Two Deaths

 Gorice XIII threw his enchantments with wild abandon as he stalked the hall, but his quarry remained elusive. Preparations for the coming festival had left it cluttered and he cast about in search of Neteth, hurling flame and whips of searing light at every hint of movement.

“Enough dallying. Assist me,” he said to Asphodel.

She stood by the wall as though trying to insinuate herself into their surroundings and be forgotten. Two loyalties warred within her.

“What is this reticence? Abase thee and serve me, Asphodel,” commanded the king.

She nodded toward an ornate folding screen the servants had placed at one end of the room.

“There, my lord.”

Spells flared about him as he drew closer, failing to notice as he passed the tall aphorae behind which Neteth crouched. Fire scourged the screen, which vanished in an instant, leaving only smoke and a small trace of ash. In the ensuing moment of confusion Neteth struck, dashing up to the king and striking a blow that sheared many of the links of his mail shirt but failed to go through.

The king hissed in pain as he drew back, holding his hands thrust ahead of his body, fatal enchantments held at the ready. Then a blow was struck from another direction, a bolt thrown from Asphodel's staff. Though halted by the fortress of magical empowerment of which the king had made himself the center, it held him at bay long enough for the young prince to avoid the retaliatory strike. Clay vessels burst, disgorging wine and water across the floor. Again the prince slashed his foe, heedless of the peril to his life. This was the end of the king's patience.

Gorice XIII rose in a corona of green witch-fire, lightning flaring from the tips of his splayed fingers and a terrible sneer upon his face. The jewel-encrusted iron crown glowed madly in the unnatural light, an eerie sight exceeded only by the insanity in the king's eyes. He hurled a thunderbolt down at Asphodel and the stone split where it struck.

“I am the sorcerer king! The hammer of heathens!” he cried in a voice amplified by the immense power at his command. “The armies of man are as chaff before me! I am the great thresher and the time of harvest is at hand!”

The earth rumbled and smoked beneath his onslaught, a fury of sorcery that would have put most men to flight. The air itself sang with the king's power, a mighty keening sound like a chorus of wraiths. Bolts of lightning danced from his hands and gouts of green flame flared and burst in every direction, hissing, sizzling, crackling with such intensity that Neteth felt as though he were standing in the midst of a great waterfall, for no matter which way he turned there was no respite. No sooner did he duck behind a column than it sagged and melted where the king directed a killing look upon it.

Neteth leaped over the low wall in his way and ran but the air itself was against him, slowing his movements, and then a scalding wave poured over him, churning, and threw him on his side. There! he thought, spying a rack of ceremonial weapons. He snatched a spear and made haste to throw it, raising his arm and blinking heat-induced tears from his eyes. A surge of lightning crackled about him and the spear snapped in half. Gorice XIII laughed, a hideous sound more befitting a beast than a man. The prince tried to stand, then stumbled as though the world spun on a new axis.

“A worthy foe you might have been were you born twenty years earlier. Alas,” Gorice's voice boomed and the hall shook with it, “you have chosen death! Cut down before your prime!”

Neteth threw for the king's heart and the fragment of the spear struck true. Gorice XIII reared back, howled like a dying jackal, and fell to the smoking stones. Despite the grievous wound he had vitality enough to rise to his feet, the broken spear shaft protruding from his chest. Neteth approached slowly, cautiously as one who believes he has won but fears some reversal of fortune.

“Yield,” he said. “Let us depart.”

The king moved with astonishing speed, summoning a sword of flame into his hands. Sparks and filaments of hate-born light spiraled from its length as it clashed with the sword in Neteth's hands, one forged by artifice of man and the other by will alone. His technique was crude, his movements designed with the single-minded goal of battering down his opponent. He knew no finesse was needed with that fulminant blade, and with each blow he drove Neteth back until the prince stood against a wall.

A desperate idea occurred to Neteth. He could not win a contest of strength, even with the king spending his lifeblood with each movement. The arc of flame whirled about him, each thrust and slash caught just in time, each turned aside or pushed back as he awaited the opening he sought, one that had to be seized without delay. He was hemmed in and falling back in the only direction he could, toward the corner, the wall to his left and the king pressing home the attack from just ahead and to the right. The magical sword flashed again as Gorice XIII brought it to a vertical position from which he could either defend himself or launch a new flurry of attacks.

In that instant where the king decided on his next act Neteth made his final effort. With his right hand he grabbed the line of flame separating them, drawing it aside as he thrust the tip of his pilfered sword into the king's throat.

The king fell once more and this time did not rise. There was a pitiful spasm and he lay still, his enchantments evaporating into the smoke-filled air.

“I do not understand,” he murmured in a voice suffused with the chill of the grave. “The world without me is as a night without stars.” And with those words the hand of death, in its infinite patience, took its prize.

Neteth fell against the wall, overcome with pain. His hand was a black and blistered wreck. Asphodel delayed but a moment gathering things scattered by the fighting and rushed to his side where she cleaned the injured hand, applied a salve, and bound it up with silk torn from her own dress. As she worked she told him everything, a confession he received in solemn silence. She said that his father the king had been right about her and that he'd thrown away his birthright for a murderer. When she was finished he only cupped her face with his good hand and drew her close and there was no need for words.

There were no witnesses to the last stand of Menepatros, a man who took lives easily and had always expected his own end would be similarly violent. Therefore he had determined never to shy from death but accept the edict of fate, whether in his favor or against. Only he could say whether this ambition in the end was satisfied.

“Well,” Tex said, kneeling by the stricken man's side. “Damn.”

“You were holding back before.”

“Truth be told, I wasn't. You just caught me by surprise,” said Tex. “To be fair, it's a great trick. How do you do it?”

“My father taught me some of his spells. Not many," he said with some difficulty. "Not enough.”

“What happens next? With all this, I mean,” Tex said with a gesture that took in the dark expanse.

“Chaos. This was our hope.” His voice was growing weaker yet still contained a hard edge, an iron-clad decision to not make himself helpless even in his final moments. “I knew the old man had some scheme of his own. He was always the sort and apprised us from time to time of goings-on in Ersetu. When he summoned Asphodel from her home I went to the oracle of Migdol and asked what would become of her. She's always right, the oracle. And she replied that if Asphodel went to Ersetu she would return a queen.”

Tex pondered that a moment.

“Yeah, she probably will.”

“Honor one last request,” said Menepatros.

“Tell me and we'll see.”

“Where are you from? What's it like there?”

Tex nodded, a thoughtful cast to his face as he listened to the labored breathing, knowing only a few minutes remained.

“There's this planet called Earth, and on that planet is the greatest place you'll ever see. A place that feels endless, but also familiar, and I wouldn't want to be from anywhere else...”