Bacorium Legacy (65 page)

“Your father arrived before us,” Luca said to her, pointing to the sea of red coloured flags.

“I see,” Selphie replied. “He must have left sooner than I counted on. I'd expected to make it here before him.”

“Let's go meet him,” Luca said.

She nodded, a slight flicker of the corner of her mouth the only indication of her true thoughts.

On their way down the hill into the valley, a guard wearing the colours of Torachi stopped them and asked their business. Selphie quickly explained that she was the princess of Sono and had come to join her father, but the guard did not easily accept that seven unseemly-looking travellers had business at a gathering of kings. After some argument, the soldier agreed to escort them into the Torachian camp to verify this. As they would have had to pass through there to reach the Sonoian camp anyway, they begrudgingly agreed.

A few minutes later, they were led inside the Torachian king's tent. He was currently having a meeting with a few lords, but he looked up as they entered.

“What is it?” he asked.

“This girl claims to be the princess of Sono,” said the guard.

The Torachian king studied Selphie for a moment, then turned his gaze slowly back to the guard. “And you had doubt that she was?”

“Your majesty, I-”

“Next time don't trouble me or the Sonoian king's daughter,” he said sternly. “Now begone before I come up with a clever punishment for you.” The guard scurried out before the king could scarcely finish his words.

“King Edmund,” Selphie said, with a slight curtsy.

Edmund nodded in reply. The Torachian king couldn't have been older than twenty-five, but his eyes were heavy with the weight of command. His jaw was square and his hair was thick and gold. He wore fine gilded clothes beneath a silver breastplate. Turning to the three lords in his company, he said, “We'll finish this discussion later. Go.”

The lords rose and stepped out of the tent without a word. Edmund gestured to the now-open chairs. “Princess. Since my foolish soldier saw fit to bring you here, we might as well exchange pleasantries. Have a seat. Your entourage is welcome.”

Selphie took the seat. Brand went over to the other side of the room and dragged over a couple more chairs so everyone could sit. The king didn't spare him a second glance.

“I've not yet met with your father,” Edmund said to Selphie. “I'd assumed you had travelled with him.”

Selphie frowned, thinking carefully. “I had some business to take care of.”

“In T'Saw?” Edmund asked. “Or somewhere else?”

The Torachian king stared at Selphie with eyes devoid of warmth. It was clear he only wanted to know why she hadn't been with Zaow.

Edmund chuckled, but the smile never reached his eyes. “I suppose it's only natural that you have responsibilities of your own. King Zaow must find it difficult to keep up with things at his age.”

“My father is, as he always has been, an excellent king,” Selphie said, her anger carefully restrained. “His age has nothing to do with his ability to rule.”

Luca sat in his seat, like the others, and said nothing. The tension between Edmund and Selphie was thick.

“But he must at least feel a sense of urgency in teaching your older brother and you how to rule,” Edmund said to her. “He waited too long to have children and now the consequences of that are coming back to haunt him. He is seventy-eight years old, after all. He cannot be much longer for this world.”

“My father's age has given him wisdom that even you do not have, your majesty,” Selphie said through her teeth. The pretence of politeness was gone.

Edmund frowned, his eyes twitching a bit at the slight. “Wisdom? The choices he's made do not support that argument. After the Acarian war, he let Manorith's son stay in Acaria unharmed, to build up a new army. A wise king would have dealt with the boy before he became a problem. Now this problem has grown, becoming a threat not just to Sono, but to Saeticia and my kingdom as well. And your father would have us continue to ignore this, until Zinoro's army is knocking at our very doorsteps. It is admirable that your father thinks that peace and honour will save lives, but a true king knows when he needs to get his hands dirty.”

“You-”

“Enough,” Edmund said, silencing her with a wave of his hand. “I know all I need, and this conversation is of no further use to either of us. Take your entourage and leave. Now that you're here, I'm sure Zaow will have no further need to delay the meeting. Tell him it will happen this afternoon.”

Turning his attention to some papers on the desk before him, Edmund was done with her. Rising, Selphie beckoned for them to follow her. She marched outside the tent with clenched fists.

As Luca stepped outside and joined the others, the three lords from before passed him on their way back inside. Following behind them was a girl in fine clothes and battle armour, with flaming red hair and a sword at her side. The girl's eyes met Luca's for a brief moment as they passed, and there was the briefest flicker of recognition in her eyes. The look only lasted a moment, before the girl vanished inside.

Luca rushed to catch up with the others, who had moved some distance from Edmund's tent. He saw Selphie having a private discussion with Jared even further away from the others. Brand looked to him as he arrived.

“She had no desire to go to Tellador and meet with him after Allma Temple,” Brand said. “I think I see why.”

“Clearly he thinks Zinoro needs to be dealt with,” Luca said. “And we already know what Marcus wants. If this is how the meeting goes down, I think we already know what outcome to expect.”

“Unless Zaow can come up with a convincing argument,” Brand said.

“Maybe,” Luca said. “But I wonder if that's really the best idea.”

“What do you mean?” Emila asked.

“Zinoro does need to be dealt with,” Luca said to them. “Edmund may not be very nice, but he's right. Continuing to delay things is only making them worse. Zinoro wants his war, and he'll have it eventually. But the longer it takes, the larger his army is going to get.”

Emila bit her lip and looked down. “The revenants...”

“Exactly.”

Luca looked at the others. Wiosna was staring at something off in the distance, and Ash was kicking a rock on the ground. Selphie was still talking with Jared.

“We do not have a Rixeor Fragment, so I cannot beat Zinoro himself, but we can still stop him,” Luca said. “Even with his magick sword he cannot fight the armies of three kingdoms all on his own.”

“So you think we should go to war, then?” Brand asked.

“We shouldn't make any hasty decisions. Not until we've discussed every possibility.”

At that moment, Selphie and Jared rejoined them.

“I'm going to see my father now,” Selphie told them. “If you wish to join us at the Sonoian camp, you're welcome.”

“Where else would we-”

Before Luca could finish, Wiosna stepped up and said, “Actually, there's someone else we'd like to go see.”

Selphie frowned, but nodded. “Very well. I suppose we'll regroup later. The meeting will likely be this evening, and I have little doubt my father will want me there.”

She started off, with Jared at her side, and Luca watched her go, wishing he could have gone as well. He knew one of the things she and her father discussed would be him, and the possibility of delaying the conflict by delivering him to Zinoro.

He turned to Wiosna, expecting an explanation. She pointed off in the distance, to another part of the Torachian camp.

“What is it?” Luca asked her.

“Look closely,” she said, an excited smile on her lips.

Brand's eyes widened, and he stepped past them both to get a better look. “There's no way - that's Allma Temple's old banner.”

“I think we know who's going to be there,” Wiosna said. “Shall we go say hello?”

A grin split Brand's face. “Absolutely.”

The five of them - Luca, Emila, Brand, Wiosna, and Ash - they crossed the Torachian camp, and made their way over to the cluster of tents that bore the Allman colours. It was only a small part of the Torachian numbers, but there were at least two dozen tents, forming a large circle.

Within this circle, there was a campfire, where some goblin meat was being cooked on a spit. Several young people were gathered around, their white robes ripped and worn and covered in dirt from months of travel. A man wearing a similar robe was telling them a story, though he stopped when he noticed the five of them approaching.

“Well, well,” Tranom said. “Look who it is.”

Brand walked up to his former master, and the two of them grinned and embraced. Breaking apart, Tranom put his hand on Brand's shoulder, and turned to the students before him.

“Kids, this is Brand. My first student. He's a damned good fighter, and an even better friend. You can learn a lot from him.”

Luca and the others joined him. Tranom saw them, and introduced them as well. “They are Wiosna and Ash, also students of the temple,” he said. “And last but not least, this is Luca, son of Lodin, who fought with us during the attack.”

“Lodin?” asked one of the students Tranom spoke to. “The hero who trained under Dori and defeated Manorith in the first war?”

“The very same,” Tranom said with pride.

Luca looked to his brother, who scoffed and turned away. Already irritated by Tranom's slight, it was no surprise that Ash had no desire to hang around his former peers and exchange stories of the father he hated. Luca let him leave without complaint - he cared little for what his brother did anymore.

He then noticed an uneasy look on Brand's face. He was about to ask him what was the matter, when Tranom spoke to them again.

“Take a seat. We have much to discuss.”

They did so, the four of them sitting down on the cloth rag on the ground around the fire.

“After you left Serenite, I took the remaining students and we returned to the temple,” Tranom told them. “The Acarians' fire destroyed much of it, but the stone walls still stood. A few monsters had claimed the ruins as their own, but we quickly eliminated them. In the weeks after that, we were hard at work rebuilding the temple. We raised the flag back up, to stand proudly in the air and let the world know that Allma Temple yet lived.”

He smiled, and continued. “There were more survivors than I thought. With the flag back up, word began to spread, and survivors who had been living in the woods and in towns nearby began to make their way back. And even new faces arrived, eager to learn our ways even after our supposed death. The ones who sit with us now are such.”

Luca looked again at the young students sitting with Tranom by the fire, and this time he saw what he had previously missed. They did not have that certain look that one had after years of training - that inexplicable something that he saw in Brand and Wiosna and even Jared - that his brother did not have. They were new to this. Perhaps they knew how to swing a sword well enough, but Luca doubted they had ever spilt blood before.

And Brand's expression had grown even more uneasy. “And - you brought them here?”

“I did,” Tranom said. “They may be new, but they are still students of Allma, and in the coming years, when the temple has finished being rebuilt and is on its way back to the glory it once had, they will need to know this story. Some of them may die in the battle. They know this, and they are ready for it.”

Brand did not look so convinced.

“What makes you think that the battle will even happen?” Emila asked him. “Zaow might still talk the other kings out of it.”

“Zaow is a fool if he thinks that this war will not happen,” Tranom said to her. “Already some are calling the conflict with Manorith the
first
Acarian war. It is an
inevitability, and rightfully so. Zinoro has committed atrocities, for which there must be justice. Not just for Allma Temple, but for all those whose lives were lost because of him. We will not forgive, nor will we forget. The survivors of Allma will not rest until Zinoro's blood is shed.”
 

The young students around him nodded in agreement. Tranom stared into the fire, the reflection of the flames burning in his eyes like the hatred he undoubtedly felt.

Luca thought of his father, and found it hard to disagree with those words. How many of the Allmans were feeling the very same desire for vengeance that he himself was so familiar with?

“Your brother is not with us,” Tranom pointed out to Luca.

“Indeed,” he said. “I don't think he feels like he was an Allman.”

Tranom scoffed. “You were with us for not even a fortnight, and you are more an Allman than he ever was.”

Luca said nothing. Ash had said enough already, when he'd first met him at the underground lake. His talk of conspiracies had seemed mad at the time, before most of it had turned out to be true. And that was before Allma had pinned the blame of the Acarian attack on him. It was no surprise that Ash had no desire to sit and talk with the people who had called for his blood.

“It's a shame, really,” Tranom said, his voice lower as he stared into the fire. “Kevalie would still be here were it not for him. She was a good student - leagues better than your brother. It seems we lost all the best students that day.”

“Who was she?” Emila asked.

“One of the temple's best students,” Tranom said. “She arrived at around the same time as Brand, and the two were always in close competition. They were good friends. Despite being a skilled warrior, she was a kind soul. She gave everyone a chance, even Ash. One day, her and Ash were sparring, and there was an accident. One of the walls collapsed, and Kevalie was trapped under it. We got her out, but her wounds were fatal.”

Luca remembered Brand mentioning a student who had died while sparring with Ash. He hadn't mentioned it had been a friend of his. Luca looked to Brand, but he did not meet his gaze.

“If it was an accident, then why do you blame it on Ash?”

“The collapse itself was no fault of Ash's,” Tranom said. “But his inability to escape from it was the fault of his own ineptitude. As a wind-form magi, he should have been quicker. Kevalie gave her own life to save his, and she was worth far more than he was.”