Twenty-ninth of Harvest
Year 1182 of Emancipation
Belkai found herself wandering in the mist. It was bright but she couldn’t see more than a foot in any direction. She could sense something out there but nothing showed itself. Indistinct voices whispered through the haze and she could feel panic starting to rise. The ground was uneven, and even as she raced she fought to keep her footing. The voices became clearer the more she stumbled along.
Murderer.
Deceiver.
Defiler.
“No!” Belkai screamed, but the voices kept whispering, tormenting, accusing.
She tripped over something long and hard and fell face first into a puddle. She rolled over to see a figure standing over her. It was a man, with the regal features so typical of Lustrians. There was a hole in his chest, as if something had ripped his heart out.
“Milton...” she stammered. The figure sneered at her and reached out with a pale, bony hand.
“You are a demon,” he hissed. “Just like the one who owned you.”
The distant voices seemed to grow louder in her head.
Liar.
Thief.
Betrayer.
Milton vanished into the mist, and Belkai hauled herself to her feet. Her heart was racing as she kept moving, not daring to look down at the soft ground that squelched below her feet, somehow knowing that it was soaked in blood. She froze as another figure appeared before her. Its head was missing, but Belkai recognised her nonetheless.
“Agatha... I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Your darkness must be quenched,” came her disembodied voice. “Your life for mine.”
The body reached out for her and Belkai stepped back, stumbling and falling into the mud. She could feel hundreds of hands grasping at her as the voices continued.
You must burn.
Burn.
Burn.
Belkai woke with a curse, springing upright in her bedroll drenched in sweat. She glanced around, but none of the elves had seemed to notice as they lay across the field sleeping.
“Devil’s breath,” she whispered, rubbing her sweat-covered face. The dreams were getting more vivid, no doubt intensified by the battle at Larton. It seemed that even victory left its mark on the psyche. It wasn’t rational, she knew. She had killed Milton in self-defence, and Davos had been the one to decapitate Agatha. So why do they plague me? The question was her own voice, and that at least was a relief, far more so than anyone could imagine. There was no more whisper in her head, no more quiet curse tearing at her soul. The Tormentor was dead, his voice forever silenced. It would take time to stop dreading his words, but to hear her own voice in her head was a breath of fresh air.
With a muffled groan, she lifted herself to her feet, leaving her sword behind as she carefully stepped around the sleeping elves. The warm breeze soon dried off her sweat, and she pushed the dark dream from her mind as she enjoyed the silence. It was finally sinking in that these soldiers around her were truly hers. An army at her command – not Ashelath’s, as he had intended, but her own. So far as she knew, no mage of her Order had ever ruled a company of soldiers, let alone a kingdom. That would have made Brimur laugh, she thought. For a moment she felt a twinge of homesickness for the old compound in the Ikari Dominion, the orcish nation to the northeast of Svaleta. She had lived there for most of her twenty-seven years. Narandir was now home but it didn’t feel like it yet. That would come with time, she knew. For now, she welcomed the warm breeze and the freedom from her nightmares. That had to be enough for tonight.
***
A strange silence hung over the fields of Larton like a mourning shroud. Even the vultures that pecked at the hundreds of decaying corpses were strangely subdued, sensing the residual echoes of magic even more than the humans that called the city home. Alihad’s forces were still camped nearby, at least half of them standing ready to counter a renewed push by the Aliri. Looking out over the fields, the general estimated that it would take well over a week to gather and bury all of the bodies. The local residents had been hesitant to leave their homes even after the victory was announced but the new Chief Scout, a young man named Ukari, had managed to organise a number of working parties. They were joined by as many soldiers as Alihad could spare, which made for a rather crowded battlefield. There was no joy or jubilation amongst the workers, only horror at what the war had unleashed upon them. Most covered their faces with cloth to try to block out the stench of rotting flesh, but such attempts proved futile.
It was easy to move amongst the fields unnoticed, and with their faces covered, no one took note of two light-skinned strangers who made no effort to collect corpses but instead spent their time studying the bloody landscape. Anyone who did see them assumed that they were with the militia, or spies sent by the king. Covered by such anonymity, for a time neither Adrianna nor Kane spoke a word as they studied the carnage. The devastation was on a level that they hadn’t seen for many a century. The beasts of Narandir had torn through everything in their path, and so far as the twins could see they had taken no casualties themselves. Dressed as they were, no one took note as they found their way to where the witches had been piled in preparation for their own burial. Someone, they had been told, was seeking mages’ advice on how to deal with them to ensure no magical consequences were incurred by accident. That amused Adrianna. Such superstitions belonged to an age before Palia, when darker forces ruled this continent. Still, it made her task easier. She knelt over the bodies, running a hand over their shattered bones.
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“I remember when the Elkuri cults first began,” Kane said as he knelt beside her. “I thought that they had been purged when Palia fell.”
“It seems the sorcerers always find a way to return,” Adrianna replied. She shook her head. “Palia fell because of their arrogance.”
“Palia fell because the Council abandoned the Arcane,” Kane snapped. “The cults were a symptom, not the cause.”
“This one is powerful.” She didn’t look up at Kane, but leaned forward to take a closer look at one of the corpses. “Ashelath’s servants don’t die easily.”
“This power...it will not be easy to break,” Kane said quietly. “To attack Narandir would be madness.”
Adrianna was silent for a moment, then stood and looked around the battlefield. “Do you remember when we used to hunt lions, Kane?”
“That was a long time ago,” he replied. A thousand years. Nowadays their prey was much more dangerous.
“We never sought the lion in its own lair. We always found its prey, made it bleed, then waited for the lion to come.”
“It worked every time.”
“Belkai’s strength will be meaningless if we find the right prey,” Adrianna told him. “That’s what it will come down to.”
Kane nodded. “It always does.”
***
To the northeast of Svaleta lay the nation of Lustria, a hardy people who toiled producing the precious metals and minerals that the region relied upon. Thanks to whatever twist of fate had blessed them, their geological gift had made them the economic backbone of the continent. The southern cities enjoyed the bounties of the wealth provided by that industry, while the northern regions were characterised by the bare necessities of families dedicated to retrieving the earth’s riches. Beyond the mines in the northeast were the Artax Mountains. This unforgiving mountain range was coated in perpetual mist, leaving a bare handful of safe routes known only to the locals. It was only after crossing these mountains that one would find their way to the Ikari Dominion.
The Dominion was what had resulted when the Palians had colonised the continent and found two dozen tribes of orcs in a cycle of constant war and ethnic strife. The seafarers had made a plan to unite the orcs under a single banner in order to protect their new land from threats to the south – and to be exported as an expeditionary force. Remarkably, the plan had worked. Orcs respected strength, and the enforced unity was backed up by an empire that laid waste to all in its path. Ikari armies had held the line against dozens of threats until the Palian Empire disappeared in the mysterious events now known as the Emancipation.
Over a thousand years later, the Ikari Dominion had remained steadfast. It was by no means a purely orcish land; people of all races were welcome so long as they submitted to the iron rule of the Clan Sar in the central village of Iradima. It was a nation of tough laws and unforgiving justice, but surprisingly welcoming to those willing to settle there and accept their civic duty. Submission, not race, was the central issue. Nonetheless, it was also a reclusive land, a favoured refuge for those in hiding. Along with the stringent justice system, the Ikari were wary of any outsiders who poked around where they didn’t belong. Trust had to be earned, and it wasn’t easy to come by.
It was in this land that the order of mages known as the Brilhardem, or ‘Children of the Wind’, had made their home. They were a secretive group and made enough contributions to the clans that the Ikari kept their compound wrapped in secrets. Only the most dedicated would find their way to the Brilhardem and even that number would be cut lower by the unforgiving initiation.
On this day at the end of Harvest, there was a storm brewing. Brimur had sensed it long before the sky began to darken and the wind turned cold. The storms got violent in these parts, but the stone-walled compound would easily withstand that force of nature. The six-foot elf gave the clouds a glance before turning his grey eyes to the four students standing before him. There were three Svaletans and, strangely enough, an Ikari orc. Despite being located in the Dominion, it was quite rare for an orc to enter the Order; the clans were far more favourable towards martial prowess than the more obscure powers of mages. Not that they had much reason to think otherwise; even as a master of his Order, Brimur would be hesitant to face an Ikari in face-to-face combat. Brimur smiled grimly as he looked at the four students. They were all in the final month of their Silent Year. They had learned much over the past year but had a lifetime of learning ahead of them. Their biggest test lay a month in the future. After completing their initial training, they would be sent into the Ikari wilderness and given the objective of making their way back to the Order by whatever means possible. Of the twelve students who would be taking the Pilgrimage this year, probably half would never return, whether because they gave up or because they died in the process. It was a grim calculus, but it ensured that Brimur’s Order stayed strong. It was a charter that had been handed down across generations. He had no intention of changing the foundational demands of the Order.
Belkai Androva had been one of Brimur’s most promising candidates. She had come from a broken home, but such was inevitable for a human family living in the Dominion. That alone had raised Brimur’s curiosity when she had walked through the gate at the young age of fifteen. She’d had an unusual aptitude for the craft that the Order taught, and had been taken underwing by Arak, the Order’s physical combat trainer. ‘The heart of an orc’, Arak had said when Brimur had asked why she’d caught his attention. He still wasn’t sure what exactly Arak had meant, but he acknowledged the unique quality that Belkai had shown. Her craving to learn had been impressive but had led her to dark places. If the stories he’d heard recently were true, then the darkness that he had sensed had been much worse than he’d expected – and it meant that Saxon, the young Svaletan who had accompanied Belkai on her mission, was dead.
His eyes narrowed as he studied the students before him, none of whom made a sound. Did they realise what lay ahead of them? Did anyone, really, when they joined the Order? Brimur made a point of maintaining the mystique around the Brilhardem, just as his predecessors had done. It protected them, kept their most questionable work wrapped in myth, but it also prevented new members from truly understanding what they were vowing to uphold.
“The physical is always betrayed by what lies beyond it,” Brimur announced, bringing his thoughts back to the present. “The gift of the Brilhardem is to bring order into the chaos of life.”
He looked at one of the Svaletans, a young woman, and said,
“Daria, perhaps your mind would be better off it wasn’t so focused on Cyril.”
She blushed, turning her eyes off a nearby combat trainer. Rumours said that the wisest of the Brilhardem could read minds. The truth, Brimur knew, was that one rarely needed to – if they knew what to search for.
“The great mysteries of this life are there for you to uncover,” Brimur continued, not trying to hide his smirk. “You just need to take hold of them and not let go.”
Isn’t that what I told Belkai? He asked himself. Well, it was too late for second guessing. He had sent Arak to learn what had happened in Narandir. Whatever news he brought, for good or ill, Brimur would deal with it in whatever manner was best. He just hoped that he wouldn’t have to kill Belkai. That was a fight that he didn’t think any mortal would win. It wouldn’t be the first time a rogue Brilhardem had to be put down. The trouble was, to kill one of his mages always cost the lives of at least a dozen hunters. He was producing the most lethal killers known to the continent – and now, it seemed, even the Arcane would have to concede that point. Belkai, what have you started?