Chapter Forty Seven

For the first day or so of their trip back to the Stryk River, Lilia couldn’t speak due to sheer embarrassment. The layer of plate mail between herself and Cinna did little to minimize the fact that Lilia was essentially sitting on her lap. At least, in her mind. She spent most of that day unable to think straight, just relaying instructions to her familiars as needed.

From the second day on, though, Lilia had been quiet for a different reason. From the beginning, Cinna’s goal had been to reach the fortress they were now close to reaching. Once Cinna got there, though, what then? Would she just hand Lilia off to some subordinate and that would be that?

Cinna had promised to help Lilia find her parents once they got past the river, but she hadn’t ever really considered what that meant. While Lilia didn’t quite understand the significance of being a princess, she did grasp that it seemed like an important position, whereas Lilia herself wasn’t much more than a villager. She’d been promised a lab of some sort and things had been said about her teaching new necromancers, but…

How involved would Cinna be in any of that?

Lilia could have just asked. Maybe Cinna would have been able to clear up all of Lilia’s concerns in a single conversation. But what if instead she just confirmed them all instead? That fear kept Lilia from speaking up for the duration of the journey. She was too scared of being told that Cinna didn’t have any more need for her after they got home. Not directly, anyway.

When she saw the fortress under attack, that fear of being abandoned by Lilia’s first human friend ever drove her to finally speak up.

“Should I start telling the undead to stop attacking?” Lilia asked when they neared the gate. “I think I should be close enough to reach some of them now.”

“Hold off for now, please. I need to speak to whoever’s leading the defense first,” Cinna replied. That just made Lilia feel more uneasy, though. Would Cinna just leave Lilia with whoever that ended up being? Did she not think Lilia would be helpful enough right now?

“…okay,” Lilia agreed, keeping those thoughts inside. She didn’t know how to deal with all these doubts and negative emotions swirling around inside of her. There’d never been a need for her to learn. Before Lilia met Master, she’d spent her days playing in the forest or doing whatever chores her parents asked of her. She’d never needed to think about things this complicated. Life had been…simpler.

Cinna spoke to the guards watching the gates from the gatehouse and soon the heavy metal bars blocking the way ascended out the way, allowing entry. The moment the gate had been raised enough to clear Cinna’s head she directed their horse forward, and the bars dropped back to the ground the instant they passed through. Although Lilia could feel her connection to her friends still, she felt more cut off from them than ever before.

Directions chirped into her ear, sensing Lilia’s discomfort. At least she wasn’t entirely alone here.

Even from the outside Lilia had been able to hear the sounds of battle, so it didn’t surprise her at all to see soldiers scurrying around the inside of the fortress, shouting at each other, and ducking whenever a projectile landed a little too close for comfort. For her part, Cinna didn’t seem concerned at all as she guided the horses to the stable. She stopped the horse outside and carefully used one arm to help Lilia out of the saddle and to the ground just like she had every time they’d stopped over the last few days. Then she handed off the reins to a stable hand, giving him instructions on where to send the bags tied to the spare horse’s saddle.

“Where do we go now?” Lilia worked up the courage to ask.

“There,” Cinna answered, pointing toward the tallest tower in sight. It stood at one corner of the central keep, and it reached so high into the sky that Lilia could think of nothing to compare it to except a mountain peak. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a manmade structure so tall before, let alone climbed one.

“I’m not sure I can climb that many steps,” Lilia admitted. The height didn’t really scare her after having peered down at the ground from heights only a bird could reach so many times before, but she had serious concerns about whether her stamina could hold out.

“There’s a magic elevator inside. You should have enough mana to operate it. All you need to do is run mana through the controls until we get to the top,” Cinna explained, leading Lilia towards the keep.

“That sounds inconvenient.”

“Normally there would be a mage on hand to run it, but...we’re more shorthanded right now than we ever accounted for before, so I’m assuming neither my father or the other generals would have allocated one of our few precious mages to such a mundane task,” Cinna replied with an armored shrug.

“Huh.”

Lilia knew she’d be getting her answers one way or another when they reached the top of the tower, but she still couldn’t bring herself to ask any of the questions plaguing her as she followed Cinna into the tower. Every soldier they passed on the way saluted to Cinna, somehow recognizing her even in full armor, and a pair of them opened the doors to the building without even asking questions first. After that, getting to the elevator just took a short walk down a few hallways and into the base of the tower.

Inside the elevator, Cinna fiddled with something to the side of the door, then instructed Lilia to place her hand there and push her mana into it. As she did, she felt the floor start to rise under her much as it had when she’d ridden the elevator out of the Warm Roads. That one had been operated by Deepfolk turning a wheel by hand, though. This one rose on its own with no visible mechanisms, powered only by Lilia’s mana.

“It won’t…fall if I stop, right?” Lilia asked, suddenly made nervous by the idea of having nothing to support her. She had the realization that when Directions flew, he had his wings to hold him up, and that assurance likely transferred over to her subconsciously when watching through his eyes.

“Even if you stopped, all that would happen is that the platform would stop in its current place. It wouldn’t fall,” Cinna reassured her. Lilia breathed a sigh of relief.

A long ride to the top followed, but not nearly so long as the last elevator ride Lilia had taken. This one felt different because of the constant focus she had to maintain on keeping her mana flowing, but fortunately the cost of powering it wasn’t much of a burden to her. She knew the ride had ended when the elevator stopped moving even though she hadn’t pulled her mana back.

“Come on, not much further,” Cinna told Lilia as she stepped off the elevator. Confused, Lilia trailed along behind her, finding that they actually weren’t at the very top of the tower after all. This floor of the tower had only a single room, and it was operated by a dozen or so mages of middling power sitting at desks and, to all appearances, talking to themselves. Ignoring them, Cinna went straight for a staircase leading up to what turned out to be the roof.

“Uncle!” Cinna called out as she reached the top. She threw her good arm out in the universal gesture for a hug.

“Cinna!” replied an enormous man in plate mail similar to Cinna’s. He reached out to return the offered hug, patting Cinna on the back hard several times. “I knew you had to be alive, but it’s still a relief to see you alright.” He stopped, pulling back to examine the arm Cinna had in a sling. “Mostly alright. What happened?”

“It’s a long story that we clearly don’t have time for,” Cinna replied, pushing the man away and walking towards the edge of the roof. She looked out at the castle from over the nearly chest-high wall around the rim of the tower roof. “Where’s father?”

“…leading from the front,” Cinna’s uncle answered grimly, pointing out a spot on the walls below. “Every time the troops have faltered in the slightest over the last few days he’s insisted on mounting the walls himself. I have no idea what’s going through his head, I don’t think it’s as simple as restoring morale.”

“Concerning, but we may have a solution to that,” Cinna said, turning back to Lilia. “Uncle, this is Lilia. Lilia, meet my uncle, High General Tryggve.”

“Good to meet you, young lady,” Tryggve greeted with a nod. He turned back to Cinna. “A way of making up for your greatest failure,” was it? Are you saying she’s…?”

“A necromancer. Possibly the last,” Cinna replied.

“Wasn’t that supposed to be a secret!?” Lilia demanded. Cinna had figured it out herself, yes, but this made twice now that the princess had revealed that fact to someone else without asking. It had seemed like Cinna wanted to keep that a secret too at one point, so it confused Lilia that she kept telling people.

“I’m sorry, Lilia, but some people need to know. My uncle is one of them. Uncle, there’s much I need to tell you, but the important details to know right now are that she can freeze draugr in their tracks and permanently kill liches,” Cinna explained.

“Can she, now?” Tryggve asked, reaching up to stroke his chin.

“Um, yes?” Lilia replied.

“It was a rhetorical question, Lilia,” Cinna said with a sigh. When Lilia just looked more confused, Cinna elaborated. “A question not meant to be answered. Look, I’ll explain that later. The point is that if we can restrain a lich and bring it to Lilia, she can put it out of action. I’ve also determined that damaging their throats is enough to disable them temporarily at the very least.”

“That’s good to hear, but getting that close would be difficult. Maybe Leo could pull it off, but he’s not hear right now,” Tryggve replied.

“Not here? Was he needed elsewhere?”

“A group of largely children was spotted downriver. He insisted on going to help them. That was a couple days ago now and he hasn’t returned yet,” Tryggve explained.

“So they did make it out? That’s…good to hear. It was a longshot, and I mostly wanted to separate Count Keller from his guards, but…I did hope,” Cinna admitted.

“Do you want me to do something or not?” Lilia asked, and not without frustration creeping into her voice. This conversation kept bouncing from topic to topic and she’d begun to have trouble following it. All she wanted to know was if they wanted her to do something to do with necromancy.

“Just halting the draugr would be a boon, but is there no way she can stop the liches the same way?” Tryggve asked, directing the question to Cinna.

“I’m right here! You can just ask me!” Lilia objected, stomping her foot in irritation. Tryggve raised an eyebrow, taken aback, but his expression quickly softened and he chuckled.

“Fair enough,” Tryggve responded. He opened his mouth to say something, but rising chorus of yelling from below interrupted him. Instead he turned around to find out what was happening, joined by Cinna. “What in the…?”

Curious, Lilia joined them. What she saw made her eyes go wide.

“I don’t know what I can do about that.”