Welcome to this monumental work of mine. Soul Scream was started somewhere mid-December last year, if you will believe it, in a car while waiting for my mom to buy train tickets. The name was actually taken from War of Genesis III Pt2, I think it’s a skill that Judy Shakbari Hagstrom learns. Heh heh. It just fit. Monumental this isn’t, really, but for a schoolgirl scribbling on lined A4 paper during assembly, while waiting for the bus, and whenever the teacher didn’t arrive for class, seventeen thousand words is monumental. Not to mention the fact that all other ‘long fiction’ that I started didn’t make it past even three thousand words. The FF8 fic (depths of the heart, if anyone remembers), the Koren fic (to shadow and back, which the koren-muse is still screaming about in the chibi art section), the RK-FF8-FF7 crossover fic, all of them pooped out at around three pages (A4 lined, as I stated previously), which is about 3000++ words, for me. The only other 10,000-plus-word fic that I finished was Castle in the Clouds, which languished untyped. I’m still planning to rewrite it.

Well, this proves one thing. While fics I can’t write long, rants can get out of control. So, barring any unforeseen accidents involving you or your internet connection, enjoy!

[note] Danheran time is… different. A tick is a second; a chime is a minute; a toll is an hour. Days are days (lazy me), a turn has five days, and months and years stay the same, since I forgot about the different time-system halfway through and put too many ‘year’s in the story to consider changing them all.

[warning]This fic contains implied shounen-ai. Anyone who starts to turn green at the thought of two men/boys conceiving an attraction for one another should leave, now. Ai am not responsible for any damage yoo might suffer from this… ai.

--Llyse, 30-3-2003 (listening to Der Langrisser music)

soul scream

[denna lockehart]

            “I hate you all!”

            “I’m a princess! I’ll not be spoken to in that manner!”

            “Shut up!”

            “I… why won’t you talk to me?”

            “Please… talk to me.”

            “I hate you all!”

            They were everywhere in the castle.

            Unseen, silent, they drifted through castle and city, watching, waiting. The corridors teemed with them; they thronged the rooms, filled the halls, occupied the stairs. For every guest invited to the state functions and banquets, ten more came unsummoned, watching the living dancing and laughing and enjoying himself or herself. Sensitives invariably moved out of Danhera; no one knew why, least of all the Sensitives themselves. Sensitives simply felt the ages-old malice gathering in the air, congregating in the ground, and Sensitives always left, driven away. They merely watched, uncaring, but angry.

            They were everywhere around her.

            The Seer sat in the overstuffed plush chair, knees drawn to her skinny chest, hands clasped around them. Gray eyes wide in an ash-pale face, she Saw. Around her they swirled, silt in an ethereal current. The walls offered them no barrier; it was as if the whole room meant nothing. The only thing they avoided and were drawn to was the little girl-seer curled in her aged chair. A vortex of smoky paleness invisible to unSeeing eyes centered on her, surrounding her with a swirl of sound and mist. Their words swept around her, brushing her with malice, with hatred.

            --traitorbetrayerevilcunningbitchtraitor—

            Still she said nothing, slate-gray eyes fixed quietly on the shimmering pulsating semi-transparent bodies. They, she knew from long experience, would not, could not, touch her. All they could do was hurl words, much of which she couldn’t understand. The creak of the door gave her warning, sound cutting through the voiceless murmurings like a sharp sword through flesh. The woman in the doorway was almost glowing, solid physical flesh amid the silver fish-darting forms of them.

            “Carilya! What, child, are you doing her? The dinner is in barely ten chimes and here you are, still sitting… Have your maids not come to prepare you?”

            A single glance at the child’s face, ash-dark eyes rebellious in a too-pale face, told her all.         

            “…Oh dear. You sent them away, did you not?” The woman chivvied her unresisting charge out of the overstuffed chair and into a frilly, beribboned dress, muttering all the way about recalcitrant children and early deaths. The little girl stayed silent, eyes alternately fixed on the wall, the woman, the dress, the ceiling, the wall, and nothing in particular. As the woman yanked her unprotesting down the corridor, Carilya looked up gravely and asked, “Deminia, what’s a bitch?”

            “Princess! Who taught you that? You are never to repeat that word.”

            Around them the silver wind whirled, traitorbitchbetrayerseducerdeathbringerdoomsingertraitor—

(he was silent, memory quiescent in a mind that had forgotten or been stripped of everything that made him him because—why?—he was somehow dead, or gone, or simply not-physical, in a way that he did not understand, fathom, comprehend or otherwise make clear to himself, and that was because… because he was asleep and sleeping people didn’t talk, or think but they dreamed and then he couldn’t be asleep because he thought and wasn’t dreaming and)

            State dinners were a pain and a half, especially since they were usually held when there were important visitors at the castle, and the visitors were usually (if that was possible) even more of a pain than the dinners themselves, big men dressed in rich clothing with entourages numbering to the hundred filling the airy palace to stuffiness, demanding this and demanding that. Useless, all of them, stinking puffed-up rich-and-powerful twits throwing their weight left and right with nary a care for servant or anyone else except the Lords and other highborn. Looking down their noses at everyone, the snots. And he’d be stuck in the middle of it all, stepping carefully and getting stepped on or yelled at by the cooks and functionaries and (it seemed) everyone else.

            “Medirlan! What, boy, are you doing dawdling out here? The dinner’s beginning and here you are, sitting on your fat arse doing nothing…”

            Medirlan adroitly dodged the swing the fat cook tried to land on him and slipped to the other end of the bustling kitchen, earning himself a grin from one of the kitchen wenches when he swiftly appropriated her burden of clean dishes and made his escape to the great hall where he spent the next toll standing, watching wealthy lord stuff their faces and listening to them politicking, while unobtrusively switching soiled plates for new ones. It was a job he liked, because then he could watch them all. Danhera was a relatively small city, and was constantly at danger of being swallowed by land-hungry nearby countries. As a restult, King Caril spent most of his time engaged in verbal fencing with the neighboring lords. For now, Danhera was regarded as not being worth the trouble of conquering. For now.

            The people of Danhera knew all about defeat. They had once lived in a kingdom to the north, Deneve, which had been attacked by a neighboring country. The remnants of the court of Deneve had made the trek south, and found the abandoned city of Danhera in a pocket valley like a godsend. Since then, they had clung on to their appropriated home with a tenaciousness that badgers would admire.

            Then again, there was the princess. Princess Carilya was ten, a sandy-haired, ash-eyed waif who seemed swallowed up by the traditional princessly finery. She usually sat by her father’s side, a symbol of the impending sanctuary they could gain. Occasionally she was absent from the dinner, but that was rare. Carilya had been betrothed to Prince Davedar, of that Faraway But Extremely Powerful Country, Celazinther. Once married, she (and her children) would become the link between the two countries, and the mortar that would hold together the wall—shield—around Danhera. Medirlan didn’t exactly enjoy sheltering under a marriage to another country, but if it could keep them from falling to the same doom as Deneve, hell, he’d marry that prince.

            Carilya. Yes, there she was, beribboned and frilled, a grave look on her face as she ate while around her grown men traded subtle insults and subtler hints, and the women gossiped, gossip with as many messages hidden in it as any man’s talk. Nobody paid any attention to the little girl sitting in grown-up finery at the adults’ table, at an age when she should have been fussed over at the children’s table by the unmarried girls. As Davedar’s betrothed—married, in a symbolic way, until her coming-of-age at fourteen—she had to sit at the men’s table. He wondered what she thought about it. Nobody knew what Carilya thought about anything, anyway.

            Medirlan blinked. His stack of plates was empty, and he went to get another.

(he was wakeful, memory screaming in a mind that knew no rest because—again, why?—something had happened that had stripped him of all memory and memory of sensation but he remembered… something… of floating, and dreaming-not-dreaming and awakening, because there was something he had to do, and someone he had to meet, or save, or encounter, or… love, marry, protect, help, words flitting back and forth until they became a quivering weight and)

            “Who are you?’

            The curious query rang down the corridor; anyone passing by would have been surprised, for the little girl with the nondescript brown hair appeared to be talking to no-one at all. It was mid-afternoon at Danhera castle, and the summer heat prostrated people enough that there were rarely any state lunches, and Carilya generally took her meal in the privacy of her own quarters, accompanied by anyone or no-one as she pleased.

            He turned, blinking at her (it was distressing to watch him blink: all his eyelids did when they swept down was make his eyes even more misty) and then at the silvery currents bearing him away from her. Flash; and then he was in front of her, blinking again, all silvery and filmy, scrutinizing her with a direct gaze that made her uneasy. Carilya wasn’t used to being uneasy.

            “Who are you?”

            [who are you?] He seemed to try out the words, tentative and shy. [who… are you? Who am I? I am… ]

            Carilya felt like a participant in some obscure ritual. In the bright noon sunlight streaming through a nearby window, she lifted a finger and pointed at herself, gravely serious as around the two of them silver flashed streamed and cursed their curses that she barely heard anymore, so accustomed was she to them.

            “I am Carilya.”

            [I… am… Carilya.]

            “No, I am Carilya. You are?” (she never smiled)

            [I… Carilya… you…]

            “I shall call you Spirit,” she informed him solemnly. “Because you need a name.”

            [Spirit. Name yes need name need past… name? Carilya castle princess marry prince Danhera spirit… Carilya?]

            “I am Carilya. You are Spirit.”

            [Carilya. Spirit. Yes.]

            “Yes.”

            [Carilya. Spirit. Together. Yes?]

            “…Yes.”

(he was awake now and learning words new and unfamiliar-strangely-familiar on his tongue no they used to be familiar once but now they weren’t somehow—because he slept too long yes that was it slept too long but now he was AWAKE)

            Celazinther seasons were very simple. Spring was ‘lots of rain’, summer was ‘less rain’, autumn was ‘leaves all fall down’, and winter was ‘stay indoors or freeze’. It was summer now, and the last time it had rained had been about a turn ago. Five days were enough for Davedar to feel like he was being steamed, and by all accounts the weather in Danhera was even hotter. He could not imagine it.

            “And you, Davedar, shall marry the princess of Danhera and then you’ll be the Prince Consort, you understand?”

            “I understand.”

            It was the same spiel every day. Marry Princess Carilya. Have children with her. Have their children inherit the small city-state. It was a simple deal, protect my city, and I’ll let your descendants (and mine, too) rule it. It was the norm in a world where any small city-state that did not ally with a larger kingdom soon lost its independent status.

“That means that when the old king dies, you will the rule city with your wife—as an independent city, mind, but as yours.”

            “I understand.”

            Rule the city. It did not bear thinking about. He could barely rule the guards under his command. Oh, he commanded, and they obeyed, but Celzan men were used to obeying. The women listened to the men who listened to their commanders who listened to whoever was in charge, all the way up to the King himself, who listened to God. Theoretically. Davedar had only had schooling for a turn in Danheran affairs, and already he was despairing. If the tutor was to be trusted (which he was), Danherans had an independent turn of mind and a penchant for speaking what they thought. It was a Celzan’s nightmare. Perhaps that was why his brother had gone mad and died in Danhera while visiting his intended bride.

            “That’s why you need these lessons—to rule properly.”

            “I understand.”

            Rule a city. It was certainly something to look forward to, and to fear.

*           *           *           *           *           (bells)

            The bells chimed. One after another, all over the city, beautiful sound and discordant noise, intricate melody and pure bell-tone ringing and pealing and sounding their wordless message over Danhera’s blue sky. To Carilya the sudden mass of sound sounded as confusing as the wedding veils the maids were arranging on her head, one after another, white then ivory then brown then orange then yellow for joy on this auspicious day, and finally white again, the last veil that was not supposed to be removed until this night.

            It was already evening, prayers barely over at the grand temple in the top floors of the castle (commons surmounted by royalty surmounted by heaven, a tradition unchanged for millennia) before the bells pealed their joyous message. Carilya sat quiescently in her room at the base of the main tower where it met and joined the palace building, letting the maids fuss. A cool breeze blew quietly through the large airy windows that let in wind but not much else, with magewards fitted snugly over them. That was Danhera’s true strength—not army nor politicians, but the superbly-trained mage corps that formed the core of their defense. It was, of course, possible to crush Danhera (nothing was invincible) but to do so would require an enormous expenditure in equipment and lives, and certainly not worth expending. Deneve had fallen with inside help. Perhaps Danhera would, too.

            “Done, your Highness.” Thee maids dropped curtseys, left hand to forehead and heart, though and emotion, the trace of a circle, life. The slender girl seated on the chair nodded distractedly, eyes fixed on the purpling sky outside.

            “Your Highness… Carilya… are you—no, you’ll never be ready. Not for a long time.”

            “I am ready, Deminia,” her charge chided softly.

            The middle-aged woman bowed respectfully, eyes dark.

(she slept, memories dissolving in a mind that felt like torn cloth fluttering in a nonexistent wind, but even through the scouring that felt like sandpaper on her mind she felt the red rage boiling and boiling and boiling until she knew it was wrong and she knew she could not forget could not but the sandpaper kept scouring and scouring and)

            The bells chimed. In a single ringing mess, tenor and soprano and bass and gods-knew-what, sounding and pealing and ringing a resounding chord through the enormous cathedral. Only the evening ceremony, traditionally the less important of the two, yet this one was public and therefore had to be big. Big, meaning stupendous, and rich, and overblown. Take the cathedral, for example: normally larger than three houses (it was a miracle the palace didn’t collapse under it) and ornamented more than a roomful of empresses, it was currently festooned with pennants and banners and other decorations of either the shining or streaming variety in both the blue-and-silver of Danhera and the orange-and sun of Celazinther. If that was not enough, nobles of both countries thronged the hall, well-night outshining the walls.

            Daven cleared his throat pointedly.

            “Yeah, yeah,” Medirlian muttered sotto voce, straightening and fighting to keep his fingers away from his itching nose. Seemed that the more you tried to ignore an itch, the worse it became. An even unit of palace guards lined the walls of the imposing structure, ceremonial spears held vertically in a position that was hell on the arms, not-so-ceremonial swords belted at waists, useless pretty ceremonial armor that was never used outside of said ceremonies a dead weight that trapped heat and increased the discomfort. They bore with it, but they did not have to like it. Medirlan just couldn’t seem to go into a trance the way most of the guards did. Maybe it was his relative inexperience, a mere three years in training compared to the rest.

            The young guard fought another urge to scratch at his nose. Princess Carilya was getting married; Medirlan didn’t know why, but the though made him feel uneasy. Carilya was odd, a slender frail-looking girl, though no longer the skinny waif she had been. She roamed the castle often, accompanied only by her nurse Deminia and her invisible friend, whom she called Spirit. Sometimes she had fits, during which she either covered her eyes with her hands and screamed, or sat and stared at the walls for tolls on end, staring at everyone who bothered her until they went away. Sometimes Medirlan felt that she was strange, but more often than not he wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her, to make the demons that haunted her go away. It irritated him that he should feel that way, especially since Carilya was married—or going to be, and her husband wouldn’t take kindly to it, even if Medirlan thought that it was more of a brotherly thing than that kind of thing.

            Her would-be husband had a reputation among the men as a quietly authoritative man, a demanding but not cruel commander. Medirlan sincerely hoped Davedar was nice to her. Carilya had been hurt too much already that she didn’t need to be hurt any more.

(she stirred, memories unraveling in a mind that felt like frayed knitting being torn at by a storm, the sand-scouring more intense than ever, trying to erase her, erase who she was, erase the hatred and the rage and the serene town filled with blood and the beautiful airy palace all ablaze with foul magic, rage and fury and anger flowing into one vast ocean that soothed her and held her together so that she would ­never forget and)

            The bells chimed. To him, they were not so much audible as visible, a rippling vibration like waves spreading prettily across the fabric of the etherworld, like the aftermath of dropping a rock into a pool. Sound, for some patently odd reason, rippled ethereal material. Thought was sound in the etherworld, which made it interesting when he watched Carilya talking. He heard her words and her saw her words, ripple of motion and sound in the palely glowing ether.

            [This distresses you.] Carilya practically radiated it, colors chasing themselves up and down her body in scintillating waves, blue then red then green then gray and dozens of others, reflecting her changing emotions.

            “Yes.” The colors swirled once more, seeming to settle on a determined-seeming dark brown before whirling again—dark green, dark gray, white, light green—

            [Then… why do it?] His own color was a muted, quiet gray-blue. It usually was. It was, as things go, his ‘personal’ color, the one he usually wore when nothing untoward was on his mind, as Carilya’s was a sparkling, ethereal silver closely blending in with the unadorned gray of etherstuff. Now she was red, a sudden bloody flash of rage and anger, submerged again into cool blue, and green, and a flicker of black.

            “Because I have to.” Her thought sounded calm, but her color told a different story, born, maroon, sky-blue, aquamarine.

            [But why?] Truly, Carilya was getting stranger by the year. She had been perfectly fine when she was young, talking and teaching him how to speak, or think (not playing. Carilya never played.) but as she grew older, things like duty and responsibility started to crop up. Why take care of people you did not even know when they were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves? How could one man, or one woman, speak for and be responsible for hundreds and thousands of other men and women who had their own ideas that never meshed. Sometimes he thought he preferred Carilya when she was young and like him, even with the fits of railing at the steady whirling stream of spirits that he could not see and she did not notice any more, even with their steady yelling (she claimed—all he felt was anger in the air). And yet something of this alien responsibility touched a chord in him, reminding him of something he had to remember.

            “Because I have no choice.” She finally steadied, swirls of blue and gray melting into a blue-gray like his own, then back to her normal silver, shot through with strands of red and yellow.

            [But you do. You could leave.] His color never changed. Never changes.

            “Where would I go?”

            [Anywhere you please.] He meant it. She could go, and he would protect her, and…

            “Oh, dear Spirit. You can’t help me, and I know it. You should know it, too.” She stood, hearing something, some change to the timbre of the bells that flooded the room with minute ripples—a girl going to be a woman when she should still be a girl. It was an old argument. One that was never won or lost.

            Carilya left the room, and Spirit followed. He would always follow.

(she awoke, memories flowing in a mind that melded together slowly, so slowly while around her things moved and jerked and flowed and light beat down relentlessly on her quiet form, light that meant to take away what she was but she formed a shield of her rage and her anger all red and foaming that beat away the light so that she

was left alone until)

            The bells chimed. The distant jangle sounded like windchimes, the sound tinny and wretched, muffled by the walls around him. Davedar drew his knees to his chest, eyes open in the windowless darkness, but seeing nothing. Would his life be like that sound, grand and complicated and great and heroic, but ultimately doomed to become tinny noise that people ignored? He would not like that… he thought. Perhaps it would be good, too. Then people would forget everything about him, including his mistakes.

            Thrap!  

            “Is everything ready?” He forced his voice to stillness, afraid that his men would hear the trembling and see it as a sign of weakness. (you should always sound authoritative, no matter what you feel. If you sound weak, you are weak, and no-one will listen to you.) His brother had told him that good leaders got close to the men, but his brother was dead, gone four years past in this very city.

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Good.” He stood, uncomfortable in the gold-chased armor that proclaimed his status as a warrior, with the narrow but still elaborate circlet of prince pressed onto his normally-tousled blond hair and pinned in place. The door opened for him without his touching it, the soldier on the other side bowing respectfully to his commander and his prince.

            The corridor seemed to stretch out before him indefinitely. At the end of it all: Carilya. The Princess Carilya, his betrothed, soon-to-be-wife, and the stepping stone to his very own kingdom. His very own kingdom, all his, to make or to break. The very thought petrified him. He could almost hear his tutor yelling. Him, and his father, too. He didn’t even know what Carilya was beyond the picture of the grave little girl on his mantel. Doubtless she knew as little about him.

            “Your Highness.” “Your Highness.”

            Davedar inclined his head towards the guards flanking the portal and strode forward at the chime before he could hesitate, cloak fluttering behind him. Across the cathedral he saw a slender figure step out from the entrance opposite, dressed all in blue and silver, combined veils an indeterminate shade of brown. Davedar swallowed sharply. Carilya, his wife. His key to a kingdom, a kingdom that would be his.

            And his alone.

(she moved, purpose bright in a mind almost devoid of memory but the important ones that made up her life and her need and her pain, the castle, the magic, and it burned bright revenge revenge REVENGE)

*           *           *           *           *           (night)

            The ritual of death was held at sunset, the time when the sun fled the mortal world to take up residence in the world of death and spirits, and the moon rose silvery to bathe the void left behind. Death, in this case, was not true death, the passing away of body to release spirit. Rather, it was the death of old life, the passing away of childhood to release the person into new-earned adulthood. Through the night the soon-to-be-newlywed couple would meditate and think upon their childish actions and words, considering and discarding all that was unworthy and unneeded for their new adult life, separated only by a screen of painted paper.

            The ritual of life was held at sunrise, but that was another matter.

            Birth, death, and what lies beyond. He is about to find out.

*           *           *           *           *           (dawn)

            The legend goes that the first man, who was as a god, awoke from his cradle to darkness and void, and was angry at it, for he could see nothing, not even himself. And, in fury and all unknowing of the powers he could wield, he cried out, and wished for light. And then there was light. Thereafter, the fist man who was as a god went forth, and with his powers he created a companion to comfort and aid and love him. They had many children, and their children had children, and so on and so forth, and the powers of the first man, who was as a god, were lessened, that now only privileged individuals bear a much weaker version of this power, called magic.

            In the darkened room there was no dramatic entrance, no sudden ‘and there is light’. Here, light was like unto a thief, or perhaps a shy child, creeping in through the large mage-warded window to illuminate the young man, the girl and the screen separating them. It entered first from the girl’s side of the room, and threw her shadow against the screen; the young man, if he had looked up, would have seen the girl’s silhouette, slender against the pale thing paper. She would have seen nothing but pale paper, and the silver smokiness that hung motionless in the still air, for this day unmoving. Behind her the spirit held similar vigil, but she did not see him.

            As the light brightened, it picked out details a flash of dark-blond hair, the quiet glimmer of steel-gray eyes, the assertive sparkle of gold ornaments. It illuminated the young man’s high aristocratic cheekbones and picked out the strands of gold in the girl’s sandy hair, and brought a sheen to the simple but rich garments—gown, and tunic and loose trousers of silk—of plain white that they had changed into at the stroke of midnight for the vigil.

            The one thing it could not pick up was sound, but on another plane the waning light picked up ripples, eddies of visible noise at the same time as the sound reached the ears of the two kneeling in quiet contemplation: a high, wailing cry of despair, layered by many voices and somehow achieving some kind of indescribable harmony.

            Their heads came up at exactly the same time.

            “Dead? How?” Medirlan’s shocked query rang through all three guard-halls and made the more experienced guards wince; under normal circumstances one of them would have cuffed the irresponsible youngster for making them look bad, but with the situation being as it was nobody had the heart to do anything but sigh. That was enough to make Medirlan flush and modulate his voice down to a more acceptable level, but the next question still came out accusatory. “I thought there were guards—soldiers…?” His nettled tone laid the blame squarely at the feet of the soldiers. There was a not-entirely-friendly-rivalry between the palace guards and the palace wing of the army, and for good reason: the palace guards were called on for all the public functions and ceremonies but generally the important jobs were given to the army.

            The young soldier dispatched as runner looked nettled, too: no doubt he’d heard this before, and hated it. Well, so there! Medirlan seethed inwardly, furious that the soldiers had botched a straightforward task and let the king, of all people, get himself assassinated. Without King Caril, they were in trouble, the only heir being that upstart prince currently in the process of being wed to the Princess Carilya. Which reminded him.

            “What about the Princess and that man?”

            That they could not let pass. One of the older guards delivered a box to Medirlan’s ears that left his head ringing. “Show due respect,” the guard growled. “They havn’ta been told—they’re participating in the mornin’ ceremony. They’ll be told after, and the word is we’ll skip ta banquet and stuff in respect, but everything else’ll go on.”

            “The inspection? The presentation? The bedding?”

            “The inspection, the presentation—on the morrow—and yes, ‘Dirlan, the bedding.” That last was delivered with more than a trace of sardonic humor. The greenest new recruit in the palace guard, given a day or two, would figure out that Medirlan was fiercely protective of his princess. There was a rumor going around that if anyone so much as breathed a word against Carilya in any of the three guard-halls where palace guard and army mixed uneasily, Medirlan would have him in the challenge-ring and beaten in moments. It wasn’t (much) idle boasting—Medirlan was one of the best swordsmen in the palace guards, despite having official training for only three years.

            Said brash youngster huffed and stalked back to his sleeping quarters. The younger guards sniggered; the older guards sighed. Medirlan was somewhat of a discipline problem.

            The spirit watched them both. He would always watch.

            In the fading evening light, the room gleamed with the last touches of gold sparkling off eddying etherstuff, sunlight through water. It twinkled, catching gold highlights off Carilya’s molten-silver hair and making the vulnerable contours of the boy’s—Prince Davedar, he remembered, not-memory catching on something—face glow. His spirit shone light blue, an airy color weighted with streaks of dark that seemed to chain the blue, rendering it unable to fly. They looked like knight and lady there, caught in a moment, a tableau come out of the paintings of old.

            Davedar was kneeling, a very knightly position, staring at Carilya in the semi-darkness. He’d said something to her earlier; whatever her reply had been, it had frozen him in his tracks. Carilya, seated on a stool, stared impassively down at her consort, expression distant and unreadable—very much the lady above the rest. Had Spirit been human, he would have seen the last touches of sunlight (somehow more real, in the physical world) illumine the two, rendering them half in light, half in shadow. Had he been human, he would perhaps had thought it an omen. But Spirit was not, and he saw them in silver ether-moonlight, touched with gold.

            Their lips moved; the spell broken. Spirit watched as Carilya submitted her body to the care of the faintly disturbed-looking young man. He would always watch.

*           *           *           *           *           (wedlock)

            The first rays of the rising sun touched the party gathered at the courtyard with blessing fingers; the priest began to chant the benediction in a soft even voice that carried no further than that same party. Around them the courtyard bustled with activity even at dawn, servants rushing to and fro on their daily tasks, pages and squires dashing around, even the distant tramp of soldiers’ feet on their morning march. Tradition dictated that the first part of the crowning ceremony was private in the midst of bustle (do not interrupt the daily routine of life), and every single one of the passing servitors and men scrupulously avoided looking at the young pair standing quietly, flanked by two acolyte priests and dressed in robes that hid their faces.

            Carilya barely heard the priest. Accompanied by intermittent phrases of “blessed be they” and “as the day dawns” and “chains of duty”, her thoughts ran themselves in wild circles. Almost shyly, Carilya stole a look at Davedar’s face, shadowed beside her. She liked him, although she would much rather have hated him, but she liked him. He had been kind to her last night; he had asked sincerely, and he had been gentle, which was more than she expected. She had no desire for him, and it had hurt, but he had apologized, which was surprising.

            “Sun, giver of life, grant blessing to these who stand before you!” Carilya and Davedar drew back their hoods, faces angled towards the light. She barely heard the spirits murmuring, although they seemed angrier than ever.

            “Wisdom, to rule,” Davedar murmured, unruffled.

            “Intelligence, to govern,” Carilya added, sun-blinded.

            “And understanding, for the unity of ruler and land!” That last was delivered in a ringing tone as the priest grasped Davedar and Carilya’s hands and thrust them forward. The acolytes curled bracelets crafted from wood taken from a very common tree that grew everywhere, spelled for strength (wood was easily breakable, carved this thin). These bracelets, more than any royal crown or trappings, signified their joint rulership of Danhera and would only be removed if they abdicated or were overthrown.

            Ceremony complete, the young couple were helped out of their robes by the acolytes. Underneath, they were both dressed in peasant-style clothes sewn from rich cloth, and the surrounding servants stopped working to cheer.

            The priest led them into the Great Hall—and rulership.

            He saw uncertainty. He saw surprise. He certainly saw doubt. If the palace guards of Danhera were anything—besides guards—they were unskilled at hiding their emotions. For all that the presentation was supposed to be of the guards to the man they would be guarding, Davedar felt that he was the one being presented, and—dare he say?—judged. One of the guards saluted out of turn, slower than the others, and he winked, deliberately mocking. Davedar’s lips thinned. Oh, he wasn’t one for inspiring the soldiers. His elder brothers were much better at that than him. But if he couldn’t command respect—obedience—from a group of guards, then what of the city-state itself. He fancied that they laughed at him. That one guard—young, with short hair that looked like it had never been combed—did look like he was laughing.

            Later, after lunch and a bath, Davedar wandered down to the practice yard, where young army and guard hotheads in simple shirts and trousers practiced against each other with blunt wooden wands, dancing with grace or without, back and forth over the sun-warmed stone. They were overseen by a few older guards who sometimes joined in the fight, but more often than not simply stood back against the walls and talked among themselves. Presumably the older guards practiced some other time.

            He wasn’t sure if his young insolent hothead was among them, and had no care to find out. Davedar simply watched, walking among them. Most of the guards ignored him when he strolled down, which was borderline insolence in Celazinther; this being Danhera, people were less formal, which Davedar had been taught. He hadn’t expected just how informal.

            “I hear your Highness is a good sword-dancer,” a voice said, almost at his shoulder. Davedar spun; the young man from the presentation grinned wildly at him, a light in his eyes that indicated the presence of what Davedar’s old armsmaster would have called ‘fire in the soul’.

            “I like to think so,” Davedar said coldly, and the young man’s grin turned sardonic. Behavior like this in Celazinther would have easily earned the boy a flogging if it had been towards Davedar; Davedar’s father the king would have had his head. (if you let your subordinates behave in a familiar fashion towards you, you automatically lose authority over them. Make them think of you as a King, and act as if you are no matter what you think of the matter.) Of course, some commanders managed to inspire their men to loyalty with the personal touch—a clever little verbal and behavioral trick that made the men think that the commander knew them personally—but Davedar could never manage it, and settled for the ‘king on his pedestal’ method.

            “Would you care to demonstrate?”

            Halfway through the fight, it was obvious that Medirlan (the annoying guardsman) had plenty of talent and strength, and the training to shape that into fighting skill. Davedar, who depended more on speed, had to watch his footwork or risk getting hit by Medirlan’s stronger, slower strikes. The guards old and young had gathered around them to watch, and nobody intervened. Davedar wondered if King Caril had regularly practiced against his own guards. It was something Davedar had been taught not to do (don’t get too close to your men) but which he felt peculiarly exhilarating, fighting against someone that he didn’t quite know and couldn’t exactly trust to hold all his strikes.

            In the end, it was experience that proved the tie-breaker. Davedar had been schooled from the moment he could walk and hold a sword by some of the finest instructors in the art of fighting with swords. He would lay a bet that Medirlan had not.

            The guards were silent.

            Medirlan grinned again, sudden as sun through clouds. Ignoring the wooden blade-tip poised at his throat, the young guardsman threw his arms around Davedar uncaring of royal propriety or dignity, and gave him a solid, exuberant hug. Davedar was briefly aware of warm arms encircling him, a swift kiss deposited on his cheek like he was a younger brother, and then the cresting cheer rolled over him like a wave. Only Davedar was close enough to catch the glint in Medirlan’s eyes of what might have been pride in his king… or pure anger.

            Medirlan seethed all the way down to the tower. What the hell did Daven think he would do? Call the Prince Consort of Danhera a bloody stinking weasel? The guard commander had dragged Medirlan out of morning practice solely to deliver a stern waning about provoking princes. Did Daven think he was a child, unable to hold his tongue? Damn the man to the moon. At the moment, Medirlan probably hated Daven just as much as that damned prince. Perhaps hate was too strong a word. Prince Consort Davedar seriously annoyed Medirlan, but he didn’t hate the man. Well… maybe a little.

            The city of Danhera was a sprawl of small houses and large, with watchtowers, mansions, broad streets and crooked narrow alleys sharing space. When the refugees from Deneve had arrived here, the city had been much smaller than it was now, with watchtowers set at regular intervals around it. As the city expanded, and new streets and homes came into being, the old watchtowers were generally made obsolete, and were torn down or abandoned. There was one particular watchtower that Medirlan liked to think of as being his, that offered a grand view of the palace and a goodly chunk of Danhera city.

            Dodging a pack of ragtag street urchins, Medirlan simply pushed the door of the tower open, the latch having long rotted or rusted to hell. The sheathed shortsword at his side banged against his hip as he squeezed past the rubble that part-blocked the stairway—the reason that most people did not enter the tower. Medirlan took the stairs at a run, reveling in the physical exertion even though he exerted himself physically every day as a guard. His temper got better, which was a good thing, really.

            Davedar dir’en Cavedar Celazinther, co-ruler of Danhera (although in truth Carilya was ruler in name only), greeted him with a sword in hand, a slender wickedly curved blade that shimmered in the dusty room. Medirlan gave him a disgusted look, which was returned in full measure by the young Prince Consort, who sheathed his sword before returning to the window.

            “Escaped from your nannies, did you, your Highness sir?” Medirlan snapped, as irritated by the man’s presence as by his apparently deeming Medirlan too lowly to pay attention to. Whatever princes were in Celazinther, it didn’t seem to be mortal. It struck him that this was probably what Daven had been warning him against, but by then Davedar had whirled, flushed, and Medirlan met him with a defiant stare, fear pounding in his heart right next to a wild berserker feeling.

            “I could have you whipped for that,” Davedar said coldly, something flickering in his eyes.

            “Right,” Medirlan snorted. “We don’t do that in Danhera.”

            “Discipline?”

            “Act like we own the place.”

            “I do own the place.”

            “Only because you married Princess Carilya.” At that Davedar sniffed, crossing his arms over his chest. They were drawing closer as the argument heated, Medirlan daring to shake a finger below the other young man’s nose. Bloody arrogant foreign princes who thought they were the sun and the moon and the first man who was a god…!

            “Is that jealousy I hear?”

            “Is that princely wisdom? Or are all princes that arrogant where you come from?”

            “Where I come from, I could kill you for this.”

            “Oh yes, O Lord High God. Kill me, then. You’ll still be human, and you’ll still grow old and die.”

            “You—”

            “Human? So are you.”

            Davedar stared at him across two inches of space, the two of them practically nose to nose, and then he bit back the retort that Medirlan could see rising, and left the room.

            Davedar could have snarled. He practiced alone in the empty practice yard, longsword flashing in the moonlight. City and palace was quiet, sane people long since gone to sleep. Or whatever they did at night. He found himself flushing, as he often did when he thought of his wife-not-wife, Carilya. He had husbandly duties to do, he knew, married a day and already people were stopping him in the street and asking him if the princess was with child yet. It took some getting used to, Danhera. He wasn’t sure if he could live here and hold his temper at the same time. The people were so impertinent!

            Form to form to form. Spinning and dancing, thought sidelined, it was what Davedar liked to do. He thought too much, his tutor had always told him. Pure elemental movement shut away the worries and the fears and the questions, made him just someone dancing with a length of shining steel. It was something he tried to do at least once per turn. It kept him sane.

            “Dancing alone’s no fun,” someone said. Before he stepped into view, Davedar knew who it was, and drew to a graceful stop, leashing his temper as he did. Medirlan tossed a wooden wand across the space between them, its twin already in his hand. He dropped his sword as he did, a shortsword forged for fighting indoors, sheathed in well-worn leather.

            “What’s this, then?” Davedar gestured with the wand, sheathing his sword and tossing it to one side. It slid to a halt beside Medirlan’s blade. “Tired of verbal fencing?”

            Medirlan snorted. “As I recall, you were the one who gave up. I just couldn’t sleep, and I thought your Highness could use someone to spar with. Trying to get used to Danhera?”

            Davedar eyed him narrowly. “What business is it of yours?”

            “Oh, none. Just that if what I heard about Celazinther is true, then your Highness should be well and truly smarting at the insolence you meet in the streets of Danhera.”

            “…”

            “Yep. We don’t have five hundred years of tradition to fall back on. We do have one hell of a march from old Deneve to here a bare hundred years ago, and people don’t forget something like that so fast. You don’t treat your king like a godling come from the sky when everyone’s running like demons’re on their tail. Not that I’ve done that, but like I said, people don’t forget. We’re closer, our people and our kings. We don’t treat them like they were immortal.”

            “What about respect for the throne? You don’t believe in that, here?”

            Medirlan snorted again. “Respect? Respect’s gotta be earned, just like everything else.”

            Davedar frowned, and Medirlan waved the wand around in the air and attacked without warning. The young prince was forced into defense, and the next few chimes were no time for speaking as the two battled back and forth across the practice yard, narrowly missing tripping over their own swords. Medirlan kicked the sheathed entangled blades off the yard entirely, and Davedar used that moment of distraction to trip him, following up with a disarming move that didn’t work as the younger guardsman surged up and applied himself to the battle anew.

            Neither of them gave quarter; neither expected it. The dull thwack of wooden wands hitting each other didn’t carry far, even in the quiet night. Medirlan seemed to have got better since their last battle. Either that, or he had underestimated Davedar the first time. Davedar had to obtain victory by using an entirely unorthodox tackle that one of his more unconventional armsmasters had taught him.

            Pinned to the ground, Medirlan offered a smoldering glare.

            “You’ve improved,” Davedar noted, managing to keep his voice even although he wanted to pant like a dog. Or gasp like a fish.

            “Practice. And some questions to the armsmaster who happened to witness our earlier… challenge-fight.”

            “Practice some more. Then you might have a chance.”

            They did practice more. In the turns that followed, noon or night practice with the volatile guardsman became as much a part of Davedar’s day as the morning sessions with Carilya and the old King’s councilors, learning how to govern the country that was so unlike the one that he had grown up in. He learnt that the ceremony held for the wedding was mainly show for the Celzan representatives, and that an actual Danheran wedding involved much less—mainly the plain ceremony of death at night, the vigil, and the ceremony of life, at dawn. No banquets, no feasts.

            He learnt. He learnt to banter with the guards, to argue with the peasants, to grin when someone asked him if the princess was with child yet. He learnt how to hold Danheran court (which was to sit and listen and actually do something rather than sit and listen and promise to do something), how to play politics the Danheran way (be normal, and only act the manipulating king when there was a state dinner), how to deal with the odd feelings that twisted his thoughts awry when he got too close to Medirlan.

            He taught, too. He taught Medirlan how to hold his temper, he taught the guards the usage of the slender blade of the north, he taught Carilya not to fear him.

            Things settled down. There were no more assassination attempts on the royal family after the king, in fact no trouble at all except for Carilya, who withdrew into herself and wouldn’t talk if she could help it, a silent ghostly presence. The healers said that it was a mental problem, that she would be fine as soon as the baby was born. She would spend half the morning emptying her stomach, and sometimes half the afternoon, too, and spend the rest of the day brooding. Davedar was the only one that she would talk to, and even then what she said did not make much sense. They would discuss politics, and she would mention a growing darkness; the neighboring kingdoms, and she would say that demons gathered to charge; the assassination, and she would imply that ‘she was angry’. All the healers could say was that it would pass.

            The peace didn’t quite last long enough.

            She cried out softly, moaning into her rolled-up sheets but refusing to let the guards at her door hear. They meant well, she knew, when they worried about her. Well, not exactly about her, more likely they worried about the child that grew within her. Her child. Davedar’s child. She wished she could hate him, but he was kind and gentle though rather aloof and she could see the fear in his eyes. The voices screamed around her, a whirlwind of hate. They sensed something she could not, saw something in the air mayhap, or some event fast approaching, and they screamed and hollered and shouted their base insults in an attempt to crack her mental walls like so many fragile eggshells.

            (He watched, unable to interfere, as the little moving eddies, those spirits he could neither see nor hear except as movement in the etherstuff, swirled around the young woman, obviously causing her grief. It hurt him, watching her suffer and being unable to do anything about it. She looked so suddenly young, curled in her sheets, brown hair free of her braid and curling like little tails on the bed. Her eyes didn’t look well; she was much too pale now-a-days, barely eating, barely sleeping. He could kill that irresponsible young prince.)

            Davedar had left her alone these few days. Part of her was relieved, that she need not perform her duty now that their efforts a month or so past had borne fruit. Part of her missed him, missed his gentleness and his ability to make her feel special. Davedar was a consummate gentleman (doubtless he’d been raised that way) and although Carilya knew he was acting, knew they were acting, one and all, she could pretend for that while that they were friends or true husband-and-wife.

            (He wanted to call out for help, to yell or scream or tell someone that this was wrong, that no pregnant woman should suffer like this. But he couldn’t be heard by anyone but the person he was trying to help, and he couldn’t be seen except on certain days when the light of the moon interacted with etherstuff to illuminate the etherworld to physical eyes.)

            She burrowed into the sheets, whimpering. The voices burrowed into her mind, shrieking.

            (He watched, and howled in frustration.)

*           *           *           *           *           (warnings)

            “Darn,” said Medirlan.

            He sneezed up a bucketful of dust, put down the glass-walled lantern with exaggerated care, and sneezed again. Then he swore like the foulest sailor no one had ever seen in landlocked Danhera.

            His two companions burst out laughing, unable to help themselves. The object of their mirth straightened. He didn’t even bother glaring at them, just picked up the lantern and forged on through the dusty room towards their goal, a set of records so long-buried in dust that it had to date to the founding of Danhera. To be exact, the records weren’t buried, just the box they were contained in. the room, a storeroom at the top of one of the smaller towers, had apparently been used as a random junkyard for anything and everything. Broken bits of wood that used to be something leaned against ornately carved, but out-of-fashion desks, chests laden equally with old furs and dust slept in a corner, and crackling manuscripts lay on a couch occupying the center of the room. Leaning over an antique hatstand, now collapsed, Medirlan snagged the small chest by a side handle, dislodging another minor avalanche of dust. The chest itself shed dust like rain, and Medirlan endured half-a-dozen sneezes before he made it back to the other guards.

            “Why does Deon need something like this anyway? It’s bad luck to sneeze on Sacrifice Day. Bloody damn mage,” Medirlan groused as he shook the chest held gingerly at arm’s length and winced at the slow-moving shower of dust that floated from it. Faran sneezed, casting an irritated look at Medirlan; the young man didn’t like Medirlan much—he considered Medirlan gutter trash, Faran being from a noble family and possessed of good looks to match, tall in a way that Medirlan couldn’t match and well built in a way that Medirlan couldn’t match either, being slender (but not practically willowy, like Davedar).

            The other guard was a veteran well versed with both Faran and Medirlan’s ways, and he interposed himself between the two young guards with admirable quickness, answering at the same time, “It’s not necessary for us to know.”

            “Yes, we just do the job,” Medirlan mocked, still fastidiously holding the chest at arm’s length as he went down out of the room.

             “Who cares what Deon wants with the Deneve records anyway?” Faran muttered.

            “Maybe he wants to sacrifice it.”

            “What was all the noise last night?” Davedar asked Daven curiously. The two of them were in the impromptu ‘Council room’, formerly a private dining room of some sort, waiting for the rest of the councilors to arrive. The Council was a rather rushed gathering of the main leaders of army, guard, mages and some old advisors of his father to remedy the fact that Davedar had only been schooled to rule in theory, and was a completely inexperienced young man. Mage-Representative Deon had called the council; he hadn’t elaborated much on the subject, but Davedar gathered that it had something to do with the disturbance near dawn, earlier. All Davedar knew was that there had been quite some yelling outside and other assorted noise, but it had died down after a while.

            “I quote,” the Guard Captain said wryly, “Attack by beings of mysterious origin, unquote. I have yet to receive a report or any other information on it, since the people involved have all apparently vanished.”

            Davedar opened his mouth to protest that Daven had to know something, but was interrupted as the door opened and the rest of the councilors filed in, Deon last with a bandage on his shoulder. Davedar’s lips thinned as he watched them take their seats, and he leaned forward impatiently.

            “Thank you for coming on such short notice—” Deon started haltingly.

            “Get to it,” General Ranel grunted. “When I find out that some of my men were involved in some kind of skirmish near dawn, and said men mysteriously vanish, and I hear that mages are behind this, I get twitchy. And it’s supposed to be a holiday today.”

            “Funny,” murmured the representative for the archer and mounted wings of the army (both being too small to warrant individual representatives), Nehras. “And here I thought you knew everything.”

            Davedar quelled them both with a glare that owed its effectiveness more to his rank than his age, experience or potential to scare peole.

            “All right,” Deon said, laying his hands on the table. “Last night, the night-watch was attacked. I was there: one moment it was quiet, and the next there were people attacking the palace guard from the city. Someone called the low alarm; there were mages and scouts coming up. There weren’t many attackers—maybe a dozen or so—and we weren’t too worried. The trouble is that they were not human.”

            Silence.

            “I had the soldiers isolated so that they would not be spreading panic-rumors in the streets and guardhalls. We mages suspect they are what we term ‘echoes’, dead people risen and given semi-physical bodies through magic. They are like ghosts, immune to magic and physical attacks except by using weapons made of silver, moon-metal, but they can touch living things and living wood. Normal weapons cannot touch them; they vanished when the sun rose.”

            “Why only twelve, do you think?” General Ranel questioned.

            Deon passed one hand over his wearily. “They shouldn’t have been possible in the first place. Do you have any idea of the power and the strength, not to mention the skill and audacity of any mage or mages able to raise even twelve echoes capable of attacking living things? Echoes are generally just that—weak echoes of what once had been human. To give them flesh—in a way—to give them even minimal intelligence… I doubt our best mages could do that.”

            More silence, as everyone digested this piece of information. Davedar chose to break it this time, leaning impatiently forward to speak. “So what do we do? Hide?” His tone made abundantly clear what he thought of that.

            Deon pursed his lips. “With your permission, Ranel, Daven, I’ll have my mages cast something that makes normal steel take on the magical properties of silver. That should allow your weapons to actually wound those echoes should they return. It’ll last you anywhere from two days to a turn-and-a-half, depending on the strength of the mage doing the casting. I think… that’s about all that we can do, and all that we need, because I doubt that that unknown could summon more than twelve echoes at any one time, especially since he already did it last night.”

            Daven frowned. “He won’t be able to conjure any more than this, you say?”

            “Not more.” It sounded like the only time Deon had been sure, in the meeting. “We should be concerned more with the sender, not the creatures. Any mage or mages this powerful, allied with some enemy of ours…”

            The council lasted late into the afternoon, with pages delivering drinks by the bucketful. In the end, nothing came out of it except a general admonition to be careful in cast the attacks came again, and the wording of the announcement to be delivered to guardhalls and public, warning people to stay indoors in case of attacks, as not to cause panic. Deon had been of the opinion that it was better to be careful. The spells were cast, the men (and the people) were warned, and as night began to fall, an uneasy silence descended over the city of Danhera. Leaning out of the window in the broken tower, Davedar marveled at the speed of the people’s reactions. The announcement had been made at mid-afternoon (Davedar had gone out to inform the people while the council adjourned for lunch) and by evening the city was already unnaturally quiet as children or whole families went to stay with friends and relatives in the country, abandoning preparations for the Day of Sacrifice. It had been near two generations since the fall of Deneve and the trek to Danhera, yet there were still people who remembered the horror of war, especially a mage-fueled war.

            From where Medirlan sat, the rays of the setting sun burnished the edges of Davedar’s profile, making him look like some prince on an ancient coin. The thought made him snort to himself as he tired to imagine Davedar like some ancient prince. The young man was in no way haughty enough to be one of the princes of old, nor commanding, nor decadent (if the old tales were to be believed). Which was probably better, despite the brief flashes of fear that Medirlan thought he caught in Davedar’s eyes. With some polish, the Prince Consort could become someone Medirlan would gladly follow into battle.

            Davedar turned, heading for the stairs out. It was getting dark, and he should probably be in the palace before full dark. Medirlan waved lazily at him from a seat of fallen rock, vaguely insolent in a way that Davedar chose to ignore. He wasn’t about to argue with the choice of protectors, or the protector, when Daven had made that choice and told Davedar in no uncertain terms to stay with him. Medirlan wasn’t that bad really; he had what Davedar’s old armsmaster would have termed ‘a touch for the blade’. Davedar had confirmed that over the course of numerous nightly practices with the volatile young man.

            Medirlan preceded Davedar down the stairs, having moved just fast enough to prevent his charge from charging down the stairs first. He heard a few disquiet grumbles from behind him as they clattered down the stairs and squeezed past the obstruction at the bottom. As Medirlan exited the tower, he nearly ran into someone else, a young page who panted and flushed and grabbed desperately at Medirlan’s sleeve. “Sir!” he yelled, flustered but loud, as Davedar came out of the tower. “Sir!”

            “The Queen Carilya—she’s dying!”

(and they were screaming and she was screaming all caught up and torn in her mind that did not even feel like her own because it burned it burned and it burned fit to send her mad she was so weak they felt so useless while their people were chased down and slaughtered and fought for their lives in the corridors)

*           *           *           *           *           (battle)

            Medirlan was swearing fit to make a whore blush. His short sword was slower than that flickering length of ribbon-steel that Davedar used like a sword and also like a whip when he pleased, but it gathered speed like a wave, and crashed like one, too. The enchantments were working perfectly; attackers found themselves missing arms and legs, but they kept coming as long as they could move. And there were always more of them, in a seemingly unending wave.

            “I thought Deon said that the mages wouldn’t be able to do this again so soon? He snarled, beheading a young woman with an open, slack mouth and a line around her neck that suggested a previous head removal. She vanished. Medirlan stared for a moment, mouth agape, before he was forced to abandon reasoning and defend himself against a man in armor, wielding a serrated blade.

            “Deon was wrong, obviously,” Davedar muttered, near-bisecting a man. He vanished, too. “Hit them the same way they were killed,” the prince consort added, spinning agilely to avoid another attack. Medirlan nodded, faintly irritated that he hadn’t figured out the connection earlier.

            “Have to pass that bit of information on.”

            “They’ll have to figure it out for themselves.”

            The battle raged on through the palace and the night. Medirlan and Davedar gained and lost ground, fighting in halls and corridors, occasionally forced to barricade themselves in rooms against hordes of attackers. They were joined by scattered patrols of guardsmen and armsmen; the army had been caught relatively by surprise—even with Deon’s warning, they had been expecting a small team of covert (albeit mindless) attackers, not a suddenly-materializing stream of long-dead people. From what Medirlan heard, most of the army was engaged in preventing the echoes from getting out of the palace. As magic couldn’t destroy what wasn’t technically there, the useless mages had been evacuated along with the palace servants and were raising wards for the army. Most of the palace guard were scattered throughout the palace in little packets, trying to stay alive. Daven was apparently leading a counter-attack from the guardhalls with the intention of gathering as many of the small forces as he could on the way to the Queen’s apartments.

            Medirlan, wielding his short, broad-bladed sword with deadly speed, spun through the echoes like a minor whirlwind, trampling all in his path. He was filled with a kind of berserk rage that was quite new to him; he had never truly fought in battle before. Faces and opponents blurred past him as he fought; now here, now gone. Only Davedar was a constant, fighting by his side, fighting before him, whirling off only to return. Davedar was hampered some by the corridors (with his long blade) but he managed, using his long knife more often than not. Davedar had never fought in battle, either, but what descended on him was not thoughtless rage, but icy calm, where enemy forces came and went but imprinted themselves firmly in his memory.

            As night wore on, the two fought their way across the palace, and more than once cursed said palace for its size as well as Carilya, for choosing a room so far from the main entrance.

(they had been screaming like she was screaming pain flaring hot and bright within the corridors of her being with every one of her people that fell beneath the merciless—merciless strokes of swords and moon-bright scimitars and long long spears that slashed at her and at them and drew strokes of fire in their wake fire that seared back out and woke her woke her woke her)

            The door had been built back in the time when Danhera had not been Danhera. Old, it had withstood kickings and bangings and the one time when an enterprising youngster had scratched names and little hearts on it. It had seen a lot (or it would have, had it eyes) and felt a lot, like that same youngster’s blood splashed hot on it, leaving a stain that had since faded to a patch of slightly darker brown than its polished mahogany. But nothing the door had ever stayed intact through would have prepared it for this.

            Echoes from the past stalked the corridors, semi-physical, semi-ethereal beings brought temporarily to life by some sorcerer of unimaginable power. A purely human army ranged against them, the servants having already been herded out of the palace and replaced by guards and soldiers. Isolated pockets of guards fought with the ferocity of trapped beasts all over palace. The army guarded the city, while the mages raised wards to protect what they could protect. Yet still the echoes came, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, and some of the brighter soldiers began to realize that they were fighting the same opponents over and over again.

            The door, had it been able to see this, would have sighed for the amount of destruction being done to other doors, wood being the only thing that the echoes could pick up other than living flesh.

            Two young men clattered down the corridor, naked steel shining bright in three hands, while a fourth was clasped tight to the shoulder of the opposite arm. Both young men looked exhausted, leaning on the walls and occasionally each other for support. Behind them trailed a small escort of equally benumbed guardsmen, every one with weapons, if not in hand, then at the ready. The taller of the two young men, though tired, was alert and wary, dark eyes scanning his surroundings. The shorter boy staggered occasionally, and one shoulder bore a spreading stain of blood beneath sheltering fingers.

            Davedar rapped on the door with unwonted ferocity, half his attention on supporting Medirlan so that the young guard didn’t keel over on the ground. There was a rattling from inside, as if a few knights had just leaped to their feet with the accompanying armor-music, then a tremulous voice called, “Identify yourself.”

            “Davedar,” the young prince-consort drawled, deliberately drawing out each syllable. It was a stupid question, anyway. Had he been an echo, he would probably have torn at the door instead of rapping on it.

            There was a faint, strangled gasp from the other side, the sound as the bar was swiftly yanked out of its cradle, and the door creaked open. Davedar half-staggered in with his burden, deposited Medirlan on the floor (where he promptly folded in a heap) and turned back to the door to call his escort in, only to find that they had stationed themselves in a protective semicircle around the door, with faces that said they would not be budged. When he turned back, the healer was already kneeling next to Medirlan, bandaging the shoulder wound where an echo had smashed a spiked club or something of the like into it. The young man had apparently recovered enough to wink up at Davedar and make the guard ‘situation under control’ sign with his good arm (thankfully, also his sword arm). Satisfied that the situation was indeed under control, Davedar whirled towards the two guards flanking Carilya’s bedroom door with some trepidation.

            “What—”

            The first guard answered him nervously, before he even finished speaking. “The Queen she’s sick, yer Highness, she’s jus’ lyin’ there moaning, sir.”

            The other guard, a handsome noble that Davedar knew only by reputation (and not a good reputation, either) sighed irritably before chipping in with, “The Queen collapsed when night fell, and she has been,” sideways glance at the other guards, “moaning since then. The healers cannot find anything wrong with her.”

            Davedar nodded and shoved the heavy wooden door open. Carilya was indeed lying on the bed, arms wrapped around her chest. The young princess looked pale and frail, small against the magnificent opulence of the huge bed. She appeared to be asleep or unconscious, but when Davedar neared the bed her eyes opened, gray as old ash.

            “My lord,” she said weakly.

            “My lady,” Davedar responded, kneeling beside the bed. “Are you well?”

            Carilya clasped her hands over her heart. “They’re so angry,” she murmured. “They are so very, very angry… My lord, are they all right? The men—are they…?”

            “They are all fine, Carilya,” Davedar soothed, dropping the formality of ‘my lady’.

            “All fine.” She freed one hand to clasp his, oddly strong beside her obvious physical frailty. “Good. I don’t want anyone to die… for me again. They… they died. They are angry at us… at—at me, they scream all the time, they scream… they call me betrayer and traitor and evil bitch and they—they want to kill me and everyone. Stay with me, Davedar, they do not want your blood, they do not scream for you—”

            Davedar stayed with her until she fell asleep, then slipped out of the room.

            He had a queen to protect.

            The girl curled up in the bed, as if curling into herself. Around her etherstuff eddied wildly, voices unheard in the etherworld tormenting the child. He knew not what to do; his form could not harm the spirits—there was nothing he could do but watch.

            Watching, was all he did. All he could do, always, it was all he had done. He was heartily sick of watching.

            The memories eluded him; they always did. He would see them sparkling like dew on a sunny morning, and grab—memories of riding, of the horse warm and strong and powerful; of bright summer mornings, running in the grass; a little boy who toddled around and looked up to him with love in his dark eyes; and above all of Carilya, a name with no image to go with it, and the injunction to take care of her. And he did, did he not? Had he not watched over her all this time? There were powers stirring this night, strange things beyond his ken. The etherworld was stirring, those eddies, spirits that Carilya saw, were moving into the material world via means quite unknown to him.

            He saw them now, clearer than ever: the spectral outline of hand, a ghostly snarl of rage, spirits that were part of the otherworld yet not. He could see his life, too, clearer than ever, places he could almost name, feelings of déjà vu. He had known that young man, the one with the dark chains weighting down the blue, who had tried to reassure Carilya.

            They had companioned her for a while together, boy and ghost, flanking her like sworn knights. Protecting her soul.

            Now the young man was gone. Carilya’s eyes opened slowly, searching for him. She moaned, reaching out, but there was nothing for her to grasp. Spirit slid his fingers through her grasp—through her hand—and railed silently at his inability to touch her, to reassure her of friends, of people who cared for her, close by her side. She blinked, eyes gray as mist in a pallid face, and as depthless.

            “Davedar?” she murmured, Princess Carilya reduced to a slip of a girl in pain, all layers and veneers of royalty stripped away. Unfocus. Focus. “Spirit?”

            He wanted to speak, if speech was what one termed the way he communicated, but something uncontrollable seemed to rise up and snatch the words away before he could give life to them, compassion anger helplessness he had to protect!

            The winds snatched up his spirit and flung it back.

                        (protect protect protect her)

            “Spirit?”

            The pale face jerked, shimmering in surprise. His hair rippled in a nonexistent wind, and his eyes widened, dark haunted orbs. She saw his lips moving, as if he wished to speak, although she supposed he did not truly need lips or throat to speak—his words slipped into her mind—but no words came. And then he was shimmering, form tattered as if whipped by a gale, and his mouth opened wide (was he screaming?) and he seemed to break apart and vanish.

            And Carilya was alone.

            The room seemed to oppress, darkness and absolute ringing silence pressed upon her; her familiar room seemed suddenly a tomb, an empty mausoleum that trapped her thoughts and emotions. She knew that outside these four walls, men fought for her and her city; knew that she had only to walk to the door and draw it open, and find there the guardsmen set to guard her body. But the darkness seemed a barrier to sound, and the distance to the door stretched like an eternity, and her throat could utter no syllable to summon the vigilant guards.

            She pressed sweating palms together, shaken. Even the spirit-voices and spirit-forms had stilled and vanished. She was alone as she had never been before in her life. She had always had the servants, and Deminia and everyone else, and Spirit and the voices. Now the silence clutched her heart, and she panicked, breath coming in short gasps, fingers clenching in her sheets, reason fled before a rush of loneliness bone-deep. And in that moment when time compressed to now, each tick a separate capsule of time, past meeting present—something answered Carilya’s desperate inward scream.

            Red-tinged with rage, it surged out from her soul with a ferocity that stunned. For a moment nothing seemed to have changes; then she realized that the way she saw things had changed. This, her dresser (shape in the darkness) was tinder; her wardrobe (bigger shape in the darkness) was something to be smashed; the beautifully carved stool (small shape in the darkness) a weapon to kill with. The palace, her home, something to burn.

            No!

            Yes.

            This is my home!

            This (walled town silhouetted against sunset) was (fires) my (a girl with jet-black hair and a haunted expression) home (tower room, sunlight slanting through slit windows).

            You cannot destroy it. I won’t allow you.

            You? Us. We are the same. Princesses trapped in fate, forced into loveless marriages (but she liked Davedar). But she had seen her home desecrated by blood, and she had grown up in that very home, and she wanted to burn it down to cleanse it of the invaders, and she wanted to protect it. She wanted, she wanted. She remembered Faran, Medirlan, the other guards outside her door, only around her age, and ready to protect her with their lives if need be. She wanted to kill them, see them die in pain, cut down by the princess they were sworn to protect. Her hand groped for the dagger she kept belted at her waist. Carilya snatched it back with a low cry.

            Soft though the cry had been, it drew response. The door slid open with a familiar creak, an untidy head poking itself through, silhouetted against the warm glow of the lamps outside. It was all so familiar that Carilya could have wept, except for the insidious little part of her that wanted to put a blade through his concerned-looking face.

            “Carilya? You alright?” There was a muffled ‘ow’ as the silhouetted head was thumped by a hand with a whisper of ‘be respectful, you damn fool’.

            Carilya hurled herself off the bed with vehement force, staggering a little as her legs adjusted. The young woman blinked down at her middle, still flat after only three months. She had almost forgotten about the tiny seed of life that germinated within her (but if the baby is the seed, does that make you the soil? Nutrients to be taken?). Sometimes she felt angry towards it, but overlaying it all was a sense that having the child was something she had to do. Simply had.

            “Medirlan,” Carilya half-wailed, fingers clamping forcefully onto the young guard’s forearm. “Take me outside. I want to see the sky.”

            Medirlan looked pained. Carilya’s free hand twitched again towards the dagger at her belt, and she grabbed Medirlan’s wrist with it to stop it from taking hold. “Ca-Your Highness, we can’t go out now—the echoes are still out there. Prince Davedar’s out there fighting them now, and the other guards.”

            “We did try’t stop him, but he would’na listen,” added the other guard, mournfully.

            “It’ll be alright,” Medirlan soothed, patting Carilya’s arm awkwardly. Part of her wanted to rip his heart out. She shook her head violently, sending strands of hair flying as her braid loosened.

            “I have to go out. Please,” she added. The two guards traded looks, then glanced as one at the third, Faran, sitting against the wall. Faran scowled.

            “All right,” Medirlan frowned. “What about this. I’ll take you out the moment that the sun dawns, is that acceptable? They said that the echoes vanished as soon as the sun rose, last night.” He patted her arm again, no less awkward. For all that ceremony and titles meant little to Danherans, most people did not really know how to treat Carilya: like a girl, a princess or a porcelain doll.

            Carilya nodded, wishing that she could throw her dagger away but not trusting herself to control her hand if she actually held the weapon. Pressed to return to her room to rest, she demurred, and spent the remaining night sitting between Faran and Medirlan (at her insistence), listening to them trade barbs and compare points of swordsmanship, refereed by the third guard, all of them with swords ready to draw at a moment’s notice. She had to constantly fight the compulsion to draw the dagger and stab all three of them. By the time dawn came, they had begun to call her Carilya.

*           *           *           *           *           (converge)

            Davedar leaned against the wall and slid down it slowly, almost too exhausted to think. His slender light fencing sword had grown progressively heavier as the hours wore on, until it was easier to just keep using it, letting momentum propel the sword. There was an odd lull in the fighting; Davedar had set down his sword, and immediately felt that picking it up again would require more strength than he could summon. Right now, as he sank into a sitting position, Davedar did not think that he could get up and resume fighting. Around him men were doing the same, sitting on tables, leaning against the walls, one or two even sprawling out full-length on the floor. Yet there was no doubt that every guard—even the ones apparently unconscious on the ground—would have weapons in hand within moments of the alarm being sounded by the sentries.

            It was completely surreal, fighting in the wee hours of the night, in one’s own home, against echoes that were not human and vanished when struck on a previous death-wound. The echoes came back, re-appearing in empty rooms. The larger portion of the palace had been abandoned, the servants and other people long since evacuated. The rest of the army was engaged in keeping the echoes bottled up in the palace, while Davedar and Daven’s palace guard protected Carilya’s quarters. The amount of echoes had increased to the point that Davedar and his little group of men could not fight their way out. The echoes had also taken to roaming in packs, and it was lucky that most of them were trying to break out of the palace. If they all came after the group guarding Carilya, the outcome of that battle would be unquestioned. The mages had insisted that the echoes were insubstantial, that they should be coming out of the walls, but that they would not.

            “Sir!”

            Davedar blinked at the chorus of voices calling his name, sword and dagger in hand before he even thought of them. As one the men pointed at the windows, which were admitting peculiar soft light into the room.

            Dawn.

            The cheer that sounded probably knocked the dust off the furniture. The light creeping over the eastern horizon seemed like lifelines to peace. Formerly exhausted men roused enough to hug each other in jubilation. Davedar saw no reason to dampen their spirits with the speculation that this might not be the first or only attack (last night’s little fracas notwithstanding), and threaded his way through the quietly celebrating men towards Carilya’s quarters.

            It took him a while to get there, and he found five wounded men industriously tending to each other in the antechamber, and a glum-faced guard sitting in front of Carilya’s bedroom door. The guard jumped to his feet as Davedar entered the room, and saluted him a tad nervously.

            “Your Highness,” he said. “The princess—”

            “Has something happened to her?”

            “Medirlan happened to her,” the guard groused. At Davedar’s raised eyebrow, he continued. “Her Highness came out sometime earlier, somewhat distraught. She insisted on going out, even with echoes around. Medirlan promised her that he would accompany her out once dawn came. Dawn just came, so he gathered five guards and went with her.”

            Davedar blinked. “I didn’t see them,” he objected.

            The guard looked even more disapproving. “The fool mentioned that he would be taking them by a lesser-used route to avoid being stopped,” he muttered.

            Davedar sighed. “She insisted?” he questioned.

            “Yes, your Highness. She was very insistent.”

            Davedar rolled his eyes in a very un-princely manner that seemed to shock her guard. “I’ll have to go and find them, then; are you coming with us?”

            The two of them were interrupted in the corridor by a distraught Deon with a box of papers. After ten minutes of spirited talking, they all started to run.

            Carilya left the guards behind at the base of the tower and continued up. Medirlan did not bother arguing with the suddenly spirited girl, he simply followed her up. The young princess glared, but made no move to stop him. This tower wasn’t the same one that Medirlan frequented; as a matter of face, it was the one that Deon had asked him to retrieve the dusty box from. It was short, barely as tall as the two-story palace, and consisted simply of a staircase winding up to an unused storeroom at the top, filled with junk, dust and more dust, with lots of windows that were barely large enough to fit a child. Without the benefit of wards on the window, the items closer to them were in a sad state, having weathered years of sunshine and rain, and there was moss growing on some of them.

            Carilya stopped at the windows. She started at the one next to the window blocked by a wooden wardrobe with warped sides, and went clockwise, peering out of each window in turn until she arrived at the blocked one. At this she stopped, made an odd whimpering sound and started pushing at the wardrobe. Medirlan joined in, and together they eased the wardrobe so that it no longer blocked the window. The moment the wardrobe scraped free, Carilya rushed for the window. The glimpse Medirlan caught of her face wasn’t quite sane. While he stood in place and tried to convince himself that it had just been a trick of the light, Carilya stood at the window, drinking in the sight for a long moment before turning.

            Medirlan had no warning. One moment he was standing, facing Carilya, and in the next a hammer-blow of force slammed into him—not from the door as he would have expected—but from his left, where there was nothing but junk and wall and windows and air outside. It smashed into him, sent him flying—as if the person did not consider him dangerous enough to kill but simply slapped him aside. His head struck something—this is impossible (guards at the base of the tower with two mages—how could there be no warning--) and darkness.

            He did not see Carilya smile.

            Faran’s sword rang bell-like on stone as the echo dodged, then flung his palms up in the universal sign for surrender. The sight startled him enough that he stayed his sword as Davedar and Deon caught up to him, both of them winded and breathless. Davedar took one look at the echo, blanched, and went for his sword. Deon flung out one hand to stop him.

            “What?” Davedar rounded on the mage-leader irritably.

            “I’m starting to suspect that these echoes weren’t sent. I think I overlooked something.”

            “What do you meant, not sent?” Faran demanded.

            “Someone might have helped them along, but these echoes wanted to come back. The records did say that our ancestors slaughtered all the people here, without provocation. That would be enough to make most people generate the anger needed to stay on the ethereal plane. And given that this is the hundredth year since the massacre, well, certain numbers have power, as all mages know. A hundred, five hundred, a thousand—”

            “Enough!” Davedar snapped, irritated beyond politeness. “So why shouldn’t I just send this one back to his etheric plane?”

            “Has he tried to kill you yet?”

            Davedar blinked. He took a second, longer look at the echo. It took the form of a young man, with oddly familiar features, long golden hair and dark-blue eyes, its whole body vaguely unreal, like a badly-remembered memory. It was dressed in rich clothing—dark blue gold-trimmed tunic over white shirt, and black trousers, dyed or painted with some kind of design up the sides, over black boots. Davedar shook his head in disbelief as his mind compared spirit-form with faded memory, and came up with a conclusion.

            “Dazan?” he questioned, voice oddly small. The spirit looked up.

(she laughed at them as they filed in to surround her—ten, a full circle of mages, the only circle of mages they had. Their eyes burned with rage, but she did not care, waiting for them to attack, which they did, magic scorching and clattering and singing among the faded abandoned furniture and sparking out the small windows. but they had no physical bodies and they had underestimated her—her shields held as they pounded it with pure energy, as the junk in the room became weapons for their usage and still it touched her not, until the room was piled with splinters, the young man sprawled ungainly among them. she laughed at them, and they laughed as well, and loosed the spirit-winds on her, a thousand voices of hate.)

            “Dazan?”

            The young man knew him! Memory caught up with present in shattered pieces; he remembered a room where a young man and woman joined in auras of light for the sake of a city-state. But now he could see physical forms, not just the shimmering blue-and-black of the young man’s aura; memory supplied him with a sudden image of a little boy who followed him around and called him ‘big bro’der Da’an’ to match this tall leanly muscled young man whose knuckles whitened on the hilt of sword that he recognized had been forged for him.

            Davedar?

            The older man, the one Dazan recognized as a mage from the auras of ethereal light ringing him—he could still see the etherworld, overlaid on the real world like shimmering mirages—did something identifiably arcane. A new ring of force added itself to the pattern swirling around him. “What do you want to say?” the mage questioned softly.

            “Who is he?” demanded the last man, a handsome youth with the haughty look tha the generally associated with nobles of some sort. His aura shimmered a faint gold to Dazan’s eyes.

            “My… dead brother,” Davedar murmured, looking shaken.

            “What are you here for?” the mage asked again.

            Dazan would have shivered if he could. Words clotted in his chest and refused to exit as something, nearby—exploded? Imploded? Shattered?—sending shards of pure cold slicing through his body. The mage whirled, surprise and horror playing across his features, to stare at a small tower almost hidden in the shadow of a mansion. It probably was a tower—to Dazan’s ethereal eyes the tower was more like a translucent tower-shaped skin with walls and floors and stairs outlined in the same spectral color, overlaid on the real tower of solid stone, with ethereal force and fires playing around it.

            The mage swore, raising one hand to point. Carilya, Dazan wailed, and tried to will himself there, but in this form he was subject to certain limitations. He ran, ignoring the three humans who blinked, sword, and pounded after him.

(it was not magic, not something she could defend against. the screaming was something that Carilya had lived with all her life, but she was not the same. she knew these people, she held responsibility for their lives and their deaths and each curse and scream and howl cut into her heart and sent her to her knees. the circle of mages did not smile or gloat, they simply raised their hands, ready to punch through her failing shields and end it all)

            There were five guards and a couple of mages clustered around the door at the base of the tower when Davedar, Deon and Faran arrived. That is the say, the guards clustered, and the mages faced the door, doing something that involved webs of light and a lot of cursing. Half the guards had weapons out, and the rest had placed their hands on the hilts of their swords. The leftmost mage turned as they neared and blurted out, without being asked, “There’s some kind of ward over the door—we can’t get through, and I have never seen anything like it, ever.”

            Deon pulled up to a stop in front of the door and seemed to test the web himself. The light shifted and shimmered as he extended a hand to it. Davedar, lacking understanding and patience for the intangible art of magic, walked forward and attempted to punch the web. He had expected resistance, or some kind of solid wall, given the mage’s comments. He got none.

            Davedar arched an eyebrow at the mages and simply stepped through. The light seemed to ignore him. When Deon tried to do the same thing, that same light was suddenly a bright wall. Davedar heard the yelling behind him as he whirled and charged up the stairs (princes were not supposed to put themselves in danger) but he did not care. There was fallen debris on the stairs, and hacking through it cost him precious time.

            By the time he got there, it was already over.

            Dazan did not take the steps; he ran straight up to the back of the tower, through the back of the tower, too distraught to care, paused for a moment at the base (how do I get up stairs that I can go through?) and desperately willed himself straight up. And then he was flying, feeling an odd resistance when he passed the stairs as if the stone could not make up its mind (if stone had a mind) to let him through or not.

            He emerged right beside Carilya, in a room whose ether rippled in a way that to Dazan meant the kind of intangible spirits who had hounded and haunted Carilya all her life. There were ten echoes there, arranged around the harried princess in a position that hurt his eyes, and although it did not take a mage the sense the malice they exuded, it did take a mage—or a being half-on the etheric plane—to see the energy that built like a vortex over the kneeling girl, radiating rage and anger. Revenge was the sense he had of it, as it flared energy and broke—

            —protect, I promised—

            —against the sphere of ward-energies that built around Carilya and Dazan, raw ether charging the fading remnants of Carilya’s shields and building it into something else entirely. Normal mages channeled ether with their own life-energy, building conduits to the etherworld to access the stuff; echoes had near-unlimited access to ether, being half-on the etherworld as they were, but they had little life-energy left to channel it; Dazan channeled his near-unlimited ether into shield-structure composed of Carilya’s life-energy, marrying control to inconceivable energy. Carilya was quick to learn; after a momentary struggle to control her shields, she structured a swift spell-lattice that Dazan charged, trapping all ten echoes in a web of light. Carilya smiled briefly, stepping forward.

            Dazan felt the first prickling of suspicion. The young woman’s smile held nothing of the Carilya he had known. It was composed equally of insane glee and pure anger. He lingered, unsure, as the young woman tossed her head haughtily and regarded the ensnared mages.

            “Well?” she demanded, placing her hands on her hips in a way that was much too aggressive for Carilya, and completely ignoring Dazan. “Did you think that you could simply kill me in my city, my tower, my room?”

            “Who are you?” Dazan snarled. The trapped mages were silent. Carilya whirled, looked at him, and started to laugh, just on this side of sanity.

            “Oh, Spirit, Spirit. You do not trust me, do you, Spirit? And here I was thinking that you were the only one I could trust.” Lightning-quick, she stepped forward, and Dazan stepped backwards involuntarily. Carilya’s aura was… strange. The former silver color had gone reddish, streaked with lines of dark red—almost black, like dried blood. Auras, he had noticed, tended to reflect the personality of its owner, but this aura was like nothing he had ever seen. “But you were right not to trust me,” Carilya added quietly, but her voice held chips of deadly crystal.

            One of the mages chose that moment to intervene. “Don’t you think this has gone far enough? Faenra.”

            “Far enough?” Carilya—Faenra—whirled back, stalking to the mage with a gait that was deadly and careless both. “What has gone on far enough, pray tell? Me, or you? Who supplied the magic for the people to walk again? Had it not been for your interference, I would have destroyed their feeble royal family years ago.

            Dazan’s eyes widened. “Who are you, Carilya?”

            “Don’t call me that!” she shrieked at him. “My name is Faenra id’ayrethan Danhera’z, and I will destroy you all!”

            “Quite mad,” remarked one of the mages. “Quite, quite mad.” Carilya turned on him furiously, magic sparkling.

            “Carilya!” Dazan howled desperately. “Remember yourself!”

            She came at him then, fingers curled into angry claws, magic howling around her, fueled by pure anger. By the eddies around her he realized that the souls that had always screamed around Carilya were still there—perhaps they had driven her mad or perhaps she was already too mad to notice. Dazan met the enraged girl with magic of his own, the mages watching impassively as they collided, girl and echo and magic. Carilya was weaker. Dazan did not want to hurt her. He managed to trap her temporarily, just as a pulse of magic from outside the tower transmitted a message to him.

            Dazan?

            It occurred to him that all the spirits were here. It occurred to him that he was weary of watching. It occurred to him that Deon was a competent mage. He flung magic out, a net that surrounded the tower and trapped everything, all the spirits, all the echoes, all the rage and anger and fury.

            Send us on! Send us ­all on!

            Light played around the room, flaring out the windows. A latticework of spells that was summoning and banishing in one wove around the tower, integrating with the hastily cast spell, already crumbling, that Dazan had flung around it. The new spells supported and augmented Dazan’s spell, and wove it into something much more.

            —by the power invested—I banish thee—attain eternal peace—

            In a room empty of ghosts, Medirlan Vanhazen stirred under a pile of splinters.

            Davedar flung the door open, sending splinters flying. What met his eyes was destruction. Splinters and the remains of the furniture and discarded items that had once occupied the room were scatteredeverywhere. His gaze fell first on a crumpled shape in the center of the room.

            “Carilya?”

            It was, indeed, Carilya. The young woman seemed oddly pale, sandy hair pulled free of her customary braid and spread out on the floor like a rumpled blanket, wisps of it framing her face. Davedar shook her a few times, not harshly, as her eyelids fluttered and slid up, and the girl looked at him with dazed gray eyes.

            “I had a bad dream,” she whispered, sounding impossibly young.

            “It’s alright,” Davedar murmured, for lack of anything else to say.

            “It is not alright,” a surly voice grumped. Prince Consort and Queen turned as one, as a pile of splinters shook and resolved itself into Medirlan, who sat (slowly) up, brushing splinters off his uniform with a bleeding hand. There were scratches and bruises all over his body—that Davedar could see, of course—and his shirt and trousers were badly scratched. He looked like he had been fighting with a pack of wildcats. “What is going on?” the young man snapped irritably. “Something hit me—” he placed a hand to his head, probing carefully “—and—” blink “—is the princess alright?”

            “I’m alright.” Carilya said it carefully, as if afraid that she would accidentally blurt out something else. “I feel… odd…” She looked around the room, frowning, and then surprise danced in her eyes. “It’s quiet!”

            Davedar and Medirlan shared equally puzzled glances.

            “Yes, it’s quiet,” Davedar agreed equably. “Let’s go home.”

            Carilya’s smile was sunlight.

*           *           *           *           *           (ever after)

            “So,” Medirlan demanded, balancing precariously on two legs of the chair, “What in the name of Dreyr happened in there?”

            “You tell us,” Davedar drawled. “You were there.”

            Medirlan gave him a glare that could have boiled water, and turned towards Deon, who was plucking splinters out of Medirlan’s back with a surprisingly practiced hand. The young guard’s injuries did not require the attentions of the already harried-looking healers, considering that many of the guards had much worse wounds. The mage-master chuckled, waving one hand.

            “You know about our ancestors’ flight? Surely, you must. Perhaps you have heard rumors of something that happened when they arrived here in Danehra—a battle of some sort that no-one would speak of.

            “Get on with it,” Medirlan grumped.

            “To cut a long story short, Danhera was not abandoned when our ancestors arrived here. The advance parties from Deneve massacred them all. That is the reason we have the Day of Sacrifice, although the old king and his men kept it all secret from the people.”

            “How did they manage to keep a secret that big?” Davedar looked down. Carilya had, for some reason, refused to leave his side and had finally fallen asleep against him, features peaceful, as they had not been for a long time. The young princess was still pretty (pretty exhausted, now) three months into her pregnancy. It was hard to believe that it had been so long since Davedar had arrived at Danhera an arrogant princeling. He was quite a part of Medirlan’s life, now.

            “I wish I knew,” Deon muttered, continuing his narrative. “The papers in the box I asked Medirlan to fetch were old records I remembered were stored there. I had thought to uncover some old enemy of Danhera’s through those records, and instead I found writing on the back of them, some kind of diary written by a girl named Faenra, princess of Danhera. She was imprisoned in that same tower and starved to death after refusing to marry the prince of Deneve. It appears that Faenra surrendered to the invading army on behalf of her sick father, and led her people to massacre instead of salvation.”

            “The echoes were the former inhabitants of Danhera, then? Raised to take revenge against us?” Davedar laughed tiredly. “I wonder if Faenra was among them.”

            “They’d have probably torn her apart,” Medirlan pointed out, wincing as Deon went after a splinter embedded particularly deep. “She betrayed them, although she knew nothing of it. What I really want to know is what happened in the tower, with Carilya and Davedar’s dead echo-brother and the magic and all. And how Davedar got through that ward the men kept swearing about.”

            “I’m not too sure,” Deon admitted. “I know that there was some sort of battle involving magic up there. My guess is that there were mages among the echoes, and that those mages attacked Carilya, and the spirits were drawn there for some reason. Dazan seemed to want to protect Carilya or something like that—I think he shielded her from their attacks.”

            “My brother was no mage,” Davedar objected.

            “Any echo can be a mage, if they believe and want to enough. At any rate, I tried to contact Dazan, and he told me to send them on, to where spirits are supposed to go.”

            “So he’s gone.” Davedar’s musing sounded with a strange kind of finality and relief. Well, it wasn’t every day that one had to face one’s brother’s ghost, and Medirlan didn’t imagine it was too easy. Medirlan couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d react if faced with the ghost of his father. Run, probably.

            “On,” Medirlan interjected, “means they’ve all gone onto where they’re supposed to go. Means they’re not coming back, right?”

            “Yes,” Deon agreed, “They are not coming back.”

            “Well,” Medirlan asked Davedar some time later. “Where do you go from here?”

            “Go?” Davedar raised golden eyebrows. “I’m not going anywhere. This is my home.”

            Medirlan laughed. He couldn’t help it. He closed strong fingers on the windowsill and laughed his ass off. The tension of the whole night, the endless waiting, the sheer relief of being alive with all his friends just as alive—it exploded out of him in round after round of lung-tearing, tearing laughter. It was as if all his laughter had just been waiting for the trigger to set it free. Davedar stared at him in surprise, and the look on his face made Medirlan laugh all the harder.

            The prince and the guard were standing at the tower—‘Medirlan’s’ tower, not Faenra’s—watching the town and palace bustling beneath them. Danhera had recovered, as Danhera always did. The damage to the palace was being repaired, with the servants (and almost everyone else) having been chased out of it. The guards were helping out; Medirlan, having become something like Davedar’s personal guard, had to follow when the young prince decided summarily to visit the ruined tower.

            “Sorry,” Medirlan huffed finally, rubbing at his eyes to clear away tears. Davedar looked simply adorable like that, puzzled expression on his face. “It’s not you. I think.”

            Davedar rolled his eyes.

            “Seriously,” Medirlan said. “You should look at yourself. When you came here, you were this all-high-and-mighty, I’ll-take-the-responsibility-although-I-don’t-like-it-because-I’m-so-much-better-than-you prince. Now look at you. You three months ago would have choked.”

            “He would have, indeed.” Davedar laughed.

            “At any rate, you’re right. This is home.” Medirlan grinned. “And you’ve got reconstruction to oversee.”

            “Whatever.”

            They left the ruined tower together, the Prince and the Guard, to find the Queen.