Chapter Twenty-three Aspect of Strength
The Prince felt as though he were floating.
He was lighter than air, and he was perched up high somewhere, his body pillowed by soft, fluffy, billowing white clouds.
He wasn’t thinking about much of anything, just existing.
Vague impressions came to him, here and there, something about the sunlight…
something about the smell of pine trees…
and something about a pair of fiery green eyes.
He liked the thought of those green eyes, but at the same time it all seemed rather unimportant… so he floated on.
He came across a cloud that smelled like travel dust and lavender soap, and then a little while later a cloud that was black and stormy-looking. It was pouting over in the corner all alone, trying to look dignified, but succeeding only in looking… well, foolish.
Another cloud, slowly fading away, was revealing the sky behind it—a cloud that looked as if it had been a storm cloud once, but now appeared rather harmless.
And then it was as if a bubble had been popped, and he was falling.
Down through the clouds, down through the sky, toward a vast plain of swaying grass, and a wolf was howling in the distance, accompanied by a lion’s roar.
An eagle screeched as it descended next to him and caught a small animal far below—a golden, furry thing whose luck had run out.
He fell and fell, down through the sky, and then as the grass grew closer he saw a small bed, far faaaaar below… but growing, growing so quickly, with the sound of air rushing past his head, the wind pounding in his ears, the animals screaming with one voice.
Light—and softer sound. Voices.
“But… how did he do it?”
“I’m not sure. One minute I’m telling him to kill me, the next minute I’m jumping up, the sun’s rising, and there’s the shadow-cursed Prince of Ravens lying next to me with a valerium sword, looking like he’d been rolled through a briar patch, clubbed, and set on fire.”
The Prince opened his eyes. He was wearing a long white shirt, sitting in a small hospital cot, and every other part of him seemed to be wrapped in bandages. His eyes began to drag closed again… he was very sleepy…
“I felt myself die,” rumbled a voice, like boulders running down a hill.
“That’s impossible, Tomaz,” the girl responded.
TOMAZ?!
“Argh!” The Prince’s eyes flew open, and then he did a kind of twitching jump as he realized that there was a dead man standing beside his bed.
“Whoa! Calm yourself, princeling,” the big man said, shock turning to laughter. “Nice of you to come back to us.”
“How are you—you’re dead!”
The Prince wasn’t certain what was happening. His memories were all confused, his brain overworked, sore, and uncooperative.
“But I—I killed you!”
“And brought him back,” a voice said from the door. “Which I, at least, find much more interesting.”
Leah and Tomaz both started and looked around as Elder Crane entered the rather small infirmary room.
The Elder was wearing a simple gray-green cloak with a soft brown tunic and loose pants tied at the waist. Something hung around his neck, perhaps the ornamental dagger the Prince had seen back in Value, but the Elder tucked it inside his shirt when he saw the Prince looking at it.
Crane came forward slowly, using a long wooden cane to steady himself.
“Elder,” Tomaz and Leah said, respectfully bowing their heads. He nodded back, and then a smile brightened his face. The Prince felt as though the room had just grown lighter.
“I am sorry to intrude on your recovery,” Crane said, “but I wished to be the first to thank you, on behalf of the Kindred, for what you did last night. Elder Keri notified me when she thought you were about to wake; I’ve often said she’s nigh on clairvoyant.
I expected to wait for a while, but it appears I arrived at precisely the right moment. ”
The Prince stared at him blankly, trying and failing to get his mind into some semblance of working order. “Thank me?” he finally managed to ask. His tongue felt too large for his mouth. “Why is that necessary? I promised I would help, and I did not do it for you.”
He realized that what he’d just said sounded a little rude, and tried to speak again, but the Elder motioned him to silence, smiling as he did so.
“Please, there is no need for apologies,” Crane said.
“I understand what you are trying to say. You did not help the Kindred out of loyalty, and you did not do it out of belief in our cause. I understand this, and I know that your reasons are your own. But the Kindred do owe you thanks. You had the chance to betray us, a chance to end the Exiled Kindred forever, and you did not. You turned against your society, your nation, and even your family in order to do what you thought was right. And for whatever other reasons you might have had, I think that you did it out of duty to the realm, and out of an understanding of the worthiness of life. These are qualities that are found in true princes, those men and women who are not merely rulers but leaders as well. And it is for that reason I, and the Kindred, thank you.”
The Prince opened his mouth to respond, but he wasn’t quite sure what he could say to such a statement. His body ached, and he again began to question if this was all a dream.
“As to what I overheard when I was entering,” Crane continued, “I believe I might be able to shed some light on how Tomaz came to be here. Do not worry,” he continued, as the Prince recoiled slightly, “he is very much alive and kicking, as the expression goes.”
“How?” the Prince asked. His throat felt sore, and his voice came out low and gravelly. “Is it real? Or have I gone mad?”
“Well, I think you might be a better judge of that than I,” Crane responded. “I gather that you have the ability to sense life in others. A great gift indeed. Can you sense life in Tomaz?”
The Prince looked at the big man, taking in his appearance. He looked the same, that much was certain. He squinted, and the man stayed where he was. Tomaz reached out a hand and briefly squeezed the Prince’s shoulder.
“Go on,” he said. “I promise I’ll still be here when you open your eyes.”
The Prince, still unsure, took a deep breath and let his eyelids flutter closed.
He reached through the Raven Talisman, searching…
and there it was. To his surprise, Tomaz did feel like Tomaz…
and more. Much more. The Prince couldn’t understand it, but it felt like something out of his childhood…
no, that couldn’t be. His mind was still hazy, and he was confused.
But what was important was that the Elder was telling the truth—the man was alive. And he was certainly Tomaz.
“But how?” he repeated, opening his eyes.
“What you call the Raven Talisman is known to the Kindred as the Aspect of Life,” Crane said. “It is my belief that when you refused to accept the death of your friend, you forced the life you had absorbed from him back into his body.”
The Prince stared at him blankly for a long moment.
“What?”
“When you absorb a person’s life,” the Elder said, “they live on in you, yes? Correct me if I am wrong, for all I know comes secondhand, and you bear the burden of the Talisman each day. But when you take a life, does not that life become a part of you? If so, it may be that under the right circumstances, you can bring them back as well. When you took his life, Tomaz was a part of you. He was still alive in a sense, and you carried the strength and the power of enough men to force those memories and that strength back into him.”
“But why couldn’t he do it before?” Leah asked. “He’s killed men before, and I’ve never seen him do anything like that.”
“I believe the answer lies there,” Crane said, motioning to the sword that had been laid, in its sheath, on a table by the Prince’s bed on top of a neatly folded pile of his clothing.
“A sword?” Leah asked.
“Look more closely,” Crane said.
Leah leaned in, brow furrowed in concentration.
A change slowly came over her, and she gave an uncharacteristically large gasp of surprise and turned to stare at the Prince, one hand holding the pit of her stomach.
The Prince looked at her dumbly, his head still feeling like it was full of cotton.
To his surprise, she crossed to his bedside, grabbed a handful of his hair, and pulled his face close enough to hers that they were almost nose to nose.
“How did you get it?” she asked.
“It’s—it’s the sword I got back in Vale!” he spluttered, trying to understand what had caused such a reaction.
She released his head and jabbed a finger at the sword.
“This is Aemon’s Blade! It’s not just a sword; it’s the sword! The first valerium blade!”
The Prince’s first thought was that she was making a joke.
She had picked an odd time to do it, but…
yes, certainly a joke. Aemon’s Blade should be somehow…
special. But this—it was just a plain sword.
Yes, it was made of valerium, but it had a simple handle wrapped in copper wire to prevent slippage, a strong but simple cross guard, and a plain oval pommel to counter the weight of the long, curved blade. It was just a sword.
“That’s impossible. Why would you say such a thing?” he asked.
She reached over and tried to grab the sword.
There was a flash of light, and she was flung backwards into Tomaz’s arms, unharmed but obviously shaken. She shook her head and refocused her eyes on the Prince.
“How? How?”
He had no answer. He could only stare dumbfounded at the blade.
“I heard a few soldiers talking about the battle between him and the Prince of Oxen,” Tomaz said slowly, scratching his bearded chin thoughtfully.
“It seems at one point he was thrown into the Temple. The Temple of Aemon. The Prince of Oxen followed him and brought the entire place down. There’s hardly a column left standing.
One of the only things they found in the rubble was a plain valerium blade. ”