by Lana Nielsen
Everything had happened so fast. It was difficult to clear her head.
Arithel squinted. She saw three figures riding towards the gate. Because of the great height of the middle rider, she immediately knew it was Zander. Mira and Fallon must have been at either side. Arithel laughed dizzily in relief. She looked forward to informing them that Darren and Meldane had left them for dead.
She stood beneath a tree as they came closer.
Arithel held her breath, seeing a host of Nureenians trailing behind them, in swift pursuit.
“Not again,” she said, readying the hand-cannon for use.
How had Fallon acquired three horses?
Arithel waited.
Meldane and Darren were now out of sight, beyond the ridge.
Her friends rode faster. Mira pulled to the front. They passed under the gate, arrows being fired at them. Arithel wondered what the range on the hand-cannon was. She wished she had her bow.
She waited.
Mira galloped past, looking down at Arithel in surprise. Soot covered the red-head’s face.
“They’re just ahead. Not too much further!” Arithel shouted as Mira flew by. Zander followed shortly thereafter, looking much too large for his horse. It looked as if he would crack the skinny beast’s back.
He spoke to her for the first time: “Get on!” he croaked.
He tried to pull her onto his saddle. She told him to leave her.
Fallon was the last of the riders, his grey cloak fluttering behind him. He kept looking back at his pursuers.
“Fallon… my lord,” Arithel whispered to herself, half in a daze.
In that brief moment, she realized she no longer cared all that much about whatever had happened between him and Mira. Her yearnings for him weren’t foolish nor could she shake them. He was part of her and always had been—however frustrating that was.
“Duck!” she shouted. One Nureenian, a light and little man, was charging hard, only twenty or thirty paces behind Fallon. Arithel hoped her arm would stay steady. Fallon dipped his head low, bringing it close to his horse’s red mane. The animal almost resembled Madroste.
Arithel fired the hand-cannon at the Nureenian’s horse, aiming it at its neck. She released the lever, and hit the soldier’s thigh instead of the beast. It was hard to aim at a target moving so quickly in the dark. The outcome was the one she wanted; the horse threw its rider off. He didn’t get the chance to cast his spear at Fallon. The other Nureenians didn’t slow down after taking note of what happened to their comrade. These men were not like the low-ranking cowards at the gate.
Fallon brought his horse to an abrupt halt just in front of Arithel. It reared its front legs in protest, which nearly sent him sliding off the back of the saddle. He held fast to the stirrups and reins. Its hooves eventually returned to the ground and the animal was still.
Judging by its dressage, it was a Nureenian horse.
“What are you doing?” Fallon demanded.
“I was looking for you.” She watched the Nureenians draw closer.
“You should already be in the mountains. I told you not to wait around!” he shouted, glancing behind him.
“I know,” she said. “But I couldn’t leave you. I’d have gone all the way back into the heart of the city if I had to, into the midst of the dungeons themselves. You’re my oldest and dearest friend.”
She wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, but she was choking on them. Her stomach wrenched.
“Hush,” Fallon said softly. He jumped from the saddle.
“What are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here,” Arithel said. She ran for cover in the forest as the Nureenians stopped their horses and loaded their bows. Fallon ignored the arrows as they sailed past either side of his head.
“I’m giving Belhaven something to remember,” he said, walking down the middle of the road.
Arithel lifted her weapon. These Nureenians learned fast, changing positions often enough that it was difficult for her to take proper aim. They thundered past the soldier she had hit in the leg. He was lying on the ground, moaning as his horse paced around his body.
“No,” Fallon looked back at her. “Shoot at me. Right through my heart.”
He stretched out his arms.
Arithel hesitated. Fallon was not suicidal, but he was over-confident.
“Was this ever part of your plan?”
“It is now,” he said. “Trust me.”
Arithel pushed the lever. A ray of starlight erupted from the mouth of the cannon, hitting Fallon before she could even blink in anticipation.
The hand-cannon recoiled instantaneously, sending Arithel flying backwards. She landed on her arse and elbows. The weapon was knocked from her grasp. She scrambled to retrieve it. Its silver runes were now embossed in light.
She noticed a burning sensation on her right hand and forearm. The skin itched and felt like it was stretched too tight. She screamed as she glanced down; awful red welts had broken out anywhere her flesh had touched the metal of the hand-cannon. The hairs on her arm were singed off.
She looked up at her friend, and was terrified by what she saw. Fallon was on fire. She could see the outline of his person burning beneath an aura of impossibly white flames. He kept walking forward.
Arithel responded to the situation by doing something she rarely bothered with and hardly believed in; she prayed. The flames surrounding Fallon somehow defied physics, growing taller and wider and brighter, so bright that if she closed her eyes she might think it were daytime
The cavalry stopped their charge, transfixed by the strange phenomena before them. The flames formed a kind of opaque tunnel around Fallon, occasionally pulsating in hues of green or blue.
The fire suddenly dissipated, leaving only a perfectly ordinary Fallon standing in its wake. Arithel breathed a sigh of relief, but was not too surprised—she did trust him.
Fallon lifted one arm. He sent all the heat and energy contained within his body pouring forth, sweeping over the landscape in a pale, scorching wave. The Nureenians turned and retreated. When the wall of energy hit them, their flesh evaporated upon contact. Man and beast collapsed into piles of charred bones and armor.
The inferno continued to rage, passing from Fallon’s hand in streams of light that continued as long as he kept his palms open. When it hit the gate, the force collided with the structure in a great tumult, blasting apart the masonry and leaving a thirty or forty-foot break in the wall. Wooden beams and stones flew into nearby buildings. A cloud of ash and smoke spread. The remainder of the gate caught fire normally. It was not a particularly intense fire, but with nothing to hinder its progress it would spread, perhaps eventually eating away at the slums themselves.
Fallon clasped his hands together to quell the light and fell to his knees. He fell further, his face meeting the road. He weakly attempted to pull himself up.
Arithel rushed to his side. She had seen the full force of his gift at last; she felt somewhat vindicated. How had it been possible? Fear coursed over her as the fresh skulls of the fallen Nureenians caught her eye, their bones so white and waxy it was as if they had been baked and polished.
Arithel helped lift him to his feet. He was trembling, his eyes yellowed and bloodshot, his breathing rushed and shallow. In that moment, he seemed as frail as an old man.
Arithel brushed ash from his brow and half-laughed. “That was something.”
She put his arm over her shoulders to allow him to lean on her as he walked. She tried to lift him onto the horse, but gave up after several tries. He was so limp and exhausted that he was practically dead weight, uncooperative and unable to support himself.
“Just glad I didn’t faint this time,” Fallon muttered.
“This time?”
“As if I haven’t practiced this sort of thing before.”
“Of course,” said Arithel, glancing back at the city, at the fire and the hordes of slum dwellers roving about near the gate. “We need to get moving.”
>
“I’d say we have at least a day or two of leeway.” Fallon laughed, his blue eyes sparking even as they drooped in exhaustion.
Arithel was still astounded by the display. Sending a torrent of fire upon one’s enemies was certainly far removed from anything she had expected.
She shifted more of his weight to her own as he coughed, his chest shuddering with each breath. He was so weak… it seemed that magic, just as in the old tales, had a heavy price. Arithel hoped he would be conservative with his gifts. She didn’t want to see him devolve to his old condition.
“In any case.” She gritted her teeth. “Walk faster.”
Fallon complied as best he could. When she squinted, she thought she glimpsed the white tail of Zander’s horse flicking on the road ahead.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Tiresias, Holy Nureenian Emperor and Lord of the Continent, sipped from a jeweled goblet as he listened to the wild tales of the masked Ered-Linnean messenger. Like most highborn Ered-Linneans, he spoke Nureenian well enough. Tiresias scanned over the contents of the scroll the man had brought.
The emperor chuckled as he took note of the crude, Elinmoorian drawings. He would have to send more artists out to the colonies.
“Commander, did you hear what he just said?” demanded his wife, Esma. “Thirty-seven soldiers, four sentries, four patrolmen, forty-one citizens and three-hundred-two subjects.”
Her fingers were gripping the cushioned arms of her throne. Her green eyes were shaking with anger. She was a Gyonian—very wise, very strong, as the women of that province tended to be. She was a good empress; he could always count on her. Not like his first three wives.
“You mean to tell me,” Tiresias addressed the kneeling messenger. “A band of con artists—” he held out the paper in front of him “—is responsible for this mess?”
“Yes, my lord,” the Ered-Linnean replied. “They are still out in the wilderness somewhere. The smallfolk of my country already sing their praises. Governor Emrhys is so addled by the dimming sun that he listens to their nonsense. He has sent out men to find them, to bring them to the palace.”
“And do what?”
The messenger shrugged and stuttered. His eyes darted about the room.
“Meet them, welcome them, I suppose. You must forgive him; he is not himself. I have talked with the leading priests of Mithoniel, and they agree. They believe there may be some devilry at work in all of this.”
“Of course there is!” the empress spat, adjusting her veil. “There have been dozens of pretenders. Why should this one be so different?”
Tiresias muttered to himself and looked at the paper again.
“This is the first time heathens have been involved in these sorts of plots.” Desmon Varrellis, the emperor’s chief advisor, spoke up in his low and sonorous voice. He pointed at two of the figures on the paper.
“They’re just the muscle,” Esma scoffed. “The Padenites are too dim-witted to have cooked up this scheme on their own. There is something more sinister at work here.”
She would know, Tiresias thought. Gyon was at the most northernmost reaches of the empire, close to Paden.
Tiresias analyzed the sketches again. His gaze rested on the name of the Neldorin man… Veselte, Veselte, Veselte—why did it seem so familiar?
“I say we send a few legions to Mithoniel, and demand Emrhys surrender these criminals and terrorists. We must nip this in the bud, before we have outright rebellion on our hands,” Desmon urged. “Some of our citizens in the colonies live a hundred leagues from the nearest garrison.”
“Emrhys has paid Ered-Linn’s tribute twofold this year. I cannot threaten him. Ered-Linn is not a colony.” Tiresias shook his head. “We must find some other way to be rid of these pests.”
He looked at the messenger.
“I can help make a plan. I am close to Emrhys,” the man said.
“You will help,” Tiresias corrected him.
He was still thinking of the sketch. A Neldorin…Veselte… He would have to call a historian.
The answer hit him. A teenage boy in the sanitarium, his cheeks hollow and legs bent from the black lung disease. He had been semi-fluent in Nureenian, remarkably bright and well-spoken. Morden had introduced him. He took a liking to him after he set the boy’s bones. For a time, the boy had hardly left the doctor’s side.
The paper shook in Tiresias’s hands. Surely it was not the same boy.
Tiresias quickly folded the parchment and tucked it away in his pocket. He breathed deeply. All of the sudden, his steel circlet—carved from the helmet he wore during the campaigns of the revolution, a symbol of authority he used in lieu of a crown—was very tight on his brow.
“What is wrong?” Esma whispered.
“Morden’s boy…” he said.
“Who?” asked Desmon.
“A doctor who used to work here.”
Tiresias stood up and paced. He liked the feeling of the cool marble floors against the soles of his slippers. It helped him think.
“I sent him away,” the Emperor continued. “A few years ago. I should have had him killed.”
Desmon and the Empress appeared confused. Tiresias wandered over to the globe Morden had given him. It never stopped spinning on its axis. It was an exact replica—down to every river, mountain and valley—of the earth. Every map in the realm was modeled off it. “Adonai, a city lost to time”—that was where Morden said it had come from.
“A doctor?” Esma asked incredulously.
“I was close to him. He was with me all throughout the revolution. He preferred to stay away from Mt. Aerys, though. Morden,” Tiresias repeated the name, shuddering a little.
“You were taking advice from a doctor all this time?” Desmon raised his oiled, grey brows.
“Yes,” Tiresias sighed, remembering how Morden had called him by his birth name—Tarik.
“Let me tell you, this situation is much more than a threat to the Empire. If we are dealing with who I believe we are, we are talking an existential threat to the survival of every creature on this earth.”
Tiresias stopped the globe, running his finger across the spine of the Shadow Mountains.
The Empress made the sign of Agron.
“What I am about to say cannot leave this room.” Tiresias said, locking the door and drawing the silk curtains himself.
About Lana Nielsen
Lana Nielsen is a freelance writer, teacher and coach who lives on the beautiful northern Gulf Coast. She’s been set on writing fantasy since middle school, when she coerced her unfortunate neighbors into playing poorly dressed orcs and elves in her home movies. When not writing or working, she can be found running, road tripping with her husband, or reading an endless stream of Wikipedia articles. She loves a good cup of coffee and a good conspiracy theory.
You can visit her at https://lananeilsenauthor.blog/ or https://twitter.com/LanaNeilsen @LanaNeilsen.
