The Rift War (23 page)

"That thing isn't big enough for a whole suit of armor." He stepped out of the
firelight.

"It's star-metal and chain mail. It doesn't have to be thick and heavy to work." She
reluctantly let go of Baedrix's arm. "Thank you."

"You're not the first to suffer from the saddle, Lady," Baedrix responded, with a bow. "I
have a marvelously effective horse liniment--"

"I can tend myself with magic, thank you."

He laughed and backed away. She turned to watch Karstis pick up her duffle, and the
night turned blinding bright.

Stupid!
she screamed at herself, as she reached for Braenlicach--fortunately,
still hanging at her hip. That uneasiness nibbling at her didn't come from the eerie surroundings,
the monsters-hiding-under-the-bed prickly feeling of being watched.

Braenlicach exploded into brilliance as she drew it, and beat away the enemy's light,
turning it purplish black in contrast. Her companions staggered in all directions, reaching for
their weapons or trying to calm the horses. Karstis went down, the duffle flying from his hands.
Grego flung himself on the duffle and slid across the ground.

She raced to intercept him almost before she realized what was really happening. A
streamer of black light pulled on the duffle, dragging it toward the ruined manor house. Grego
still held onto it, and--wonder of wonders--flares of blue and green magic spurted up from his
hands and his feet as he resisted.

Then Emrillian snatched at the duffle.

Red light filled her eyes as another explosion flung her across the camp, over the fire.
Somehow she held onto Braenlicach. Later, she thought perhaps the sword had held onto
her.

Harsh cries rang across the clearing in front of the ruins. Horses screamed, metal
clanged. Emrillian struggled to her feet, not quite sure what was up and what was down. Her
entire body tingled and felt scorched and she couldn't see for a handful of precious seconds.
When she blinked the red haze from her eyes, her companions battled against a force of
dark-clad warriors that outnumbered them five to one. Pellen went down, clubbed from behind while
he fended off two dark warriors, one battering at him with a longsword while the other tried to
stab him with a long spear dripping poisonous green light.

Her eyes cleared more, and she realized those men weren't dressed in dark clothes, but
were wrapped in a black haze.

"Estall help us," she growled, and launched herself at the knot of men around Grego,
kicking him and trying to wrest the armor-filled duffle from him.

Emrillian remembered too clearly Mrillis' stories of how the Nameless One animated
dead bodies in his service. How much damage could the dead take before they stopped fighting?
She pushed that thought away and slashed at the first man. His head came off like his neck was
wax. She stabbed and hacked and kicked. Braenlicach shot out coronas of blue-white light that
shoved away the enemy warriors just as effectively as repulsor fields on Moerta subdued riot
crowds.

Grego got back to his feet with the duffle slung over his shoulder, and finally loosed his
own sword to join the battle. They stood back-to-back, just like in the innocent days of Archaics
tournaments and battle games. Emrillian had a moment of breathing room when Braenlicach
drove away the enemy warriors for a good five meters around them. She released the shield
around her armor and directed a Thread full of power to Grego.

"Shield us!" she shouted, when he staggered at the surge of energy.

"You've got a lot of faith in me," he snapped, his voice ending with cracked
laughter.

Through the pale blue light that surrounded them, expanding to push the enemy away,
Emrillian saw their companions still battling. She wished a moment later she hadn't looked,
when she saw Darian lay sprawled on his back, gurgling and convulsing as his life spilled away
through the gaping hole in his chest. Pellen was a still heap on the ground that the enemy soldiers
tripped over as they battled Baedrix and Karstis, who had also managed to position themselves
back-to-back.

"Baedrix, duck!" she shrieked, as a red, black-streaked lance of light shot through the air
from inside the ruins.

He turned to look at her, and she realized too late that was the worst thing she could
have done. The light burst between him and Karstis, knocking them both forward, away from
each other and onto their knees. A surge of death-walking soldiers overwhelmed them, crushing
them to the ground in two writhing, kicking, unnaturally silent heaps.

"Yield!" A sour tenor voice rang through the ravaged camp.

"Don't tell me," Grego said. "Please tell me that's not him."

"I wish it wasn't." Emrillian nudged him with her left elbow and turned to the left so she
could see the manor house. They had used the same maneuver in Archaics battle games enough
times, he turned to the left as well, without hesitating, keeping their backs to each other.

Around them, the enemy soldiers fell back, snatching at the arms and legs of the men
who still lived. Emrillian took some hope from the fact they dragged Pellen into the circle of
prisoners, as well as Taran, meaning only Darian was dead.

"Well, well, well, little sister, you have indeed grown up," Edrout said as he appeared
from the ruins, surrounded by a nimbus of writhing purple and poison green light. He wore the
same rich clothes she had seen him wearing at the tunnel leading to the Stronghold. Was it only a
day ago? Two days ago? He walked up to the edge of Grego's shield, now four meters in radius.
Smirking, he tapped at it. Red sparks snapped at his fingers and he staggered back, scowling, and
shook his hand.

"Good job," Emrillian whispered. She knew better than to laugh.

"An entire suit of star-metal armor. How inventive. Did you spend your entire life on
Moerta creating it?" Edrout clasped his hands behind his back. He lost the image he must have
been trying to portray, when his cloak got in the way. "It's bonded only to you. Clever, to make
sure it can't be worn by anyone else, even if you were rather foolish to leave it lying about
instead of wearing it. Not that a suit of star-metal armor would have done you any good now."
He gestured at the prisoners, who all knelt in a row now, swords at their throats, held tight by
enemy hands on their arms, enemy boots resting on their ankles, enemy spears at their
backs.

"I can probably get your helmet out and on your head, if you keep him busy," Grego
whispered. "Will that help?"

"It can't help me with battle strategy. Thanks." Emrillian blinked away a few tears of
appreciation for her good friend. She prayed she hadn't brought Grego and Karstis and all the
others here to die so soon, so wastefully, because she hadn't had the brains to actually wear the
armor she had spent so long making.

"Maybe I should have you make me my own armor." Edrout paced around the edge of
the shield. He didn't tap at it again. Emrillian dared to hope Grego was indeed keeping him away
from them.

Or was he only playing with them, and any moment he would shatter the shield like a
soap bubble and attack? She knew Edrout would go for Grego, first, just to hurt her.

"I'm too busy to take orders now, thanks." She nudged Grego to have him turn, so she
could keep facing Edrout. He would have to go through her to hurt Grego. She wished she could
do something to protect the others.

"You will take orders from me when we are married." Edrout paused, visibly waiting for
a response from her.

Some of the prisoners let out curses, and were slapped across their faces by mail-clad
hands. Bloody noses and cut lips and cheeks didn't cool their fury and made them look even
more defiant. Baedrix was stonily silent, but even through the dark haze of the soldiers that
seeped through the air to partially cloud the prisoners, the icy fury on his face spoke
volumes.

"Legends tell of minor kings who offered their daughters in marriage to the heroes who
saved their kingdoms or retrieved magical swords or shields for them. What will Athrar give me
when I hold Braenlicach?" Edrout continued, his voice rising a few notes, his expression
tightening. "A bargain, little sister."

"I am the daughter of Athrar. You are the son of the Nameless One, spawned on his
great-granddaughter, Megassa the traitor."

"I will be whoever I want to be. And you will be whatever I say you will be. He who
holds Braenlicach rules the world."

"Queen Emrillian Warhawk holds Braenlicach," Grego spat. "Or haven't you taken a
good look lately?"

"She will give me the sword."

"Never," Emrillian said, and wished she didn't sound so hopelessly melodramatic. "My
father will finish you--"

"Your father? Athrar sleeps. He won't wake without Braenlicach. Don't waste your
strength, calling for help. No one can hear you. I made sure of that." He chuckled and held out
his hand, almost touching the edge of the shield. "I know your weakness. All of you are so weak.
Shall I threaten the life of one of your companions here?" He gestured at the prisoners. "Or all of
them? Will you really sacrifice all their lives to hold onto that sword?"

"Now you're going to offer to let me sit on the throne next to you if I give you
Braenlicach. And help you kill my father. And defeat the Moertans who are even now
surrounding our shores with machines that will drain all the power from the Threads," Emrillian
said, making her voice as bored as she could. It was hard, when a mental tap against the nearest
Threads revealed he spoke the truth--she couldn't call out to anyone. "You are so behind the
times, Edrout. Villains like you went out of style more than a century ago."

"Do not mock me!" Poison green bursts of light flared up from him.

Emrillian blinked, stunned, when the dark soldiers wobbled for a moment.

Like puppets when the puppet master fumbled the controls that guided their strings.
Edrout's power, obviously, was strained nearly to its limits. If she pushed him hard enough,
fought him hard enough, would his power break? Could she break through his shield that kept
her from reaching through the Threads? If he lost control of his death-walkers, her companions
would be safe. What would it take to drain Edrout completely?

"I don't need to kill Athrar. I'll simply leave him to sleep forever in the Vale of Lanteer."
Edrout regained his poise and his smirk when Emrillian flinched at that threat. "He won't hear
you when you call for help, no matter how loud you scream. Poor little princess, abandoned by
your parents, turned into a slave, all because of a few useless prophecies. No one will help you.
Do you want your friends to die? Give me the sword, and all of you will live."

"No, he won't hear me, will he?" she whispered, as an image filled her mind, terrifying
and dangerous. But maybe the only chance she had.

Emrillian had grown up on the tales of the last battles with the Nameless One and
Edrout, and of the weaving of the Threads into the dome that protected their world and held
Athrar in his healing sleep. Her father wouldn't hear her until he awoke. But she could wake him.
Perhaps.

What if it wouldn't take the Zygradon to heal and awaken her father? What if all he
needed was Braenlicach? But first, she needed to push Edrout until his control and power
snapped.

"Papa!" she shouted, with her voice and her mind, and reached with all the power of the
armor hanging from Grego's back, as well as the strength Braenlicach gave her. She felt the
reverberations and the peculiar resonance of the magic that enclosed the Vale of Lanteer, and
marked the pathway through the Threads.

"Poor little girl," Edrout said, standing back and resting his hands on his hips. "Call as
long as you want, as loud as you want. You won't wake him up. Nothing can wake him up except
the Zygradon. Isn't that what you've been telling all your friends?"

"Aren't the Zygradon and Braenlicach linked?" Grego whispered.

"They are, man from the future," he retorted, his voice strained as if he would giggle in a
moment. "But I will hold Braenlicach, and without the key, who will find the Zygradon?"

"Papa! Mama! Hear me!" Emrillian called again, reaching deeper inside herself, calling
up all the power from all the Threads around her. The deadness of blocked communication
rippled like scum on a stagnant, half-frozen pond. At the back of her mind, she heard a deep
chiming of multiple chords, coming from the ground underneath her, from the air, from the dome
overhead.

That had to be the Zygradon, responding. And just as it had been in the days when
Mrillis had been released from near-death enchantment, and the dome had been raised, when
Meghianna had been too busy to follow the sound, Emrillian could do nothing to follow and find
it.

Emmi?
Mrillis called, his voice faint through the Threads.
Are you thinking
of...

Pray for me, Grandfather!

"What are you doing?" Edrout stalked up to the shield's edge, and through it as it popped
with a fizz of sparks. His death-walkers staggered for a few crucial heartbeats. Fury and fear
twisted his face into a caricature of his former arrogance. A sizzling sound and the stink of
scorched hair tinged the air.

"You want the sword?" Emrillian growled. She half-bent, turning away from Grego,
putting her whole body into the effort. "Take it--and choke on it!"

With all the strength of her body and her mind, she pulled back on Threads as thick as
her arm, wrapped them around Braenlicach, and let go, like an enormous slingshot made of all
the magic of the world.

Edrout bellowed, an incoherent, animal sound, and reached for Braenlicach. It sliced
through his hands and through his side just above his hip, and kept going. In an instant it was a
blur as it picked up speed. It cut through the ruins, melting and evaporating stone and wood. A
sonic boom erupted through the air, and then it vanished in a flash of blue-white light that lit up
the horizon and reflected off the dome, and back down to the ground.