Chapter Nine Elician
CHAPTER NINE
Elician
Elician gathers a relief force to Altas.
He calls all his reserves. Decisions are made fast and without any room for compromise.
Adalei assumes control of Himmelsheim and Elician spends no time waiting or questioning what plan is best. He has been chosen by the god of life.
He commands the power to raise the dead, and though it is forbidden, he will see it so.
No more people are going to die this day.
No more civilians are going to fall to the crushing hand of Death in a war of attrition without end.
If Gillage wants to use Reapers on the battlefield, then Elician will answer in kind.
And he will ensure this horror is never repeated again.
He sends orders for Zinnitzia to go to Kreuzfurt and collect as many Givers and Reapers as possible to bring to the new war front.
She argues with him; he does not listen.
She leaves, furious, but she bends to his command.
He is king. His word is law. Fen, though, is another matter.
She is the only other Giver in the palace, and he needs her with them.
He needs any Giver capable of raising the dead at his side, for there are going to be so many dead to bring back from their graves.
So many with souls he hopes are willing to return.
Zinnitzia may balk at the notion of resurrection, but he knows Fen won’t.
‘You’ll be riding with the main relief force,’ he tells her. ‘Get the armourer to have you fitted, and make sure your sword is sharp.’
‘I’ll be going into battle?’ she asks.
‘You’re sixteen. You’re of age,’ he replies. ‘You wanted this once, didn’t you?’ She nods, more dumbfounded than confident.
‘I never joined any of the cadets’ drills.’
‘I don’t need you in formation, I need you keeping people alive.’
‘You want me to use my powers…during the fight?’
‘If Gillage is going to be using Reapers, then we’ll use Givers.’
‘But…the gods forbade it…they’ve made it clear that that is not allowed.’
‘Yes,’ Elician replies. ‘They did. Get ready to go.’
She only hesitates a moment longer. Then she straightens her back, tilts up her chin and promises: ‘You won’t be disappointed,’ before running off to do her duty.
Elician catches Lio’s arm the next time he sees him. ‘Assign a guard to protect her,’ he requests. ‘Just in case.’
‘I’ll see it done.’
Elician hesitates only a moment longer. Lio has been working to recover his strength since Alelune. He’s been training meticulously and Zinnitzia has been dedicated to healing him. But he is still only a few too short months free of captivity. ‘Are you able to do this?’ Elician asks.
‘My parents were there,’ Lio replies firmly. War has made orphans of them all, and his own pains or recovery do not matter in the face of the need to be a part of this force to retake a city he has spent years trying to defend. ‘I’ll be there.’ Elician lets him go.
They ride out as soon as they possibly can, Elician leading the force with Cat, Lio, Marina and Fen just behind.
It will take over a week to move a party this size across the country, and they cannot tire their horses out before they reach the city.
They all need to be fit and trim if they’re going to make it.
It is slow. Too slow. Elician is sick of waiting.
At night, each night, he goes over reports.
Pigeons and couriers, updates and missives are constantly circulating.
They all say the same thing. Altas has fallen, but the Alelunen army has not advanced deeper into Soleben territory.
They have not expanded. Elician doesn’t understand why, but he will take what good news he can get.
There is still so much they need to discuss.
‘What are we going to do with the army?’ he asks Cat the night before they make their final approach to the city. It is the only detail he has not been able to work out on his own.
‘Stop them,’ Cat replies coolly.
‘You’re willing for them to all die?’ It doesn’t sound right to his ear, and Cat shakes his head.
‘No,’ Cat replies. ‘But I’m willing to stop them.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘I know how to stop their hearts. Not permanently. Not for ever. Just long enough to keep them from moving. It would give your army enough time to bind them.’
‘You want to take the entire army hostage?’
‘Gillage cannot fight back without an army, and they will not be dead in the process.’
‘That…is a lot of people,’ Elician says.
‘It is fewer people to manage than what you want to do.’
Elician concedes the point. ‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ he says.
‘But…it’s all I can think of. Everyone – the whole city.
Every single person that died…it shouldn’t have happened.
Reapers are forbidden to be used in acts of war, and if they did something the gods forbade…
then maybe…maybe their souls are still there. And maybe…I can bring them back.’
It is not a prepared speech, not a decision meant to be overheard by the revellers or the camp followers who always report on his every decision.
But he wishes that it was more coherent.
That when he spoke, it did not sound like the desperate plea of a child but the declaration of a king who knew full well what needed to be done and was prepared to face all possible consequences for that action.
‘Have you done anything like this before?’ Cat asks.
‘Not…on this scale. I brought Lio back when I couldn’t see him, when I didn’t know where he was. Hours had passed, and his soul was still there.’
‘It’s going to have been weeks since they died by the time we get there. The chances of their souls having made the change…’
‘I know. But if they haven’t…if even one soul is still within my reach, then shouldn’t I try?’
‘They called me a monster,’ Cat says, the non sequitur slicing through the air as easily as his blade.
‘I believed them. I believed them for a long time, because what else was there to believe? Everything I touch dies, and everything around me will decay simply because I exist.’ Cat’s eyes fall to a bowl of fruit someone provided for their evening refreshment.
He twitches his fingers, and the ripe flesh dents and squelches inwards, juice sluicing to the bottom of the bowl, rotting and dying at his will alone.
‘You’re not a monster, Cat,’ Elician says, watching him work.
‘But I believed I was, for this is how monsters behave. This is what monsters do. They kill everything in sight. They destroy everything around them. And if you believe in something long enough and hard enough, you make it a reality even if truth itself needs to distort its perception of you. And you learn how easy it is to be the monster that they think you are.’
Cat’s hand falls back to his side. He takes up the bowl and holds it between them.
All the fruit has diminished, decayed into pulpy matter not fit to eat.
‘I learned I could kill without a touch, because that is the kind of thing a monster wants to be able to do. It is the kind of thing they believe they are capable of doing. The very best and worst things in existence are those that leave no trace, and the ideas that we believe are the ones that we form into our reality. What do you believe, Elician? What did you believe when you brought Lio back in Alerae?’
That I could do it, he thinks. That I had to do it.
‘What do your people believe about you?’ Cat asks next. ‘What do you believe that you can do…for them?’ That he is their hero. Their king. That he can save them. They bowed to him when he returned, they cheered his name. They believed he could save them all.
Elician stares down at the bowl. The rotting fruit. A metaphor for the decay of his homeland and his people. He clenches his jaw and he believes.
‘I’m going to bring them all back,’ he says.
A refrain, but the only one he knows. The only truth he has known from the moment he heard what had happened in Altas.
The only path he can countenance. Come back, he thinks.
And in that bowl, the fruit move. They fatten.
They shed their rot and push out at the limp flesh that once bound them full.
Until by his will alone: all that died returns to the living.
‘I’m going to bring them all back,’ he repeats, letting that belief fill him to his core.
‘I know you will,’ Cat replies, eyeing the sweet and perfect fruit. ‘We will see this through, history be damned. And we will do it – together.’
They reach Altas the next day – Alelunen flags hanging limp and still from the parapets.
The great city sprawls across the banks of the Bask River.
To the west lies Alelune, but the western bank of the river and the western half of Altas had both been considered Soleben territory since the moment the Marias Compromise was signed.
Every fight against Alelune was at the very border of that ground, keeping Alelunen soldiers from breaching the walls of a city that lay on a shore over which they desperately wanted to regain control.
West Altas reaches across to East Altas via one large bridge.
But the city proper is protected on both sides by a large border wall.
In all years previously, the gates facing the country that did not occupy the city were kept closed.
For as long as Elician has known Altas, that meant the Western Gates were shut.
As he leads his relief force forward, he expects the gates to East Altas to be shut too.