Children of Prophecy (9 page)

The sword dropped. “Are you all right?” Tal asked her.

“I’m fine,” she said, wide eyes taking in his sword and formal robes. “You’re here for them, aren’t you?”

He nodded wordlessly, starting to turn away from her.

“Then it’s the last mistake
you’ll
ever make,” she hissed, chaos fire suddenly flaring from her hands. Tal slammed against the wall as his shields solidified to full power.

The former Life Mage recoiled at the look in his eyes as he pulled himself back to his feet, ignoring the flame that formed a corona around his shields. Tal lifted his left hand and sent lightning hurtling at her. Her shields took the blow, but now a crackling aurora of lightning surrounded her.

More lightning flickered from his hand. The Chaos Mage’s attack wavered as she focused her power into her shield. At the moment of her greatest distraction, Tal’s sword flashed across space in a one-handed slash that opened up the woman’s throat and sent her crumpling to the floor in a spray of blood.

He leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily.
Even the
Life
Magi have Fallen. How far has this infestation spread?

With a weary sigh, he pulled himself to his feet. He made no effort to clean his sword – he no longer had the time. With every second that passed, a feeling of foreboding grew in his soul.

Tal hesitated outside the door. Just rushing in there was a recipe for disaster, guaranteed to get him killed. A moment more, then he released both his focus and his shields.

He breathed deeply, once, then twice. Lifting Kove’tar’s old sword once more, he reached into his mind, to focus. This time, it wasn’t the minor focus necessary to work any magic, but a state of almost meditation. Shields flickered into place around him and his sight shimmered with the silver glow of Form Sight.

A moment of hesitation, as he ascertained his memory of the magics and skills he would need, then he was ready. His left hand drifted into ready position and fire flashed from it, blasting the door to smithereens.

His mind ignored his body as it stepped over the rubble. His eyes and mind swept the room in infinitesimal instant, classifying threats. Lik’nar was by the crumpled body of the Hawk Car’raen, the form of a crouching vulture superimposed over his kneeling form. A single Swarmbeast Mage, his other form squirming with tentacles, stood by the heavy table, eyes focused on Car. One Raven stood with the Vulture, seemingly assisting him. Two Jackal Magi and a second Raven Mage had guarded the door and now reeled back from its destruction.

He seemed to be moving in molasses, but the others moved like they were enmeshed in tar. His left hand drifted over to send a blast of fire flashing across the room to blast into Lik’nar, killing him, the most powerful of the Chaos Magi, before he could even raise his shields. The Raven Mage who’d been aiding in the torture was blown across the room by the force of the blast, crashing into the floor by the Swarmbeast Mage.

Even as this was happening, his sword slashed out, almost lazily, and gutted the Raven Mage near the door as he reeled back. The Jackal by him managed to raise his shields before the sword reached him, bouncing it away.

A sense of mild irritation touched Tal. A single thought sent lightning flickering up and down the blued steel of the longsword’s blade. With the Islander blade now glowing with energy, he launched a backhanded slash with the sword. It sliced through the Jackal’s shield like it wasn’t even there, to bisect the Chaos Mage with a sickening crunch.

Rainbow-colored chaos fire hammered Tal’s shields for a moment. Without hesitation, he retaliated with normal-looking red flames, which shattered on the Swarmbeast Mage’s shields.

Tal spun to face the last three Magi, who had gathered themselves together. A Jackal Mage, a Raven Mage and a Swarmbeast Mage; they faced him in the traditional triangle formation of Battlemagi.

For an eternal moment, he didn’t move. Then he sheathed his blade and stepped forward slightly, raising his voice in the formal greeting and challenge of a Battlemage to Fallen Magi. “Greetings and defiance, Fallen Ones.”

The three Magi were silent, merely raising their hands as one and sending chaos fire battering at the young Battlemage.

Tal raised his hand, reforming part of his shield into a funnel. The chaos flame gathered in his hand, in a ball of fire growing larger with every second. After a few moments, he smiled coldly at the Chaos Magi. His shield reformed to normal as he lowered his hand, still holding the ball of multicolored flame. As more flame battered his shields unnoticed, he focused on the ball of fire. It flashed intolerably bright for an eyeblink, and then turned to pure white. He shifted his cupped hand around so it faced the Chaos Magi. With a flick, he flattened his hand.

A lance of white flame flashed across the room, cutting through the Swarmbeast Mage’s shields like fire through butter. It burned a hole the size of a man’s fist through the Mage’s chest then continued without slowing. The fire hit the wall with an explosion, as several kilograms of basalt were instantly vaporized.

Waves of heat and shards of rock battered the shields of the three surviving combatants. Car, still slumped half-unconscious on the floor, was protected by the heavy wooden table.

As the effects of the explosion died down, Tal faced the two remaining Chaos Magi. They began to back away, but Tal stood between them and the door.

The Death Mage felt nothing as he hurtled lightning at the weaker of the two Magi. The Chaos Mage’s shields flickered, but stabilized as the other Mage threw his power into it in a desperate attempt to save both their lives.

It failed. A moment after the Raven Mage began shielding the Jackal the lightning suddenly vanished. Before either Chaos Mage could react, fire blasted from Tal’s hands at the Raven Mage. With her power still tied in to the weaker Mage’s shield, the woman lit up like a living torch.

The last surviving Chaos Mage backed away desperately. His shields were still up, but a Jackal Mage’s shields would be less than paper against the power of a Mage who could do what Tal had done. “Mercy!” he begged. “Mercy,
please
!”

Tal’s eyes were cold as they settled onto the pathetic figure, still tightly locked into focus. “There is no mercy for the Fallen,” he said quietly. An immense wave of fire flashed from his raised hands, overwhelming the Jackal’s shields like tissue and incinerating the last of the Fallen Magi.

With the Chaos Magi dead, Tal slowly released the tight focus he’d maintained throughout the fight. He crumpled to his knees as the life seemed to leave him with it. A moment later, he began to throw up, adding the contents of his stomach to the mess of shattered stone, wood and bodies on the floor of the room.

Car returned to consciousness with a pounding headache. He touched his head gently, and opened his eyes to a scene he recognized quite well: the inside of a fort sleeping cell.
How did I get here? Last thing I remember, Lik’nar was trying to interrogate me.

Tal,
came the answer from Jor’nial.
He rescued you.

There were six Chaos Magi in that room!
Car thought in shock.

Yes. He killed them all, and then he brought you here.

Car sighed and slowly pulled himself to his feet. His ears caught a sound from outside the door, a
schnick, schnick, schick
noise. The sound of a sword being sharpened.

He slowly opened the door; using the focus disciplines he’d learned over a lifetime of wielding magic to ignore the headache. Sitting cross-legged on the other side of the hallway was Tal, Kove’tar’s old Islander blade across his lap as he ran the whetstone over it.

Car leaned on the side of the door. “Good morning,” he said softly.

“It’s afternoon, actually,” Tal said distractedly. “You’ve been out for almost a full day.” Tal didn’t look up. He put the whetstone on the ground and picked up a piece of steel wool, starting to polish the blade.

“Lik’nar?” Car asked. He knew what Jor had said, but he preferred to keep the fact that he had voices in his head under wraps. Besides, he had another reason for asking Tal.

“Dead,” Tal said flatly, still not looking up from the blade of the Islander sword.

“The others?” Car asked, knowing the answer now

“Also dead,” the youth replied harshly. “Nine Fallen Death Magi, one Fallen Life Mage.”

A silence descended for a moment, broken only by the scratching sound of the steel wool on the blued steel of the sword blade.

“You want to talk about it?” Car asked.

“No,” Tal snapped. “They’re dead and I’m not. Nothing else to it.”

Car nodded slowly, sadly. He stepped out into the hallway and sat down, facing Tal. “It isn’t really, Tal,” he told his adopted son quietly. “Killing is an ugly thing. It is only incidental to our real job, which is keeping people
safe
. Unfortunately, the only way to do so is often to kill those would harm them.”

The scratching sound had stopped. Car glanced down, to find that Tal had stopped polishing the blade and was now clenching the steel wool in his fist. He hid a wince of sympathy. Doing that
hurt
, but sometimes it was the only way you could control something.

Car leaned back against the wall and waited for his adopted son to speak. Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

“They never stood a chance,” Tal said suddenly, so softly that Car barely heard him. “
None
of them did. It was like fighting a sheep or someone’s pet: it can only scratch or hurt you, but you can kill it almost at will.” Small drops of blood began to be visible on Tal’s fist as he clenched the wool. “The last one… he begged me for mercy. He didn’t ask, he
begged
.” Tears began to slowly leak from the youth’s eyes, water on his face to match the blood on his hand. “And I killed him. I was in full focus; I didn’t even think to stop myself. He was a
Jackal Mage
, for the Gods’ sakes. He could never in a million years have hurt me; and I burned him down like he was vermin.”

Car looked at his son calmly. “Did you throw up afterwards?” he asked gently.

Tal’s head snapped up, tears still in his eyes. “What?” he demanded.

“Did you throw up afterwards?” Car repeated. “Did what you had done sicken you?”

The youth turned away, shaking the tears out of his eyes. “Yes and yes.”

“Good,” Car said flatly, meeting Tal’s eyes as his apprentice turned back to him, eyes flashing in anger. “From the day you entered that Academy, it has been instilled in you to offer mercy if at all possible. It is instilled in
every
Battlemage to do so.”

“That is because non-Magi are so outclassed by us that if we do not, few would survive to be Judged,” Car told his apprentice. “It is a sad fact however, that against our greatest foes we
cannot
offer mercy. A Swarmbeast, even a Drake, has no comprehension of mercy, compassion or anything even remotely like them. One of them would take your mercy and stab you in the back the instant you turned away.

“A Swarm-master can be trusted even less than his ‘beasts,” he continued, “for they hate us with a passion you cannot understand. Most especially, we
cannot
offer mercy to the Fallen. They have already broken the greatest Oath a human can swear.
Nothing
can bind one of them.”

“I know,” Tal admitted with a sigh. “Even so, it is sickening.”

“As it should be,” Car replied firmly. “Never rejoice in the slaying of a foe. To take a life is the worst thing a man or Mage can ever be forced to do.”

Car’s face turned hard. “Which isn’t going to stop me killing that son of a bitch Jyd’har when I get my hands on him.”

The hooves of the two horses rang loudly on the cobblestones as Car and Tal approached the gates of the Kahir Citadel. The city of Kahir spread out behind them, cobbled roads and two story stone houses contrasting with the immense ten, even fifteen, story marble and crystal towers. Those towers, constructed by a combination of magic and over two thousand years knowledge of structural engineering, housed the merchant guilds and manufactories.

The Citadel’s outer wall was impressive, a ten-meter high featureless expanse of smooth gray granite that encircled an area a quarter of a mile across. The Earldom army patrolled the top of the wall, the last fading flow of sunlight glinting off pikes and crossbows.

The gates themselves were immense constructions of wood and steel, four meters wide and as many high. Each half-door massed several tons and took an immense amount of machinery to move. A pair of fifteen-meter-high towers flanked the gates, each level sporting a pair of immense ballistae.

Car stopped his horse just in front of the gates and called up, using a touch of Air to make certain the guards heard him, “Open in the name of the High King,” he commanded loudly.

A moment passed before a voice called down from above: “The High King has no authority here,” it replied. “So take yourself off and shove it, Kingsman.”