Chapter Fourteen: What You Use It For
He yelled in surprise before he could stop himself, but the cry was cut off short as the sword pressed deeper into the skin of his neck.
“None of that now, little Exile,” the Defender breathed into his face, smelling of garlic and rancid meat, a combination so disgusting that the Prince almost emptied his stomach right then and there, sword or no sword. But he swallowed and was able to steal a glance to his right and left, trying to see where Tomaz and Leah were.
It was just past dawn, the shadows of the forest still long and cool about them. The campsite was just as they had left it, fire banked and food stashed close by. All three bedrolls were present, but where were the Exiles?
“Don’t worry, your friend is here too.”
The Defender grabbed a hank of his hair and, careful to keep the sword close as a warning to the Prince against doing anything foolish, pulled him upright. The Prince looked frantically around the campfire; he saw Tomaz, and as his gaze fell on the giant, the Prince felt his heart lurch and momentarily stop dead in his chest.
The big man was sitting calmly on the ground, though he was neither tied nor bound and no sword or dagger was being held threateningly to his throat. Instead, a man dressed all in black, with a head shaved bald and arcane symbols tattooed into his skin, stood over him, holding a blood red crystal into which Tomaz was staring helplessly.
A Soul Catcher. A Bloodmage.
“NO!” the Prince roared, heedless of the blade at his throat, caring only for the safety of Tomaz. The Bloodmage threw up a hand, and immediately three Defenders were on him, all equally unwashed and dressed in the notorious Brown and Red, with insignias of the triliope on their chests.
“how … how?” He asked no one in particular.
“Came on you in the night, we did,” said one of the Defenders, apparently in answer to his question. “Samson there, our Bloodmage, he sensed you a ways off and said we’d wait for dawn, and then he’d come and hypnotize the guard and we’d have the other two of you no problem. Happened just like he said.”
“Quiet,” said a deep voice, and the Prince knew it was the Bloodmage speaking, for the voice had the raspy quality all of those cursed fellowship carried.
“Sorry, Samson,” the Defender said with true deference and contrition.
The Prince was thinking hard and fast, trying to find a way out of this situation. Where was Leah?
“Is the girl secured?” the Bloodmage asked, mirroring the Prince’s own thoughts.
“Yes, sir,” the Defender holding the sword to the Prince’s throat responded. “We tied her up and sent her back to Formaux. Captain Toraine is seeing to it himself.”
The Prince felt confusion and panic fighting inside him - why had they taken Leah? Had the orders changed about him? Was he to be killed here, by the Bloodmage, and his soul harvested to feed the mage’s power? But no, that made no sense, if they wanted to kill him, why would they take Leah?
And then it came together, the pieces falling into place with almost audible clicks - they didn’t know who he was. They had no idea who they were holding.
His brain went into overdrive, and took in every detail of the appearance of the men around him. All had several weeks’ worth of beard growth on their cheeks, and all smelled so foul that it was clear that they hadn’t had time to wash in an equally long period of time. The Bloodmage, from what the Prince could see, looked gaunt, so much so that he looked like a man starving to death - which most likely meant he had gone some time, perhaps several weeks, without sustenance. The Defenders all had several caked layers of mud and grime on their boots, and also halfway up their thighs. All also had large, angry looking boils on their necks and cheeks - bug bites.
They’ve been in the swamps east of Lake Chartain, the Prince realized in a rush of understanding. They’ve been looking for Exiles, like Tomaz and Leah, who use that way to get around the usual patrols.
Tomaz gave a small groan, and the Prince came back to the present, and realized desperately that he needed to do something - anything - to break that trance. If he didn’t, soon the big man would be beyond saving. But what could he do? He couldn’t move - the Defender with the sword was staring very intently at his neck to discourage any such thoughts. Leah wasn’t anywhere around -
As this thought crossed his mind, he heard, almost at the edge of hearing, the sharp whistling sound that signaled one of her daggers flying through the air.
The Defenders heard it as well, and they all turned to look into the forest behind them, wondering what the sound could be, and as they did, the long, wicked length of steel flew through the clearing and pierced the Bloodmage in the back, where his heart would be. The black robed man gave a small cry, and then fell to the ground.
For a long moment, no one moved, not the Defenders, not the Prince, not Tomaz as he came out of his trance. All of them simply sat and stared, uncomprehending, at the fallen figure of Samson the Bloodmage.
And then all seven hells broke lose.
The Prince threw himself backward, away from the sword at his neck, as the Defender holding it drew back the deadly metal and sliced it clean through where his head had been not seconds before. The Prince hit the ground and struck out with both hands and both feet, whipping around in a circular motion. He was rewarded when he connected with two pairs of ankles, depositing two men onto the ground. The remaining men, three all told still standing, drew their swords and made to run the Prince through.
An enormous figure came up behind them, casting a shadow over them as it blocked out the rising sun, and they turned to see a thoroughly enraged giant towering above them.
Seizing his chance, the Prince reached under his drape-over and pulled out the dagger Leah had given him. In three quick motions he flipped himself over, and then slammed the dagger’s hilt once, twice, into the temples of the men he’d knocked to the ground. Three muffled cries followed by three heavy thumps signaled that Tomaz had done the same to the other Defenders, leaving them helpless on the ground.
The Prince quickly crossed to the Bloodmage, who lay still on the ground unconscious, but, as the Prince knew, not yet dead. He kicked the mage over and reached down to grab the blood red crystal that had been used to hypnotize Tomaz, breaking the leather cord that held it strung around the man’s neck. He threw it on a flat rock nearby and scrabbled around quickly for another. His hand closed over one and he pulled, prying it from the earth, as the Bloodmage began to stir. He raised the second rock high in the air, and brought it crashing down on the Soul Catcher. As rock met crystal, there was a terrifying moment where it felt as though the rock would be repulsed and the crystal would remain whole, but then came the sound of breaking glass, a sharp shattering as if a piece of reality had been fractured, and the crystal broke. The Bloodmage screamed, so loud that the Prince flinched away and his ears began to ring. The black robed figure rose up, like a corpse marionette on tangled strings, twitched in the direction of the Prince as if to exact revenge, and then fell to the floor and moved no more.
The Prince whirled around, and saw that Tomaz had thrown all of the Defenders into a line against two adjacent oak trunks, and was binding them with lengths of their own clothing.
“How did they find us?” Tomaz asked the Prince over his shoulder. “What happened?”
“They were scouting the swamps for Exiles – their clothes, their hair, they’re filthy, and see those bug bites? From what that one said, they were returning to the roads when the Bloodmage sensed us, and they set an ambush as we slept.”
“Why didn’t you sense them?” the big man asked, looking at the Prince with an intensity that unnerved him.
“I … I haven’t been using the Talisman,” the Prince said, and felt guilty and ashamed. If only he had listened to the girl, he could have prevented this, but he’d let his pride and his anger blind him.
“How did they take me? The Bloodmage?”
“Yes,” the Prince said, “he hypnotiz
ed you.”
“How did you break the trance?”
“I didn’t, Leah did.”
“What? Where is she?”
“I don’t know. They said they were taking her north to Formaux, but she must have escaped and come back –”
“Is that her dagger?”
“Yes, it’s how she broke the trance, she threw it and it struck the Bloodmage.”
Tomaz was suddenly in the Prince’s face.
“From where? Did you see her throw it?”
“No – no it just came flying in from the forest, but she can’t be that far, I mean it’s impossible to throw a dagger –”
“She’s a Spellblade, princeling,” Tomaz hissed at him, low enough that the Defenders couldn’t hear them. His anger and fear were unnerving. “She can throw a dagger from wherever she wants and make it go wherever she wants. She could be miles away! She threw the dagger hoping the Bloodmage would be where he still was when she last saw him, and she got lucky. But she only would have thrown it as a last resort – only would have thrown it if there was no way she could use it to help her own situation and come back to help us.”
And as Tomaz said this, the Prince looked into the big man’s face, and saw that Leah was lost to them.
”No,” he said to Tomaz. “No, you’re wrong. She can’t be that far.”
“Far enough that you’ll never catch her!”
Both the Prince and Tomaz whipped around and saw the Defender who had held the sword to the Prince’s neck, blood dripping from his temple down his face and making him look like some grisly reanimated battlefield corpse, smiling at them with a hatred that was unmatched by anything the Prince had ever seen.
“Explain yourself,” Tomaz said, stepping up and towering over the man.
“She is being taken to Formaux on the fastest horses money can buy, with a squad of two dozen fully armed Defenders of the Realm. They left almost an hour ago - you’ve been in your trance all that time, and this scrawny little runt didn’t even wake up!”
“LIAR!” the Prince roared in his face, but the man only smiled manically back.
“I only speak the truth,” the man said, grinning his bloody grin. “It cuts so much deeper than lies.”
The Prince turned around and started to pace, needing to do something.
“We have to go after her,” he said to Tomaz.
“How?!” the Defender shouted at him, enjoying every moment of their fear. “We slaughtered your horses! Hah hah! You have no way to catch them. You truly should have been more careful in setting up your campfire … we could see it through the trees a mile away. Didn’t even need the Bloodmage to point us in the right direction at that point.”
“I told her!” the Prince said, suddenly angry at the Exiles, trying to make it their fault for some reason he didn’t understand. “I told you both, we needed to be more careful!”
“Too late for that now,” Tomaz growled at him, anger and pain in his eyes, and the Prince realized, with despair, that the big man had a point. It didn’t matter now who was wrong and who was right – what mattered was that Leah was gone, and they had no way to get her back. She’d been taken. If he had continued to use the Talisman, like she’d suggested, to feel around them for signs of life and pursuit …
“They will reach Formaux before you can come within a hundred miles of them!” the Defender yelled, breaking into the Prince’s thoughts. “And once she is there, she is out of your reach, and we will have a bargaining chip against the Exiled Kindred that they dare not ignore!”
“What is she to you? Why didn’t you take me instead?” the Prince screamed, grabbing the man by the throat, his fingers digging into the skin as fear coursed through his body, standing every hair on edge.
“The daughter of General Goldwyn, the leader of the Armies of the Exiled Kindred themselves?” the Defender managed to get out past the Prince’s hand. “And not only that but part of a Rogue pair and likely a Spellblade as well? Are you blind? She is worth ten of you – you who are a simple Exile!”
The Prince shot a quick look to Tomaz to see if any of this was registering with him. The look of horror on the big man’s face was all the confirmation the Prince needed.
“How do you know all that?” the Exile asked, pushing the Prince out of the way, grabbing the man and lifting him clear off the ground into the air as far as the ties would let him go. The Prince had never seen Tomaz lose his temper, even when he was fighting for his life he seemed cold and calculated. But there was a panic beneath his anger now, and his massive shoulders were quivering with useless energy. He was on the verge of losing control.
The man tried to sputter out a response, but the look on Tomaz’s face had finally gotten through to him, and it was clear his mind was now buried in fear.
“We’ve all been in the wars,” one of the other Defenders said with the same eerie, maniacal light in his eyes. The fire of a zealot. “And we know all of your secrets, Exile!”
The way the man spat the word at Tomaz struck a chord in the big man, and he dropped the first Defender, drew his sword, and moved to the second. He stood there for a long moment, sword raised, before letting out a bellow of frustration; he turned away and threw Malachi end over end into a nearby tree, where it sunk up to the hilt and caused the tree to sway dangerously under the force of the blow.
“Tomaz,” the Prince said quickly. There had to be a way to stop this, to prevent her from reaching Formaux. If she did … his mind helplessly began imagining what kind of treatment Leah would undergo if she made it into the hands of his brother Tiffenal, and the thought of seeing her at the mercy of the Prince of Foxes was enough to set his heart racing. “Tomaz, your people will come for her, won’t they? Isn’t there some way to get her back?”
“NO!” roared the big man. He strode forward, pulled his sword from the tree trunk with wrenching, bone-breaking power, and swung it around in an enormous arc where it sunk into the side of a tall redwood and stuck fast, quivering. Tomaz fell to his knees and his hands covered his face.
“Once she is in one of the capital cities she is disavowed,” the big man said, his voice heavy with despair. “She will not be rescued. She will be mourned as if she were dead already, though she may cling to life for years to come.”
The Prince stood stock-still, unable to wrap his mind around what the man was saying. The girl had always seemed so … invincible. She was untouchable, no matter what danger had been thrown at her. Following him, undetected through Banelyn … dispatching the soldiers in the Elmist Mountains … even the Death Watch itself hadn’t slowed her down.
And she had rescued him, from the bowels of a Seeker’s lair. She had rescued him. He, who wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save her.
Now you are your own weapon. You have a choice now.
He spun to face the Defenders. Five of them, all told. Five of them.
What matters is what you use it for.
The leader’s face split into a grin as he watched Tomaz kneeling on the ground.
“Yes – the Empire cannot be defied! Make your peace with whatever god you pray to, Exiled scum, there is nothing you can do to get her back.”
“Nothing he can do,” the Prince said softly. “But something I can do.”
The Defender shifted his gaze to the Prince, and his smile faltered and turned into a look of uncertainty. The Prince reached beneath his hide drape-over, feeling the cold wire hilt of the girl’s dagger.
“What can you do?” the man asked, eyeing the Prince warily.
“I can kill you. Because what you don’t know is that you’re right, she is worth ten of me. But she’s also certainly worth five of you.”
Fear crossed the man’s face as the Prince drew Leah’s dagger and slammed it into his chest, piercing the Defender’s heart.
Immediately, the man’s life was added to the Prince, and he staggered back under the weight of memories, even as he forced them to the far corner of his mind along with the bloodlust that cam
e from the man’s zealotry. His limbs flooded with strength and the world leapt forward as his eyesight increased; scents filled his nose and sounds of wildlife and birds in the trees suddenly seemed far too loud and close.
The Prince turned to the other four, and in four quick motions, these men fell limply to the ground, all with helpless expressions of fear and awe, as if seeing an avenging angel come to reap their souls.
The Prince’s heart was beating so quickly he felt it might come right out of his chest. He had never absorbed so many lives before at a single time, and his mind was reeling under the memories crowding into his own, of home towns, of childhood sweethearts, of murders and beatings they had committed in the name of the Empress - and it was these he focused on, used to fuel his anger, and his need to save the girl who had saved him.
He felt as though he could jump to the top of any of the tall trees surrounding him; he could see the veins of each individual leaf, hear insects buzzing and birds calling each other what seemed like miles away. His blood was on fire with the power, the strength, and the pure life flooding through him.
“What – what are you doing?” Tomaz asked in a shocked voice from behind him.
“Bringing her back,” the Prince said.
He grabbed two swords from the dead Defenders, one a long hand-and-a-half sword, the other a short stabbing sword. They felt no heavier than feathers though both, he could see by the intricacies of the metal, were made from good Tynian steel. Reaching out with his mind, he quested for the life of the distant Defenders and the Exile girl.
His mind, powered by the deaths, shot outward, farther than he’d ever gone before. A woodsman several miles to the east - two women moving to the south - several small bands of what must have been families to the west - and there, several miles to the north, a band of soldiers and the Exile girl – flashes of green and silver, the sound of steel cutting silk – glowing in his mind’s eye, and then gone, too far away.
He set off at a run, his feet digging deep trenches in the soft ground as he shot through the glen with inhuman speed. Trees flashed by him to either side at an astounding rate. Each of his strides covered nearly ten feet, his bounds leaving long gouges in the earth.
He didn’t know how long he ran for, following the life energy of the fleeing Defenders, but as he ran the sun moved overheard, and he felt more than saw the forest take note of his passing. He was a phantom - a blurring wraith, made of six men but controlled by the anger of one. He ran faster and harder and longer then he had ever done before, dodging fallen trees, running up the side of hills, leaping streams, all with barely any effort, all the while focused on that distant speck of life in front of him, that single beating heart that belonged to a girl with green eyes and raven hair.
And finally, as his strength began to flag, and his speed began to ebb away, his nose caught the scent of horses and the sweat of men in rusty armor. He pushed himself even harder, passing through the forest so quickly he left whirlwinds of leaves swirling behind him.
Without warning the forest ended, and he was running across a brief grassy plain that stretched to the horizon and then ended in another line of trees.
There they were, silhouetted against the horizon line, the squad of Defenders – and there was Leah, bound and gagged, struggling and bucking wildly against her restraints. The Prince could hear her muffled curses. One of the Defenders turned to her, and with a slashing motion carelessly backhanded her across the face, mailed fist hitting her so hard that she was almost sent flying off the horse, held on only by the ropes binding her to the saddle. The Prince snarled deep in his chest, and the bloodlust of the Defenders he had killed rose up in him like a tide, and he knew there was no going back.
When he was twenty paces away, he pulled back his right arm, and hurled the hand and a half sword straight toward the white-plumed helmet of the captain as if it were a javelin. The power of the throw sent the sword right through the man’s head, sliding neatly into the helmet up to the hilt, as if it were a hot knife sinking into butter.
The Prince felt his flagging strength and speed surge back as the man’s life was added on to his own. Memories flashed before his eyes, but he blocked them all out except for one: which men were where in the squad. The Prince shot toward the left hand column, which contained all four under-captains.
The entire group was in disarray, horses rearing in shock as their riders turned every which way to look for who or what had thrown the sword that killed their captain. Leah, eyes wide and staring in shock as the captain fell off his horse right in front of her, was in the right hand column.
A few men spotted the Prince and notched arrows to bows, letting out cries of alarm, but they weren’t fast enough. He watched calmly, his mind moving at extraordinary speeds, as the arrows left the bows, and he moved causally aside. The first passed him with barely an inch to spare, harmlessly nicking the drape-over as it billowed out behind him. Three more arrows shot past him as he closed the distance. The Prince shrugged out of the drape-over, letting it fall to the ground.
And then he was among them, hacking, slashing, cutting with the short sword, twisting past their blades with the speed of a demon; he leapt from the ground onto the back of a horse, slit a Defender’s throat, pushed off the creature’s back, flipped high in the air and landed astride the horse of the second under-captain. He pulled Leah’s dagger from his belt, severed the man’s spine, and then rolled to the ground and moved on.
Soon the sword and dagger were coated in scarlet blood, and with each kill he grew faster and stronger. He was invincible, a whirlwind of pure death, a tool of absolute and complete annihilation.
And then it was over. The horses cantered off out of sight, leaving the Prince alone with twenty-three dead Defenders lying on the ground. Leah had somehow managed to free herself of her bonds during the fight; she had rolled to the edge of the battlefield, and now stood staring open-mouthed at the sight before her.
The Prince was kneeling amid the bleeding corpses. His eyes were closed, and his entire body was shaking, each and every muscle jumping, bunching, contracting, releasing only to tense again. His breath was coming in short, harsh gasps, rasping and tearing his throat, the smallest particles of dust in the air choking him, the scent of blood and death overpowering all thought. He was on fire – life filled him so fully that he felt he must explode, that he must die at the very moment when he was filled with so much life that he felt like a beacon, shining across the world for anyone who cared to see.
The memories of all twenty-eight men he had killed that day pounded inside his skull, overwhelming his mind, coursing through him as real as if he had lived them. Images of childhood, the scents of fresh baked bread and a father’s hug, hopes and dreams achieved and unfulfilled alike. Families, lack of families, lovers, friends, enemies, their first kills, their first beatings, their passion, their hatred, their painful loyalty to the Empress. Their fears, worst of all, always worst of all, buried so deep and left so long uncomforted that they were raw and bloody, brought out like a swarm of mutilated, deformed monsters from a dark cave, ready to devour him whole.
“Stop,” the Prince whispered aloud, “please stop! I don’t want it – I don’t want to care about you! I don’t want to know any of you – leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
His hands clutched his head convulsively. He wasn’t aware that he had spoken aloud, wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. He was the Defender Billzby who had joined up in Lerne – no! – he was Livanom who had joined outside – stop! – Jimayl who had three children and a fourth on the way – STOP IT!
He had no name to cling to, no identity. The Empress had taken it from him. He felt himself dying, felt himself being submerged under all of the memories, all of the people who he had killed –
Slender hands grasped his head, holding him as silent tears ran down his face. He was clutched against a lithe frame that smelled of the strong lavender soap a giant named Tomaz made, raven black hair falling into his face, c
ool and feathery.
“Breathe,” a voice said to him, a scared voice but one with a steely insistence in it. “Breathe. I’m here, princeling, I’m here. Be here with me, stay here with me. Just breathe.”
He did breathe then - a long shuttering breath that burned his nostrils and lungs but helped to clear his mind. His own memories began to come back to him as the girl’s insistent voice calmed his racing heart, her hands clutching him to her chest, holding him tightly. He took another breath, and the memories retreated further. Another breath and his mind went completely blank, leaving him in silence.
“You’ll be okay,” Leah said to him, “I’ll take care of you.”
And the rest was darkness.