Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (20 page)

He felt like one of the mighty wizards of the fairy
tales.

Chapter 13 - Returning Home

“How’s that now?” Jodoul asked. “What do you mean that
we can’t go back to bein’ soldiers?”

He rode atop one of the pilfered horses from the
garrison and was now embroiled in a conversation about what they would do once
they got back to the Empire proper.

“You have seen too much, been too close to me,
witnessed the way I was living out there. I cannot have you mixing back in with
the common soldiers like it never happened,” Rashan replied.

They were all riding close together and talking loudly
enough for all to hear. Rashan had slowed their progress back to Kadris,
assuring everyone that the message about the goblin raiders had arrived.
Rashan’s change of heart after the massacre had quickly resolved itself into a
determination to resume his place atop the pecking order of the Kadrin
sorcerous hierarchy.

“This is no free pension to live out your days in
luxury, but you are not going back to front-line duty or digging latrines. I
shall find places for you all, once everything has fallen back into place.”

“You are assuming you will be welcomed back so easily?
Surely High Sorcerer Gravis is not going to step aside and cede you the
position,” Iridan chimed in. He rode right next to Rashan on one of the smaller
horses, a white mare that had a grey streak down her chest.

“Of course not. I do not plan on making it a choice,
though. By all rights, I outrank him, even now. The position of high sorcerer
is still a lesser one than warlock, and I never officially resigned.
Traditionally the role of high sorcerer is assumed by a warlock as well, but I
may allow him to keep his title and role as second in command should he be
cooperative during the transition.”

Iridan looked visibly concerned. “‘Cooperative?’ High
Sorcerer Gravis is not known to be one for compromise, let alone ceding rule of
the Inner Circle to someone who has not set foot in the Empire for a century.
Suppose he is not cooperative? What then?”

“Do not worry. Leadership of the Inner Circle has
always been a small part politics and a large part aetherial might. Despite not
being current with the doings at court and the petty backstabbing amongst the
Imperial Circle, I shall have no problem demonstrating that I am the rightful
leader of the Empire’s sorcerers … and the knighthood. I suspect we will find
far less resistance on that front, however.”

“Why is that?” Brannis asked. “I have been through
both the Academy and the School of Arms, and if anything, the knighthood is
more hidebound and traditional than even the sorcerers.” Flanking Rashan on the
other side from Iridan, Brannis had been the counterpoint to Rashan’s arguments
since he began making hints to his post-return plans for the Empire. “They will
not just step aside and allow you to take charge of the order.”

“Well, I think they value tradition more than you even
know. Those old war-mules have always looked back on the ‘better times,’ every
generation of them. And let me tell you this much: those better times nearly
always coincided with the ascension of a warlock to lead the Empire in battle.
There is no glory in parades remembering someone else’s wars. Plunder,
conquest, the expansion of the Empire, and throwing down the broken corpses of
old foes: those make for the tales that the old men tell. Most warriors, when
they reach the age where creaking bones and failing sight limit them to hearth
sides or their beds, want nothing more than to relive the glory of their youth
and see wonder and admiration in the eyes of their young kinfolk. Pity the ones
who have no tales to tell … or who cannot lie.

“No, the old guard will put up enough of a resistance
to show they care, and they will make sure I have convinced them thoroughly
that my claim is authentic, which I have no worry of accomplishing. Then they
will salute and step aside.”

Brannis noted that Rashan now sounded confident. His
demeanor had changed markedly. He was no longer quiet and unassuming, content
to let Brannis lead them and keep out of sight, back with Iridan. Now when he
asked questions, he sought only information, or to make one think of something
in a new way. He no longer asked permission or even hinted that it might be
necessary. He seemed to just have naturally taken over command. If his claims
were all true, it seemed he was even within his rights to do so.

“What if they charge you with abandoning your
responsibility to the Empire?” Brannis asked. “A Kadrin officer could never get
away with a long unexplained absence without charges being brought. What will
you tell them of the time you spent outside the Empire’s borders, with no
word.”

“Perhaps they shall try that, though I think the
circumstances are certainly unusual enough and the justification legitimate
enough, that I will weather questioning well enough,” Rashan said, somewhat
more quietly.

“If’n you do not mind me askin’, just what was the
circumstances?” a soldier named Tulok asked from the back of the group.

“Do you know the history of the Necromancer Wars?”
Rashan asked.

There was general muttering at the question.

“I do,” Brannis said.

Iridan nodded.

“What of the Battle of Farren’s Plain?” Rashan
continued.

“No, I cannot say that I know that one,” Brannis
responded. He had been a good student and had an excellent memory, especially
battles. The Kadrin Empire had a rich history of wars, and Brannis knew them
all quite well. He looked skeptically at Rashan, possibly having caught hold of
a thread that could unravel his story.

“Well then, what do you know of the last great battle
of the Third Necromancer War?”

“Well, that would be the Battle of the Dead Earth.
That is when Warlock Rashan—err, you, I suppose—unleashed a magic of
unfathomable power that consumed both armies. There were no survivors, and the
land itself was cracked and broken, with every plant, animal, and man not just
dead but reduced to skeletal remains. Nothing grew there for winters.” Brannis
recounted the story as best he remembered it being taught to him as a boy.

“So they ended up calling it the Battle of the Dead
Earth, did they?” Rashan mused. “Would you like to hear the rest of the tale?”

Rashan didn’t wait for a reply: “It had begun to rain
as the final blows rang out from the forge. It was an open-air smithy that
adjoined the royal stables. The work had taken much longer than I had expected.
I am no blacksmith, nor was I then, but I felt it was something I had to do
myself. My handiwork was good enough to pass the muster of many a smith in the
Empire, though candidly I must admit I used aether to guide my hammer. And I
did not just guide the blows of the hammer to shape the metal of the blade, but
I forged aether right into the alloy, and not without structure, either. The
blade had a purpose, and just as that purpose was finished being crafted into
it, one of my apprentices, a promising young man named Sarthon, spoke up.

“‘Your work does not pass unnoticed,’ he told me. I
always valued thinkers who spoke their mind over the obsequious bootlicks the
others in the Inner Circle seemed to prefer, so I asked him what he meant by
that.

“‘The heavens themselves cry at what you have wrought
here,’ he said, gesturing up to the rain-soaked sky. I had paid little
attention to the weather, but it was indeed a foul day he was attributing to my
handiwork. I took no offense, for indeed I had created something terrible. It
seemed Sarthon was a bit of a poet, and I liked the image he had conjured in my
mind.

“‘Well then,’ I replied, ‘I shall call the sword “Heavens
Cry.”’ It seemed somehow appropriate. The task I had set out for was an
unpleasant one, and I was equal to it. I had spent winters fighting back the
legions of dead that Loramar and his underlings kept creating and expanding.
Several of the Empire’s protectorates had been freed from our reign in the
aftermath of the previous wars, and this time, Loramar seemed intent at
striking at the heart of the Empire. He had been bypassing the larger cities in
favor of sacking villages and moving quickly, carving a path that one could see
led straight to Kadris.

“Here was our dilemma, though. You probably recall
their name, Brannis—as might you, Iridan—but for the rest of you, should you
not remember your history, my men were called the Red Riders. I stole them from
the Imperial Academy and trained them as knights. Their magical training I
diverted toward a single purpose: maintaining their hold on their own Source.
You see, such was the evil of the necromancers that even approaching them was
fatal. They drew aether not just from the world around them, but straight from
living Sources. They could, and did, kill men outright, just by draining them
dry inside. A man killed like that was easier for them to re-animate, and
sounder of body, than one who had been rent apart by blades or magic. Armies of
foot soldiers would march into battle under one banner and end up fighting for
their enemy.

“My Red Riders could wade into the middle of the fray,
hacking down the dead. Our steeds were fashioned from nothing but aether,
constructs I had made myself that were difficult and time-consuming to unravel,
and sturdy enough to bear the rigors of battle. We brought nothing and no one
with us that could be turned against us. I stole half a generation of sorcerers
from Kadrin, but it was needed.

“I had known that blades alone would not be enough.
They were too many and we were too few. My own power I used mostly to defend us
from the other tricks the necromancers knew, though even at that I had to be
wary of all the dead aether that followed the walking corpses everywhere they
went. That was why I created Heavens Cry: to destroy an army.

“The fateful day we met Loramar’s army in Farren’s
Plain, we faced the entire might of the Great Necromancer and all his
apprentices. It was his final march toward Kadris itself, and he was preparing
to do battle with all the forces we could muster. I had left scouts a day’s
ride behind us, so that if we failed to stop them, word would reach Kadris for
everyone to evacuate before the battle for the city. All who lived there were
weapons waiting to be wielded against the Inner Circle should the dead army get
that far.

“Farren’s Plain was farmland in those days. The wheat
fields were knee high—not quite tall enough for a good ambush, had our hundred
or so had any need for stealth. Stealth was not an option for what I intended.

“Each time we had fought Loramar, we would attack and
withdraw. We would break his dead soldiers and ruin them so they could hold
aether no longer, then ride off without letting him have any more corpses to
replace them. It was wearying work, but we had been able to eventually wear down
his armies and win two wars. But in the third war, Loramar had done better. He
kept his armies far from the territories the Red Riders kept safe and amassed a
huge force, one that our strike-and-flee tactics could not combat quickly
enough to protect the heart of the Empire.

“That day at Farren’s Plain, we charged into the vast
legion with no thought of escape. The necromancers had grown used to our
attacks and weathered them, rather than putting serious effort to destroying
us. I had thwarted them each time they had tried, and they had grown weary of
wasting aether against my defenses. But that day, they saw blasts of aether and
pieces of the dead flung like leaves on the wind. They realized I was no longer
on the defensive, providing cover for the Riders. No, I was carving a swath
straight for them, safe at the center of a sea of dead bodyguards. They
panicked, and they attacked.

“My Riders had been trained to protect their Source,
but I had done better. My men could be overwhelmed by the sheer force of the
necromancers’ combined powers, but my Source I had turned into a fortress. You
see, I had already by this point gone beyond my mortal limits. The quest to
find a way to defeat Loramar had led me to the perfection of my defenses
against him. Unfazed by their impotent assaults directly on my Source, they
tried conventional magics on me, but those were pitiful, atrophied powers,
forgotten lessons that could not be relearned in the midst of battle.

“I cut my way to the heart of their army, within sight
of Loramar, the only one who posed a threat to me personally. As my men died
around me by the dozens, I unleashed the power I had crafted into Heavens Cry.
I drove the blade into the earth at my feet with all my might, nearly to the
hilt, and I drew all the aether I could. I drew from anything and everything I
could grasp hold of, and I fed it into the sword. The ground cracked and split
beneath my feet, in an ever-widening area. From the cracks a caustic fog arose
and clawed at the flesh of the living and the dead alike. Nothing could bear
its touch for long. Loramar withstood it best, but even then, it seemed
unsatisfying how quickly he succumbed to its power.

“But I became the center of a maelstrom. I had made
sure the sword could finish its task. Whether I survived the day or not, I
wanted to ensure that none of the necromancers made it out of that field alive.
The sword continued to draw all the aether in the area. The field of wheat, Red
Riders, Loramar, his apprentices, and the animate dead, all were drained to the
last wisp of aether as the sinister fog grew and spread. Cloth and leather,
skin and sinew, the fog devoured it all, save my own flesh; I was its creator,
and in its crafting, I was able to ensure at least that one small
self-protection. My Source was safe from it as well, though I could not teach
it to let that be. I was immortal already, a demon as you would call me, and my
Source had no weakness through which aether might be pulled.