Chapter Twenty-two The Prince of Oxen #3
With a resounding boom amplified by the large empty space, the Prince of Oxen swung his axes and destroyed the pillar in a shocking display of raw power. As the dust settled, Ramael stepped into view, swinging his axes easily by his sides, a horrible grin on his face.
How do I defeat that? the Prince thought in despair.
The building around them seemed to shake for a minute, and then settled. The Prince’s breath caught in his chest, and he realized he’d just found the answer.
Praying his plan would work, he ran toward another pillar.
Ramael followed, and as soon as the Prince was behind the pillar, Ramael tore it down with a savage blow that struck sparks as the metal of his blades tore through the heavy stone, ripping it down.
As the dust settled, Ramael looked around… and saw nothing.
The Prince had taken the opportunity of his brother’s momentary blindness and the enormous crash of the crumbling pillar to run to the other side of the Temple and throw himself behind another pillar to hide.
“Brother, brother, brother,” Ramael said, amusement coloring his voice. “Are you hiding? No wonder Mother is so disappointed in you…”
The Prince clenched his hands, and he forced out a slow, shaky breath.
“Did you know that there was a bet between the Children over which of us would be the one to bring you home? Though I suppose credit should be given where credit is due… Mother was the one who offered the prize for your head…”
There was another huge crash and the sound of screeching metal as Ramael tore down another pillar. The roof above them shook ominously, and a patch of stone ceiling crashed to the floor. The Prince tensed, but the dust settled, and the building remained standing. The Ox Lord continued.
“My bet was on Geofred, to be frank… he seemed to think it would take cunning to find you. But I always found you so predictable. At first, I thought you were being clever, luring me to the Kindred lands, trying to buy back your place in the Children with the end of the Exiles… who knows, it might have worked. But when the Bloodmages told me you had moved, I knew you had gone over… I knew you had been corrupted away from your duty and your blood. Scum… rebels… the worst dregs of humanity…”
“They are better than you will ever be!”
The words were out before he could stop them. He snapped his mouth closed and held very still. Ramael began to walk slowly in his direction.
“You actually believe you’re doing the right thing, don’t you? Think again, little one. You’ve betrayed your family! You’ve betrayed your Empress!”
“She betrayed me!” the Prince shouted, coming out from behind the pillar before he could stop himself, rage boiling so hot inside him that he couldn’t see straight. “You all did! You tried to have me killed! You took away my name, you sent me into exile, and then you tell me I’m the traitor?!”
He charged, all rational thought gone. There was a furious exchange of blows that threw sparks into the dark temple. Ramael made another swing with his axe; the Prince ducked, and it hit another pillar, which came crashing down.
“Too slow!” the Prince taunted. His rage was so intense that it bordered on madness, but he could not pull back.
Ramael reversed the swing and almost took the Prince’s head off. He had to scramble back ungracefully, and as he rolled back to his feet, his brother was laughing.
It was then that he realized Ramael was toying with him.
“Is this all about Mother taking away your name?” Ramael asked. “Poor little boy… would you like a new one? I’m sure I could think of something.”
“I HAVE NO NAME, AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO GIVE ME ONE!”
He launched himself forward, sword light as a feather in his hands, and pushed his brother back across the room.
A sharp swing from one of the axes brushed across the Prince’s ribs so closely that he knew he had barely avoided evisceration.
The valerium sword lanced out again, but the axes were there to meet it and repel it.
The Prince dodged away, and the axe hit another of the pillars; and, as the pillar crumbled, the entire temple, weakened to the point of collapse, came crashing down.
The Prince dove to the ground and covered his head with his hands as an enormous rumble vibrated through his body, and then he was struck with falling rocks.
He cried out in pain as a stone smashed into his spine, and he felt his hands go numb and his vision grow dark.
If it wasn’t for Tomaz’s strength keeping his body whole beyond the point of natural endurance, he was certain he would have died.
The shaking and crashing subsided. After a few moments of ringing silence, he managed to pull himself out of the pile of rubble with one hand.
His head emerged first, and he drew in a gasping, shuddering breath and set about freeing the rest of himself, dirt and powdered stone clouding the air and making it impossible to see.
Blood was in his eyes from a cut on his forehead, and his left arm was hanging uselessly by his side.
His legs still seemed to work, but when he tried to stand, his strength finally failed him, and he slumped back to the ground.
His sword was gone. He looked around for it frantically and saw it sticking out of the rubble several yards away. He began to crawl toward it, watching for any sign of his brother. The entire building had collapsed, and there were mounds of broken stone everywhere.
A huge pile of rubble not far off to his left shifted and then seemed to explode outward.
Ramael stood up with a bellow of contemptuous rage, whole pieces of armor missing and a wide, bloody gash marring his perfect face.
His helm was gone, his breastplate torn away, and one of his axes was lost, buried somewhere deep in the temple’s ruins.
“Nothing can stop me, little brother!” he roared. “And now, it is time to end this.”
The Prince pulled himself with all the strength left to him toward the sword. It was only an arm’s length away now. He reached for it, and his fingers just brushed the wire-wrapped hilt.
“Too late for that,” Ramael said. A double-bladed axe rose high overhead.
A flash of steel shot through the air and sank into the Prince of Oxen’s neck.
He let out a bellow of pain, and the axe went wide, burying itself in the ground next to the Prince. Another dagger streaked through the air, sinking its foot-long blade into Ramael’s back and causing another convulsion that made him fall to the ground.
The Prince pulled himself the last few inches, wrapped his hand around the hilt of the valerium sword, pulled it from the rubble, and with a cry of pain at the effort, sank the blade into his brother’s chest, piercing his heart.
Light exploded in the Prince’s mind as Ramael’s life and memories were added to his own. His mind felt as though it had been exposed to the sun after being kept for seventeen years in the dark: one hundred and forty-two years of memories, crystal clear and visceral, flooded into him.
Someone slapped his face.
“Argh!” he sat upright, holding his head with both of his hands.
“Are you all right?” Leah asked.
“Parchment,” he said through clenched teeth, “and something to write with!”
The memories of the Prince of Oxen were whirling through his mind, more than he had ever absorbed before, and in any other case he was sure his body would have collapsed under the strain.
But he felt as if he had an unlimited source of strength that he could draw on, a power like the sun that would never die, and it held him together.
He wasn’t sure when the parchment came, he wasn’t even quite sure how he was able to write legibly, but he was later told that he wrote for the better part of an hour, and never the same sentence twice.
Memory by memory, the Prince plumbed the depths of his brother’s mind, doing his best not to think of what he was writing down, just putting it into words.
He would deal with it all later—he had no time to judge it now, and he couldn’t keep it in his mind.
The memories were on all topics, but among the most important were details about the layout of the castle of Roarke, the defenses of the Empire, the current state of Empire politics, and the names of various spies planted within the Kindred’s forces.
And then, without warning, the memories from his brother’s mind shifted, and the Prince was remembering another life. The life of a young boy, training with a sword bigger than any the Prince had ever seen.
Tomaz.
The next thing he knew, he was up and running, clutching the sword. He left the ruins of the once great temple and moved in a strange dreamlike trance through the city, memories playing in his mind of the giant who had given his life to save the Kindred.
He moved through the gate to the second tier of the city, passing cheering Kindred, hearing the sound of retreat blown on Imperial horns. But none of that seemed to matter.
He turned a corner, and there he was, lying where the Prince had left him.
Tomaz.
He moved to the big man’s side. He sank to the ground beside the body, feeling the rough stone of the street scrape his knees through his tattered clothing.
How could Tomaz be dead? The Prince felt as though at any second the big man would roll over, rise to his feet, and laughingly ask the Prince what he was doing on the ground.
Tomaz.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice full of emotion. He laid one hand on the gaping wound left by the Prince of Oxen’s axe, and his other hand held the hilt of the valerium sword. He began to sob.
The memories of Tomaz’s life continued to play in his mind…
Guardian training, a young woman long ago, hope and laughter and simple things…
and then the memories began to fade. In a panic, the Prince tried to hold onto them, to keep them from leaving, but the harder he tried, the more quickly they seemed to fade.
He let out a growl of frustration—he wouldn’t let what was left of Tomaz die.
He would keep these memories—he would keep Tomaz alive!
Concentrating with all of his might, he sank mental anchors into the memories and began to reel them back toward him.
Memories of Guardian Training, the young girl from his youth, the parents he had never known, and a man…
a man he’d been forced to kill. The Empress condemning him, the pain he’d felt as his name had been taken from him.
And the first sight of the Prince—and the knowledge, the certainty, that he could be redeemed.
But the memories continued to fade, like lines drawn in sand before an advancing tide, and the power of the big man’s life began to fade as well. Dimming… dying.
So he drew on what strength he had, drew as much strength and power and energy as he could find in his body, and threw it into the memories, clinging to Tomaz and sobbing over his body.
A burst of light flung the Prince flat on his back as the memories were sucked away from him in a sudden inexorable force, and then the strength that had kept him going, the strength he’d taken from his brother’s death, was gone as well, and he fell backward into darkness.