Prince Teluko threw back the flap of his tent and surveyed the remnants
of his brother’s once mighty army. A cold drizzle fell over the
hills from low gray clouds. He wore no helmet or hood. Rain soaked his
hair and pattered against the steel of his armor. He looked over his shoulder
in the direction of Tanshe-Arat, the Home-in-Exile where his wife and
daughter awaited his return. But he knew he would never see their faces
or the beauty of his city again in this life.
Teluko closed his eyes and listened to the rain and the sounds of the
army around him: weary men speaking in hushed tones, the quiet whickering
of the horses, the creak of wagons moving across wet earth. His anger
drained out of him. Nothing remained but an overwhelming sadness. They
would be obliterated by their enemy. They had already suffered two crushing
defeats that had killed more than half of their men. The coming battle
would be the last.
He heard steps behind him. Teluko opened his eyes and turned to face
Suvendis, his chief war priest. “My prince, we should speak,”
said Suvendis. He regarded Teluko from beneath the crimson hood of his
robe, pulled down low over his blue skullcap. He gripped the witchwood
staff at his side with fingers so gnarled they seemed carved of the wood
itself. His expression was stoic, unflinching, but Teluko knew
him better than anyone save Suvendis’s companion priests, and the
prince knew the older man was troubled. And who would not be troubled in times like
these? Teluko wondered.
Teluko nodded and followed Suvendis into the priests’ tent.
A servant hurried to the prince as soon as he entered and offered a cup of
wine. Teluko took the cup and drained half of it, then dropped down into
a small folding chair beside the long plank table, its scarred surface
covered with maps and candles, where his other priests waited. He drank
more of the wine, then held out his nearly empty cup. At once another
servant appeared and refilled it.
The priests all regarded him with the same guarded expression Suvendis
had worn; as with Suvendis, Teluko could sense concern and worry in all
of them. They consider themselves to be more than the rest of our
people, different and somehow better — and in some ways they are
— but when faced with the annihilation of our race they feel the
same fear as the rest of us. They all bowed and took their places
across from him.
The prince took another sip of wine. “Suvendis said we should speak.”
“We need to plan for the morrow, my prince,” said Hodentu,
the youngest. “The Atalari will arrive by mid-afternoon. Most likely
they’ll deploy their front lines to the north and south in an attempt
to contain our flanks.”
“And what do you suggest?” asked Teluko. “There’s
nothing but open land behind these hills. If we don’t stand here,
then where? At the very foot of our homes?”
“My Prince, we must do something,” said Hodentu.
“My brother lies near death,” he said. “His own priests
have refused to let me see him. This is where he commanded us to come
before he collapsed on the field. I have no authority to change that unless
he dies or commands me to take control of our forces. There’s nothing
else to be done.”
“The king’s wound was a grievous one,” said Odalendë,
his deep voice rumbling from the shadows of his hood like the grinding
of boulders. He was a huge man, tall and broad and thick; his neck was
nearly as big around as one of Teluko’s thighs. “It has been
five days since he was struck. I fear he may be dead and that his priests
are holding that from us to keep the army from complete despair.”
“My brother is not dead,” said Teluko. “I would have
felt his death. The bond between us is deep, deeper than even the closeness
of being twins.”
“The king’s priests have been working strange magic whose
purpose I cannot fathom,” said Suvendis. “When I was refused
entry to the king’s tent I sensed powerful forces within. I don’t
know their purpose, and Nanjelkir told me nothing.”
The name of Asankaru’s chief war priest set Teluko’s teeth
on edge. Nanjelkir was the one who earlier had refused Teluko entry to
his brother’s tent, saying it was the command of the king that he
receive no visitors.
“It’s not fair,” said Gythero, second in authority after
Suvendis. “We have the right in this!”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Suvendis. “Might is
all that is important, and might is the one thing we do not have this
day.”
“Fairness and rightness had never been part of our dealings with
the Atalari,” said Teluko. Their histories told that the Atalari
had always hated and feared them. They could not understand why the People
of Theros chose to live underground and believed all manner of sinister
motives for that choice, even after the reasons were explained to them.
Our eyes and skin do not love the sun’s light or its heat, Teluko
thought. We are better suited to the cool caverns beneath the mountains,
and see best by the light of our lamps. When they walked above ground
it was in twilight and darkness. Why was that so difficult to understand?
When the Atalari discovered that Teluko’s people could know their
thoughts with a touch of the flesh, their initial distrust blossomed into
fear and hatred. No matter that this power made learning the language
of the Atalari simple, so that the two peoples could better speak and
understand one another. That did not matter. It was a power the Atalari
did not have, something they had never before encountered, and it shook
the confidence of their Nation and filled them with dismay.
After a time there was open war between them. The People of Theros were
driven from the north, out of the lands claimed by the Atalari, and created
their Home-in-Exile.
The tent flap was thrown back. A figure entered, unannounced, his hood
pulled low to conceal his face.
“The king has awakened and summons his younger brother,” said
Tageluron, another of Asankaru’s war priests.
“Lower your hood and bow to the prince!” demanded Suvendis.
“It is your place to show respect, Tageluron!”
Slowly, the other war priest lowered his hood and inclined his head at
Teluko.
The prince rose. “Tell my brother I’ll be along soon. I haven’t
finished conferring with my priests.”
“The king has commanded —”
Teluko raised his hand, but did not look at Tageluron. “I’ve
given you my reply. I’ve tolerated your rudeness but you will not
question me. I am not yours to command, though you may think otherwise.
Now leave us. We have important matters to discuss that do not concern
you.” He turned his back to Tageluron and took his seat.
Tageluron did not move. He was about to speak again when Teluko said,
“If you do not leave at once I’ll have you whipped for disobedience.
I am still a Prince of our people, and you will obey me or be punished!”
His brother’s war priest lingered a moment longer, then left the
tent without another word.
“They grow arrogant beyond measure,” said Suvendis.
“They follow my brother’s lead.” He finished his wine
and placed the empty cup on the table.
There was little more to say. The army was encamped on the eastern edge
of the Beltharos, a wooded, hilly country that stretched all the way to
the great cliff into which Tanshe-Arat had been delved. This is where
they would make their stand when their enemy came. There would be no further
retreat.
Suvendis and Gythero accompanied the prince to his brother’s tent.
It was the largest in the army and the only one dyed scarlet, with gold
and silver patterns worked into the fabric. Framing the tent flap were
two tall pylons of black belku wood carved with incantations of protection
and words of blessing taken from the tablets of Theros himself, the Lord-Father
who first united the Nine Clans and made them a true people.
The rain had stopped. Gray tendrils of mist drifted above the ground and
curled over the tops of the hills like specters of the dead.
After he was announced, Teluko went to his brother and knelt. “I’m
glad you have recovered, my king.”
Asankaru, propped up on a narrow bed near a glowing brazier beneath one
of the three tent poles, gestured for his brother to stand. “Leave
us,” he said to the war priests and servants. “My brother
and I must speak alone.”
Teluko rose and looked at his brother steadily, the first time he had
seen him in days. The king looked surprisingly hale. His wounding had
been terrible: an Atalari spear had been driven completely through his
upper chest, just below his collar bone. Teluko had not seen his brother
fall — he and his legions had been furiously trying to keep their
lines from breaking beneath the sheer weight of the Atalari onslaught
— but when the hail and lightning abruptly stopped he knew at once
that something had happened to the king. Invigorated, the Atalari surged
forward and hacked their way through their forward lines, splitting the
army in two. The call for a retreat to these hills had come moments later,
the final order given by Asankaru before he lapsed into unconsciousness.
His wound was heavily bandaged in white linen that bound his left arm
across his chest. The king’s face, though thinner and with a fringe
of beard along his jaw, was lively and full of color. His eyes, the same
deep silver color as his brother’s, glinted beneath his dark brows.
“You look well, my King.”
“I have my priests to thank. If not for them I would have died.”
“Suvendis felt strange energies here while your priests tended to
your wound, but he didn’t recognize the power they used. Is this
some new thing they’ve devised? They would not speak to Suvendis,
but if you —”
“I’ve no desire to speak of priestly powers,” he said.
“It matters not how they healed me; what matters is that I am healed
and prepared to lead our people once again. But I’ve lost precious
time. I summoned you so that you could tell me your plans for our victory
against the Atalari.”
“Victory? There are no plans for victory, Asankaru! All we can hope
to do is hurt them enough before we’re destroyed so that they won’t
take this war to our homes and slaughter our wives and our children!”
A blinding rage rose in him. “How dare you speak of victory! It’s
your arrogance that has brought us to the very edge of ruin!”
The king’s right hand clenched into a trembling fist. “Throw
down your weapon and flee if you must, but the battle is not yet over,
and I’ll hear no more of defeat!”
“You may not wish to hear of defeat, but that is what we face. What
you’ve brought us to. You thought your powers as a Storm King would
swing the balance in our favor even against a mightier foe, but you were
wrong. I told you this would happen, I told you my visions showed me this
plan of yours was doomed to fail, but you wouldn’t listen. Three
times I dreamed of this doom. Three! Never before have I had three visions.
But still you wouldn’t heed me. Your faith has always been in your
powers, your strength, but this time they are not enough. I know because
I’ve seen it. Deny it all you want, but when the Atalari destroy
us it will be on your head.”
Asankaru, his teeth clenched, said, “I could have you executed for
what you just said to me.”
“It matters little. If you don’t, the Atalari soon will. But
if you have me killed it’s because you’re too weak to hear
the truth. Certainly your sniveling war priests won’t tell it to
you.” He shook his head, his mouth suddenly dry. “If Father
were alive he would have never let you go to war.”
“That’s a lie! He’s the one who told me that one day
we would grow strong enough to reclaim what the Atalari had taken from
us.”
“I remember his words, Asankaru, and they were not spoken in earnest.
He was trying to quell your hurt at finding we were not the mightiest
people in the world. You were always proud, and his words were meant to
soothe, not ignite a fire in you. If he’d known his words would
lead to this he would have bitten off his tongue before speaking them.”
“You don’t know –-”
“No, Asankaru, I do know. I remember when you decided to field a
great army to attack at the heart of the Atalari. ‘They’ve
all but forgotten us,’ you said. ‘If we strike quickly and
kill their Matriarch their army will crumble and turn inward to defend
their borders. We’ll be able to return to our lost homes and live
in peace.’ I thought it unwise but held my tongue. But after my
visions I did speak out, only to have you accuse me of being craven and
letting fear overwhelm me. You listen to me when my visions suit your
needs and ignore me when they do not. You have doomed us all.”
“Your visions are not always clear,” Asankaru said. “You
have been wrong in your interpretations before.” Some of the heat
had left his voice, but anger still burned in his eyes.
“It’s been many years since I was wrong about a vision,”
he said. “I am not wrong about this.”
“Despite your words, you don’t know how this will end,”
said his brother. “We will be victorious. I’ve not been brought
back from the brink of death only to fail now.”
“You delude yourself,” said Teluko with disgust. He turned
to leave, then faced his brother once more. “Perhaps you were right.
Perhaps I was craven. If I’d been braver I should have killed you
when you refused to listen to me. It would have been a small price to
pay to save our people.” Without asking the king’s permission,
Teluko stormed out of the tent.
Suvendis and Gythero hurried to catch up with the prince, whose sudden
exit caught them at unawares. “My prince, we heard shouting,”
said Suvendis. “What is the command of the king?”
Teluko’s boots sank into the muddy earth as he marched back to his
tent. He knew his priests had heard every word spoken; only a deaf man
could have failed to hear. But they did not presume to point out that
they had heard, waiting instead for the prince to speak. Soldiers saluted
or bowed to him as he passed, but he paid them no heed.
He marched into his tent and shouted for wine. He gulped down the full
cup that was handed to him and flung it to the ground. “I knew what
would happen yet I followed him anyway,” he murmured. “I am
at least as guilty as he is. Perhaps more so, because I knew with absolute
certainty how this folly would end, where Asankaru at least has the excuse
of his terrible pride.”
“My prince, are you all right?” asked Hodentu. “What
did the king say to you?”
“Nothing that matters,” he said.
* * *
It rained again during the night, a heavy downpour that drummed noisily
on Teluko’s tent. He slept little, and the few dreams he had were
dark and troubled. By morning the storm had passed, though dark clouds
still hung in the sky, blocking the sun and leeching the color from the
world, so that everything seemed sad and gray and dying.
Teluko had heard nothing from Asankaru. He no longer knew what to expect
of him. His brother was mad with his hatred of the Atalari; it consumed
him like a fever. The prince did not understand it. Asankaru had never
even seen an Atalari until he began his doomed campaign. Thousands of
years had passed since the People of Theros had been forced from their
homes beneath the mountains in the north, half a world away. The story
was full of legend and myth, the true accounts lost over the long reach
of time.
“My prince, we should pray before the battle begins.”
He turned to face Suvendis, then nodded. “I’ll pray to my
father for guidance. I feel he’s near me.”
“Of course he’s near. Our dead remain with us, to watch and
protect us from the Unseen Powers.”
“I wish he would appear to Asankaru and tell him what he has done
is folly.”
“My prince, you know that we cannot see the dead. They are here,
but not as —”
Teluko smiled at the priest. “So earnest! Of course I know that.
Although it’s said the Atalari can sometimes see the spirits of
our dead.”
Suvendis scowled. “In the old scrolls it’s written that the
spirits they saw terrified them. They accused us of consorting with demons
and other creatures of darkness. Their own beliefs are repugnant, if what’s
written is true. They believe their dead journey to some distant place
where they live in the glory of their gods and wait to be joined by those
still living once they die. I do not understand it. Why would they want
to leave the world where they had lived?”
“This world is all I want after death. Once I am dead, I will return
to Tanshe-Arat and watch and guard my wife and daughter.”
“As it should be.”
They knelt together, and Teluko prayed.
Father, protect our people in the days to come. I know this army
will perish, but guard those we’ve left behind against our enemies.
Asankaru has awakened their terrible might, and I fear in their blinding
rage they will not stop until they’ve killed us all. How he
wished for the power of his enemies, that he might speak to his father
for just a moment.
He opened his eyes just as the war horns sounded.
* * *
The Atalari army would arrive within hours. Teluko wandered among his
men, speaking small words of encouragement he hoped sounded sincere. His
soldiers were not fools and knew they had little chance of surviving the
coming battle, but a commander could not speak of defeat, no matter how
certain it was. He did not speak of victory — such a lie was beyond
him — but he told his men he believed in their bravery and the courage
in their hearts. “We must be strong when the Atalari come,”
he said.
Asankaru did not leave his tent. The scouts who had sounded the war horns
went immediately to the king upon their arrival and remained with him
for a long while.
Word reached the prince that the Atalari cavalry had grown to
more than three thousand, and that at least three thousand foot soldiers
had joined the army since their last battle. Despair filled him when he
heard the reports. They will roll across us like an avalanche, he
thought.
“Have Echareil brought to me,” the prince said to a servant.
He pulled on his gauntlets and left his tent. A second servant handed
the prince his helmet.
He mounted his warhorse and patted the animal’s armored neck. “This
will be our last ride together, I fear,” he whispered.
He trotted toward the front lines on the northern flank. He had positioned
two of his legions on low hills that swept upward to the west with a narrow
valley between them, choked with brush and small trees. The Atalari would
be forced to make a direct assault up the slopes of the hills to reach
them. Teluko’s archers would inflict heavy casualties, and the lines
of entrenched soldiers would be able resist an uphill attack for a long
time. But in the end, the overwhelming numbers and magic of the Atalari
would win the day. The powers of his war priests would not hold against
the sorceries of their enemy.
But we will hurt them, thought the prince. We will make
them rue this day for as long as their memory endures.
His war priests followed him on their black steeds. Neither the priests
nor their horses wore armor of any kind. Each held his staff easily in
the crook of an arm. They said nothing as they kept pace with the prince.
He knew they were slipping into the trances that would ease their ability
to call their magic and speak to one another with their thoughts, a power
unique to those who underwent the secret rituals of their priesthood.
He heard some of the soldiers near him joking. It was good to hear men
laugh at a time like this, and the prince smiled.
His priests spread out in a line across the hills and stood completely
still, as if time around them had stopped.
He heard men call out and looked to the east. Horsemen raced toward them,
sounding their horns. They were Asankaru’s scouts, and their appearance
meant the Atalari were not far behind.
It did not take long for the Atalari army to appear. A line of armored
horsemen formed the van, moving at a quick but steady pace. A low rumble
like far off thunder reached him a few seconds later. Even in the dim
light, their armor shimmered like rainbows, a sign of their inherent power,
a shifting swirl of colors that the prince even now could not deny was
beautiful to behold.
He felt a tightening in his chest. He heard a murmur run through the soldiers
around him, and saw them point toward the king’s tent.
Asankaru had emerged in full armor, surrounded by his war priests. His
left arm was no longer bound against him. The king looked at his army
and raised his hands. His priests enclosed him in a circle and leaned
their staffs toward him, the steel ferrules resting lightly on the sodden
grass.
“Proud warriors of the People of Theros, this will be our final
battle against our enemy!” His war priests used their powers to
carry his voice across the hills so that to each man it sounded as if
the king stood no more than a few feet away. “There are some that
would have you believe this battle cannot be won, that we have already
lost. But I tell you that you are better than that! I know your hearts,
I know what you are capable of doing! It was I who failed you. I was not
strong enough to do what was needed, and I almost perished because of
my weakness. But no more! I will not fail you again! Prepare yourselves!
Victory is ours!”
He threw back his head and shouted their ancient war cry, “Ei
valros tehu Theros!”
Teluko realized his brother was mad. There was no victory to be had here.
Asankaru could not face what was about to happen. Even with the Atalari
army rushing toward them like a flood of death, he continued to believe
they could somehow win the day.
Perhaps he said what he did to lift the hearts of these men before
they die, thought the prince. He knew it was something he would never
have been able to say. The words would have choked in his throat. He could
not have brought himself to utter such a terrible lie. In that regard,
his brother was much more suited to be king than he. Teluko could not
inspire men; he thought and spoke far too literally to win hearts.
Asankaru threw back his head and unleashed his power as a Storm King,
the first to be born to his people in more than five hundred years.
Teluko saw the power pour up from the earth and through his brother’s
body. Crackling sparks of energy danced around Asankaru’s head like
a swirling halo of stars. Even from this distance Teluko could feel the
charge in the air; the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood
on end. The clouds above his brother thickened and grew darker as he bent
them to his will. Wind gusted toward the Atalari army, whose foot soldiers
— their spears bristling like a moving forest of steel-crowned trees
— were now visible behind the charge of cavalry.
Asankaru’s war priests began an incantation. Teluko could sense
the power on the hilltop surge to an almost unimaginable level. Their
staffs shimmered with dancing blue light.
He heard Suvendis shout to him but could not make out the words, though
it sounded like a warning, or cry of surprise.
What are they doing? he wondered. He’d never seen anything
like this before.
Then a vast amount of energy exploded from Asankaru. The force of it shook
the earth. Echareil staggered and whinnied in fright as he struggled to
keep his balance. Around the prince, soldiers toppled or fell to their
hands and knees.
What have they done? he wondered. Never before had the war priests
been able to augment Asankaru’s powers as a Storm King. They were
different magics drawn from different sources. What he was seeing should
not have been able to happen.
They must have changed him when he was wounded and near death. The
strange powers Suvendis sensed. It was the only explanation. Something
that altered him, or them, or both, so that their powers could be used
together. He wondered what price his brother had paid for such a transformation.
He looked up and saw the result of this impossible blending of magics.
It was as if an inky curtain of night had fallen across the hills. The
storm clouds Asankaru had created were as black as pitch and spread across
the sky like a growing stain. The dark air took on a greenish cast as
lightning flashed within the clouds. The thunderclaps were immediate and
deafening. The storm was larger by far than anything Asankaru had ever
before created. It awed and frightened Teluko to witness it, and for a
moment his heart fluttered with hope that they might indeed conquer their
foes.
But I had three visions of our doom! he thought. Was it possible
he was wrong, that he had somehow misread the dreams that had haunted
him? Perhaps it is only my own doom I saw, my own death in this place.
He doubted himself, doubted his powers for the first time in years.
The magic of the storm continued to build, a charge in the air that rode
upon the wind but was not truly of it. Lightning licked down from the
clouds and struck the Atalari cavalry, followed by fist-sized balls of
hail that smashed their helms and shimmering armor.
The prince looked at his brother and understood the price he was paying
for such power. The king himself was little more than a blurry shape within
the column of energy that roared up into the sky. The war priests kept
their staffs aimed at the king, funneling their own power into his own.
But it was too much — it would kill Asankaru in a little while if
he continued at this rate. He simply could not contain it.
Three tornadoes spiraled down from the black clouds. They touched the
ground and blasted dirt and debris into the air, then churned their way
toward the front lines of the Atalari.
All around the prince the soldiers shouted, “The Storm King!
The Storm King!”
Teluko whirled his sword above his head and cried, “Asankaru!
For the king!” Then he spurred Echareil toward battle and wondered
— truly wondered, for he no longer trusted his visions — how
this day would end.
