Oberon's Dreams (33 page)

“This is a clever trick,” Ephitel called. “How did you bring me here against my will?”

“The sheer power of my hatred bent reality.”

“You bear such hate for me? But I don’t even know you.”

Corin didn’t answer. He closed and lunged a feint, then slashed down hard toward the prince’s neck. Ephitel tried to riposte the feint and had to stumble back from the true strike.

Corin pressed after him, a slash, a stab, a lunge, and then he nicked the prince’s wrist even as Ephitel brought his guard around. Ephitel cried out, in surprise as much as pain, and Corin flashed a shark’s cold grin.

“You are Ephitel of the High Moor, but I will make you bleed.”

The prince shrank away, but Corin stomped after him. “You were a lord of war and prince of all Hurope,” he screamed while raining blows upon the prince’s frantic defenses. “But I will make you a memory, a stain on history. You will mar my world no more!”

As Corin screamed this last, the prince attempted a stand. Ephitel braced himself and raised his sword two-handed in an overhand block. Corin might have undercut him—he saw the opportunity—but burning as he was with rage, he brought the ancient longsword smashing down on Ephitel’s light rapier.
Godslayer
smashed the prince’s sword to pieces and carved a long, deep gash down his lovely face, from eye socket to jaw.

Ephitel threw away his ruined weapon and turned to run. His regiment was waiting some way off, in evident disorder at the sudden disappearance of their commander. The prince sprinted for them now, but Corin dragged Ogden’s pistol from beneath his cloak, took aim, and fired his final shot through the prince’s back.

Ephitel went sprawling. Corin stalked up after him. The hatred in his heart was now a bonfire, and it warmed him to the bone. Corin jabbed
Godslayer
through the prince’s right shoulder, and the legendary blade parted flesh and bone like water. Corin crippled the other shoulder, too, but he saved the killing stroke. He locked one hand around the prince’s ankle and dragged him backward through the dirt toward the city gate. The fires were raging now, the townsfolk caught in panic. Corin knotted a fist in the back of Ephitel’s shirt and heaved him to his feet.

He hurled the prince against the city gates and pressed his face into the bars. Skin sizzled on the fire-scorched steel. Corin held him in place and shouted, “Look what you have wrought! This is your villainy.”

Then Corin heaved him back, flinging Ephitel to the ground beneath the gates. The pirate stepped over the fallen prince and flourished the legendary blade. “And I am your punishment. For Kellen. For Maurelle and Avery. For Oberon.” He raised the blade to strike. “For Iryana.”

And then the sun went out.

But as his streaming eyes sought desperately down each side street he passed, he saw no sign of rescuers. They must have worked fast, he thought, because he saw no one else at all. He hadn’t seen these streets so empty since he’d stepped through time into a memory.

At worst, he could head for the river. Not an easy jog, but with the streets cleared, he might beat suffocation to the nearest banks. Better to reach the palace, Oberon’s great throne room—

Even as he thought it, he remembered his new trick. He closed his eyes and focused on the throne, then dove forward, looking, hoping he had moved.

And he knew instantly he had, for the scorching heat was gone. His searching eyes showed him, dimly in the darkness, that he had found the throne. He knelt before it, a throne too tall for any man, carved into the foundation of a giant living tree.

But the throne was empty, and the tree lived no more. It yet towered over him, but it was hard and gray and dry with time. Its bare branches reached toward the cavern’s ceiling and out toward the distant fire like skeletal fingers, and even now their farthest tips began to burn. Half a mile off or more, but once it caught, the whole tree would go like tinder.

Corin turned back to the empty throne. “You managed it at last. You robbed me of my killing stroke, and gave me the only favor I ever asked of you.” He heaved a weary sigh. “You sent me home. Or…back to my own dream, anyway.”

As the fire’s light began to brighten the artificial cavern—Ethan Blake’s fire now, not Ephitel’s—Corin frowned. “A dream.”

Panic bubbled behind his breastbone. Was it all a dream, borne of pain and fear? Had he ever left this cavern? This time?

He held the answer in his right hand. The sword
Godslayer
glowed with reflected firelight, cold despite the cavern’s heat. Corin gripped it tight, clinging to it for his sanity, and then his eyes touched something on the empty throne. It was a single book on vellum, its ink a cracking crimson. Even with the flames racing toward him, Corin had to stare.

He reached out with a trembling hand and flipped back the cover. It opened to an inner page marked with a softened strip of bark, where a new chapter started with his name, “Corin Hugh,” written in an ancient elven script. He had seen the like at Rikkeborh, in long-forgotten texts, but he had not known its meaning. Now he read it easily in the fire’s rising light.

Now you have heard the story of my king, who lived and died within this darkness. But one final task he asked of me, and this one greater than all the rest. He bade me tell a story of a life that’s yet to be lived—a dream he had, a fantasy about a manling outside time. This is not my memory, but it is Oberon’s, and I set it down as he related it to me.

Corin was a peasant, born in Aepoli beneath the reign of Cosimo Vestossi, and in his time the name of Oberon was not known. In his time, Ephitel was thought a god among the manling nations. Corin Hugh was not a righteous man, but for the sake of Oberon, he was good…

Corin shook his head in disbelief. He flipped forward through the brittle pages, spotting references to the Nimble Fingers, his brief apprenticeship to the wizard Jonderel, his first encounter with Old Grim the pirate, and then his years upon the seas. How much life he had lived in two short decades!

And there was more. He turned page after page, and still it spoke of him. Of heroic acts and legendary wars. Of battles with the gods and a new kingdom for men, but these were things he hadn’t done. Yet.

He swallowed hard and wiped the sweat from his brow. Was this his future? Was this his whole life, borrowed from the dreams of a dying god? He wiped his brow again and realized the sweat was from more than just his fear. The air was cooking now, all around him, the fire crawling along the branches overhead. Soot and embers rained around him, until he feared the book might catch a spark and burn.

He nearly snapped it shut, but one last curiosity stayed his hand. He flipped forward to the end, to the last pages, and read what was written there. In a shaky hand and blotted ink, he read of Oberon’s end.

This was the last memory shared with me by my dying king. Oberon is no more. His body is destroyed, his kingdom stolen, his people driven into hiding. Oberon was maker of this land and good king to his people, but all that now remains to this world are his dreams of a world that could have been, his enemies victorious, and an unending hunger for vengeance.

I share these things. If ever manling reads this book, if anyone can comprehend, my final wish is my king’s final wish: destroy the traitor Ephitel.

Corin raised his head. He touched the winter-cold steel of the stolen sword while fire rained around him, and nodded once within the vast silence of the eerie tomb. “I swear upon the blood of gods,” he said. “I will grant you vengeance.”

Then he closed his eyes and stepped out into the world.

THE END