In the House of Five Dragons
9. Stand
“Who are the Alterra? What are they? These are questions that we have asked since their discovery a century ago and for which we have few answers. All we know for certain is how truly little we know about these strange, alien creatures.”
— From A History of Our Worlds, by Carnus Orphaem
The horizon tipped up on its side, like the joint of two vast walls in the immeasurable distance. But with every passing verse, it drew closer as the Shatter consumed the dreamlands between. Sizzling tears shot sideways with lethal despair. A lanky Alterran sang them on, an antlered form somewhere between rebellion and a leaping stag. He raised his long-fingered hands and the tears caught a colorless curl of smoke in their whipping rain.
The ashy smear writhed silently, trying to escape. But before the rain scoured it away, the blank-bodied Shatter coiled into a tight, invisible ball and then exploded outward in a boom of blindness. The stag-headed Alterran’s resolution was no match for the blast and he fluttered to the ground in tatters.
A moment later, even those faded and there was nothing left to mark his passage.
Stumble sparked his bright new owl-eyes unhappily and flew back to Flickerdim. The other Alterran had uncoiled from around the silver-slick tower branch and hung like a thick vine, weaving sinuously from side to side. Stumble spread his wings and glided to a lower limb, closer to the serpent’s head.
Did you see that? Stumble asked.
I see many things, Flickerdim thought. And know more.
He surged a short sound of unhappiness in a rapid-fire succession of snow and stone as the sky burned with loss and unfounded resolution.
But Jingleblack… They just killed Jingleblack! Stumble cried.
Flickerdim looked back to the upended horizon. Of Jingleblack, there was no sign. His tear-rain spiraled and spun, but that would be gone soon, too. The ground beneath the battlefield twisted and thinned. Colors cracked as it stretched, peeling away like layers of cheap paint. Flickerdim turned away from the encroaching Shatter with a flick of his tail.
They will not reach us here, he said. Not yet.
Not yet? Where was Firelight? Stumble asked. She was supposed to help Jingleblack!
Firelight is dead, too.
Stumble clawed at the air until he found a stable memory and held tight. Flickerdim stretched his coils until the younger Alterran could see quite clearly through the stars and storms of his body. The thin, tenebrous form reminded him disconcertingly of the fragile, failing Uprising. Flickerdim touched his thoughts against Stumble’s lightly, comfortingly.
They aren’t here yet, he said again. There is still some time.
Rikard’s struggle with the Fiori girl had unexpectedly wearied him. Half Fiori, he reminded himself. It seemed like an important distinction.
He tripped over a broken paving stone and nearly fell. Everything hurt. The acid growling in his gut was gnawing away at him until it seemed that his armor was the only thing holding him up. His eyes were lumps of drying glue. Every time the sticky things closed, it grew harder to open them again. The little night-death was coming back for him soon.
Home. I want to go home.
Rikard was impatient. Who knew how long the colorful blackness, the twins Sleep and Dream, would take him again? He wanted to move, to keep going. Get home. But how? The streets here were dark and narrow and twisted.
The last time Rikard had been in Dormaen — thirty years ago! — all of this was different. Farms. Farms on the bank of the Mazren River. Rikard raised his eyes to the rotting husk of a house. No, not a house, but a barn with an arched roof that had tumbled in some time ago. But why? Where were the farms? The vineyards?
Thirty years. What happened? Did we… win? Is the war over? How big is the empire now?
Rikard jerked upright, his very bones protesting the movement. He had to keep moving. Everything was so heavy, so empty. As long as he kept moving forward, toward the center of the city, he would eventually reach something he knew. He was so close.
But so far along the time-road. Thirty years. Thirty…
The road had widened again, gently smoothing in course and texture. Proper houses and shops replaced the ramshackle shanties. And people. Real people, not like the unnerving half-Fiori girl. Carcaens, with golden skin and angled eyes. But the girl’s eyes had been familiar, too. Everything was the same but different.
A bilious surge of resentment flared inside Rikard, but smothered under the oppressive weariness in his body.
How strange to feel his body again after so long. Other bodies, too. Rikard had forgotten how easily they betrayed the thoughts shielded behind mere layers of flesh and bone. Or had he ever known? It was so hard to remember anything from before the broken-glass war of Alterra.
Even that’s hard to hold on to. The war… What happened?
There were few others in the street during the dark hours. Night. Most were at home, safe and warm with wives and husbands and children. But there were some midnight travelers, maybe lost like Rikard or with duties that demanded their late-night attention.
A fat Carcaen lounged in a sedan chair with a young woman in his lap. The pair giggled and wrestled in a manner that belonged in a bedroom, not the open street. They were utterly oblivious to the discomfort of the four porters that struggled to keep their gilded chair upright. The woman’s dress would have been embarrassingly revealing even if she was still wearing the whole thing. She sat up in the man’s embrace, pointing at Rikard plodding past and laughing at his disarray.
He kept walking.
Most of the other evening travelers were not so lucky as the couple, or at least not so rich. Like Rikard, they traveled on their own feet, many reeling drunkenly in pairs or groups. Others looked more like the half-Fiori girl — dirty and pathetic, with a subtle, dangerous ferocity that Rikard could not place. There was nothing like it on the battlefield. Some eyes tracked him, but most remained fixed on their destinations, as though they could see their homes even through the distance and obstacles.
Just like me.
Everyone is going home.
But Rikard was slowing down. Even his momentary consideration of the other Carcaens was chipping away at his fading energy. How long had it been since he had last… what? Rikard still couldn’t remember what he needed, but it was something he had been a long time without.
Even his thoughts began to fray and it was difficult to focus. Sleep was coming for him again, inescapable and treacherous as bad luck. Darkness welled up from some hidden place inside his own body and Rikard fell.
* * *
Marus Gallard sighed and shook the sleeping knight. The man on the ground was little more than a faintly glistening lump in the long dawn shadows, like the rolled-up ball-bugs Marus had played with in his mother’s garden when he was a boy.
He shook the other VEIL knight again. Another one too drunk to make it home or to the archouse. This was the fifth this week.
“Come now, get up,” Marus told him. “If you’re still down here when the captain makes his rounds, we’ll both get in trouble. Let’s get you back to the archouse.”
The knight on the ground grunted and uncurled from his fetal coil, though he did not stand or even sit. Marus sat back on his heels, frowning. Something was not at all right here. Though the other man looked about ten years younger than Marus — who did not consider himself anything like an old man just yet — he was in a stupor that rivaled the oldest, most besotted drunkards. It must have been a fun night.
Or a rough one… It wasn’t very often that a VEIL knight lost the fight that he picked, but it was known to happen from time to time. There were several deep rents in the fallen man’s armor, but most of the blood streaked around them was flaky and brown, long since dried.
His features were classically Carcaen, handsome and fine, but sunken and unhealthy-looking. Not sick, but as if the young man had not eaten in days. Weeks, perhaps. He wasn’t dead, but not far from it. His chest rose and fell shallowly.
Marus shook the other knight again, harder this time.
“Get yourself up,” he said. “You can have a better sleep back in your bunk. I’ll send a foster and something to eat. Come along.”
“Home,” mumbled the man on the ground.
Marus sighed. It was clear that he was not going to get a speck of help. With an effort, Marus hauled the young man to his feet, where he crumpled promptly again in a great clatter of armor. Marus grabbed again, groaning and heaving, and folded the limp knight over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
The two miles back to the Moon Court might as well have been the distance to the actual moon. By the time he hauled his burden back to the white-columned archouse, Marus’ saela was soaked in sweat and clung to his skin. With his hands full, he kicked the doors open. They cracked loudly against the walls and the noise brought a pair of white-tabbaed templars hurrying into the entry hall.
“Long night?” asked the older of the two, a matronly woman named Ephria.
Neither templar looked even slightly surprised to see a knight carrying one of his unconscious fellows into the archouse.
“Don’t know,” Marus huffed. “Tes Luan, go get the foster. I think he’s hurt.”
The younger woman bobbed a quick bow and hurried off to do as she’d been asked. Ephria rolled her eyes.
“Really, Sir Gallard, I don’t think we need a foster to deal with one drunken knight.”
“Damn you with blood, woman!” Marus wheezed. “Stop talking and help me get him to a bed. He weighs like a boulder!”
Muttering to herself, Ephria helped Marus heave the unconscious knight up the stairs and into one of the empty barracks rooms. Together, they pulled him through the door and dropped him heavily onto the bed.
Marus collapsed onto a stool while Ephria — who had taken much less of the burden — arranged the young man on the bed. Her gray-streaked hair was in disarray, like a wispy steel crown. She was no longer smiling.
“You’re right, Sir Gallard,” she said after a moment’s inspection. “He’s been doing a lot more than drinking.”
Marus nodded. He could not keep enough breath in his body to speak, so he waved a sweaty hand at the damaged armor. Ephria followed his gesture and covered her mouth, stifling a gasp.
“He’s been bleeding. Surely no one would dare! Gods, where did you find him?”
“On the street. Not far,” Marus panted.
Ephria shook out a pair of oiled leather gloves from a pocket of her tabba and pulled them on. The templar unbuckled and began peeling back the broken armor. She stopped, frowning.
“What?” Marus asked her.
“This isn’t the usual armor.”
“What?” With an effort, Marus stood and went to the bedside. “Are you telling me I just hauled some other soldier halfway across the bloody city?”
“No,” Ephria answered. Her voice was unexpectedly soft, almost reverent. “No, I remember suits like this. From the campaign days, when I was younger. I was at Njorn Pass, hae.”
Marus knew. The entire Moon Court knew. Ephria reminded them often, but now it suddenly actually seemed interesting.
“This is old armor, the kind they wore during the war,” Marus said. “What’s this fellow doing with it?”
“I’m not sure,” Ephria answered. “None of the smiths have made it in years. It’s just too heavy.”
In short order, Ephria had the man carefully stripped down to his torn, dusty saela. Star Court black, Marus noted. Luan knocked politely at the door frame before entering, a fat blue-robed foster in tow.
Marus stepped back to make room at the bedside and smiled at Luan. She returned it shyly, bobbed her head and left again. When Marus returned his attention to the sleeping knight, the foster had pulled up a stool beside the bed and unlaced the young knight’s torn saela. Like Ephria, he put on a pair of gloves before beginning his examination.
“The cuts are bloody, but superficial,” he announced. “Badly malnourished and dehydrated, but otherwise, I would say that he just needs sleep.”
The foster brushed back the young knight’s long black hair and peeled back his eyelids. Ephria let out a shriek and jumped back from the bed. Marus started, dropping his hand to his sword. The golden cap on his forefinger clacked against the hilt with startling volume.
The stout foster looked up at the other two in annoyance. “I need quiet to work.”
“That… that’s him!” Ephria cried, pointing to the man’s face with a shaking finger. “It’s Captain Mazrem!”
The subject of her alarm twitched at the noise. His eyes fluttered beneath blood-flecked lids. Marus pulled the foster away by a handful of cerulean tabba and stared. There was no way Ephria could be right. She must be mad to think this poor, beaten boy was Rikard Mazrem. It was impossible, of course… but the man on the bed did look familiar. He looked just like that statue in the middle of Dormaen.
“Calm down, both of you,” the foster huffed, straightening his tabba. “Tes Ephria, you’re quite mistaken.”
“No, I’m not!” said Ephria, her eyes still riveted to the sleeping knight. “That’s him. You boys are too young to remember, but not me! That’s Rikard Mazrem. Gods, he looks exactly the same.”
She did not seem to be speaking to them anymore, or even to the man she claimed was Carce’s greatest hero, but to her own long-lost youth. She reverently touched the star emblem, embossed in leather and affixed to the left shoulder of his discarded armor. Rikard Mazrem had been from the Star Court… Marus was only a toddling little boy during the Fiori campaign.
“Ephria, are you sure?” he asked the templar. “It’s been thirty years.”
“I’m sure. I swear it, Sir Gallard. This is Captain Mazrem.”
The foster seemed to be reconsidering his objections. He waved Marus away again and bent to examine the strange knight’s injuries. With gloved fingers, he prodded and probed the cuts and a couple of deeper stab wounds in the man’s chest.
“These injuries could have been inflicted by spears,” the foster said slowly. “Fiori spears.”
“That’s hardly definitive,” Marus protested. This was madness. Rikard Mazrem was thirty years dead!
“Why don’t you believe me?” Ephria asked.
“Because it’s impossible!”
She was quiet for a long moment as she visibly struggled to regain her composure. Marus and the foster waited. Even though it could not be true, Marus couldn’t shake the feeling that history was waiting to happen.
“You don’t believe me, but you’ll have to believe his wife,” said Ephria at last. “Foster, give this great man milk and water. When he wakes, we’ll take him to Laurael Mazrem. I’ll take care of the arrangements.”
In a stiff of white robes, the old templar swept from the room. Marus rubbed his eyes. It was still early in the morning, but it felt like years had passed. Time enough to turn the whole world upside down.
“Do you believe her?” Marus asked.
“If she’s wrong, then I’m not going to be the one to say so. But if Tes Ephria is correct…”
They looked down at the knight on the bed. The ramifications were too great for words.
