The small tower seemed ever so slightly larger on the inside than it had been on the outside, and Matt had to shake his head to keep from being distracted by the difference. He had too much to do to worry about whatever magical nonsense the Greymark Circle had going on here.
From what he could see, the first floor of the tower was dominated by a large, circular library. Books filled the alcoves built along the walls, going from floor to ceiling. Additional bookcases had been added in the middle of the room, forming a small series of progressively smaller circles. There was a statue in the very center of the room, which showed a cluster of seven Wizards lifting a torch together while they were surrounded by mist. Judging by the amount of wear, it had been created as part of the original tower. He wondered if they had been the original rulers of Greymark.
There was a single staircase along the back of the room that led to the second floor. The assassins were already flowing up the steps, their blades out and ready. His own lifeguards were following them, though Balred had stayed behind to help bar the door.
Matt followed Namathus to the second floor, ignoring the literal treasure trove of magical grimoires and mystical tomes that the room held. They weren’t what he’d come for, and if they did manage to find Alerios, maybe he’d be able to grab a few then.
His boots seemed impossibly loud as he ran up the stairs; the stone was a little slick from the wet footsteps of those who had gone before. When he reached the second floor, however, he found himself in a curving hallway that led around the perimeter of the tower again. There were a series of chambers set into the outer wall that looked like they might have been cells, but they were unlocked, open, and empty. He continued around the curve until he reached a door that led into another, smaller chamber on the inside of the curve. It was standing open, and he saw one of his lifeguards just disappearing through the opening.
Matt chased after them, and when he stepped through, he found himself in a ritual chamber of some kind. It took up the entire interior of the floor, with a clear space and a small pedestal in the center. The ceiling had been left open all the way to the roof, which rose to a point high above; a glimmering crystal of some sort glowed there. All sorts of magical incantations had been scrawled across the floor and the walls, filling the space with a kind of arcane graffiti that Matt couldn’t have deciphered for the life of him. Perhaps it had been preparation for the next summoning spell?
In the center of that chamber was a pedestal surrounded by light. Alerios was kneeling on it, his hands bound in some kind of silver chain. He looked old, older than he had seemed when Matt had seen him last. His fine robes had been replaced with a plain grey robe, one that had seen better days. When he looked up, he seemed listless, as if he had no interest in the world around him. The Wizard didn’t even seem to notice the assassins and lifeguards fanning out through the room and checking for traps.
Then Alerios blinked. He looked up, and his gaze sharpened as it fell on Matt. “You.”
Matt came to a sudden stop. The voice had not been Alerios’. He spun around, his mouth open to call out, just as Balred, Gorfeld, and the last of the lifeguards came rushing through the door.
The door slammed shut behind them, and the magical writing along the walls began to glow.
“We knew you would come to this place eventually, Tyrant.” Alerios smiled, though the voice was still not the Wizard’s own. “We did not expect you tonight, obviously. Some of us thought that a few more… guests… from your world would encourage you to set your foot in the trap, but others thought you would come just for Alerios alone. Ger’thal would be pleased, if you had not killed him tonight.”
Matt reached for his magic. He froze as the spell framework for his shattering spell simply refused to form. It was as if all the training and discipline he’d built up for weeks had just vanished. One after another, he tried the rest of his spells, only to find that they were all beyond his reach. The Sources were both still there, raging away with their near-limitless supply of energy, but he had nothing to channel them into.
The image continued. “I’m sure you’ve just found that your magic has been nullified. A wonderful trick that Mal’then developed. Anyone attempting to use a spell within that chamber will fail. You are all now as powerless as an armed pack of lowborn, now, and you’ll die like them, too.”
Matt saw the others stir. He looked at Psirofel, and the assassin shook his head. With a grimace, Matt glanced at Gorfeld, who shook his head as well. They were trapped, then. “Who are you? Where is Alerios?”
The false image laughed. As it did, it shifted to become an image of four people, three of whom wore the traditional grey and green of Greymark. The fourth wore a different uniform, blue and silver, with a crown placed on his head. Matt felt himself go still as he recognized it from the descriptions he’d read back in Redspire. It was the King of Storms, the leader of the Circle of the Heavens. How many rulers had been in Greyhenge tonight?
The King of Storms gestured to the Wizards around him. “Now you know who has beaten you, Tyrant of Iron. I am glad that my comrades extended me the invitation to come here in preparation for our march. Now I can see to your destruction personally.”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “This is between you and me. Let these others go.”
The King tilted his head to the side. He looked around the room as if evaluating the rest of the room’s occupants. “Why? So that your allies among the Circle of Echoes can escape?” Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw Namathus and the other assassins go still. He grimaced as the King laughed. “Do not worry, little assassins. Your…participation in this night’s events will not be overlooked. Once we are finished cleansing the world of this abomination, we will come for you next. Your spider-queen will not have to wait long.”
Anger flickered as Matt glared at the man. Another horrible thought flickered across his mind. “Was Alerios ever even here?”
“That broken-minded fool?” The King rolled his eyes. “We disposed of him days ago, when he refused to continue serving us. What’s left of him might be starving in our actual dungeons beneath the keep, but I doubt it. He wasn’t left in a condition to continue breathing for long.”
Matt blinked. “Yet you were still going to capture more people from my world?”
The King’s grin was abhorrent. “Of course! The first batch was so useful. Once they were properly persuaded.” He chuckled to himself.
Matt drew in a breath and let it out slowly. So. They were trapped. The enemy had discovered his connection with the Circle of Echoes. He and all his companions were about to be killed, and the other Humans the Alliance had kidnapped would be stranded with no way home. Even worse, the Alliance had obviously figured out a way to keep abducting Humans for their plans, even without Alerios.
He looked at Gorfeld, who nodded slowly. “Namathus.”
The assassin looked up, and Matt forced himself to smile. It felt more like a grimace. “When the spell goes down, I want you to take my lifeguards with you back to Redspire. Do not wait for me. Do not take them back to the Circle. Return to Redspire first.”
Namathus tilted her head. The lifeguards and assassins all turned to look at him as she hesitated. “Even if that were possible, they would be far safer in—”
“This is not a negotiation, Wizard. Keep your word.” Matt turned to look at Balred, ignoring the baffled look from the King. “Once you are back in Redspire, get the wounded to the healers. I expect you all to be there.”
Stubbornness showed on Balred’s face. He took a step towards Matt. “Sire, I will not leave you—”
“You’ll do it, or I may kill you myself.” The words made Balred blink, but Matt continued in an iron-hard voice. “Follow your orders, Balred. For the Kingdom.”
Balred stared at him a long moment. Then he nodded. “For the Kingdom, my liege.”
As he went to join the others, Gorfeld stepped over to Matt’s side. He looked up at Matt with a fierce grin. “I’m assuming that we are relying on the backup plan now, my liege?”
Matt nodded, turning his attention back to the image. The King was watching him with plain contempt on his face. Outside, he could hear boots on stone. Enemies were coming. They would burst into the room soon enough. He cleared his throat. “I’ll give you one last chance. Abandon this course, or I will kill you all.”
The King gave him a surprised look. Then he burst out laughing. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Perhaps killing you immediately would be too merciful. You might make an interesting jester for my court.”
“Someday, perhaps.” Matt shook his head. “You know that all of this was unnecessary, right? If you had just chosen peace, I would have stayed within my own borders. Putting down the rebels and fighting the Noble Races was hard enough. All I would have done was build and trade and lift up my people. None of that would have required me to break down yours.”
The King rolled his eyes. “Your words are meaningless. You sought power, and power always leads to conflict. Whether it was now or in a hundred years, your Kingdom would have come for us. Better to finish you now, while you were weak. If you wanted to avoid death and suffering, you should have bent the knee the day you took your crown.”
The callous disregard for what he’d done stirred Matt’s ire. He clenched his hands and unclenched them. “So be it. You’ve finally trapped me. I have no chance of escape, and no hope of victory. You’ve won.”
His enemy’s smile grew, imitated by the Wizards around him. “Oh yes. No need to be bitter, Tyrant. It will all end soon.”
Matt smiled back. He flexed his fingers. “You know, a wise man had a lot of advice about this sort of thing. He called this kind of situation ‘dying ground’. A place where you can only fight or die.”
The King blinked. His own smile grew a bit less certain. “Well, he was right about that, fool.”
“Of course, he was also known for saying that you shouldn’t press a desperate foe too hard.” Matt shrugged, summoning up what strength he had. “After all, when you back someone onto their dying ground, they might fight harder than they would if they had a way out. People with nothing to lose don’t think as much about taking risks.”
Matt reached out with his mind, setting aside the training he had worked so hard to instill in himself. Safety and wisdom were for another time, now. He needed power, not control. “There are a few other sayings from my world you’re about to learn the meaning of. You reap what you sow. What goes around, comes around. And my father’s favorite: mess with the bull, you get the horns.”
The King opened his mouth, probably to ask what a bull was, but Mat shut him out of his focus. With every ounce of willpower he had, Matt reached out and did exactly what Melren had told him to never, ever do. He closed a mental fist around both of his Sources, feeling their boundless power within him. For a moment, he savored the rough, grinding feeling of Earth, and the whistling, whirling brush of Air.
Then he squeezed, the way he had when he had just built his first Source, all those weeks ago.
The King of Storms was still halfway through some pointless taunt when the first shakes started. Matt saw the man’s eyes go wide, darting to look at something that Matt couldn’t see in the image. As he did, the wind outside began to howl, rising to a shriek as the room began to shudder and heave. Gorfeld lurched over to grab hold of him; Matt didn’t look down. He didn’t have the focus to spare, not when he was busy provoking whatever catastrophe he was creating.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a crack tear its way across one of the runes on the wall. They flickered and failed, just for a moment, and suddenly the lifeguards and assassins were gone. The last he saw of them was a group of terrified expressions and despairing shouts, but they were safe.
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Yet Matt was not done yet. The enemy knew too much to let live. They all had to die.
He heard stone creaking and the wind building to a terrifying scream, and doubled down on his efforts. The King of Storms was shouting something, but Matt ignored him and just kept the pressure building. Pain was starting to tear through him as his own magic lashed out, and he went down to one knee as the room itself began to come apart. Pieces of the roof above shuddered and were ripped away, revealing a sky turned green that flashed with lightning. Something dark and terrifying revolved in the sky, something Matt had never seen up close.
Some part of him found the strength to look back at the pedestal, just as the image of the King of Storms flickered. There was fear on the man’s face now, and he had his mouth open in a scream as the Wizards around him stumbled and staggered.
Then the image abruptly vanished. There was a terrible roar outside, something like an avalanche that somehow managed to cut through the screaming wind and shaking earth. A chunk of the tower Matt was in collapsed, crashing to the floor on the far side of the room. The building shook as something slammed into it from the side, and the dust in the room seemed to jump into the air.
The runes inscribed in the floor and the walls abruptly went dark, as if whatever had been powering them lost the connection. Matt was plunged into darkness as the sky and land raged against those foolish enough to live between them. He thought he heard Gorfeld yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear the Imp’s voice over the chaos burrowing into him from the outside, and the madness of the world around him. For a moment, he was lost in the midst of a storm all his own, caught between an endless avalanche and a raging gale that would never stop.
Then his steward slapped him on the back of his helmet, and sanity returned to him in a rush. He released his hold on the Sources, feeling as if he had just let go of the edge of a cliff. The backlash seemed to rebound straight into his soul, and he gasped in both pain and relief. A small amount of awareness came back to him as he half-collapsed into Gorfeld’s arms. He could hear the Imp yelling at him, though he couldn’t make out the words, and he forced his too-thick tongue to work.
“Go, Gorfeld, go!”
Somehow, the Imp heard him. He felt Gorfeld sag a little in relief, only for him to tense as there was a resounding crack from somewhere deeper in the tower. The floor started to slide away beneath them, and he could feel his world tilt.
Then, all at once, the crumbling tower, the raging storm, and the impending destruction were all gone, like they had never existed. He and Gorfeld collapsed together on the floor of a dark, quiet room. Matt pitched forward onto a soft carpet with a sobbing gasp of relief, and Gorfeld rolled off him, also seeming to fight to catch his breath.
They lay there for a moment, still fighting just to recover. Then he heard a voice in the dark, carrying a tone he had both missed and dreaded over the past hour.
“Matthew, is that you?”
Tanya’s voice carried both concern and surprise. Matt forced himself to breathe easier and tried to sound normal. “Y-yeah. It’s me and Gorfeld.”
There was a pause. “Are you wounded?”
Matt blinked. He glanced at where Gorfeld was still breathing hard in the darkness. “No.”
The next question carried a very definite promise of death. “Do you want to be?”
Wounded soul or not, Matt scrambled to his feet and dragged Gorfeld with him towards the door. “No, ma’am. We’re already gone.”
As he staggered out of the room and into Tanya’s antechamber, he thought he heard Miguel murmur something, and Tanya telling him to go back to sleep. A little stunned by just how close he had just come to death—probably in more ways than one—Matt still couldn’t help grinning. He’d done it. They were alive, and they’d won.
Now all he had to do was get some sleep before he died on his feet. Luckily, that’s exactly the thing he wanted most in the world. In this world, at least.
Matthew Irons, ruler of the Kingdom of Iron, staggered towards his bedchamber half-carrying his steward and laughed.
For once, Matt sat at his desk and simply looked out the window.
It was a beautiful spring day. A brilliant blue sky, only occasionally broken by wisps of white clouds, stretched overhead. The weather was warm enough that it had banished the chill from the previous day’s storms completely. Birds were filling the air with song, where it wasn’t covered or eclipsed by the continual dull roar of the people of Redspire going about their business.
Things had been downright peaceful the past few days, a fact that Matt found so atypical it was almost depressing. The Council had been bickering as usual, Voice Cholia had been agitating, and Voice Girtun tried to moderate things. His new blocks of apartments were slowly taking shape, and the people who had been forced to live in tents up to that point were beginning to find some enthusiasm for them.
Tanya was presiding over the grand opening of the Maiden’s House of Art in a couple of days, which had nobility and freeholders alike speaking about it. Apparently, she had already started arranging things throughout the place, ranging from Impish paintings to Orc metalwork. He hadn’t had time to visit the place yet, given the way Tanya was still giving him cold glares whenever he showed up, but Matt found himself actually looking forward to the place. Even Paralus had started to cautiously ask if he could bring visitors from the Western Coalition to see the exhibits. Unless Matt completely missed his guess, Tanya might have actually started the Kingdom’s first tourism industry.
Of course, not all of Paralus’ friends had wanted to see art. Namathus and the surviving assassins had left the night after the assault. She’d taken the news that Alerios was dead or dying with an impressive lack of reaction; the assassin had simply accepted the news and promised to inform the Magistrix. Matt hoped they wouldn’t come back to Redspire anytime soon, or if they did, that it wouldn’t be to pay him a quiet visit.
His lifeguards had all lived through the assault, which had been a relief. They had been equally happy to see him alive, though Matt and Gorfeld had stayed tight-lipped about the way that they had made it out of Greyhenge. Every time he thought back to the maelstrom he’d unleashed on Greyhenge, he shuddered inside. It had needed to be done, but he never wanted to do anything like that ever again. It didn’t help that since that night, his Sources had been… fragile. Melren had encouraged him not to use any magic at all until they were more stable, just in case.
At the very least, his headaches seemed to have faded. Maybe things had changed in the Copper Hills somehow. He hoped so; at the very least, he needed some time to prepare to deal with the giant army the enemy had been gathering to march against him again.
There was a soft knock at his door, and he looked over at it with a sigh. The peace had been nice, but there was probably something urgent he needed to deal with. “Come in.”
Gorfeld stepped through, his expression nearly unreadable. The Imp had been watching him with something like awe and horror since the attack on Greyhenge. Now his eyes seemed to be filled with pity for some reason. “Sire. We have news.”
Matt blinked. He leaned forward, setting aside the parchment he had supposedly been working on before. It had the lists of six royal Houses, the leaders of the Alliance as far as his agents had known them. He’d put an X through all of the ones they knew were dead. Unless he miscounted somewhere, the thrones of the nations facing him were going to go empty soon, unless someone came to their senses and ended the war.
He shook his head, a little miffed that he’d been distracted so easily. “Go ahead, Gorfeld. What have we heard?”
Gorfeld handed over the parchment in his hands. He seemed hesitant, almost reluctant to speak. “We’ve received a report from Margraves Morteth and Karve, sire. The Alliance is starting to pull back from the front lines.”
Matt raised his eyebrows. “Where? Maybe they mixed up their orders and left a section that we can attack.”
“Everywhere, sire.” When Matt stared at him, Gorfeld continued. “It started with the Ponthuul Elves, and then the Greymark Wizards. As they pulled back, the Stormcaller troops were isolated and pulled back as well. At the moment, most of the remaining resistance is from members of the Leaffall militia that had been forced to fight. Many of them are surrendering in droves as Morteth and Karve advance.”
Matt looked down at the parchment and then back up at Gorfeld. “I don’t understand. If the Alliance pulls back much farther, they’re going to have a hard time keeping the fight in those ravines and gorges. We’ll be able to break through and start taking parts of the Copper Hills themselves, and they’ll end up having to fight on the old borders instead of where they could bottleneck us.”
Gorfeld nodded slowly. “That is correct, sire.”
“Then what are they doing?” Matt felt his thoughts grow a bit more sluggish. That had happened a bit more often lately, though Melren and the healers hadn’t been all that concerned. Apparently, it was a common side effect for mages whose efforts went a bit too far. The former nobleman had been confident that he would recover with time, as long as he refrained from using magic for a while. “Could they be drawing us out into the open so that massive army can roll over us? If that’s the case, I might need to tell Morteth and Karve to not push too far forward. We can’t…”
He paused. Gorfeld was shaking his head. “What am I missing?”
His steward paused again, as if searching for the words. “Sire, they’ve been hearing rumors from the militia they’ve captured. Information that the Orcs overheard from their supposed allies before they pulled back.” Gorfeld paused one more time and then sighed. “Sire, Greyhenge is destroyed.”
Matt felt everything inside of him go still. He stared at Gorfeld for a long time. “That’s not possible. There were over fifteen thousand people living inside of Greyhenge, and an army of over ten thousand soldiers camped outside of it. There’s no way that we… that I…”
Gorfeld’s voice was gentle. “Apparently, the earthquake and the windstorm continued for a while after we… left.” He looked away. “Even if it hadn’t, it had already continued for far longer than it had here when you created your first Source. By the time it was over, nearly half the city had collapsed, and the Castle itself is nothing but a ruin.”
As Matt stared at him, stunned, Gorfeld consulted his own copy of the report. “When the Ponthuul Queen died, her Heir was in the field. She immediately withdrew her soldiers from the front lines and retreated back to their homeland to secure things there. The forces from Greymark also pulled back, though they are already fighting skirmishes between each other.”
Matt blinked. “Skirmishes?”
Gorfeld nodded. “The Greymark Circle has always depended on having a Council of Seven to hide which of their members has the Divine Right. Four of their members died with their Castle, and two others had recently been assassinated in the Copper Hills.” He grimaced. “Now the only member left is fighting against the nobles who know who they are, and want to take power for themselves. To say nothing of the devastation of their capital.”
The Imp glanced down again. “The King of Storms also died, but his Heir was still in their own territory. He recalled their armies when he heard the others were running, though there was a delay that nearly let Morteth catch them. It does not seem like they will stop until they are back home, however.”
“What about the army? The one outside Greyhenge.” Matt was trying to keep himself focused on the strategic side of things, to ignore what must have happened outside the Castle on that night. He pictured the peasants waking to the sound of bells, and then the wind and earth turning against them… “Is there any sign of that force?”
Gorfeld shook his head. “No, sire. Our only real report of them is that there were large groups of people fleeing from Greyhenge in all directions. They may just be peasants, but I suspect that there are a lot of soldiers among them.” The Imp winced. “I know if something similar happened in Redspire, even our best disciplined soldiers would start to desert. If that army still exists, I believe its morale is in tatters and likely doesn’t have a fraction of the soldiers they gathered before. Brave or not, no soldier wants to march into the face of someone who can do that, not without someone of similar power backing them.”
Matt sat back in his chair. He scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to think it through. The image of him destroying an entire city single-handedly kept overwriting his attempt to focus. How was he supposed to make peace if he had to resort to that to do it? Greymark, or whatever nation came out of its ruins, would never forget it. He’d be known as a monster in the histories of the world, no matter what else he accomplished.
Yet it had stopped the Alliance. They had gathered an impossible amount of force to use against him, and he’d destroyed it without losing his own soldiers in response. Their leadership had been gutted, and the source of their power had been shattered. More than that, he’d made sure that if anyone tried to pull someone from Earth again, they’d have to sift through the rubble of Greyhenge first. Hopefully that would serve as warning enough to put a stop to it.
He shook his head, trying to clear it. A bird flew by his window, and he looked over to see that same beautiful blue sky, bright with the promise of a wonderful season ahead. He watched that sky for a moment and then walked over to the window.
Matt looked out over Redspire. His vantage point allowed him to see nearly the entire city, from the bridge over the River Crimson to the still-repulsive statue at Victory Square, where he doubted the people would want to celebrate this victory. He picked out the stonemasons still working on the museum, no doubt starting the next wing of Tanya’s creation. Soldiers were training and marching in the New Arsenal, while across the street Parufeth’s workmen were laboring on the housing blocks.
People filled the streets, walking to and from their homes and workshops. They traded with one another, laughed, debated, and argued. Carts paused beside the gates, paying a quick fee that the Council had instituted, before moving on to bring their goods to Shadowfen, Harvesthold, Heartlight, or Ashpeak. Beyond the walls, freeholders worked their farms, preparing for the coming harvest at the start of summer, and for the work that would be required of them in the days ahead.
Which city would he have wanted to be destroyed? The Alliance of Light would have made the choice without hesitation or regret. It would have been something they accepted as a justified part of their holy quest to purge the world of his Kingdom. They’d even embraced an Oath to make sure they couldn’t hesitate or abandon that quest.
It was all too easy to say that he’d had no choice, but the truth was, he could have surrendered. Matt might even have been able to leave with Namathus, once the runes flickered. He’d wanted to stop the Alliance and make sure that they wouldn’t threaten his people anymore. They’d become something he had to destroy, either that night or later on. If he’d waited, more would die for their insane cause, and he’d chosen to kill them quicker.
Matt wouldn’t be like them. He wouldn’t pretend it was an obvious choice, or one that he would live easily with, but it was the choice he had felt right at the time. Now he would bear the consequences for it, whatever the cost.
He looked over as Gorfeld joined him at the window. The Imp stared out at the city for a few more moments, and then he sighed. “I heard a saying once. From a wise man that quoted another.”
The Imp looked up at him, his face solemn. “It’s better to be feared than loved, if one cannot be both.”
Hearing the words quoted back to him made Matt pause. He looked back over the city again, watching the things he had built, and the things he was trying to change. Then he bowed his head and sighed. “You’re right, Gorfeld. Again.” Then he grinned. “You’re sure you don’t want this job?”
His steward smiled. He gave Matt a deep bow. “No, my liege. I think you aren’t quite done with it yet.”
Matt nodded and turned back to face the city—and the future along with it. “No. No, I’m not.”
