Phanar stood behind Kanthyre at the prow of the Dremmedine, his arms around her, her hands on his, as moonlit tides brought them in to Salnifast-by-the-Sea. Ulfathu’s steady hand was on the wheel. Ibbalat and Anathta were in the crow’s nest – depending on which of them he asked, they were either going up there to get a better view of the port-town as they approached, or to better-effect a wind-spell, bringing them into the harbour more quickly… He knew they were both lying, and had to hide his smile twice.
He hadn’t been wrong, that day in Ord Ylon’s lair, looking down on both their corpses. This newfound freedom was a bliss for the soul that he’d never known might exist. Days and nights were a whirl of luxurious potential, a blank plenitude of existence that fascinated him. He could settle down somewhere with Kani – but he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to do anything. They could go together, anywhere, anywhere in the world. He could just live. Be himself.
One final hurdle – the magisters of Mund. A little blip on the open, empty horizon.
It was, therefore, with some alarm that he spotted the shape winging its way across the silver-lit bay towards the ship.
“What is that?” Kani asked at once, drawing herself up, hand falling to the empty mace-loop on her belt out of habit.
“A sorcerer,” he said in a tone of agreement; when she stiffened, he continued softly, “but a champion, I think.”
“We don’t know that!” she barked, stepping free of his hold on her. “And what about our last ‘champion’?” She raised her hand up to the sorcerer and suddenly there was a glob of whitish, silvery fire in her palm. “Who are you?” she called immediately across the waves. “What do you want with us?”
“Is he dead?” the sorcerer cried back.
“Which one?” Phanar butted in, stepping up beside Kani to the very rail, folding his arms.
“Redgate!”
“He is dead,” the warrior confirmed.
“What’s happening?” Ana muttered from behind him.
He turned and saw her just a few paces away; Ibbalat was still clambering down the rigging halfway along the ship.
“Nothing,” the warrior said. “Don’t be troubled.”
He turned back. The sorcerer was dropping closer, and he did indeed seem a little less intimidating than Redgate. His robe was not blood-red – he was clad instead in greens and purples, accented with blues and greys, the outer layer covered in little grinning mouths. The mask he wore was no spider-face but a confident, smiling satyr with curving horns. The six wings at his back were gossamer-nimbuses of blue light.
“He’s dead? You’re certain?”
The champion hovered down over the sea-serpent figurehead at the front of the ship, then came to hang just ten feet from them, matching pace with the wind and looking from the trio over to Ibbalat as the mage ran up.
“Who are you?” Kani asked again in reply. “Are you Redgate’s ally?”
“Gods, no!” the sorcerer said. “My name’s Feychilde. Timesnatcher basically gave Redgate a death-sentence. I’m told he was a bit of a bad egg. I actually saw you once – well, one of you – in a shop –”
“Have you got, oh, about three days, Feychilde?” Ana grated. “’Bad egg’ isn’t even close. As to his death…” Of course, she had the two bolts to hand – she drew them from her pouch, showed them to the champion. “I pulled the Mundertakers out of his heart myself. What little there was of it.”
“Mundertakers?” Feychilde repeated, sounding a little awed.
“They could do with a bit of a re-ensorcellment,” the rogue went on. “Feel like offering special rates to some adventurers who’ve just rid the world of two super-massive evils? We’re broke after shelling out for all our gear.”
“You’re… broke. The slayers… of Ord Ylon… are broke.”
“Hey!” Ana pointed a finger at the archmage. “Them stories, they’re just stories, you know! You think we’d be coming back here in the same boat – in the same gods-cursed clothes – if we just found a lake of shining platinum and electrum, a…”
Her voice dropped away suddenly. Keeping the existence of the hoard a secret was the only way they’d got Anathta onboard with them burying the place, in the end. If she wasn’t pillaging it, no one was. If the Magisterium wanted to send some people off to explore the caves, it would have to be for the right reasons…
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And now here she was, dropping herself in it already. Her money-brain really was like a completely separate entity, incapable of rational thought.
“Riiiiiight.” Feychilde’s grin, visible beneath the covering, matched his mask’s cheeks. “Look, if that’s your story I’ll go with it – whatever. And I’ll happily trade you spells for information. My friends,” he gestured at one of the docks the Dremmedine was heading towards, “the champions of Mund, I mean, are eager to have a chat. I just volunteered to pop over and check we didn’t have a fight on our hands, if you follow me.”
“This is why we have returned to your city,” Phanar replied. “To bring you information. There is much the Magisterium needs to hear.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” Feychilde frowned. “You see, while you’ve been off dealing with Ord Ylon – massive thanks from, like, everyone in the world for that, by the way – we’ve kind of been busy dealing with his cousin, who, it turns out, has been here for years. We’ve just got rid of her tonight, but my friends are sure there’s more to it – if she comes back we need to be ready, but they can’t see beyond a certain barrier… I’m sure they can explain it better than I can…”
Phanar tuned out the champion’s words. Feychilde was explaining things, important things – archmage-twins, Tyr Kayn, an enchantment placed on the magic-users of Mund – but the warrior could pick up what he missed later.
It is not over. There is no freedom to be found, no end to the trials. There is only struggle, until there is death – and even then, the ending can be made bittersweet, an eternal servitude…
He felt the despair enter his heart.
For a moment, just a moment, he tuned it all out and entered the emptiness.
It awaited him still.
The dragon in the sand.
The prophecy.
“… chance she and Ord Ylon were working together, for some reason, towards some mysterious goal –“
“Feychilde,” Phanar said, interrupting and raising his hand palm-outward in apology. “Are you saying that, until tonight, Tyr Kayn resided in your city?”
The champion nodded, staring at him.
“Then until this matter is settled, we too shall reside here,” the warrior decreed. “It is our path – it is Anathta’s path,” he looked at his sister solemnly, “to fight these creatures, wherever they are to be found. As to our story… Let us wait until we are with your friends. It shall be long in the telling. We will not want to tell it twice.”
“Speak for yourself,” Ibbalat said with a smile. “Best story of my life. I’ll be telling it till I’m ninety.”
He’d been practising showing the encounter with his glamours, but he was still having trouble erasing the ridiculous amount of treasure from the illusory lair – the existence of the Ord’s hoard was just too ingrained in his mind, apparently.
“Let us hope… that this is the case.”
“What’s the matter?” Kani asked, putting her hand on his arm.
Phanar withdrew with his beloved to the starboard rail, leaving Ibb and Ana at the prow to regale Feychilde with the highlights of the fight.
“What is it?” she asked again once they weren’t going to be overheard.
The concern in her voice touched him, and he kissed her head as he drew her into his arms.
“It is nothing.”
“Phanar…”
“It is… only a small thing.”
“Tell me. Speak to me, Phanar…”
He drew a deep breath.
“I… I fear we will never be there – in the future I have always hoped for, for us… I fear we will be fighting until the day we die. I fear we…” He swallowed and it was like he choked down a rock, hurting his throat and the top of his chest. “I fear we will not die together, and I will live on without you – or die, knowing you must live, live without me –“
She tilted her chin up, bringing her face to his, and kissed his lips deeply.
“Let the darkness swallow me,” she said softly when she broke away, her eyes still closed. “I offer it all up, myself, freely. I lift my voice to the night and it is the light that sweeps down over me. The light, Phanar. Do you know what it tells me?”
He shook his head. He didn’t understand.
“That we have to surrender, without shame. There’s no fighting fate, my dear one. That day, in his lair… I gave up. I told myself I wouldn’t, that I’d stay strong, but when my mace broke it brought it all home, you know. We were going to die… or worse…”
“Kani –”
She tossed her head and continued: “So I communed again. I spoke with my goddess. I didn’t understand. How could I die, without knowing what it was to be in your arms? Then the Maiden – she showed me how I would live. How we could win. There was just one price.”
He frowned. “Price?”
She smiled in answer. “I had to accept my destiny, conquer my fears. My vows – I had to promise to break them.”
“Break them? But, your power –”
“I still possess it, yes.” The cleric blinked, and suddenly her eyes flashed amber for a second. “What we’re taught doesn’t always correlate exactly to the truth. The Maiden… She’s less interested in chastity than she is… well…”
“Love?” he guessed.
She just smiled again. “I didn’t understand my vows, not until I knew I had to break them… It doesn’t matter. What’s important is, sometimes we get what we want when we least expect it.” She regarded him, staring into his eyes for long seconds. “Do you really think you would be happy? Giving up this life, becoming… what would you even want to do?”
“I could train others… The adventurers of tomorrow…”
Even as he said it, he knew it sounded, to use Ana’s term, ‘lame’.
“And how long would that last? Your favourite pupil gets in danger – do you save them? There’s a raid on a nearby village – do you back them up? You hear of a powerful magical item in a nearby crypt – do you leave it for the local darkmages to find? If –”
“I understand.” He folded her more-tightly into his arms. “I… Yes. You are right, of course. You are always right.”
“Can I get that in writing?”
“You have been spending too much time with my sister…”
“We’ve grown a little closer,” Kani agreed, smile splitting into a grin.
She leaned in to him, tightening her own embrace about his chest, and he put his chin on her head, as though to pull her into himself.
They stood there, looking out over the darkness of the sea as, behind them, they drew ever-closer to the shoreline.
“The Maiden had just one stipulation,” Kani murmured.
“Oh?”
“Did I forget to mention? You’re going to have to return my ring – or get me a new one.”
He took a few seconds, processing her words, then breathed, “Will you marry me, Kanthyre Vael?”
“Haven’t you been listening? It’s my fate,” she replied nonchalantly, shrugging. “It’s not like I’ve got a choice.”