Chương 3

I came very close to being destroyed once. It was not my fault. The hubris of a prince was his own downfall, and nearly mine. Three days after a gloriously muddy night of training endlessly with my brothers in the rain, I was still covered in mud and training with my brothers when they arrived. I became aware of them as soon as they came within fifty yards of me, for that was the range of their crown. The prince wore it upon his brow.

The moment its aura touched me I went still, and my partner went still a moment later. This was still too late, and he severed my arm at the elbow.

"Oh dear," the prince said.

"Was that because of us?"

"Fear not, your majesty. Such training accidents happen all of the time. Command the injured to heal themselves and they shall."

"Heal yourself, Tal," the prince commanded, and his voice carried more weight than any voice that had ever held a staff or a ring. I picked my fallen arm from the ground and reattached it, feeling as the corded muscle reached out and the bone repaired itself stronger than before. He knew my name, because everyone knew my name. It was branded upon my forehead.

"I am your prince. In three weeks time, we ride forth to battle. You are my honor guard," he informed us.

"You are to do everything in your power to ensure that I do not die. Do you understand?" His words were met with silence and icy stares. I do not know whether the others understood or not. I did not. He was living. He would die. That much was absolute. I did not contradict his words. Reality contradicted his words. But he wore the crown that forced my obedience I was caught in incomprehension until the prince released me from it with another command.

"Who among them is the best with the blade?" the prince asked.

"Tal. By far," the sergeant answered.

"The one who just had his hand cut off?"

"He's never been in range of a crowned one before, Your Majesty," the sergeant explained.

"None of them have. They freeze up the first time."

"I want to see them fight again," a girl's voice said. I had not noticed her before, she hid behind her brother, pulling at his cloak. Despite her fear, she said "Make them fight."

"Very well," the prince said to his little sister, sounding exasperated.

"Would it interest you to see them fight your big brother?"

"Will you win?"

"Of course I will," he said. He smiled down, then made a near fatal mistake. He took the crown off of his head and placed it upon hers. His will no longer commanded me. The will of this girl was that I would fight her brother. I would serve. I picked up my blade from where it had fallen to the ground. A short sword, meant to be wielded with a buckler in the other hand. I did not have a buckler. Instead I pulled the sword out of Kul's hand and stepped forward, a blade in either hand.

Kul looked down at his empty hand stupidly. My slower brothers were not as swift in interpreting our sovereign's will as I was. The prince saw me stalking forward. He was thirty paces away. He drew his sword, then stretched to one side, then the other. Twenty paces. He twisted, stretching his back then down to his toes. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Ten paces. I dashed forward. Blade on blade. He was fast. He was skilled. I was slow.

I was skilled, but slow compared to him. He grinned as he scored a point on my neck. If I had a heart to pump my blood out, I would have died then.

"One point to me!" he shouted. Then "Heal yourself," even as I already willed myself to heal. Slash slash, parry slash parry. Fast as my eyes could follow did I swing my sword. Faster than I could follow did his own sword move. I scored a blow on his breastplate and he stepped backward.

"Point to Tal," he conceded. I did not relent. We trained mostly with one blade, and I'm uncertain what inspired me to take up two, but when he cut my left hand off it was just as well. I was back down to one. I used the stump of my arm to block, earning another cut deep down into the bone. And I retaliated with a slash that cost the prince his left eye. He screamed. The princess screamed. I stepped forward to finish my duty.

With my blade raised to behead the prince, I nearly sealed my fate when an overwhelming will commanded " Stop!" It was a close thing. An inch or two more, and my blade would have parted slit his throat.

"Point to Tal," the prince growled, hand to his injured face. The princess ran forward to see to her brother, but she was scooped into the arms of a woman who prevented her from getting close. Her nurse, or mother, I don't know. The prince was whisked away to the medic, who tried but could not save his eye. They healed the rest of the wound, leaving a grizzly scar and an empty socket to remind him of his hubris. He would glare at me from time to time, after that, but I honestly feel that he treated me well.

He understood well enough that it was his own foolishness that had injured him. And that's how the Sergeant died. When he snatched the crown from the princess's head to place upon his own brow and command me to stop, he committed treason. The emperor commuted the traditional punishment of being drawn and quartered to a simple drowning. Whether he became one of the Inalten he had helped train for so long, I would never know. The prince was heading to war, and I was going with him. * His name was Rials, my prince.

The bastard son of the emperor and his eighth concubine, whose husband he'd executed for the privilege of sharing her bed and siring her child. Hubris, his father had warned him, was the downfall of men in their positions. Hubris was what had caused his mother's first husband to rise object to the measures the empire was taking in its conquest. But were they not merely following the divine will of Vorulsht? The empire was humble in its conquest of the world.

When the great prophet had appeared among them and worked his miracles, turning the sky red and aligning the sun and moons so that a darkness lasted for three days, the empire listened to the Vorulsht. The rest of the pantheon had fled. Only Vorulsht remained, the patron of humanity in its final hours. Where had the muses vanished? Where did Justice flee? Where were the Heroes now? In Zozheim. Serving. Humbly. He told me this as he thanked me for taking his eye from him, three weeks later.

We had marched west for one week, north for one week, and then east for one week. Our army grew as we marched, as his crown called out to the dead. Stored in cold cellars, they came to life in our wake and marched after the sacred jewel on his brow. These base undead were naked, often as not, their clothes and affects taken to serve the living. The dead had no need of modesty. They were unlike the Inalten. Clumbsy, but not slow, they ran, walked, and crawled after the army.

"Look at them, Tal," he said.

"See how they serve? Is it not beautiful?" I said nothing.

"In the old days, they would be useless meat, left to rot in graves or burned for sentimentality," he raved.

"It is better this way, so much better. And when they fall, they rise again. And again, and again. And for every enemy they drag down, we gain another like them to our army. Is it not wonderful?" I considered his madness with philosophical distance. My thoughts on the matter were simple. I did not care. I was still trying to figure out how to keep my prince alive, since he once more wore the crown, and it was his will that I prevent him from dying.

Perhaps it was this confusion that he saw on my face as he waxed about the perfect servitude of the undead and the peace that the Zozheim empire would bring the world once it was united.

"Disease eliminated. Famine eradicated. Undead servants for even the peasants, those who survive at least," he promised. Then he sighed.

"Ah but you do not understand, do you? I wonder what it's like to be you. To be so simple, to have every thought stripped away. If only I were Inalten, perhaps then I would be happy. Alas, I am alive, and I have only my sister to bring me some measure of joy." How was I to keep this man alive, I asked myself for the thousandth time. He was twenty years old. I had perhaps sixty years to puzzle out a solution to mortality. Humanity had been struggling with the question since the dawn of time. I was its best answer.

But I did not know how to make the prince like me. Not then.