that I will tame for good my black-hearted fury and walk evermore beneath the light of virtue."
"It isn't virtue to cut yourself off from the world," Amy said. "It isn't virtue to care more for an ideal of a place than for the people who live in it. Suppose I decided to bui
ld a splendid palace where there were only crude huts, and to drive out the peasants who lived there or, better still crush them under the foundation stones and use their blood for mortar, would I be right?"
"Of course not, our Amy."
"But the palace will be so beautiful."
"To what purpose, when all those you might have ruled from your beauteous palace are dead beneath its floor?" Michael asked.
"Exactly," Amy said firmly. "I fight to bring lustre to my name, to spread the word of my deeds across the corners of the world and to step out of the shadow of my illustrious lineage. And because it's fun. In that cause I will seek out monsters, stand against armies, and protect the innocent against the cruel. I don't fight because I want to make a perfect world, either on land or beneath the ocean. Such ideas... they are for the hand that wields the blade. I am content to be a weapon."
"I do believe in Gideon's dream, truly I do, I think it will marvellous," Michael said. "But I cannot picture it in my mind. I cannot imagine paradise."
"I can, but it does not have an imperial flag flying over it," Jason said.
"Compared to Arko I am already in paradise," Wyrrin said.
"Then Arko must truly be a terrible place," Jason replied.
"That depends what caste you are born into," Wyrrin muttered.
Michael coughed. "Your Highness, would you do something for me?"
Jason looked a little surprised. "Yes. What?"
"Try and summon your familiar, Aggaroth, if you would," Michael said.
"Why?" Amy demanded. "You know I don't hold with summoning demons."
Michael allowed himself a small smile. "I think you will be pleased, if I am right. If not, could I ask you to have your sword ready?"
Amy frowned, but she drew her shining broadsword, Magnus Alba, and stood ready to use it against any foe that might be found.
"Your Highness, if you would," Michael said, gesturing for Jason to continue.
His Highness stood up, and pointed his summoning rod at the ground before him. "I call upon Riate, Eldest and Highest, King of Heaven and Master of All, stretch forth thy power to aid me and grant me the service of thy warrior, Aggaroth!"
Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue (The First Sword Chronicles Book 2) Page 7
