by Liam Reese
It was so effective that Khaleen found herself in the middle of the Waravalian army that had been forcing the mercenaries back.
“Khaleen?” King Vetrulian asked in shock when he saw her. The king had seen some fighting, his bright armor now scarred and covered in blood, and the white cloak he had worn ripped and stained.
“We can’t get trapped in here,” Khaleen said, reading the patterns flowing around her. “There are too many of them.”
Her eyes wandered to the gates they had destroyed, where hundreds more mercenaries were pouring in to hack and slash at the combined armies without end.
We’re done for. Where did they get so many men?
“What can we do?” Vetrulian asked.
Khaleen racked her brains for a solution, but could not think of one until she turned to look at the gates again. “Up!” she said. “We go up, get on top of the walls, and funnel them up a narrow ramp. If they want us, they’ll have to pay dearly.”
Vetrulian nodded. “Fall back!” he bellowed.
Blinded by anger and despair, Besmir lashed at Cathantor with fire and lightning, his power exploding outwards to engulf the statue of the God as well as several of the benches in the chapel.
When he finally felt the flow of power drain off, he looked to see that Merdon had thrown himself before Cathantor. His grandson was staring at him in horror, as if unable to believe he had attacked the God.
“You don’t understand, Merdon,” he said. “The Gods have brought me nothing but misery.”
“Still!” Merdon gasped in a shocked voice. “Still!”
Behind him, Cathantor stood with a look of surprise on his deer-like face. You didn’t expect that, did you?
The God looked from the burned benches to the statue of himself, now disfigured and with a curl of smoke rising from one nostril. “Well,” he said with an air of sadness. “I think that concludes our business here.”
The God stretched one arm out, indicating the door, leaving no confusion as to his wishes. Besmir was more than happy to comply. He would never set foot in one of these chapels again. In fact, he had the sudden and insane urge to have as many of them destroyed as he could.
He stormed across to the door, throwing it open and stepping back down into the citadel hallway, turning to stare at Cathantor as Merdon and Lyeeta followed him. He shook his head in disgust as the God smiled at him and reached to slam the door shut.
Merdon gasped behind him, and Besmir turned to see Arteera and Joranas hit the floor at his feet, his wife moaning in agony as something broke. His eyes rolled around, recognizing his own home.
He helped!
The king looked back down at his wife and son as Merdon crouched beside his father, then along the corridor to where Emmerlin stood, her mouth open in shock at the sight of him.
“Emmerlin!” he cried.
“Emmerlin!” Besmir bellowed, his anger incandescent.
The door behind her opened and Senechul appeared, his eyes searching for her. Fright clamped bands of ice-cold iron around her chest at the sight of her father.
How did he get here?
The King of Gazluth started towards her and Emmerlin felt her insides liquefy. He was going to burn her, burn her like he had done to Tiernon. Forgetting her immense powers, she turned and darted up the corridor, leaving her guard behind.
Merdon looked up from his father’s face to see the massive guard, Senechul, blocking his grandfather’s way. How they had been brought three days north in the blink of an eye was beyond his capability to understand, and thinking about it made his headache. Yet he had to believe the evidence his eyes told him; this was his grandfather’s palace, and his father was here, injured, with his grandmother.
“Take care of them,” he said to Lyeeta. “I have to help Grandfather.”
Without time to even check if his father was alive, Merdon sprinted up the hallway after Besmir, drawing his swords as he went.
Senechul stood in the middle of the corridor, a door of flesh and blood that sealed Emmerlin’s escape. Merdon watched Besmir raise his hand, then let it drop, and could guess at his thoughts.
He had tried to burn a God. A God that had then helped them.
Merdon darted past his grandfather and launched an attack against the guard, who somehow managed to parry and dodge every thrust and cut his lightning-fast blades rained down.
Senechul grinned at Merdon’s surprise and tried to throw a blow at Besmir as the king walked past them, but Merdon lashed his right-hand blade out, drawing a red line down Senechul’s arm. He hissed, snatching it back.
“How’s the nose?” Merdon asked as the pair faced each other.
Senechul drew a long dagger and kissed the flat of the blade. “Going to cut your liver out with this,” he growled.
“You realize she’s left you to die, right?” Merdon asked.
Nothing changed in the big guard’s eyes; there was no epiphany, no understanding that he had been used and now sacrificed. He believed he could win against Merdon and then go join her. The prince shook his head.
Then attacked.
The walkway atop the walls was about three feet wide, and slippery with blood and guts as Khaleen hauled herself up towards the top. Once there, she made her way towards the area above the gates, a wider platform that allowed her to see the whole battle.
The Gazluthian and Waravalian armies were fighting a retreat as they got the command to climb the ramps to the top of the walls. Arrows rained on them from mercenary bowmen, felling them as they fought to escape, and Khaleen called for shields to be raised. Those who had managed to get up the ramps threw any shields they had remaining over those who did not, and managed to protect those defending the ramps.
Khaleen saw her tactic had worked. The combined armies could hold off the attacking mercenaries on the narrow ramp, as they could only come up two at time, facing two of her troops. She turned to look over the wall and down, to where the mercenary force was still trying to enter the camp, and felt her heart sink. There were still too many.
Turning, she saw Vetrulian had come to the same conclusion and watched a wry smile twist his lips.
“It might take a while, but we’ve lost haven’t we?” he asked. Khaleen nodded sadly.
“Glad I sent Collise away, now,” he said. “But I’d have liked to speak to her one last time.”
Vetrulian put his helmet back on and fixed his eyes on her through the slit. Wordlessly, he raised his sword in salute before turning and shoving his way to the top of the ramp to fight alongside his men.
Despair rolled though Khaleen as she watched men and women die at the end of the mercenaries’ swords. Almost as many mercenaries died trying to take the ramps as they killed of her army, but the tide had turned in their favor. The combined armies knew they had lost.
Screams from behind her made her spin to see mercenaries scaling the walls from the outside.
They’re using our ladders!
“Reinforcements!” she bellowed. “North wall!”
Khaleen made her way over with the few Gazluthians who had heard her and stabbed at the faces that appeared over the top of the wall. Men screamed and died, falling back down into the sea of mercenaries, only to be replaced with others.
Her arm ached, her thigh ached, and still she fought on, side by side with Waravalian men and Gazluthian women as the mercenaries came over the top of the wall, killing and maiming everyone in sight.
To begin with, she thought the incessant thumping was the sound of her heart beating, but it was too slow and regular to be her, and she actually paused for a second, the remembrance of something from years before triggering hope inside her.
“Vetrulian!” she screamed, forcing her way through the fighting men and women. “King Vetrulian!”
A blood-covered form detached from the fighting and turned. King Vetrulian raised his helm and looked over at her.
“The Corbondrasi are here!” Khaleen screamed. “We’re saved!”
She
turned to look over the wall, where, a massive force of brightly-colored, feathered soldiers approached, marching to the rhythmic beat of war drums
18
Panic drove Emmerlin to flee the house she had grown up in. Her only thought was that her father was coming, and he was going to burn her. She slammed through the door and out onto Kings Avenue, turning toward the old palace.
Yes. There.
She sprinted across the cobbles towards the crumbling building, getting halfway there before she heard his bellow from behind her. “Emmerlin, wait!”
Her father’s command was a snarled grunt, and she ran faster from him. Tiernon will help me if I can get in there.
The princess ran on, slipping through a hole in the wall and into the overgrown gardens. She blasted a tunnel through the clutching hedges, tripping over the stumps of shrubs in her haste to get inside.
Merdon danced back from the blow Senechul aimed at him, his training making him do so even though he could not be hit. Both men were panting heavily, the fight evenly matched between them despite being different in size and speed.
“You’re good,” Senechul said. “Fast,” he added.
“And you’ve got the strength of about six men,” Merdon replied.
“I’ll kill them quick,” Senechul said, flicking his eyes over Merdon’s shoulder.
“No,” the prince said. “You won’t.”
He brought his left-hand sword about in a low arc, aimed at Senechul’s stomach. The guard caught the blade on his dagger and aimed a lunge at Merdon’s throat. Merdon should have deflected the sword with his right-hand blade, and everything in him wanted to do exactly that, but he managed to overcome his training and dropped his blade low.
Senechul’s eyes bulged when his sword tip stopped against Merdon’s throat, slamming shut in agony as the prince buried his other sword deep in his chest. Merdon dropped his left-hand sword and grabbed his other blade in both hands driving the bright steel up into his lungs.
Senechul looked down at the sword jutting from his abdomen as if he could not believe it was there. “Emmerlin,” he said, collapsing to his knees.
Merdon helped him to the floor as he died.
“Son?” Joranas asked from behind.
Merdon leaped up, hugging his father, as Lyeeta helped the queen over to where they were.
“How did you get here?” his grandmother asked. “This one makes no sense.” She pointed to Lyeeta.
“I’ll try and explain later,” Merdon said. “Now I have to help Grandfather.”
He grabbed his sword from the floor, pulling the other from inside Senechul with a wet sound, and started up the hallway.
“Merdon!” Lyeeta cried from behind him.
The prince turned to see his father and grandmother looking from the young guard to him with knowing looks on their faces.
“Be careful,” she said, redness coloring her cheeks.
“I will,” Merdon said. “My love.”
“Emmerlin, wait!” Besmir called after his daughter. “I just want to talk to you.”
She slipped into the old palace through a hole in the crumbling wall, however, and he had to follow her if he hoped to make her see he was sorry for invading her mind. Sorry for forcing her to aid the Ninse. Sorry for everything.
Arriving at the hole she had entered through, he saw it was nowhere big enough for him to fit, so he trotted around to the gate. The hinges screamed their protest when he shoved the rotting gate open, a cloud of rust-red dust erupting from them.
The courtyard within had been cleared to allow access to this section of the palace, where hundreds of documents and books pertaining to the Fringor royal family had been stored. The only section Besmir permitted anyone to enter, and the only area of the building to be maintained, the library sat still and silent as he padded through it. Memories flooded him as he smelled the musty air, feeling the weight of years pressing down on him.
The door to the main palace had been barred decades before, but the years had been unkind to the stone and metalwork holding it in place, and he managed to lever the thick wooden plank off with an iron candelabra, throwing it aside with a clang.
“Emmerlin!” he called, moving inside the door.
Emmerlin stumbled through the dusty, abandoned palace in a mad attempt to get to where Tiernon had died. If she could get there, she would be safe from her father’s wrath, safe from the flames he would surely bathe her in. Tiernon would help her. If she could just get there.
The throne room had once been a beauty of marble architecture, Emmerlin knew. Now it was as much a crumbling ruin as the rest of the building. The ceiling had collapsed in the center, leaving a pile of rubble in the middle that she skirted around, crossing the room to get to the corridor at the back.
Eyes followed her as she walked along the Hall of Ancestors. Statues of her long-dead relatives, kings who had ruled before even Tiernon.
She would be there soon, Emmerlin knew, just at the end of this hall.
A massive pile of stone and rubble blocked her way. Immense slabs of stone from the roof and buildings above had filled the corridor, preventing her from reaching the spot she had to get to.
The princess turned, panic gripping her again. If she could not get to the spot Tiernon had died in, there was no way he could help her. She stopped when she saw Besmir approaching in the gloom, vengeance written across his face.
“Emmerlin,” Besmir said gently as he walked past the statues of his great-grandfather and other ancestors.
The paint had long since faded, the clothing they had once been dressed in rotted and in heaps at their feet, yet he always felt in good company in this part of the palace. As if they were here in spirit, with him when he battled Tiernon and ended his violent rule, and with him now as he tried to save his daughter.
She was huddled at the far end of the corridor, almost trying to disappear into the rubble so he could not find her.
“Stay back!” she cried, the fear in her voice tangible.
Why’s she scared of me? “I just want to talk,” he said. “To tell you why I did what I did. Will you come out?”
He waited as Emmerlin took a few steps forward until she could stand upright at least, but still remained as far away from him as she could.
“First,” he said, “I was wrong and I’m sorry. I should never have tried to alter your mind. I was … unwell, and...”
Running footsteps from behind drew Besmir’s attention for a second, and he smiled as Merdon appeared.
Merdon caught up with his grandfather in the Hall of Ancestors, standing beside a stone carving of a bearded man with a sword pointed at the crumbling roof. Beyond Besmir, his Aunt Emmerlin stood with a victorious grin on her face.
The prince approached his grandfather, who turned back towards Emmerlin at the same time as the statue beside him moved.
“Grandfather!” Merdon shouted, seeing what was about to happen and throwing himself at the king.
His cry came too late, however, as Emmerlin tried to slam the statue into Besmir using her powers. The point of the sword screamed as it scraped along the roof, the whole statue flying towards his grandfather with deadly force.
Merdon felt the impact of the statue against his back as he threw himself between it and the king. Aging marble crumbled when it slammed into the shield his body produced, but the old king’s sword hissed past his arm and lanced into Besmir’s abdomen, snapping off inside him.
Emmerling screamed in triumph when he saw her father fall and took a step towards them both. Merdon flicked his left arm up almost contemptuously, launching his sword towards her as he knelt beside his grandfather.
Emmerlin saw Merdon’s arm move, but did not realize he had ended her until her breath would not come. Somehow a sword had appeared in her throat, cutting off her air and making pain explode in her neck.
Abruptly, she could no longer feel her body, and saw the world shift around her as she collapsed. Spite drove her on and with her last sec
onds of life she wrapped her fading power around the crumbling ceiling above them all.
The roof of the old palace caved in, dropping tons of stone on Besmir, Emmerling and Merdon.
Epilogue
Khaleen limped through the camp of tents, exchanging nods and greetings with her troops as she went. A warm wind tousled her hair and flapped the light blouse she wore. Khaleen had folded her uniforms up, taking the medals off and storing them, before placing the heavy cloth in a trunk she then had sealed.
She had written her letter of resignation on the same afternoon after the Corbondrasi had accepted the unconditional surrender of every mercenary in the camp. King Vi Rhane had sent them when he had received word of the combined attack, but the harsh, dry landscape in Boranash meant they had taken longer than planned to arrive in order to procure enough water to make the journey.
A great moan had run through the mercenary army as soon as it became clear they were outnumbered, many of them throwing their weapons down right then.
Khaleen reached her destination and swallowed, suddenly nervous, but entered the large tent to see the Waravalian king, Vetrulian, walking between the beds, speaking to the wounded. Collise looked up and saw her, smiling as she skirted over to speak to her.
“General,” she greeted.
“General no longer,” Khaleen said. “I sent my resignation to your family yesterday,” she explained.
“So it’s true,” the queen said. “I’d heard rumors you were quitting. What will you do?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Khaleen admitted, shrugging. “For the first time in years, I’ve got no clue as to what’s about to happen. And I love it.”
