Matabar

Ardan slammed his staff against the floor, forming a Water Shroud around himself before he dove to the side. The Selkado fighter's orange vortex of energy scorched the walls with flame and acid, causing the brickwork to drip down in a steaming, hissing, sputtering slurry.

Ardi's Water Shroud whirled those acidic flames around in a wild dance, stretching them out like a thin ribbon and then sending them streaming back toward the Selkado fighter.

"That won't work twice, beast!" The Selkado man shouted.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ardi glimpsed the foreigner simply slicing his own "spell" apart as he swayed slightly to the side. He wasn't that tall, nor was he especially muscular, but he moved with the lithe grace of a cat. He wore gloves on both hands (one of which moved a bit too smoothly to be a common prosthetic) and a light spring coat. His face bore the scars of old burns. And the instant his sabers severed the vortex, which was still contained within that watery ribbon, he flicked his blades out in a swift strike. Several seals flared at once along his wrists and on the sabers themselves.

Ardan had never before seen Star Magic seals split into separate components. But that was precisely what was happening here, with the Selkado warrior's magic. Instead of layering one seal over another, they were distributed evenly across both his swords and his wrists.

Four of them at once, no less. Combining that many seals into a single working demanded remarkable focus and relentless training.

It was all the more surprising, then, when the result was not some monstrous spell that instantly reduced half of "Bruce's" to rubble, but something shaped like a bird instead. A bird with stone wings, a beak crackling with lightning, and a shimmering field around it that seemed to absorb any ambient light.

Just before he threw himself toward the open ice chest (the one he and Tess had recently emptied of its last few supplies, leaving it to defrost), a thought ran through Ardi's mind:

An offensive spell enclosed within a passive shield?

He was on the verge of calculating how many rays and from which Stars, which runic links, arrays, contours, and embedded seals might all be required for such a creation, but a moment later, the spell exploded right above his head.

The hail of stone shards passed easily through the bird's own shield, which was clearly designed to defend the spell from countermeasures, and shot across the room. They pierced the brick walls as though cutting through something even flimsier than paper — perhaps gossamer threads poised to collapse when faced with a single breath.

And each time those shards struck an obstacle, they fragmented into smaller pieces. These were less swift, less sharp, but still left fine, narrow gouges across the walls and floor. Several of them raked across Ardi's back just as he vaulted over the rim of the ice chest.

Between him and the Selkado man — Ardan suddenly recalled that his name was Darton, maybe — lay what used to be the kitchen. Only a moment ago, it had still resembled one. But now the worktables had been reduced to splinters and metal shavings. Dishes littered the floor, now a pile of ceramic shards. Cabinets lay smashed, covering scattered grains, leftovers of various dry goods, and the few vegetables he and Tess had never gotten around to eating since Ardi couldn't quite stomach them.

And yet, even all that destruction wasn't enough for Darton. The bird, now shorn of its feathers, revealed the part of itself that Ardi had at first mistaken for a lightning-spitting beak — a cluster of arrows. These were white-hot bolts that had miniature plasma explosions sparking along their lengths, each flash brimming with lethal energy.

Ardan managed to slam the lid of the steel ice chest shut — it was actually an old gun safe that Arkar had repurposed — an instant before the lightning arrows rained down on him. Apparently, their creator had intended for those bolts to finish what he had started.

The bird, shielded by its protective magic, would surely deliver the spell to its target. The stone shrapnel could easily shatter any defense that a typical mage or a squad of common soldiers might be able to erect, and after that, those plasma arrows would deliver the killing blow — a multitude of searing, electrified strikes. Ardan could hear muffled, resonant pops as the bolts collided with the surfaces around him, bursts of air echoing wherever they landed. The entire kitchen rumbled, like the ground when faced with the passage of a mountain troll.

"You're quick, Imperial beast!"

Ardi could feel the reinforced steel of the former safe beginning to melt, and he knew it would only be seconds before superheated metal — along with scorching air — poured inside his hiding place, turning him into a thoroughly-charred hunk of flesh.

He was about to raise his staff to cast the strongest spell he knew — Ice Flowers — when he froze. He lay there in the icy confines of the chest, surrounded by cold. This chill had dwelled in that cramped space for so long that it had merged with the steel walls. In these frozen depths, ignorant of both heat and flame, the frost had reigned for as long as it could remember.

And now someone on the outside, unknown and unwelcome, was trying to breach its wintery kingdom, bringing a hostile element with them. The cold surged in response. It reached for the one person in whom it sensed even the slightest glimmer of itself.

Despite the tense moment, Ardi — not one to rely on the art of the Aean'Hane — thought about it and realized that this just might work. It would not be like that incident on Warehouse Street, when he and Arkar had rescued Boris.

He could do this.

Ardan reached out, answering the cold's silent summons with a pledge of his own. The frost swept into him. Like mountain streams settling into winter's slumber, it coursed through his veins. Like the winds of distant peaks, it filled his lungs. And with the force of the ice caps that would slide down gentle slopes in spring, grinding ancient stones down to gravel and shearing off entire rock faces, that frost now empowered his will.

Ardan uttered a Word — not with his lips, but with his will, his mind, and his Ley.

And for the first time in nearly eleven years, the frost answered him with its True Name.

***

Darton, who was worried about his Ley-prosthetic and how much longer it would hold out, kept a wary eye on that strange ice chest, which resembled an old gun safe more than any typical kitchen cooler.

His spell — fueled by three rays from each of his Stars — had already claimed the lives of far more experienced and talented mages than Corporal Ard Egobar of the Second Chancery. He was a baffling half-breed whom his employers wanted brought in "not necessarily intact or fully coherent, but alive enough to talk."

But after the fiasco on that accursed train, Darton would prefer to explain his target's "untimely demise" rather than risk another catastrophe.

Over the years — first as an officer of magical law enforcement in Radan, then, following his less-than-honorable discharge, as a mercenary for hire — Darton had faced many opponents. Strong and weak, cowardly and brave, brilliant and fools who fancied themselves to actually be wise.

Ard Egobar, by comparison, seemed far from exceptional. He didn't even measure up to most of those whose corpses Darton had stepped over without a thought.

And yet…

And yet, he remembered that name. Ard Egobar. That fight on the train still plagued him. He could still picture those two cold, watchful, amber eyes that had tracked every movement in the carriage as though pinning them with invisible needles. For the first time in nearly twenty years of "work," Darton had felt, for just a single moment, like the hunted rather than the hunter. Like prey that had been tactically dissected by someone calm and lethal, someone who'd ignored the trivialities while focusing on the vital.

And for the first time in ages, Darton had also felt something that might not have been dread, but was certainly close to fear — like a child hearing the growl of stray dogs behind them.

And that was why he wasn't taking any chances. He'd unleashed one of his best combat spells right away, the same one that had set off the chain of events that had led to his "disgraceful discharge" back in Radan.

To the blazes with all of it…

Sabers raised, Darton closely watched the roiling plasma devouring the metal. He was prepared for anything and took care to stay at a safe distance from the main Ley-cable junction. He'd also covered the backup generator in the corner with a stationary shield. He would not repeat Tisin's blunder, nor would he let some amateur conjurer cost him his life due to a cheap trick.

And only that vigilance, and his refusal to underestimate any foe, even one who was rumored to possess just one or possibly two Stars (as he'd gleaned from bribed members of the Imperial Mage Guild) allowed him to activate his enhancement seals in time.

Ley energy flared within his three Stars, then surged through the seals etched on his body. The seals on his legs lent him speed and agility while the one on his back gave his bones the hardness of stone and the flexibility of clay. The seals on his chest allowed his heart to beat like the pistons of an engine, his lungs pumping air more swiftly than a blacksmith's bellows. The seals on his arms granted him brute strength and the final seal at the nape of his neck, hidden by his hair, sharpened his reflexes to that of a mongoose facing a cobra.

When the ice chest finally surrendered — not to the plasma, but to something pushing out from within — Darton believed himself ready.

Or at least he'd thought he was. He'd truly believed he was prepared.

His sabers, cloaked in a steady steel radiance thanks to the final set of weapon seals, easily sliced through the heavy shards of reinforced metal barreling toward his head.

Ley energy flowed out from his accumulators, fueling his partial suit of seals. He had maybe thirty seconds left before they ran out — usually more than enough to finish a duel between a classic Star Mage and a Selkado Blade. The League of Selkado had designed its military techniques precisely to counter the classic Star Mages of Castilia and the New Monarchy. The full series is hosted on My Virtual Library Empire, known as MV7LEMPYR.

These thoughts all flashed through Darton's mind in an instant. He braced himself to fend off a typical spell or artifact — some cunning device Egobar had hidden away. But… no.

From within that ruptured ice chest, like a nightmare emerging from a frozen tomb, rose a young man. His eyes smoldered with a cold, amber fog that was trickling out of them. His lips exhaled trails of vapor.

Darton suspected that the young man was some kind of mutant at first, but a mutant couldn't become a Star Mage — the two existences were mutually exclusive.

"What in the…?"

Then his opponent raised his staff and struck it against the ground. Darton could have sworn he heard a ringing as he did so, like two shards of ice knocking together.

Yet there was no ice on the floor.

What followed was a flurry of icy webs creeping across the walls, entwining in complex, frigid patterns. Then, from the staff's tip — without any visible seal accompanying it — a colossal bear paw made of blue ice lunged forward, trailing a frigid luminescence. It sped across the rubble of the kitchen, leaving everything behind encased in hoarfrost.

On pure instinct, armed as he was with only partial knowledge of how to defend himself against such strange magic, Darton crossed his sabers in front of him. And, by the Eternal Angels, he thanked those instincts.

When that ice paw slammed into his blades, it did not shatter like any other physical spell would. Instead, it flung him through the kitchen and out of the building itself.

He flew several meters through the air, then skidded across the ground for another five. In the process, he shredded his coat and, despite his partial seal suit's protective effects, his skin, which had thickened beyond the hardness of the steel that had once encased the ice chest, was scraped away. Darton tumbled head over heels across the floor.

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Fortunately, he'd been positioned with his back to the entrance rather than to a wall. Otherwise, that single attack would have broken half the bones in his body.

After landing in the street, Darton scrambled upright and leaped aside. He did so just in time, too, because a moment later, the cobblestones where he'd fallen were raked by the claws of an ice lynx.

Not understanding what he was seeing, the Selkado fighter flicked his gaze toward the open doors of the jazz bar. Inside, the mage — his eye sockets still brimming with that amber fog — stepped forward. He slammed his staff down again, and a four-winged eagle shimmered into being upon his shoulder. It was large enough to lift even a man as big as the half-breed and carry him aloft with ease.

And then it did just that. The eagle spread its vast wings, and in an instant, the mage was outside on the street, carried there by the eagle. The air around them grew colder by a good ten degrees, and despite it being late spring, with summer drawing near, the water in the canal abruptly froze. It cracked and groaned like a cantankerous old woman scolding whoever had dared bind her.

Darton did not advance. His foe was wildly unpredictable, and so…

He never quite grasped what happened next.

No sooner had the mage emerged from the bar than the eagle behind him began to melt away, and the glow in his eyes diminished as if it were being drawn inward, back into those amber irises.

***

Seeing that the Selkado fighter was bracing himself for combat, Ardan intended to end this as swiftly as possible. He felt the ice and cold become an extension of his own will. It was as though he held a pencil in his hand and was free to write anything: the most nonsensical formula or the most absurd equation — it wouldn't matter. Anything he wrote would become reality, right here, right now.

All he needed was to focus his thoughts, channel his strength, and make his heart beat in harmony with the breath of frost.

And Ardan, who was intoxicated by this alien sensation that was ten times more potent than anything he'd felt while shaping living snowflake figurines, raised his staff to deliver the final blow.

Kaishas' wings carried him above the ground — Ergar had always said the best way to strike your prey was from on high.

And then…

Suddenly, he felt as though he were drowning. Something vast and heavy pressed down on his chest, pinning him in place.

Breathing became difficult. The world darkened, rippling like the surface of the canal as it fractured the thin film of ice. The sun shone overhead — the sun of a spring morning, bright and warm, a herald of the coming summer knocking at the doors and windows of the Metropolis. A pleasant, merry breeze carried tales of warm islands, of lands that never saw snow.

No, the cold did not rule here. Frost had no claim on this place. Born in the ice chest, they both knew nothing of true heat or how fiercely the sky's fire could burn. And now they'd been undone by it, gone before Ardi could even grasp what had happened, before he could sever his mental link with that sliver of Winter's Name.

And then the same thing happened as when he'd fought the elven Aean'Hane, only magnified many times over.

Ardan's bones felt like they'd gotten caught in invisible, merciless grinders that no cry or prayer could halt. His blood boiled. The air both seared his lungs and tore at them like an enraged forest cat's claws. The smell… The smell of his own flesh burning filled his nostrils.

It was as though Ardan had been thrust into a raging fire. Into flames that could banish any and all shards of Winter's chill, for they had no place here, not now.

***

Darton did not approach the writhing Egobar right away. The young man lay on the shattered cobblestones that had been broken apart by his own ice spells (if they even were spells, and not something else entirely), rocking from side to side and… literally burning. In places, his skin blistered, forming huge welts that seemed like terrible burns, his hair smoldered with glowing embers, and clouds of black smoke rose from his cracked lips.

Darton tilted his head. As he did so, the sun slipped behind a bank of fluffy clouds, casting a cool shadow across the street. Immediately, the youth's breathing grew a fraction calmer. He was still unconscious, but the blisters on his body stopped swelling (they had been threatening to outdo the spring buds with their relentless growth), and black smoke no longer rose from his lips accompanied by that sickening stench of scorched flesh.

It was almost as though… as though the sunlight itself had caused Egobar pain.

"But he's no vampire…" Darton muttered, thoroughly disoriented.

He was jarred back to focus only when his partial suit finished draining the Ley from his Stars and from his accumulators as well. The mechanisms in the hilts of his sabers clicked where the crystalline accumulator rings were slotted.

Darton felt a crushing fatigue descend upon him. The world dimmed and blurred and his limbs suddenly felt like they were pure lead, causing his arms to sag.

It was no wonder that so many Squires — and even full Knights — would go mad, turning into wretched addicts desperately chasing that surge of power. It always ended the same, in ruin.

Something similar, perhaps, was happening to Egobar. Still, while in the shade, the young man was noticeably less tormented.

With a flick of his sabers, Darton ejected the spent hilts into the canal, then swung the blades onto his back and clicked in a fresh pair.

"Damn it… I'll have to raise my fee by two hundred exes… Who could've guessed that this kid would make me burn through both accumulators?"

And yet, it felt odd calling him a "kid" when he'd just…

Darton whipped around and glanced upwards and to the right. In the distance, he could already hear the sirens of the Imperial Guard and the fire brigade. Clearly, either the neighbors or the few passersby out on the street at this early hour had reported something.

But the Selkado fighter had a different concern. From the corner of his eye, he'd seen the curtain shift in the top-floor window and caught a glimpse of red hair disappearing behind the wall.

"One more sin to pray for," he muttered, pointing a saber toward the window.

Why? Because every other resident of the nearby buildings had gone into hiding, not daring to poke their heads out. No one except that red-haired woman. Which meant that she was tied to Egobar somehow.

A witness like that couldn't be left alive.

Darton was just about to activate another seal when something made him pause. He put no stock in omens, superstitions, or any other such nonsense. But in that instant, he sensed — perhaps thanks to some primal instinct — that if he carried out his plan and sent that red-haired woman to the Eternal Angels, something terrible would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Something so unbearably grim and horrifying that even the faintest whisper of it — like the roiling in your gut before a leap — made him lower his saber.

"What the hell is wrong with this Empire?" Darton muttered. Then, triggering the seals on his arms and legs once more, he hoisted Egobar's body over one shoulder. He bent down, intending to pick up his staff as well, but stopped dead.

Again, that same sense was warning him that if he so much as touched that roughly-hewn oak branch with its cheap lacquer, he'd lose his other hand for sure.

"No thanks. I'll just take my fee and sail off to Viroeira, with its wine, sun-kissed priestesses of pleasure, and no more of these abnormal half-breeds."

With that, Darton gave the staff a firm kick, sending it skittering toward the canal. Then he turned and ran toward his extraction point, where a car and driver awaited him.

***

Tess swayed slightly in her chair, staring at a single spot in front of her. She knew — she had always known — that one day, this moment would come. That someday, just like her mother before her, she'd be sitting, rocking in place, and wondering whether everything would change by nightfall or not. Wondering whether her father would come home or not.

And now…

Now she didn't know whether her… her… her Ardi would come back or not.

"Is that everything you remember?"

Pointless questions. Useless words. What had been the point of any of them? She knew, and yet she'd spent months telling herself it was all nonsense. That it was just a fleeting attraction. After all, it wasn't really possible to look at a person once and then spend all your time picking them out of a crowd, your heart filling with joy at just a glimpse of them? Was it?

And yet it felt so easy in her soul, so effortless to breathe when he was by her side. Everything felt so warm and cozy when he was near. Her heart was so happy whenever she heard the floor creak beneath his familiar steps.

No. That didn't happen in real life. That sort of thing belonged in cheap romance novels, the kind Tess had stopped reading the day she'd moved to the Metropolis.

Because the capital was different. Everything here was scarier, dirtier, gloomier.

But Tess had allowed herself to forget that. She'd let herself hope — on the fifth day of going out with him, while strolling through the city in winter, dancing by the waterfront — that maybe… maybe she could give herself a foolish chance at a fairy tale.

Except… it was not a fairy tale.

"Have a bit more, Tess."

Someone held out a glass of water, cool to the touch.

By the Eternal Angels, why was it so cold?

Her hands trembled, but mechanically, almost like a doll, she raised the glass and took a sip. The world blurred before her eyes. She couldn't banish the image of that man with the sabers. Or the sight of Ardi convulsing on the broken cobblestones and quite literally burning alive.

Her father and brothers had told her that Star Mage battles could be terrifying, and were, at times, no less horrifying than a frontal assault on enemy trenches.

But to her, despite the fact that she'd grown up in the border province of Shamtur, it had all seemed like little more than scary bedtime stories — tales without any tangible substance. Something unreal.

And now…

"Is that everything you remember?" Asked a voice she recognized.

A familiar voice…

Tess lifted her gaze. Sitting before her, apparently, was Milar Pnev — Ardi's colleague. He was jotting down notes in a small pad, tapping his foot so that his heel clicked against the floor in a staccato rhythm, and every so often checking the holster on his belt and the saber at his side.

Milar had arrived with the Guard. The moment he'd shown up, he'd begun searching for Ardi, only to bring back the medallion Ardi never took off, not even at night. In fact, Ardi often pulled it out of his pants pocket and looped it around his neck by its cord.

He'd never explained why, and Tess had never asked.

"Yes…"

"So when the man with two sabers took Ardan, he was still breathing… and you saw him run around the corner, then a plain old 'Derks' drove off toward the Crookedwater Canal?"

"Yes…" Tess repeated dully.

Milar fell silent for a moment, then burst out:

"Damn it, Tess! That's not enough! Isn't there something else? Even the smallest detail? Can you remember anything at all before the Magister ends up wandering the paths of his damned Sleeping Spirits!"

"I… I…"

She just couldn't hold it in anymore. She couldn't keep it all bottled up. That knot in her throat, pressing on her chest like a crushing weight, shattered and burst free. And along with it came a raw, keening wail and a flood of tears.

"Damn it… I'm sorry…" Milar wrapped an arm around her. "I'm not as good at going about this gently as Din is… I never have been."

But Tess couldn't see him anymore. She saw nothing except for her own tears burning her cheeks and Ardi's good-natured, caring, and somehow comforting smile. She saw Ardi, who could stare pensively into a teacup for an hour, then stretch like a cat and doze off on the spot, folding his arms on the table and resting his head on them.

But what if… what if she would never again…

Another wail tore its way out of Tess' throat. She couldn't bear it. She couldn't take it anymore. The Orcish Jackets. Lisa. Boris and Elena… and Ardi… How much more would the Metropolis take from them before it sated its hunger?

"All right, all right, let's think logically. The Crookedwater Canal… probably means either Tendari or Tend," Milar was muttering, though Tess heard only fragments. "No other options. And there we have the Dandy, the Hammers, and the Crimson Lady… but it's probably none of them, so that means out-of-towners. Maybe the Spiders… Most likely them… I'll have to pull all three in. One of their people must've seen or heard something… Argh! Aversky's tied up with tests at Dagdag's… the medallions don't work there. And we're running out of time. Ursky and Erson are still out cold… What awful timing, Magister, just awful! Well… I'll just have to go alone."

Tess started. She gave a sniff, wiped her tears, and stared soberly at Ardi's colleague.

"I'm coming with you."

Milar flinched as though she'd slapped him.

"Come again, miss?"

"I'm coming with you, Cloak," Tess said firmly. "I'm still the daughter of Shamtur's Governor-General. I'm an Orman. I know how to handle iron, and-"

"And if something happens to you, even if Ard is on those Sleeping Spirits' paths of his, he'll come back from them and… I don't know, Tess," Milar said with a shudder, a fleeting memory of Lorlov crossing his mind. "But one thing I do know is that I don't want to be there when he comes back if something bad happens to you. And I definitely don't want it to be my fault. So no. You're not coming with me."

"You're going alone?" Tess frowned. "But you're not a mage."

"I'm still an officer of the Second Chancery, miss."

"Out there-"

"He won't be going on his own, Tess. Don't you worry. You think I'd entrust a mountain brother to some shorty… a human, that is? Ha! My ancestors would be disgraced to see me stoop so low."

Milar turned toward the speaker. Squeezing sideways through the doorway to Tess' apartment was none other than the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets, Arkar. His suit was rumpled and clearly hadn't been washed or ironed in a couple of weeks, and his face was covered in a bristly scruff that could practically pass for sandpaper.

He had bags under his eyes and looked a bit thinner than usual, but was otherwise unscathed. Behind him, on the stairs, stood five more orcs, all of them purebloods, observing the guards and firefighters as they worked. Each of them stood about two meters tall, was broad enough at the shoulders to rival a car axle, and was radiating such an air of menace that no one dared come up and ask them a thing.

Ardan had mentioned that after the events in the Firstborn District, Arkar had voluntarily surrendered to the local Guard. The Conclave Court — a self-governing body that was permitted to exist by the Parliament even though many people weren't happy about it — had been waiting for him. Apparently, he had walked free in the end.

Considering the rumors going around about the right hand of Ordargar — a man who had won that position despite his human blood — Milar wasn't the least bit surprised that Arkar had emerged unscathed.

"And what's your angle in all of this, Arkar?" Milar asked, narrowing his eyes at him.

The half-orc froze for a second, then jutted out his lower lip, baring his tusks.

"Human…" He said, pronouncing the word like an insult. "You know nothing of our ways… If it were otherwise, I'd spill your wet… your blood, I mean, for such a question."

"Yeah, yeah, orc," Milar retorted, waving his notebook dismissively. "What else have you got?"

"Ard is one of the Kar'Tak," Arkar growled, his eyes flashing.

"I'm not well versed in the Ectassus language, Arkar."

"It means tribe, human. Our tribe. Kar'Tak translates to Firstborn in your languageor as a "people"." Arkar stepped closer to Tess and set a huge hand gently on her shoulder. Given their difference in size, it looked almost comical, and somehow… not quite right. "Doesn't matter what the Conclave says or what the other Firstborn might think. Ard carries more of our blood in his veins than he does human blood. We were here before-"

"Before humans even learned how to speak," Milar interrupted. "I've heard that fanatical nonsense the Conclave uses to brainwash you. It's not much different from the Tavsers' nonsense — just the other side of the coin. So let's speak plainly: You want to have the Black House in your debt?"

Arkar said something in the orcish tongue. Milar filed it away in his mind to translate later.

"Human… only you would keep flapping your jaws when a Kar'Tak is in trouble," Arkar muttered, then turned to Tess. "You're sure they went toward Crookedwater Canal?"

She nodded.

"Then we'll bring Ard back home," Arkar said, heading for the door.

As he passed by Milar, he spoke so only the captain could hear him and not Tess:

"Or we'll bring back the heads of those who took him."

***

Ardan struggled to open his eyes. The first thing he saw was Indgar's tusked face.

"We meet again, Ard," the orc said with a wide grin.

He was sitting in front of a table that had a tool roll spread out on it. It was the kind carpenters, woodworkers, welders, and other tradesmen used, a piece of leather lined on the inside with pockets and loops for tools.

Right now, however, Ardi was certain that Indgar's roll held no chisels or screwdrivers.

"Shall we have a little chat, Mr. Egobar?"