Book 5, Chapter 4: Introspection
Walking, my thoughts kept beating me up. The foxes seemed to have joined the birds in protecting me. And I’d just killed some of them. I was deadly to everything near me. The worst part was, I flashed out of instinct, fear. That spider leaping toward me! Brin could have been standing next to me. Or Tread. Or anyone. Thinking I’d protect them.
Perhaps it was best that I was alone.
To stave off the ‘What the hell am I going to do’ questions and the ‘Open the damned book’ yelling from inside, I thought about spiders. Relentlessly scanned the environment for more spiders. Why were there so many awful arachnids? Those ones weren’t like the trap door spiders – which were happily out of sight – but giant web-based ones. What were they eating? Couldn’t just be birds.
They were so large, at least the first one I saw, that they could probably eat a cow. A disturbing vision came to mind. Instead of war rhinos, you could ride giant spiders into battle. If nothing else, it would horrify the enemy army into fleeing. Certainly not surrendering – that’d be like taking a chance on becoming spider food. The terrifying mounts would have to get fed somehow.
Real spiders, at least where I came from, or the little ones here I suppose, didn’t need to eat all that much. They don’t produce their own heat, so don’t burn a lot of calories, and can survive weeks without food. Though they can also eat lots if food is available, store it for later, too. The giant size of these ones made me wonder how they worked. Did they produce their own heat or rely on the environment?
I could, if I ever retake the kingdom and get rid of all the mages and everything, which seems incredibly unlikely, and start that university, send a research team to study the giant spiders. First, they’d have to spend time near the arachnids, so the spiders wouldn’t mind having the humans around. Next, they’d take out their notebooks, start recording behaviors. Then, they’d get eaten.
‘I’m sorry, Your Majesty, the other members . . . I had to flee for my life!’
‘Your research isn’t done. Get back out there!’
I guess I’d be a very stern queen.
Letting my mind wander over these odd fantasies kept me from thinking about all the awfulness, the battle with the Ketzillians. The foxes and I crested this hill, where it was dusty and dry, with scraggly grasses growing between tall trees, then made our way down, to the wetness of the valley. This one had moss so high, almost up to my knees, it made my footsteps silent and bouncy.
But eventually, walking along, the ‘whys’ and ‘what ifs’ crept back into my thoughts. How could I let Morry die? My army? How could I kill all those people?
I didn’t know what I could have done differently. Not coming into this world would have been a nice start, but I wasn’t given a choice in that. Perhaps I should have told the grand magister from the beginning. Let him kill or imprison me. Except that he wasn’t around when I’d developed powers.
If I’m being honest, the man, Wizard Tye, was infuriating. Barely gave me two words when he was around and vanished when I needed him most, only to later orchestrate an attack on me. I guess it made sense. If your enemy has unlimited power, and he seemed to think I did, and I sincerely seemed to, you certainly wouldn’t tell them of your plans.
‘Hey Princess, I’m going to turn the Barclays against you, try to get them to kill you. If that doesn’t work, well, we’ll help out the Ketzillians. If that doesn’t work, we’ll drop fire on you. That’s cool, right?’
‘No,’ I’d probably say, ‘not really. Just stand still a moment, would you?’ Zap!
I kicked a rock on the path. Not round, it rolled along then bumped up into the air, landed on a dirty root, tumbled, then shot off down the hill.
Because the grand magister was orchestrating events behind the scenes, I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t physically stop the rock I just kicked. Not while watching it bounce downhill.
Perhaps I should have used the power earlier. Gone to fight the Ketzles alone, or at least, threaten them a little, instead of my army. But that wouldn’t have really worked, either. I could barely control the energy until recently. And only stopped myself from killing helpless men because I saw, somehow, through the haze of power, the humanity of their army, the injured and dying and those desperately rendering aid.
If I hadn’t . . . I’d have continued killing and killing until there was nothing left of that side of the battlefield. Would I then turn on my own troops? I didn’t think so. I didn’t! Yet the power was seductive and wanted to be used. Not controlled, not doled out carefully.
Ugh. Ok, so this line of reasoning wasn’t panning out. I guess I just wanted to berate myself. I didn’t need hypotheticals to berate myself, though. I could work out roughly how many soldiers I sent to the afterlife.
The Ketzillian force was about 110 000 soldiers. I began my swath of destruction on their right flank, exploding that group of mages all at once, then moved it across the battlefield for probably four seconds. The thing about lines and movement, the origin point doesn’t have to move much and the endpoint moves a lot. Four seconds was a great distance on the receiving end.
I closed my eyes, trying not to see the bodies – people! – vaporize closest to the beam, explode a little further out, burst into flame after that, simply die more distance out, and probably much worse until they were far enough away that the beam was painful, but not deadly, and those guys could get away.
Oh my god.
I sat down on this dry and dusty path, staring into nothing.
A fox jumped into my lap and licked my wrist. Absentmindedly, I petted the little creature.
Tried to push the images out of my head. Ok, ok, yeah, twenty percent of their line, I think. Roughly 20 000 men.
Jesus.
I was finally leading Alexander in direct kills if not in slaves sold. I just couldn’t get my mind around it. No wonder the mages feared me, wanted me dead. As I wished for them before developing these powers.
But wait. That’s not really true. Aisu didn’t try to kill me. She demanded I surrender and go with her. Why would she do that? All it did was give me time to blast her.
Bechalle didn’t want me dead, either. He specifically said that. I don’t think the torture bothered him, it was just part of the process. His goal was to take these powers for himself.
I played the reverse-role game. If I were the grand magister and a fourteen-year-old girl was suddenly gifted the powers of a deity – mind you, he wasn’t around for that part, but he must have worked it out after seeing the runes on my back and the magical knife to make them – I would carefully walk her through that. Like Etienne did. And worry she’d destroy everything but hope she could be molded into a benevolent force.
No, he immediately left to make plans with the dowager, possibly poison Sapphire and her brother against me, then headed, presumably, to the wizard’s conclave to learn what to do. And he stole Bechalle’s rune-inscribing knife the first chance he got. He probably understood how the ritual worked, though he didn’t share that with me. He certainly knew the how part of it, since he’d seen my back that night, raw and bleeding.
At the battle, most of the mages fled. Except Aisu, who tried to capture me.
It seemed like the grand magister required me alive. Possibly he was going to try what Bechalle did and take the power for himself. Yet that didn’t quite make sense. Bechalle’s ritual gave me these powers – would the wizard subject himself to the same torture?
Or could he simply continue cutting me where Bechalle left off? Perhaps he merely need to finish the pattern on my back to take the power.
More foxes hugged me, whining and calling to me, and I may have snuggled with them, the sneaky bastards, then set off again, walking quickly, disturbed at my conclusion. It fit, it certainly fit.
Yet he must know something I don’t. Well, lots of somethings if I’m being honest. It wasn’t that alone bothering me, though.
It was, and this is stupid, the lack of villain soliloquies. The grand magister was cagey, quiet, arrogant and, well, sneaky! He never once gave me any hints of being antagonistic. He just took off, acting behind the scenes. He didn’t even try to capture me himself but sent others.
I mean, yeah, ok, I quickly killed the people he sent so that was a smart move on his part. I had to give him that.
But, damnit, I wanted my, ‘no Miss Cayce, I expect you to die’ moment. The bastard didn’t even ask me any questions. The villains were much kinder to Mr. Bond than they were to me, despite all their murderous intent, laying out their plans with enough detail that he could defeat them.
I threw my hands up in the air, yelled into the valley, and kicked another rock.
I guess that’s life, though. The bad guys don’t want you to know what they’re up to. They just want to win.
***
Later, after the sun set, preparing my camp after managing to pass another valley, climb another hill before it became too dark to see. Dragging some heavy piece of wood over – a smallish tree had fallen, offered itself to me, really – to get a fire going that would last the night, and the foxes, hundreds of them, marched into my camp, dropping mounds and mounds of kindling off, then smaller and a few medium sized branches.
I shook my head in wonder. “What are you guys doing?”
Several of the foxes stopped, facing me, bowed, then raced around, getting back under the bushes with their fellows.
I wondered how they knew I needed fire. Needed? Wanted. To make me feel safe. Thinking on that, it had to be a human species thing, to feel safe around fire. More so the marvel that these foxes would cater to my desires despite their fears.
I didn’t need the kindling. I used it anyways. The fire burned bright and high and I sat before it, cross legged.
A crow landed on my outstretched left arm. A raven on my right. Foxes joined on my lap, around me, cuddling in.
The fire. Orange and yellow, dancing high above the wood. Blues and darker colors closer to it and lower down the blacks of coal and whites of ash. Sparks fly up, but we don’t move.
In the flame, far off in time and distance, a crow leads a mighty ship and a fleet of twenty-four boats behind it. “Erik, do not settle here, for it is not so green.” But he wouldn’t listen and settle there he did, and barely survived. His son listened more closely, Leaf was his name, and left after an argument with his father, to a new world.
And a raven in an ever green and far off land, full of moss growing on tree branches and lichen on stones and tea colored, quiet ponds, led those of the ocean to the great inner lakes and maple trees. A land of plenty, until it, too, was taken from them.
Only the middle kingdom, the land between two rivers, revered the fox and the fertility she brought, and long did it last, until the ground was exhausted, the people left and forgot her, their culture and language lost to time.
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