Sam Bowring: Soul's Reckoning

It must be an old world, I think. Our recorded history goes back many millennia, but that isn’t why I arrive at such a conclusion. It is more that our knowledge grows fragmentary in the distance, then drops away into nothing, like an undersea cliff. There are no clues as to how much further it goes, and no beginning in sight. Perhaps no beginning exists, just ages that follow one after the other. Perhaps the age we inhabit now will become an unknown abyss to those in the next. I do not know.

I suppose I do not care. What is remarkable is to stand on the cusp of a new age forming, one foot in the past and one in the future. It almost seems as if change could be instant, forgetful of the centuries that precede it, the years spent building to such a point, the months of strife and struggle …and now, only days.

Time to break into a run.

Bel parted fern fronds with the tip of his sword, managing to avoid the slightest rustling. Ahead a Black Goblin crouched behind the brush, taking in the two hundred or so soldiers camped between the trees – those who had survived the ill-fated charge against Holdwith. The failure still grated on him, and he pushed away memories of Olakanzar being torn from the sky, of Kainordans dying around him. Perhaps he had been too eager to attack, but how could he have guessed that such a monster would be waiting for them?

Someone started striking a hammer on metal, and Bel made small movements forward, in time with the echoing clanks. As he levelled his sword at the goblin’s back, anticipation of the blow warmed him, and he tensed to thrust. This spy of Losara’s would deliver no report.

The goblin turned his head almost imperceptibly and sprang away. Bel jabbed too late, coming about as close to missing as was humanly possible, extracting a single bead of blood from the small of the goblin’s back. He rose angrily from the undergrowth as the goblin fled, curving to avoid both Bel and the camp, where soldiers began to notice that something was going on. Bel had a sense of the path trying to form, and yet it failed to solidify. He chased the goblin nonetheless, but the little bastard was quick, and already gaining ground. Bel raised his sword to hurl it, but the goblin was keeping trees between them, and it was difficult to find the right moment. Seconds later he blundered unexpectedly into a stream, his foot plunging into soft mud …and knew that he would never catch up.

Why had the path failed him? he wondered irritably. A strange phenomenon it was, the way he sometimes saw the steps he needed to tread to achieve certain ends. Certainly the appearance of such preternatural lines was no magic that Fahren had ever been able to explain. His father had once described it as going berserk, but Bel had come to think of that state as a separate thing, for the path did not seem to apply solely to battle – it had also led him to escape when victory was impossible, and even encouraged him to speak with a dragon which he could not otherwise have hoped to defeat.

Maybe it is fate’s path . Maybe I feel the direction I am supposed to go. He took some comfort from the thought, but then frowned. Then why not show me how to kill a skulking enemy?

He stabbed his sword into a ripe log at the stream’s edge with an exclamation of disgust, feeling like a man promised a meal and instead delivered an empty bowl. The world darkened to suit his mood …the broken reflections of trees across the water lost their sheen, no longer a barrier to visibility beneath the surface. Leaves curled in the current like lazy dancers, catching on Bel’s legs. Clouds gathered in the sky and the first drops of rain began to fall, advance scouts of the storm that was coming. Circles expanded in the stream to disrupt the path of a water beetle, which changed course to skitter under reeds.

‘Which way did he go?’ came a sharp voice, and Bel realised he had gone blank. He turned to see Nicha, the leader of the Kainordan camp, flanked by lightfists. He stared at her a moment, then stabbed a finger after the goblin. Nicha gave a nod to her lightfists and they blurred in pursuit, spraying him with water as they churned through the stream.

They will earn the kill that should have been mine .

Only then did he notice the golden bird perched on Nicha’s shoulder.

‘A sundart,’ he said. ‘From whom?’

‘Gerent Brahl,’ she answered. ‘The Fenvarrow army is heading towards the Shining Mines, and our own forces march to meet them with all possible haste.’

‘Holdwith?’ said Bel.

‘Holdwith,’ she spoke the word with a kind of forced neutrality, ‘will be given up for now. Better to reinforce our standing defences, and meet the enemy at an advantage. We are ordered to return to Brahl.’ She glanced at the sky. ‘Dusk is not far off. We ride at daybreak.’

‘How distant is he?’

‘Not far from here, but some three days from the Mines.’

‘And the enemy?’

Nicha’s brow creased in consternation. ‘Maybe a little less, but the Mines are well fortified. If they can hold off the enemy until the bulk of our forces arrive …’

‘Yet Losara lingers in Holdwith,’ muttered Bel. ‘Surely his army won’t attack without him.’ He stepped from the stream and retrieved his sword. ‘I want,’ he said, ‘to be notified of any movement out of Holdwith.’

There was a hint of irritation in Nicha’s gaze, and he wondered if she disliked taking orders from him. She disapproved of his recent action, he knew, both beforehand and afterwards, when she had been proven right …but the mistake had been his to make, and who was she to question him? He held her eyes until she nodded.

‘As you wish,’ she said.

The rain grew heavier.

•

Losara stood on the walls of Holdwith, overlooking the dusty plain. Bodies of Bel’s soldiers still littered it from the previous day, and occasionally the wind brought him the stink of them. A group of shadow mages moved about below him, opening holes under the slain so they fell away into the ground. Tyrellan had said he did not understand why Losara paid them this respect, and Losara wasn’t sure either. Was it better to be dead under the ground? The dead did not care – maybe burying them was for the people above. Maybe Losara simply didn’t want to have to look at them any more.

As for Bel himself, he was not far away, and neither was the Kainordan army that travelled to meet Losara’s own. There would be great ruin soon, and more bodies on the way. Perhaps, Losara thought, while brutal, the shadowmander would at least bring the confrontation to a swift conclusion. There was no force in the world that could stop the creature carved from the legacy spells of hundreds of mages. He imagined it wreaking havoc amongst Kainordans, its great scarlet tail sweeping back and forth, snapping its jaws around Zyvanix wasps as they tried to flit away. Yet even the mander could not sweep through thousands in a heartbeat, was no guarantee of instant victory. He watched it now on the plain below, sniffing at the dragon’s corpse. The great beast hadn’t fallen fast to rot, and if not for the wounds that covered it, and the dull hue of its remaining eye, it could have been merely sleeping.