Chapter 51 Eder
EDER
J ust west of the Sapphire Mountains stretched the valleys of Olado, which swooped low before rising into gentle green hills.
Atop one such hill grew a lone royal whitebud tree.
It flowered twice a year, both times flooding the branches with wide, pale flowers whose petals would flutter away upon the wind.
Hundreds of years ago, Sariel had married Isca underneath that tree, at a wedding attended by all of his siblings. She had been named Elena then. Eder himself had overseen the vows.
Eder waited at the top of that hill, his back pressed to the whitebud.
Its branches were barren in preparation for the coming frost. He wore plain dark trousers and a gray shirt.
Simple garb to pass unnoticed and unattended at the borderlands between their kingdoms. Atonement lay in the grass beside him, and he touched it for comfort when he saw his brother approach.
Sariel was a figure clad in black, wrapped in grief, and carrying his own sword across his shoulders.
“Welcome, brother,” Eder said. “I pray you are well?”
“How could I be?” Sariel asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a familiar silver pendant and threw it at Eder’s feet. Sunlight glinted off the sapphire in its heart. “Agnes is dead, and the blame lies upon your head.”
“Does it?” Eder asked, careful to keep his tone neutral. The discomfort in knowing his brother was hurting could not affect him, not at this critical moment. The fate of Anaon would be settled, Eder felt certain of that in his bones.
His brother pointed an accusatory finger.
“Do not play the fool with me. We both know the state of your lands. My people suffer, and all for your foolishness.”
“It is not foolish to patiently change the nature of a heart,” Eder said. “The faith I am building will take time, and the people’s conversion must be honest, not pressed at the edge of the blade. As the rest of your own country’s excesses so succinctly prove.”
“Enough!” His brother jabbed Redemption into the earth and crossed his arms. “No more words. No more pointless banter. You cannot remain in charge of Angloss. You have failed, Eder.”
“Failed, because I must honor a vow sworn to you and your cleansing laws, whose ineffectiveness are proven with every passing rise and fall of the sun.”
“You would refuse me?” Sariel asked.
“The truth is irrefutable. All of Anaon suffers from the crown upon your head.”
Wind blew across them, cold from the mountains, and it fluttered Sariel’s coat and Eder’s loose shirt.
“A duel,” Sariel said. “I propose a duel.”
Eder tilted his head slightly, intrigued.
“A duel?” he asked.
“For everything. You and I, right here, with all of Kaus as the stakes. If you win, I will step down from my throne and elevate you as ruler over all of Anaon.”
“Not all will agree to this,” Eder said, imagining how his various regents would react. “There will be civil war.”
“And that war would be child’s play for you to crush,” Sariel insisted.
“But if I win, you will abdicate your role as regent of Angloss. Afterward, you will join me in the Tower Majestic. For one hundred years, you will serve me, Eder. You will use your brilliance, and your wisdom, to help me enact the dream I have envisioned for all of Kaus. And then when Isca is reborn, and I find her anew, you will spend a year of that hundred pleading to her for forgiveness for the crime you committed against her.”
Eder imagined such a life, one hundred years bound in servitude to his brother, and was filled with revulsion. That revulsion paled against the alluring idea of sitting upon a throne he had been quite content to let Sariel sit upon… until the disasters of his reign made themselves evident.
“This is the cleanest way,” Sariel said when Eder hesitated. “A duel between us, the fate of the kingdom settled by our own blades, and no one else’s.”
Eder reached for Atonement beside him, then hesitated when his fingers touched the hilt.
This… this would be it. There would be no reconciliation between them.
Blood would be shed between brothers. In time, perhaps such a duel would be romanticized, but not here.
Not now. It was failure, and sorrow, and swords clashed.
He lifted Atonement from the earth and slashed the air before him.
“I accept your terms,” he said. “At least our differences shall be settled honorably.”
Sariel readied Redemption, holding it before him in a high grip. His legs braced. His eyes narrowed.
“Until death or surrender,” he said, dictating the terms.
“Until death or surrender,” Eder agreed.
A cold wind blew.
Sariel lunged first, the aggressor, as he was in all things.
Eder retreated step after step, his sword held in one hand as he blocked each and every hit.
The clack of bone against bone became the only noise.
Sariel shifted the angles of his swings, seeking openings, but Eder left him with none.
No matter how high or how low he struck, whether a chop at his shoulder or a cut at his side, Eder batted them all away.
Since Eder wielded his weapon one-handed, Sariel shifted tactics.
He planted his feet with each swing, trying to overwhelm Eder with sheer strength.
He was stronger than him, too, and perhaps it could have worked if the ploy was not so obvious.
Eder shifted his own tactics. When an overhead swing threatened to split him in half, he sidestepped while parrying it.
Not much, just enough for safety, each deflection using Sariel’s own strength against him.
Sariel’s frustration grew. He slammed his sword down twice, trying and failing to break Eder, and then pivoted backward, set his right leg, and lunged forward with Redemption thrusting.
It would have impaled Eder if his reactions had been any slower.
Instead the weapon cut a thin hole in Eder’s shirt as it slid harmlessly past. Atonement was out of position, but Eder made the most of it by shifting his arm so his elbow slammed into Sariel’s throat.
The pair separated, Sariel coughing and hacking to regain his breath.
Eder set his feet and lifted his sword, taking the hilt in both hands.
He eyed Sariel, daring him to make another attack.
His brother turned, spat blood, and then bounced on his heels, building momentum, building speed, before a sudden explosion of movement.
He leaped sideways, then dashed inward, attempting to surprise Eder with the change in direction and shift in angle.
Child’s play. Sariel was too used to fighting humans, where his speed could overwhelm them and his skills dwarfed their own.
He had not trained as Eder had. He did not spar against their siblings, whereas Eder and Aylah had spent more than a decade honing their abilities in mutual isolation, pushing each other to greater heights.
Sariel believed himself superior. Eder made himself so.
Eder parried the thrust high, twisted his sword, and immediately blocked the looping counter Sariel attempted.
Their weapons crossed, but Eder was braced, and Sariel in mid-charge.
Eder shoved Redemption aside, twisted so his elbow and shoulder struck his brother in the chest upon their collision, and then pirouetted away.
Atonement lashed out amid his twisting, slicing open Sariel’s chest. The coat and shirt parted, revealing flesh, blood, and a hint of cracked bone.
Pain and fury mixed together in a wordless shout from Sariel’s lips.
He slashed twice, an X pattern with strength born of desperation.
Eder blocked both, his concentration sharpening, the speed of the entire world slowing as he observed every shift of his opponent’s feet and hands.
Before Sariel leaped into a thrust, Eder already knew the movement coming, and he charged right back.
They passed by each other, weapons flashing, each seeking openings, but only one sword struck true.
Eder slowly eased out a held breath as Sariel collapsed behind him and coughed blood.
“Do you yield?” Eder asked, turning. His strike had ripped the tendons of Sariel’s right arm as well as broken more of his ribs. Based on the blood and the raggedness of his breathing, Eder suspected at least one of those ribs was twisted inward and puncturing a lung.
Sariel said nothing, only glared.
Eder approached, and he held Atonement to its full length. Its eternally sharp tip pressed to Sariel’s throat.
“Do you yield?”
“I do,” Sariel said through labored breaths. He dropped his weapon to the grass. “And so your reign shall spread across Kaus. How many lands will fall to bandits and thieves? How many families will lose their loved ones like I lost Agnes due to your ‘patience’?”
Still Sariel blamed him for his wife’s death. Eder’s resolve weakened, and he knelt before his wounded brother.
“You don’t know, do you?” he said. “I thought to spare you the pain, but I see doing so will only lead to hate festering in your heart.”
Sariel glared silently, further confirming the need for truth.
“There is a reason Agnes was in Olado,” he said. “She was fleeing you .”
His brother’s eyes widened. “You lie.”
Eder shook his head.
“I wish there were a gentler way to break this, Sariel, but I can only offer you the truth. Agnes sent me letters, asking if I would grant her asylum. She told me where to meet her, and though I sent soldiers to the rendezvous, she never arrived. I suspect bandits saw her little caravan, and the treasures it carried, and ambushed it without ever realizing your queen was among them.”
Sariel’s gaze drifted to the pale grass. His fingers dug into earth stained by his own blood.
“Why?” he whispered. Even asking the question sounded like it required tremendous effort.
Eder laid his blade flat across his knees as he crouched.
“She dreaded the world you were building,” he said.
“Every crime, every failure, must be punished, and she feared that she would one day fail you. Humanity is not perfect, Sariel, and never will be. She understood that, and she understood that your enforcement would continue to escalate until all of Anaon was bathed in blood. And so she wrote me, seeking a new life in Vendom. Forgive me, Sariel, but I obliged. I hoped that, once she was with me, it might finally be the light needed to pierce the darkness that has clouded your vision.”
Eder turned away from his broken brother, and though the need for the duel still chafed, he relished his sudden sense of freedom.
At last, all of Kaus would be his. He need not fear his brother’s influence as he expanded his temples.
Already Leliel’s Beloved, his newly established religion, had overtaken the west. Soon its temples would sprout in the east, furthering their influence. The salvation of humanity was at hand.
Eder smiled, and he felt a tremendous burden lift from his shoulders. All was as it should be. One day, even Sariel would understand, and forgive the steps taken to achieve it.
And then Redemption pierced his back, the tip punching out through his ribs in a rupture of blood and bone.
Eder gasped, his breathing suddenly wet and difficult.
The blade twisted, flooding him with pain.
Atonement dropped from a hand too weak to hold it.
His knees went numb, and he collapsed, held upright only by the weapon impaling him.
“Mine is the only throne,” Sariel said, and ripped Redemption free, tearing innards and bone with it.
Eder collapsed onto his side, unable to form words.
The sword had ruined his lungs. Silently retching, he glared at Sariel, overwhelmed by the sense of betrayal.
In all their years, amid all their differences, they had… they had never…
Sariel knelt before him, and despite his naked rage, there were tears in his eyes. He put his hands on Eder’s face and softly kissed his forehead. His condemnation was a whisper.
“Forgive me, Eder, but Kaus is mine, as are you, for I shall have my hundred years.”