A Sliver of Redemption h-5 Page 17

  “They don’t know how to defend against undead,” he said after several minutes passed in awkward silence. “And they know nothing about fighting creatures that fly on wings and wield lengthy glaives. Velixar’s magic alone will crush them, and who knows what the war god might do.”

  “Do you wish you had gone with your brother?” she asked.

  “I do,” Qurrah said after a pause. “Every minute of every hour, I do. But this is where I belong.”

  “Then help them,” she said, gesturing to the bridge.

  “What help can I be? They’d rather stick a sword in my belly than listen to my advice. My role is to give them a chance with my magic, and even that has turned against me. I once could devastate entire armies, yet now a simple spark of flame exhausts my mind.”

  “Your magic has left you?” Mira asked. “How is that possible?”

  “I turned against Karak,” Qurrah said. “That must be the reason.”

  She shook her head, then grabbed his hand. He gave her a surprised look but she ignored it. She was used to people not knowing who she was and what she planned.

  “Come,” she said. “Follow me.”

  She led him to one of the outlying fields far from the camp. With a clap of her hands she summoned a fire, a tiny little blaze that danced on her palm. A flick of her wrist and it burned the grass but did not spread.

  “Do the same,” she said.

  Qurrah sighed. Had she not listened to a single word he’d said?

  “I told you, I can’t.”

  Mira crossed her arms and frowned. “Let me see for myself.”

  He turned to the fire. For a moment he felt embarrassed, for he’d seen the tremendous power both Mira and Tessanna wielded. Compared to them he was but a child, and that was when he’d been blessed by Karak. But now?

  “You asked for this,” he said, crushing his hands into fists. Words of the spell came naturally to his lips, but the power wasn’t there. He should have felt it pouring out of him, like water bursting through a broken dam. Instead the fire flickered, grew maybe an inch, and then shrank back down. He sighed, and his head ached as if he’d put it through a great strain.

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  “I’m not faking this,” he grumbled. “I’ve felt steadily weaker ever since I joined my brother. It’s to the point now where even a ruffian with a dagger could probably kill me. If Velixar saw me like this, he’d laugh his head off his bony shoulders.”

  “It’s not that, Qurrah. I can sense the power still within you. But you’ve forgotten how to use it because of your reliance on Karak.”

  Qurrah waved his hand, trying to summon a wall of fame. Only sparks flew from his palm.

  “What would you know about it?” he asked. “You’re the daughter of a goddess.”

  “Exactly. All my power comes from Celestia. As she weakens, so do I, but you aren’t like me. You need to rely only on yourself. Think, Qurrah. Think back to before Karak! When were you strongest? When did your power seem limitless?”

  Limitless…

  The word struck Qurrah like a hammer, then looped around him like a vice dragging him backward years through time. When had he felt limitless? When had he felt that reservoir of power within him at its greatest?

  The night he’d first encountered Velixar. When he’d challenged Velixar, ripping away his control of the skulls that circled Veldaren while his orcs besieged the city. Qurrah had been stunned by the strength within him, by how his limits were in fact nothing but self-imposed delusions.

  And now here he was, a shadow of that strength, wondering where his power had gone.

  “Try to hurt me,” he said, snapping out of his introspection. Mira, instead of being surprised, only smiled.

  “Fire or frost?” she asked.

  “Both.”

  She hurled a bolt of fire, following it up with a lance of ice. The two attacks shot for Qurrah, who had his hands held out before him. He kept his mind focused on that memory, on that one moment where he’d dashed Velixar’s magic and cut them like cheap threads. Within him, he felt something break. Shadows leapt from his hand, forming a barrier the fire and ice shattered against. He dismissed the barrier immediately. Sweat covered his forehead, and he felt like he might faint, but he’d done it.

  “Like a muscle,” he said, gasping for air. “Like a sore, unused muscle.”

  “Are you ready for more?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Only one way to get stronger, right? We have only so long before Velixar arrives.”

  Magic danced around her fingertips.“All too soon,” she whispered.

  They trained for several hours, until Qurrah could hardly stand. That night, when they prepared for bed, he asked her to stay at his fire.

  “For once, I’d prefer to not sleep alone,” he told her. “I don’t want to feel like a stranger to everyone.”

  She knew what he meant, for she felt the same. She spread her bedroll and blankets out on the opposite side of the fire, which burned through his magic, not hers, and then they slept.

  A horrible unease woke Mira from her sleep. She lay still when she looked about, for she saw several men. They carried torches, and their light hurt her eyes. Her heart pounded in her chest. The men gathered around Qurrah, and they held naked blades that glinted in the yellow light. One man in particular seemed to lead them, for he stood directly before Qurrah and gestured to the others.

  “Hold him tight,” whispered the man. In the poor light his face looked haggard and long, a man carved of shadows and world-weary flesh. “Don’t let him talk, and don’t let him waggle his fingers, either.”

  Mira struggled for a course of action. They clearly meant to do Qurrah harm…was it right for her to stop them? Could she do so without harming them? And if she did, how would the others react? She couldn’t fight off half the camp if they thought she and Qurrah were a threat. Confused, she watched and waited.

  “Now,” hissed their leader.

  Two men lunged, each going for an arm. They yanked the half-orc from his blankets and pinned his arms behind his back. A third held a sword against his neck. Qurrah’s long hair fell across his face, and through it he glared at his attackers.

  “Say anything,” insisted their leader. “A single word, and Rick here slices your throat. I hope you don’t, though. I want to do that. I want to pay you back for everything you done.”

  Qurrah chuckled, so void of humor or fear that the others tensed. Mira ran a list of spells through her mind, trying to decide on one before the killing started.

  “Payback for what?” Qurrah asked, unafraid of the blade pressed against the tender flesh of his throat. In response, their leader struck him, splattering blood from his nose.

  “You got to ask?” the man asked. “You slaughtered thousands when you took over Veldaren, and you got to ask?”

  “Make it hurt,” said Rick. “Real bad, Jeremy. Make it hurt bad.”

  “Angels and kings have pardoned me,” Qurrah said. Blood trickled down his neck from the cut made from his talking. “Must I now beg forgiveness from every commoner in the land? How have I hurt you, Jeremy? In some way, I have hurt every single man and woman alive.”

  Jeremy grabbed Qurrah’s hair and lifted his head so they could stare eye to eye. Mira shifted in her bed, angling herself better for a spell. Someone was to die soon. She felt it.

  “You don’t deserve an answer,” said Jeremy. “I don’t care about kings. I don’t care about angels. I know what you done to me, and that’s enough. Don’t you get it? To me, that’s all that matters. And your blood’s going to pay for all of it.”

  “Stop,” Mira said, lurching to her feet. Her voice was calm, but it had a power to it. All of them turned her way, and one of the men even dropped his sword.

  “Stay out of this,” said Jeremy. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “He’s here to help you,” Mira said, ignoring his protest. “He stands with you, ready to die when the demons come. Are you so ea
ger he beat you to your twin fates? Is your hatred so great you’d deny him any chance at redemption?”

  “He killed them,” Jeremy said. “All of them. Don’t you get it? You…you’re just some witch; you’re an elf in human form. You don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly understand!”

  He shoved the others aside and grabbed Qurrah by the front of his robe, and he pressed his sword tight against Qurrah’s neck. The half-orc refused to fight back, instead standing still and calm, though his eyes burned with anger and sadness.

  “You wearing the white robes of an angel? A sick joke. I don’t care how many demons he helps kill, he’ll never atone for what he did!”

  “Who was it?” Qurrah asked, his voice suddenly quiet. “Tell me.”

  “My little girl,” Jeremy said, suddenly taken aback. “My wife, and…and Tasha. My little one. Butchered. Don’t you get it? All of you, don’t you get it? He deserves to die!”

  He looked ready to kill. His hand shook, and tears streamed down his face. Mira felt her spells flutter in her mind, so great was his sorrow. Could she deny him? Their task was so hopeless, a fool’s stand against an unstoppable force, might it be better for that one man to have his moment of peace in the last remnants of his life?

  “I deserve it,” Qurrah whispered. “You are right. I won’t run from what I have done, and I won’t pretend that your hatred is unjustified. But I will help you, if you let me, Jeremy. I will bleed and die beside you, all the while praying I might one day be worthy to stand in my brother’s shadow. But you will not kill the one you wish to kill. The monster that took your beloved is already dead. He died holding his own stillborn daughter.”

  Everything slowed to a pause, a frozen moment in the night. Qurrah and Jeremy stared face to face, and there were tears in both their eyes. Slowly, the half-orc put his hand on Jeremy’s wrist and pushed the sword tighter against his skin.

  “Do it,” he said. “Let this end. Every night I see a thousand faces come to haunt me. I have watched cities burn. I have watched loved ones of those dear to me bleed out by my hand. If your hatred is so great, then give me your blessing. Take it. If it’ll ease your suffering, cut now! If not, leave me be so I can face the one who turned me into what I was. Let me see if I can bring a thousand demons with me to the Abyss that most certainly awaits me when I die.”

  “Fuck it,” Jeremy said. He yanked his hand free and pushed Qurrah away. “I don’t care how eager you are to die. You can wait like the rest of us.”

  “Such a kind gesture.”

  As the men departed, Jeremy turned back one last time.

  “They claim you can summon the dead with a wave of your hand,” he said. “They say you can clap your hands and bury an army in fire. That true?”

  Qurrah nodded. “It is.”

  “Then prove you’re not who you were. Fight with us, and fight like one of the damned.”

  Mira waited until he was gone, then put a hand on Qurrah’s shoulder. “They’re only…”

  “I know what they are,” Qurrah said, brushing her aside. “And they showed me more restraint than I ever could. If anyone killed Tessanna, or had killed Teralyn should she have lived…not even the gods would find their corpse. All the more proof of how wretched I am compared to the rest of the world.”

  “Must you be so hard on yourself?”

  The half-orc laughed. “The world is ending because of my hand. Yes. I must.”

  He lay back down to sleep, rolling over so his back was to her. Mira stared at him while chewing on her lower lip.

  “You won’t win them over by how many you kill,” she said. “You could call fire from the heavens and destroy every demon, and they will only fear you. Protect them. Struggle with them. Give everything you have, and then beyond, and they will see you are more than what you were.”

  She curled back under her blankets, and when he failed to respond, she was not at all surprised.

  Q urrah was gone before she awoke the next morning. Preparations for defenses had already begun, but a few still ate. She stopped by one of the center campfires and accepted her morning rations. As she nibbled, she looked for Qurrah. Again she found him by the bridge, but this time he did not watch.

  “Their undead have no balance,” she heard him say as she neared. A group of men surrounded him, apparent leaders of the constructions. They all looked grumpy, but when Qurrah spoke, they nodded and didn’t argue. “We need barriers every few feet, shin high. Your walls on the sides of the bridge need to go. Every dead body is a risk, and we must shove them off and into the water before they can bring them back to fight…”

  She left for the nearby forest. She needed the solitude, for she had a message to send, one that needed to be absolutely perfect.

  It was time to bait a god.

  16

  H e thought himself beyond most human emotions, but Thulos felt a combination of eagerness and impatience as he led his army closer to the bridges. Since arriving on Celestia’s world, he was yet to kill a man in combat. Nations had sworn their allegiance with hardly more than a shake of his sword and a promise of victory. He needed troops, yes, but everything felt too easy. As he walked, he thought of worlds where he’d encountered hundreds of mages in unified defense, or when elves had assaulted his legions while riding dragons of all colors. That was one of the few times he’d nearly ‘died’, in the mouth of an elder black wyrm, but he’d prevailed, and he bore the scars proudly on his body.

  But this world? Pathetic.

  Velixar assured him that in Ker, across the bridges, he would finally meet an army willing to fight. While resupplying at Angelport, they’d received word from several sailors arriving from Angkar, the capital of Ker according to Velixar, that their king had declared independence by executing hundreds of priests and paladins of Karak. The news had infuriated Karak’s prophet, but only amused Thulos. So a king wanted to make a bid for freedom while the rest of the world burned? He’d heard of stranger things. The bridges across the rivers and into Ker were near, and within the kingdom’s borders he planned on having himself a true siege. This time he would not recruit their strongest. He would not give them a grand speech about conquest and strength. No, he’d kill them to a man, so that the rest of the rabble they chased would hear of what awaited them.

  He didn’t sleep, so he was always the first about when morning came. Every dawn he inspected a different squad under his command, making sure they prepared for the day in an efficient, worthwhile manner. Sometimes he even stole over to the regular human troops, just to let his presence be felt. They stared in awe of him, his size, his strength. It amused him, but he also knew that a few minutes there would keep the army disciplined better than a hundred taskmasters and their barbed whips.

  Being in the presence of the war god suddenly made conquering worlds seem possible.

  But that morning he oversaw none. Something nagged at him, like a worm burrowing into his brain. He kept hearing voices, but never decipherable, nor coming from any direction. Magic was at its heart, he knew, but from where remained unclear. He tried focusing on it, grabbing a hold of the invisible strands looping around his head, but they always broke like mist. More and more he thought he was being taunted. By who, though? Who was mad enough to taunt a god?

  I am, said a voice, responding to his thoughts.

  “And you are?” he asked, walking away from his army so he might have silence. The voice still sounded thin, and he didn’t want to miss a word.

  You come to my world, then ask who I am? Can you not feel my anger with every breath you take? Do not even the grass and trees ripple with fury when your demons pass?

  “You sound unhappy, Celestia. Your memory must be as good as mine. I remember watching my demons burn this land centuries ago. How your precious creations cried.”

  You mock and insult because you feel victory is certain. You are isolated. You are vulnerable. You are not a god, not as you once were. Do you wish destruction? Do you desire to know fear?

&
nbsp; “I fear nothing,” Thulos said. He drew his sword and pointed it upward. “Is that where you are, Celestia? Must I cut a hole in the very sky to find where you hide?”

  You must do nothing. I am coming to you, Thulos. That is, if you are not afraid.

  Thulos felt a wave of anticipation flow through him, a sensation he had not felt in at least a decade.

  “You would fight me?” he asked. “The world dies, and now you come to me in desperation?”

  Death comes to the mortal, Thulos. So long as Karak and Ashhur remain imprisoned, I can destroy you. Eighty leagues south of here is a clearing sacred to me. Do not worry about finding it; I will guide you.

  The spider webs of magic left, and the voice vanished. Thulos laughed.

  “At last,” he said. “At last a real challenge!”

  He summoned Velixar, wishing to talk to him first.

  “You seem joyous,” said Karak’s prophet as he joined him outside the camp. “Is it because the bridges are so near?”

  “Celestia has come to fight,” Thulos said. “And I have accepted her challenge. While I am gone, you shall be in charge of my army.”

  Velixar’s red eyes flared with happiness.

  “A great honor,” he said, bowing low.

  “One I expect not to haunt me when I return,” Thulos said. “I will instruct Myann to follow your orders, but should you fail in your duties, or put my demons at risk, he will assume control.”

  Velixar did a poor job hiding his displeasure. He and the demon Myann had disagreed often when discussing plans at various intervals in their travels. It was that disagreement that made Thulos trust the war demon to protect his soldiers. Myann would not cow to Velixar, regardless of the prophet’s power. If the lich risked his victory, he would stop him.

  Though it might soon not matter. If he crushed Celestia, then his brothers might go free from their cages. For how slow things had moved, suddenly his victory rapidly approached. The god dismissed Velixar, relayed his orders to Myann, and then prepared for travel. Eighty leagues would take him several days to cross, and that was if he walked without rest. Which he would.