“I’m fine now,” I said. “I’ll admit I suffered a turn of battle madness, but it has passed now.”
“That was more than battle madness,” said Moira firmly. “Something happened to you, something bad.”
Then I noticed that the men on the walls were gone. In fact, no one was visible other than my two children and Gram. Was this some sort of trick? “What’s going on?” I demanded, struggling to keep my growing irritation hidden.
“His eyes turned black on the field,” said Gram. “I saw them, just before he hurled me at the walls.”
“Mom will be here in a minute,” announced Matthew. “She wants to talk to you before you come in.”
“Just open the shield gate,” I said. “This isn’t necessary.”
Penny stepped out from the town gate. “I’ll be the judge of that, Mort.” She nodded at the three of them and they withdrew, leaving us alone. Moving as close as she could, she stood just a couple of feet away, with the thrumming power of the barrier enchantment standing between us. The heavy wood of the city gate closed after Gram and my children passed through it.
I stared at her, and despite the heavy pulsing aythar of the shield between us I could see her heart-flame, her aystrylin, flickering within her. Compared to that of the others, it was a pale wan flame. She was healthy, physically, aside from her missing arm; even the level of her aythar was what one would usually expect for a normal human, but her aystrylin was dangerously weak. In contrast to her outward health, her aystrylin resembled that of an extremely elderly woman.
It wasn’t something I had noticed before. Normally I only saw people’s aythar. Discerning the aystrylin was only possible for me through a tight link, such as that formed for deep healing. I should have been paying closer attention to her.
She never fully recovered after the battle with Mal’Goroth. At one point she had given most of her life to me, feeding me her vitality to strengthen me while I struggled inside the She’Har spellweave that held my soul captive. It had nearly killed her, and she had been deathly ill for weeks afterward.
I had wanted to believe she was the same. I should have made sure.
“I saw the fight from the chamber in the castle,” she said, breaking me out of my reverie. “It was terrible. What happened to you? How is this possible? Did you become one of them again?”
No! That wasn’t it, it couldn’t be, but even as I denied it to myself I knew the truth. I had been hearing the whispering voice of the void for years now, ever since I had regained my humanity. Today I had let it fill me. By them she meant the shiggreth, undead monsters we had spent years fighting.
“Of course not,” I answered hastily.
“Gram said you took a crossbow bolt through the heart,” said Penny, her voice hard.
I nodded. “I did. It nearly killed me, but I healed it.”
“Like the shiggreth?” she accused.
My anger from earlier had vanished, replaced by fear, not of her, but for her—fear of myself. “No,” I declared, staring down at my hand. “I’m still in control of myself. What happened was temporary, like when I listen to the wind, or the earth. I’m still human.”
She pointed, directing my attention over my shoulder. “What about them?”
Behind me, forgotten, stood an army of inhuman soldiers. Dead soldiers. With my magesight, I could see the black cords binding them to me, connecting them to my silent, still heart. “Oops,” I replied convincingly.
The corner of Penny’s mouth rose briefly, just a hint of a smirk at my poor attempt at humor, but it vanished as soon as it appeared. “I need better than an ‘oops,’ Mort. A lot of people depend on us.”
Focusing my will, I severed the links and an army’s worth of man-like soldiers collapsed to the ground behind me. Meeting Penny’s eyes again, I spoke, “You’re right. I wasn’t even close to normal. I’m still not there. Give me a few minutes.”
Surprisingly, she lifted her arm over her head and gave the signal to open the shield gate. The barrier between us vanished. “I rejected you once,” said Penny. “Do you remember? I swore I’d never do it again. You sound like yourself to me.”
She started forward, as if to embrace me, but I stepped back quickly. “Wait. It isn’t safe yet.” I could still see her faint aystrylin, and I feared that even a moment’s touch would kill her.
I needed to restore myself. I was still wrapped in the void. I could force my heart to beat, but that wasn’t enough. If I released the connection, I would probably collapse. Or maybe I would start living normally, I thought. I really had no idea. There was nothing physically wrong with my body anymore, but my intuition told me that I might just fall dead if I released the void too suddenly.
Perhaps if I replace it with something else first. Opening my mind, I listened, finding the deep, slow sound of the earth beneath me. I put all my attention on it, and it became louder. I forced my heart to beat and filled my lungs with air, and then I sank into the mind of stone. Pain shot through me but faded as quickly as it came, dulling into insignificance as I expanded to become more, until my body comprised not just a human form, but the soil it walked upon.
I studied that body. Its heart had grown still again. It needed something more. Drawing it down, into myself, I transformed it, filling it with stone and fire. Then I contracted, making myself smaller, until that hot, rocky lump was my only flesh. Clawing my way upward from the darkness, I stood above ground once again, staring out at the world with alien eyes.
My memory was fading, but the animal in front of me reminded me what I wanted. I wanted to be like it. Gradually, I rebuilt the image of the—what was it again? Then I saw it, a man. That was me. That is me. I let it flow into me, and the world changed. Colors gained new meaning, and I felt the air on my skin. The woman—Penny—Penny was close by. Breathing, I felt my life moving within me and my thoughts became fluid again.
I watched her for several minutes, taking stock of myself and remembering who I was. Penny was patient, but eventually she spoke, “Mort?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I said after a moment. When she came at me again, I held up a hand. “Let me be sure.” Then I bent down and put my hand on a patch of green grass, watching it to see what happened. I felt no life transfer, and when I removed my hand, the grass still looked green.
Glancing up at Penny again, I realized I could no longer see her aystrylin. “Yeah.” I nodded. “I think I’m me.”
She took my hand, and then she hugged me. Together we walked back into Washbrook.
Chapter 25
“Where is everyone?” I asked Penny. The town was empty, devoid of people.
She laughed. “In the castle courtyard. I told Elaine not to open the Washbrook shield until everyone was safely within the castle shield. That way if you really were insane, they’d be safe.”
I frowned as I looked down into her brown eyes. “What about you?”
Penny patted my cheek. “I’m with stupid.”
“Hey!” I muttered, mildly offended, but she cut me off.
“Live or die, Mordecai, I’m in it with you. After everything that happened before—with the shiggreth, the Dark Gods, all of it—I promised myself I would never turn my back on you again.”
I growled, “That’s a dangerous philosophy. With all the weird things that happen to me, I’d rather you think more about yourself. What would our children do if—”
Penny interrupted me again, “Stop and turn that sentence around. I’ve made my decision. If you want them safe, if you want us safe, then you had better be more careful what you do—or become.”
Watching her from the corner of my eye as we walked, I knew I wouldn’t win this argument. The wind tossed her soft brown hair and made me want to sigh, while her empty sleeve made me wince. She had suffered so much for me over the years, and yet I still couldn’t protect her—not from pain, not from the world, sometimes not even from me.
“I don’t deserve you,” I muttered.
She released my han
d to signal to Elaine to open the castle shield gate, then looked up at me. “Shut up. You deserve more than you know. Nobody talks about my husband that way, not even you.”
My guardsmen saluted as we entered, but kept their eyes on the ground, fearing to meet my gaze. I couldn’t say I blamed them. What I had just done was gruesome. Gram and Matthew stood in my path.
“We took the sub-commander prisoner,” Matthew informed me. “He’s unconscious, but once he wakes, Moira can learn a lot from him.”
I nodded, and then looked over his shoulder at Gram. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. How badly are you injured?”
The young knight shrugged. “A cracked rib, nothing more. Moira already took care of it.”
I held his gaze. “Forgive me, Gram. You didn’t deserve that. I was…not myself.”
“It’s already forgotten, milord,” he responded.
Maybe for you, I thought, but I have to answer to your father in the next life. What would he think of my actions?
The silence was broken when Gram spoke again, “About the bodies…”
I stifled an inappropriate chuckle. I should have had them bury themselves before I released my newly created shiggreth. Penny answered before I could, “Send a wagon and some men to strip the bodies, then organize the townsfolk. They can dig a trench to bury them.”
“What about our guardsmen?” suggested Gram. “They should help.”
Penny responded in a neutral tone, “We have met our duty to defend them. There are far too many for our men to deal with. You can detail half of the guards to assist, but keep the rest ready in case there are more enemies nearby. Make sure everyone is prepared to retreat within the walls if there’s any sign of another attack.”
I nodded in agreement. My wife had the right of it, though I had been unable to say it myself. I was still in shock from what I had done, and I wondered what should be done next.
Matthew took the lead. “No one has had lunch. After all that excitement I’m sure everyone is hungry. Let’s eat.”
Of course. I should have thought of that, though perhaps part of the problem was that I was the farthest thing from being hungry. Unlike most battles, I had emerged from this one feeling better than when I had entered it. I was practically bursting at the seams with energy. Food was the last thing I needed. Because you already ate enough for several lifetimes, I thought darkly.
***
While everyone ate, I went home. I needed to think, so I left our mountain cottage and took to the air, flying up until the peaks of the Elentirs were beneath me and the world appeared small. It helped, seeing the world that way; it made my problems seem smaller, less overwhelming.
Visions of what I had just done kept creeping into my thoughts, but I pushed them aside. They weren’t helpful, and I knew from long experience with such horrors that I would have plenty of time to revisit what had happened in my nightmares.
“I’m a long way from the simple boy who lived at the smithy,” I said to the landscape far below. “Every passing year seems determined to dye my soul a darker shade.”
That wasn’t helpful, so I decided to list the current problems. A mysterious forest appears where Lancaster used to be, and somehow, it’s tied to the ancient Illeniel She’Har. A new race of people arrives and promptly attacks us, for reasons I don’t understand. Intelligent machines have invaded the world, secretly attempting to enslave all of humanity, or maybe just to remake our world according to their own vision. Meanwhile, the She’Har I resurrected are led by my ancestor, who has no discernible morals, and may or may not be on our side.
It was human nature to seek a pattern. I wanted to believe all my problems were connected in some way that made sense, but I cautioned myself it could be a non sequitur. Some of these things could be entirely coincidental.
The She’Har initially came here to escape from an ancient enemy. Tyrion’s suffering and eventual holocaust was part of their long game to find a way to save themselves. I and my children were one result of that. The Illeniel She’Har had been brought back as a result of our actions. Now ANSIS, the ancient enemy of the She’Har, was here, and ironically my son had discovered during his recent travel that they were probably created by humanity as a response to a She’Har invasion.
Those things, fantastic as they were, had some sort of cause and effect, or perhaps even a circular cosmic cycle, but the disappearance of Lancaster and the appearance of this new enemy didn’t seem to fit. It seemed possible that the new enemy came from the primeval forest we had found, or from someplace like it. Those things might be connected, but they didn’t fit in with the rest of it.
Except for the fact that my son had detected translational magic at the borders of the strange territory that had replaced Lancaster. That implicated the Illeniel She’Har, indicating it might be some sort of result of their millennia-long plan to protect themselves from ANSIS.
Then again, it might be something they had done that was unrelated to that plan. Yet, if they had done it, and I was ignorant of it, then it must have been part of the knowledge removed from the loshti. That would tend to indicate it was part of the She’Har’s secret plan.
Now that I’ve established that I’m essentially clueless regarding current events, what can I do to gain more information? I reminded myself. Focus on what you can do.
Interrogating the prisoner was obviously our first and most promising source of potential information. Continuing Matthew and Gary’s project to locate ANSIS was equally important. I could also ask my son to investigate the magic around the border of the strange forest. It might help if we knew where it came from.
It might also help to talk to Lyralliantha. She hadn’t received the loshti, but being the last of the original Illeniels, she might have some knowledge that would shed light on what their plans had been. I didn’t relish the thought of another trip to their island, though, or the fact that even asking simple questions of her might take weeks of valuable time.
You need to delegate more, stupid, I told myself.
Moira was the obvious choice for extracting information from our prisoner, although I hesitated to put her in a situation in which she might break more of the rules the Centyr had created to protect themselves. She might also be able to speed up the time it took to gain information from Lyralliantha, or discover answers the She’Har meant to hide.
Am I willing to put my own daughter at risk? I was only one man, but I had incredible resources at my disposal, if I dared to use them. It really came down to whether I prioritized the safety of the world, or my family. My first instinct was to keep them safe, to try and do everything myself, but was that really in their best interest? My oldest children were grown, but if I didn’t allow them to leave the shelter of home, they’d never become true adults.
Honestly, the same was true of the Queen and the nation of Lothion. My actions in the past had been founded on the assumption that only I could protect them. They needed to be given the information and power to do so for themselves. My only previous attempt to do that had been the creation of the Knights of Stone, but they were gone now.
There were only a few surviving members of that order, Cyhan, Harold, Egan, William, and Thomas, and none of them had the earth-bond any more. After a period of years, it became too dangerous, slowly converting the men so bonded into golems of earth and stone. I had broken their bonds when they began to show signs of the change.
We needed them back. I wasn’t willing to subject more people to the earth-bond, but the dragons I had created were the perfect solution for that. I had just been too cautious to use them, giving them only to a few family members and the Queen. “That will change,” I muttered.
Having resolved myself, I dropped from the sky, stooping toward the ground and only slowing myself just before I reached the doorstep of my home. Conall was standing there, and he opened the door for me. “I wish you’d teach me to do that,” he said.
“It’s too—"
“Dangerous. I know. You t
ell me that every time,” he groused. “But you learned it.”
I frowned. “I don’t think you want to go through what I did to learn it. Sooner or later, everyone who has tried flying this way has wound up dead—usually sooner, rather than later.”
“But you keep doing it,” Conall reminded me, as he led the way. “Elaine and Elise have been examining the prisoner. They want you to come see him.”
I followed my younger son, thinking on what he had said. My flying skill was such that it was unlikely I would kill myself, unless I lost consciousness while in the air, but today’s events made me wonder. Could I die? I had just been shot through the heart, and here I was wondering about it. Had my internal transformation only been possible because I was already starting to listen to the earth when it happened? That might have made it easier to touch the void.
What if I was killed while unconscious? What if I was decapitated while conscious? I was pretty sure those things would be fatal, but I couldn’t be entirely certain, not anymore. There might be nothing more between me and becoming a monster than the beat of my heart.
When I had been trapped as a shiggreth before, it had been an artificial copy of myself making the decisions, while I was trapped as an observer within the She’Har immortality spellweave. That was not the case anymore. I was the one who had crossed the line this time, and it hadn’t been easy to come back. If it happened again, I wasn’t sure I would want to come back. It had felt so good.
It was like being drunk. My inhibitions had been gone, leaving me free to indulge my darker impulses. Pain had been a thing of the past and killing had felt natural, pleasurable. Even now, the void was only a heartbeat away, waiting for me to listen to it, to give it power and expression.
The example of Gareth Gaelyn was a warning. An archmage could easily lose control, giving themselves over to the impulses and drives of whatever they became. In his case, he had become a dragon, and after slaughtering his enemies, he had turned claw and fang on his friends and allies. It had taken him a thousand years to regain his humanity.