War of the Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

  “I was,” he said. “But then I saw a tavern on the way, and they were serving strong honeyed ale, so I told Zell and Syan to go on ahead. And I went in and ordered myself the biggest glass they had.” Lyriana shot me a look equal parts disappointed and concerned, a look Ellarion caught immediately. “I didn’t drink it, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just sat there staring at it for a long time, and then I paid and left. What would the point even be? An hour of relief, a restless sleep, and then I’d feel just as bad tomorrow.”

  “Um, Ellarion?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “Is something wrong?” he repeated with a scoff, strolling out to rest along the balcony’s edge. “You mean, besides the fact that we’ve lost the Kingdom, the rebellion’s defeated, and the situation is so dire my dear cousin has to sell her hand in marriage to Rulys Cal? No. Nothing’s wrong.”

  Lyriana rolled her eyes, zero patience for the dramatics. “I can make my own choices, thank you. And that’s not what this is really about, is it?” She paced over to his side. “If you want to talk, talk. Tell us what’s wrong.”

  Ellarion turned to her, then sighed. “I’m tired. And bitter. And angry. So angry all the time.”

  “About your hands?” I offered.

  “No, actually. I got over being angry about that long ago,” he said. “I’m angry about everything else. Did you see how Cal looked at me? How he talked to me? I’m the Archmagus, for the Titans’ sake, and he treated me like I was nobody. He was ready to kill me to make a point. Elric Kent was a more valuable hostage.” Ellarion’s nostrils flared, and his eyes smoldered. “He looked at me like I was nothing.”

  “Ellarion…”

  “It’s not just him, either. It’s everyone. Galen. The vagabonds.” Ellarion paused, like he was debating, and then decided to go there. “Even you.”

  “No, I don’t…I…” I tried.

  “You do, though,” Ellarion pressed. “I can see it in your faces. The pity. The sadness. The way you all look away when I’m training with Syan, like it’s so pathetic. Like I’m just poor broken Ellarion, and you all feel so bad for me all the time.”

  “I—I mean…” I had an instinctive rootless impulse to defend myself, but I’d also learned that any time I felt that, it meant I was probably in the wrong. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I made you feel that way.”

  Ellarion took a deep breath and turned to Lyriana, his red eyes glowingly dimly through the night. “Let me ask you something. When you were a child, and you imagined being Queen, what did you think about? What went through your head?”

  “If I’m being honest? Mostly worries,” Lyriana replied. “I worried if I would be a good Queen. I worried if I would know how to make difficult decisions, if I was smart enough, if I was compassionate enough. I worried every day that I wouldn’t be good enough.”

  “Of course you did,” Ellarion said. “And do you know what I thought about, when I imagined being Archmagus? I thought about the monuments they’d build in my honor. I thought about the songs they’d sing. I pictured the crowds gathered, chanting my name, and I imagined the history books, and how they’d call me Ellarion the Great and Ellarion the Magnificent and talk about how I was the most astounding Archmagus of all time.”

  “That’s not all you thought about.”

  “No, it is,” he insisted. “It really is. That’s all I cared about. Being great. Being celebrated. Being amazing. All the things an Archmagus is supposed to care about, like bringing light to the masses and helping the smallfolk and all that, well, that was just a means to an end. A step on the road to glory.” He slumped down into a chair with a weary exhale. “I don’t want it anymore. I don’t need monuments or songs or parades. I just need people to look at me like I’m a person. I need people to stop underestimating me. I need people to understand that I’m still me.”

  “I understand,” Lyriana said, and she walked over and gave him a hug. “You’re my cousin. And you’re smart and resourceful and clever and kind. You’re the most important person in my world. And you’re so, so far from nothing.”

  “You’re also super good-looking,” I added. “I mean, don’t forget about that.”

  Ellarion shook his head, curly locks swaying. “Thanks.”

  “Feel better?” Lyriana asked.

  “A little,” he replied. He smiled, and Lyriana smiled, and I guess I did too, but it was hard to look away from the sadness in his eyes and the worry in hers. A cold chill blew over us, swaying the curtain over the balcony’s door.

  I fought back a shudder.

  The next morning, as the sun rose over the city’s sparkling pools and bustling bazaars, we made our way to the southern gate. Syan hadn’t been joking about provisions. There were heavy packs of food and big leather skins filled with water, new shining blades and thin ochre robes, the kind that were supposed to help us deal with the heat. And then there were our rides.

  “What in the frozen hell are those?” I yelled the second I stepped through the gate.

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting to take out into the Wastes. Horses, maybe? Camels? But apparently I was totally off the mark because waiting for me out there, laden with our goods, were four massive, disgusting, hideous lizards. And I mean massive. These things were easily the size of a carriage, with six leathery limbs giving way to uncomfortably human hands. Huge tails thick as tree trunks lashed behind them, flicking up dust and sand. Their skin was a dull green, covered in bumpy scales the size of my fist, that didn’t so much sparkle in the sun as absorb it. And their faces were the weirdest of all: long snouts that gave way to wide, fanged mouths, and bony skulls lined with four eyes, two big and red, two beady and black.

  “Terzans,” Syan said, gently petting one’s head. A long purple tongue flicked out to lick her hand, and I had to fight back a gag. “Wonderful creatures. They were born in the Storm just like us. You won’t find a better companion to brave the sands.”

  I looked to my friends for backup. “Seriously?”

  “Syan says they’ll get us through the desert,” Zell said, and Lyriana just shrugged. “I think they’re kind of cute.”

  “Well, I think they’re big monster lizards with freaky-weird people hands.” I knew this was a petty thing to be protesting, but also, I really didn’t want to ride one. “We can’t just take horses?”

  “A horse will spook at the first sign of a storm,” a man’s voice said from beside me. I spun to see a young Izterosi guy, leaning against an exceptionally big terzan thing. He had shaggy black hair lit up with streaks of silver, wide brown eyes, and a gap-toothed smile that was instantly endearing. “Trust me. Out in Izteros, a terzan is the only way to go.”

  I blinked at him. “Um…”

  He extended a hand, and clasped my wrist when I reached for it. “I am Trell Tain of Benn Selaro. I’ve been hired to be your Torchbearer.”

  “I thought Syan was our…that.”

  “My flame will relight once I reach the sands, but it won’t be enough. Making it out all the way to Benn Devalos is too risky with just one Torchbearer,” Syan said matter-of-factly, and it was starting to dawn on me how little I actually knew about what came next in our journey. “The Dyn has paid Trell to escort us.”

  “He offers a fortune,” Trell said, beaming, and I had to wonder if he had any idea what he was getting into. “The elders at Benn Selaro will be so amazed when they hear.” He shot Syan a wide grin. “Perhaps our benns can finally resolve their differences? Perhaps our adventure will forge a bond!”

  “Mmm,” Syan said, looking away. There was a weird vibe here, something going on between them, but I had no idea what it was. At this point, I was only like 95 percent certain that a benn was a kind of city.

  “Come on,” Ellarion said, climbing onto his disgusting lizard monster like it was no big deal. “If we’re not back with Syan’s mages before the Southlanders attack Lightspire they’ll all get wiped out. We need to ride as fast as we can.” He glanced at me. “That means
you, Tilla.”

  I hated every second of this, hated climbing onto that thing’s back, hated how slick its skin felt and the way its beady black eyes flitted around. Even the fact that I was riding on one with Zell and could wrap my arms around his waist wasn’t helping. “This is my personal hell. You know that right? Personal. Hell.”

  “I’m sure you’ll somehow get through it,” he replied, and I could see the corners of his mouth twitching as he tried to hide that smile.

  Syan gave a command, a sharp cry that ended in a whistle, and the beasts took off, plodding down the road with their hands slapping the ground, jostling us from side to side with each stride. Trell and Syan led, followed by Ellarion and Lyriana, then me and Zell, and last of all my father, riding alone, a black eyepatch mercifully covering the awfulness that was his right socket. We trudged forward in that line, past merchants and travelers and rows of soldiers, out through the arched southern gate and to the sprawling desert beyond.

  As we left the city, I glanced back, and that’s when I saw him. A lone figure standing atop the gate, watching us go. Dyn Rulys Cal. His hair hung long and neat down his back, and he’d traded out his sheer robe for a suit of blinding golden armor and a curved sword sheathed at his side. His face was stern, distant, but as we looked up at him, he balled his right hand into a fist and pressed it against his heart.

  On the terzan in front of me, Lyriana let out a long, sad exhale. Then she raised her own fist and did the same.

  Cal smiled.

  I’LL GIVE THE RED WASTES this. The name is extremely literal.

  We’re talking massive, sloping dunes, the vibrant crimson of a blooming rose, endless sprawls of sand in the smoldering red of a sunset’s heart. I’d never seen anything like it, never imagined anything like it, an ocean of color brighter than any painting I’d ever seen, that sparkled like a million diamonds in the sunlight and glowed a gentle orange even in the dead of night.

  It wasn’t just the color (though a lot of it was the color). It was also the scale. Once we were out in the Wastes, four days after leaving Tau Lorren, it was like everything else in the world had vanished. There was just sand, beautiful and vibrant crimson sand, stretching out in all directions as far as the eye could see. There were no rocks, no plants, no wandering animals or birds circling overhead, just this great red sea with its mountainous waves and placid surface. Every now and again we’d pass a slab of crystal, reflective as a mirror, jutting out like a spike or lying flat like a buried relic. Other than that, it was just red sand forever. It was stunning, astounding, impossibly peaceful and serene.

  I had no idea how anyone could possibly live out here.

  The sun bore down hot overhead, but the terzans didn’t seem to mind. They just marched forward, padding effortlessly over the dunes, leaving a trail of handprints in their wake. At night, we fed them hunks of dried meat from our packs, and they cuddled up in a big slumbering pile of snorting nostrils and floppy hands. Mine was apparently named Gribshanks, and I’ll have it noted that at no point in the journey did I ever come to like him.

  Navigating was its whole own challenge, because there were exactly zero landmarks to guide us. Trell and Syan led the way, gathering side by side every few hours to do some weird magic that involved their zaryas zipping around overhead, leaving grids of glowing lines in the sky. Lyriana and Ellarion spent twenty minutes one day debating how it worked, and when they finally asked the Red Wasters, they’d shrugged and said “It just does.”

  Three days into our journey, the Waste Sickness began to hit. I’d been feeling weird all day, a low rumbling nausea building up in my gut, a dull throb stabbing in the sides of my head. I’d figured it was just me, but as we settled into camp, I could see that the others were feeling it too; Zell rubbed at his temples, and my father wobbled unsteadily on his feet.

  “Do you feel that?” Lyriana asked Ellarion, squinting all around like the sun was in her eyes. “In the air. It’s like…like…”

  “Magic,” Ellarion answered, his brow slick with sweat, his teeth gritted. “All around us. But it’s raw, unfocused, like…”

  “Like that Titan crypt,” Lyriana finished. She looked down at her hand, and a tiny burst of flame enveloped it, flared purple, and vanished. “I didn’t do that. I mean, I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “It happens to all stillanders who venture into our lands,” Trell said casually. “The People of the Storm don’t feel it. We were born to the sands. Their power runs through our veins. But for your kind…it can be hard to endure.”

  “Some warning would have been nice,” I said, and now I was definitely seeing little red spots in the center of my vision. “Is this just how it’s going to be?”

  Syan snorted. “Here. This will help.” She turned to rummage around in a heavy pack, and I realized her hair had changed again. After the crossing at Torrus, the colored strands had faded to a dull gray, but they were starting to shine again, a soft blue.

  “You’re absorbing the magic,” Lyriana said, obviously noticing the same thing. “That’s why you’re not sick. You’re breathing it in and out like, like air.”

  Syan shrugged. “If that’s how you’d like to think of it.” She found what she was looking for in the pack and turned around, holding a few dried-looking brown leaves in her open palm. “From the sashtu plant, which thrives out in the sands. Chew these. They’ll help.”

  Lyriana looked at them skeptically, and then another burst of fire shot out of her, this one popping off by her head like a firework. “Fine,” she said, chewing the leaf with a grimace.

  They tasted bitter and had an awful texture, like chewing on a crumbling twig. But within ten minutes, the nausea had passed, and within half an hour, the headache was gone, too.

  The nights out in the Red Wastes were cold, a chilling cold that you felt in your bones and made your breath hang heavy in the air. Lyriana tried to warm us by making orbs of Light, but her magic was just too messed up out here; they popped and crackled, bursting apart in showers of sparks, and one even turned into weird gooey worms that wriggled off into the sand. So we relied on Syan and Trell. Every night, as the sun set, they sat together at the center of our camp, eyes closed, hands folded, working their magic. Trell had his own zaryas, and I’m guessing his were the cheap ones to Syan’s luxury goods: chipped wooden balls lined with dulled metal, the paint on them faded and a distinct wobble in their twirl.

  But hey, they worked, and that’s what mattered. Their zaryas flitting in elegant spirals overhead, Syan and Trell made fires burst out of the sand, pillars of spiraling orange and gold that radiated blessed heat in all directions and burned of their own free will. Even fifteen feet away, the air was so cold you could feel your hair freeze, but the pillars kept us warm through the chill of night, giant candles blazing in the dark.

  It took me four nights to make the connection. “Ohhhh,” I said, staring up at the majestic tower of flame. “That’s why you’re called Torchbearers.”

  “You figured it out, huh?” Trell chuckled. “It’s not a perfect translation, but it’s close.” His accent was softer than Syan’s, his tongue more confident. I’m guessing he’d been living in Tau Lorren for quite a while.

  “It’s amazing,” Ellarion said. He sprawled out on a blanket, chewing on his leaf, resting on his wrists. He’d had to take his hands off that morning; all the magic in the air had been causing them to go haywire, clenching and jabbing and clicking uncontrollably. “This whole desert is beyond inhospitable. The best explorers and mages in Lightspire wouldn’t have made it two days. And yet the Red Wasters have been out here all along, surviving effortlessly, with a solution to every problem. It’s like they’ve perfectly acclimated to the environment.”

  “We didn’t ‘acclimate’ to this environment,” Trell said, enunciating every syllable in the word. “We were gifted the power to control it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Trell came over and hunkered down cross-legged opposite us. When he spoke a
gain, his voice had a new quality, slow, rhythmic and just a little grandiose, like he was reciting a story he’d heard hundreds of times. “Long, long ago, this land was not a desert but a forest, sprawling and lush, with towering trees and flowing rivers. The Sunfather had made it such, and while he admired its beauty, as the years passed, he felt lonely that he had no one to share it with. So one morning, he reached down from the sky, and he forged a man and a woman out of dirt. These were the first Izterosi, the first people of these lands. And they thanked the Sunfather for the gift of life, and settled all across this land.”

  Trell had been talking to just Ellarion and me, but the way he spoke managed to pique everyone’s interest. Lyriana came over to join us, waterskin in hand, and Zell set down the blade he was sharpening. Even my father swiveled around, just a little. The only person who didn’t seem to respond was Syan, who sat on the other side of the flame, arms crossed, gazing out into the night.

  “But the Nightmother, she was jealous,” Trell continued. “She was a demon, a monster, as cruel as the Sunfather was kind. She descended from the stars with her thousand siblings, cloaked in the swirling chaos of the Storm, and they enslaved the Izterosi. They forced us to build their city, a terrible monument of stone and glass. They put us to the lash, murdered any who dared oppose her. It was an era of darkness, of suffering, of pain.”

  “Trell,” Syan cut in sharply, her back still turned. There was something weird going on with her, a discomfort, a tension. “You don’t have to tell them this.”

  “Why not?” Trell shrugged. “We’re taking them to your benn, aren’t we? Are you really worried about keeping secrets?” He looked at us, and especially at Lyriana, who I’m pretty sure he had a thing for. “Would you like to hear more?”

  “Yes, definitely,” she replied.

  “Right, then,” he went on, and even though Syan’s back was turned, I could somehow feel her rolling her eyes. “The Sunfather heard his children’s cries, and he could not bear to see their suffering. So he reached deep into himself and drew forth his flame, and he brought that flame down on the Nightmother and her siblings. A rain of fire from the skies that destroyed their city, that toppled their towers, that set the demons aflame and burned them to ash. The Nightmother fled to Kaichkul, the Black Prison, and the Sunfather sealed her in there, where she rages to this day, plotting her revenge.”