Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1) (77 page)

With a wild roar, the demon with the greatsword brought it down on her back. The stroke pierced her cape of salamander skin and the backplate of her cuirass, but although Amy was staggered by the blow she ignored the pain in her back – the stroke had been stopped by her ringmail, but that had driven into her back like a hundred needles – and rounded on him while she had him all alone.

“Now then,” Amy grinned, and hefted Magnus Alba as she fell upon the demon in a flurry of blows, driving it back and beating down its guard before driving her ancient blade down onto the demon’s head.

The demon with sword and axe was the next to fall to her as she turned her attention upon him, ignoring the blows it rained upon her, even as her paudrons cracked, in order to slam her sword into its gut.

Only the demon with the shield remained. It fought with the most skill, blocking with its shield while striking from behind cover. But the tide was flowing Amy’s way now and she was an unstoppable force, slicing the shield in half with a mighty blow and then cutting off the demon’s head in a single stroke.

Amy turned to face the demon summoner. She was covered in the smoking ichor of his monstrous friends and her grin was savage.

“Blessed be the lord of seas and oceans,” Amy murmured. “For he follows me and guards me all the days of my life.”

The demon summoner’s eyes were wide with shock. “Y-you…”

Before he could say more Wyrrin leapt off the back of Mummax and descended upon the sorcerer, sinking his teeth into the man’s neck so hard that his head nearly came off. Mummax roared as he was consumed in fire, banished back to the black abyss now that the one who had summoned it was dead.

Wyrrin got up and stepped away from the dead body, wiping some of the blood off his jaws.

“Are you going to eat him?” Amy asked.

Wyrrin shot her a sharp look. “No.”

"I was only asking, I don't know any fire drakes,” Amy said. “But…thank you for letting me take the warriors on. I know you could have killed the summoner at any time.”

“I would never deny a comrade the opportunity to win great glory,” Wyrrin declared.

“No, I bet you wouldn’t,” Amy replied. “Come on, we need to keep moving.”

Jason stood perfectly still as the slaves fitted his imperial robes around him. They were of a flowing purple, trimmed with gold and billowing around his slender frame and hiding the man beneath, burying him beneath a mound of protocol and Imperial dignity.

And yet he could not deny a shiver of satisfaction at the sight of himself in the mirror, so solemnly clad as the slaves adorned him with the symbols of his rank and station: the sword of Aegea was buckled at his waist, the Ausonian ring was placed upon his finger, the rich chain of the world, with a link of gold for every province in the Empire and a link of silver for every allied tribe or client state, hung heavy around his neck. The Imperial diadem, adorned with a winged unicorn's head upon the crest, rested on a pillow not far away. He would not put it on until he had to, the weight was a little much for him.

Behind him, a mage corps Black stood watch. She had long black hair, and wore a leather cuirass with a dagger at her waist.

Jason frowned at that. She was not who he would have expected to see. "Where is Tullia?" he asked. "I would like her to be here for this."

"Why?" his mother asked, stepping slowly into the dressing room. "This day is about you, not about some servant girl." She approached him without deference. She was a beautiful woman, with long dark curls, blue eyes and a dusky complexion a shade or two darker than his own. She was dressed in a gown of royal blue that trailed behind her steps, and her arms were adorned with bangles of gold set with diamonds and emeralds. She cupped his chin with one hand, running her fingers across his face. "My son: the Emperor. I could not be more proud of you."

Jason smiled. "I will earn your pride each day, mother, and your love."

She smiled. "You have that without condition."

Jason closed his eyes for a moment, taking her hand and holding it against him. "I will make this country just and fair. I will make it a land of opportunity. For everyone, not just for the well-born."

"You will be the greatest Emperor the world has ever seen," his mother said. "And I will be by your side, always."

"Then I will always have the strength to do what must be done," Jason replied.

The door opened and Captain Thrakes stood in the doorway, bowing at the waist. "Your Majesty, it is time to leave."

"We will be out shortly," mother said. "Have our horses prepared."

"As you command, highness."

"Captain, wait a moment," Jason said. "Have you seen Tullia? I want her present."

"Why do you keep talking about that wretched mage?" Mother demanded, her voice suddenly becoming harsh. "Enough of Tullia, you have no need of her."

Jason took a step back. "No, but I want her at my side. I would reward her for her faithful service."

"You cannot."

"I am the Emperor, I can do as I please," Jason said.

"Spoiled children demand what they want, I thought you were a better man than that."

"I am not asking for more toys after I have broken the ones that I already have," Jason said sharply. "I am asking to know what has become of my dear friend, so that I can reward her."

"Reward her how? Will you make her captain of your guard?"

"I am considering it," Jason said. "Mother, what is the matter? Why do you dislike her so?"

"You have no more need of that little tramp," his mother said. "You have me now, is that not enough."

"Are you jealous?" Jason said. He laughed. "Mother, there is no conflict between you, and no way that Tullia could come between us; but I will not allow you to keep my friends from me. If you know where she is then I command you to tell me."

"Command me?" Mother snarled. "Just who do you think you are?"

"I think I am the Emperor!"

"I made you Emperor you foolish boy!" she shrieked. "Now cease this argument at once and forget about that slave girl, that beggar's companion, or I will cast you off the throne as I put you on it."

Jason shook his head. "You are not my mother. You are not my mother and this is a trick. Who are you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"My mother, whoever she is, could not put me on the purple throne," Jason shouted. "Even if she were nobly born, which I highly doubt, there are no women of our colour whose famillies are so wealthy and powerful that they could place a bastard on the purple throne without the support of the higher patricians, and none of the Commenae or the Manzikes or the Livii or any of the rest would back my claim. And as for Tullia: I would rather be a beggar true to my friends than an Emperor who abandoned them."

His mother, or the thing masquerading as his mother, smiled wickedly. "Then why this vision? Why do you imagine yourself as the Emperor, when you so self-righteously rail against the Empire in your conversations with your companions?"

Jason chuckled self-effacingly. "I suppose that I am not as humble as I thought was, or as my beliefs would seem to demand."

"Then why reject all that I offer, for her sake?" she asked. "Why not stay here, with me. Does she mean so much to you?"

Jason hesitated. "Yes. I would like to think so."

And suddenly he was alone, surrounded by the remnants of a dead city, back in his slightly tattered blue coat, clutching his shepherd's crook in one hand. Jason Nemon Filius once again.

"Jason? Is that you?" Amy called as she clambered over a broken wall. "I thought I heard you shouting. Are you all right?"

Jason smiled thinly. "I am...myself, and that will have to do."

"Good," Amy said. "I was worried about you. We're not alone in this city, and I thought that one of the enemy - I suspect they're Quirian's men, but I didn't have time to ask the demon summoner we ran into - might have found you. After all, you're not exactly the most doughty of us are you?"

Jason shook his head. "Indeed I am not." He noticed Wyrrin leaping over the wall behind Amy. "I have neither skill at arms, nor great speed or great strength. I am...superfluous. Amy, why do you think I'm here?"

Amy blinked. "What do you mean?"

"You and I were brought into this quest by Silwa. You, because of your great strength and skill at arms. But I...why am I here? Tullia, I can see, but why me? Am I here solely so that Tullia could be here also?"

"I doubt it," Amy said softly. "I think you're here for your perspective."

"My perspective?"

"We are all of us fools, upon this errand," Amy said. "Romantic fools with hearts full of dreams and heads full of nothing. We have our dreams of Empire, of honour and chivalry, of great glory that will ring throughout the land. I think even Tullia is like that, though she hides it well; that girl is more ambitious than she would like to let on, I think. But you...you don't want any of that. No statues, no songs, no story to be remembered through the ages. You just want to save other people, with no thought for how your legend will survive when you are gone. In that way you might even be better than us. Certainly you're different than we are, and you think differently. That's valuable, even if we don't always seem to appreciate what you have to say."

Jason chuckled. "You think better of me than I think of myself right now. Thank you."

"You're still a spoiled brat who thinks he was hard done by," Amy added with a small smile.

"I am that," Jason said. "And you're a bloodthirsty brute."

"Well of course I am, what kind of knight would I be if I weren't?" Amy asked as she put her helmet back on. "Now come on, we should try and find the others. I think if we head-"

Her last words were cut off as a brilliant bright light erupted into the sky, a column of white reaching up into the clouds, burning brightly for a few moments, and then dying down again.

"Sorcery," Amy muttered. "Ultimate Spear, or I miss my guess."

"And a signal as well," Jason said.

"To us, or the enemy?" Wyrrin asked.

"A desperate signal, from whoever it was, for it will alert both sides for sure," Jason said.

"We have to hurry," Amy declared sharply. "I hope you're all up for a run, but we can't leave them out there a moment longer than we have to."

"You're so sure that the signal was meant for us?" Jason asked.

Amy's eyes were wide, almost desperate. "Do you believe that it wasn't?"

Jason swallowed to cover the sudden dryness in his mouth.

By all the gods, Tullia, please be alright.

XIX

Daughters of Beltor and Handmaids of Silwa

Michael drew his swords, his spatha in his left hand and the blade of Eena in his right, and advanced cautiously out of the courtyard. He had no idea which way was the right one, and he was frankly more concerned with finding his companions than with recovering the sword of Cupas. But he closed his eyes and prayed to Turo for inspiration, and some god put the idea into his mind that he should head eastwards, and so he followed that road out of the courtyard and into the unnaturally preserved city. “Gideon? Gideon can you hear me? Our Amy?”

The silence was deafening. Every footstep Michael made echoed off the tarnished walls and the damaged roofs. Not another sound was to be heard. No birds or beasts, it seemed, had crept into these ruins and made their homes in them. No loose stones fell, no masonry crumbled under the assault of years. It became clear to Michael that he was walking not through the ruin of a city sacked, but through the mausoleum of a people wiped from history. Someone, Cynane no doubt, had not only closed off the ruins to all intruders until Michael and his friends had entered, but she had also cleaned up the ruins of the city, for how else to explain the lack of remains, the absence of any debris of battle. Certainly there were the breaches in the walls, and some of the houses had been holed or wrecked, the temples torn down, but there were no bones littering the streets, no discarded blades, flecks of iron that were all that remained of arrows and spearheads. It was possible the Empire might have buried not only their own dead but that of the Aurelians, but hardly probable that they would have collected every discarded weapon, every arrow loosed, every scrap of evidence that Aureliana had fallen to a battle and not to the wrath of a god. No, more likely this was Cynane’s work.

“Turo, Lord of the Seas and Oceans, forgive me for the sacrilege I do this day,” Michael muttered to himself. “I do nought but what I must, and leave to their rest all whom I may.”

Now, with good fortune that would prevent any skeletons rising up out of the ground to attack him, or the unquiet dead rising from their resting places to tear at his flesh.

“So you are the second of my descendants to enter this place. Five hundred years undisturbed, and now two visitors in a single day.”

Michael spun upon his heel, bringing his blade into a guard, spatha low and leaf-blade high. He saw at once how someone had managed to creep up on him unheard, for there was no living creature there at all. Instead, he was confronted with the shade of a woman, pallid and ethereal, half-transparent even. She had silver white hair, even as Miranda did, but her skin was a paler shade that Michael would have guessed came both from a watering down of the Coronim blood and from a lack of hard work beneath the heat of the sun.

Michael’s jaw tightened. “Mater Cynane, I presume?”

“You presume correctly,” Cynane’s shade murmured, her voice soft and melancholy. "And you are my heir."

“I am of your blood, it would appear,” Michael replied. “Though your true heir, inheritor like you of the magic of Queen Aurelia, would be my sister, Miranda. For myself, I have the honour to be Michael Sebastian Callistus Dolabella ban Ezekiel, of Corona Province.” He bowed from the waist. "I would declare myself to be at your service did I not fear that it would be in poor taste.

Cynane smiled. "I see that the roots I put down in Corona grow there still. Is Corona free again, or has Imperial governance done so little to dilute the gallantry of Corona of old?"

"Neither and both, ma'am, I think," Michael replied. "The wolf and unicorn fly over Corona yet, and will do so for many a year if I have any voice in the issue, and yet the Coronim are slaves to none but citizens sharing in the bounty that the Empire's greatness brings. As for my gallantry, I fear that I am rare in my affectations, the manners of old are nowhere what they were."

"Except here, it would appear," Cynane said. "Your gallantry is, by any road, far greater than that of your predecessor."

"My predecessor?" Michael frowned. "Is Miranda here? Ma'am, if I may, have you seen a maid of nineteen years, with your look in many respects, and your hair of silver-white, walking with the aid of a cane?"

Cynane shook her head. "No. The other to open the gate and lead his company inside was a man, by his voice, though his face was hidden behind a mask."

"I do not understand," Michael murmured. It was possible, he supposed that this man was a distant cousin of some sort, but if there were other branches of the line then why had Quirian taken Miranda?

"You have come for the sword, have you not?" Cynane said. "The blade of Cupas, Fidelis Aeternum. It is the only treasure in this city that would be worthy anything to men of this age."

"A treasure indeed, ma'am, so much so that I marvel it remains here," Michael said.

"I took it with me when I fled the city, and then I brought it back, to keep it out of the wrong hands," Cynane said. "What purpose do you have with it? You and your...competitors?"

"They wish to slay my sister with it, and in so striking absorb the power which she is heir of," Michael said sharply. "I wish to prevent that."

Cynane nodded. "You speak more fairly than your counterpart, who tried to strike at me with his sword and then, afterward, with his magic. I deem you speak the truth, so I will give you truth in return: the blade of Cupas is in the temple of Silwa. Get there first if you can, but be warned: the legacy of death and magic in this place...the city will test you, seek to turn you from your path. You must be strong, you and your companions. And be wary of your enemies."

Michael bowed again. "I am most grateful to you for your assistance, ma'am. I wish that I had more to offer you than gratitude."

"Live a life worthy of our line and of our people," Cynane said. "That is enough."

Then she was gone.

Michael took a deep breath.
God grant her rest and protect my dear friends from all perils.

He kept moving, holding his blades at the ready, moving through the ruins, calling out the names of his companions to no result.

Then he began to hear a child crying. Sobbing fitfully, quietly, as if afraid of being heard.

Michael approached the sound of the weeping quietly, stealthily. He found the source of it hiding behind two nearly demolished walls, huddling in the corner of a ruined house: a boy, with long black hair, hugging his legs with one arm as he pressed his face against his knees.

Michael stepped around the broken down wall, lowering his swords. "Be not afraid, there is no cause for tears." He knelt down. "What is the matter? How did you come to be here."

Felix looked up at him, his face bloody and scarred. "Stay away from me!"

Michael recoiled, nearly falling over onto his back. "A trick?"

"No, a desert long deserved," Felix snarled. He stood up, and Michael could see that his arm, the arm the rebels had cut off, was missing. He had there only a bloody stump, red and raw. "This is what you did to me. What do you think?"

Michael retreated another step. "I didn't...Felix, it was the Crimson Rose."

"You said you'd protect me!" Felix yelled. "You said that you'd watch over me! You said that you'd take care of me after mother died! But you didn't, did you? You killed me like you killed our mother!"

"I didn't kill mother!"

"You told her there was someone at the door!"

"And if I hadn't they might have gotten in and hurt you, or Miranda," Michael shouted back. "I did what I thought was best."

"And she died, didn't she? Was that your best?"

"I don't need to answer to you," Michael yelled. "You aren't my brother, you aren't even real!"

Felix snarled. "No, I'm you, and you can't make excuses to yourself, can you? I can say these things because I know I'm right. Look at me and tell me that you don't feel any guilt for the things that you did."

Michael scowled. "You are not Felix," he repeated.

"What right do you have to be happy," Felix said, advancing on Michael. "What right do you have to pleasure while I'm dead?"

"None at all!" Michael cried. "But my true brother would not deny me this, nor insist that I wander the earth in torn rags for a hundred years in penance."

"How do you know?" Felix asked mockingly. "I'm dead."

Michael closed his eyes. "Yes. Yes, you are, may God forgive me." He opened his eyes again and glared at the illusion of his brother as he pointed the Eena blade at him. "Which is why I have nothing to say to you, be you imp or demon or whatever else. Begone!"

Felix snarled, his lips contorting in anger as he roared with futile rage, then he was gone.

Michael closed his eyes, leaning back and sinking down the wall, head bowed, chin pressed against his chest. The armour was cold, but he could still feel the rise and fall of his breathing.

"God forgive me," Michael muttered, his confidence of the morning melting away like ice under the heat of the sun at the sudden reappearance of his failure of the past. If he could not protect Felix then why should he, being older but no wiser, stronger but faced with stronger foes, being more virtuous only due to the company of the virtuous, being favoured only by uncertain luck, be able to protect Amy, or Filia Tullia or their highnesses?

What was his confidence but arrogance, the kind that, as Lady Silwa had tried to warn him, was always punished by the gods?

"God forgive me."

Michael's ears pricked up as he heard footsteps on the other side of the wall. Shifting slightly, as quietly as he could, Michael peeked over the edge of the wall to see a man in a dark cloak and a leather cuirass walking down the street, moving as warily as Michael had a moment before, a sword held in one hand and a knife in the other, passing slowly by him.

Not one of my comrades, therefore he must be a man of Quirian's,
Michael thought, and made his decision. Emerging from hiding place with a shout, Michael grabbed the man around the neck and pulled him backwards into Michael's hiding place, holding him in a choke and knocking sword and knife from his hands as he struggled and writhed.

"Who are you?" Michael demanded. "How many of you are there, and how did you gain entry into Aureliana?"

Tullia moved swiftly through the streets of Aureliana, eyes glancing this way and that, noticing her surroundings but taking no especial note of them, merely passing over them for any sign of threat and then moving on.

She had to find His Highness, he was practically defenceless without her. She had sworn an oath to the Emperor that she would give her life for his, and she would not break her bond.

I may be only a mage, but I have the pride of a soldier. Fear not, Your Highness, I am coming.

She had a knife in one hand, she was ready to wield magic in the other, and she ran as fast as her feet would carry her. Her hair flowed behind her as she ran on swiftly, desperately. She had to get to His Highness before danger did.

"Tullia."

Tullia skidded to a halt, turning on her heel, dagger at the ready, crouching down ready to fight.

"Who's there?" she whispered, tensing herself to spring out of the way of any magical attack that might be launched from any direction.

"Tullia," her mother stepped into view, tut-tutting as she shook her head. "Is that any way to talk to your mother?"

Tullia's eyes narrowed. "This is a trick. Some illusion or the like. You are dead."

"Yes, we are dead," her father said as he appeared beside his wife. "But after all that you have witnessed, is our apparition truly too bizarre to be credible?"

Tullia stepped back, tensing for the trap she felt was inevitable. "I do not believe this."

"Believe it or not, we stand before you," her mother said.

They did look like her parents, at least so far as Tullia could recall. They were dressed in familiar roughspun tunics, her mother wearing a simple dress of cheap brown wool.

"If you are real," Tullia said. "Then what do you want?"

"To show you the error of your ways," father said.

Tullia cocked her head slightly. "I can't think of any."

"Your profession," mother said. "How could you have become a killer abandoned your sister?"

"As opposed to staying diligent by her side while she died? Very easily," Tullia said sharply. "Even if you are my parents I don't need to listen to you if this is the level of your conversation."

"Don't turn away from us, Tullia," father snapped. "We are your parents and-"

"And dead these years past," Tullia cried. "I need your council not, I trust my own judgement."

"The same judgement that took you away from your sister?"

"A different verse of the same song I did not like the first time," Tullia said. "I am His Highness protector and defender, a warrior of the Corps of Mages."

"A warrior despised by every fighting man in the Empire, regarded as a coward who fights with magic instead of a sword," mother said. "Does that not shame you?"

Tullia hesitated. "I would prefer to be recognised for my warlike talents."

"And what of Lucilia?" father said. "What does she think of you, a tame dog in the service of the Empire?"