An orderly walked into my room from out of a corner when I wasn’t looking and startled me. I wasn’t doing much of anything but lying on the cot and staring at the blue sky over my head. Not even a cloud marred the sameness to break the monotony.
He was from one of those far off shadows that produced good workers with little imagination and made great soldiers. He handed me a square tablet with a scribe and I just stared at it. I didn’t want a magic device that allowed me to draw upon it, I wanted real paper. The scribe worked only against the surface of the tablet and not anywhere else. I complained and he stared stoically at me making no reply.
I looked around and asked for a spare sheet and a piece of charcoal. He delivered both easily enough. Leaving me alone, I hung the sheet on the rack around my cot and closed my eyes. Remembering the tiniest detail of the room at Cabra. With quick, sure strokes, I drew the room and before my eyes, the colors filled in and became real. I knew if I stepped forward, I would emerge in that room in the Lighthouse.
With equal swiftness, I drew the bedroom where last I had seen the Master. I was somewhat nervous about stepping blind into his room so as an afterthought, I did a quick sketch of my nook at the Master’s manse in Szeged. I stepped forward and stumbled as my feet tripped on the carpet near his bed. Laying atop the covers were his abandoned clothes. I searched through his drawers, pulling out leather trousers, shirt, vest, belt and cape to cover all. My eyes glimmered in joy when I spotted my set of leaf daggers thrown carelessly on his bureau. The room looked as if it had been hastily packed, most of his important stuff was gone. In his closet, I found the elven cape and a sword. I left my first cloak and took the elven, it was like my shadow cape and would mask me.
In the kitchen I found bread and foodstuffs left out and bread dried out as well as opened flasks of wine. What I didn’t see were his servants. It seemed that they had all run off as soon as the Master’s back was turned.
I packed enough food for three and gathered up a wine-skin. Slinging the pack over my shoulder, I checked the area one more time before slapping myself in the head. It hurt. “Damn. I need to make a return trump,” I said, disgusted with myself.
Using a piece of charcoal from the fireplace, I drew the image of the room where I had died in the Master’s arms. Felt the flush of...magic, power, whatever race through my hands into the drawing and I was stepping forward there in a whisper of movement as the elven cloak flared. A man was bent over the bed smoothing back the linens as I emerged, weapons drawn but I knew that supple back and the motion of his body.
“Steen!”
He whirled around, deathly pale and gasped, his hands held out before him in protection. “Gods of the Firmament! Are you Death come to take me at last? I saw your body laid upon a funeral pyre!”
“Did you see me burn, Steen? No, I rolled off before they could torch me,” I put down my daggers and hugged his stiff, unrelenting body. “Steen, I’m alive. I need your help to rescue the Queen and stop this war.”
“He told them you were dead.”
“The Master? Told who?” I questioned.
“The Barons. Baron Resonant. He sent a missive to King Random and King Merlin with the news of your death by Webster’s hand and asked for terms of surrender. The Master slew the Barons in his rage and retreated to the Tower where the Queen is held. He spelled great magics there and any who try to approach are destroyed in blue fire. He’s been up there for a week.”
“A week! I’ve been gone for a week?” I gaped.
“My Lord, you have been dead since Candlewick. It is now Moontide.”
I counted. Was amazed and dismayed to learn I had been gone for nearly a month. “The forces have laid siege for that long?”
“Aye. Random’s Coalition holds the land around the Palisade and his Magicians work daily to break the wards that guard the castle but so far, no one has made it inside or left, save you.” He eyed me. “How did you do it?”
“Trumped my way in. Or did you mean, how did I live again? I died, Steen. The peace was wonderful. No pain, no worries, just endless sleep. But this power called the Logus asked me to choose sides. I refused and it brought me back here to suffer. Again, only this time, I’m mortal and I can die.”
“You’re alive,” he marveled and smiled. Shook himself. “What do you need from me, Corbel?”
“I need to reach the Queen,” I stated.
“You can get into the tower?”
I shrugged and wandered the bedroom, it looked the same as when I had last seen it save empty of the Barons and the Master. “I don’t know. I think I have to be able to see it well enough to draw it but we shall see.”
“If you attack, he will kill the Queen, he already warned the Kings he would do so,”
Steen warned.
“Take me as close as you can,” I ordered and he nodded. Crossing to the door, I followed and frowned as I saw the flowers placed on the bed covers. Pointed and asked him what they were for. His answer shocked me.
“A memorial for the boy called Corbel,” he said. The bed was awash with roses cut from the Master’s gardens, wild flowers from the woods and sides of the lanes. I swallowed. It was more than from just Steen.
“For me? From the staff? Why?” A lump formed in my throat and tears threatened to fall.
“How many times, Corbel, did you deflect the Master’s wrath from another taking it on yourself?” he returned.
“I never,” I shook my head. “I looked out only for myself, to ease my own way.”
He smiled secretly. “You never knew what you did, but others saw and noted it. When you died, they all came forward to mourn you.”
“I thought they hated and feared me, Blackbird, the Master’s killer,” I said in wonder.
“To the Master’s eye, yes but in their quarters and in the dark whispers of the night, they talked of you and how you always fought back, if even in only a small way. Your body bears the scars of that insolence. Even after he beat you to death with the flailed whip, you are here to attempt the impossible. Is it possible, Corbel, Blackbird, that you can be broken?”
I sucked back a sob thinking of all those times when I had broken, had been his slave, his puppet with no other thoughts but to please him so he would love me enough not to hurt me. When the pain dished out by his hand nearly became pleasure. When he raped me, I almost became his, almost changed to one of those that craved both sex and pain before pleasure could be achieved. Was closest to becoming his in every sense, from my mind to my body. If I had not died, nor been taken by the Logus, I would now be kneeling at the Master’s feet, bound by blood and mind as his willing, adoring slave.
Steen said softly, “oh my Lord, your face! Never have I seen your face show so much emotion! I know your life here has been hell for I have been in your place but Corbel, I would never have survived what I see here.” He stroked my face and reverently kissed me.
Stepping back, he opened the door and led me out to the hallway. No sign of any guards and Steen explained that those of the army still inside the compound were guarding the outer walls. The rest of his forces were camped outside engaging in skirmishes with the Amber forces. Of his original hundred thousand, about half were still alive and fighting, holding off the Amber army and allies from reaching the Palisade. Some force prevented them from moving forward to take the relatively small fortifications and I suspected it was the power of the Logus.
He brought me to the bottom of a staircase, a narrow spiral of well-worn stone treads that led upwards inside a massive boulder built tower whose foundations went deep into the bedrock of this land. I sensed an ancient river of power beneath my feet and knew why the Master had chosen this place. Here, he could draw upon that power and use it to repel all but the greatest spells. As we stood on the first step, we felt a great rumbling and the ground beneath us trembled. My fingers burned and a backlash of power spilled down towards us. I pushed Steen behind me and flung the elven cape over us both as blue flames roared down the shaft and consumed the very air around us.
It lasted less than a minute yet in our fear it seemed longer than we could hold our breath. Cautiously, I pulled the folds of elven material off us and shuddered. Steen held onto my back even more white-faced than me.
“What was that?” he cried.
“Backlash of a spell rebounding off the Master’s wards,” I explained. “A powerful one, too. More powerful than I know.” It had the flavor of the Logus and I suspected it had been sent by King Merlin.
“We must go up,” I said and the manservant nodded, placing his life in my hands. The ground trembled again yet the Tower stood firm.
He asked if the fire would come again and I shook my head no. Once a spell of such force was used, the receiver was armed against it with a counter spell and it would likely not be efficient. If it failed once, the wielder would go on to another, more powerful. What the last one had felt like was the Dissolution Spell, it should have dissolved the ground the tower stood on as well as the bonds that held its very stones together. We began our climb.