For the Killing of Kings

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “It’s beautiful,” Elenai breathed.

  “Yes,” N’lahr agreed. But he didn’t sound very happy, and he explained why a moment later. “There should be signs of life.”

  He was right, and she’d missed it in the charming view. The village was completely dark, and at dusk there should have been lights in a number of the cottages, and certainly smoke from the cookfires. Perhaps lanterns along the battlements or farm animals moving in the fields. She saw nothing.

  Kyrkenall whistled. “This is just weird. If there are gods, they love screwing with us. Why couldn’t we just have found some friendly faces, some fresh food, and some warm beds? Instead we get this.”

  “Boring would be nice sometimes,” N’lahr agreed. “Wait here a moment.” He dismounted.

  “What are you doing?” Kyrkenall asked.

  N’lahr paused only briefly. “Buying us time.” He jogged for the cliff to the right side of the defile, then started up a narrow stair notched into the rock, almost impossible to see in the fading light. He hurried to a height of at least a hundred feet, then vanished into a dark tunnel.

  “What’s going on?” Elenai asked.

  “No idea.” Kyrkenall looked as if he were about to say something, but hesitated before speaking uncertainly. “He squired with Belahn and once mentioned helping him improve the defenses at Wyndyss. Maybe he’s got something…” Kyrkenall’s voice trailed off as a great rumble of rock and earth came from within the defile. It shook the ground beneath them. Their horses shifted nervously, pricking their ears and whinnying alarm.

  Kyrkenall tensed and stared into the darkness.

  “What’s happening?” Elenai asked. “Is it an attack?”

  “Avalanche,” Kyrkenall answered, then said nothing more, all of his attention focused toward the defile.

  Studying it carefully herself, Elenai made out a plume of dust, almost invisible against the dark sky and the cliff below it.

  Beside her, Kyrkenall slowly relaxed. After another moment she saw why. His friend was descending the staircase unharmed. Kyrkenall called to him once he reached the ground.

  “What was that?”

  “A protection Belahn devised if the valley was threatened with invasion.”

  “And just anyone can walk up and set it off?”

  “Normally it’s under guard. And it takes either a team of warriors, or someone with a ring.” He raised his hand, showing his sapphire.

  “So did you block the whole pass?”

  “Most likely. It’s hard to tell, and it’s never been tested.”

  Kyrkenall nodded. “Nice. It will take them a while to clear that out, even with a hearthstone. But that means we’re locked in, doesn’t it?”

  N’lahr shook his head. “There’s a back way out. Come on. You worry too much.”

  “I worry too much?”

  N’lahr didn’t answer as he climbed into his saddle, shook his reins, and started down from the pass toward the bridge.

  After she fell in with him, Elenai spotted something that stopped her cold. “Commander!” She rode up to his side and pointed ahead. “That straight post there—that’s like those around the Chasm Tower.”

  “Shit,” Kyrkenall said. “Let me find the sigil.” Kyrkenall reached behind to dig through his saddlebag.

  The object standing a hundred paces before the bridge was the same height and width as the obelisks that had trapped the creature she and Kyrkenall had killed, and it was topped by the same sort of pyramid. They’d shown those fence posts to N’lahr as they left, which was probably why he drew Irion now.

  “Are we inside or outside the enclosure?” N’lahr asked.

  “I can’t tell,” Elenai said, “but I’ll check through the inner world.”

  “Quickly.”

  Funny now how easy it was to switch between her ordinary sight and magical. The fence posts here glowed with similar energy but were spaced a bit closer than those near the Chasm Tower, centered in a wide space around the bridge. And she found the guardian creature almost immediately, or rather, its long, scaly, emaciated body. It lay a few paces to the right of the road under a large flowering bush, its magic collar wrapped about its neck. Elenai wanted to be certain of her answer, so she peered carefully all along the fenced area. “We’re inside, but the guardian beast is dead,” she said at last.

  “How did we get so lucky?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “It’s very thin. It may have starved to death.” Elenai indicated the direction where the remains lay.

  The commander urged his mount toward it. “Are there others?”

  “I don’t sense any.”

  While Kyrkenall kept watch with his arrow nocked, N’lahr examined the desiccated beast without dismounting or relaxing his guard. Then he wordlessly returned to the road and started forward. Elenai followed, her senses stretched taut. She used the power of her borrowed ring to search, fearing that she had missed something and that some other monster might wait to pounce upon them. The loose spare mounts that paused to crop green stuff beside the road would make tempting targets for a hungry beast.

  Kyrkenall brought up the rear, bow still at the ready.

  But nothing appeared as N’lahr urged his horse onto the bridge deck. The arching structure was wide, well-made, and fashioned with lovely artistic touches. Even in the fading light Elenai saw that the stone sides were arranged in hexagonal patterns and that the wooden decking planks were inlaid with images of swirling leaves and nuts. Hollow hoofbeats rang out at their crossing and set her last nerve on edge.

  She began to breathe properly again when they passed the second row of posts. “It’s the same kind of fence and a similar beast that they used to protect the Chasm Tower. Do you think they imprisoned Belahn as well?”

  N’lahr’s voice had a flinty edge. “No. Keep alert.”

  She glanced back at Kyrkenall to see if he had any more to offer, but he was silent.

  As they advanced along the well-packed dirt road, N’lahr stared intently toward the line of pear trees in the orchard. “Elenai,” he said finally, “can you look again through the inner world without tiring?”

  Fatigue clawed at her but was kept at bay by the hammering of her heart. “What am I looking for?”

  “The trees.” He held up a hand and halted, considering the distance carefully in each direction before nodding his permission to begin.

  The archer must have noticed just then whatever was the problem, because she heard him curse softly, almost in wonder.

  Elenai didn’t see anything amiss. Around her was the steady bleat of courting frogs and the chirrup of crickets. Was there something lurking within the trees?

  Despite her fatigue, she easily slipped into magical sight. She tore her eyes away from the glow of the hearthstones in her pack and looked beyond the simple bright structures against the darkness that was the crops.

  There were no large life-forms among them. “There’s nothing hiding there,” she reported, a little breathless from the effort.

  “They’re all the same,” Kyrkenall murmured. “Every single one of them.”

  With a start she saw he was right. Each pear tree was identical. It wasn’t that they resembled one another, or that they were pruned into similar designs. Each had one thick straight trunk and four main branches rising at the same angle, and each had the same configuration of smaller branches bearing fruit

  “Gods,” she whispered. “Yes, they’re identical.” How had she missed that? “Shaped with hearthstone magics?”

  N’lahr answered her. “Almost surely. Drop back. Save your energy.” He sheathed his sword but didn’t look any less wary.

  Elenai was about to do as he commanded until she noticed something else. After the ranks of trees, from slope to road, the valley was a grain field. And every single stalk was precisely the same height. “The same thing’s been done to the grains.” She dropped her inner sight. Without the hearthstone, her brief magical exercises had left her short of breath, but she spoke
on. “You find the perfect plant, and then you duplicate it, right? The tree that bears the most fruit, or the barley that grows the tallest.”

  “Likely,” N’lahr agreed.

  “Belahn’s been practicing.” Kyrkenall whistled appreciatively.

  “When’s the last time you visited him?” she asked.

  “Years. No mage could do this kind of stuff, last I knew. Maybe Rialla.”

  She wondered if the same kind of duplication might be worked with animals. Surely not. That would be even more complicated, wouldn’t it? And where were all the livestock, anyway? “We should be seeing animals by now, shouldn’t we?”

  N’lahr’s answer was short. “Animals, and people.”

  Dusk was giving way to night. The horses and pair of men with her became dull shapes in the gloom.

  A little way on, the ground grew flat and level. The fields ceased, and the grass was but ankle high up to the steep slope of the defensive wall, two good bowshots on. She suddenly realized they were on “killing ground,” a clear area before a defensive line with no land features for attackers to hide behind. Elenai eyed the battlements as they advanced, searching for helmed heads or the points of arrows. None appeared, not even when they rode into the narrow corridor that pushed into the city and led to its gates. She continued to look for signs of warriors along the merlon-topped walls on either side, her neck tingling with the sense an arrow might wing toward her at any moment.

  But there were no defenders. Past the open city gates and the village square just beyond it, neat, ordered rows of cottages with window boxes and fine carvings along the timber supports stretched before them. These, at least, didn’t appear to be completely identical, for she saw some were wider or taller than their neighbors.

  But the streets were silent, empty, and dark.

  N’lahr dismounted at the first cottage and rapped loudly on the wooden door while Kyrkenall scanned the empty streets. When there was no answer, the commander opened it, hand on his hilt. Elenai waited to one side, sword out, ready to reach through the inner world and touch the power of the hearthstones in her shoulder pack.

  N’lahr motioned her to wait and stepped inside. A short while later there was a glow from within that could only have come from a lantern. After several tense moments, he called to them. “Come see this.” There was an odd note to the man’s voice. “Bring the hearthstones.”

  Just beyond the door was a small dining room little different from thousands across the realms. To the left was a stone fireplace, soot stained but tidy. Beside rested a carefully ordered pyramid of firewood. On her right was a square table, and four people sat there: a man, a woman, and two young girls. N’lahr shone the lantern light directly upon them, and Elenai advanced, her breath in her throat.

  The family didn’t move.

  Each was frozen in mid-motion: the young father with hand raised, head turning toward the door; the fair-skinned woman’s plain face wide with surprise; the younger, smaller girl pointing at the other, her teeth showing in laughter.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “Touch one,” N’lahr suggested grimly. He set the lantern upon the table. Elenai tried to do as he suggested. Her hand met resistance a finger’s width from the shoulder where the woman’s dark hair touched the edge of her green collar.

  She peered across the table to the man. His eyes were bright, and a smile touched his mouth, as if he’d just heard something funny. Despite the lack of movement, the skin of the townsfolk held a healthy glow. In repugnant contrast, their plates contained a pile of crusty mush in which small worms writhed.

  “They’ve been put under a spell,” N’lahr said. “Elenai, can you free them?”

  She needed no urging, and reached out with her will to touch the stone in her pack. Now, wielding the energy of the artifact was as simple as slipping on a glove.

  What she discovered was that someone had woven a protective barrier about the people, rooting a golden net through every single portion of their bodies. Their life force glowed, dully, but it didn’t pulse. It had been arrested.

  “I’m not sure, Commander. It’s as if they’ve each been impaled by magical energies in a thousand places. No, ten thousand places.”

  “You’ll not be interfering.” The deep voice came from behind her, and even as she reached out with the hearthstone to explore the surge of energy rolling toward her, her hearthstone shrank in upon itself. She felt as though she were trapped in a collapsing tunnel, and struggled in the darkness to scramble free. The hearthstone had been forcefully closed!

  She just managed to pull into the real world, turned, then found herself willed into place, her body unresponsive to her own commands. Her vision was tinged by blue from the quartet of sapphires glowing on four hands: her own, N’lahr’s, Kyrkenall’s, and that upon the ring of a gaunt, tall figure in the doorway. He resembled no Altenerai she’d ever heard about. His old brown robe draped him like a sack, as though borrowed from a much larger man. His dark eyes were hazy, his hair unkempt, his long gray-tinged beard a tangle. As he sidled toward the fireplace corner, his left arm tightened around a silvery-blue hearthstone that glowed and winked in hypnotically shifting patterns.

  Kyrkenall stood still on the other side of the table, Arzhun gripped in his right hand, arrow to string, though he hadn’t pulled it back. The light from the sapphires was mirrored in his ebon eyes. Was he, too, frozen?

  With Irion unsheathed and leveled toward the intruder, N’lahr stood motionless beside the table. Elenai thought he, too, might be under a spell until she saw his hand tighten upon the grip of the blade. Did the sword protect him from the magic, the way Kyrkenall’s bow had protected her from hearthstone sorcery? It must. Irion, from what she understood, was more powerful than Kyrkenall’s weapons. Unlike the sapphires set into their rings, though, the stone in Irion wasn’t glowing. It didn’t seem to have been crafted with any sorcery.

  “I won’t allow you to interfere,” the man repeated simply. “And you, woman, reach your power toward my stone and I will destroy you in an instant. Do not doubt it.”

  “Take no action, Elenai,” N’lahr ordered quickly.

  She had no way of moving, but until that command she’d thought she might fight the stranger for control of his hearthstone.

  “Belahn,” N’lahr said with a fair semblance of calm, “if you hurt her, you’ll have to answer to me.”

  This was Belahn? He looked nothing like the paintings and tapestries Elenai had seen. Belahn was a bear of a man, and this fellow was little more than a bent scarecrow.

  “I don’t plan to hurt anyone,” Belahn said.

  “You’ve a strange way of showing it,” Kyrkenall complained. He apparently wasn’t as much hindered as she. Elenai was fairly sure she couldn’t speak. Perhaps he was keeping still so as not to excite the mage.

  “If you don’t want to hurt anyone,” N’lahr said, “why are you attacking?”

  “Denaven warned me you were coming.” Belahn’s voice was resonant, expressive—much larger than his presence. “To seek vengeance.”

  “We came for your help. But I see you helped Denaven erect the fence that hid me. Probably you helped him trap the monster that guarded the tower where I was held.”

  Kyrkenall cursed softly. Apparently that was as much a surprise to him as it was to Elenai, who was disappointed she hadn’t deduced it.

  “That fence was just a safeguard,” Belahn admitted. “Until they could find a way to free you. I want you to know that I didn’t try to keep you in that stone. I just cleaned up the spell after the accident, and I wasn’t even sure you were still alive. I’d have gotten you out if I could.”

  Elenai tapped into the inner world without looking fully away from the outer. She saw that the energies of the stone and the energies of the man were so tightly interwoven there was no distinguishing between them. Careful as she was to keep her own threads from the mage, Belahn’s eyes narrowed and his voice took on a keen edge. “I war
ned you once, woman. This stone and I are practically one. I’m not wanting to hurt you, but I will if you interfere in any way.”

  “So Denaven told you to expect us?” N’lahr’s voice was calm, careful. He seemed to be trying to keep Belahn’s attention on himself. “Is he here?”

  A sad smile crossed Belahn’s lips. “No. Don’t play the fool.”

  “I’m just trying to get caught up,” N’lahr said. “You’re saying that the rest of you figured out how to talk through the stones like Rialla used to do?”

  Belahn’s brow knitted irritably. “All initiates can communicate from afar, once fully attuned to the sacred stones of the Goddess.”

  “Initiates?” N’lahr repeated.

  “You’re stalling. Waiting for me to make a mistake. I’m not going to do that. Now, put down your weapons.”

  Kyrkenall snorted.

  N’lahr shook his head, never shifting his eyes from Belahn or dropping the angle of his sword. Elenai marveled over how steady his hand was.

  “There’s no need to resist. All three of you will be fine if you do as I say.”

  She wondered if “fine” meant being rendered fully immobile and silent like these people in the cottage. She wished she could think of something effective she could do without fighting him for the hearthstone.

  “Belahn,” N’lahr said. “I don’t know what you’ve been told. The hearthstone ‘accident’ that imprisoned me occurred solely because Denaven attacked me with it. He’s the reason I was in the stone. He wanted me gone. And he must have lied to get you to help him.”

  “How did you get out?” Belahn asked. “I tried everything.”

  “Elenai managed it,” Kyrkenall said with a hint of derision.

  The spell caster’s troubled eyes searched her own before they shifted to the archer. “I can trust nothing from you, Kyrkenall.”