Bruce Blake: Heart of the King

Dimly through it he heard a crack of thunder, sensed a flash of light. The ground quivered beneath him with a vibration greater than what might accompany the casting of a spell; he focused on his words, on tracing the scrollwork’s path. Power built inside him, churning, straining to break free. He closed his eyes and concentrated on control as his finger continued its path, his lips continued their words.

In the distance, somewhere outside himself, he heard a voice strained with urgency. It came closer and a second voice joined it, this one higher pitched, a woman. He heard his name amongst the words they spoke and focused tighter, concentrated harder to shut them out, to keep from being pulled out of the spell and have the power welling up inside him dissipate.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, grasping it, shaking him. Athryn stopped chanting and opened his eyes.

Emeline stood over Khirro, her hair whipped by strong wind Athryn hadn’t felt in his trance, her face distorted with fear. She gripped Iana tight against herself as the baby wailed. Therrador stood beside Athryn-it was his hand on his shoulder-and Graymon was beside him. Thunder rumbled across the sky bringing goose bumps to the magician’s bare chest.

He struggled to his feet and looked around.

Green lightning flickered and jumped from the staff in the woman’s hand, flashing out to strike down the living or raise the dead, depending on which it touched. A host of her newly-raised soldiers ambled along behind her, fresh wounds dripping, weapons covered with the blood of the men now marching beside them. Behind them rose a wall of cloudy white smoke and snow that hid the horizon and reached to the top of the sky.

Athryn bent and retrieved the Mourning Sword from where it lay on the ground beside his fallen friend, then nodded to Therrador. The king guided his son to Emeline and put the boy’s hand in hers. He touched Graymon’s cheek and his lips moved, whispering words of love, a promise, then he returned to Athryn’s side.

“You must stay with Khirro,” Athryn said to Emeline as he and Therrador started toward the Archon. “Without him, all is lost. Your love for him can keep him alive until I return.”

If I return.

For the first time in his life, Therrador wanted nothing more than to flee from the fight before him, to turn and run and leave the fighting to someone else. He imagined himself scooping Graymon up in his arms, taking the boy away somewhere safe, and leaving the kingdom in the grip of the madwoman into which he’d delivered it.

Not much of a king.

Instead, he pressed forward-likely to his death-at the side of a man he didn’t know as his son watched.

The first wave of dead men rushed them, putting any thought but survival from the king’s mind. He should have been too exhausted to wield his sword, but knowing his son crouched a few yards away, and that letting one of the things past would surely mean the boy’s death, brought energy and urgency to his limbs.

Beside him, the magician hacked and hewed their adversaries, fighting with a ferocity Therrador wouldn’t have expected from a magic-user. The blade of the Mourning Sword glowed first red like the blood for which it thirsted, then orange and yellow, and back to red again. It shone on the faces of the men it cut down, reflected in their armor before cleaving it in two. Heads rolled and bodies fell as they made their way toward the woman.

Therrador’s sword found the eye of the last standing soldier of the first wave of undead, and he looked up, ready for the next attack. There was none. The other dead men hung back, standing on either side of the woman and behind her, the snowy wall of white mist pressing close behind them.

The king’s gaze fell on the woman. She stood with her legs spread to shoulder width, her arms extended as if awaiting his embrace; the sight of her stole the breath from his chest. His eyes moved slowly from her face to her neck, then her chest, his gaze flowing over her body like honey. His sword drooped in his grasp and he forgot what reason had brought him to this place.

Why should I want to kill such a beautiful creature?

The woman smiled, laughed with a sound like gold, her teeth pearls, her eyes sapphires. The hatred and rage in Therrador’s chest loosened and his mouth opened to profess his love.

Before his throat struggled the words into being, a yellow glow fell on the woman. Her smile faded and she diverted her eyes. Therrador’s chest lurched at the precious gift of her attention taken away, wrung from his heart so suddenly.

The glow brightened, illuminating the woman without shadow, without deceit. Her pearly teeth became fangs dripping venomous saliva, her sapphire eyes flashed jealousy and disgust, her laughter became the growl and roar of a beast.

Therrador shook his head and looked to the magician beside him. He squinted against the Mourning Sword’s blinding glow and raised his hand to block it from his eyes as he realized it was the blade’s golden light he’d seen upon the Archon’s face, reminding him of the truth of her. Athryn lowered the sword and fell to his knees, lips moving with the words of a spell, and Therrador shook the last of the woman’s deception from his head.

He knew what he needed to do.

The king gritted his teeth and moved forward as the undead throng rushed from around the Archon. The wall of mist and snow descended on them, enveloping them all.

***

When the mist rolled forward, enshrouding the magician and the king, Emeline pulled Graymon close. Iana, hugged tight against her chest, cried and protested; Graymon stared wide-eyed as his father disappeared in the fog.

The white mist moved inexorably forward, devouring the dead and the living, the earth and the sky with its advance. The day dimmed before it, the quake of magic shaking the ground quieted beneath it.

A wisp of mist touched Emeline’s face, its tendril cold against her cheek like the caress of a bony finger. She flinched away. It touched her again, this time on the head, a hand smoothing her hair. She felt Graymon tense in her grasp-he felt it, too, the way the icy fingers of fog acted in the manner of a living thing.

“Close your eyes,” Emeline said to Graymon as she did the same and put her hand over Iana’s. “Hold your breath.”

She felt the mist envelop them, its cold touch coddling them. With it came silence. She heard only the beat of her own heart in her ears, the pulse of the blood in her veins. Iana made no more sound, Graymon was silent, the clash and clang of battle ceased. Fearful the mist might be poisonous, Emeline clung desperately to the breath in her chest until her lungs burned and she could hold it no more. In the deathly quiet, air whooshed as it escaped her lungs, then whistled as it entered her mouth and found its way into her chest.

Then she was floating.

The swirl of snow and mist lifted her, held her aloft like a cork floating on a lake, bobbing gently but neither rising to the sky nor sinking beneath the surface. Her arms dangled loose at her sides. At first, she felt the pressure of Iana and Graymon against her, but that lifted, too, as the mist cradled them. In the back of her mind, she knew she should be concerned they were no longer with her, but she couldn’t bring herself to pay attention to the tiny voice of warning.

The mist will take care of them.

And she felt assured it would.

She floated for a time she couldn’t fathom, the air around her rejuvenating and refreshing her until the return of sound took it from her.

It began a far off rumble, in the manner of a thunder storm rolling in from the sea, but it grew from a rumble to a growl, then a growl to a roar that filled her ears, crowded her head and pulsed behind her eyes.