For the Killing of Kings

by Howard Andrew Jones

  The archer called warning: “Behind us!”

  Elenai glanced over her shoulder, and her breath caught. Mounted troops had topped the forested line they’d come from two miles back. A half-dozen figures sat saddle.

  They were too far away for Elenai to recognize all of them, though she picked out two. Tretton was in the lead; there was no missing the dark face and short gray beard that hid the chin strap of his helmet. The sturdy figure on the larger horse a few yards back could only be Decrin. The sun gleamed off the round buckler on his arm, emphasizing his identity as the bearer of the Shining Shield.

  She would have liked N’lahr to suggest a more brilliant plan. Instead, he yelled, “Loose the spares!”

  He meant the mounts. As she released the lines, Elenai sighed at thought of the chestnut lost to her, lamenting she’d never bothered to name him.

  They kicked their animals into a hard gallop, setting the nearer oxen to bellowing alarm. Hundreds more raised their horned heads and snorted indignation at the intrusion of riders.

  Surely, the border wasn’t too far off. If the Shifting Lands were shifting, they might be able to lose their pursuers in the chaos. They’d be much less trackable there now that the hearthstone was inactive. She grimaced that it had become worse to be caught by Altenerai than a shift storm.

  Even as she thought it, the sky ahead thickened with black clouds, and flashes of lightning played sharply from earth to heaven. A storm to hide them! The agitation of the gigantic cattle grew. More stirred and bellowed as she and N’lahr and Kyrkenall rode on the slope above them.

  Thunder rolled. And from ahead Kyrkenall shouted a warning. “Naor!”

  Before she could even worry about where the Naor had come from or what they were doing, a flight of arrows sped from a rise of boulders ahead. N’lahr diverted downslope toward the herd and she rode with him. The flight went wide, but the half-dozen archers hidden among the rocks were already launching another sally.

  No matter that he rode a running horse along an uneven hillside on a windy day, Kyrkenall was returning fire. As Elenai searched the distance ahead to learn the strength of their foes, she saw one archer sprawl backward across dark boulders, a black-feathered arrow standing out from his face.

  They had chanced upon a small Naor troop, for some reason taking its ease on the slope of the valley beside the eshlack. A red-cloaked officer goaded a handful of bowmen to fire even as another ten rushed to climb onto their restive mounts. So far the Naor shots were inaccurate despite the narrowing range, likely because Kyrkenall’s arrows sent them scurrying for cover. Or it might be that the Naor thought them the advance attack of the larger force of Altenerai behind.

  Elenai leaned away from an oncoming arrow. It passed within an arm’s length of her head.

  The sky darkened further and clouds tumbled over one another. A startling sheet of lightning lit the entire horizon, and a blast of thunder shook the air. There was answering thunder from below when the eshlack began running along the floor of the valley toward its southern exit, as if they were one mighty beast with ten thousand legs. They apparently didn’t care for the flurry of nearby human activities, nor the light show in the sky.

  The Naor only managed to throw out five horse warriors in an interception line. N’lahr, riding point, plowed straight into them. With a single slash he cut through a leveled spear and into a horse’s neck, dropping one opponent in a flurry of kicking hooves. His backhand strike slashed through sword arm, scale armor, and the chest of a second foe. Kyrkenall sent a shaft at short range straight through another warrior’s heart. In an instant they were through with only a few errant arrows reaching out for them.

  She didn’t have time to feel relief, for the stampeding cattle were spreading out as they ran past. One lowered horns and charged her.

  Elenai reached into the inner world to access magics, seeing, once more, the possible outcomes strung before her like beads. She acted upon the information without deliberation, veering closer to the herd. The beast, struck by an arrow either from the pursuing Altenerai or Naor, swung left, goring the air where Elenai would have been.

  Was she glimpsing futures because she’d spent so much time using hearthstones? How far forward could she see? The visions seemed restricted mostly to immediate moments.

  Her horse squealed nervously to be so near the mass of gray animals galloping the opposite direction on either side, and she carefully swung him back into line after her companions. She’d lost some ground and urged him to a faster pace. From behind came a shout. Elenai risked a glance, saw that Tretton’s horse was down near the boulders and four Naor were running for him. Her heart was in her throat. Much as she feared capture, she didn’t want the alten killed.

  Kyrkenall had seen. He spun in his saddle and launched two arrows, one after the other. They struck through one attacker’s knee and another’s chest. Both dropped. A mass of dust raised by the eshlack interposed itself before she saw the resolution to the older alten’s situation.

  When Elenai next checked behind, a single blue-coated pursuer followed at a mad pace, golden hair streaming after. Gyldara. She was gaining, and reached for more arrows to put to her bow despite the distance between them.

  She was damnably good. Her missile snapped past Elenai and struck Lyria’s side, where it stuck out at an angle. Elenai gasped, then realized the arrow had embedded itself along the edge of Kyrkenall’s saddle. He tore out the shaft, fitted it to his own bow, twisted to fire.

  Gyldara and her horse went down in a jumble. Somehow the alten threw herself free and came up in a crouch with her bow, fitted another arrow to it.

  Elenai was impressed despite herself. She tensed at the thought of an arrow soaring at them on the wings of deadly skill, then saw Gyldara stare at her bow. Her fall had broken its tip, and the string hung slack. The woman flung it aside in anger.

  They galloped on, and soon Gyldara, too, was lost behind with the Naor and the rest of the Altenerai. The stream of eshlack dwindled to a few stragglers, the dust their swifter relatives raised blowing in fits with them. Soon all that remained was the storm-eaten sky. The entire horizon was a swirling wall of gray and black, shot through with flashes of blue-and-yellow lightning. Its breadth and power were terrifying. N’lahr paused just a few dozen feet shy of it.

  For once, even he looked nervous.

  “Denaven’s got to be doing this,” Kyrkenall spat.

  N’lahr nodded and looked to Elenai. “Can you get us through?”

  She reached out to the storm through the inner world, her Altenerai ring flashing blue. It was like laying hand to a great, quivering muscle. “It’s stronger than the last one,” she said dubiously.

  “But you’re stronger, too, right?” Kyrkenall prompted. His ring was already alight, as was N’lahr’s.

  “I’ll have to use the hearthstone.” She wished the thought didn’t thrill her so much. Partly because she feared it, she looked at N’lahr.

  He met her eyes. “Are you up to this, Elenai?”

  “We don’t have much choice, do we?” She reached into the hearthstone, trying not to savor too much the rush of power and pleasure that permeated her to the core. She shuddered involuntarily.

  “Ready?” N’lahr asked.

  She nodded, then, when she saw him fighting his mount forward, she reached forth with threads of intent and calmed their horses.

  N’lahr led them into the storm.

  At first she fought only to keep the winds away. Then, after the first few hundred yards, the landscape shook, and melted. Grass, rock, trees—all that lay ahead swirled away into tiny black motes. Heart slamming, she reached out and, with the hearthstone, firmed the ground beneath them. Apart from the narrow band of naked dirt, they soon existed in a nothingness buffeted by angry winds. Darkness stretched away in every direction. The horses rolled nervous eyes, and she sent soothing energy to them again, wondering how often she’d have to do that.

  “Can you keep us moving?” N’lahr called t
o her. His voice was strangely muted, no matter that she’d gentled the nearest air currents, as if sound wasn’t working normally.

  She stared at him in disbelief. “Can’t we just stay here until the storm blows through?” That’s what Kyrkenall had told her Altenerai usually did during a storm, protected by the power of the sacred rings, which reinforced their own reality amidst one that constantly changed.

  N’lahr shook his head. “If this is Denaven’s doing, he won’t let this end.”

  He might, she thought, when he tires. But how long could he hold it? And suppose he came after them. What if he came near enough to fight her for control of the hearthstone? How close would he have to be for that?

  “When we needed to carry on,” Kyrkenall said, “Kalandra used to shape matter ahead of us to form roads.”

  Elenai wanted to tell them that she wasn’t the peerless Kalandra. It was hard enough to ward off the intense energies trying to invade their little zone of order. But then maybe it wasn’t impossible. She’d just have to strengthen the environment ahead a bit.

  She looked out farther and found the void alive with glowing, whirling motes of energy, each sparkling with potential. Why not? She started small, astonished at how simple it was to coax those bits close with threads of desire, to sculpt them into forms similar to the gray soil under hoof, to firm them into place. In moments she’d extended their narrow point of land a few feet forward.

  “Good,” N’lahr called. And he urged his mount ahead with a click of his tongue.

  Elenai choked back a cry of amazement and coalesced more soil before N’lahr, setting threads to calm each of the mounts again a moment after.

  “Keep it coming,” Kyrkenall said with a grin, and he followed in the wake of his friend.

  Didn’t they realize she was just experimenting?

  There wasn’t time to explain. She threw more of the mixture together as her horse walked after the others of its own accord, then repeated the actions again and again. After fifty feet she was feeling a little stretched and risked letting go of her attention upon the material behind. It slipped away like mounded sand into the waves. Too late she realized it might be easier to shift the soil over which they’d traveled so that it would lift again ahead of them.

  The winds rose, tore at their hair, set the horses sidestepping close to the right edge. Once more she eased their fright, then elected to stay tethered to them by threads of will so it would be easier to send soothing commands.

  “Can you keep the ground coming faster?” Kyrkenall asked. “I think the storm’s getting worse.” He stared at the void beyond her shoulder, his ring shining like a beacon.

  She wanted to tell him she was weaving energies as quickly as she could, but she didn’t have excess mental strength to reply. And so she winged the soil they’d crossed beneath the ground holding them and fitted it ahead. Over and again she repeated the process. There was one close call when the lead horse’s hooves almost stepped into nothingness, but she somehow accelerated the process she used, too frightened to actually be pleased with herself.

  The Altenerai must have thought her more capable than she was, because N’lahr increased the pace. She’d thought Kyrkenall the more reckless, but the swordsman pushed into a canter as the winds howled, and then a gallop.

  Gritting her teeth, she kept up the preposterous demands, maintaining the horses and flinging then firming the dirt and anticipating the worst of the wind gusts with counter ones of her own. All the while they rode through the vast darkness, like heroes in a tapestry woven by some drug-addled madwoman. She’d heard tales of Altenerai travels through the storms, but never such a one as this.

  She was just about to congratulate herself for managing so well when she sensed presences riding the empty currents of nothingness.

  Something followed them.

  17

  Faces in the Storm

  Her first thought was that Denaven and the Altenerai had caught up, but it soon became clear they were pursued by nothing human. When viewed through the inner world, men and women were complex outlines filled with threadlike energies of varied color. The things behind, she saw, were a seething maelstrom of hunger. Almost anticolor. As she watched, they closed upon their fragile strip of road, and the nearest resolved into the glowing outline of a mountain-sized man, a bearded Naor. It was a chalk sketch come to life. On either side of his form she saw only the star-shot void.

  Impossibly the outline strode forward, as if it walked on ground invisible to her, and it stretched hands toward her conjured road.

  Kyrkenall looked over his shoulder at their pursuer, his mouth gaping and his ring shining brightly, but he didn’t draw his weapons. What could he do against such a creature? She reached deep within the hearthstone’s limitless energies, shaped a vast length of road before N’lahr, then turned the whole of her attention on the closing monster.

  She formed the drifting energies around to send them hurtling at the thing’s face.

  Rather than throwing up its ghostly arms to ward against the attack, the Naor-shaped entity reached out with impossibly huge hands, welcoming it. Even as that one fell behind, others drifted from the darkness to either side.

  From then on, their journey was nightmare. Before, she’d been worried that she’d lose control and they’d fall into nothingness forever. Now she was terrified that they’d be consumed by the titanic entities. One by one the things emerged from the black, stark outlines of the men and women who’d died in combat against them: The kobalin Kyrkenall had slain, its horn glowing like starlight. The woman Elenai had stabbed through the neck. The soldiers at the tower, some of them afire with not quite blue flames that had consumed their bodies. All stumbled after, clutching at their road like hungry children reaching for fresh-baked breads on the windowsill. Elenai swept more and more energy toward them.

  She hadn’t the time to wonder what they were. She had no illusions about what would happen if the things got hold of her and her friends, for she saw the matter she sent disappearing entirely the moment the spirits mimed consuming it.

  They followed in ones, twos, sometimes as many as three or four at once, and each time she distracted them others crowded forward, until finally she wept from the stress.

  But she did not give up.

  While blasting at a disturbingly Belahn-shaped specter, her senses bumped into a new object. Something solid lurked out there ahead in the void. A fragment, or a smaller splinter? Whatever it might be, she threw the road toward it, realizing as they fled closer that the landform was large.

  Better, the storm at last was dying in strength, and the darkness trickled away until they rode through a wasteland of red rock under an orange sky. It was still the Shifting Lands, but had a semblance of normal reality. She laughed in relief until she saw that the things drifted after. Were they going to pursue them even onto solid ground?

  They did. Without her directing energy their way, they tore into the fragile matter that was the sky and soil, ripping holes through which she could see that starless void. She tried resuming the weird feeding, but the matter around her was increasingly difficult to move.

  The character of the land changed as they passed over it. Grass sprouted, the land rose into gentle hillocks, and they emerged onto a rolling plain. The chaotic entities finally seemed unable to proceed and were left, howling, behind.

  N’lahr eased their laboring mounts to a trot. The lungs of Elenai’s poor gray heaved like a bellows.

  “Elenai,” N’lahr said from just ahead, “let go the stone.”

  Kyrkenall appraised her with a sympathetic look. “Last time she let go of the hearthstone after working that kind of magic, it drained her.”

  She resented that. “I think I know how to handle it better, now.”

  “We have to chance it,” N’lahr said. “Denaven can sense the stone so long as you have it active. We don’t want him able to follow.”

  Cautious of what might happen if she relinquished hold too quickly,
Elenai siphoned off some of the energy as she closed it. A wave of dizziness washed over her and she sagged as everything went black.

  She didn’t feel herself roll off the animal and hit the ground, but she felt someone shaking her and looked blearily up into Kyrkenall’s strange eyes. Behind him the sky was the same washed-out blue it had been prior to her collapse.

  “You all right?” Kyrkenall asked.

  She nodded weakly, flushing because she’d made a fool of herself. She’d thought she could handle the situation better this time. “How long have I been out?”

  “Only until I could reach you. You hit kind of hard.” He touched her scalp above her ear as she sat up. “Any pain there?”

  “I can’t tell. I ache all over.”

  He laughed at that, as though she’d planned a joke, then helped her to her feet. She was angry with herself, and with him for laughing, so his smile surprised her.

  “That was well done. Top-rank spell work. A few days ago, I’d never have believed you could do something like that.”

  “Neither would I,” she admitted.

  N’lahr guided his horse up on her right. “I don’t think Kalandra herself could have done better.”

  She felt a smile rise, and turned away to take in the rolling hills, tall grasses, and occasional scrubby trees. A constant wind blew from the left, rippling through the plants so that they showed green, now white. It looked almost normal, save for the strands of shifting chartreuse bands fluttering in the sky, as if the Gods dragged festive banners through the heavens. It reminded her of the auroras that sometimes shimmered in the skies of home. Except those occurred at night.

  “What were those … things in the storm? Were those…” She hesitated. “Demons? Spirits?”

  She waved off Kyrkenall’s proffered winesac as he answered her question with one of his own. “What did you see?”

  “Giants. Phantom giants. One was a bearded Naor. Another was that kobalin you killed. Every one of them was reaching for us.” She fumbled with the watersac on her belt.