Bruce Blake - Spirit of the King

The flames before Khirro’s eyes dimmed and his control returned. He pushed himself up and took his hands off her chest; blood pumped from the holes left by the tyger’s claws. He leaned forward again, applying pressure to the wounds he’d caused. The woman’s face became Elyea’s again.

“No,” he whispered. “Elyea.”

Behind him, he heard Athryn speaking archaic words, using the end of his love’s life to concoct a spell. Each foreign syllable wrenched at him, twisting his insides into a knot of anger. He wanted to yell at the magician to stop, say it was wrong for him to take advantage of the loss of her life, but Elyea’s eyes moved to Khirro’s and he forgot his companion’s transgressions.

“Khirro.”

“Shhh. Don’t speak.”

“She lied to me. It wasn’t you. I’m sorry.”

He felt the blood pulsing out of her chest between his fingers, soaking the bandages wrapping his hands. Somehow, through the pain, through death pulling her from him again, she smiled. Her expression drained his strength and he sagged forward, put his cheek against hers.

“It wasn’t you. I loved you,” she whispered, then her breath ceased.

“Don’t go. Not again.” He shook his head, cheek brushing against her cheek. “Don’t go.”

He was vaguely aware of Athryn’s incantation stopping and the room-a room full of so much death-fell into silence. Soon, the magician would put his hand on Khirro’s shoulder and tell him it was time for them to go. Soon, they’d be on their way, into the country of their enemy, marching toward a future which surely held their deaths; for an instant, it seemed the future might also hold love.

But no more.

At least she can seek peace with the Gods. The thought gave him no comfort.

Athryn put his hand on Khirro’s shoulder.

The Archon’s eyes snapped open and she sat up abruptly, pain flaring in her chest. Hanh Perdaro stirred in the bed beside her, snored lightly. She smelled the odor of his sweat and the hot air in the room pressed on her like a moist sheet; it brought nausea to her stomach.

He must have gotten up in the night and closed the shutters.

It bothered her both that he had done it, closing her in the stone prison of the room with its heavy air and rank smells, and that he had managed the act without waking her. If she knew any truth, it was that she needed to be more alert and aware than that-all the time, but especially while sleeping under the enemy’s roof. She threw the covers off angrily, unconcerned about waking the man in the bed beside her, and dangled her legs over the edge.

But she knew the heat hadn’t woken her, nor Perdaro’s smell or his snoring. She’d been dreaming of the woman, Shariel, her assassin. The dream had been more than a dream, as they always were, and she had been pulled from her sleep when the woman’s life left her body.

She has failed.

She stood and crossed to the window, the soft fur of the bearskin rug grating on the bottom of her feet more than usual, her hatred of it amplified by her mood. Her skin was thankful when it touched cool stone.

I should have the damn rug removed.

She threw open the shutters and stared out into the night. From the window in the king’s quarters on the third floor, she could see the tops of a few buildings and the inside of the fortress’ wall, nothing beyond. She knew the building faced north when the happenings of her dream lay to the west, but she stared hard into the night as if doing so would allow her to see into the distant public house and look into the face of her enemy.

When it didn’t, she put her hand on her chest and breathed deep, her chest and heart and lungs stinging with the wounds inflicted by the flaming tyger on her assassin. She felt blood oozing from the wound and onto her fingers, heard the hiss of breath escaping from the holes in her chest. Life escaped the body with the fluid and the air. The Archon closed her eyes and concentrated, willing the power to rise in her, and the pain faded.

Vanquishing the feeling of Shariel’s wounds changed neither the fact of her death nor the survival of the man and the spirit of the king within him.

Her eyes remained closed another minute as she fought the urge to build the power further, to use it to transport herself to that distant city and finish herself what the assassin started, but she knew she didn’t have the power to do it. It took too much of her to raise the dead men and keep them going for her to expend so much energy elsewhere. She must trust the man’s journey would be cut short another way, or that he would come to her and find his death at her hands.

A cold breeze gusted through the window, blowing the scent of Perdaro’s body out of her nostrils and carrying with it the briny scent of the sea and the hint of winter coming in the near future. The wind embraced her, caressed her like no man ever could, but his time it didn’t calm her or make her feel better like it so often did. Instead, it was the gust of air to fan the flames.

“He lives,” she said aloud; Perdaro snorted in his sleep. “And he still carries the king within him.”

This wasn’t what she had foreseen. In her visions, Erechania’s king and its people simply bent to her will, provided her the stepping stone she needed to launch her offensive on other kingdoms. As her army and her might pushed forward, she would eventually overthrow the southern kingdoms and learn the secrets of their dark magic no northerner had ever learned, not even Monos. She’d be the most powerful Necromancer who ever lived. No one would stop her.

Yet this man, this farmer, stood in her way.

“How is it he yet survives?”

She knew the answer. It was unexpected and unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility. Only one man could have kept the farmer alive so long, a man who professed not to involve himself in the goings-on of men. Her eyes narrowed, a shadow fell across her face.

“Darestat.”

She cursed herself for not ensuring the old wizard was truly dead as she watched clouds roll across the moon, throwing the fortress into deeper night. If the Necromancer still lived, she would have to find ways to increase her powers to defeat him. It was no longer a farmer or a fallen king against whom she fought, but the powerful magician.

And she relished the challenge.

“This is not done,” she said crossing the room to the divan.

The velvet upholstery chaffed her flesh as she reclined on the bench. She closed her eyes, focusing the power swirling within her until her mind filled with the vision of a verdant field, blue sky, and the shape of a woman reclining in the grass.

“Shariel,” she said and smiled.

The flaming tyger’s claw pierces my heart and I know it’s done.

I’ve failed.

The flames flicker and die and the man called Khirro looks down on me with love and sorrow in his eyes. I want to tell him he’ll be okay, to reach up and stroke his cheek; in this moment I realize I’m Shariel no more. I’m Elyea: the woman he loved, the woman who loved him.

“Khirro.”

“Shh. Don’t speak.”

“She lied to me. It wasn’t you. I’m sorry.” He leans forward, puts his cheek against mine. It washes warmth through me not caused simply by the proximity of a warm body. This is the way he made me feel.

“It wasn’t you. I loved you.”

“Don’t go. Not again.” He shakes his head and his cheek touching mine is the last thing I experience. I breathe my last breath and feel myself floating toward the ceiling with it.

Below me, Athryn kneels, his chanting finished. He uses my death to heal them both and the thought fills me with joy. I caused their injuries, so it’s fitting I’ll be the cause of their healing, too. I pass through the roof of the building, floating upward, and can no longer see the two men. The city of Poltghasa stretches beneath me, a sleeping beast, a place where I wreaked such havoc and caused such death.