“Which would you rather believe, Ari?”
“Whichever is true.”
Einar shrugged. “The truth is I do not know. Maybe it was your tor. Maybe morutmanon knows its creator’s enemies better than the scholars realize. Maybe one of the gods intervened. Maybe it was the Traveller’s curse. Believe what you wish and be glad you are alive and free.”
Einar pulled the last strap of the shin sheath tight. He frowned at the mundanes standing around them. “It seems the morutmanon freed me from Robert’s Will-Breaker, but I’m not sure what to do about the rest of the Protectorates.”
“I think I can free them. If not, the enchantment will eventually pass.”
“And the Mardux?”
Ari took a deep breath. “That will be harder. It is a different enchantment, and unlike the others, he will remember his nightmare.”
Einar went silent at that, remnants of his own torment perhaps not yet fully faded. “Then let us get started, son.”
Chapter 47
“Every story has its end. The mortality of storytellers alone makes this true.”
— Pondr,
Collected Journals, edited by Weard Asa Sehtah
“Would you like me to tell you one last story about yourself, Mardux?” Pondr’s voice whispered in his ear as Sven floated in the frozen darkness.
What is happening?
Then Pondr spoke, and Sven felt himself transported.
Sven Takraf stood on an altar at the center of a vast host of Mar. Adepts, wand-wielders, mundanes and wizards stood in a circle around him, and the Mass pressed in all around them, trapping them, suffocating his people.
From his vantage, he could see clear to the horizon. The swamps’ giant trees, with their thick, hollow roots and soft moss, were gone. The moors’ and fens’ grasses and stunted, rotting growth had vanished. No wild rice fields remained. The rivers themselves had disappeared, replaced by countless Drakes.
Guer of every species, gobbels and ravits had swallowed his country, and their fierce cries and waving weapons and arms were a wild, ungodly creation before them. Even the reclusive ochres could be spotted among the fray.
The Mass truly was. Unlike the first Waves of it, the Drakes did not separate by race. Here, two gobbels and three distinct types of guer, united, launched spears at his Mar, who deflected with their magic but as yet did not attack back. There, a lone ochre was enmeshed with jabber and spiny-tailed guer, waving spears and screaming in disarray. They moved in many directions, but as one, as if the Mass wasn’t a singular collection of all the Drakes, but had acquired its own mind and person in Domin’s favor, with millions upon millions of hands, preparing to take Sven’s last island in Marrishland.
And its largest hands were the damnens, who had come from their seclusion to finish off their largest competitor. They towered above everything except the insero and ravits, Mar-length claws reaching for Sven’s people and jaws wide, screaming as incoherently as the rest of the Mass.
It was a nightmare. It was everything Sven had feared it would be, but everything he had prepared for, as well.
We have placed the last of our food on the altar as a sacrifice. If the gods do not provide for us, we will die.
The buzz of inseros’ wings shadowed the sky to the north, and the darts of the ravits on their backs rained deadly poison on the adepts and wand-wielders.
“Stand fast! We will still carry the day!” the Mardux shouted.
It was no use. No one could afford to turn and look at him. No one could waste the energy to raise a cry. The south and east continued their collapses, meeting the remnants of the west. The damnens roared again.
“Stand fast!” Sven called again, more desperately. “The gods are with us!”
A few eyes in the back ranks searched out the Mardux. A hand pointed. Someone said his name, maybe. But the wizards who had joined his cause gladly and the magocrats he had ordered to bleed for him knew the battle lost, and yet they fought to stay true to their oaths. The screams of adepts and wand-wielders — people from the Protectorates who entrusted their lives to him and those from Domus Palus who blindly followed him — filled the air.
“Immortal patrons — Marrish, Niminth, Fraemauna, Sendala, Heliotosis, Swind, Seruvus, Cedar and Her — we are lost without your aid. Help your people!”
Still, the Mar hesitated.
“Her, give us a sign of your presence!” Sven shouted.
Please, gods.
Horsa and the last remnants of his priests took up the cry, unleashing fire and force and morutmanon. The sun stood still in the sky.
“Cedar, give us a sign of your presence!”
The Duxess of Pidel and the Duxes of Gunne, Piljerka and Skrem shouted oaths of fealty to Sven, and massive trees sprang up from the ground, their branches shielding the Mar from the insero and ravits above. Sven felt a slight shift in the battlefield as both sides hesitated slightly in light of this unusual phenomenon. Even the damnens, on the edge of another roar, took a collective breath.
“Fraemauna, Sendala and Niminth, give us a sign of your presence!” he shouted just as the damnens’ roar came again.
Erbark, Eda and the Dux of Wasfal drew marsords in unison and assailed the damnens, driving them back for the first time in memory. The moons danced in the sky. The armies of Flasten and Domus cheered. The Drakes renewed their assault without the damnens or insero, compressing the remaining Mar into a tiny ball.
“Swind, give us a sign of your presence!”
Einar, Erika, Asfrid and Sigrun reconned, and a dome of Energy like the Mosquito Shields of the Protectorates sprang up around the Mar. The Drakes who tried to pass through it burned, while the wounded Mar within it healed. A warm south wind stirred Sven’s cloak and drew water from the pools to splash on cloaks and corpses alike.
“Heliotosis, give us a sign of your presence!”
The Dux of Wasfal came from the east with Ari and Arnora and all the other Mar who had opposed the Mardux. The gobbels and guer grinned, welcoming them as reinforcements, but Dux Gruber Ratsell gave the order to attack, instead, and the stingers and jabbers were unprepared for this abrupt flanking maneuver. An icy gale blew from the north, forcing Drake and Mar alike to grab shrubs and tree trunks to keep from being knocked over. The gobbels fled, and the guer trembled.
Sven screamed over the din. “Seruvus, give us a sign of your presence!”
Bui and Finn and all the adepts, wand-wielders and mundanes in Marrishland rose up from the mud of the swamp and struck down tens of thousands of stinger and jabber guer, and then hundreds of thousands. Thousands of humanoid shapes formed of brackish water rose with them and struck down Drakes with liquid fists.
“Marrish, Lord of Wind and Fire, God of Magic, Father of the Mar, show us a sign of your presence!”
Nightfire took the field with all the professors and apprentices of his Academy. Cold rage flickered across his features as they hurled striped guer around like clods of clay. The sky turned black with thick clouds. Lightning struck the ground in a hundred places, blasting Drakes to ash where they stood.
Sven fixed his gaze upon the Mass and stretched out with both his hands. The black storm clouds broke open, dropping balls of fire that sucked the moisture from the air. The water of the swamps rapidly evaporated. The air became choked with the stench of death as the Mass crumbled before the onslaught of the gods.
“Praise the gods!” the Mar shouted over the deafening thunder.
The myst appeared to plain sight, and Sven blinked, lowering his arms. It stood still, the colors separating and gathering. Suddenly, it shifted. Cyan and lavender motes illuminated the dark cyclone, spinning around as though chasing one another. The pools of water radiated an amber glow and red motes danced around the grasses and wild rice. The clouds struck the Drakes with bolts of green lightning.
The Drakes, finally overwhelmed by the combined attacks of Mar and gods, broke and fled in every direction. At the north, where most of the Drakes still lived,
nine figures dressed in green, auburn, blue, amber, cyan, lavender, yellow, red and white cloaks waited for them. The nine gods each glowed with light corresponding to the color of his cloak, and each held hands forward, fingers outstretched.
Every wizard on the field of battle recognized that gesture. Even the mundane — none of whom had studied the careers of such wizards as Nightfire, Brack, Olaf Weisht, Asfrid Gegnart and the bare handful of other wizards who had possessed the power such a gesture represented — had heard the stories.
The gods’ auras dimmed for just a moment as the tendrils of black flame leapt from their fingers, the deadly rivers of magic twisting and shifting like angry serpents as they struck the fleeing Mass.
The divine morutmanon crackled like bolts of lightning, held its victims fast and reduced the army to hot ash that sizzled and steamed as it struck the water below. Then the spell ended, and stars appeared in broad daylight and fell from the sky. Where they landed, the legendary hero for whom each star had been named rose from the swamp and marched forward to join the line of gods. Sven followed them, surrounding himself with an aura of flame. Ten thousand heroes formed a long line behind the retreating Mass.
The Mar blinked in unison at the miraculous vision, knowing this could not be a mere dream. As they watched, the gods and stars joined hands, with Marrish at the center of the line. The two heroes on either end of the long line — Weard Darflaem and Uneheilich — took a step toward the center, their bodies merging into their neighbors’. Gradually, all the fallen heroes became one with either Fraemauna or Cedar. Then the deities did the same, until Marrish (or was it Nightfire?) stood alone.
Three figures stood before the gods, barring their way. One was either a farl or a man with the head of an alligator who held a marsord to Sven’s throat. The other was either Katla or a woman clad only in mud.
“We have come to beg the gods to show my children mercy,” Dinah — Katla — said, kneeling before Marrish — Nightfire. “In return, we have spared Pitt Gematsud’s son — the Guardian who leads all Mar.”
Domin — Robert — did not kneel, but nor did he voice any objection.
Marrish held out a hand. “Your offer is acceptable to me, Dinah. Trouble my people no more, and I will consent to a truce between us.”
The clouds dispersed. The sun shone down. The winds stopped. The water and grasses grew still. And the moons looked on in silence. On the battlefield, the Mar had fallen to their knees on the dry and cracked ground, shouting prayers of thanksgiving.
Sven felt the blade move away from his throat, and then the darkness devoured him.
Did I truly fight Dinah and Domin, or was that another of Robert’s illusions?
“Why can’t both be true? The moons are lights in the sky but also gods — crescent or gibbous, but still the same moon. Life is full of paradoxes. The storyteller is dead, but the story is alive. Open your eyes, Sven Takraf. Use your energy. You are not the fuel that everyone feeds on; you are the fire in the hearts and minds of all Mar.”
The lesson of the fire. I brought Marrish’s gift of magic to the mundanes. Marrishland is the fuel, not me. I am the fire who touched each Mar, and now they are fire.
Sven saw the fire in the hearth first as the room came into focus around him. He sat in a rocking chair, swaddled in blankets like an infant, and someone had taken his boots. Sven touched the wood of the chair’s arm and recognized it immediately as his.
They’ve brought me home. To Leiben.
“Pondr, are you there?” Sven said, his voice softer than he expected.
There was a whoosh of cloth behind him, and Erika was at his side, clutching his face to her chest. Sven felt a child crawling into his lap. He clutched both of them to him with fingers too weak to hold them tight.
“Erbark,” Erika began, but the warrior was outside before she could even finish her sentence.
“How long has it been?” Sven whispered urgently. “The Mass...”
“Has withdrawn, Sven, so don’t set yourself on fire,” Erika said, easing her hold on him somewhat. “It has been a month. Ari and Horsa tried everything they could think of to break the enchantment — magic, morutsen, torutsen. Asa spent days upon days reading to you and telling you stories. Something worked, but by all the gods, we have no idea what.”
“Papa,” Asa whispered in one ear. “It was Pondr’s stories.”
Sven opened his mouth to respond, but the heavy clomping of many boots interrupted him.
Erika stood up. “Can’t you give him some time to recover?”
“We will try not to wear him out too much, but some matters require his immediate attention,” Einar said behind him. “Is that acceptable, Mardux?”
“Weard Schwert, I am in your debt. Please, call me Sven, and let me know how I can repay you.”
Sven couldn’t see Einar’s expression, but he could all but hear the embarrassment. “I took an oath, and I fulfilled it. You owe your life to Ari and Horsa more than to me.”
“I owe more debts than I can ever repay,” Sven murmured.
“Are you strong enough for a brief audience, Sven?”
“I think so. Turn me around so I can see.”
Erbark did so, and Sven scanned the crowd for familiar faces. He saw many.
Nightfire and Bui seemed unchanged, and Erbark had lost some more hair but otherwise was as he had always been. Einar looked older, as did Asa, who was much heavier on his lap than he remembered.
When was the last time she had a chance to sit on my lap?
Erika and Finn looked fiercer than before. Duxes Borya Zaghaf, Wolber Verden and Yver Verlren, his vassals, looked vaguely guilty, but Duxess Glyda Zaun looked upon him with a mixture of reverence and relief that seemed out of place on her face. Dux Gruber Ratsell was all smiles, making Sven wonder how much he owed to Wasfal, after recent events.
Then came the surprises. Horsa wore a red cloak now, and once Sven determined that Ragnar was not among the assembled crowd, he felt he already knew the cause. Arnora Stolz seemed out of place, but she stood at Erbark’s side. Eda Stormgul was absent, as was Pondr, and Sven wept inside for what he knew that must mean. Katla was all business, as always, though she betrayed her nervousness by fiddling with the braided silver and gold ring on her finger.
He cleared his throat, commanding their attention. “Who is first?” he croaked.
As the others were looking at each other, Katla stepped forward, raising her right hand in a gesture of salute.
“Weard Duxpite, I have yet to repay you for Tortz, and now I am doubly in your debt. How can I serve you?”
“I come to you as a representative of the Delegates — the ruling council that commands the Drakes of the Mass — to discuss terms for a long-lasting peace. The Delegates will withdraw from all the lands south of the Lapis Amnis, which will serve as a natural boundary between the Mar and the Drakes. Neither side is to violate this boundary by building settlements on the wrong side.”
“This is a matter for the whole Council to approve, but I would vote in favor of it.”
Sven looked to the duxes and saw no objections there.
“The Delegates have one other small request. They would like permission to send an envoy to Domus Palus to represent the Drakes to the Council as I represent the interests of the Mar among the Delegates.”
Again, Sven looked to the rest of the Council. “Is this acceptable to you? A permanent envoy from the Delegates might help head off future conflicts.”
“It is unprecedented,” Pidel said. “But as the rules of magic have changed, so too may some of our customs.”
The other Mar murmured their agreement.
“Let it be as the Council wills,” Sven murmured, nodding his head.
“I will inform the Delegates,” Katla said as she stepped back.
Several others stepped forward, but Erika interposed herself between them and Sven.
“The Mardux needs to rest. The other petitions can wait until he returns to Domus Palus. Wea
rd Schwert, you will rule as seneschal in his absence, as the law describes. Erbark and Arnlaug, rebuild the Protectorates’ recon stones. Bui, have your draxi set up a visible boundary along the Lapis Amnis. The war might be officially over, but that doesn’t mean all the Drakes know that yet. Until the Mardux returns, mourn your dead, tend your wounded and visit your families.”
Dux Verlren opened his mouth to object but closed it after a brief glance at Nightfire and the other duxes. The Mar filed out of the house. Erbark was the last to leave, closing the door behind him.
“Asa, go to your room. I need to talk to your father for a little while,” Erika said.
Asa seemed on the point of refusing.
Sven kissed her on the cheek before the words could leave her mouth. “Do as your mother says.”
Asa stared at him hard as if calculating the probability of successfully arguing her case, but in the end, she obeyed. When she was gone, Sven met Erika’s gaze.
“Nothing I say will convince you that I only did what had to be done,” he said flatly.
“And nothing I say will convince you to give up the Chair and settle for a quiet life teaching at Nightfire’s Academy,” she countered with a surprising lack of venom.
Sven cocked his head.
“Volund is dead, and Flasten has chosen your friend Horsa to rule them. None of the duxes oppose your rule. The Mass has broken off its invasion and agreed to a truce between Drakes and Mar. The adepts have proven their value, and it seems unlikely that magic will ever be the secret power of the wizards again. What is left to do?”
“Deal with the Drakes out of the lands south of the Lapis Amnis — the damnens, the ochres, the ravits and the gobbels. Nurture the diplomatic relations between Mar and Mass. Put a stop to slave-taking or, at the least, prevent the kind of slavery that steals a mother from her family.”
Erika stared at him with tears in her eyes, her emotions conflicted. He looked away, watching the shadows cast by the fire flicker and twist on the wall.
“You know my head is always filled with grand schemes and far-reaching plans,” he said. “I cannot lay that part of me aside no matter how hard I try.”
“I don’t want you to give up your vision. It’s why I married you, remember?” She laid a hand on his arm. “But let me be a part of it. I helped Finn plan the adepts’ revolt and showed them how to make Blosin gloves. I’m not completely useless, you know.”