Ursus led her silently through the snow. The lion glided wraith-like, like a demon without legs or a ghost without a body, hovering past trees and deep into the woods. He stopped to shake his mane; flakes of frost showered to the ground.
He raised his nose as they reached a small grove. Eyes scanning the trees. Then he went to the place beside a trunk and dug into the snow. A few inches deep he found the remnants of a burnt-out fire.
“This is the place,” he said.
Eris spun about herself. She recognized the tree Aletheia had propped herself against to shoot her bow, and against another’s trunk were scorch marks charring the side like a strike of lightning—or a burst of magician’s fire. Yes, this was the place.
“Your memory is impressive to lead us back here,” Eris said.
“I know the woods,” he replied.
Together they combed the premises. She found Robur’s phylactery and placed it in a pouch, but aside from a few stray scraps, her bedroll and one of her books—now ruined—there remained no sign of the rest of their things.
But they did find the Seeker. Her body was buried beneath the snow. Her head remained attached by a thread beneath her chin. She wore plain clothes and furs. Her armor was gone.
Eris trembled in fury.
“Scavengers have beat us to it,” she managed.
“I am sorry.”
“Do not be sorry! You have done enough already, it is—” She shook her head. “Unless your squirrels took these things, men are surely responsible. They will have returned to Coedwig in search of a market for any valuables. I will go there myself.”
The lion looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Very well.”
“Thank you for taking me this far, Ursus. I bid you a safe journey.”
A nod. A moment. Then he vanished. Perhaps he was reticent about leaving her and she simply couldn’t tell; from their encounter the other day she received the impression he felt obligated to do precisely as she said, when she said it. An advantage of her current state. Even if he did think leaving was a mistake, he didn’t say it. If only her friends deferred to her so much.
That left Eris alone. Alone and disarmed, with nothing but determination to see her task through. She had been here before. Three winters ago, after leaving Rook. When she left Pyrthos. She was alone then—and she had done well enough, for she trusted herself, and was comfortable in her own company.
Yet she was not quite alone this time, was she? Although she had gotten used to the feeling, and the notion, of carrying this child, she still found it impossible to imagine how others saw her. Eris, the elfin sorceress who stole the Tome from the Arktids: that she could imagine. Could such a woman have done such a thing while pregnant?
The answer was yes. She looked ridiculous, and leaning over was an increasing challenge, but she was not impaired so much to no longer be herself.
So she set off to Coedwig. More men went about the place now; they had given up the hunt. In two weeks they hadn’t killed a single lion. Many more still fought their war, however, and Eris was keen to notice how empty the markets were. She decided to ask about the stalls if anyone had seen a sword with a crow’s head for a pommel.
“I’ve seen ‘im,” said a woman, after an hour of fruitless jabbering. “He came in four days past. Llewellyn, it was; he found a whole trove of things when out huntin’ with his son, and I watched ‘im as he hauled ‘em all back thru the gates. But he didn’t sell it to us. Not even the blacksmith could afford a sword like that.”
“Those things were not his to sell,” Eris said. “Where did he take them?”
“To the castle, of course! Where else? Said it would be a gift for the new Prince! Went up with ‘is wagon and—why, I don’t know what else, ‘e didn’t come by to tell me, but I didn’t see ‘im come back with it all, that’s certain.”
Eris let tension overwhelm her. Every muscle contracted as her body tried to tighten itself into an knot.
She glanced up at the ‘castle.’ It was a small keep, with a palisade wall and a single great hall. But there would be retainers within. Why could it not be simple, just the once? Why did fate tease her in this manner?
But teased she was. Eris had always favored the direct path. She would take it once again.
----------------------------------------
A mustachioed man in scale armor and a gleaming helmet stopped her at an exterior gate. “What’s your business?” he said, regarding her warily. No doubt she looked a depraved vagrant; extremely pregnant, yet not in a dress, wearing ragged leathers, a look of fury in her eyes.
“The regent has come into one of my possessions,” she said.
“Your what?”
“I am here to retrieve something that was lost.”
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
“I am Eris of—just let me in!”
“Step back, madam.”
“I am the wife of Korax XXXII! I am the duchess of Korakos! You must let me in! Would you turn away nobility?”
Another guard was attracted to this scene and drifted over. They whispered to each other. Then the first disappeared, and a moment later he returned with a man in a robe.
“I am told you are a Kathar duchess?” the robed man asked. He regarded this claim with doubt, clearly, and stared down his nose at her.
“Yes! And I demand to see the regent!”
“…you have come very far indeed.”
“‘Tis a long story, and one I would gladly recount—out of the cold.”
The robed man clutched his wrists together. “It is a bold assertion. Can you prove such a claim?”
She groaned. “Several days ago a man brought a sword to your master. It is silver and has a head of a crow on its pommel. This sword is mine; it was not his to give away. There was also an elven bow, a dwarven hatchet, an arcane—an orb, and a staff among the rest of the things. And a suit of mail. Is that proof enough?”
The look on the robed man’s face gave away that he had seen these artifacts, and that he was both surprised and dismayed to hear Eris returning for them. Then he frowned. “You are a magician,” he said.
She gasped. Her eyes. She hadn’t been concealing herself, but of course—to claim she was a duchess, she could not also be a magician. How funny, then, that it was also basically true.
“Those were my things that were given to you,” she said slowly. “I would like them returned.”
The man made a gesture. He stepped back behind the gate, and a guard stepped forward. “You must depart at once, Eris. The lady will not see you.”
“You do not wish to make this mistake,” she shouted.
“Your kind are not welcome here, witch. Be gone.”
“Leave,” a guard said. He reached out to grab her by the arm.
“Touch me and you will die,” she said.
He hesitated. But perhaps he had never seen a magician before, perhaps in Eris he saw only a pregnant, vulnerable, weak girl, because he grabbed her anyway and pushed her down toward the town.
She had not been lying. The moment his hand brushed against her bicep she grabbed him around the wrist and used Disintegrate. As his fingers turned to dust he burst into screams, stumbling backward, surprised and horrified, and the other guard jumped forward. He punched her and she nearly fell, but she steadied herself, and as he drew his sword she expelled her Essence in green fire, coating him, melting his armor to his skin, and sending him flailing against the gate.
This was not how she wanted this to go. She had tried to be diplomatic—whatever ensued was not her fault. But they had chosen this court, not her. She was innocent.
She wiped a trail of blood from her nose.
The first guard still screamed. In awe. Staring at his empty sleeve. Eris reached out with her mind and wrapped her Essence around his windpipe and choked him until he tumbled to the ground.
She sighed. This was not the time for a killing spree. She was vulnerable. She was tired. She did not have her things. But those things needed to be retrieved, and—and what if she waited? What if Rook’s sword were sold? What if she never found it again? Her son would have nothing, no symbol of his father’s rank, no proof he ever existed or that he was a Korakos at all. She would not have that.
She turned to the gate and blew it down. It was held by only a single latch, not really meant to withstand a psychic battering ram, and with an explosion of wind it flew off its posts and collapsed in on itself. She stepped through just as an alarm bell rang.
The keep was some feet uphill. She ascended. Yet as she took the first step, a wave of lethargy hit her, and she stumbled slightly.
Such feats of magic were not so easy without her focusers. This was a return to the form of her first two years of adventure.
Without the arcane focus it was impossible to project Disintegrate or Sleep at range, so instead she relied on fire. Two guards on the walls near the keep’s gate rushed toward her, but she flicked a fan of flame toward one, and his surcoat sizzled and immolated; he rushed into the snow to pull it off. His companion routed back down to the village.
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Eris was overcome with bloodlust then. She grabbed the fleeing guard’s leg and the flaming guard’s arm and raised them both in the air. She would not risk them coming back with reinforcements. So she tossed them over the edge of the hill, sending them flying over the wall, tumbling over themselves like tossed stones down to the forest beyond.
It was a long way down.
Her mind strained like an exhausted muscle at the exertion. Tingling, and it spread through her arms. She could not perform such feats safely without the staff.
She held her forehead for a moment. Resting. Then she continued.
The gate to the great hall was not locked. Eris pushed it open with her own hands. Within she found premises much poorer than Korakos; a long, wooden funnel toward a humble chair, with few objects of art on display.
Eris began preparing energy in her hands. Readying herself to release it at whoever she next saw. Any servants or slaves within would have heard the alarm and fled to safety, no doubt; the hall was deserted. She proceeded down toward the seat, the chair, the throne of the ‘Prince,’ until she came to a hallway that led to living quarters.
Another guard stumbled out through a doorway, and at his side was the robed man. They looked horribly confused, but Eris gifted them clarity: she shot her magic at the guard. A bolt of electricity twirled through the air, sparkling until it impacted squarely on a scalemailed torso.
A brief flash. A crackling of electricity. A pile of ash fell to the ground.
A chain of sparks caught on the wooden walls of the keep. A fire started.
The robed man screamed. “You can’t—Ragom! What are you doing?”
“Your god will not help you this time,” Eris shouted. “I have given you one chance already. Bring me my things or this entire wretched town will burn to the ground!”
He shook his head. Starting backward. The fire spread up a beam of wood, jumping across the ceiling as red spread everywhere. The heat grew intense. Another armored man rushed through the hall’s open gates, but Eris pulled a beam down from the ceiling onto him. He was crushed and the way out was blocked.
“Make your decision!” she yelled.
The robed man ducked back inside the room he had just stepped out. A door slammed behind him. What brave people these Voreians were.
Eris started down the hall. She checked each carefully, wary of being ambushed as she was by Kirkos in Castle Korakos. Then, feeling spiteful, she used Hold Portal on the closed door of the robed man, sealing it shut with arcane energy; let him hide in there forever, she thought. Or at least the rest of his life.
The fire continued to spread.
Four servants rushed into the hall. They hardly noticed Eris as they fled from smoke. She passed a kitchen and a dining room where a fat woman and an old man argued. Then she came to a door covered in illustrations of dragons, carved and gilt. This was where a Prince would be found. She tried its handle.
It opened.
Within was a woman with a baby. An infant. Less than a year old. She held it in her arms and clutched it to her breast, and when she turned, it was with a jealous fear. The alarm bell was very audible from here.
She looked young. She was blonde, fabulously dressed, and well-curved, but short, and on her face was terror—yet when she saw Eris, that terror turned to confusion.
Eris was not then in the appearance of a depraved killer. But looks could be deceiving.
“Who—” the woman stammered. “Please—”
“I care nothing for you,” Eris spat back. “You and your people are worthless to me. I come only for my things—things you stole. Where are they?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know—I—who are—”
“A sword.” Eris stepped forward. “A sword, a staff, an orb, and a bow. The rest is unimportant.”
Her eyes went wide. She shook her head. “I didn’t know—”
“Tell me where they are!” Eris stepped forward. She let the fire in her hand surge and sent a gust of wind through her hair, using mana to pick up a vortex about her feet and send her skirt blowing as if she stood in a storm. “Your life is not worth stolen goods. Tell me and you shall live.”
The woman—the regent for the new Prince, whom she held in her arms—pointed at the far wall. Eris stepped in that direction and saw at once a small armory set out in a portion of the room. An armor stand, a rack for swords, a dresser for various armaments. Eris rushed to it.
Rook’s sword was there. Displayed prominently. She grabbed it and wrapped it around her belly—the top, as before, where it still barely fit. She also found Aletheia’s bow, discarded without a place to be displayed, and she put it in her backpack. Finally there was the Seeker’s enchanted armor—true enchanted mail.
That was worth much. Eris took it. She wasn’t sure how to best transport it. She could wear it, but she was already taller than the Seeker had been, with a larger bust, and now it would never fit her. Instead she folded it and, too, placed it in her backpack, but it took up most of the remaining space. But where were her other things—
A woman screeched behind her. A shrill, feminine roar. Eris felt something slide into her back. Instinctively she turned, and she saw the regent behind her; in her hands she clutched a letter opener, a small knife with a sharp blade, and it was coated in Eris’ blood.
The wound was minor. It didn’t even hurt, relative to so many other stabs. But it made her very angry. Eris grabbed the woman and seared her with green flame across the arm. She dropped the letter opener and yelled and Eris, taller and stronger, subdued her with raw physical strength; but as the fight went on, she dropped her concentration, and the spell of Wisdom of the Sages faded from her mind.
She didn’t understand the woman’s cries for help. She didn’t really need to. No one came.
She still kicked and bit against Eris. Screeching and yelling. “Stop!” Eris commanded. “Stop! I have—stop it!”
She tried to cast Sleep, but just as the spell went off, the woman bit her pinky. Eris swore and pulled her hand away and all her concentration dropped, and now free the woman went for the letter opener again. She grabbed it, then climbed to her feet, and then she leaped for Eris—
That was it for empathy. Eris incinerated her.
The regent couldn’t scream for long as she died, as all the air was sucked from her lungs by the fire. She simply shriveled into a blackened husk. Her dress charring around her. Her skin shriveling. And then she stopped, and Eris ended the spell.
Smoke still trailed into the room. The fire across the keep spread fast.
Eris grunted. Her wound was minor, but it stung, and she was angry now. She had tried to be diplomatic—not for very long—yet still—and this woman had attacked her—all because—
There was a cradle near the center of the room. The child had been set down, the new Prince of Coedwig, and Eris stepped cautiously over to glance at it.
It was monstrously ugly. Fat, disproportioned, helpless, useless. She hated it on instinct. She could not reconcile that this hideous thing was the same as what grew within her. The thought disgusted her. She shivered at it.
Now the fire was very close. An ember from her spell had caught on a rug in this room and now that started to burn, too, along with all the rest of the keep. She needed to make her decision.
The Prince of Coedwig. Not an enemy. She didn’t even know its name. Just a child.
She picked it up and hauled it through the halls. Eris had no empathy whatsoever for those she did not know personally, but she was not a psychopath. She did not kill for satisfaction—although she found much satisfaction in killing, for it was the ultimate expression of power, strength, and victory. But it was pointless leaving this child to die. She did not need that among her sins, too. And maybe someday, grown, he would seek her out for vengeance—well. He could join the queue.
But first she needed her staff and orb.
She navigated the halls with this infant in her hands, clutching it like a wet cat, while she checked each room. She thought hard about where such things might be kept; both would seem quite mundane to a normal human. They would potentially be discarded, even, but they had been found with other artifacts of power, and so perhaps…
An idea. The man in the robe. He was most likely a steward. Perhaps a man of learning and letters. Maybe…
She let her Hold Portal spell go and went straight back to the room where she had locked him. She navigated through a smoke-filled, fiery hallway to get back there. When she opened the door a cloud of black smoke hit her like a blizzard and she was forced to use a spell to blast it all away, which bought her only a brief moment, but it was enough. She pulled the wailing child against her chest and stepped within.
She was getting very tired by then. She wanted to preserve her magic, but she could barely see within the room. She batted away smoke, approaching a burning section of the wall—
And there, on a desk, was her focus. She put the baby down on the table—he started to cough—and grabbed it. Then her staff—yes, against the wall, just as she had hoped. She picked them both up and went to grab the child—
But her hands were full. And so was her backpack. She could not take both.
She stared at the child for a long time as smoke filled her lungs. Could she return? Would there be time? Did she care for this thing’s life? No, not really. Yet she still felt some compulsion to save it—perhaps to prove that she hadn’t come here to harm anyone, to demonstrate that none of this was truly her fault and she, really, was the victim, and no one could honestly be blamed for this calamity anyway.
But the orb meant more to her. And the staff. She had to leave him. She took a step toward the door—
Yet his cries called her back. She did not know why. They were impossible to ignore. She couldn’t abandon something alive to cook in this place, even a revolting baby.
Then she had an idea.
She put down her focusers and used Polymorph on the child. It took a minute, and by the time she was done she could no longer breathe. But once it was, she closed her eyes; and when she looked again, the Prince was now a tiny, baby mouse.
He fit in the palm of her hand. She slid him into a pocket.
Then she grabbed her things. She rushed quickly back to the Prince’s room, where she scaled out from a window. She used a short-range Blink to transport herself outside, where at once she found herself surrounded by guards, servants, and a trail of concerned townspeople coming up from Coedwig. She was lost instantly in the confusion.
The whole of the keep was engulfed in flame now.
She coughed out her lungs. A man came to her with concern on his voice, but she didn’t understand him, and with a glare—and seeing her, no doubt confused as to her collection of equipment—he backed away.
She dropped the focus and staff on the snow. Then she withdrew the mouse and reached out into her Essence, and she severed the sustaining of the spell. As seconds passed the mouse transformed before her eyes back into a boy, now naked, in her arms. She did this covertly, her back turned, so none might notice.
She spun around.
When this was seen by those around her, they screamed in surprise. Then Eris presented the child as though she had been the one to rescue him—which, of course, she had been.
She handed him off to a guard while she coughed up black bile.
Then she picked up her staff. She picked up her focus. And she simply left. She walked down the stairs, through the gate she had blown open, and away from the inferno of the keep behind her as more and more spectators gathered on the approach. She walked into the town, then out into Chionos, and no one said a thing.
Because Eris did not look like a killer. She looked like a pregnant woman, and no one expected the two to be the same. And she considered, as she walked away, that no one who had seen her on her rampage survived the ordeal. They might never know she started the fire. It might even be that Eris the Magician would be, tomorrow, a name held in heroic regard among Voreians: the savior of the Prince. She could only hope.
As for her things, she had never been so relieved to be in possession of a weapon she did not even like.
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She forgot Aletheia’s sword. That night, as she made a lonely camp on her return to the ruined castle, she remembered. Aletheia’s sword. It slipped her mind entirely. Had it been there, with the others? With the bow?
No. She would have remembered if it had been. Who knew where it was. She hadn’t had time to search every inch of the keep, and she still mightn’t have found it. But she did not look forward to telling the girl that it was lost, now almost certainly forever. A cloud of guilt descended onto her.
There was only one choice. She would have to give Aletheia Rook’s sword. That thought was—distressing. Eris did not want to part with it. But Eris was no swordswoman, and if it was to be her son’s, then it should go to Aletheia, for she would be the true mother to him. Eris had looked after it for these last months, but now he was almost here; the time had come to pass it off.
She made up her mind and then went to rest for the night. Of course, as always, it was night when her son’s gymnastics began. The movements now were strong and deeply unsettling, and when she dared to look down at herself, she often saw hands and feet pushing out from within her stomach. Such reminders of what precisely she was doing with her body could serve only to horrify, but like any unfathomable reality she could do nothing but accept it.
She considered then, that night, that it might be the last time she was truly alone for a long while yet to come. She did not want to risk leaving the safety of her friends or the White Lions in her eight or ninth months, when the child could come early, when she might be very vulnerable. She could not risk another expedition like this one.
And once he was born…she did not know. She didn’t want to think about that.
For now she was alone, deliciously so, although she didn’t much feel it. Her stomach kept her awake for hours. She decided to enjoy it while it lasted.
When she fell asleep, it was with Rook’s sword clutched in an embrace.