Year of the Black Rainbow

by Claudio Sanchez

  Marth shook his head. “Such ridiculous notions from one who decided to declare himself the Supreme Tri-Mage. His confidence has caged him.”

  “The legend of the original Tri-Mage was a tale of arrogance,” said Crom. “It says much of Ryan that he took that as something to aspire to rather than something to avoid.”

  “Yes. Yes indeed, it does.”

  “In my opinion, my lord, he is not thinking straight. He must be in a panic since our forces routed his on Apity Prime.”

  “Yes,” and Marth smiled grimly. “That must have been a crushing blow to him. He thought he had the advantage over us, and we showed him otherwise. For one who holds himself in such high esteem, discovering his limits is a devastating experience.”

  “He placed too much confidence in Deftinwolf, if you ask me.”

  Crom’s men were already fanning out, surrounding the citadel that constituted Ryan’s last stronghold. It was a broken, shattered husk of what it had been, but it was still standing. Marth saw it as something of a symbol for the entirety of the circle of Mages. “How do you see this playing out, General?” said Marth.

  “I am interested in knowing how you see it playing out, my lord.”

  Marth stared at the citadel. “I go in there. Confront him. Hold him responsible for the death and destruction that he has inflicted on his brethren. Either he commits suicide in shame over his actions, or surrenders unconditionally. Otherwise I will take it upon myself to inflict a terminal punishment upon him as some small token of retribution.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You sound skeptical, General. That is not how you would handle it?”

  “No, sir.”

  This was the foremost of the many reasons that Marth preferred Crom as his General. Most military men were reluctant to speak truth to power, and there were none who trod the world that were more powerful than Mages. Yet Crom never hesitated to say precisely what was on his mind, even if it flew in the face of what the Mage believed. “How would you address the problem, then?”

  “Annihilate his citadel and extract his remains from the rubble.”

  “Hardly a satisfying conclusion to his business.”

  “With respect, it is folly to believe that Ryan is going to repent. If he can destroy no more lives, I consider that to be sufficiently satisfying.” He paused and then added, “I am a soldier, my lord. It is not in my interest to provide opportunities for repentance, nor stage some manner of final face-to-face confrontation. My goal is for a maximum victory with minimal loss of life. Certainly my goal is not to allow he who has my fealty to risk himself needlessly.”

  “‘Risk?’ You believe that I cannot dispatch him?”

  “I believe it is a waste of your time even to try. This man, this…traitor to the cause of the Mages,” a miniscule crackle of static in his electronic speech pattern betrayed the slightest hint of the cold fury within, “believed that he was destined to take over the entirety of the Fence. He aspired to be the Supreme Tri-Mage. He aspired to be like God, if not God himself. Such as he deserves to be put down like a rabid animal. Nothing more.”

  It went against Marth’s grain to allow it to end in this manner. However, everything that Crom was saying made sense. He did not trust himself to speak, because there was every chance that he would give voice to more doubts or uncertainties or simply order Crom to stand down so that he could attend to this himself. So he limited himself to a single nod and then looked toward the citadel.

  That was all that Crom required. He raised his right wrist and spoke into his comm unit. “End this, now” was all he said.

  It was all that he was required to say.

  Full bore pulser cannons unleashed their payloads upon the citadel. The charges hammered home, the citadel trembling furiously under the pounding. Most of the firepower was concentrated on the lower sections of the tower, on the assumption that if the supports were taken down, the rest would collapse in short order.

  “Any possibility of escape tunnels?” said Marth.

  Crom shook his head. His monotone delivery was difficult to hear over the escalating series of explosions. “We performed soundings of the area. If there were anything underground, we would have detected it. The only way he could possibly escape is if he could mentally transport himself from one point to another.” He glanced warily at Marth. “He could not possibly do that, could he?”

  “Teleportation, you mean? No. No, that power has been long lost to the Mages. The last to possess it was, in fact, the Supreme Tri-Mage. Perhaps Ryan thought that if he declared himself to be such, that he would accrue all the legendary powers that accompany the title.”

  “Madman. He was an utter madman.”

  “I notice that you use the past tense.”

  There was a thunderous roaring from the citadel as the tower began to collapse in upon itself. The entire thing tumbled in slow motion, crumbling downward, brick and stone flying in all directions. The pulser corps had backed off the moment the structure began to lose cohesion.

  Marth watched in fascination, unable to tear his eyes away from it. Oddly, he felt no satisfaction, no glee, no sense of triumph over the destruction of an opponent who had caused so much bloodshed, destroyed so many lives. All he felt was sorrow and the sense that wasted lives were being celebrated with a wasted death, the final symbol of unfulfilled potential.

  The air was suffused with the ear-splitting noise of the tower’s final collapse. The ground shook as if a giant were taking vast, thunderous strides across it. The soldiers scattered, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the destruction as possible. Marth did not budge an inch, nor did Crom. They kept their positions as dirt and dust billowed toward them, leaving a thin coating of debris on their clothes. Larger pieces of rubble tumbled all around them, and several of the falling pieces posed a threat until Marth gestured casually and they incinerated in mid-flight.

  Long minutes passed before nothing was left save the rubble and the silence, and soon that silence was obliterated by the cheers of the soldiers. It was slow at first; the younger ones were the quickest to take up the huzzahs and cries of joy. Then the older, more experienced soldiers looked in Crom’s direction. The General said nothing, but instead simply inclined his head slightly. Provided this tacit permission, they joined the youngsters in a whooping cheer that was nothing less than a collective sigh of relief from humanity.

  “You have reason for celebration this day, General,” said Marth, knowing full well that Crom was as likely to sprout wings and fly as he was to celebrate anything.

  “You do not join in, my lord?”

  “I? I have no reason for celebration. Just because a tragedy has ended, that does not make it any less a tragedy. If only this could have been avoided, General. Would that, despite my occasional knack for foresight, I had possessed sufficient knowledge to see all aspects of this conflict and find a way to forestall it…short of murdering Ryan before he had sufficient power to pose a threat.”

  Crom was silent for a moment, and then said, “Permission to—?” He did not need to finish the request, for Marth gestured that he should proceed. “With respect, my lord, you should have let me take the shot when I had the chance all that time ago.”

  “You certainly have been with me quite some time, General.”

  “Your gift to me of prolonged life, my lord.”

  “You have used it well.”

  Crom bowed to him. “I have used it in your service. That is ever all that has mattered to me.”

  Marth turned away. “I must meditate on what has gone before…and what is yet to come.”

  “To come?”

  “Others of my order remain missing. They were in Ryan’s clutches, and their whereabouts remain unknown. With Ryan dead, it is up to me to locate them and restore them to their greatness, presuming that is still possible.”

  “I have every faith in you, my lord. If any can accomplish it, it is you.”

  “Thank you, General. I hope to be wor
thy of your trust.”

  “I shall make certain the troops are ready when you wish to depart, my lord.”

  * * *

  The last citadel standing.

  Marth paused at the threshold and then entered, shaking his head as he did so. Once he had looked upon his citadel with such pride. Now it was a symbol of greatness lost, of a ring of power that had been shattered beyond repair. He was the last fully functioning Mage. The responsibility that accompanied that unwanted status was practically suffocating.

  He entered his sanctum, his mind whirling back to a time that was simultaneously so long ago and yet so recent. That time when he had been face to face with Ryan, trying to warn him of the insanity of what was to come, in the vain hope that it might be averted. And oh, how he had tried to warn the other Mages. Naturally they had not believed him. They never believed.

  And now they were gone, and it was up to him to set things right. He would have to find the others of his kind, wherever they were imprisoned. Failing that, new Mages would have to be recruited for the first time in ages, and it would fall to Marth to find them and educate them in the ways of being a Mage.

  He realized that he was about to embark on a quest to restore order to Heaven’s Fence, an order that had been severely damaged by the lengthy Mage War. It would be a great quest, a reconstruction, one that musicians would write songs about and that scholars would teach their students and that historians would describe at length. It would be called The Quest to Mend the Fence. Yes. Yes, that would be an excellent name, one that fully described the enormity of his mission: namely, to heal the rifts that had been torn in the natural order of things, to say nothing of the lives of simple, ordinary people who had just been trying to live. A new democracy where everyone has a voice…

  “It is a shame it has come to this, Marth.”

  The voice boomed out of everywhere in his sanctum. Marth had just been lowering himself into his chair of contemplation, and the voice was so loud that it virtually blasted him to his feet. “No,” he whispered.

  “Kindly do both of us a favor and do not say, ‘It can’t be.’ That is trite, and clichéd, to say nothing of demonstrably wrong since, very obviously, it not only can be, but is.”

  “Ryan.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “Again, yes, and also again, obviously.”

  “Where are you?”

  “With you, my dear Marth. Here, within your sanctum. Here, well secured, so that you cannot see me to incinerate me. I, on the other hand, can see you perfectly.”

  The significance of that pronouncement was not lost on Marth. He was standing in the center of his sanctum and he turned slowly in a full circle. Ryan said nothing as Marth did so, perhaps out of a sense of courtesy, or perhaps simply out of amusement in seeing Marth’s growing awareness of his own vulnerability. “You were never in your citadel? Our information was wrong?”

  “No. It was quite correct. I was there. And now I am here.”

  “A tunnel? They said there were no tunnels.”

  “They were correct.”

  The horrific implications of what he was saying crawled upon Marth like a thousand cockroaches. “You didn’t…”

  “I did.”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “I have.”

  “You cannot teleport yourself. No one can.”

  “How odd, for I am hardly no one. I,” and he paused, allowing a brief moment of self-satisfaction, “am Wilhelm Ryan, the Supreme Tri-Mage. You, on the other hand, are no one. So let us see you transport. Transport yourself to safety, Marth.”

  Marth immediately made for the door. He slammed into it with the full weight of his shoulder horns, but it did not budge. Although he knew there was no point, nevertheless he made for the exit on the far side of the room. That door likewise did not open. Ryan had already done something to them, or perhaps was in the process of doing it. There was no way of knowing for certain. The only thing that was certain was that apparently Wilhelm Ryan was capable of absolutely anything.

  “How did you learn it?” said Marth softly, with the air of someone who knew that his end was at hand. “How is it possible?”

  “If you had studied the ways of the first Supreme Tri-Mage, instead of simply viewing him as a cautionary tale of the dangers of overreaching, perhaps you might have learned the secret as well. Now, though, it is too late. Far too late.”

  “Yes. Upon that we agree,” said Marth.

  “I will give you an opportunity though.”

  “Let me guess,” said Marth. “You will extend me the courtesy of taking me prisoner, as you have done with eight of our brethren.”

  “Our brethren no longer.”

  “And what have you done with them, you bastard? What hideous experiments have you performed on them? What have you transformed them into?”

  “Give yourself willingly into my custody and you will find out.”

  “Your custody.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “That would imply that somehow you were trustworthy. That you were a caretaker of the concerns of others, when the truth is that all you give a damn about is your own mad quest for power. You’ve abrogated your responsibilities as a Mage.”

  “You are wrong, Covent Marth. I am, in fact, the only one of your sorry lot who willingly embraced my responsibilities.”

  “How does your twisted logic and sense of self-aggrandizement possibly come to that conclusion?”

  “Because only I am willing to embrace the full potential of the Mages.”

  He circled the room slowly, still trying to grasp where Ryan might be. “Our full potential is to be pawns in some massive power game of yours?”

  “You have made yourselves pawns. You willingly closed your eyes to all that you could accomplish. The Mages were content with their place as proscribed in the Ghansgraad. How pathetic is that? How disgustingly pathetic? Each of you content to rule over a single sector of Heaven’s Fence when there is so much more that we can accomplish. For so long I stood on the outside looking in at the Mages, hoping that once I joined your ranks, I would be able to convince the lot of you of your full potential. But none of you were willing to consider it, or even grasp the possibilities. Instead you were disgustingly content with your status and your limitations.”

  “Limitations that come from God through the word of the Ghansgraad.”

  “Wrong!” For the first time, Ryan’s mask of calm slipped, and there was genuine anger in his words. “Limitations that come from your refusal to question the fundamental make-up of the universe! Limitations that come from your inability to realize what we could accomplish if we pooled our power!”

  “What could we have accomplished?”

  “It’s too late to ask now.”

  “I’m asking anyway. What could we have accomplished?”

  “We could have ruled the universe.”

  Marth whirled and saw that Ryan was standing ten feet away from him. “We could have been gods together,” he said.

  Marth lashed out, focusing his power, but it was too late. Ryan’s mind brushed aside the attack and stabbed forward into Marth’s molecular structure. Marth staggered, and there was pain, pain unlike anything he had ever known, pain beyond anything he had ever thought possible, pain that made it seem as if the only sensation he had ever known was soul-searing agony, and against that pain was the now calm voice of Ryan, speaking the last words that Covent Marth would ever hear:

  “Instead I’ll have to do it all myself.”

  * * *

  Wilhelm Ryan severed the bonds that were holding Covent Marth’s atomic structure together. There was a sizzling like meat being overheated, and a final ear-splitting scream, and then Marth blew apart in a million directions simultaneously. There was no blood, no gore. With destruction at an atomic level, such a thing was impossible, unless Ryan deliberately downgraded the destruction for shock value. One moment Marth was there, and the next, he wasn’t. There was nothing left of him save f
or a black splotch on the ground where he had combusted.

  Ryan stood there and simply stared at the non-remains of Covent Marth. Outside the cheering of the soldiers was tapering off as the celebration continued. That was as Ryan had expected. He had already sacrificed enough soldiers in trying to convey—successfully—that he was on the run, overwhelmed by the forces of Covent Marth. It was true; Marth’s forces were formidable. Ryan might have conquered the other ten Mages, but many of their surviving soldiers had not sworn allegiance to Ryan; they had joined up with the Mages who had not yet fallen, and now the bulk of those were part of Marth’s army. It was ironic that in overcoming each Mage, Ryan had—to some degree—made his task increasingly harder. That’s not to say the murder and capture of the Mage’s prior to Marth had been simple for Ryan by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the War of the Western Third had left him personally disfigured by a deep actinic burn on the lower half of his body. It scarred him physically, but did even more to jar him at a mental level. The battle wound proved that despite what Ryan himself believed and demanded others believe as well, he was mortal and could be damaged. So overcoming Marth’s army had required some shifting in his own strategies.

  But those shifts had succeeded, just as Ryan knew they would.