For the Killing of Kings

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “You might, if you use a hearthstone long enough.”

  “Stamina can change?”

  “Hearthstones alter your magical prowess. I thought you knew that. They can hone your gifts. So long as you’re careful about it.” She laughed lightly. “I see you haven’t been told that, either.”

  “Mostly I’ve heard they’re dangerously seductive.”

  “Aren’t all good things?” At his look, she smiled slyly, then guided her animal away from their lookout point and down toward Varama.

  Damn, he thought. She’s flirting with me. He liked that, too.

  Rylin urged his own horse after, even though the animal snorted unhappily about riding closer to the weird chaotic area. The vein of shifting land had altered now to a deep blue, and a great river flowed behind Varama, crackling with scarlet lightning.

  “Hail, Altenerai,” Varama said to them, raising her sapphire. Her expression was strangely neutral.

  “Hail,” he and Cerai answered as one.

  “It’s been a long time, Varama,” Cerai said.

  “Yes,” Varama agreed. “You’re far more beautiful than I remember.”

  It wasn’t spoken as a compliment, but an observation. Cerai smiled. “Thank you.”

  “What have you done to yourself?” Varama asked.

  What did that mean? He looked back and forth between them.

  “I’ve merely made some adjustments,” Cerai answered. For the first time Rylin detected a note of annoyance. “No word of thanks?”

  “Thank you,” Varama said. “Your intervention was timely.”

  “There it is.” Cerai sounded faintly amused. “You haven’t changed at all. Rylin’s caught me up on your adventures. It sounds as though we have a lot to discuss.”

  “I gather that we do.”

  “It looks as if we’ve arrived in The Fragments just in time for war.”

  22

  Ring Wearers

  With Ortok standing watch, the three of them managed an unbroken stretch of sleep. It wasn’t enough to be fully restorative, yet when they moved out it was with renewed energy and purpose. The mysteries and troubles that plagued them had been set aside. N’lahr had a plan and the people of Arappa needed them. That was all the focus they required.

  They pushed their pace as they ventured across the shifts, speaking little. Even Kyrkenall was mostly silent, though it was not because he brooded over his argument with N’lahr. As far as Elenai could tell, that had passed like a summer rainstorm. Instead, each seemed grimly centered on the immediate future, and the challenges it brought.

  Ortok was as quiet as the rest of them, although he had to keep pace at an unflagging jog. His steady breathing was usually audible over other sounds and soon became a strangely reassuring constant that even the horses stopped alerting to with their ears.

  Just after a series of rises topped by a smattering of those unpleasant scaly trees, they approached the shores of a great void, very much like the one they’d passed through during the storm. A faded yellow sun burned in an umber sky to the right but darkness cut a ragged and abrupt line across the land and firmament beyond. Elenai watched it warily as they drew closer, fearful that she’d glimpse matter-eating entities within. She worried, too, that she might be called upon to build another land bridge, but so far the empty zone with its uninterrupted twinkling points of light seemed not to intrude upon their intended line of travel.

  Even with the distracting starry void looming on their left, she was pleased to recognize the rolling hills and general shape of the splinter where they’d rested the “day” before. She was starting to sense the land better, as Kyrkenall had tried to show her.

  They picked their way through the hills for several hours, the void never very far away. It was only a few yards to their left when darkness suddenly washed over them.

  N’lahr shouted to get down even as Elenai warmed the hearthstone to life, which alerted her to the ebon spellthreads penetrating their consciousnesses. This was no natural phenomenon—an enemy hearthstone was powering the blinding spell.

  Though her eyes registered no light while she slid to the ground, she sensed all the living beings around her: Kyrkenall, N’lahr, Ortok, the horses. On the nearby hill were twenty or so more. She heard Ortok grunt, felt his life force ebb a modest degree. He’d been struck. Their attackers must have bows.

  She discarded the notion of trying to clip off all the tiny threads of the darkness and instead called forth a desperate, disruptive wash of golden energy.

  The darkness broke like black shards as more arrows arced in. Elenai rolled aside. One narrowly missed a kneeling Kyrkenall, letting fly with shafts of his own now that he had targets. On the hill above Elenai felt the life force weakening from one of the archers, who screamed as she fell. A squire, she saw, in traditional gray-liveried armor. Kyrkenall’s arrow dropped another dead; she saw his life force leave him in an explosive gust in the same moment she recognized him as Velnik, a friendly, freckled third ranker.

  Blue-coated Altenerai charged down the hill, huge Decrin in the lead with the Shining Shield on his arm. At his side was tall, spare, gray-bearded Tretton, and after came broad-shouldered Lasren, Denaven on his heels with two competent-looking fourth rankers. She saw Gyldara pause at the height of the hill, throwing axe raised like an avenging goddess, but Kyrkenall stepped aside as the spinning missle hurtled down at him.

  Denaven shouted. “Lasren, take the kobalin with the squires. Decrin, Kyrkenall’s yours.”

  “He’s mine!” Gyldara screamed, and raced to catch up.

  Elenai sent a thread at the restive horses to urge them clear of attack and was deciding what more to do when a stream of energy slammed through her defenses and sent her reeling. An intruder latched on to her hearthstone and used its own power against her. It wasn’t Denaven, she noted through a disorienting haze of torment; some new and powerful mage was boring in.

  The instinctual choice was to throw all remaining energy to self-defense, but even as she felt a new attack build, a wiser idea occurred to her. She slipped from her hastily thrown protective energies, effectively climbing through the layers that bound her to the hearthstone. The stranger battered her as she worked free, and Elenai gasped at the lancing pain and nauseating vertigo.

  As both were linked to the same stone, a small part of each consciousness was bared to the other. Elenai sensed her opponent’s smug confidence that she faced an inferior foe, and she glimpsed her name as well. Ortala didn’t seem concerned with the novice’s retreat until only a few tendrils connected Elenai to the stone. Sudden insight set the woman struggling to free herself from the thicket of magery.

  But it was too late. Elenai drank in a modicum of energy before she released a final thread, then cycled the hearthstone closed.

  Ortala’s panic as she fought to break clear of the clinging and unyielding matrices stabbed at Elenai. But there simply wasn’t enough time for the woman to escape the entanglements before the stone snapped shut upon the strands that tied her spirit to her distant body. The connective spiritual tissue, once severed, blew away like a cobweb on the winds. Upslope, Ortala’s body fell limply.

  Elenai felt little remorse for this death, for she was certain Ortala had planned some similar fate for her. She had little time to reflect upon it in any case. Winded by the invisible conflict, Elenai gasped in air and took stock of her surroundings.

  Nearest at hand, Ortok had borne several cuts and was fending off sword attacks from two squires while Lasren struggled to stand, shaking his head blearily. As she watched, one of the squires went down with a hammer blow to his shoulder, mouth working silently in pain.

  On her right-hand side, Kyrkenall fended off attack from two Altenerai. Gyldara must have flung her second ax, for she was trading blows with her blade, striving to maneuver Kyrkenall toward Decrin’s heavier length of steel.

  Gyldara shouted in frustration. “Stop toying with us and fight!”

  “I’ll have you know,” Kyrk
enall objected, “that ‘not killing’ you … isn’t as easy as I make it look.” His breathing was heavy but a rakish grin lit his face. “Maybe you should try it.”

  Clearly both her altens were hampered by their efforts to avoid mortal blows. N’lahr was in more dire straits, engaged in swirling combat with Tretton and Denaven near the void’s edge. As Elenai watched, the swordsman dodged a lethal overhand strike from Tretton, then barely sidestepped a powerful back swipe from the older swordsman’s offhand knife. Denaven, advancing cautiously from the right, attempted a lunge, but N’lahr caught the blade with his own, sliding it aside as he jumped in close to knock Denaven over a precisely placed leg. Presumably unable to employ mental magic against someone bearing Irion, Denaven blasted N’lahr with swept-up bits of grit and dirt as the swordsmage fell to his backside.

  Tretton, moving on N’lahr’s rear, caught nearly as much of the debris as the intended target. The graybeard stepped back, sputtering. Rather than pressing an attack, N’lahr spoke to him. “We should be fighting the Naor, not each other!”

  Tretton wiped his face with his arm, looking as discomfited as if his dog had discovered speech. “I wish I didn’t have to do this.” He sounded more like he was thinking aloud than addressing N’lahr. He resumed his attack with grim ferocity.

  N’lahr parried the blow and slid away from a sweep with the man’s long knife. He then beat away a wicked flanking slash from Denaven, riposting with deadly force.

  Irion sliced through even the Altenerai armor, leaving a gash along Denaven’s arm. The traitorous commander just managed to avoid the point and retreated. Was he afraid to resume attack, or was he readying new magics? Or both?

  Elenai shook herself to action. She’d have to even the odds. Narrowing her eyes, she called up the inner world. Each knee-high blade of grass was a complex tapestry of form. Like Denaven and Tretton and N’lahr. Like everything, save for the solid light of an active hearthstone borne in the pack hung at Denaven’s waist.

  Without further consideration, she confidently set her own hearthstone blazing back to life. She passed through the tattered remnants of Ortala’s consciousness, eerily brushing against her last moments of fear, then sent a shining filament of will at Denaven. Elenai drew her sword and advanced even as she commanded “sleep,” as M’lahna had done.

  She saw him start, then turn away from the engrossed fighters. He sneered and took a step toward her. “You’re a talented amateur, now, aren’t you.”

  With stunning speed, his own will leapt out and touched her. She thought she’d known pain from Ortala. Now she was afire with blinding agony and she barely managed to lift her sword to intercept his overhand swing.

  She gritted her teeth and reflected the same attack toward its originator.

  That seemed to surprise Denaven. His own assault halted for a span of a single heartbeat. Then he bore in again. This time she willed his attacking threads to split asunder as she parried another sword stroke. She still felt pain but at least she could see clearly. Undaunted, Denaven pressed in again, and once more. As they warred she heard N’lahr again, though she didn’t catch his words.

  “—just a monster in a friendly shape.” Tretton growled back. Each utterance was punctuated by clangs or thuds.

  “Your attention’s wandering, Squire,” Denaven spat, and lunged.

  Elenai parried, but it was a close thing, and she backed even as he resumed his magical press, scowling. His attack tore through her defenses like a hammer through a pane of glass. She realized she’d sunk to her knees when they contacted the ground and her vision spun with pulsing points of light. Denaven might have finished her then if he’d closed.

  Instead, the commander pivoted to direct a magical assault against N’lahr with a veritable blizzard of threads. He willed his own hearthstone to disrupt the ground. Soil undulated like ocean waves. Elenai was impressed despite herself.

  He might have meant the attack only for N’lahr, but it vaulted Tretton toward N’lahr’s outstretched weapon and both toward the edge into nothingness. The two went down in a tangle, and the next moment that Elenai could sort out had N’lahr driving a bloodied Irion deep into the ground with his off hand while the other maintained a hold on the older man’s collar as most of Tretton dangled over the drop into the pitiless void. Kyrkenall bellowed alarm.

  And Denaven strode forward to kill N’lahr. Kyrkenall, desperate to free himself, struck with blinding precision right through an opening in Decrin’s guard, over his shield and apparently through his armor, for the huge alten sank to his knees. Gyldara rushed in with an enraged onslaught and held Kyrkenall in an earnest dance of destruction.

  No one else could help. Ortok remained locked in combat with Lasren and the final squire. It was up to her. Elenai was still seeing spots, but she got her feet under her.

  She lashed Denaven with a blast of pain. His spine stiffened and he faltered a few steps shy of his blade’s reach.

  N’lahr took the respite to release Irion and grasp Tretton with both hands, to haul him to safety.

  Elenai raced forward. “Face me!”

  Denaven half turned so he included her as a target, then sliced out to keep her at bay.

  She dropped under the cut, rolled near to the edge and N’lahr, and rose between him and Denaven. On sudden inspiration she left her own sword in the grass, and pulled Irion instead.

  Denaven’s visage vibrated with shock and anger, and somehow she knew it was about the blade she now held.

  With a choked roar he thrust at her with his own weapon, battering her at the same moment with threads from his hearthstone. She felt the intents rise one after the other, shooting toward her like lead-weighted rope. She lifted threads from her hearthstone to obstruct them, but was so busy upon them she barely blocked another thrust, and then ducked a swipe that would have taken her head.

  “No helm? You’re not good enough”—he swung again, and she sidestepped—“to be so careless!”

  He was right. She retreated from the edge, drawing Denaven farther from N’lahr and wishing she could send a wave of earth as he had done. She wasn’t sure she could, so she sent the thought of one toward him, complete with the image of him fighting for balance.

  And she saw him hesitate, the fraction of an instant. In that tiny respite she glimpsed that near invisible line of branching possibility that only she seemed to perceive. Her off hand grasped it, though there was nothing physical to hold, and she followed it forward. A thousand minutely different futures blossomed like flowers in a hedge maze.

  He slashed at her, then seemed startled he missed. She and Denaven whirled into a manic duel. On and on he came, and now she blocked him almost before he struck. He cursed at her. His blows came, the spells fell, but each time he struck she was to the side of where he aimed, countering each sorcery with a new blaze of energy. She sensed his frustration rise when her satisfaction rose.

  “What are you doing?”

  He wasted words, and Asrahn would have told him so. All of Elenai’s attention was centered on the pinpoint moment that lay just ahead of the now. Denaven ceased his forward momentum and reached deeper within his hearthstone. She supposed he pulled more energy, but the result was too far forward to know.

  He drove hard at her, screaming some meaningless insult, but she danced to one side and suddenly she had the perfect opening. In the next moment Denaven’s hand was arcing away from his body, still grasping his sword.

  He screeched and grabbed at the horrible wound with his other hand. Through the inner world Elenai saw life roaring away from the injury like water streaming from a pipe.

  He screamed again, and she felt him drawing on the hearthstone, knew his desperation, knew another opening when she had one, and jammed Irion’s point through his neck. She felt it catch in his spinal column. The moment she pulled it free he dropped, gracelessly, and slammed face-first into the ground.

  She turned, breathing heavily, still sighted in the inner world, paying no more heed to Denave
n’s corpse than she might have regarded a rock, then shut down his hearthstone before scanning the battlefield.

  Ortok and Lasren still traded blows. The other squire was down. Near at hand N’lahr crouched at Tretton’s side, and the two conversed in low tones. Through her inner sight it was clear that Tretton’s life force was diminished, but that he was in no grave danger. She would not have been able to tell it by the man’s pose, but she saw pulsing lines of red all about his right upper arm that she knew signified pain. Gyldara was retreating before Kyrkenall as the archer attacked with mad abandon.

  Elenai shouted: “Kyrkenall, stop!”

  But either he didn’t hear, or he could no longer control himself, for he pressed on. Gyldara proved even a finer blade than Elenai would have guessed, somehow anticipating or avoiding every mad flurry, but her energy flagged and she was clearly on the defense.

  “Stop!”

  Gyldara saw Elenai’s rush and wrenched to the left, trying to keep her from flanking. Kyrkenall seized the opening, struck, and deftly knocked the woman’s sword, spinning and shining, to the ground; he drew back for the death blow, grinning terribly.

  His blade met Elenai’s with a weird greenish spark, and his eyes shifted to hers in frustrated rage.

  “She was misled!” Elenai avowed

  “I don’t care!” he cried.

  Gyldara snarled in fury at the same time. “He killed my sister!”

  Elenai pushed back on Kyrkenall’s sword, looking not at him but Gyldara, who clearly waited for an opening to renew the attack. Elenai struck at her, not with blade, but mind.

  The alten fought as her ring lit, her head swaying right and left as though she might hold back the mental assault with physical action. Yet Elenai bore down with the full power of the hearthstone and forced a mental link. The woman’s sapphire slowed but could not contain the attack.

  The golden-haired alten choked back a curse as she saw what Elenai remembered. That moment, ages but merely weeks ago, when Elenai had stood before the tomb with Kyrkenall as a similar-looking woman circled with a hearthstone and talked to them of Asrahn’s death. M’lahna, Gyldara’s sister.