The Lord of Water was dead.
The woman known as Big Mamu closed her eyes in pain and bowed her head. Around her, the colors of the Stellar Church flickered and dimmed, darkening to the muted indigo of mourning.
Behind her, silent and motionless as always and yet ever-aware, her elite guards watched her in her grief, and shared it. They too had known him---as had all who shared the near-immortality of their kind, for he was the oldest of them, and without a doubt the best-loved. Of all the sacrifices that had been made to maintain the peace of their world, his was the most terrible, and the most keenly felt. Later, in private, they would each grieve in their own ways. For now, there was only one tribute they could offer, small and insignificant as it was.
For the first time in half a millennium, the air elementals halted their song. Silence reigned in the halls of the Stellar Church.
Zeii Mizu was dead.
Mirufi closed his eyes for a moment, feeling tears threaten his habitual Haz Knight impassiveness, and not caring. There was no doubt of it, even from a distance. No one could live in a body so ravaged; Carunirian had lost all control at the end. That Zeii had survived for so long was both a testament to his strength and a terrible, cruel irony.
He had watched, reaching deep within himself for a fortitude he had not known he possessed, while Carunirian did his work on Zeii. Fortitude or no fortitude, he was sick---sick to his soul---from what he'd seen. He had witnessed countless atrocities in his lifetime; death was nothing new to him. But to watch and do nothing as a body he'd once reverently caressed was trapped in a pain-wracked hell for hours... to listen to the screams of a friend and mentor and not scream with him...
It had been nearly unbearable. But he had kept the recording crystal in his hand the whole time, collecting the evidence that would condemn the Conclave and preserve the peace. He had watched because a great man's passing, however ignominious and dishonorable, deserved to be noted.
Below, in the courtyard, Topaza had finally pulled Carunirian away from Zeii---too late, of course, but Mirufi supposed bitterly that Topaza should at least be credited with more humanity than his colleagues. Carunirian's eyes were still filled with the madness that had overtaken him near the end. He had shocked them all, Mirufi noted with grim amusement, in how far he'd taken his pleasure. He shook his head, sighing faintly. The Conclave was only now discovering what Garunetto had known all along. Carunirian was only sane by the broadest of definitions.
On the other frame, across the fire from Zeii's pitiful form, Marron blinked and came awake from his trance. For an instant, the young man's face was full of agony---he knew. Somehow he already knew of his lover's death. But abruptly the expression cleared from his face, and he looked around. His eyes settled on Zeii's body, and stayed there.
Mirufi gathered himself, ready for anything.
"Ojiisan," murmured Nashi to herself, softly, closing her eyes against tears. Then she spoke louder, for the benefit of the others. "Zeii-sama. He's dead."
She turned to look at the other teachers and saw her own pain mirrored on their faces. They had all sensed it, but Nashi was the one who'd had the strongest bond with him. They'd been watching her, hoping against hope that she would somehow deny the evidence of their senses. She could only confirm their worst fears.
Nearby, the surf crashed against the shore, sending the sharp tang of sea-foam into the air and chilling them with mist. It was enough to stir them from their shocked silence.
"What now?" asked one of the teachers. His lined face was drawn and pale. They were all looking at her. She sighed and clamped down on her emotions for the time being, lifting a hand absently to brush away the tear that had already fallen down one cheek.
"We tell the children," she told them. Oh, how weak her voice sounded, compared to Zeii's soft-spoken forcefulness. But it would have to do. "And then we rebuild."
The man on the strange glowing frame was definitely dead, Gateau thought grimly, narrowing his eyes as he gazed through the curtain into the courtyard. And he'd died in agony by the looks of it. But the hair on the corpse, what little of it was still distinguishable---the rest was matted with blood---was stark white, not black. And so he exhaled in relief.
But at that moment Carrot made an odd noise. Gateau glanced at him, wondering obliquely if the other man had been hurt during that last scuffle.
"Down," Carrot whispered, his whole body tense. "Right below us."
Gateau looked straight down from the castle window through which they'd chosen to reconnoiter the courtyard, and felt his heart spasm painfully. Marron. Suspended on the same strange kind of frame as the one that held the dead man. He was naked, unmoving, and covered in night-dew, but seemed otherwise unharmed.
"What the hell is that thing he's on?" Carrot hissed angrily. "And how do we get him off it? He's the only one that knows how to handle magic stuff like that."
Gateau shook his head. "We'll carry the whole damned contraption if we have to, and get him off later. For now, we'll just worry about getting him out of here."
"You've got other worries, friend," said a voice behind them. They jerked in surprise and whipped around to see another pair of guards standing behind them, crossbows leveled at their throats.
"He's dead. Dead, you fool! How the hell do you expect us to get information out of him now?" Topaza shook Carunirian roughly, resisting the urge to throttle him. Only then did something approaching coherence begin to seep into the viscount's eyes.
"Let go of me," Carunirian murmured querulously, blinking in what Topaza could have sworn was mild surprise. He ground his teeth and released Carunirian, only too happy to avoid contact.
"I knew you were a sick son of a bitch, Carunirian," he gritted, "but this..." He looked toward the body on the frame, and quickly looked away as his stomach roiled.
He faced the other Sorcerers, grimly noting that they were all silent, a few of them wearing expressions that mirrored his own. So Carunirian's little game and their little spectacle had gone farther than they'd expected. Good.
Behind him, Carunirian finally spoke, still sounding oddly dazed. "I got information out of him, Topaza. He told us where the other schools were---"
"He was babbling, you idiot. Saying whatever you wanted to hear. You were too busy to notice that he contradicted himself three times on the location of the western school. I don't think even he knew what he was saying, after a while." Topaza turned, his cloak swirling, to point an accusing finger at Carunirian. "That wasn't a proper torture, Carunirian. You didn't test him to see if he was telling the truth, or double-check his information, or anything---you just wanted to hurt him. And now you've killed possibly the greatest source of information we could have had on these people." Furious, he turned to leave, disgusted by the recent turn of events. Garunetto had won them a perfect victory---and Carunirian had turned it into something ugly and fruitless, instead of the triumph it should have been.
Because he stopped, startled, as two of the mercenaries came into the courtyard, pushing before them at spearpoint two of the Sorcerer Hunters. How they had gotten free and what they'd been doing in the school, he couldn't fathom...
But he had no further time to consider it. For at the other end of the courtyard, the young man who'd been captured along with the school's headmaster stirred on his frame. And then all hell broke loose.
Zeii.
Marron gazed at the corpse that lay bleeding on Carunirian's frame. That was not Zeii. Just his flesh, discarded and useless. A husk.
Warm smooth skin, gentle lips, soft-spoken voice.
A husk. Zeii was long gone from it. It was pointless to focus on such pitiful remains. Better to turn his attention to Zeii's killers. Better to make them pay for Zeii's death.
I love you, Zeii. I need you. Come back.
He closed his eyes, and only then was able to turn his face away from the body.
When he opened them, he was looking at Carunirian and another Sorcerer. The two were arguing vehemently about something. Their words made no sense. He didn't care. He couldn't think about anything but Zeii.
The taste of Zeii's skin.
He wanted that taste again. Wanted to hear the voice, feel the warm arms around him, gaze at the smile he'd loved so much, for such a short time.
I thought I would have forever with you.
Something was holding him immobile. An annoyance. Zeii had shown him the way to his power and it was natural, now, to let it appear around him, devouring the frame in quick tongues of black fire. Cold flames, like the cold of nothingness. The cold of death.
His feet touched the ground and he walked around the bonfire, vaguely aware of agitation and fear in the atmosphere, coming from those standing nearby. They did not interfere, so he ignored them. The bonfire went out as the flickering, lashing aura around him touched it and devoured it, leaving only frozen, powdered wood. He sensed a spike of fear among his watchers, and ignored it. He didn't care about them. They were alive. Zeii was dead.
He reached the place where Zeii had died, and walked through grass that was slippery with blood. When he reached the frame, he drew in his aura and spoke a single word, and the frame faded away to nothingness, freeing its occupant. At last. Too late. Zeii's body crumpled to the ground and Marron kneeled beside it, gathering it into his arms.
His hair pooled in whorls on Zeii's skin. There was still a little warmth here---in the flesh that sagged heavily against his supporting arm, in the blood that still oozed from wounds inflicted from within. Still warmth, but no life. He turned Zeii's face toward himself, smoothed back the pale hair, stroked the ravaged cheek.
It didn't look like him anymore. Not with his eyes open and staring. Once, Marron had believed those eyes held all of the blue vastness of the ocean, terrible and beautiful and ancient and ageless and constantly-changing. Now, they were merely blue. He lifted a hand and closed them. Then closed the mouth that gaped open like a raw wound, tongue and teeth and lips torn and smashed.
Better. Now it looked like Zeii. Battered and bloodied, but sleeping.
"Wake up," he murmured, not really expecting an answer. Not surprisingly, he was right.
The appropriate thing to do in this situation, he knew, was to cry. Perhaps to scream, clutch the body against himself, rail against fate for taking his love from him, or some such thing. Pointless. Slowly he let the body drop from his arms, doing nothing to stop its boneless, inelegant sprawl. It was only flesh.
Dance with me, Marron.
Only flesh.
He closed his eyes.
"Marron!" Gateau shouted, lunging forward. The mercenary behind him, caught off-guard, cursed and slammed the butt of a crossbow into his back. Carrot gasped, and then remembered. This was Gateau.
The big warrior twisted in annoyance, grabbing the weapon and crushing it in one fist, then hitting the guard in the face with the same hand. Carrot's guard gasped and raised his crossbow, and Carrot didn't think; he just drove his knuckles into the guard's face, slapping the crossbow aside before it could be fired.
The guard that Gateau had disabled whimpered, crawling feebly with his face pressed against the ground. Gateau snarled and kicked the one in front of Carrot, sending the man flying into the wall. Then they both turned, tensing, ready to fight. But no one was looking at them. It was then that Carrot saw what Gateau had seen.
Marron. The frame that had held him was gone; he stood unbound and naked, his hair billowing around him in a breeze that only he seemed to feel. An updraft, perhaps, from the strange, lashing nimbus of black light that surrounded his body, flaring out from him and illuminating his face in harsh, unnatural planes of deathly-pale light and stark shadow. The nimbus was utterly silent despite its curling, twisting life; it pulsed slowly, in time with Marron's heartbeat, and Carrot shuddered at the sharp, almost painful frisson of sensation that moved through him in response to the magical energies rippling in the air. Powerful energies.
What in hell? Marron's never had power like this...
As if hearing his thought, Marron moved. He seemed not to notice the soldiers, the Sorcerers who were on their feet staring at him, or Carrot and Gateau. He stepped around the fire and Gateau's gasp echoed Carrot's own---for in that moment, that writhing black aura licked out lazily and touched the fire. Once. Lightly. And the fire disappeared with a quick, almost surprised shoop. Sucked away, Kami-knew where. Only the fire's fuel remained, and that glistened oddly in the flickering torchlight, falling apart even as Marron stepped past it. Frozen.
"Shimatta..." one of the Sorcerers breathed in the near silence of the courtyard. "He's another one! Another Mage!"
Carrot stared at the man, then back at Marron. Who continued his walk around the fire, stopping before the body of the dead man, still on its frame. At a soft word, the glowing frame flickered out of existence, dropping its burden. The black aura vanished and Marron knelt quickly to catch the limp form, gathering the dead man's head to his chest; he paid no heed to the blood-soaked ground or the corpse's ravaged state. He bowed his head, saying nothing, and did not move.
Beside Carrot, Gateau inhaled suddenly. When Carrot tore his eyes away from Marron to look at Gateau, the warrior's face was pale, his eyes haunted.
"Gateau? What is it?"
"That's it," Gateau breathed. "That's why."
Carrot stared at him. "What are you---"
But in that moment one of the Sorcerers, breaking the paralysis of shock that seemed to have overtaken them all, snatched a crossbow from a nearby soldier and raised it, fumbling for a moment with the unfamiliar weapon. Aiming at Marron's unprotected back.
"NO!" The shout burst from both of them, and Carrot whirled to snatch a fallen guard's crossbow while Gateau lunged through the soldiers, literally beating a path to the Sorcerer. But he wouldn't get there in time.
Carrot lifted his own crossbow and aimed it clumsily, cursing his ineptitude. Silently thanking Kami that the thing had a targeting sight, he lined up the crosshairs on the Sorcerer's back and squeezed the trigger, holding his breath. The recoil of the thing nearly knocked him off his feet. But he heard the sound of an impact and a cry, and when he struggled upright again the Sorcerer was on the ground, howling and clutching at his right buttock.
Close enough...
Gateau had already carved a swath through the soldiers but had been caught in a group of five men with swords. Carrot heard his roar of frustration and caught a glimpse of metal swinging; without thinking he raised his own sword and charged at the knot. Two of them turned to face him and before Carrot had more than a moment to register the panic that flowered in his mind, he'd cut one of them down and was parrying the other's attack. For a moment he felt powerful; he grinned into the mercenary's face. The other man's eyes narrowed. In a movement too quick to see, there was the hiss of metal and suddenly Carrot's sword was gone from his hands. The mercenary smiled at him and raised his blade. Carrot struggled to swallow, and could not.
A hand like a stone descended from the corner of Carrot's vision and caved in the side of the mercenary's head, helmet and all. Carrot stared, but Gateau had already moved on, charging now at the pack of Sorcerers gathered near Marron. Carrot picked up a discarded sword from the ground and ran after Gateau, not allowing himself to think about the wisdom---or lack of same---inherent in attacking a large group of Sorcerers with nothing more than a secondhand sword.
However, in the next moment a Sorcerer hit him with a magic blast, and the battle took a sudden turn in their favor.
Damn.
Mirufi watched, sighing, as the courtyard disintegrated into pure chaos. The mercenaries were scattering every which way, leaving the Sorcerers to deal with the chimera that had suddenly appeared in their midst---or dragon, in this particular case---as Carrot completed his Zooantropic transformation and let out an earth-shaking roar.
The Sorcerers were in a panic, their former unity dissolving as self-preservation took precedence, especially when Carrot stomped on two of their number in short order. Gateau was still tearing through the crowd, struggling toward Marron against the tide of people running in the opposite direction. None of them noticed that the black aura had reappeared around Marron, or that its power was rising. Rapidly.
Mirufi drew out a phoenix feather. Carrot first; unchecked, he'd keep up his rampage until his body exhausted the magical energy it had absorbed. Which would be too late to save his life. His wrist flicked and the feather flew, piercing the hide of the dragon and flashing; the dragon froze in mid-roar and began to shrink. Now Gateau; the fool was so besotted that he didn't seem to realize the danger. Mirufi raised a hand in a gesture, speaking aloud the words of a spell out of habit while his mind and will shaped the power. A moment later Gateau and the newly-human Carrot were gone, teleported out of range of whatever conflagration was about to happen.
Now himself. For the power building around Marron was the most unabashedly destructive aura Mirufi had ever seen, and while he might be nearly immortal and well-protected by his armor, he wasn't stupid.
From the moment he'd seen them, he'd understood.
Gateau smashed his fist through the faceplate of another mercenary clumsy enough to get in his way, and got a few meters closer to Marron before his path was blocked again.
Beyond his current opponent's head, he could see: Marron, cradling the head of the unknown dead man against himself, his long hair falling forward onto the body and obscuring his face. As Gateau watched, knocking a Sorcerer out of the way, Marron lifted a hand to close the sightless eyes and gaping mouth of the corpse in a gesture that was unmistakably tender, undeniably grief-stricken.
Intuition and observation met and melded into an epiphany as powerful as a magic-blast, and Gateau knew it as surely as if it had been written: whoever the dead man was, Marron had loved him.
The knowledge was dust in his heart, bile in his mouth. But he didn't have time to think about it, because in that moment behind him he heard the familiar sound of a magic blast being fired, and then an even more familiar low, coughing snarl. All around him, mercenaries and Sorcerers were pausing to look up with wide eyes at something that Gateau sensed only as a vastness behind him; he ignored it and refused to look back, shoving roughly at the suddenly panic-stricken soldiers. Carrot's Zooantropic forms had never harmed any of his friends, and Gateau had seen them all before anyhow. Marron was more important at the moment.
Another Sorcerer had the intelligence to get out of his way, and suddenly the path was clear; Marron was only a few meters away, no longer cradling the corpse but still kneeling beside it. The black aura blazed around him again and Gateau ignored the flare of warning instinct in the back of his mind. Marron needed him---
The world turned, suddenly, on its head. Gateau gasped, gripped by sudden nausea; light and sound and color around him warped, twisted into something unrecognizable, re-formed---
He blinked. He was in the forest outside the school again, several miles away on a rocky outcropping overlooking most of the valley. Carrot, unconscious and naked, lay on the ground beside him. And in the distance---
In the distance, a slow, silent geyser of black light rose into the sky from the center of the school. It peaked, then broke, spreading outward in a flare that eventually enveloped the entire school, obscuring it from sight beneath a dome of solid, matte darkness. And then it was gone, with no fanfare or movement; one moment it was there and the next it simply was not. And everything that it had touched was gone with it.
Where once the shelf on the side of the mountain had been rough and naturally terraced, the school nestled precariously on its slope, now the shelf was perfectly, unnaturally level. As if someone had simply sliced away the portion of the mountain where the school had been, with a colossal razor-sharp knife.
From this distance, it was impossible to tell if anything moved on that strange new plateau. But it was clear that none of the school's structures or even the stone of the mountain itself had withstood the magical flare; surely nothing made of ordinary flesh and blood could have survived such a cleansing.
Oh, gods. Oh dear gods.
Gateau felt his knees buckle. He sank to the ground, leaning on his hands for support, his lungs suddenly unable to find enough air, his body trembling for no logical reason.
Marron.
In the distance, the sun crested the horizon. Slowly, the Suporoku Valley was bathed in the light of a new day.
His booted feet crunched in the frozen dust. He tried not to think about the contents of that dust. Never mind that some of the mercenaries had simply been poor men who'd sold their bodies and swords to feed their families. What was done was done, and he had a greater concern at the moment.
The young man still knelt in the spot where Zeii had died, his face now tilted up toward the rising sun; he did not move. Of Zeii's body, there was no sign. Mirufi stopped in front of Marron and looked into his face, and sighed at what he saw. Or didn't see.
"Marron," he said softly.
"Only flesh," Marron whispered in reply. His face was blank; his eyes gazed through Mirufi into a hell that Mirufi hoped never to visit. "Only stone. They took his life. They took his dream."
Mirufi swallowed back unease. There was nothing resembling sanity in Marron's eyes right now, but he could only try reason and hope it worked. "Come away from here with me, Marron," he urged. "This place..." He trailed off. It was a tomb. There was no tactful way to say it to a grieving man.
Marron leaned forward, bending at the waist to press his hands, slowly and deliberately, into the dust at his feet. He lifted his hands and gazed at them, and spoke again. "All I have is corpses." He held forward his hands, palm up and covered in dust, and looked up at Mirufi, his eyes finally making contact. Mirufi shivered inadvertently. Marron smiled faintly. "Here is Zeii."
Mirufi crouched before Marron, taking the upraised hands in his own. Marron's smile faded as his hands were pulled down; he sat listlessly, his eyes blank again. "Zeii would not have wanted you to die, Marron. Some of the Sorcerers and soldiers that were here survived. We have to leave before they return. I'll take you back to the others."
"No."
"No?"
"I don't want compassion. I don't want love." For a moment Marron's face contorted in pain and Mirufi held his breath, hoping that he would at last see some sort of human emotion on the young man's face. But then it was gone, as quickly as it had appeared, and Marron's expression was again as featureless as the plateau where they now knelt.
"What do you want, then, Marron?" He kept his voice gentle. The slack hands, in his, suddenly twitched once. Mirufi looked up in surprise to meet eyes that were abruptly razor-sharp, frighteningly lucid, and glittering with a darkness that had nothing to do with Marron's eye color.
"Vengeance," Marron said softly. "Will you help me?"
Futures and possibilities flickered through his mind, coalescing into this moment; he nodded slightly, to himself. He had known the answer to this question long before its asking.
"I will," he replied quietly.
Marron watched him for a long moment, then nodded, and fell still. The intensity left his eyes as if it had never been. His face went slack and his body listed to one side.
Mirufi sighed, recognizing catatonia when he saw it. It was probably the closest thing to a normal grief-reaction Marron had yet shown. He got to his feet and lifted the younger man in his arms, arranging his limbs for comfort when he noticed their rigidity.
He levitated the recording crystal from one pocket and let it hover before him, gazing into its glassy depths.
"I'm taking him to the place I prepared, Mamu," he said, knowing she would receive the message later. "All has gone as foreseen. Unfortunately. I'll leave it to you to decide whether to tell the others; you understand the future-lines and their consequences better than I do. Contact me if you need me, of course."
He started to speak the spell that would send the crystal back to the Stellar Church, but paused, sighing as he looked down into Marron's near-lifeless face. He shook his head, slowly.
"So many casualties. And not all of them dead."
Marron did not move. After a moment, Mirufi sent the crystal on its way. He watched until it was out of sight, then turned and flew off, carrying Marron, in the other direction.
It would be three years before Marron called upon Mirufi to fulfill his promise.
**End Ch. 9