by Ted Neill
Haille sniffed, regarding Adamantus’ shape once more. “Then we should leave all the prisoners, council members, my mentor Yana to their imprisonment by the Magus and his horde, because their suffering ennobles them?”
“That is not what I meant. To remove suffering when one can is honorable, a calling to us all. But when it is inevitable, how we choose to respond can give us meaning, power. That is my solace in times like these.”
“Is it wishful thinking?” Haille asked, looking through the antlers to the braces of the ceiling.
“Haille, where would your power be, without your wounds?”
She had made a circuit of the elk and now stood on his left, her hair glistening darkly in the candle glow. Haille’s eyes came to rest on her scar.
“My wounds diminish me. Adamantus’ wounds killed him. The same for my father.”
“We can be noble despite loss. Who doesn’t love a lost cause. We thinking beings can add meaning to suffering, resolving to stay noble despite it, as Adamantus did until his last breath. It’s a gift.”
“Gifts, burdens, Adamantus spoke of both.”
“Our choice makes all the difference, I believe.” She knelt down on the floor alongside where he had settled looking into the elk’s face. “A grave responsibility but it is what we make it.”
To his surprise she reached across and squeezed his hand. He stared at his hand in hers. “I have dreams now, Veolin. Visions, like memories. I don’t know what to make of them, but they are there, in the back of my mind even now, like thunder on the horizon. I don’t know what to make of them, a dam breaking, a city in the clouds, a sword falling with the rain out of the heavens, into the sea.”
“Mysterious are the Stygorn but it was a spell of transference that passed between him and you before he died.”
“Transference of what?”
“I don’t know. It is a question I would pose to my elders, Gandolin and Seraphina.”
“I feel like I’m supposed to do something with it.”
She released his hand, straightened her legs to stand, and walked to the doorway. Before leaving him alone she said, “Then you probably are.”
“The moonstones are powerful, dangerous relics,” Veolin said. She stood in the center of the room, her voice raised to carry over the crowd of fighters—elves and human, alike. “They have been tools for the Magus to hide his identity while manipulating his victims, but we can turn the gaze back on him. He is linked to them and with the right magic and combination of powers we might be able to see into his mind.”
“And learn his plans?” Val asked, sitting close to her in the front row of fighters.
“And his weaknesses?” Kalief added.
“If he has any,” Lasolorn said.
“Every man has weaknesses,” Chloe replied.
“We still don’t know if he is a man, a woman, elf or human, but we may learn. There are many of us now, and only one Magus,” Veolin said.
A lot of havoc has been caused by just one, Haille reflected. He scanned the room, full of fighters joined to their cause, strangers and friends, old and new, Gail being one of the most surprising but according to others, deeply loyal to his father’s memory. Kalief and Lasolorn spoke for the elves of Sidon that had come to their aid. Val sat with Cody and Chloe near to him, Gunther next to his wife, and Gregor, who preferred to be called his true name of Nathan now, next to them. Katlyn and Tallia rounded out the circle, sitting just to Haille’s left.
“We will need volunteers, those with the gift of magic,” Veolin continued.
Gunther and Nathan stood. Kalief and Lasolorn as well. Haille made to rise but was secretly relieved when Veolin put her hand on his shoulder. “Five will be enough, as long as there is one more than the moonstones. You must wait until you are stronger.”
“Who will be the fifth?”
“Me,” Veolin said.
The three elves and two humans joined hands around the broken plinth in the center of the room where the four moonstones that had been collected waited: one from Oean, one from Kiruna, one from Annabeth Chastain, and one from the revenant on Drahlstrom. Pried from their necklaces, chokers, and collars, they were beautiful and identical in color but unique in the ever-moving patterns of swirls on their surfaces. Haille felt a cold chill each time he looked at them and a dreadful pull, the way he had once been drawn to throw himself from the edges of the highest towers in the castle when he had been at his lowest. Each stone possessed the same eerie sense of depth as if looking over a cliff’s edge or imagining an ocean trench.
Veolin called for silence. The elves in the room closed their eyes; the humans, newer to magic, did the opposite and no one more than Chloe who watched her husband settle into the circle, locking hands with the elves who were more practiced and knowledgeable than he. Haille imagined his own face reflected the same anxiety as he looked to Nathan. Katlyn reached out to grab his hand and Tallia’s with the other. Collectively, they held their breath.
It was Lasolorn, most taciturn of all of them, who began the chant, his voice low and deep. It was in a language Haille did not understand but the words were full of power. As Nathan had taught him, Haille concentrated to put a simple shield between himself and the others, as the currents of magic were already making his skin feel cold and his scalp tingle. No longer distracted by the interference, Haille noticed the details of the room. The light from the windows dimmed as if a cloud had passed over the face of the sun. The shadows in the room grew. A tremor shook the boards under his feet and continued up his legs into his spine and to the ends of his arms. Katlyn felt it too, turning her face to him, questioning. He had no answers.
“They are glowing,” Tallia marveled.
A faint blue aura radiated from the center of the room. The elves’ faces were calm and serene, their eyes closed to it, but Gunther and Nathan looked startled. Cody reached for his sword. Val placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Chloe’s expression, stony with concern, was unchanged. Haille noticed that Veolin’s and her brothers’ eyes moved beneath their lids as if they were dreaming in their sleep. He could detect subtle shifts of emotions: effort, revelation, puzzlement, and even fear in their faces. The strain became more pronounced in their expressions, their hands beginning to tremble, the muscles of their forearms flexing. The pressure on his own hand increased. Katlyn bit down on her lip.
The plinth with the stones shook from a jolt, dust falling from its sides, the stones wobbling. The windows rattled in their panes and a voice, ghostly, disembodied, echoed around them, its syllables sharp, even if the meaning of the words was lost on Haille. Lasolorn raised his voice in response, his siblings joining him. The voice growled in response, shaking the hall as if a great dragon were stirring under their feet.
You dare, Haille heard it say.
Now all the elves joined the droning chant, their voices in unison. The ceiling shook, buffeted by a gust from the sea that gave no sign of abating. Haille heard the startled cries of men and elves outside, surprised by the abrupt change in weather. The light from outside grew weak while the aura of the stones had coalesced into a shape, something like a hooded figure with glowing blue eyes, not human, not demon, but a specter of some sort. The stone of the plinth grew white as the moonstones heated it.
“You dare to disturb the balance,” Veolin spoke back. “You disrupt a long peace of a gracious order.”
Nathan was shivering, tears running from his clenched eyes.
I am order. I am balance. I am power, the voice responded in booming tones followed by a groan and flash from the stones themselves. The five figures in the circle fell backwards. Chloe was quick enough to catch her husband, easing him to the ground, while the others were left to fall upon the floor.
The wind outside died. The light grew normal once again. The fire in the hearth crackled anew. The plinth began to cool as the other witnesses attended to those from the circle.
“I’m all right,” Gunther told Chloe. “Check on Nathan.”
/> Katlyn and Tallia obeyed, Nathan’s head between them. He was panting as if having just run a race. “I’m better now. Now that he’s gone. The pain, it was horrible.”
“What did you see?” Veolin asked, rubbing her own head as if nursing a headache.
“A dungeon with dripping walls. People in chains.”
“And vaurgs, rank upon rank, waiting behind city walls, filling city streets. He has brought discipline to them,” Kalief said.
“It was Carasans. I recognized it. I saw it from above as if I were standing on the fire tower,” Gunther said.
“The light house?” Val asked.
Gunther nodded.
“And the Rakne, the dark elks, I saw them, too,” Lasolorn said.
“As did I,” Veolin stood up. “He is preparing for us in Carasans.”
“The city is well fortified. We’re doomed,” an anonymous man said from the crowd.
“We would be fools to attack right when and where he wants us to.”
“We can’t wait,” Veolin said. “They have hostages. This will be his last stand or ours.”
“Did anyone see him or sense his identity?” Val asked.
Those from the circle shook their heads.
“It felt familiar, to me. But I still know nothing of who he is,” Nathan said.
“Wasn’t that him we saw there?” Cody pointed to the empty space where the apparition had materialized.
“No,” Veolin said firmly. “Only a part of him. He has communed with the stones so often that they retain a part of his consciousness. What we saw was an aspect of him, but there is no telling whether or not he knows we have looked into the stones.”
“I sensed only great power. A complex, disciplined, and learned mind,” Kalief said. “I would advise we wait, too, for the armies of Anthor to join us from Karrith or even reinforcements of our own from Sidon. But I also sensed his intent to kill the prisoners, the citizens of Carasans, the members of the council.”
“Yana,” Haille said.
“Yana, yes. Who is she?” Kalief said the name over.
“The closest person I have to a parent left,” Haille said, Katlyn placing her arm around him.
“Interesting,” Kalief said. “I think the Magus knows this. He wants to use it against you.”
Haille sat back down, his bones aching, his stomach aflame.
“It was clear he has devoted much time to thinking of you, Nathan, and you, Prince Haille,” Lasolorn said, eyebrows raised.
“I sensed it as well,” Gunther said, turning to Nathan. “Is there anything you can tell us of him? You are the only one to have met him in the flesh.”
Nathan sat up and wiped his brow. “It was so long ago. I would know his face, I think, but who knows if it was really his own he revealed. We have seen that he is skilled with illusions and glamors. But I sensed his ire toward me. I have betrayed him but perhaps that emotion let me see deeper into him than any of you for I glimpsed something I had not before.”
“What is that?” Veolin leaned closer to him.
Nathan’s throat fluttered. “A plan. As if he has seen all this before. A plan, falling into place, that only ends one way, in fire, blood, and death.”
The room went quiet. Haille could sense the question on all their minds, on the tips of all their tongues: why not wait, wait for reinforcements, wait for a better time? But Val, as if sensing the turning point, the fulcrum of where things turned, stood up.
“We wait, the prisoners die. We’ve seen the vaurgs, the elves have told us their taste for human flesh. We’ve dealt them one defeat today, let us not let up while our boot is already on their neck, let us not give them more time to prepare, to build barricades, to fletch their arrows, string their bows, sharpen their blades, and grow strong on the flesh of our brothers and sisters. I don’t want to fight for a city full of broken and gnawed bones, empty, desolate homes. I am for life. And if we go before the city gates to challenge them and we perish, we perish, knowing we did not run, knowing we rose to fight when the fight was on us, knowing we serve the right, the light, and in that service we will live full lives and die good deaths. Who is with me?”
By the resounding cry that rose up, shaking the hall once more, Haille concluded: everybody.
Chapter 21
The City Gates
During the day they rode south on the forest roads that connected Soledor through a chain of hamlets and fishing villages to Carasans. The villages were abandoned. The woods were not. At night the army set up pickets where sentries repelled attacks from roving bands of vaurgs. The creatures never breached the perimeter but the suddenness of the forays, the howls of the dreadful creatures kept Nathan from sleeping most nights. Inevitably he would find Haille already awake—even on peaceful nights the prince did not seem to sleep. Instead Haille stood off, separated, gazing to the south, where Carasans waited. For all they had been through together, Nathan still did not feel privileged enough to break into those pensive moments of the prince. Katlyn, a few times, brought Haille a blanket to drape over his shoulders or a cup of tea. Once Veolin returned from the edges of camp, fresh from a skirmish to convey some news to him, but no words lightened his mood or changed the grave countenance he wore.
“What troubles him?” Nathan asked Katlyn one night as the sounds of fighting kept them both awake.
“Loss,” she said, holding her cloak close to her neck with her fist, Tallia asleep next to her—the Maurvant girl could sleep through any noise. “He has lost parents, friends, and Adamantus. Yana is all he has left and now her life hangs in the balance.”
“He blames himself for his father’s death, that I know.”
“His mother’s too.”
Nathan rubbed his neck with both hands. “I knew him as an exile, away from his true identity. How the burdens of his station sit with him, I cannot guess.”
“His responsibility to those he loves weighs heavier on him than the role of prince. To Haille, the High Council rules Anthor, not he.”
“But he must notice the way the men look to him, the way their eyes grow hopeful when he rides past.”
“He’s too modest. Too used to being an outcast. He rides with elves to his left, captains to his right, he likely does not even realize the men are looking to him and not his companions,” Katlyn said, readjusting her legs beneath her, the moonlight flashing in her eyes as she regarded Haille’s silhouette leaning against a tree. The cry of a vaurg echoed through the treetops above.
“Haille will need to realize how they see him, before this is over,” Nathan said, reflecting on his own time as a figurehead.
“And we all need rest,” Katlyn countered, reaching under her cloak and producing a corked bottle. “Veolin gave this to me. It’s what Tallia has been drinking to help her sleep.”
“Here I thought she had ice water in her veins,” Nathan said, taking the offered bottle.
“She does. If she wasn’t sleeping, she would be with the fighting, no doubt. Take a sip, I’ll sit up a while and rouse you if you are needed.”
Nathan did so. The liquid was strong and tasted of crushed herbs and viscous oil. Before long he was drowsy and despite the cries and clashes of steel in the night, he fell into a deep sleep. But it was not dreamless. In it, he saw the same skyline of peaked roofs clustered on a narrow peninsula of land that he understood to be Carasans. Rising prominently above the houses was the harbor light, a tower crowned with a soot-blackened cupola where fires were stoked through the night to guide ships home. In his dream the fire burned on a great iron pedestal like a red star fallen from the sky, its reflection tracing a long path of fire over the inky harbor where he stood on the opposite shore, a watcher who was also watched, for he could feel the presence of his master, like a familiar ache, his presence prowling the edges of Nathan’s own consciousness, waiting for him across the waters, behind walls.
You dare.
Nathan woke groggy. The sky was the color of milk and the camp was stirring around him. He wa
s pleased to see Haille sleeping across from him. Perhaps Katlyn had prevailed upon him to try the elven brew as well. Tallia stole up soundlessly beside him, offering Nathan a cup of tea, dried apples, and cheese.
“Eat. Long march today to the city,” she said.
Nathan thanked her, roused Haille, and they ate together in silence. It wasn’t long before they were marching again. The column passed through a few more empty villages before entering a wood that was unnaturally quiet. Haille’s blue jays and Gail’s crow were the only birds to make a sound and Nathan did not see so much as a single squirrel scurrying through the denuded branches. Scouts reported finding spoor from vaurgs and the carcasses of deer, raccoon, and fox torn into pieces and devoured by the ravenous monsters. But there were no sightings of the vaurgs themselves. When the vanguard crested a hill and the expanse of Carasans harbor opened before them, Nathan knew why: they had come upon the city at last and the creatures had fallen back to fortify their positions.
The city was a new one to Nathan’s eyes and yet familiar for it was indeed the city he had glimpsed in his visions the night before and in previous visions of his master’s mind. The houses were packed in tight, growing upwards, three, four, even five stories, making the best use of the narrow space afforded them on the strip of land that was Carasans. The city center rose up on a hill crowned by a citadel with windows smashed and blackened by soot, the gates in rubble. It had clearly been the last redoubt of the Carasanians before the city had fallen. Now its flagpoles were empty, its walls barren of the colors that once hung there in banners. Instead bodies of warriors dangled, missing limbs and heads, a warning no doubt to the vaurgs’ enemies.
The closest approach was the causeway that crossed the shallow end of the harbor, skirting an impassable strip of marsh that connected the city to the mainland. The causeway was also littered with scattered bones—more victims of the vaurgs—the piles growing in size closer to the city where the bridge met the wooden doors, a portcullis dropped down before them.
