The Lady's Man (53 page)

“Yes! You ate him and you ate his memories and his fear. You let them become you. And now they are all that you are. They control you.”

“No!”

The volcano – and Yorik knew then that that was what it was – was rising up. Tearing its way up, out of the ground and forcing its way through the inferno all around, its top was already burning orange. The land was shaking violently all around, crying out its fury and terror.

“Yes! Look inside yourself. You know it's true. You are the Nameless. Not some pathetic little human wizard. You aren't afraid of anything. It's only the memories of a dead wizard that tell you you should be afraid. A wizard you ate.”

“Liar!”

“No. I speak the truth. You are the lie.”

“Deceiver!”

“And the fear you feel is the fear of the wizard you ate. The fear of yourself!”

“No!”

“Look inside yourself. Just look. If I'm lying you'll see Mayfall there. And if I'm telling the truth you'll know the fear isn't yours. Either way you win. So look!”

But the fear Yorik was feeling was growing. The volcano deep within that cloud of black fire had started spewing lava. In fact rivers of it were flowing down its sides, forming an orange lake around it, and soon he knew that lake would cover the land; all of it. And Yorik had no protection against that. The magic he'd studied was for hiding and running. For tricking the thane and for not getting hit. He couldn't fly. Yorik started backing away, hoping that the thane didn't realise what he was doing.

“No!”

“So you admit you're not Mayfall. Because he wouldn't give into that fear. He after all took the Nameless into himself no matter how he feared it. But you're afraid and surrendering to your fear.”

It was sophistry at best and most likely a lie, but he knew that the memory that was Mayfall had had a weakness; pride. Everything he had done had been for power, but the power was as much for the sake of pride as anything else. Even when he'd been running he'd had to show off how powerful he was. And if the thane had anything of the dead wizard in him he surely had that.

“I am Mayfall!”

“Coward! Mayfall wouldn't run away from himself. Look!”

Already Yorik was fifty paces behind the thane and backing away further, while the lake of lava was starting to pool around Mayfall's feet. But the thane didn't even seem to notice it. He didn't cry out or burst into flame. Meanwhile the volcano was growing in size quickly. Already it was standing at least two hundred feet tall and sending ever more lava streaming down its sides. Soon he knew the lake of lava it was pouring out over the land would push him so far back that he wouldn't be able to send his voice all the way back. Then the thane would guess where he was.

“I am not afraid of you!”

“No. You're afraid of yourself. You're not Mayfall. You're just a shoddy copy. The gnomes would be ashamed of such poor workmanship.”

The anger that suddenly flowed from him was real. It annoyed him that this thing should be so deadly and yet so much less than the dead wizard that had caused him such terrible pain. “Look inside yourself you coward!”

That must have been enough. There was a scream, a sound that wasn't mortal, that tore across the sky. The land shook with its horrified fury, and the sun itself seemed to blacken over. And then the entire world exploded.

Yorik didn't know what was happening. He didn't know why the land was exploding into the air all around him, or why balls of burning hot magma were crashing down everywhere. He didn't know why the wind was raging out of control or why water droplets the size of sheep were smashing into the ground. He didn't know why he couldn't hear anything over the roar all around. But he knew one thing – he had to run.

And that was what he did.

Yorik dropped every spell he had. Invisibility, voice casting, muffled feet, none of them mattered any more. Only running mattered, and he put every fraction of the Lady's remaining magic into getting his feet to move as quickly as they could, and ran from the nightmare behind him as no man before him ever had.

His only regret was that he couldn't slow time as he normally could, but that was considered too much of a spell for a mere mortal human like himself to master in just ten days. And then a thought struck him. If the thane was gone -?

“Lady!”

He called to her and in a heartbeat she was with him again, overjoyed to see him alive, as he was overjoyed to feel her return. But more than that she knew what he needed and cast the necessary spells upon him.

Time slowed and so did the fireballs falling from the sky. Suddenly they seemed to be barely floating. The huge clods of earth ripping themselves loose from the ground and flinging themselves high into the air also slowed. The wind all but stopped tearing across the land. Even the sound died away.

He used that slowing of time to run, streaking across the leagues like an arrow loosed, weaving his way around the deadly obstacles towards the safety he saw ahead. But really all he cared about was one thing as he ran. It was over. The thane was gone. The memory of Mayfall was finally dead.

He was free!

Chapter Forty.

Genivere was keeping watch over Yorik when the man came. Standing vigil as the paladins would say. Just as she had been doing for the past three days. Ever since the others had brought him in. Unconscious, deeply so, and in need of rest. He hadn't been injured in the battle with the thane, it was simply that he had been injured too many times before and never fully healed. He had pushed himself too hard for too long and now he was paying the price for that. Others had helped her in her work of course, and Myral and Ascollia were there almost as much as she was. Annalisse too. And the elders were constantly visiting, enquiring after his health. Yorik had become a hero to the town and to Hammeral. Even now they kept talking about medals and ceremonies. But she would not let their presence distract her from her duty. She was a healer and he was her patient. And one day soon she hoped, he would become her lover, her husband and the father of her children. He had promised her after all and she intended to hold him to his word.

She was very lucky compared to many. Even though the loss of her father still hurt, she knew that. Most of her family had survived as had her ancestral home. Rivenwood Copse had been missed by the thane as he set about destroying the world. She hadn't been hurt, and that seemed like a miracle when the village of Andalia was filled with the injured and the sick. So many in fact that the normal population of fifteen thousand elves had swollen to at least five times that, and so many of the newcomers needed the healers' attention. Rough hide and canvas tents like the one she was in covered the entire glade as the buildings could not cope with so many extra people, while the healers spent their days wandering from one to the next. In that unfortunately she knew that Andalia was far from alone. Most of the towns and villages surrounding the remains of Hammeral were similarly overcrowded with refugees. Too many of them were patients. Much of the rest of the world was the same.

As for Hammeral itself, it was gone. That final battle had destroyed it, and now there was a small volcano sitting in the centre of what had been its heart. The forest surrounding it was destroyed, burnt and broken, and fires were still burning brightly. The city would never be able to be rebuilt. But at least the dead had been properly laid to rest. The thane in his final battle had ended up cremating them all.

Hammeral Forest itself was lucky compared to some other provinces. Mayfall had only destroyed the single city and a dozen towns. And though there was yet no tally she would have guessed that fewer than thirty thousand in Hammeral had died. The dwarves had lost a lot more when Iron Deep had been levelled and their city could not be rebuilt. The Schist Valley was also destroyed.

Other peoples had been luckier. The dryads had no cities but had lost a dozen or more copses. With the thane's passing however the plague that had been slowly spreading across the forests had ended and in time their homes could be regrown. The satyr's had probably lost as many towns and villages. And the gnomes had escaped almost completely untouched.

But against that good fortune there was the bad. The humans had been devastated.

No one knew how many of their cities had been destroyed. They only had word thus far from the nearest realm of New Vineland. There, three of their six cities had been destroyed. Doverion, Ender's Fall and Armitage. Those three cities between them were home to more than a million people, and no one had any idea just how many of them had been killed.

If what Annalisse and the rest of the elders were saying was right though, Mayfall had been determined to destroy every chapter of the Iron Hand. And the Order had twenty two chapters in twenty two cities across a dozen realms. There was no news yet of how many more chapters he had destroyed before Yorik had stopped him. No news of how many more cities had been levelled with them. The farseers however, were suggesting that it was at least a dozen.

This thane had been far more deadly than the last one, and had he been given the chance half the world would have been destroyed. There was no doubt in her mind that Yorik had saved millions. He was a hero. But she suspected he would not receive the accolades he deserved as such. Few would even know what he had done. His order would of course not boast of his accomplishment. They did not do such things. The Order of the Iron Hand – however many of them remained – would say absolutely nothing. Not when the destruction of so many cities and the deaths of millions could be laid at their feet. In fact they would deny everything. And the other orders would not say much either as they went about their work.

As for the nobles and rulers of their cities and realms, for the most part they didn't know what had happened. No one had told them. And she imagined that the sylph would work hard to hide the facts from them as well. It was beginning to appear as if they had had their hands in a lot more of the activities in the human realm than anyone had ever guessed. Though now with the Order of the Iron Hand in tatters they had presumably had their fingers burnt.

It would be years before anyone heard of Yorik, and by then it would be old news. But the thought that kept running through her head as she tended to him, was that he would want it that way. He did not want fame or thanks even though he deserved them. He wanted only to be what he was. A paladin of the Order of the Lady. And living with only that modest goal in his heart made him a far greater man than any human king. A better man.

“Is this Sir Yorik?”

Geneivere shivered when the stranger asked the question, sensing that there was far more to the man than she knew, and that none of it was good. He looked normal enough for a human, though the fact that he was wearing chain and bearing a sword now that the danger was past seemed a little much. Most of the others in the village had put their weapons away. The undead were gone and the thane had never been vulnerable to swords anyway. This was now a time for healing, not fighting.

He also bore signs of magic upon him. Powerful, healing magic that had been performed recently. As a healer she was always attuned to the signs of others. But the magic that had been used was not that of a healer of the Mother. It was something else. Something both powerful and crude. The sort of healing that an elemental wizard might do if he only had the power but not the touch. The sort of healing that itself had to be healed.

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Is he going to recover?”

In another the question would have been an expression of hope for the future. When this man asked it, it felt almost like a threat.

“Yes. He is recovering. His flesh and blood has simply been through too much for too long and it will take time. A few more days at least.”

“Then I'm here in time.”

With no more than that the man reached to his side and drew his sword, and it was then that she understood what it was she hadn't liked about him. His heart and his sword. They were both dark. In fact he reminded her very much of the paladin Yorik had fought so long ago. The paladin of the Order of the Iron Hand. And he had come to commit murder.

“Guards!” She screamed, but not because she thought they would come. Not quickly enough anyway. It was late and the village had few guards anyway. Andalia was bursting with people these days; refugees and those still wanting to return to Hammeral when the fires finally died away, but few of them were guards. But her scream made him hesitate and given her some time. Time to fight as only a healer could and foolishly he had come very close to her.

Even as he hesitated, wondering whether he needed to kill her first, she reached out with her magic, found his muscles and tightened them. All of them.

The result was immediate as he suddenly straightened up to his full height, dropped his great sword, and then fell over on to his back like a statue. He hit the ground hard, almost bouncing because his body was so rigid, and then lay there unmoving, exactly as she hoped he would.

After that the battle was over and she returned to her patient while she waited for the others to arrive. They weren't far away.

Ascollia was first through the flap of the tent, followed closely by Myral and Annalisse. And strangely Captain Ysabel also came.

“What is it?”

“An assassin. He came for Yorik.”

The assassin meanwhile wasn't denying it. Actually he wasn't saying much at all. He couldn't. He was lying on the ground, locked within a statue of rigid flesh. Even his face was locked into an unnatural grimace of taut muscles that made him look like a grinning corpse. It made it easy for the others to deal with him and they quickly had him disarmed and securely tied up. It was only then that Genivere was willing to let him free of her spell. Even then she wasn't really sure that she wanted to, but the others insisted, if only so that he could breathe more freely.

For his part the wizard was more interested in the great sword the assassin had dropped, holding it in his hands and studying the runes on its blade intently. And when the assassin continued to say nothing as he was questioned, even after his muscles had been freed, he spoke for him.

“If this blade is anything to go by then this is Sir Renwick of the Order of the Iron Hand.” Suddenly he leaned close to the would be assassin and whispered conspiratorially into his ear.

“They named their blades and they never let them be held by another. And the Iron Hand was an old order even in my time. One of their rules was that they never disguised their face or lied about their name. For good or ill they were who they were and they took the glory or the shame for their deeds. They also never let their weapons fall into the hands of an enemy.”

“So speak Sir Renwick. Tell us your name.”

“I am Sir Renwick of the Order of the Iron Hand. Only survivor of the Doverion Chapter.”

He forced the words out as if it was an imposition that he should have to speak them at all. He was obviously displeased to have to say them but since he had already been named there was no point, and she guessed no honour, in denying it.

“And why have you tried to murder Yorik here in his sleep? Did the sylph send you?”

“The teachers? Pah!” Sir Renwick snorted his disgust for all to hear. “They healed my wounds after the wizard destroyed the chapter. I was blown half way across the city in a gigantic explosion when the wizard Mayfall destroyed the keep. But somehow I survived, my fall broken by a thatched roof and by my armour. The teachers found me shortly after that.”

“But as I lay in the remains of their house recovering I heard them speaking of Yorik and how he had loosed this Mayfall upon our Order. It was then that I knew my enemy. An act against the Order must be answered in kind. None can be permitted to strike freely against us.”

Genivere shuddered at that. She knew that the man spoke the truth. And it was a horrible truth. There was no forgiveness among his order. No understanding of mistakes made. No compassion. Not even understanding. Yorik had tried to explain what the Order of the Iron Hand was after his battle with Sir Cavutos, but she had not understood. She had not wanted to understand. Because what he was describing was monstrous. But listening to Sir Renwick she knew it to be true. His order was a monstrous crime.

“Perhaps while they were speaking your teachers forgot to mention that they allowed the wizard Mayfall to take the Nameless to him and in so doing created the thane.”

Myral sounded a little angry as he spelled out the sorry truth to the paladin, and with good reason she thought.

“And the longer Mayfall lived with the Nameless growing inside him, the more terrible the thane that came from him was. Yorik killed Mayfall, releasing the thane, but preventing an even more terrible thane from being released later. And then he defeated the thane himself, at the cost of his own health. Mayfall should have been killed the moment he took the Nameless into himself. Or even before that.”

“As to why the thane attacked your chapters, again perhaps your teachers might have forgotten to mention that when they sent some of the Order of the Iron Hand after Mayfall, they made the thane your enemy. He would not have stopped until every one of your chapters was gone.”

“If any chapters of your order remain, it is only because of Yorik's courage. You owe this man everything that you are.”

“You lie.”

Sir Renwick clearly didn't believe the wizard and even bound and disarmed he wasn't afraid to show it. The man had courage even if he had no decency.