Caladin’s Climb—Part 25 (Patreon)

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          Caladin’s magic took a minimum amount of concentration. Concentration he wasn’t able to achieve while lightning jolts of pain were shooting up his spine from his legs. He tried pulling free, but the iron roots only coiled further up his ankles, crushing and squeezing as they went. He was trapped. In his panic, he could see his death coming for him.

          “Stop!” Caladin screamed. He didn’t even intend to reach for magic with his words, but it poured out of him. No pyromancy, or lunamancy, or any other type, but the lithomancy that was his natural harmonic. Caladin’s command reverberated throughout the chamber, echoing preternaturally with the same repeated command. “Stop… stop… stop…” The roots stopped squeezing, Queen Rusalia stopped snickering in enjoyment, and even Falidor stopped trying to shout empty words of encouragement. Whatever they were doing when the compulsion struck them, they halted. Caladin winced as he tried not to give in to the pain. He didn’t have time to cry about his situation. If he didn’t move, his compulsion would wear off and he would die. He took a steadying breath and activated a vocomancy spell to teleport free of the trap he was in.

          Pop.

          Caladin appeared on the ground just outside the bounds of the arena. His feet touched down and immediately collapsed under his weight, bending and snapping at all kinds of unnatural angles. He let out an involuntary scream while he caught himself on his hands. Panting, he scanned the arena for the roots that had reached up to grab him. They were still frozen in place, but as he watched, they began to twitch. In moments, the ground buckled unevenly across the surface of the arena’s floor as more roots emerged from underground. They moved slowly at first, but he knew that wouldn’t last.

          Caladin reached down and laid his legs in a vaguely straight line, then thought through his options for healing spells. There were plenty, but healing wasn’t cheap and he couldn’t afford to waste mana while fighting for his life. Really, it was just the pain that was the problem, not his legs. Caladin knew he could fight without legs if he had to. Pain… Pain… Torture! He remembered the torture spell Brorn had taught him. It was incredibly cheap and designed to increase pain to intolerable levels. Tweaking it to do the opposite seemed doable. Clenching his jaw, he made the necessary adjustments and cast the spell on himself. All sensation from his shattered legs evaporated. He still couldn’t walk, but at least his mind was clear to focus on the fight.

          The short-lived compulsion to “stop” was fading fast. The queen and her retinue were blinking their eyes and looking around in annoyance, and a veritable forest of metal roots were twisting their way out of the ground all over the arena grounds and even beyond it. If Caladin hadn’t teleported outside the bounds of the arena, he was sure they would have already grabbed him again. As it stood, his enemy would realize her mistake soon enough. The figure he’d been fighting before had obviously just been a puppet. Now if he wanted to kill his opponent, he’d need to find the real body and destroy the heartseed. Easier said than done. She was buried underground and only sticking up iron roots to attack. No wonder this Krensyl was “unconquered”. She didn’t fight fair!

          The metal roots began to hunt for Caladin. A cluster at the edge of the circle nearest him reached his way. He was helpless to crawl away without magic, so he used a burst of gravity magic to make himself fall towards the ceiling of the chamber. It was the same spell he’d used on the town guards that had attacked him a few weeks past. The ceiling of the chamber looked spongy and soft. It turned out to be exactly that. When Caladin reached it, he looked back down at the mess of roots hunting for him below. It wouldn’t take long for Rusalia or someone else to realize where he’d gone and inform the underground plant monster. He used his break to think through a plan. As much as he didn’t want to use lunamancy after what had happened the last time he’d worn Belorian’s Crown, he didn’t feel like he had a choice. He dug a hand into his extra-dimensional pocket and removed the crown. With a sigh, he put it on his head.

          Hate, hate, hate! Caladin hated Krensyl. She was a cheater! A liar! If not for her stupid trick of hiding in the ground like a coward, she wouldn’t have even touched him. She was beneath him. At present, literally. He watched her flail around her disgusting vines blindly, looking for him, unaware he was watching her from the ceiling. How could one lying, cheating plant like that injure him? He was Archmage Caladin and he would show her why his name was to be feared. He sent a focused lance of darkness down onto the field below, aiming for the center of the mass of roots, hoping to hit the heartseed.

          Before Caladin’s attack struck, the vines responded, straightening to intercept the projectile. Everything that touched Caladin’s lunamancy was erased. A perfect circle in the dirt was carved where his attack struck. The vines didn’t collapse, so he guessed he hadn’t struck anything vital. That was fine. She was still doomed. It would only take a second to sweep his—

          Shnck!

          Belorian’s Crown was wrenched from Caladin’s head. He grabbed for it, but it rocketed away impossibly fast, dropping away and being snatched by one of Krensyl’s vines. Of course! She was a ferromancer! He should have created a… a… he couldn’t remember how lunamancy worked anymore, but he was certain he could have stopped that attack if he’d anticipated it. Now that his enemy knew where he was, her vines extended and threw a small cloud of metallic needles at him. Unable to effectively dodge, Caladin was forced to block the attack with a small personal ward. Needles deflected off his purple barrier and wedged into the mushroom ceiling in a circle around him. He checked his mana bars. Three were now completely dark and a fourth was fading. Only eight left. If he didn’t go back on the offensive, he’d burn through the rest of his mana defending. But what could he do? Controlling her body with ferromancy might work, but not against a ferromancer. He would just have to use an attack strong enough to pierce her iron body… pyromancy?

          A standard Fireball wouldn’t do. Caladin needed much more heat to melt iron. He took the basic pyromancy spell and condensed into a beam with a few modifications. A Flame Lance. The absolute center of the arena didn’t seem to be the location of Krensyl’s center, but he noticed there seemed to be slightly more vines sprouting from the end of the circle closest to Queen Rusalia. He fired off his new Flame Lance spell in that direction. It whooshed out of him, taking more mana with it than he’d intended. Four full mana bars winked out. In exchange for that mana, a beam of concentrated fire blasted out of Caladin and splashed down into the center mass of the metal tentacled monster below.

          Instead of getting deleted, this time all the vines that came into contact with the fire were melted to red hot slag. A terrible high-pitched screeching sound reverberated across the chamber. Krensyl had finally been injured. The needle attack stopped as putrid smoke billowed out of the tangle of melting vines. Caladin released the gravimancy that was sticking him to the ceiling in favor of an aeromancy flying spell. He flew in closer to get a look at the damage he’d done, hoping the creature would be dying. A woman’s face twice again as big as Caladin’s body emerged from the ground, one eye oozing melted iron. She screeched at Caladin and used some of her vines to reach into the gathering puddle of her own body to scoop up a few clumps of hot slag and fling them at Caladin. He swooped left and right to dodge the attacks, but still got peppered with a few specks of iron. They burned holes in his clothes, then his skin, but his Reverse Torture spell prevented him from the necessity of processing that pain.

          Caladin could tell this wasn’t going to work. He only had enough mana for one more of those Flame Lances, and it looked like it would take at least four to melt his enemy’s body into submission. Maybe an incredibly well-aimed lance could do it, but that would be too big a risk to take. He needed a more efficient weapon that would work against the metal dryad. Another glob of hot iron was flung at Caladin. This time is was scattered into a wide swath instead of a single globule, making it much harder to dodge. Caladin flew straight up, only just getting enough altitude on the slag before gravity arrested its momentum. The metal instead embedded into the ceiling of the mushroom chamber in a smoking line. It kept burning until a new window into the sunny outdoors appeared, bathing the entire arena in sunlight.

          Krensyl was briefly distracted by the bright light, giving Caladin a moment to think of how he was going to beat her. He couldn’t just keep dumping mana into the problem. His Flame Lance had worked far better than normal pyromancy to melt solid metal, so he decided to try condensing the fire even more. He increased the modifications he’d made to the spell as far as he possibly could, then added a splash of gravimancy magic to take them even further. He was hoping to make a small, cheap, hand-held spell that was still hot enough to melt through metal. A spell like that could slice Krensyl into pieces. Caladin didn’t have much practice modifying spells in the middle of combat, so he decided to use trial and error. He would start by using the maximum possible constraints, then he could back them off until he got a spell that worked. That would get him the minimum beam width possible. He inscribed the first spell and cast it.

          KABOO-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

          Light flashed in Caladin’s face, then he went blind. A terrible explosive force battered his ears, then he went deaf. He felt himself flying backwards. He hit something, kept going. Even through the mitigating influence of his Reverse Torture spell Caladin felt like his skin was on fire. He couldn’t understand what had happened. Had Krensyl cast something on him? Some kind of kinomancy spell to throw him back? Did she even know any of those? He had no choice but to waste mana healing himself with visceramancy. He felt like if he kept flying through the air without the ability to see or hear, he’d eventually hit something that would kill him. Like the ground. His healing spell washed over him, regenerating burned skin, restoring his sight and hearing, and even fixing his broken ankles. The spell was expensive; Caladin just hoped he would have enough mana left to finish the fight.

          Caladin found himself… in the sky. “What the Hell?” he said to himself. He was practically scraping the clouds. Far beneath him, he could see the mountain-sized mushroom that formed the Setsyan seat of government. There was a round hole in the top of the mushroom, and Caladin figured if he could see it from so far away, it had to be sizable. He released his Flight spell and allowed himself to fall back down. He didn’t want to spend long enough away from the arena that Rusalia could try to claim he’d been trying to flee. When he reached the hole, re-engaged his Flight and glided back into the arena. What he saw stunned him.

          The tangled mass of metal roots that had once been Krensyl the Unconquered was a smoking crater. Had… his miniature spell done that? How could that even be possible? He didn’t think it was, but couldn’t deny the evidence of his own eyes. Surely, Krensyl hadn’t slagged herself into oblivion. He made a note to remember that spell or later, and it would also need a proper name. The fight appeared to be over, so he checked for was signs of the mushroom queen. It would be a disaster if he’d accidentally killed the person he’d need to confirm he’d won the match and offer concessions to King Haedril.

          The queen was embedded in the wall of the chamber, the front of her body horribly burned. The same was true of her steward and the princess. For a moment, Caladin thought he had killed her, but then her chest split open and a clean, uninjured body emerged. She looked… furious. Her nose pulled up in a sneer as she surveyed the damage to her palace. Falidor was similarly positioned on the opposite wall of the chamber, minus the disgusting rebirthing process all the myconid dryads were undergoing. Caladin flew over to the man and pulled him free, finding his front was scarred and blackened beyond recognition. Blood bubbled from a hole in what used to be his face, the only sign that he hadn’t quite died yet. Caladin used a healing spell on him to pull his soul back from the brink of annihilation.

          Falidor took a gasp of air as his body rebuilt itself with Caladin’s magic. “Tuan save me!” he shouted. He blinked, then looked up at Caladin. “Oh, it’s you. I was sure I’d died.”

          “Not quite,” Caladin told him. “Did you see what happened?”

          Falidor shook his head. “Is that a joke? You created some kind of explosion! How did you do that? Why did you do that? You could have warned me! I know an armamancy spell that I could have used.”

          Caladin offered a hand to help Falidor to his feet, ignoring the awkwardness of his burned robes as best he could. “Sorry,” he said.

          “K-Krensyl? Krensyl!” someone shouted. Caladin turned around to see it was Queen Rusalia, shouting uselessly at the blackened crater that had once contained the monstrous body of her beloved champion.

          “Your champion is dead,” Caladin told her. He still had no idea how he’d done what he’d done, but he didn’t want to let on. He had a part to play, and part of that act would involve acting like he was both a real archmage, as well as someone that actually knew what the hell they were doing. He alighted in the air and flew over to the mushroom queen, arms splayed wide in a dramatic posture. On his way across the crater, he spotted his crown lying undamaged in the rubble and summoned it to himself with a bit of ferromancy. As he settled to the ground before the queen he returned the artifact to his pocket.

          “I won,” Caladin declared to the Setsyan queen. “As agreed, the Kingdom of Haedenia is now fully independent from Setsya.” King Haedril had given Caladin notes on a few respectful lines he should say after winning to help soften the blow. He tried them now. “Out of respect for our two nations’ history, King Haedril will continue to act as shepherd—”

          “No!” Queen Rusalia howled. “This is impossible. Krensyl is invincible!”

          Caladin turned around to look pointedly at the smoking crater. “She looks plenty vincible to me,” he said. “I’ll admit, she was much stronger than I was expecting, but nobody can hope to stand against an archmage. I tried to warn you.”

          “No. You cheated! You must have,” Rusalia insisted.

          It took an inordinate level of self-control for Caladin not to snap back a venomous retort at that accusation, after the way Krensyl had tried her damnedest to trick him into fighting her puppet. Falidor saved him from needing to respond, stumbling up to say, “Caladin did not cheat. I’m the witness. I had True Sight active during the fight. He used some kind of pyromancy spell with, uh, I think it had gravimancy mixed in. We were both watching. I saw it. You saw it. Caladin is the winner.”

          “No!” Queen Rusalia repeated. “He cheated. No pyromancy spell is that strong.”

          “Oh?” Caladin said. “I didn’t realize there was a cap on the strength of the magic we were allowed to use. Just admit your champion was no match for me.”

          Rusalia brought her hand up and squeezed her fist. Her two hangers-on came up beside her to back her up. “I don’t know how you cheated,” she said. “But I will get you to tell me before I will allow you to leave my palace. You are at my mercy, archmage.” She sneered. “There is no way you have any mana left after a spell like that.” Thin white roots extended out from the ground and latched on to Caladin and Falidor’s feet.

          “What are you doing?” Falidor demanded. “You agreed to the terms. We won!”

          “I’m changing the terms,” Queen Rusalia said. “Neither of you are leaving until you admit you conspired to cheat.”

          She was wrong, of course. Caladin had at least one full mana bar left after healing himself and Falidor, though with the way relations were breaking down, he thought it might be a good idea to reserve a bit of that to get back home. He didn’t want to get dragged into a full-fledged fight with the queen, but he also wasn’t willing to get dragged off to prison. As satisfying as it would be to use another explosion on her, he decided to try something more tactful. He had come here to avoid a war, after all.

          “Stop,” Caladin commanded. He imbued his will into the word. Lithomancy. The only magic he didn’t need spell scrolls to cast. The roots stopped climbing up his legs. “Release us,” he said next. The roots receded. Rusalia clenched her lip and stared daggers at Caladin. But as much as she hated it, she couldn’t resist the compulsion of his magic. If looks could kill, he would be a bloody smear on the ground. “You cannot hold us against our will,” Caladin explained to her. “We are leaving. I expect you to fulfill your end of our deal.”

          “You will get nothing!” Rusalia hissed through clenched teeth.

          “Do you really want to start a war with Haedril?” Caladin asked. “You’ve just seen what I did to your champion. What do you think I would do on a battlefield? I have you under my power. The only reason you are still alive is because I don’t want to kill you. Refusing to comply with the terms of our deal will be considered an act of war. Are you telling me you want to be the leader of a nation at war with Haedenia?” Caladin looked at the princess standing over her shoulder. “What about you?” he asked. “Do you want to be at war with Haedenia?” The princess went wide-eyed at being addressed and slowly shook her head.

          “Her opinion does not matter!” Rusalia insisted. “She is just—”

          “She will be the Queen of Setsya in five seconds if you don’t take back your accusations of cheating and confirm my victory in this contest.”

          “Who do you think you are?” Queen Rusalia demanded. “I am a queen! You do not make threats to me!”

          “I just did,” Caladin answered flatly. “If you think I’m bluffing, you are welcome to keep trying to detain me. I would prefer we not escalate things.”

          “You dare command me, boy?” Rusalia roared. “Here? In the heart of my power? Even if you were to kill me, you would not leave this palace alive.” She raised both of her hands wide. The walls of the palace began to moan and vibrate. The walls of the chamber they were standing in moved in to crush them. Caladin had no idea what would happen if they reached him.

          “Do something!” Falidor pleaded.

          “Brace yourself,” Caladin warned his eldrin ally. He dived on Falidor, ripping free of the white roots wrapping his feet and surrounded them both in a tight armamancy ward. Only when he was sure they were safe did he fire off his new custom pyromancy spell. He didn’t aim it at Rusalia. Despite his words, he really didn’t want to return to King Haedril to tell him he’d killed the queen. Instead, he fired his attack into the outside wall of the rapidly-shrinking chamber.

          Foom!

          Behind the wards, the sound of the explosion was muted and distant, but it still came through loud enough to hurt Caladin’s ears. This time he kept his head ducked down so he wouldn’t get blinded. His wards cracked and barely held, and that was with him aiming the spell in the opposite direction. It was clear the spell would need some refining to make it safer to use. When Caladin looked up, the walls of the palace in the direction he’d fired were just gone, along with a good portion of the ceiling. Daylight filled the room.

          Caladin had half been wondering if the first explosion had just been a fluke, but that proved it wasn’t. The output power was so completely out-of-sync with the input mana, he was sure there was a law of magic being violated. He easily spent ten times more mana protecting himself from the fallout of the explosion than creating it. As Caladin got to his feet and helped Falidor do the same, he did his best to not let the awe he was feeling show on his face. It was important he maintain the perception that he was in complete control.

          Queen Rusalia once again had to dislodge herself from the cushioning walls of her mushroom palace. She dropped to the ground, positively seething. “What was that about me being out of mana?” Caladin called out to her. “Do you want me to cast that spell again? Because I can. Ten more times, if I want.”

          “That… power… It’s impossible!” the queen sputtered. She got to her feet. For a second, she raised her hand like she was going to cast a spell again, but then she lowered her hand. Her pressed into a thin, tense line.

          “Do you need a third demonstration of my power?” Caladin asked. “Or will you comply with the terms of our agreement?” This time, it really was a bluff. Caladin had enough mana to cast the explosion again, but not enough to protect himself from the blast. It was the same as not being able to use it again, though he wasn’t about to admit as much.

          Queen Rusalia looked over at her steward, then back to Caladin. Her steward was currently in the process of regrowing an arm that had been burned off. “Fine,” Rusalia said. “You can go. Your king can have his little province. I never liked those forests much anyway. No decent swamps in them.”

          “Thank you,” Caladin said. “See? Isn’t this better? Talking out our problems instead of all that fighting? King Haedril only wants peace.”

          “If that’s true, he has a funny way of going about it,” the queen commented.

          “Don’t look at me,” Caladin said. “You’re the one who insisted on fighting.” He could have said more about the queen trying to take away his victory after he won fairly, but he decided not to push his luck.

          “Just go, child,” Queen Rusalia said, shooing him away with a flick of her wrist. “Perhaps you will learn more about statecraft when you are older.”

          “Let’s go, Falidor,” Caladin said. “I’m sure Philipus will want to hear the good news.”

          Falidor said nothing, he just hobbled up next to Caladin and made sure he was between himself and the queen. Instead of returning through the halls, Caladin took the exit he’d made in the side of the palace to leave. He and Falidor had to carefully pick their way across the scarred, smoking dirt. Only when they were well out of earshot of the palace did Falidor speak up. “What. Was. That?” he demanded.

          “What was what?” Caladin asked.

          “You know what! That spell. How did you cast a spell that powerful?”

          “To be honest,” Caladin said. “I have no idea. I just came up with it on the spot. I was trying to come up with something that would be effective against Krensyl, I just had no idea how effective.” What he didn’t say was that he’d only been testing the spell, if he’d put as much mana into it as that Flame Lance he would have certainly killed them all. Yeah… better not to bring that up, he decided.

          “You just came up with it?” Falidor asked. “A new spell? Just like that?”

          Caladin shrugged. “I guess I got lucky. Does it matter? I won. I’m actually sort of glad I didn’t have to use lunamancy to do it, too.”

          Falidor’s glowing eyes went wide. “You know lunamancy?” he asked.

          “Of course,” Caladin lied. “I’m an archmage, remember?” He didn’t actually know any lunamancy spells, but as long as he still had Belorian’s Crown, he could always access the harmonic at a moment’s notice. It was practically the same thing as knowing lunamancy, just like being able to create spells of other harmonics with lithomancy was practically the same as being a real archmage.

          “You know, until I saw you in action today, I didn’t really believe the stories. Phillip’s been telling everyone he has an archmage working for him that can destroy entire legions single-handedly, but that’s just the usual propaganda, isn’t it? I mean… I thought it was.”

          “But don’t you work for the king?” Caladin asked. “Couldn’t you have just asked him yourself if it was true?”

          “I never know if he’s just telling me what he wants me to repeat to the queen, or if it’s the truth,” Falidor admitted. “I just sort of assumed archmages weren’t real. In the stories, they can do anything with magic. That doesn’t mean you can grant wishes, can you?”

          Caladin laughed. “No, only the Conflux can grant wishes, but I can cast spells from any harmonic. It should be possible for other wizards to do the same thing I have if they learn how.”

          “Learning spells is one thing,” Falidor said, “but I’ve never heard of anyone inventing new spells in the middle of battle! What are you going to call that new explosion spell, anyway?”

          Caladin thought about that for a moment. “How about… Pyroclastic Destruction? Because it’s as strong as a volcano.”

          “A wonderful name,” Falidor agreed. “Evokes a sense of awe, which will be useful if you want to threaten to use it.” He laughed. “Can’t be calling it a simple ‘boom’ spell when it’s that powerful!”

          While the two of them walked, Caladin saw the large tree-sized mushrooms move. They had been so prevalent on his way in they had practically blended in with the scenery. Now that he saw them moving around, he realized them for what they were: guards. A veritable army. Each one was alive and watching him go. He counted his blessings that he had beaten the queen’s champion so thoroughly. There was no way he would have gotten free passage out of Setsya without her blessing. He really wanted a good night’s sleep before he had to deal with another big fight.

          “Sorry about losing your job,” Caladin said to Falidor after a while longer of walking in companionable silence.

          “What?”

          “Your job,” Caladin said. “You were Haedril’s emissary. Now you’re not. Sorry about that.”

          Falidor shook his head. “Nothing to apologize for. She almost killed us. I was a fool for thinking she had any honor. I should have known she wasn’t planning to let us leave as victors. Thank goodness you were every bit as strong as Philip said you were.”

          “About that,” Caladin said. “We need to talk about Philip. Was he really planning to sell my family into slavery if I’d lost?”

          “I don’t know anything about this family of yours,” Falidor said. “That is between you and Philip. I only negotiated the terms of the deal. Philip said he could offer a hundred human slaves as tribute and that was enough for Rusalia to consider the contest of champions. He didn’t say where he would get them from and I didn’t ask. I didn’t even know you were a human until you showed up.”

          “Yeah, well, I usually wear a disguise,” Caladin said. “Most eldrin would never take me seriously as a human wizard. Dryads don’t seem to care either way, so I didn’t bother this time. The only reason I’m fighting for Philip at all is because he promised a safe place for my family.”

          “What family?” Falidor asked. “If you don’t mind me asking. I’ve always heard that humans have larger families than other races, but a hundred seems like a lot.”

          “We’re not all related by blood,” Caladin admitted. “We’re just… one people. We’re a family because we stick together, look out for each other. I’m not actually blood related to any of them anymore. Not since my dad died. It was just me and him, but now he’s gone.” He didn’t like the direction their conversation was going in. “This is taking too long,” he said. “I flew here from that teleportation circle and at the pace we’re walking, we won’t reach it for another hour. I have enough mana left, I think I can just teleport us back to Fort Sumnter from here.”

          “Don’t you need a teleportation circle for that?” Falidor asked.

          “Who said I wasn’t going to use one?” Caladin asked right back.

          “But…” Falidor trailed off. He looked around, then looked back at Caladin. “I don’t understand. Is there a circle here?”

          “I don’t need a circle,” Caladin said. “Stand back.” There was a decently flat patch of grass in front of them. In another half league, they’d reach the deeper swamp and wouldn’t be able to find any spots like that. Caladin laid his hand on the ground and used his lithomancy to inscribe the pattern for a teleportation circle. He made sure to include all the correct details, updated for their approximate coordinates. He estimated the figures, but knew he didn’t have to be perfect if it was only going to be a single one-way trip. The real danger would be someone trying to arrive at his new circle and ending up with their legs inside a stone, or something equally horrific. The circle he was arriving at would do most of the work of stabilizing and directing his travel.

          “There,” he said when he was done.

          “There, what?” Falidor asked.

          Caladin pointed down. “Right there in the dirt,” he said. “Careful not to step on it, or I’ll have to inscribe it again.”

          “But…” Falidor said as he looked down at it. “Doesn’t it at least have to be made of copper? We can’t use this. Can we?”

          “It’ll be fine,” Caladin insisted. “We’re only going to use it once. Silver circles are nice, but the most important thing is the symbols. We have them all right here. If I spent the mana necessary to harvest a bunch of silver out of the ground, it would just end up costing more than brute-forcing this circle. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

          “My dad always taught me to be careful with vocomancy…” Falidor said, trailing off with unspoken words of apprehension.

          “Did your dad ever meet an archmage?” Caladin challenged. “No. Didn’t think so. Get in this circle so we can get out of here.”

          Falidor winced like he was about to be stabbed, but he did as he was told. “If I die—”

          “Hogwash!” Caladin interrupted. Vocomancy had actually been a big weakness of Caladin’s but he’d figured out a lot about how it worked fixing the mistake he’d made that had killed all those townsfolk. Sometimes mistakes taught the most. He opted to keep that particular detail to himself. He could tell that anything less than pure confidence in his abilities would have Falidor jumping for cover and refusing to come.

          Pop.

          The two of them appeared in the courtyard of Fort Sumnter. A squad of undead soldiers with eerie green eyes were doing drills in the yard. Caladin wasn’t sure what they got out of doing drills. They were dead. It wasn’t as though they could get any stronger.

          Falidor patted his hands over his chest and face dramatically. “We’re fine!” he said. He laughed.

          “Told you,” Caladin said. “I’m sure you can find your way around here, now?” he asked.

          “Why? Where are you going?”

          “To talk to the king,” Caladin said.

          “Good idea! We should report to him right away. I’ll come with you.”

          “You can come,” Caladin told Falidor, “but I don’t think I want to talk to Haedril for the same reasons you do.” He led Falidor through the courtyard and into the throne room, only stopping to give Lenny a wave. He’d been made commander of the king’s zombie infantry, so he didn’t have as much time for casual chats as he once did.

          King Philipus was in the middle of a talk with a small group of high-ranking officers when Caladin and Falidor entered, but he broke off his talk when he saw them. “Caladin! Fal!” he greeted them. “Just the people I was hoping to see. I trust things went well in Setsya?”

          Falidor started to say something, but Caladin spoke over him. “We need to talk.” His tone left no room for negotiation on that point.

          “By all means,” Philipus said in an easy voice. “Talk about what? Should I send the others away?”

          “Don’t bother,” Caladin said. “I want to know why you let me think I was supposed to negotiate when you had already lined up for me to fight Rusalia’s champion! And then I want to know where you were planning to get the hundred human slaves you promised to turn over to Setsya if I lost.” Caladin clenched his fists, feeling his anger rising despite not wearing Belorian’s Crown. “What happened to creating a nation without slavery?” he demanded. His voice echoed across the chamber, leaving an oppressive silence in its wake.

          One of the officers standing near the King’s throne cleared his throat awkwardly and quietly excused himself. Nobody else had the courage to speak before the king.

          King Philipus looked over Caladin’s shoulder at Falidor. The former emissary looked down at the ground, not meeting his king’s gaze. “I can explain,” Philipus finally said. “Your fight in Setsya was a gamble, yes, but a gamble that I knew would pay off. My stance on slavery has not changed.”

          “And if I’d lost?” Caladin demanded.

          “I would have been forced to go to war with the Setsyans. I never had any intention of enslaving citizens of my own nation.” The king took a measured breath. “Look… I can see you are upset. Come. We can talk more in my drawing room. I think it’s time I told you more about the true nature of this war we’ve been dragged into. With your victory in Setsya, things have been set in motion that must be addressed. The future of this nation rests in your hands, Caladin, and we need to act fast or we could lose everything.”

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