By Andrew Getting A tale of Larisnar
The Deverenians pride themselves on forging the finest armor in the Accordlands, capable of turning aside the strongest blade. They pride themselves on maintaining and wearing the mail of their forebears, and some even see their war helms as their true identities. Though many men know Anandale's Armor, few have seen his face.
My fingers press through the field plate, and into the soft flesh beneath and I step aside before I release, sending my foe screaming and crashing down the rough-hewn granite stairs behind me, leaving two more before me in the parapet. I whirl my robes around, disappearing momentarily within them.
An ancient, forgotten architect designed parapets to turn in on themselves in such a way that it was difficult to swing a blade to a higher point without striking the wall. The Emperor of his time promised great riches for such works, and true to his word, rewarded his faithful servant with a royal tomb.
The second knight brings his own sword down at my face, but I catch it in my left hand even as my right sweeps behind to his gorget, near the helm. Blood - mine and his - trickles from my palms as he falls to his knees before me. I drop his weapon, knitting my fingers together and mingling his death with my life.
A life in turmoil is a life of distraction. Aspire to more than survival, or accept the death that has already come to pass.
I swing my fists across the face of the third knight, shattering his jaw. To his credit, he remains standing, and more. His main gauche pierces my right arm and pins it to the cracked mortal of the wall. Strangely, I feel no pain, just the sure grip of steel through my flesh. He levels his sword at my throat, but I bend backwards, spinning along the axis in my arm. I bring my foot up to what's left of his jaw, and his body jerks once, then slumps to the floor before I finish my flip. My feet on the floor, I grip the gauche's hilt in my teeth as much for leverage as to have something firm between them for what comes next.
Fate comes in its own good time, and therefore is meaningless. It is not simply dangerous to seek to know what lies beyond day's end, it is futile. Fate is a wheel, and those who seek to reverse its turning invariably crush themselves under its sure tread.
I tear a strip from my outer robes, wrapping it around my gaping wound. Fifteen years ago, I would have sickened and died from such an injury. I step over the dead, and continue my ascent. Somewhere above me, just around this turn, or the turn after that; somewhere up there is the most powerful pawn in the world.
A novice to chess sees only the 64 squares of the board, its 32 pieces, and its 16 pawns. As Deverenus revealed to Deima, a master does not play the game on the board at all.
I reach the top of the stair, and study my penultimate challenge, trying best as I can to remember what I know. The doors are each at least ten feet high and wide, solid and master-forged blackiron. Any spell cast at them would rebound as a vengeful bolt of lightning, magnified tenfold by the blessed workings of the Church of the Storm and its wards. No nothrog battering ram could dent these doors, nor tear them from their moorings. Their weight is their only lock, and their hinges lie on the other side. Though a thousand men could march to this point and not suffer a single casualty, they would pass their lives before passing to the chamber beyond. The only successful attack here ignored this chokepoint entirely, and though legend suggests he sleeps until his people need him once more, I doubt that Signon would awaken for me.
And how long has it been since you last slept? Are you even truly awake now, or simply lost to your own delusions?
"Quiet," I whisper, then do the only thing anyone can do to open these monstrous doors. I roll up my sleeves, tighten my right hand into a balled fist, and rap lightly on the black iron. A moment passes, and then they turn in upon themselves, welcoming me in to whatever doom awaits me here.
The wind whips me as I step forward, the ceiling and walls distant memories here. Unsurprisingly, a thunderstorm threatens overhead, though without the offerings of rain. Empty and raised stone seats line the tower's highest height around me. Opposite where I stand, I see a raised dais and a figure in robes upon a throne. Between the dais and me is the shattered remain of a support column, and there squats a most motley woman.
"Sir Eddard Hume," she half-sings, half-spits. She leaps to the floor, and exaggerates her bow. "Or didst I name thee quite too soon? So great a warrior, our Sir Eddard Hume, that all fleeth from him, e'en Sir Eddard Hume." A dozen needle-points jingle as she moves, dancing along her hat, cape, and shoes. She gestures to me with a crooked scepter, its inner curve a bladed scythe. "Alas for Sir Eddard, his heroism may fill a compendium, but he hath not the heart to hold it." She cackles and leers at me, her face at once beautiful and monstrous. I wonder how many fools have mistaken this fool for a fool.
"My name is Kedric," I correct her. "And you can think of me as you wish. Ignore my advice at your own peril."
"Advice?" she answers, then laughs. "An I ever need such wisdom as thou canst offer me, no doubt 'twould be thy duty and honor an thou guideth me to the privies." Her smile curdles into a sneer. "Thou art no man, ‘Kedric', and thou offerest naught but wan amusements." She raises her crook in a mock salute. "An thou tarriest yet, thou mayest bargain my next jest quite cheaply with thy life."
I draw my hands low to my sides, just past my hips. "I do not wish to fight you."
"A quick death, then? A merciful end?" She grins. "Banter hast done thou no wrong, and this is thy recompense? A blanket could cut thy wit."
I glance past her, at the throne. "It costs you nothing to hear me out. Would I have come all this way for nothing, knowing that you wouldn't let me leave alive?"
I don't see her move, but I hear the crack of her club against my head, and the ringing that follows.
"'Tis a sign of base honor to ignore a lady's presence," the jester hisses.
A Deverenian prizes his honor like a miser does his money; should a stranger offer him none, the stranger receives none in return.
"Not now," I hiss back, and then she kicks me in the face, her blades tearing my hood as I fly back impossibly far. I grab blindly, blood in my eyes, and I grip a stone outcropping in my left hand. My body jerks to the wall, the winds suddenly sharper. I rub my face with my free hand, and look around. Luthlarius swings wildly below, its strata suddenly like a spiral beneath my feet. I look up, and she is there, smiling to me like a school matron at a backward but favorite child. She cradles her head along her crooked scepter.
"Ah, and how thy songs wilt differ. Mayhap an unkind zephyr doth crash thy bones upon the callous earth, or wilt the lady avenge herself upon the coarse cad, hmm?" I pivot my right arm up to try to mount the wall, but she bashes my arm away. "It mattereth not for the throng to know the hero's end, twixt the lady and the tiger," she muses. "The lady knoweth, and I do know a bard who doth enjoy the odd private caper." She raises her rod high, indulging herself in my helplessness.
Damn her, she's going to take her time until even I wonder which is going to kill me.
It happens so quietly that at first, I think I'm just hearing things again, but then it builds until it silences the wind before its cacophony. Laughter, and clapping. "A prodigious farce, sweet Thalia," a voice like the ruffling of brittle paper offers. "Verily, thou hast outrivaled thyself afresh. Let him up, and let him speak, and let him leave my city thereafter. Humor him, an thou wouldst."
Thalia shrugs, and rolls her scepter back along her hand, replacing it with a poesy. She tucks it behind my right ear, and then offers me her hand. I stare at her blankly. "You were joking?"
"Assuredly, flighty man, and thou didst fall for it. Well, nearabouts," she says, still smiling. "What need hath a jester for honor?"
I frown, then take her hand in my own. She heaves me up, then somersaults backward, leaping into the air before landing with a blustering bow at the foot of the dais. "Kedric, the exalted Imperator Deverenia, Vyacheslav Drac, hath granted thee private audience." She stares at me, expecting something. I blink, trying to force my tired mind to recall what it is.
This one does kill to protect her master's honor. Remember this favor.
My knees buckle like an old man's, and I prop myself up with my hands. I look up and see Thalia, and she nods to me. Then, laughing, jumps, twists, lands on my aching head and forces it back into the floor before leaping again. I rise again just as she disappears over the side of the Emperor's tower, her mad cackling fading into the storm winds.
I brush myself off, glowering. I glare at the Emperor. "Was that really necessary?"
"An I add each day's trials to the ones before, ever and anon," the Emperor adds with a what might just be genuine chuckle.
Consider this man.
For once, I listen, and take a second look at the Emperor, slouching in his throne. Swaddled in dark satin robes lost to furrows, in the night I cannot see where the folds of his clothing end and his wrinkled flesh begins. Tallow eyes stare at me from beneath a hood, and wisps of white hair peek out from beneath. He grins mouthful of pearls. He has studied in this time, as well.
"Sir Eddard Hume," he speaks hoarsely. "I have heard of thee." He nods.
"Thank you," I answer.
So protocol and submission have their places after all. Fascinating.
"Tell me thou, Sir Eddard, why thou didst brave my home and my city, and slew my guard, but to bend an old man's ear." He leans forward, and bones creak with the exertion. "What tragedy befalleth me and mine, an I listen not to thee?"
"The Battle of Four Points," I begin, "was not the victory you think it to be."
"Verily?" the Emperor asks, smirking behind steepled fingers. "Pray tell."
"Dallen Stormlost loosed an enemy imprisoned in the days of the Dragon's fall, a devourer of men's minds and souls. It is both delirium and pestilence, and intends to bring the world low before its warped sense of unity and harmony." I pause, watching the frail figure closely. "Many have mistaken this sickness for a kind of power, willfully enslaving themselves to it."
This is a kindness repaid, a reward for saving a life?
"How calamitous," the Emperor answers me. "Why shouldst Deverenia anguish over an affliction of the southern nations?"
"It spreads and roots itself deep in the hearts of the unwary. It is here, and has chosen the Tzin line for its heralds. It is not just Narawat, Drac," I grumble before realizing that nothing had stopped me.
The smile vanishes from the Emperor's face. "An thou amusest me or no, Sir Eddard," he says, rising from his throne without moan or effort, "I shall tear my name back from off thy unworthy lips, an thou darest to utter it once more. Likewise thy fate, an thou dost besmirch the name of Tzin. E'en now, Captain Karkos Tzin doth bend the minds of others toward a truer loyalty than my empire hath ever known."
"Kill me, then," I answer. "But if you must destroy me to soothe your feeble honor, remember my words. The force you seek to master is not yours to wield. It is relentless, and unstoppable. It took a god to imprison it before, and now it is free among men."
"Thalia is a jester due, and greater at her arts than thou," the Emperor says, sneering. "She was right, thou art witless."
"What?" I ask, my mouth gaping despite myself. "But this thing, it seeks absolute dominion, a never-ending horror where the slaves' shackles are their own minds."
The Emperor shakes his hooded head, then suddenly enters a coughing fit, almost collapsing on his throne once more. His mouth silently gasps for air, he beckons me closer. I ascend the dais, each step like the sullen tedium of an eternity, before I at last reach his side. He whispers something I do not hear, then beckons me closer still, and I lean in to hear him.
"My dear boy, thou speakest such slander of Silas Tzin's ambitions," he chokes out. "What dost thou think that I want, but the very end that hast thrown thee into such apoplexy?" He reaches up, and shoves me down the dais. "Simpleton. Thou thinkest me as dull as thee, an thou thinkest I know not my allies. Silas Tzin careth only for unity, not its cause nor its master. He mindeth not that I am not among his plenty only that I bring all the world to bear before me. My reign shalt be forever, with Tzin's legacy at my command.
"Now depart from my sight, lest I find thy simplicity more bothersome than blithe."
I stand, dumbfounded, looking up at the Emperor, who scowled down at me. I looked away, and limped back to the staircase that had brought me to this dark place.
Understanding is sometimes its own price. Do not cower before the inevitable. Embrace it.
Each step down was another great stone on my shoulders, each unbearable alone.
Change, even positive change, begets strife. Unity, however desolate, is comfort.
Despair clings at me. Maybe... Maybe he's right.
Behold a new world, where all are o...
"Sanct vas wis!" another voice cries, and a behemoth hand reaches from the dark descent before me to grip my face. I lash out, but pull back. The voice... It's silent.
"The spell lasts but a day at a time," a ponderous voice offers as the hand retreats to the shadows. "While it does, your mind is your own. Should it end, our enemy would most likely destroy you for the threat you might now be. Likewise, should he ever touch you, his might would outstrip my own magic."
"I know you." I blink, looking again into the darkness, puzzling out my benefactor's identity. "You're the VoTaurr general from the Temple of the Doomed Sky. Mekk'iah."
The immense beast nods to me, its horns scraping the castle wall.
"What do you want from me? What price are you going to extract?" I demand.
"You misunderstand me, Kedric," Mekk'iah says, reaching out to me palms up. "I am not another would-be master. In this place, at this time, I am your comrade in arms. Together, you and I will strike a terrible blow against our foes."
"Foes?" I ask. "You mean Tzin's victims?"
"No, Kedric," he replies. "His allies, the Medusan Lords. Come, we have much to do."