Chapter Twenty-Three: Aspect of Strength
The Prince felt as though he was floating. He was lighter than air, and he was perched up high somewhere, his body pillowed by soft, fluffy, billowing white clouds. He wasn’t thinking about much of anything, just existing. Vague impressions came to him, here and there, something about the sunlight … something about the smell of pine trees … and something about a pair of fiery green eyes. He liked the thought of those green eyes, but at the same time it all seemed rather unimportant … so he floated on.
He came across a cloud that smelled like travel dust and lavender soap, and then a little while later a cloud that was black and stormy looking. It was pouting over in the corner all alone, trying to look dignified, but succeeding only in looking … well, stupid.
Another cloud, slowly fading away, was revealing the sky behind it – a cloud that looked as if it had been a storm cloud once, but now appeared rather harmless.
And then it was as if a bubble had been popped, and he was falling. Down through the clouds, down through the sky, toward a vast plain of swaying grass, and a wolf was howling in the distance, accompanied by a lion’s roar. An eagle screeched as it descended next to him and caught a small animal far below – a golden, furry thing whose luck had run out.
He fell and fell, down through the sky, and then as the grass grew closer he saw a small bed, far faaaaar below … but growing, growing so quickly, with the sound of air rushing past his head, the wind pounding in his ears, the animals screaming with one voice!
Light – and softer sound. Voices.
“But … how did he do it?”
“I’m not sure. One minute I’m telling him to kill me, the next minute I’m jumping up, the sun’s rising, and there’s the shadow-cursed Prince of Ravens lying next to me with a Valerium sword, looking like he’d been rolled through a briar patch, clubbed, and set on fire.”
The Prince opened his eyes. He was wearing a long white shirt, sitting in a small hospital cot, and it felt like every part of him was wrapped in some kind of soft white bandage. His eyes began to drag closed again … he was very sleepy …
“I felt myself die,” rumbled a voice, like boulders running down a hill.
“That’s impossible, Tomaz,” the girl responded.
TOMAZ?!
“Argh!” his eyes flew open and focused on the giant, and then the Prince did a kind of twitching jump as he realized that there was a dead man standing by his bed.
“Whoa! Calm yourself, princeling,” the big man said, shock turning to laughter as he began smiling from ear to ear. “Nice of you to come back to us.”
“How are you – you’re dead!” The Prince wasn’t certain what was happening. His memories were all confused, his brain foggy as if it had been overworked and was now sore and uncooperative.
“I killed you!”
“And brought him back,” a voice said from the door, “which I find more interesting.”
Leah and Tomaz both started and spun around. The Prince looked too and saw Elder Crane entering through the door of a rather small infirmary room. The Elder was wearing a simple gray-green cloak with a soft brown tunic and loose pants tied at the waist. Something hung around his neck, but the Elder tucked this inside his shirt when he saw the Prince looking at it. Crane came forward slowly, using a long wooden cane to steady himself.
“Elder,” Tomaz and Leah said, respectfully bowing their heads to him in deference. He nodded back, and then a smile brightened his face. The Prince felt as though the room had just grown lighter.
“I am sorry to intrude on your recovery,” Crane said, “but I wished to be the first to thank you, on behalf of the Kindred, for what you did last night. Elder Keri notified me when she thought you were about to wake; the woman seems to be almost clairvoyant – I expected to wait for a while, but it appears I arrived at precisely the right moment.”
The Prince looked at him, trying and failing to get his mind into some semblance of working order.
“Thank me?” he finally managed to ask. His tongue felt unwieldy and too large for his mouth. “Why is that necessary? I promised I would help, and I did not do it for you.”
He realized that what he’d just said sounded a little rude, and tried to speak again, but the Elder motioned him to silence, smiling as he did so.
“Please, there is no need to fret,” Crane said. “I understand what you are trying to say. You did not help the Kindred out of loyalty, and you did not do it out of belief in our cause. I understand this, and I know that your reasons are your own. But the Kindred do owe you thanks. You had the chance to betray us, a chance to end the Exiled Kindred forever, and you did not. You turned against your society, your nation, and even your family in order to do what you thought was right. And for whatever other reasons you might have had, I think that you did it out of duty to the realm, and out of an understanding of the worthiness of life. These are qualities that are found in true princes, those men and women who are not merely rulers but leaders as well. And it is for that I, and the Kindred, thank you.”
The Prince opened his mouth to respond, but he wasn’t quite sure what he could say to such a statement. His body ached, and he again began to question if this was all a dream.
“As to what I overheard when I was entering,” Crane continued, breaking the silence that had fallen, “I believe I might be able to shed some light on how your friend Tomaz came to be here. Do not worry,” he continued, as the Prince recoiled slightly, “he is very much alive and kicking, as the expression goes.”
“How?” the Prince asked. His throat felt sore, and his voice came out low and gravelly. “Is it real? Or have I gone mad?”
“Well – I think you might be a better judge of that than I,” Crane responded. “I have gathered that you have the ability to sense the life in others. A great gift indeed. Can you sense life in Tomaz?”
The Prince looked at the big man, taking in his appearance. He looked the same – that much was certain. The Prince squinted his eyes, and the man stayed where he was. Tomaz reached out a hand and briefly squeezed the Prince’s shoulder.
“Go on,” he said. “I promise I’ll still be here when you open your eyes.”
The Prince, still unsure, took a deep breath and let his eyelids flutter closed. He reached through the Raven Talisman, searching … and there he was. To his surprise, Tomaz did feel like Tomaz … and more. Much more. The Prince couldn’t understand it, but it felt like something out of his childhood … no, that couldn’t be. His mind was still hazy, and he was confused … but what was important was that the Elder was telling the truth – the man was alive. And he was certainly Tomaz.
“But how?” he repeated, slowly opening his eyes again.
“What you call the Raven Talisman is known to the Kindred as the Aspect of Life,” Crane said, “and it is my belief that when you refused to accept the death of your friend, you forced the life you had absorbed from him back into his body.”
The Prince stared at him blankly for a long moment.
“What?”
“When you absorb a person’s life,” the Elder began, “they become a part of your subconscious, yes? Correct me if I’m wrong, for I have never studied this myself, only gleaned the information from others who read it in old books that have long since crumbled to dust. When you kill someone, they become a part of you, yes? And so it was an easy thing for you to bring him back – he was a part of you. He was still alive in a sense, and you carried the strength and the power of enough men to force those memories and that strength back into him.”
“But why couldn’t he do it before?” Leah asked. “He’s killed men before, and I’ve never seen him do anything like that.”
“I believe the answer lies there,” Crane said, motioning to the sword that had been laid, in its sheath, on a table by his bed on top of a pile of his clothing.
“A sword?” Leah asked.
“Look closer,” Crane said.
Leah leaned in, brow fu
rrowed in concentration. A bare second later she gave an uncharacteristically large gasp of surprise and turned to stare at the Prince, one hand holding the pit of her stomach. The Prince looked at her dumbly, his head still feeling like it was full of cotton, unable to hold form or thought without a good deal of effort. To his surprise, she crossed to his bedside, grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his face close enough to hers that they were almost nose to nose.
“How did you get it?” she asked.
“It’s – it’s the sword I got back in Vale!” he sputtered, trying to understand what had caused this reaction. She released his head, and stepped back, pointing at the sword.
“This is Aemon’s Blade! It’s not just a sword; it’s the sword! The first Valerium blade!”
The Prince’s first reaction was to laugh at her. She had picked an odd time to make a joke … he looked over at the blade and began to think they were all playing a joke on him. Aemon’s Blade should be somehow … special. But this – it was just a plain sword. Yes, it was made of Valerium, but it had a simple handle wrapped in copper wire to prevent slippage, a strong but simple cross guard, and a plain oval pommel to counter the weight of the long, curved blade. It was just a sword.
“That’s impossible – why would you say such a thing?” he asked Crane, looking over the girl’s shoulder skeptically.
She reached over, and tried to grab the sword.
There was a flash of light, and she was flung backwards into the Tomaz’s arms, unharmed but obviously shaken. She shook her head and refocused her eyes on the Prince.
“How? How?”
The Prince had no answer, but could only stare dumbfounded at the blade.
“I heard a few soldiers talking about the battle between him and the Prince of Oxen,” Tomaz said slowly, scratching his bearded chin thoughtfully. “It seems at one point, he was thrown into the Temple - the Temple of Aemon. The Prince of Oxen followed him and brought the entire place down; there’s barely a single column left standing. One of the only things they found in the rubble was a plain Valerium blade.”
“I lost my sword,” the Prince said thickly, “but I found it again.”
“It wasn’t your sword,” said Elder Crane, hands folded behind his back, a strange look on his face. “It was Aemon’s.”
“But … how was I even able to touch it? Leah told me it was buried where he died, because they couldn’t move it.”
Crane looked at him for a long moment before glancing at both Tomaz and Leah.
“I will now tell you something I must ask you not to repeat outside this room. It is information that is known only to myself and the members of the Council of Elders, with perhaps a handful of others. I would ask Eshendai Goldwyn and Ashandel Banier to leave, but what I have to say concerns them too.”
The Elder took a deep breath as if steeling himself.
“It concerns your father.”
Fire shot through the Prince’s body, gathering in his fingers and toes and lifting the hair on his arms and neck. His vision narrowed in on the Elder to the exclusion of all else. The fuzzy feeling in his head was replaced with the sharp, cold feeling of a well-honed razor.
“My father?” he asked breathlessly. The Elder nodded.
“Twenty years ago your father was sent on a mission to the Empire.”
“Mission?”
“Yes. He and his Ashandel partner were Rogue scouts.”
“He was … my father was an Exile?”
Crane nodded.
“One of our most skilled Spellblades, born here to Exiled parents. His father died before he was born, and his mother, your grandmother, died in childbirth. He was raised by all of the Kindred, as our orphans are; he was everyone’s son, everyone’s brother. He was the last of his line, and he was treated with respect because he showed such promise.
“It was thought that he died on his first mission to Lucien. The last report we had from him and his Ashandel said they were infiltrating the Fortress itself. He no doubt sent it when he did, knowing we wouldn’t be able to stop him. He was smart and headstrong, and in the years since I have often thought that we should have waited to send him out … but his Ashandel was older than he, as was customary, and it was thought that the two of them were so well paired that this would be our first chance to see the inner workings of the Imperial Fortress with your father’s skill and his Ashandel’s experience. They sent word that they were attempting to gain access to the palace on the previously noted night, and then they disappeared. What we have learned since, is that your father infiltrated the Most High, and was brought into an audience with the Empress herself, where it is rumored he fell in love. He became her consort, though we cannot be certain whether it was for true love or in an audacious attempt to gain information. In any case, once you were born and found to be a viable Child of the Empress, she had your father killed. It is a perverse sign of the respect she had for him that he was killed by a Blade Master, not by the Death Watchmen; he was thought too dangerous for anyone else to deal with.”
The Prince had to work moisture back into his throat before speaking.
“How do you know all of this?” he asked.
The Elder looked to Tomaz and raised an eyebrow. The big man, face white and eyes wide, nodded his head the barest fraction, and the Elder continued.
“This information came to us when Tomaz joined our ranks.”
The Prince looked up at the big man, whose face was now a mask of grief and pain as well as unquestionable shame.
“What does he mean?” the Prince asked Tomaz. The big man took a deep breath, his brows drawn together and his mouth turned down at the edges; his black eyes bore a deep sorrow, making him look suddenly much older than his years.
“I told you I was asked to commit an act that led me to betray the Empire.”
The Prince nodded numbly.
“That act was to kill the Empress’s consort and his travelling partner. To kill your father and his Ashandel.”
His eyes were locked on the Prince’s, wordlessly asking for forgiveness and understanding, but not expecting it. It was clear that no matter what pardon the Prince could try to give, Tomaz had already eternally judged himself unworthy.
“That’s why you wouldn’t let me leave in the mountains,” the Prince said softly. “That’s why you came back for me in the Seeker’s dungeon, and that’s why you took the blow from Ramael’s ax that should have killed me. You thought you were in my debt.”
Tomaz nodded. He cleared his throat gruffly and shifted his weight, putting his hands on his hips; the Prince realized the big man was close to tears.
“I can never bring your father back,” Tomaz said, his voice rough and heavy with years of regret, “but when we found you in the mountains, I made it my duty to protect you. I couldn’t save your father, but I could save you. Even if it meant saving you from yourself.”
There was a long moment when no one spoke. The Prince’s mind seemed to have gone blank. Fatigue and shock had addled him, and he couldn’t put coherent thoughts together anymore.
“But what does any of this have to do with the sword?” Leah asked.
Elder Crane nodded and continued.
“The sword was the first Valerium weapon forged, but also the first sword enchanted as a Spellblade’s weapon. Being a Valerium weapon, the link forged was much more powerful than anticipated, and when Aemon died, we found that none could touch the blade. Aemon had a power in his blood, the seed of the same power that the Empress had. They brought it with them from across the sea, and when they settled here that power began to dim. The Empress found a way to sustain that power, but Aemon had fled before he could learn from her and his power died out, though some trace of it remained in his blood; when he came here and found Valerium, and used his blood to bind it to him, that dormant seed grew and blossomed, allowing him to fight and defeat the Tyrant when she invaded. That seed was, we believe, passed down from him to his son, from that son to his daughter, and so on and so
forth until your father.”
Leah and Tomaz both looked as though they’d been punched in the gut. The Elder fell silent as he gave them time to absorb this piece of information, and the room became heavy with unspoken disbelief.
“But the line died out with Aemon!” Tomaz said in shock. “Aemon had no child!”
“He did, though it was kept secret,” Crane responded calmly in the thundering silence of the room. “The Empress had invaded to kill Aemon, and with that accomplished she retreated. It was imperative to keep Aemon’s continued line from her knowledge, which was part of why Aemon could not let the Empress take him alive. It is why he fought to the last on the spot we now call Aemon’s Stand.”
“His father was the last of Aemon’s line?” Leah asked in a hushed voice of awe. But Crane was shaking his head.
“No no,” the Elder said, “he is the last of Aemon’s line.”
Tomaz and Leah slowly looked at the Prince.
“No other of his line has been able to touch the sword, though we have tried again and again, obviously without telling them why. You are the first to know of your heritage, in fact. But it is my belief that because you are also the son of the Empress, you have the same seed of power in your blood that Aemon had, allowing you to handle a sword originally paired exclusively to him, and to his power of healing. That was the secret he stole from the Empress, the ability to bring a person back from the edge of death as long as there was the smallest bit of life still in them. To this day she does not have this power, for she did not deem it worth having and so gave it to Aemon while she kept the other Aspects, what you called Talismans, and gave them to her Children to help her rule. And you, with all of Tomaz’s memories conveniently stored away in your mind by the Raven Talisman, had more than enough to work with in order to bring him back. For you see, Aemon’s blood is in that blade, and I suspect that his sacrifice turned it into a Talisman of its own in a way, allowing you to turn the Raven Talisman from its black, corrupted purpose, back to what it was intended to be. Even still, the task was enormous, and in your exhausted state I do not think you would have been able to manage it without the strength you gained from Ramael - some of which was passed into Tomaz.”
A quick exchange happened between the two Rogues, but the Prince took no notice of it, for he was staring, uncomprehending, at the Elder, and continued to do so for a long time.
“I know it is a lot to take in, particularly after what has just happened. I will leave you alone, though once you feel adjusted enough to be up and walking I would like to speak with you further. There is the matter of the information you gave us on the castle of Roarke – the information you gleaned from your brother’s memories. Part of it is incomplete, and I would very much appreciate your help in filling in the blanks. But more than that … I will make no secret of the fact that you are the hero of this battle. The Kindred know your story, they know your identity as the Prince of Ravens and also, now too, as Aemon’s Heir. You gave me your loyalty until this crisis has passed, and passed it has. Now … you are free to choose. And I would like to know where that decision will take you. Where it will take us all.”
With a respectful nod of the head and a slight smile at the stupefied look on the Prince’s face, he made for the door, motioning for Leah and Tomaz to follow him and leave the Prince alone.
“Wait!”
The Elder turned.
“I have two questions,” the Prince said.
The Elder nodded, and waited.
“First … if I decide to leave, will you let me?”
“Yes,” the Elder said immediately. The Prince felt a huge weight fall off him that he hadn’t known he’d been carrying around. The Elder continued: “The Kindred are in your debt for our very existence. You are not our prisoner. The Council unanimously decided that should you wish to leave us, it is only right of us to let you. Though please know that you will always have a place here with us. You need not leave … you need not continue to run.”
The Prince couldn’t do anything but nod. He needed time to think about that.
“You had another question?” Elder Crane prodded.
“Yes … what was my father’s name?”
The Elder’s face took on a look of surprise and … hope.
“Relkin,” came the answer. “It is one of the oldest names of the Exiled Kindred. It means ‘true son.’ Your father chose it on his name day, when he turned eighteen. He chose it because he saw himself as the son of all the Kindred, who had brought him up together.”
“Relkin,” the Prince said, seeing how the name sounded. The Prince looked up to the Elder and said, quite simply, “Thank you.”
The Elder nodded, concealing a smile, and turned to leave. Tomaz and Leah, however, did not go. Crane turned and looked at them expectantly from the door, but neither of them moved.
“I think we should speak with him alone Elder,” Tomaz said. “About the matter we discussed before.”
The Elder looked momentarily surprised, but then nodded as if he should have expected this.
“It is your gift – you have the right to share it with whom you wish.”
And with that, the man turned and left, closing the door quietly behind him. Tomaz and Leah turned back to the Prince.
“Leah,” he began, before they could speak, “thank you for helping me -”
“Not necessary,” she said with one of her rare, dazzling smiles.
“It is,” the Prince insisted. “You seem to be making a habit out of saving my life.”
“Don’t forget that you saved mine too,” she responded quietly.
“I’m grateful all the same,” he said. She rolled her eyes.
“You princes and your manners,” she mocked. But then she grew quiet and silent, and even looked troubled. She turned to look at Tomaz, and the Prince looked to the big man as well.
“Tomaz … thank you for what you did. What you were willing to do, sacrificing your life the way you did to save the Kindred … to save me.”
Tomaz nodded, face drawn and still tight with emotion. The Prince cleared his throat, which had a sudden lump in it.
“Thank you,” Tomaz said, “for bringing me back.”
There was a long pause, in which Leah and Tomaz looked at each other once more. The Prince, finally realizing that there was something that had been left unsaid, looked at them with curiosity.
“What is it?”
They both looked at him, and then Leah cleared her throat.
“When you brought Tomaz back … you gave him something.”
The Prince looked from the girl to the man, confused about what she was saying, trying to see if this was one of her jokes.
“I … uh … I don’t understand,” he said, trying to be polite about it.
Leah opened her mouth again to speak, but then closed it and turned to Tomaz. He quirked an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged in response.
“I think I’ll just show him,” Tomaz rumbled. He began to undo the lacings on his simple cotton shirt.
“What are you doing, Tomaz?” The Prince asked, very confused.
“Just … just wait,” Leah said, looking at him anxiously, and the Prince realized that they were both frightened of how he would react to what they were about to show him. His mind began to race through all the possibilities as Tomaz undid the final lacings on his high-necked cotton tunic. Had the Prince somehow left him so badly scarred it would affect his life? Was there a gaping hole in his side, a permanent wound that would not close? What could frighten them this badly?
The giant pulled the shirt over his head, and the Prince felt his mouth drop open.
Tomaz’s chest was covered with dimly glowing red lines that seemed to pulse and twist as he moved. They outlined the muscles of his chest, his shoulders, his arms, his stomach. They moved up the sides of his neck and stopped just short of his chin, and now the Prince understood the purpose of the shirt’s high-necked collar. Tomaz turned slowly, and the Prince saw that the markin
gs, like carefully banked coals ready to burst into flame, continued on his back as well, lining every muscle.
“How is that possible?” the Prince asked. “I killed him. It should have gone back to the Empress.”
“We think you absorbed it along with his life,” Leah said, speaking slowly and watching him closely for his reaction. “And when you brought back Tomaz, you passed it to him along with his memories.”
Tomaz turned back to face the Prince, who found himself speechless. The Ox Talisman, for its part, continued to pulse with a fiery red light, beating in time with the giant’s heart.
Epilogue: Prophecies Fulfilled
The carrier pigeon landed on the man’s knee. He reached down and pulled the message from the small leather pouch tied to its foot. The bird flew off again, back to the south where it had come from.
“What’s the news?” a voice asked from behind the man.
The first man untied the small roll of parchment and read. He did so slowly, not wanting to miss any of the details.
“The first step is complete. The boy has defeated Ramael.”
The second man let out a low, rich chuckle.
“Good,” he said languorously, tasting the word. “What is next?”
“We wait,” the first man said. “He will come to us.”
“What was the prophecy from the Visigony?”
“It is only part of the larger cycle,” the first man reminded him.
“Yes,” the second man purred, “but this one mentions me.”
The first man recited it for him in the sing-song voice of a bird:
The Raven shall kill the Ox
The Kin will gain a throne.
The Blood will stain the rocks
And all the land shall moan.
But once the Veil falls,
And after the castles crumble,
The Raven for his vengeance calls
And over his pride will stumble.
The Sword shall be reclaimed,
The fruits of Empire sour;
But once the Lion shakes his main,
So ends the Raven’s power.
The second man laughed – a long, rolling sound that sent pleasant vibrations through the first man’s skin, as he turned to walk away, his boot heels clicking on the stone floor of the aviary. A woman stood up abruptly from a chair in the corner where she had been waiting. Green lines ran along her neck and hands, slowly pulsing as she walked after the second man, undulating with each step. Two other figures, a man and a woman, both rose as well, the former with half of his face blackened as if burned and covered with glowing golden lines, the latter with grizzled gray hair that hung lank about her face.
“Well that was fun,” said the burned man. “I’ve always enjoyed sitting in drafty stone birdcages. But pray tell why we were invited to this again?”
“Hush,” said the gray haired woman. She bared her teeth at him in annoyance. “Would you rather they had left us out?”
“No,” said the smaller man, “I’d rather they had left us alone. I’d rather they had left everything alone – this world is full of pleasant distractions and there’s no need to change it. They meddle too much. They always have.”
“Not all of us can depend on luck to make things turn out in our favor,” said the first man, still seated with the pigeon’s message held lightly in his hand. He turned a single, piercing blue eye on the short man, whose golden eyes were laughing back at him, mocking him. “And not all of us have your appetite for ‘pleasant distractions.’”
The golden-eyed man snorted, and then turned to leave. The gray-haired woman followed him with a slow, loping walk, but stopped at the door and turned back.
“I do not approve of this plan,” she growled at the first man. “I do not think Mother would approve of it either.”
“Mother knows of it,” said the first man. “Do not underestimate her … there is very little any of us do that goes unobserved.”
The woman’s lip curled momentarily in contempt and disgust, and then she left.
The first man remained seated. Once the door had closed, he allowed himself a brief, small smile that pulled at the scars around the corners of his mouth, twisting them into a grotesque expression that had more than a hint of anticipation to it. The light of the setting sun played on his bald head, bare chest, and bootless feet. Strange markings, cold as ice and blue as the sky, swirled and began to glow, running from the crown of his head, down the back of his neck, branching along his arms to his fingertips, down his spine and around to his feet. He cast his sight outward, and looked into the future once more.
“Hurry along, little brother,” he whispered. “I have plans for you.”