The Harvest Ball
FUGUE
K arigan stood planted in place while Weapons ushered Estora out and carried Zachary away. He called her name and desperately reached for her, but the Weapons overpowered him in order to carry out their mandate to protect their king.
The wraith wrought a wide swath of carnage as it swept its blade through stragglers attempting to flee and guards pouring into the ballroom. The wooden skeletons chattered overhead.
Travis appeared at her side and started to pull her away. “Sir Karigan, you must come to safety.”
“No,” she said with a solemn knowing. “There is no safety. Not for me.”
He stopped pulling, must have seen something in her face or heard it in her voice. “What will you do?”
“You must go to the king.” Command rang in her voice. “You must ensure he and his family are safe.”
He nodded and sprinted for the stairs. She wanted nothing more than to go with him, but the wraith would not stop until it reached her. This she knew even as the presence of Westrion began to fill her and the wind that preceded the arrival of Salvistar, his great steed, swept around her.
The spirits of those the wraith killed rose from their bodies—ladies in fine ball gowns, soldiers and servants. Some appeared confused; others simply started to float away. Lichant hissed an order, and, bound and enslaved by his sword, they drifted toward her.
In a blinking, the avatar was clad in the armor of star steel that had been forged by the god Belasser, whose forge was the stars.
The light of those stars gleamed upon the shield she bore, its device a luminous crescent moon.
Winged symbols of protection glided across the shield and armor.
The spirits reached for her, desperate to feed on her soul.
She waded into the revenant mist of lords and ladies, servants and guards, that billowed around her.
Their touch caused the protective symbols to spit and sputter, some to burn out.
The avatar paused, for this had never happened before.
She called her star steel sword to hand and swept it through the spirits.
Their forms twisted around her blade like wet rags and clung to it, fouling it and straining its protections.
It required more force to end the existence of the apparitions and the avatar exerted herself in a way she’d never had to before.
When finally she cleaved them all into nonexistence, she stood panting from the effort, but at last Salvistar arrived.
Black and huge, Salvistar’s muscles flexed and rippled with fury, his hide embodying the depth of the universe. Without a thought or movement on her part, she was seated upon the deep saddle on his back. He needed no bit or bridle, and wore only a chafron of star steel upon his face.
White arrows flashed through the air at the wraith shot by five Eletians who had been present at the ball, but this was Lichant, powerful and preternaturally fast, and it swiped the arrows aside with its blade.
They raised their moonstones filled with silver moonlight.
The stones brightened, brightened, brightened the whole of the ballroom to drive the very dark from all the world, and Lichant backed away.
Smoke arose from its rags as purest light burned into it. Its horse squealed in fear.
But then Lichant opened its loathsome mouth and ancient words of a foul language of Mornhavon’s creation rasped out in an incantation.
The moonstones dimmed, for the brighter the light, the darker the shadows.
One after the other, with each fell word uttered by the wraith, the moonstones cracked and released their ancient silver moonbeams, which died in the immensity of the dark.
The Eletians cried out in dismay.
“Go,” the avatar ordered them.
Even Eletians could not quite see her, but they heard or felt the command. They protested, called out to her.
“Go.” The word was simply spoken but rang like thunder.
The stallion stomped a single massive hoof and the floor cracked down the center of the room to where the Eletians stood and caused the ground to quake, the ballroom to tremble.
The skeletons jangled, decorative plaster fell from the ceiling and smashed on tile, and glass windows cracked.
The message delivered, the Eletians retreated and the avatar put them out of her mind for the enemy lay ahead.
The wraith sat as still as the dead in its saddle. Its horse was ordinary and mortal, and its neck foamed with sweat, eyes rolling wildly. It bled from dozens of cuts from the window. The slain lay beneath the horse’s hooves, and no more guards attempted an assault.
“Galadheon,” Lichant hissed.
“I am the voice of Westrion.”
“A puppet.”
“No more than you,” the avatar replied.
They launched at each other. Their swords clashed. The force of Lichant’s ill-made sword resonated up her arm with unexpected power. The wraith struck like a viper, but she’d the will of Westrion upon her and she countered just as quickly.
“You will be turned,” Lichant said.
“You will be made into dust as long ago you should have been,” the avatar replied.
Salvistar shouldered the mortal horse, and it staggered, almost heaving over.
Lichant brutally laid its rusted spurs into its sides and it leaped back into the fray.
Lichant clove into her shield, cutting through the crescent moon device.
The protections embedded in it held it together, but already made vulnerable by contact with the spirits, it was further weakened by the blow.
Westrion’s avatar realized then that the wraith’s sword was not merely a soul-stealing weapon, but some other power was upon it, and suddenly she understood.
Black Star.
During the Long War, Mornhavon the Black had created a magical device so powerful he thought to use it to win the war and tame all the lands.
He failed and King Santanara had captured the Black Star and “killed” Mornhavon with it.
Something of that powerful magic had been added into the making of Lichant’s sword.
The avatar renewed her attack, her blade thrusting and parrying with such speed it was a blur. The wraith scored another hit on her shield. It was no glancing blow, and the shield split with a tremendous crack, its protections dying immediately. It turned into vapor and vanished.
Salvistar snorted and charged into the wraith’s horse once again. It toppled, but not before Lichant cleaved its sword into the avatar’s breastplate. If steel could scream, it did so, the protective symbols flaring and dying and bleeding the luminous ichor of stars.
Lichant rose and leaped on the side of its fallen horse. It raised its sword over its head. “Behold, Dirasgheul, the God Killer.” The greenish glow of the blade intensified.
The protections of the avatar’s armor, weakened by spirits and wounded by the wraith, screamed in her head as they died.
The injury to the steel spread, crackling in arcs of star-born energy in its death throes and subjecting her to forces no mortal should withstand, and, in turn, weakening her.
The wraith knocked the sword from her hand.
She tried to call it back, but it turned to vapor and dissipated.
The wraith’s blade cut into the avatar’s armor again and she tumbled from her mount onto broken glass.
Energy arced and burned through the armor, causing the mortal woman within to twitch and writhe.
Lichant stood above her, holding the sword two handed, ready to plunge it deep into the avatar’s chest.
“You will be chained and turned,” it intoned.
Salvistar bellowed his fury and a challenge. He reared to protect the avatar. The wraith pivoted and drove its sword into the great stallion’s chest. Salvistar crashed to the floor beside his rider.
Dirasgheul the God Killer had succeeded.
Lichant watched as the god-being, Salvistar, took his final breath.
But curiously the stallion’s wound did not bleed, but leaked the heavens with a viscous fluidity, the stars and planetary bodies and moons, gaseous objects and a hail of meteors.
It flowed into the ballroom across the avatar’s prone form, swirling, expanding.
It floated among the dim chandeliers and wood skeletons and swallowed them.
The wraith backed away for it sensed a buildup of power, a surge—
A blinding light exploded through the ballroom and blazed through the windows.
The wraith shrieked—a sound like to peel skin off flesh—and leaped over the broken windowsill where it had entered.
It vanished into the night. When the flash faded, all that remained in the ballroom were the corpses of the dead, overturned tables, and the decor.
The hanging skeletons seemed to come to life in the light of sputtering candles.
The great steed of Westrion lay dead, and his avatar was gone.