The Eighth Warden - After the Burning

Author's Note: This short story takes place in the world of The Eighth Warden. It contains spoilers for Books 1 through 5, so I recommend reading those first.

Short Story: After the Burning

Five thousand and six years before the events of The Eighth Warden...

The village of Lapithos, at the edge of what had once been central Van Kir, had hung on through the long years of the Burning, its residents stubbornly clinging to what lands still remained to them.

Or they had until now. Most of the bodies were arranged in a wide circle on the village green, but a scattered few had fallen elsewhere, as if they'd realized too late what was happening and attempted to run.

The man who called himself Calum stared out across the village, dust clouds along the northern horizon announcing the foreboding presence of the barrens. Or the wastelands, or the burned lands. The region had been given many names by many people, but Calum still thought of it as Van Kir.

"The bodies are only a couple of days old," his second-in-command, Sakur, told him. "We're catching up."

"Not fast enough," Calum said.

They'd been tracking Dekar for over two months. This was the third village the dark mage had slaughtered, but it was difficult to gain ground on him when there were no obvious patterns to the man's actions or the direction he was traveling. In some villages he brought gifts for the children, while in others, he ranted and raved and cried. And in the unlucky few, he killed everyone around.

Tracking down an individual murderer might not have been the best use of Calum's time, particularly when the victims were just humans, but these little tasks he assigned himself served to give his life some sort of purpose while he considered his broader plans. The world he'd discovered himself in after recovering from the ritual was much changed from what he'd known before. It had been over a century since he'd escaped the darkness, yet the Chosar had been dying out even then, whether from hunger, old age, or being unmade by the wildstorms. These days, very few of The People still remained. They'd been gradually replaced by their changed children, who were more capable of surviving these new circumstances.

With the loss of the Chosar's guiding presence, the human barbarians had been left to fight over the scraps, vying against each other for the power once wielded by their former overlords. Calum owed the world a debt, yet with civilization having fallen into chaos, it was unclear how he would pay what he owed. The wildstorms might have died out, but the damage they'd caused would be felt for generations.

"Calum!" someone called. "We've got a survivor here!" The shout came from Berto, or possibly his brother Berno. Calum had trouble telling humans from the same tribe apart. With identical twins, he didn't bother to try. He'd hired the two men after executing the warlord they'd been working for.

"Who is it?" he called back, heading in the direction of the voice. Sakur followed him.

"This fellow," Berto said, the battle axe strapped across his back giving away his identity. He was nudging a smaller, greasy-haired man ahead of him. "Says his name is Lederis."

"Lederis," Calum said. "You live here?"

"Y-yes, sir," Lederis said, his eyes darting back and forth as the rest of Calum's men approached. He looked like he wanted to run, but Berto had a tight grip on his shoulder.

"What happened?" Calum asked.

"A... a man, sir. He said he knew magic that could keep the plague from touching us, but then he killed everyone. Killed them all!"

The swelling plague had been racing across the continent, at least in areas with poorer sanitation, but Calum and his men had been able to ignore it during their search. One of their number, Mikus, was an acolyte of Pallisur--a priest of Pallisur, as the humans would say. Mikus had been gifted with the ability to heal any sort of disease. No one had thought to question why the fellow had been chosen by Pallisur so soon after Calum recruited him.

"This man," Calum said. "Dark hair, rich clothing? Calls himself Dekar?"

Lederis bobbed his head up and down. "You know him, sir?"

"Not yet," Calum said. "If he killed everyone, how did you manage to escape?"

"I didn't like the look in his eyes," Lederis said with a shiver. "He promised to save us, but I didn't like his eyes at all, or that skull he was showing around."

"Skull?" Calum asked. "Why was he was carrying a skull?"

"Not a real one. A small pendant, silver. Red gemstones for eyes. He said that's how he would keep the plague away."

"He used it for the spell?" Enchanted objects had been very rare since the fall of Van Kir, but the last dark mage Calum had hunted had one as well, a gauntlet of unknown purpose. Calum had buried it with the man's body.

"I didn't see anything," Lederis said. "I got out of here before he started, hid at my family's farm. When I came back, everyone was dead and he was gone. That was two days ago."

"Were there any other survivors?"

Lederis's eyes darted to the southeast before he could stop himself. "N-no, sir. I was the only one."

An obvious lie to protect his family from the heavily armed strangers. Calum let it pass. He had secrets of his own.

"Do you know which way Dekar went?" he asked.

Lederis shook his head, but Drocus, the group's scout, answered. "We found a single set of tracks heading north, toward the barrens."

The men exchanged worried glances--they knew Calum wouldn't turn back. The firestorms had finally burned themselves out five years earlier, but the barrens remained a desolate wasteland where nothing could grow, a huge, near-perfect circle surrounding the abandoned mountain fortress of Tir Yadar. In another month, the autumn rains would arrive, packing down the soil for the winter, but for now, the dust and ash would blow across the dry landscape in massive, choking clouds.

What could Dekar possibly want in the barrens? Nothing useful remained in the Chosar's former bastion of power. Or, at least, nothing that the human mage could possibly know about.

"Odar, you'll stay here with the horses," Calum ordered. "There's no grazing in the barrens. The rest of you, search the village for provisions. We'll take as much as we can carry in our packs. And find more waterskins! At this time of year, there'll be too much ash blowing into the rivers to refill there."

The men set to work, not raising the obvious complaints. For humans, they were decent sorts. Calum had hand-picked each one himself--capable fighters, able to stand against the wrath of the warlords when the need arose, and willing to face the strange new dangers which had arisen since the Burning.

But if necessary, he'd sacrifice them all if it meant catching his quarry. The greater good had to be considered.

#

On their second day into the barrens, they discovered that more footprints had joined with Dekar's--a small group which had come from the west, then turned to match the dark mage's trajectory.

Calum pulled the dust scarf away from his face. "Are they traveling together?" he asked.

"It's hard to tell," Drocus said. The scout got down on his hands and knees and crawled ten feet down the path, peering closely at the indentations in the dirt. "Four or five people in the new group. Their tracks cross Dekar's, but the wind has blown away too much to tell who came first. They can't be very far apart, though. No more than a few hours."

Which didn't eliminate any options. Dekar might be following the new group, they might be following him, or they could be together. Perhaps the whole reason he'd come to the barrens was to meet up with them. Regardless of the answer, he was still traveling north. If he stuck to his current route, he might actually make it to Tir Yadar itself, and that was a troubling thought.

Calum closed his eyes and tried to focus his mind on the likely probabilities, but no visions came. One of the skills he'd discovered in himself after the ritual was the ability to see potential futures. Unfortunately, the talent was marred not only by the sheer number of possibilities but also by the fact that he had little control over what he saw. While the visions were consistent in their warnings about the years of war still to come, whatever power Calum had tapped into apparently didn't consider Dekar to be of any import.

Giving up, he turned back to Drocus. "Set out ahead of us, and don't let anyone see you. We'll follow behind, but at a slower pace. We need to know who they are and whether he's with them." There was a chance the interlopers were innocent, but Calum couldn't risk allowing Dekar to get away. And if they were together... well, he would make that decision when he had to.

It was late in the afternoon when Drocus returned. Calum's men gathered together to find out what he'd learned.

"I found him, I think," the scout said. "A mile out, north by northeast."

"You think?" Calum asked.

"It's one man, not the group. Either it's him, or they left someone behind. I couldn't get close enough to tell for sure without alerting him."

"Then let's go," Calum said. "Everyone, leave your packs behind, and anything else that'll make noise. We'll try to take him by surprise."

His men were wearing a primitive sort of armor, with small metal plates woven into padded coats. It didn't offer the protection of Chosar silversteel, but at least it made less noise. Calum's own armor was quiet as well, being made of leather and silk. As a wizard, he had to avoid wearing too much metal on his body.

They headed toward their target, spreading out and creeping more quietly as they reached the last small rise. Calum crouched down and ducked his head to keep from being seen as he peered through the dust storm.

A single figure was kneeling less than fifty yards away, facing the opposite direction. The shifting of his arms suggested he was working at some task on the ground before him. Calum would have sworn the man was trying to start a fire, but there was nothing left to burn in the barrens. Perhaps he was digging for something? He wore a gray cloak with the hood up, allowing him to nearly blend in with the surroundings.

A dozen different people had offered descriptions of Dekar over the past months, and none had ever mentioned the cloak. There was something familiar about the bulky, unnatural way it lay over the man's form.

"Dekar doesn't wear plate armor, does he?" Calum asked.

Sikur shrugged. "Maybe he kept it on his pack mule, then had to start wearing it once he left his animals behind." Dekar had entered Lapithos with a horse and mule, but he'd left on foot, likely because the animals wouldn't survive in the barrens. Calum had asked Odar to be on the lookout for the creatures in case they could offer any further clues.

"Something's off," Drocus said. "He's barely moved since I left, and that was nearly an hour ago. He was facing away from me then, too."

"A trap?" Mikus asked.

"Probably," Calum said, drawing his sword. "But I'm not going to waste this chance. Follow when I go, and whatever happens, don't let him get away."

Calum quickly whispered the words to his combat spells, the familiar magical protections and enhancements snapping into place. One of those spells ensured he would reach the target before his men could catch up, so if it was a trap, he'd take the brunt of whatever was coming.

With his preparations in place, Calum signaled to Sikur, then dashed down the rise toward his quarry. He could hear his men running behind him, and had to hope the sound of the wind would hide the noise they were making.

When he was ten yards away, the person ahead of him suddenly leapt up and spun around, tossing the cloak to the side. It wasn't Dekar but a brown-haired woman wearing the mirrorsteel plate armor of a Chosar Mage Knight. Her blade practically leapt into her hand, already lined with magical flames.

Beyond her, four more figures uncovered themselves, all armed with crossbows. From a distance, obscured by the dust in the air and more of the gray cloaks, they'd appeared as nothing more than boulders strewn across the ground.

By the time Calum was able to come to a halt, he was close enough to see the woman's face. A face he knew very well.

"Ephrenia!" he shouted, thrusting his hands out to his sides to signal his men to stop. "Hold hold hold!"

#

Ephrenia, for her part, did the same, signaling her people to stay back.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

"Yes, Effie, you do."

The Mage Knight narrowed her gaze. She'd insisted that people stop calling her by that nickname even before she'd reached adulthood, and that had been a very, very long time ago.

She approached and circled around him, studying the unfamiliar features of the body he'd created for himself. Then she stopped and stiffened, her eyes going wide in recognition. She started to speak, possibly to say his name, but then glanced at the people surrounding them.

"Weapons away!" she called to her group, before extinguishing the flames on her own blade and sheathing it. "These are friends."

She turned back to Calum and tilted her head to the side, obviously wishing to talk privately. He nodded, but went to speak to his own men first.

"Wait here for now," he said. "I'm going to find out what they're doing in the barrens."

"She's Chosar," Mikus hissed. "She might be working with Dekar."

None of these men had ever met one of the Chosar before, as far as they knew, but the human tribes still remembered the old stories. While Calum had spent the past century trying to bury those tales, Ephrenia was unmistakable in that armor, as tall as a human and with pointed ears similar to an elf's.

"Chosar weren't monsters, whatever your grannies might have said," Calum told them. "She's trustworthy, and I need to speak to her, so we might as well stop here for a while. Set up some tents so everyone can get out of the dust storm."

They shot glares at the Mage Knight and her people, but they obeyed. With his men occupied--and distracted--Calum returned to Ephrenia. The two of them stepped far enough away that they wouldn't be overheard.

"I never thought I'd see you, of all people, masquerading as a human," she murmured.

"It was the best way to blend in," he said. "My men know me as Calum. How did you get free?"

"Thedan didn't tell you?"

"I felt his bond return, maybe four years ago, but he's never made contact." Calum shrugged. "He'll find me when he wants to."

"Arodi got us out. After the firestorms ended, she made the trek to Tir Yadar on foot, and brought along enough provisions for us to get through the barrens. Barely. You should know, it was only Thedan and me--the rest of the Mage Knights died in their stasis pods. Something to do with not being warden-bonded, I guess."

"I knew," Calum said. He'd been to Tir Yadar in spirit form, when he wasn't wearing a mortal body.

"Then why didn't you--" she started, then shook her head. "Never mind. So, yes, that was four years ago. I went to Skotinos first, but the last of the Chosar there have died out, and the stoneborn don't like being reminded of their past." The crack in her voice betrayed the pain she was trying to hide. Unlike Calum, who'd had over a century to get used to this new reality, for Ephrenia the fate of The People must have still been a fresh wound. "Since then, I've been fighting for whoever seems like the best choice at the moment. Right now, that's the warlord Orgutz."

"Why him?"

"Because someone needs to impose order on the chaos, and he's running the only group in the region that allows both humans and stoneborn to claim citizenship."

"Why didn't you stay with Arodisis?"

"I don't want to talk about her right now, and I wish you wouldn't call her that."

"The sooner our old names are forgotten, the better."

"Then you should have chosen less obvious names, Pallis."

He frowned, but she hadn't been so careless as to speak his birth name loud enough for anyone else to overhear. The new names the wardens had taken hadn't originally been intended to hide their identities, but instead were honorifics bestowed by their first acolytes--those few among The People who'd accepted their gifts of magic. Burying the old names had come later, part of a deliberate effort to erase any knowledge of the ritual or how to replicate it.

It wasn't the first time the Chosar had changed the oral and written histories of their world. Humans would forget first. Most of them hadn't known any of the details to begin with. As for the elves and the children of The People, memories would take longer to fade.

When he didn't respond, she spoke again. "You should come with us. Orgutz isn't the strongest warlord around, but with both of us backing him, we can bring the others in line."

Quick glimpses of potential futures flashed through Calum's mind. Orgutz would betray the stoneborn and be killed within the year, if not by Ephrenia's hand then by Calum's own. Yet the warlord would leave behind his followers, a group with the potential to build a nation that could rise from Van Kir's ashes. And Ephrenia was right--she and Calum working together would be the strongest fighting force around, strong enough to change the course of events throughout the region. If they tracked down Thedan, they'd be unstoppable.

Those efforts would aid the humans more than anyone, but it couldn't be helped. The descendants of the Chosar would never again be strong enough to rule the continent. Besides, Calum and the other wardens owed penance for their crimes, and that debt belonged to all the peoples of the world.

"I'll consider it, but I need your help with something first," he said. "You've heard of Dekar, the dark mage?"

"I've heard the name. I wasn't aware he was a mage. I thought he was a traveling storyteller."

"He used to be, but he's murdered three villages so far that I know of, and he's heading for Tir Yadar. I aim to stop him before he gets there."

"Are those the tracks we've been following? One person alone, less than half a day ahead?"

"Yes."

She looked to the north, frowning. "Arodi told me about these dark mages. What's he after in Tir Yadar?"

"I don't know, and I don't particularly care. He won't reach the city alive."

She nodded. "All right, I'll help. That's better than what Orgutz has me doing, which is looking for Chosar artifacts. He thought I'd have better luck than his previous search parties, but there's nothing left out here."

Her decision caused an immediate change in Calum's visions, and he had to stifle a gasp as more flashes of potential futures danced through his head. The wars ahead would be long and bloody, but in time civilization would rise again. Humans would reign supreme, yet the descendants of The People would have their own places in the world.

The return of civilization didn't mean the end of all threats. The demon lords still held to the armistice for now, but that wouldn't last forever. Wild magic remained in the world, even if the wildstorms had faded. And these new dark mages represented a danger Calum didn't fully understand--they'd only appeared after the ritual, and the two he'd eliminated so far hadn't given up any of their secrets before dying.

And someday, someone would learn the truth behind the Burning and Calum's part in it. Someone who might be tempted to take that power for themselves. Calum wouldn't allow the same mistake to happen again.

He glanced at his men, still setting up tents for a temporary camp. They were a rough bunch, but trustworthy despite that. He would need soldiers for the wars ahead, soldiers who weren't afraid to face magic despite having none of their own. It would have to be humans--the descendants of The People would never trust him enough to fight for him.

While his priests might be more powerful individually with their gifts of totemic magic, they weren't numerous enough to fight every battle themselves. An order of soldiers--an order of knights--would serve as a bulwark against unnatural threats or any magic that might risk another Burning.

The man who called himself Calum managed a small smile. His purpose in this new world would be the same as in the old. The wars never ended. They just changed faces.