Bacorium Legacy (70 page)

“I can't believe this,” Luca muttered. “I was just speaking with him last night...”

Selphie glanced at him for a brief moment. She frowned, deep in thought for a moment, then said, “If I were you, I would keep that to myself for now.”

Luca looked at her, but she had nothing more to say to him.

A few minutes later, the flap of the tent opened up, and Zaow poked his head out. He beckoned for Selphie to enter, and she did so. Luca took the opportunity to follow after her, with Emila at his heels. The princess didn't object, but she didn't seem pleased with his presence either.

Inside the tent, two kings and various lords were gathered around Marcus' bed. Zaow was by the entrance, waiting for his daughter. He noticed Luca and Emila enter, but said nothing.

Marcus lay on his back on the bed, staring straight up at the ceiling. His eyes were wide open and bloodshot - he did not blink. Indeed, he seemed unable to move in the slightest. His veins were darkened, looking like his blood had turned black. Occasionally, he would convulse, and cough up a few specks of blood. This, and his shallow breathing, were the only signs that the king still lived. He had not yet disappeared.

“The healers looked him over,” Zaow said quietly to his daughter. “They say he is in constant pain. He cannot move or communicate in any way. There is no way to treat it, so the only thing that can be done is to put him out of his misery. We are waiting for Prince Halt to make a decision.”

Halt was kneeling at the side of his father's bed, holding Marcus' hand in his. His expression was torn with indecision.

Zaow then said, in an even quieter tone, “It is not a natural illness. Someone did this with inverted healing magick.”

“But who would do something like this?” Selphie asked, her eyes filled with pity for Marcus. “And why?”

“We have no idea who could have done this,” Zaow said. “It would have had to have been an extremely skilled assassin, to slip in and out the way they did. The two guards outside were found dying of similar conditions, but they could not speak either. As for why...”

Zaow's glance shifted over to a writing desk on the other side of the tent. It was empty. Luca had a feeling in his gut - he already knew what Zaow was about to say, and he dreaded it.

“It would seem Zinoro is a smarter man than we gave him credit for,” Zaow said. “He knew what the one true threat to him was, and he eliminated it before we had a chance to even use it. Whoever this assassin he sent was, Marcus' Rixeor Fragment passed to them the moment his death was a certainty.”

Chapter XXIII

First Blood

An hour ago, they had crossed the border into Acaria. What Luca saw was not the desolate wasteland that he had been told many times that Acaria was, but rather the same rough, wooded terrain that embodied most of northern Saeticia. The borders were not exact, of course, so Luca knew not to take it as a good sign.

He walked in stride with Brand and Wiosna, closely behind Tranom. The new trainees of Allma Temple followed behind them, dressed in white robes beneath steel armour, and with expressions of varying confidence. They were atop a hill at the time, and from there Luca could see the majority of the two armies stretched out before them. A sea of red, and a sea of blue. The Sonoians, and the Saeticians. As per Marcus' plans, the Torachians had gone west, to enter Acaria on the other side of the great forest.

Marcus was dead. Halt had put his father out of his misery, then taken his place as king of Saeticia. He now marched at the head of the Saetician army, and if Luca squinted his eyes, he could almost see the flag carried by the banner man at his side.

On the Sonoian side, Selphie was marching with her father. Luca now knew that his brother was with her, along with Jared. Ash had taken her side in the aftermath of his actions at the Elder Hall, and seemed to want little to do with him anymore. This suited Luca fine.

As for Emila - she was in the back, with the healers. Luca had insisted on it, both to keep her safe from harm in the battles to come, and so that she could lend her magick to the injured. Even at the distance she was from him, he could still feel her presence through the tether. Every little irritation she felt, from a toe stubbed on a rock, to an itch on her shoulder, seemed to resonate within Luca. The distance seemed to make no difference anymore - if anything, their connection seemed to have grown much stronger since the previous night.

Turning his gaze from the army below, he looked behind him to his companions. Brand wore a frown, his eyes filled with a strange expression of calm. Wiosna, however, looked full of excitement at the prospect of the coming battles.

“Why have they stopped?” Brand asked suddenly.

Luca looked back at the armies. Indeed, they had ceased their advance. The two kings, with their banner men close behind, left their respective groups and made the gap between them.

“It looks like they're meeting to discuss something,” said Tranom.

The two kings met, spoke for a few minutes, and then separated, returning to their respective positions. A minute or two later, and the Saetician army resumed its march, but the Sonoian army stayed where it was.

“What happened?” Wiosna asked.

Tranom looked down at the army, thinking. “I think I know what's happening. Look to where we must go next.”

He pointed to where the Saetician army was going. They were making their way down a hill, bordered on each side by hills to steep for an army to climb. The hill sloped gradually downward for nearly a kilometre, until it finally narrowed out into a large valley.

“That basin was once a lake. It emptied for unknown reasons years ago. The hill that leads into it is too narrow for both the Saeticians and the Sonoians to pass through at the same time. Halt and Zaow were most likely deciding who would go first.”

“What do we do?” Brand asked.

“We'll follow after the Saeticians,” Tranom said, starting off. “We'll take the position between the two armies.”

As they made their way towards the basin, Luca thought back to his conversation with
Marcus. He'd mentioned the emptied lake. Though they were still following Marcus' plans, nobody had known anything about Marcus' plans to have Luca lead the assault with
Altair
. It must have been something Marcus had only decided after the meeting at the Elder Hall. Nobody else knew that Luca had been the last person to speak with Marcus before his death - and as Marcus' assassin was still unknown, Luca had no intention of bringing this up.
 

Now Marcus was dead, and his sword was missing. Even without the Rixeor Fragment they needed to defeat Zinoro, they were marching out to face him and his army of revenants. Luca may not even get the opportunity to fight Zinoro now, much less kill him. But even with a Rixeor Fragment, Zinoro was not invincible. If they wiped out his entire army, what choice would Zinoro have but to surrender? No great swordsman, no matter how legendary a blade he carried, could fight when a hundred archers surrounded him.

The Allmans reached the edge of the basin and began their descent down the long hill. It was narrow, and the soil was loose, so stable footing was no certainty. As they went, there were several moments when someone would slip and almost fall, only to be saved at the last minute by a companion. The hill was long and there were many large rocks. If someone fell, it could be fatal.

But thankfully, nobody did. The Allmans reached the bottom of the long hill, and touched the soft ground of the drained lake. It was bone dry, and there was at least a millimetre or two of soft, sand-like dirt that was once mud. Every step one took kicked up a small cloud.

Looking back up the hill, Luca now saw the Sonoians making their way down. At their head, King Zaow walked with his daughter. Selphie supported her father as they went, making sure the old man did not slip on his even-less sure feet.

Luca turned away before Selphie could notice his looking. The others had already started off, so he went with them. They followed behind the Saeticians, and soon, the Sonoians were behind them.

He noticed Wiosna would glance at him from time to time. “What?” he asked her, after growing too irritated to continue ignoring it.

“Something's different about you,” she said. “Did something happen last night?”

He scoffed. “Aside from the fact that Selphie hates me now?”

“No, not that,” Wiosna said. “You have a certain feeling to you... It's like your mana is stronger, or something like that.”

He thought of himself, and Emila, and nearly chuckled. For a moment, he nearly considered telling Wiosna of his night with Emila. But even he could not be so cruel.

“If that's true, then all the better,” he said. “I'll need all the strength I can get in the days ahead.”

Wiosna smiled. “But you don't need to be strong. You're the only one among us who has nothing to fear. You cannot die.”

But he did fear, he thought to himself. He feared not for himself, but for someone else.

A gush of wind blew through the valley, throwing up the dirt at their feet into a blinding cloud of dust. Luca coughed, and covered his eyes, until the wind finally died down and he could see again.

“What the hell...?”

Hearing Tranom, Luca looked to him to see what it was. At Tranom's feet, there was a line, nearly five millimetres thick, carved into the ground and filled with hard ground of a vastly different colour. It stretched on, running well past where they were.

“This wasn't here a moment ago...” Tranom muttered.

“No, it was buried under the dirt,” Brand said.

The army had stopped its advance. Around them, Luca could see groups talking, and digging into the ground with their hands. Many other lines had been uncovered, it would seem.

“Someone carved this into the ground here,” Wiosna said, getting down on her knees to get a better look at it.

“But what is it?” Tranom asked her.

“I have no idea,” she said. “Perhaps its a giant ornate marking that covers the entire basin?”

Tranom turned to one of his students. “Get back up on the hill. Tell me what it looked like from above.” The boy nodded and took off the way they had come.

Luca watched for several long minutes as they boy went past the Sonoians behind them, and started back up the long, steep hill. It had taken them almost half of an hour already to get the two armies past down that hill. Climbing down it had been difficult - climbing back up would be impossible.

“You might be right,” Tranom said to Wiosna. “Small parts of it appear to be uncovered all over the basin. It looks to be one giant carving.”

“But what is it a carving of?” she asked. “I would like to uncover the whole thing and see it from afar.”

Tranom thought about that, frowning. He looked around at the many soldiers. “Everything is rather confused right now. Halt and Zaow are trying to reestablish order, and get their men to start moving again. This thing is a distraction.”

No sooner had he finished saying that, when another large wind tore through the basin, sending up yet another cloud of dust. This one lasted for much longer, and when it finally died down, the dirt was all but gone from the ground at their feet. Though it was hard to see it from the thousands of people occupying the basin, it was clear enough that the carving covered almost the entire size of it. It was an ornate circle, with many intersecting lines and patterns.

Then the sound of a horn being blown filled the air, coming from somewhere up in the mountains.

Everyone was still, looking to one another as the sound of the horn rang loudly, echoing through the valley.

Brand turned to his former master. “Was that one of ours?”

Tranom's expression soured. He slowly shook his head. “They know we're here.”

Another horn was blown, this one some distance farther away than the first. And then, as that one died, they heard the faint sound of a third, even farther away.

“They're sending a signal to Zinoro,” Wiosna said.

“How long will it take to reach him?” asked Brand.

“Assuming they have a man stationed every kilometre or two, he might know within the hour,” Tranom said. “It makes little difference, though. He was bound to know we were coming sooner or later. The only advantage this gives him is a little extra time to mobilise his troops and prepare his defences...”

Tranom trailed off. A feeling filled the air, one that everyone in the entire army had felt before, but never in such a way. It was the feeling of one gathering mana, but rather than coming from a particular person, it was coming from everywhere.

“What is this?” Tranom said, drawing his sword. “Everyone get ready! Something is happening!”

The sounds of a thousand swords being drawn filled the air. They stood, waiting, as the mana gathering continued. Then they noticed the carvings on the ground were glowing.

“It's coming from the thing on the ground!” someone shouted.

“Beware!”

“It's a trap!”

And then it happened. The mana exploded all around them. They were not struck, however, for it was not an attack. A flash of bright light filled the air, temporarily blinding everyone.

The scar across Luca's cheek suddenly ached. The wound opened anew, and he felt blood flowing through it. He knew the dark mana before them was Zinoro's.

As the light cleared, and vision returned, sounds of panic filled the air. Luca looked up, and saw the sight that had brought so much dread.

They were no longer alone. A third army had joined them, surrounding the Saeticians on all sides. The Sonoians, some distance away, was cut off.

The Acarian army had appeared on the edges of the ornate circle. There were hundreds of them - the faceless armoured revenants in red and black. And they brought with them monsters - caged goblins, trolls, and even three massive bull-like behemoths, which stood at the west, east, and south corners of the circle.

At the north end was a dragon, upon whose back rode a man in the Acarian armour. Black haired, with a trimmed beard. This man was not Zinoro. Another acolyte, it would seem.