The Ancient Ones (The Legacy Trilogy Book 3) (18 page)

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Then I apologise if I am ill-mannered, Your Majesty. I had a simple upbringing.’

‘So did I,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Just call me Leopold. I’ve only been an emperor a few days. You were queen for much longer than that.’ The words had come out before he could stop them.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, furrowing her brow.

‘Nothing.’ They safely stepped back from the edge. ‘Your cousin would be angry if I spoiled the surprise. I’ll let him tell you everything.’

By now, Samuel had landed on a high steeple beside Orrell’s men. He paused, then dived into the teeming horde of Rei’s soldiers in the streets. Leopold and Jessicah could not clearly see what was happening, merely the effect. A ring of stillness appeared around the magician as those near him fell to the ground, lifeless. He continued moving, leaping between buildings, darting from street to street, and wherever he went the enemy fell around him.

A cheer rose up from the Turian army and they moved ahead as Samuel cleared the way .

Leopold felt Jessicah move at his side.

‘Leopold!’ she called, her voice filled with urgency.

She was looking behind them. A winged beast, a giant leathery bat with a nest of serpentine heads, was roosting at the far edge of the tower. It hissed and slavered, shaking streams of spit from its heads as it rattled them about.

‘The trapdoor!’ Leopold said, pointing to the wooden door that led down into the tower.

‘It’s too close,’ Jessicah warned, for the flying creature would be on them before they could near it.

‘What do we do?’ Leopold asked with urgency.

‘Your sword!’ the woman by his side said. ‘Use it! Kill it!’

Leopold considered telling her that he had no knowledge how to use the weapon. Instead he nervously put his hand to the hilt, keeping his eye on the beast as it watched. He pulled the blade free of its sheath and felt lightning in his grip—a slender, silver blade of death that shimmered with reflected light. He imagined his father standing in the same posture, the blade being the only thing between some fiend and a tender damsel.

Looking to the demon, all pretence of bravery evaporated.

The beast unfolded its leathery wings and shrieked on sight of the sword. Its many heads writhed and gnashed the air, and it rushed at them, snapping and biting. Leopold had hoped the spirit of his father might guide his hand, but on sight of the creature’s charge, the sword turned to stone.

He tried to hold the weapon in some meaningful way, and realised it was beyond him. Adding to his difficulties, he could not take his eye off the beast as it closed. His mind was overwhelmed with fear.

‘Leopold!’ Jessicah shrieked.

Perhaps it was because of his violent shaking, or because he had paled with fright, but Jessicah realised he was frozen to the spot. She stepped in front of Leopold, obscuring his view, with something bright in her hands and in one movement she made a broad swinging action.

The beast shrilled and fell dead at her feet. As she stepped aside, Leopold saw his sword in her grip, and noted his empty palms with disbelief. She had relinquished the weapon from his hand and saved them.

Leopold stepped beside her. The beast’s head lay beside its body, snakeheads writhing and clawed feet kicking wildly, no traction upon the stones. The sword was wreathed in the creature’s black blood, and Jessicah was holding its hilt, staring at the demon defiantly like a veteran warrior.

‘How—how did you do that?’ he asked her, nauseous at both the sight of the dead creature and the fear souring inside his stomach.

‘I don’t know,’ Jessicah admitted, surprised by what she had done. ‘I just ... did.’

She returned the sword to Leopold and he shoved it back into its scabbard, covered in ooze. It squelched, pushing out a squirt of the bubbling black fluid.

‘Well,’ he stammered, ‘time we went below before any more come to devour us.’ He went to the trapdoor that covered the entrance into the tower and struggled with the chain to open it.

She hurried to his side, as he heaved the heavy door open. They fled down the steps revealed below and Leopold pulled the trapdoor banging shut above them, sending them abruptly into blackness, only a thin line of bright light from the crack above to guide their way.

Thankfully, many windows were further down the tower. They descended the countless stairs, crossing balconies and circling the inside of the building as they explored their way down. The place was abandoned. Many rooms were stripped of their doors and the contents broken or removed. Every few floors, they looked out a window or glanced from an external balcony, to see how the battle was progressing outside.

When they were halfway down the tower, they saw that Orrell’s men, led by Samuel, had reached the palace gates and were forcing their way inside. The grounds, once beautiful gardens, had been churned to mud, and the Turians hacked at the remaining guards that blocked their way. Most of the defending Order were already dead, killed by Samuel’s spells. Orrell’s men chopped at those that remained, while Samuel assaulted the large, screeching humanoids that accompanied them.

They fought towards the central buildings, and Leopold saw the immense shape of General Ruardin at the palace walls, striding through buildings, trailing broken rubble. How they planned to stop such a monster, he had no idea.

Leopold spied the shape of Samuel scuttling towards the beast. In one movement, the magician had vaulted across the rooftops. He gathered speed as he went, changing to a streaking blur, and the two met with an almighty boom; Samuel came off the worst, thrown aside. His impact shattered a tall steeple, rubble piling on top of him. Leopold thought that may have been the end of him; but Samuel was not defeated so easily. He clawed through the debris and battled the general again. The beast was slow and the magician darted in and out, evading its enormous limbs. He teased it, and it followed him, dragging its bulk alongside the grounds, scraping out huge grooves in the wall with the back of its stone shell.

Leopold and Jessicah had seen enough, they bounded down the stairs, never short of breath, and before they knew it, they reached the ground floor.

The door had been boarded over from the outside; Leopold had to throw his shoulder against it a couple of times before the shoddy nails broke free from the brickwork, and they burst out into a courtyard. The walls around them were covered with the pale skeletons of ivy, dried residue of the deep green climbers that once graced many of the external palace walls, neglected and left to die in the care of Rei and her forces.

An archway nearby led them into the grounds proper, and in the open they saw that Orrell’s men were assaulting the last of the forces left inside the palace boundary. The men shut the great gates behind them and the remnants of Rei’s Order in the streets, pursuing them, were locked out. Neither, however, could Orrell’s men escape. They were trapped inside: hopefully, with good reason.

Leopold trudged across the mud to Captain Orrell, Jessicah right behind, holding the hem of her blue gown.

‘What are you doing here?’ the man roared, wiping the blood, sweat and mud from his face. ‘You should be back on the ship!’

‘The Witch Queen brought me here; Samuel saved me,’ Leopold responded.

‘And who is she?’ Orrell said, glaring at Jessicah.

‘Samuel’s cousin.’

‘Then I won’t ask how she came to be here.’ He looked her up and down, wrapped in the dress as she was, mud over her bare feet and shins, for she had abandoned her fashionable although impractical boots halfway down the tower. ‘What of the witch? Is she dead?’

Leopold glanced to the woman beside him. ‘Ah, Samuel took care of her.’

‘Then why are her armies still screaming for our blood?’ Orrell asked in frustration.

‘He said he needs to kill General Ruardin as well. That’s what he’s arranging now.’

Orrell sighed aloud. ‘It never gets easy, does it?’ he said, mirroring the magician’s earlier sentiment. ‘Then we will have to continue with Samuel’s plan as best we can. I only hope his mad scheme proves its worth. Most of my men lie dead in the streets or inside those fiends.’

‘Where is he?’ Leopold asked, for he had become disoriented after making his way from the tower, and currently did not know north from south or east from west.

‘There,’ Orrell said, just as a monstrous howl came from afar, and Leopold followed Orrell’s finger to beyond the palace walls. Movement, and a great hulking shell of stone lumbered on the other side. ‘We have much to do yet. You two stay close to me.’

The captain led them back to the palace, and they raced up the many, great white steps that led to the main entrance, following his men. Each of Orrell’s troops had one of the black powder canisters strapped to their backs—some bore more under their arms—and they made their way through halls and out to a courtyard near the base of the High Tower.

‘Wait here,’ Orrell told them.

Leopold stopped the bloodied man before he could disappear inside. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Samuel said we need to destroy the tower if we want to end this battle while we’re still breathing, so that’s what we are doing. It had better work. We will not survive more than a few hours in here once the main gate comes down ... and that won’t be long.’ He gazed up at the mighty spire of the High Tower. ‘My engineers know the foundations well. I only hope we still have enough powder left to do the job.’ With that, the captain left Leopold and Jessicah waiting where they were.

They stood for a time, while Orrell’s men busily ran in and out of the tower entrance, carrying casks from the arms of the wounded.

‘Stay here,’ he told Jessicah.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked him apprehensively.

‘I want to see how Samuel is fairing against the general.’

Leopold ventured out upon the grounds once more to get a better view. He heard the crackle of magic and the muffled thunder of walls and buildings collapsing. It was a brutal fight, then the noise fell suddenly. Nothing stirred, save for the rising dust. There was no sign of Samuel and so Leopold ventured nearer, to the foot of the wall. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Orrell’s men on the steps, and another cluster atop the great palace gates, firing down with arrows to keep Rei’s army outside.

He was considering climbing the nearest stairs that would lead him atop of the wall beside him, when his boots shivered and a heavy boom followed. Vibrations ran across the ground and up through his legs; something enormous stirred. The mighty shell of General Ruardin was only a dozen strides away, beyond the wall, and the earth rattled as it moved again. Leopold ran and a roar of anger sounded behind, deafening.

Looking over his shoulder, the dark figure of Samuel bounded over the wall directly after him. He looked beaten and tired, desperate, and he ran in a wavering path. Even so, he quickly caught Leopold and was dragging him along by the arm when another ear-splitting wail shattered the air.

Leopold opened his mouth to ask what was happening, but the words never made it out. The wall behind them exploded and what-was-once General Ruardin became visible.

Leopold stopped, twirling around and gawking at the monster, nothing humanly recognisable in the creature. More of the stonework crumbled as it pushed its way through. Tentacles covered the mouth and as they parted, a jet of blinding fire sprayed forth, baking the mud between them.

‘Keep running, you fool!’ Samuel exclaimed.

Leopold wasted no time in turning about and following the magician as fast as he could.

‘Why are we running?’ Leopold asked. ‘Can’t you defeat it?’

‘Of course not, or I would not run,’ the magician panted. ‘His armour is impregnable. The stones of the old School of Magic have been fused upon him and within him, replacing his skin and bones. They came originally from Mount Karthma—the most powerful concentration of magic in the world; at least, it was until a star destroyed it. It has been worked to quell any spells that meet it. I never planned to defeat him. Not myself. I only wanted to lure him into place. Hopefully, Captain Orrell is ready. I can delay the general no longer. It’s now or never.’

Samuel stopped, skidding in the mud, and faced the thing as it lumbered towards them. Desperate hope filled the magician’s eyes, as if all his plans relied on this single moment. Leopold waited beside him as the Ruardin beast bellowed again, its footsteps shaking the earth.

Captain Orrell’s men bounded down the palace steps, vaulting as many at a time as they could. The captain scurried down behind them, dragging Jessicah by the hand.

‘Run!’ Orrell shouted towards the pair, and Leopold and Samuel did as they were told, turning once again from the roaring creature and heading towards the palace gates. Another jet of flame tore after them, searing the earth.

There was a deafening, sharp bang and Leopold was thrown sideways. He flailed his arms and legs wildly, sprawling onto his chest in the mud. He rolled over, wide eyed, to hear the loud crack that followed. He whirled about, desperate to see what new attack was upon them, but the sounds had not come from General Ruardin. The beast was still lumbering after them, ignorant to the explosion at the heart of the palace.

A cloud of dust and smoke was rising from between the buildings and then, the impossibly tall High Tower of Cintar began to lean. There was another set of audible cracks, the sounds of failing stone and supports, and it tilted further. It gathered momentum until there was no doubt about which direction it was falling—directly towards the beast ... towards them.

Captain Orrell was at Leopold’s side, pulling him out of the mud and dragging him away, but Leopold could not take his eyes from the sight of the tower as it crumbled. Huge stones shattered across the palace, collapsing the buildings beneath it. Concrete grey plumes of dust gushed from the palace entrance and poured out over the steps.

The upper half of the tower slammed into the ground, its segments crashing down and creating a path of devastation, making the ground shudder tremendously. General Ruardin lay in that path, vanishing under the rain of stone. Everything disappeared in the billowing clouds that filled their eyes and lungs.