The Onyx Throne - Book One

The sound of another explosion rocked the palace, and Allora and Lethelin both jumped. Before the echoes had even died away, there was a great crashing noise and the floor shook again. Windows rattled in their frames and several cracked.

"That would be the main doors," Hackett said with a frown. "Bunch of jivi fucking whoresons."

Allora stepped down from the dais and crossed to the front of the throne room doors, standing about ten feet back. She could already hear the sounds of the soldiers filling the room beyond. Just like before. Just like that night. The sounds of people screaming, fighting, and dying. Invaders in the palace. In her home. She drew her sword slowly and, with her free hand, swapped out all three stones in her krisa for fresh ones.

They had invaded her home, killed her friends, her parents, and the monarch. They had driven her into hiding, chasing her for two years, even to another world. They had tried all they could to kill her, but they had failed. She would run no longer. Now it was time for vengeance. None would get past her.

"You're just going to stand there?" Lethelin spoke up, her voice tight with nerves.

"Yes."

"Shouldn't you... I don't know, hide or take up some defensive position?"

"I will run no longer. I will never hide again."

Allora didn't mean for her voice to sound so cold, but her mind had gone quiet. Distant. She saw nothing but the door in front of her. She felt nothing but the light touch of the stones in her krisa against her head, the lines of the pommel against her hand, and the surging of mana in her chest. She was the eye of the storm. She was the spark in the dragon's maw. She had come to it at last, and she would have her revenge.

"You're freaking me out a little, Lora," Lethelin said.

Allora didn't bother to respond. She waited and she watched, her feet planted, her sword tip resting on the floor, both hands on the pommel.

"Lethelin, get over here, you silly girl," Allora heard Gilriel snap, but her voice was far away.

"Something's wrong with Allora," the thief said.

"Don't worry about her, post up behind the throne with that bow and start picking off anyone that gets through our line. You hear?"

The first attack came against the throne room door, thunderous in the enclosed space, but Allora did not flinch. She was the razor edge of the blade, flawless and without mercy. She was vengeance, two years delayed, but coming nonetheless. None would get past her.

***

"Balls! Balls! Balls! Balls and bloody fucking taint!" Lethelin swore to herself as she sprinted up the dais steps and behind the glowing throne that held Mitchell inside, doing Stollar-knew-what to him.

Lethelin had heard of the throne her whole life, but she never thought she'd actually get to see it. Nine hells, she never thought anything like this would ever happen to her.

"Allora sure picked the perfect time to go all catatonic," she muttered as she unslung her bow and grabbed the arrows from her quiver.

"Oh balls!" she swore as she saw how many she had left. Only twelve, and then five of her specialty arrows.

She really didn't want to have to fight the approaching force head on, but she knew she would run out of arrows long before they ran out of soldiers. As she shifted, her foot hit her pack and something rolled out of it.

Lethelin looked down at the sound, as the white bottle she'd picked up from the warehouse came to a stop at the back of the throne. She picked up and tried not to drop it when the next attack came against the throne room doors.

"I never did figure out what you did," she said, starring at it.

She bounced it in her fingers and contemplated taking the potion now. She figured it probably couldn't hurt. Just then there was another loud crash and the throne room doors bulged precipitously and the frame around several of the hinges ripped free of wall.

"Not yet," she told the bottle, setting it down carefully out of the way. "But maybe."

Instead, she picked up her armor breaking arrow. Likely the first ones through would be the most heavily armored and this was a very bright room. It would give the skitterback blood in the glass arrowhead a bit of extra punch.

Outside, the sounds of triumph became louder and through the gaps around the failing door, Lethelin could see movement, as they positioned to deliver the final blow. Lethelin steadied her breathing, calling forth that cool, calm center she always sought when using her bow. It wasn't too dissimilar to when she fought with her blades, but there was no music. Whenever Lethelin was dancing with her blades she always thought she could detect music just beyond her hearing, and sometimes she thought it guided her steps. But not so with the bow.

With her hand around the grip and her fingers clipping the shaft around the fletching, she heard only the silence between her heartbeats and her slow, deliberate breathing. Her eyes sought the tip of the glass arrowhead, focusing there, and then moved to the door.

Time almost seemed to slow for her. She knew from long practice now that she was in that in between space. Where her eyes tracked, the arrow would follow. Her body would make the minute adjustments necessary to send the arrow where it needed to go. This close, it wasn't even a challenge.

The doors blasted outward and clattered to the ground, the cast bronze warped and smoking. Lethelin let out a breath and her eyes caught the first hint of movement in the dust and smoke, and – delicate as a fairy's wing, she released the armor piercer. Lethelin could feel it connect to the target in a way she could never properly explain. But when a shot was good, she always knew it. And this one was good.

As the big man, a half-orc by the looks of him, nearly seven feet tall and wearing full plate came charging into the room, his great sword already in motion, Lethelin's arrow was there to meet him. The black glass struck the hard steel of his breastplate and shattered to dust, exposing the caustic liquid inside to Stollar's holy light and the reaction was near instantaneous. The fireball detonated through the metal and into the man's chest and blew a hole at least three times as big as the one it made going in, splattering those behind him with shards of steel, bone, and gore as the man flew backward several feet.

Lethelin didn't see that part, though. She knew well enough what the armor piercer did. She was already grabbing her next arrow.

***

"There! Movement on the second level!" one of the two legs cried from below. "Get up there!"

Vras liked the idea of fighting in this giant two-leg den much more than he did fighting outside underneath the sun. True, it was quite fun to be able to run down the terrified two-legs as fear made the blood sweeter, but he was, by nature, a creature of stealth. And now that he was in the shadows, his illusions would be much more effective.

Vras had extended his palps and displayed the illusion of Tar Ara'tiss near the edge of the platform, making it appear as if she were turning away and running. Once the illusion disappeared from the sights of the two-legs below, he ended it. He could not maintain his illusions very long, but in the rush of battle, he didn't need to. The two-legs were panicked and the smell of their fear was intoxicating. Already, Vras heard the pounding of their feet as they ascended.

He waited, narrowing his eyes and retracting the palps to hug his back. His body was tucked up on the ceiling of one of the passages, deep in the shadows. There were no windows to the outside here, and the glow from the magical light was muted.

"I thought she was in the throne room!" shouted one two-legs.

"They might have split up! There's five of us, don't worry about it."

Vras's claws flexed into the wood and the powerful muscles along his back began to tighten. Their fearful scent was a heady perfume that was so thick it almost made him dizzy. His teeth ached with the need to rip their fleshy bodies asunder and feel the splash of their blood on his tongue and running down his fur. He would need to kill one of them slowly so as to further terrify the others below. Well, not too slowly. There wasn't time for that.

"The second passage, troll brain!"

Their footsteps grew closer now, the sound like small explosions to his sensitive ears. Vras's whole body began to quiver but not yet. Not yet.

The five two-legs came charging into the dim corridor weapons raised their eyes scanning ahead for the false Tar Ara'tiss. Scanning ahead, but not above. As the last one passed beneath him, Vras released his hold on the ceiling and lunged.

The screams. The beautiful screams. And oh, so much blood.

***

When stories spread afterward of the Battle of the Onyx Throne, few believed the more outlandish retellings though some did. Others assumed the tale was an apocryphal yarn meant to inspire patriotism in the days after. Because what was described could not be true, they told themselves. Everyone knew that the Onyx Knights were fearsome. No one doubted that, not in Awenor or in any of the seven kingdoms. But for one woman to do all that… Do not be absurd, the call would ring out in taverns across Awenor, and eventually Iletish, Kazig, Islivaria, and all the rest. The tale was sometimes celebrated, the bard songs cheered, but it was just as often that the teller would be shouted down and warned not to spread such nonsense. They were nice, sensible people and wanted none of those troll leavings in their nice, sensible taverns and villages. The knights are skilled but they are still mortal! But as with all tales become legend that then fade into myth, the truth is somewhere in between.

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Of the stories that were written down after the battle, the most trusted, came from those few survivors who charged the throne room that warm spring day. They told a wide-eyed tale of, not a woman, but of a black-haired, violet-eyed demon. They said that inside that throne room a portal opened from the Nine Hells and death emerged. Ghosts of the fallen arose from the sun stone and struck down the enemies of Awenor. Some say it was Denass herself emerging from the void stone to claim the souls of the invaders.

While the stories disagree on just who or what empowered the lord captain that fateful day, none disagree that she was a beautiful and terrible sight to behold. Soldiers fell before her blade like wheat before a scythe. Her magic charred bodies and ripped them apart. She fought without mercy, gave no quarter, and her blood-streaked face sent terror into all who looked upon her. Those who survived would be haunted by the sound of her vengeance for the rest of their days.

But, while every warrior in the purple and black acquitted themselves well that day, and showed for all the world to see what it means to bring the wrath of the Onyx Knights, they were just mere mortals. So then where did the tales of the ghosts come from? On that, the stories have little to offer. Men and women dropped dead, their throats cut open, despite being nowhere near the battle. Casters suddenly found their magic useless and were cut down, no shield spells to protect them. Those that survived that bloody day say all they saw were flickers at the corner of their vision before the man next to them died.

And all of this is to say nothing of the unnamed horror that stalked the halls of the Onyx Palace, that left every soldier who entered those empty passages a ruin. The blood still seeps up from the floor and drips from the walls even now. In the true dark before first moon rise, the screams of those dying men still echo through the corridors and give nightmares to the uninitiated. What it was, no one is sure. More demons, perhaps? More ghosts of the fallen knights? The angry spirit of Baylor seeking his own revenge? Some say that dark rituals were held in the palace and they summoned creatures from other worlds that mortal minds simply cannot comprehend. But whatever it was, it left only blood and bodies in its wake and it is still unsafe to walk those empty halls to this very day.

Or so the tales say.

But, as is always the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

***

Lethelin released her last arrow and cursed. Every shot had flown true, and she had an impressive body count, but now her ranged options were done. In front of her the throne sat, glowing and implacable. And beyond that, the knights battled. The sight of their true might both terrified her and made her want to scream with adulation. Their blades sang, their magic coursed through the air, filling the space with the smell of ozone, fire, and ash. And beneath that, the smell of blood was so thick as to nearly choke her. Were it not for the windows that had been blasted out by the concussive shockwave of spells fired all about, the charnel house stench would have made her gag.

And, despite their unmatched skill in battle, there were simply too many soldiers. If something didn't change, they would be overrun. The knights and Falen—who was a blade master in his own right— had blocked the door with the dead, but it couldn't last. And they had no way of knowing when Mitchell would break free. She would have to go down there and aid in the fight. There was nothing for it.

"Balls and bloody fucking tai—" and she stopped suddenly, her foot hitting the small bottle once more as she had prepared to stand and charge down the dais stairs.

She picked it up and, not taking the time to second guess the decision, pulled the cork out with her teeth and drank it down in one long pull. It tasted strongly of quinnamon and something else that made her mouth begin to tingle. She held her breath, wondering if she would be dead in moments, her insides melted. She breathed, awaiting her death, but it didn't come. The tingling sensation in her mouth intensified, then the same feeling spread out from her stomach to all her extremities.

Her vision changed then. Or, at least that's how it appeared to her. Whites became pale grays, colors became darker and richer. But, more than that, everyone seemed to slow down. Allora's lighting fast swings with her enchanted sword were suddenly moving as if through a thick oil. She watched as one of the soldiers cast arcane lighting at Gilriel and the lightning moved through the air at the pace of a slow walk.

"Sweet fucking sun!" Lethelin swore her eyes going wide as a dragon's. "It's a haste potion!"

Everyone wasn't moving slower; she was moving faster! She was moving a lot faster. Lethelin knew there wasn't much time. Grabbing Mira in her off hand and her rapier in the other, she bolted from behind the throne, her now-white cloak billowing behind her and she charged into the melee.

It was like child's play as she dove between the attacking soldiers, cutting a throat here, stabbing a kidney there. She took an extra second or two to seek out the handful of casters in the front line, using her witch bane daggers on them. She could have killed them outright, but she knew that the panic that set in when they lost their magic would further confuse the enemy and serve better than just another dead body.

Lethelin didn't know how many men and women she'd killed before the potion started to wear off. The pale gray began to shift back into white and the sounds of the battle returned to her ears. The could feel her legs getting heavy and her fingers start to slacken. Haste potions were amazing, but they extracted a heavy toll on the body. She had to get to safety before it wore off completely.

With a last burst of strength, she ran for the dais and was halfway up when the spell ended and Lethelin felt herself start to lose consciousness.

"Balls and fucking—" but she never finished that sentence.

Her body collapsed, its forward momentum carrying her over the last few steps where it hit the ground next to the throne and slid into wall behind it. There she lay, unmoving. Keen ears might have detected the softest snore coming from her exhausted form.

***

"Can you feel it, Mitchell? Can you feel the land as I do?"

Mitchell came awake at the sound of Awen's voice. Or... no. Not awake. He hadn't been sleeping, but he had been somewhere else. As he thought about the words, he turned his attention inward, but that was the wrong direction. He cast it outward into Awen. And from there, it spread out into... everything.

Mitchell was the land. He was every living thing, from the single blade of grass growing through the rocks on the eastern shore, to the blackmoor trees in the heart of the Shadow Glen, to the water drake prowling the river in the High Valley. He was everything and everyone.

"This is how you sense things all the time?"

"If I wish it. Focusing my attention on any one piece for long is difficult for me. But, if you pull your awareness back, you can get a different perspective."

Awen showed him how to orient his perception so he didn't see each individual thing, but rather the land as one interconnected whole. He felt how the pressure of the air exerted force against the trees and ground in one area where, in a different part of the land, the air passed more lightly. High and low pressure systems, he realized. He felt the surface water and the underground rivers and aquifers as one whole, flowing back in on itself, the whole system appearing in his mind like swirling lines of fire on his consciousness. He felt the mass of all the people pressing down on the ground, the weight of their buildings like fingers pressing into his skin. Mitchell was aware of all of it as one varied sensation that expressed itself in different ways across his senses.

"This is how I generally get a sense of the health of the land and our people. If I sense an imbalance, I can divert resources to correct it. With time, you will sense those imbalances, as well. But only when you sit in the chair. I would not be able to share this much information with your fragile human mind without the throne there to act as a buffer. But, suffice it to say, this is how you will fight Milandris and how you will direct the forces to do battle against him. I can show you where he is now."

Mitchell felt a pressure and then his perception became that of the ground beneath ten thousand feet. The weight of the men and women of Milandris's expeditionary force pressed into his consciousness and he felt the magic and men tearing up the soil to dig for the onyx geode that they knew to be beneath them. He didn't see them with his eyes, but he could view them through the senses of all the living things around them. The sights, sounds, and smells of those soldiers and engineers were broken up into a thousand little pieces by the various insects, plants, and animals, that called that area home, and all of it was fed to his mind.

"This is how I track him and how I listen to his plans. This is how you will track him and his armies when they come to retake the city. And this is how you will direct your soldiers to battle him and drive him out."

"This is... This is unbelievable."

"There is more I must show you before I release you from the throne. You must learn to take control of the palace and its defenses. Allora and the others fight bravely, but they are being overrun. Now, watch carefully."

***

The soldiers that were still lined up in the hall were the first to notice the statues. And that was only because they all stepped off of their platforms as one and began to attack the back line. Their stone bodies paying no heed to spell attacks and no concern for sword slashes or axe blows. Their faces were all expressionless except for their eyes, which glowed with a purple fury that knew no mercy.

Out in the courtyards where more soldiers were forming up, sculptures that looked like ornate sundials began to spin, shredding off the vines that had grown over them in the last two years, and lighting began to arc out with terrible power, exploding men and women on contact. Each bolt landed true and left only a mist of blood and shattered armor. Statues of man and beast alike came to life and began to chase down and slaughter every soldier that had made it inside the gates. They emitted no sound, their carved faces bore no expression, only the fury in their purple eyes spoke of vengeance long delayed.

The greatest terror awaited those beyond the gates.

As Mitchell's expanded consciousness flowed into them, easily dissecting itself to control all 47 guardians, their eyes opened as one and they stepped away from the wall in unison. Mitchell could see through each and every set of eyes at the several thousand soldiers that had remained outside the gates to keep the citizens of city at bay. The ground was littered with the bodies of the dead – soldiers and civilians alike.

As the guardians stepped from their ancient posts, a silence stretched over the palace grounds. Then a cheer so loud it broke the sky ripped through the air as the people saw their guardians—at long last—come to their aid. The ground shook with cries of victory.

Inside his shell of onyx, Mitchell smiled and he felt the smile echoed across all 47 guardians. Then those terrible eyes turned to the soldiers who stared mute in disbelief at the threat they now faced. Before their captains could organize any sort of defense, Mitchell attacked.

Few soldiers made it out of the city alive.

***

Allora brought her sword down on the head of another soldier, cleaving through the left side of his temple and down into his neck and chest. The man died without uttering a sound and his body collapsed to the floor to join the other dead soldiers. Her mind was empty, her body numb. Only one thought burned through the haze of exhaustion.

"None shall get past me."

She swayed but raised a sword as heavy as the world to meet the next attacker only to find there were no more. In front of her was the stained and cracked statue of Verity De Farseer, a captain during the war with Iletish who had died defending the town of Buckkeep near the Southern Road. And behind him stood a dozen other statues, all still, their weapons held at the ready, their purple eyes unblinking. At their feet lay untold scores of dead. The Hall of the Sun was thick with bodies.

"Is it..." Elrin gasped beside Allora. "Is it over?"

The woman's hair was matted with sweat and blood, she didn't appear to have the use of her left arm, and one side of her face was a bloody swollen mess. Her words were slurred and tears of pain and maybe relief were dripping out of her other eye.

"I think so," Allora croaked. She started to turn and look to the throne but her legs gave out and she collapsed. The last thing she thought she saw was the throne receding around a form that sat upon it. As her eyes slid closed, she thought she heard the sound of cheering drifting through the shattered windows.