Aralim 22

Miresh’s next task for Rattar was not as pleasant as making a flower grow.  Each day she went to train, Aralim and she sat on either side of a small wooden cage.  Inside sat a fat grey rat, eying them nervously.  There was a cup of water and a cup of seeds for it, but it ignored them.  It was as focused on Miresh as she was on it.  Rattar had told her to kill the rat.  To poison its health.

Aralim hadn’t yet succeeded in making the flower grow.

Similar to the flower, Rattar expected it to take Miresh a while to succeed, so he left them unattended that afternoon.  They sat in one of the adjoining rooms of his meditation hall, with wide windows and heavily laden bookshelves while Rattar attended to business with the First Court.  Aralim was reading from a book, stumbling over half the words as he attempted to master the language.  He was doing better than he had before, so that no one had to read to him.  This book was about fishing—he had chosen it to help with his understanding of their language, since it was a topic he already knew well from his youth.

“I was wondering why he sniffs so much,” Miresh said.  “I think he can smell a lot more than we can, but I don’t think that will make him any weaker or more vulnerable.”

Aralim nodded.  “It must have such a tiny heart,” he said. “And a small brain.”

Miresh smiled, and kept watching the little rodent.  What did she see?  Was she just watching it, learning from it?  Or was she focusing the forces Aralim could not see on the unsuspecting creature?

A distant shout reached their ears, followed by a screech and the clanging of metal.  Aralim stood up, and a moment later, another bang of iron echoed across the Palace.  It was not the dull clack of sparring swords, nor the echo of a blacksmith in the city.  Those were the sounds of a fight.  Aralim looked Miresh.  “Stay here,” he said.  “I’ll see what’s the matter.”

More screams followed immediately, the sound of a panicked crowd.

Miresh nodded with a small smile and Aralim strode out of the room with his staff in hand.  The meditation hall was empty aside from them—the other magicians and their apprentices only sat around the decorated kapok tree on days when Rattar wasn’t involved in court.  Aralim looked at the tree reverently and then another shout from the other side of the Palace grounds drew him out through the arched gate of the empty shrine and into the grove beyond.

The Iron Palace loomed up on his left and the outer wall of the grounds on his right.  As he passed out of the grove and into the wide courtyard on the north side of the Iron Palace he paused.  The main flat in front of the Palace was nearly abandoned, while a group of three or four guards descended the front steps of the enormous structure.  It took Aralim a moment longer to see their adversary, a man in a tattered black robe that marched out from the gatehouse.  His face was too distant to make out, as Aralim strode cautiously forward, but it was visible splattered in blood and a red trail was left by the robe he wore.

Those were not the usual guards on the steps, though they wore armour of similar designs, black ribbons hung from their neck and shoulders, and their armour was trimmed with gold decals.  With drawn swords they approached the stranger, and one shouted, “Surrender!  Throw down your sword.”

Surprisingly, the man complied.  He tossed a bloodstained blade down onto the cobblestones; with open hands he bowed to the elite guards.  He spoke to them with a quiet voice—Aralim started to walk closer, keeping to the edge of the Palace wall, but the guards shook their heads.  “Not on our watch,” one said, loudly.

The man in the bloodstained robe stepped toward the speaker and grabbed hold of him.  The sword dragged along the attacker’s arm but only black cloth fell to the ground.  Then the guard’s helmet went rolling.  With shouts, the other three guards slashed at the attacker, who held out his hand to protect himself.  In a blur, his fist slammed downward on a second guard, driving the man to the cobblestones amidst broken bones.  Somehow, the attacker got hold of a sword in the commotion and swiftly dismembered the next guard.  The last one was knocked head over heels across the cobblestones, trailing blood and broken iron in his wake.

The clash was over in a moment, and Aralim couldn’t say how noisy it was for his ears were ringing with a terrifying sort of silence.  Alone, the man in the tattered robe climbed the stairs into the Iron Palace.

Aralim, of course, had no choice but to wait a few moments and then follow.  This man had destroyed the Emperor’s elite guard with ease, breaking through their training and skill with undisciplined aggression and his bare hands.  Certainly, he demonstrated a measure of power along the Path.

At the top of the steps, Aralim found two more guards, dead, and he paused.  He had seen death before, but never like this.  One of the guards was missing both his forearm and the bottom half of his leg, which littered the pond of blood around them, while the other guard seemed a little more cohesive.  His armour had been torn away, leaving leather straps hanging down around his ruptured torso.  Neither stirred as Aralim stepped quietly across their final resting places and followed the invader further into the Iron Palace.

For the shortest moment, Aralim wondered if he was having a vision some magic like Miresh’s had summoned before his eyes.  The dead guards, the abandoned courtyard… it all seemed so surreal.

Out of the metal columns strode a member of the Aura with a long spear in his hand.  He didn’t look at Aralim and he didn’t say a word, simply walked through the shadows.  Aralim followed him, from a distance, until he was joined by a woman, also garbed in dark orange.  She also carried a spear.  Soon, Aralim was walking with a group of fifteen Aura.

“Let me pass or you’ll all perish!” a loud voice demanded.  “I’ll learn the truth of the so-called Eternal Emperor!”

Without a word, the Aura surrounded the stranger in the dark robe.  There were more than fifty of them, all armed with spears.  A circle of iron points surrounded the invader, and the Aura quietly stepped inward.

The stranger brandished a sword and smashed away the first few spearheads, easily shattering the wooden staves that held them.  One Aura fell to a spearhead in the cheek, only to be stepped calmly over by the advancing circle.  The wounded man was replaced by another spearman.

One by one, each point of the spear reached the man, who could not defend himself from all of them.  He seemed to not even notice the first two that pierced his side, slashing at his attackers with a feral cry.  Another spear caught his shoulder, and another jabbed his back.  With a shout he pulled himself away from the shoulder wound, pushing himself onto one of the spears that breached his side.  “Think you can kill me?” he screeched, and clawed his way along its shaft until he reached the man who held it.  He grabbed the Aura’s forearms and snapped them both to the outsides.  The man didn’t cry out, simply released his spear and let the attacker snap his neck.  Two more spears jabbed through the slain Aura and punctured the stranger’s stomach.

It took him a long time to die, pinned there by half a dozen spearheads.  There was little blood, but his incredible strength dwindled as the Aura continued to stab him and drive him down to the blood-stained floor of the Iron Palace.  None of them said a word, not even Aralim who stood behind the crowd watching.

Through the folds of orange cloaks, he was the only one distinct, and the dying man locked eyes with him.  His eyes were yellowed in the corners, and bloodshot from his wounds, but he seemed lucid enough when he called to Aralim: “This is all a lie.  All of it.”  He broke two of the spears with one last spasm, and then lay still, eyes glazing.

Later, Aralim sought to examine the body of the extraordinary attacker, but the Aura bore it away and one of the Emperor’s guards later arrived to explain, “You mustn’t speak of what you’ve seen.  The body will be properly autopsied by members of the court, not guests of the grounds.  Count yourself fortunate to have survived this day.”

Aralim did, of course.  But he did not attribute his survival to luck.  Proper pursuit and attention to the Path rarely led to a senseless death—it led only to answers and achievement and power.

To Miresh, he said nothing.  The day’s bizarre events would only distract her from her studies, and she was finding progress on the Path with her magic.  Aralim picked up his book when he returned to her, and tried to read it, but he could only contemplate the wisdom imparted by the dying man of strength.  This is all a lie.