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THE HALFMAGE HAD never been afraid of the sea. There was something comforting about the predictability of the tides, the endless cycle of nature at work. Even the Broken Sea, with its natural properties altered by the wild magic that swirled within its depths thanks to the fallout from the Godswar, largely adhered to a familiar pattern. It was something knowable to cling to in a world of uncertainty. Perhaps not for much longer, in this Age of Ruin. But it was something.
No, what Eremul was afraid of wasn’t the sea.
It’s sailing on a ship the size of a small town towards a city governed by the most powerful wizard in the world. A ship carrying enough firepower to blow us all to the Confederation and back.
Eremul glanced at the churning waters far below and tried to steady his nerves. Deadman’s Channel was narrow at the best of times, but it seemed that no sooner had Isaac assisted the Halfmage aboard the Second Fleet’s titanic flagship than Thelassa was drawing into view. It cut a markedly different sight to Dorminia – a pale and beautiful twin to the stunted, grey dreariness of its counterpart across the channel. Given the choice, Eremul would choose the latter every time.
After all, ‘stunted’ and ‘dreary’ are what I’m all about.
Following behind the flagship were the magnificent vessels that made up the Second Fleet. Each was crewed by a small team of fehd as well as a much larger team of thralls. The general himself, Saverian, stood only thirty feet away from Eremul at the very front of the flagship. The white-haired general’s forbidding presence was a large reason for the Halfmage’s anxiety. He wondered how a Magelord would fare in the face of this legendary immortal.
Perhaps we are about to find out.
As they drew closer to Thelassa’s harbour, a strange sight greeted them. A shimmering wall appeared, rising from the sea to tower hundreds of feet above Thelassa’s fleet just beyond. Eremul could feel the monumental magnitude of the magic emanating from the magical barrier; a colossal undertaking that rivalled the great spell Salazar had cast to crush Shadowport for sheer audacity.
The fehd appeared disconcerted by the unexpected obstacle. The flagship dropped anchor and the rest of the fleet followed suit. A vast cloud of steam hissed forth from the great turrets on the ships, turning the chill winter air momentarily sticky. Following a brief exchange between Saverian and his officers, the flagship turned sharply and the Halfmage was forced to grab hold of a metal railing to stop his chair being propelled down the deck. Having presented its side to the magical barrier ahead, rows of artillery began to click into place on the ship’s weapons deck.
Isaac approached Eremul and pointed at the silvery barrier just ahead of them. ‘I don’t imagine you are able to dispel this?’ he asked, apparently in earnest.
Eremul stared at the ancient creature who had once masqueraded as his manservant and tried not to laugh in his face. ‘This wall was conjured into being by perhaps the greatest living master of magic in the known world,’ he said sardonically. ‘You might as well ask a fisherman to reel in one of the great whales that are said to dwell within the Endless Ocean. I am half a man and half a mage. The White Lady is a repository of the divinity of the gods.’
‘They were never our gods,’ said Isaac. ‘We do not understand this thing you call “magic”. It did not exist in the place from which my ancestors came.’
Eremul’s eyebrows rose. ‘Well, it manifestly exists here,’ he said. ‘Besides, what do you call the feats your people can perform, if not magic? Your agelessness. Your ability to beguile.’
‘The Time Before was a wonder of artifice and invention,’ Isaac said, as he and Eremul watched the cannons preparing to fire. ‘Our ancestors discovered how to permanently alter their bodies. They eliminated diseases. Grew taller and stronger with every passing generation. The wealthiest among them had new powers and abilities implanted directly into themselves; traits such as empathetic projection, that could be passed down to their children, and their children’s children. Eventually, they unlocked the secret to eternal life. It proved their undoing in the end.’
Eremul was suddenly overcome by a great sadness. He frowned up at Isaac. ‘I asked you not to do that,’ he said.
The Adjudicator reached out and, much to the Halfmage’s surprise, clapped him on the shoulder. ‘As I said, it is difficult to control. Ours is a story of triumph won through tragedy.’
The mechanisms driving the gigantic cannons ceased their whirring and clicking. A pregnant silence settled over the harbour. ‘You should cover your ears,’ Isaac said calmly.
Eremul did as the Adjudicator suggested. It wasn’t a moment too soon. A cacophony of explosions suddenly shook the deck beneath him and a fiery rain of death exploded from the flagship’s cannons. The sky was lit up as the loads from the cannons hurtled towards Thelassa. As the deadly storm descended on the City of Towers, it struck the translucent barrier and was thwarted, bursting apart, the explosive projectiles detonating in mid-air. The heat from the failed assault washed back over the ships and Eremul choked on air suddenly hot enough to burn his throat.
‘Cease the assault.’ General Saverian’s voice rang out like a clarion call, the command as irresistible as the tide. ‘The lady of the city approaches.’
The artillery went silent. For a long moment smoke wreathed the harbour, making it difficult to see beyond the barrier ahead of them. When it finally cleared, it revealed the shimmering wall of magic to be utterly intact.
Floating safely behind the barrier, her white silk robes dancing around her in the breeze, was the Magelord of Thelassa.
General Saverian raised a gloved fist in greeting. His voice was like iron, gripping all present in its power. ‘I am General Saverian,’ he boomed. You will lower this barrier.’
The White Lady’s response was perfectly modulated, carried on the wings of her magic. ‘Turn back, Ancients. You will not harm my city or my people.’
Eremul looked from the White Lady to Saverian and back. He could never have imagined he would live to see this day: a Magelord, an immortal wizard, made to look vulnerable in the face of something even she could not understand. Saverian was five thousand years old. He had been conquering the worst of what the Age of Legends could throw at his people before humanity had even learned to crawl.
To me the White Lady is inhuman. Terrifyingly ethereal, a figure to fear and look upon as something almost divine. To Saverian she is simply another buzzing insect. A queen bee, perhaps, with a dangerous sting – but inconsequential nonetheless.
The white-haired general crossed his arms in front of his chest and narrowed his ruinous gaze. His black cloak flapped around him in the salty breeze. ‘There will be no exceptions in our crusade, killer-of-gods. Your city will be destroyed and your people exterminated. Such is the fate of those we judge unworthy.’
‘And who are you to judge what is worthy?’ the White Lady asked softly. ‘It is as you said, general. Even the gods could not judge me.’
Saverian’s voice rose until it thundered across the deck. ‘Your gods were the only entities with the power to oppose us! Yet your kind slew them, just as you murdered two of our people. For that, there can only be one answer.’
‘You will not pass this barrier,’ the White Lady declared again. But there was a strained quality to her voice now; perhaps even a hint of doubt.
Eremul turned to Isaac beside him. ‘What would happen if the White Lady were to unleash her magic against Saverian? She could destroy your general here and now.’
Isaac shook his head. ‘We are not of the Pattern, and its rules govern us only loosely. For the eldest of our kind, magic runs off us like water. The resistance fades the further one is removed from the bloodlines of the blessed Pilgrims – but even one possessed of only a few centuries can withstand a great deal of magic. The elves, too, thought to bring their sorcery to bear against us during the Twilight War. It availed them little.’
Saverian drew himself up to his full height – over seven feet of harsh lines and too-angular limbs encased in that near impenetrable silver armour that flowed like cloth. ‘I chased the great serpents from Rhûn. I slew the king of the elves in single combat. I was ancient when your forefathers were scrabbling in the mud. I am General Saverian, and I declare now that you will be Reckoned. There is no shield, magical or otherwise, that will protect you from it.’
Having made his declaration, the general turned his back on the White Lady and gave the signal for the fleet to turn around. The Magelord watched the ships depart in silence. Then she turned and drifted back towards her city.
As the great fleet returned across Deadman’s Channel, Eremul summoned his nerve and asked the question that had been troubling him since he had first heard Isaac use the term. ‘What does it mean,’ he asked, ‘to be Reckoned?’
The Adjudicator stared into the distance. He seemed troubled, and for a moment the Halfmage wondered if he had pushed his luck too far.
Then Isaac told him.
*
‘Dust,’ he whispered. ‘Everything will be dust.’
Eremul sat in the dreary room in the Refuge that he shared with two other refugees. Ricker and Mard were poor company but at least they didn’t despise him like many in the city did. Sleep had eluded the Halfmage again this night. In all likelihood it would elude him every night from now until the moment General Saverian utilized the unspeakable weapon Isaac had described. The weapon that had broken worlds. Isaac’s words twisted around and around in Eremul’s skull.
In the Time Before, we called it the last resort. All nations had it come the end. The desperate scramble for immortality made rulers mad. Once one committed to using the weapon, they all did. Those who weren’t killed instantly were poisoned. The land, too, felt the effects of what we had done. The Pilgrims were our last hope. They left in search of a better place. Their journey lasted untold millennia, until eventually they found somewhere. A new land to call home.
The elves were the first to be Reckoned, their great forest cities reduced to blackened wastelands of ash and bone. The second Reckoning occurred far to the south, when an empire of scaled folk we named the saurons threatened to unleash their deadly poisons upon our people. We chose the lesser evil. I chose the lesser evil.
As an Adjudicator, Isaac – together with his sisters – was one of the select few entrusted with the moral conundrum of deciding when a civilization merited the use of the ultimate weapon.
The Halfmage’s hands shook as he opened the hidden box attached to the underside of his chair and removed the bottle of Carhein white he had purchased weeks ago. It had been meant as a gift for Monique; her favourite wine from her homeland in Tarbonne. But Monique was gone, and the clear liquid in that bottle might be the only thing that would allow him to forget the imminent destruction of the city and its people, at least for a time.
Then a rough hand darted in and snatched the bottle from his grasp. The broken smile of Ricker leered down at him. ‘Think I’ll be having that,’ he said. He popped the cork into his mouth and attempted to leverage the cork out with what few remaining teeth he had.
Eremul stared up at Ricker as he struggled with the bottle. ‘I am a wizard, you know,’ he said slowly. ‘I can’t help but think it might be wiser for you just to ask.’
‘Don’t care,’ Ricker mumbled around the cork. ‘Ain’t got nothing to live for. You want to take this off me, you kill me first.’
The Halfmage sighed. After a brief moment of deliberation he waved a hand at the fellow to continue. ‘Enjoy it,’ he said. Then Eremul wheeled himself over to the corner of the squalid little room he had claimed as his own and closed his eyes.
So much for a quiet drink.
A moment later there came a knock on the door.
‘Who’s that?’ growled Mard. The old man hardly moved from his spot on the floor. In his more lucid moments he had claimed that he used to work the docks before his house was burned down and his family killed by Melissan’s thralls. The Halfmage suspected the tragedy had driven him mad.
The door opened and the outline of a woman appeared in the doorway. She hovered there uncertainly, cloaked by the darkness of night outside.
‘I told you,’ Mard yelled angrily. ‘I don’t want no cock-rot. My wife would kill me.’
‘Your wife is dead,’ Eremul said gently. ‘And we have bigger things to worry about than the cock-rot. Trust me.’ He frowned at the woman. Streetwalkers were common enough in the Refuge; everyone did what they had to in order to survive. But this woman wasn’t dressed for the job, so to speak.
He wheeled himself closer. ‘Do you need something?’ he asked irritably. Then he smelled her perfume and a soft gasp escaped his lips. He knew that scent. She moved closer and the moonlight caught her, revealing her features. The Halfmage’s heart seemed to explode in his chest.
‘I don’t want no cock-rot,’ Mard barked again, but Eremul hardly heard him. He stared at the face before him, the sleek black hair, the reading lenses perched on her perfect nose.
‘Monique?’ he said, his voice catching in his throat. An instant later she threw herself on him, wrapping her arms tightly around his body, her warm breath in his ear and her warm tears sliding down his cheeks.
‘I found you,’ she sobbed. ‘My love... I’ve found you.’
Eremul stroked her hair, hardly believing what was happening, scarcely daring to imagine this wasn’t all some great joke designed to rub further shit into his wounds. But it wasn’t. Monique was here. The only woman he had ever loved had tracked him down.
‘I don’t want no—’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Eremul whispered savagely. Mard fell silent with a whimper.
‘They sent me to Westrock,’ Monique said, her lilting Tarbonnese accident thick with emotion. ‘I was kept imprisoned there. When the invasion began everyone in town fled east, but I couldn’t leave. Not without you.’
The Halfmage held Monique as she sobbed. For the first time in years, he had the strange sensation he wasn’t entirely worthless after all. He actually mattered to someone.
He knew the gods were dead and the Creator long gone but nonetheless he offered up a prayer of thanks to whomever might be listening just then.
The fehd might be planning a Reckoning, but until it happened, he would count every minute a blessing.