“Before I make my request I will let you know the you may get angry.” I barely said anything but the tension of the room skyrocketed. The duchess straight face slowly firmed up “go on”. Steeling my resolve “I cannot really sugarcoat it, so I will be blunt.” My gaze drifted noticing the axe next to the chair where the duchess was sitting. “Basically, I want to experiment on your daughter-“ the axe that was by her chair was now lodged in the wall behind me. The entirety of my instinct scream at me to run, but I can’t stop now, I’m so close. The words were at the back of my throat slowly but surely they came out “to create a barrier based off her ability to wield the darkness. Although you and your husband have the ability, they are both internal based, your daughter is the rare case where she is external based. With the results I will be able to protect everyone that you rule over, and that is a promise.” -- Anon Guest
The Vicerene DeGluem was, as the palace staff euphemistically called it, playing with her shadow puppets. What she was actually doing was playing with the very shadows themselves. Turning them into shapes. Turning them into physical objects. Making them dance and perform for her. She was six years old and had no fear of monsters in the dark. With her powers, any monster in its right mind was afraid of her.
That's what I was banking on. The Duchy would be protected, oh yes. The Vicerene was a talented little lady in the ways of shadows. Most of her line could only manipulate their own, or work with extant shadows. The Vicereine Solaria could create them and make them solid enough to move physical objects. Her puppets did not have voices, so she provided them in her play.
Gods help me, I was about to experiment on a baby to save the realm. The forces of true evil were nibbling away at the Duchy's ability to defend itself and the Vicereine was the only one with the power to do anything. I already vowed to her protection. I would do everything in my power to augment hers without her pain.
"The great tower is almost ready," Vicereine Solaria DeGluem announced as a puppet under her control nodded in time to her words. "We shall have a splendid view of the Duchy borders. With a telescope, we may even see how our troops are doing on the border." In a slightly different voice, and making a different puppet nod, "Well done, well done. With flags and signals, we may yet win the day."
She was in a pink and frilly dress, with frilly socks and a cheap wire-and-bead tiara perched on her head. If she wasn't playing with shadows, she might have been mistaken for an ordinary girl playing pretend. I had to hold back tears because her very game was the chief concern of the realm.
I cleared my throat and said, "My pardons, my lady."
"Ah. My courier has arrived. My pardons, gentle-darks. I must see to wider businesses." She rose, and her puppets melted away like ice in Summer. "How goes the war?" She had lived her life in the war. So had her mother, the formidable Duchess who had fought an entire battalion while heavily pregnant and only retreated because Solaria was coming out. She still claimed the pains gave her extra motivation to murder the opposition.
"Grim news, my lady, with an atom of hope. The troops are retreating as far as the third wall."
"That is grim. So much of our farmland lies between the second and third walls. Is the atom of hope something to reclaim those fields?"
"Yes," I said, and told her everything. Her unique gifts and their potential. The experiments by which she could create and maintain a fortification impenetrable to enemy fire. How her 'gentle-darks' could be an unbeatable army.
"I will proceed gently, my lady," I promised. "I vowed to your protection on the hour of your birth." What a memory. All three of them, bloody in the battlefield. All screaming for different reasons. I had torn my own cloak off to be her first swaddling, and the Duchess provided the enemy's stolen pennant.
It's a girl! Blood in her eye, just like her mother! How the cheers had sounded. We won back the first wall that day, for the new Vicereine.
She had had a life in safety since then. Secure in the palace, true, but steeped in the news of war. How much of the war was like her storybooks for her? Talking animals and friendly witches in the woods... The rule of the third son and the glisten of fairies raised her as much as talk of mangonels and troops and rations.
"I would rather die than see you come to harm," I said, meaning every word.
"It will likely hurt all the same," said the lady. She nodded formally and turned back, summoning the shadows into puppets. "Well, my gentle-darks. The time has come for us to contribute to the battle for our lands. It will cost more than gold, as all things do. Today, we fight for the Duchy. Today, we fight for our people. Will you join me?"
Once more, I had to wonder if all of her shadows were under her conscious control. A majority of her twenty figures raised their arms in salute.
"Very well. Let us begin."
I held her hand all the way to the laboratory. I told her it was quite all right to announce when she reached a limit. It was perfectly fine to announce when it hurt. Even soldiers in the field needed to sleep and eat and all the other things. Even the armies cried out when they were hit.
It was perfectly all right to cry, too. I had cried when I lost my sword arm, but the mechanical one hardly hurt any more and further, I could still aid the Duchy with magic.
"You're crying now," she noted.
"Yes." The slow tears would not stop. "I am sad that your chances for play have to end so soon."
"We all make sacrifices for the good of the realm," she reassured.
That may be true, but you are that sacrifice. Today and tomorrow and for as long as this damned war lasts. The tower was almost complete. It would allow a powerful mage to see all the Duchy at once. With the aid of a telescope or omnivision, they could win...
The Duchy made the opposing forces pay dearly for every square foot of land, but they... they kept coming. Wave after wave of skittering, screeching insects the size of warhorses. The size of boars. The size of hay-carts. It was the ones the size of dogs that were the worst. Wicked fast and with a front full of sharpness. They could tear an unarmoured man to shreds as soon as fall on him.
The third wall, from up there, looked like it was being held with ants. The forces of the opposition like a tide of green wheat. It was the Drivers, with their banners or pennants and their almost human shape, that were the true targets. Knock one of them out and their entire battalion was without direction and easier to destroy.
She could help be a bulwark on a broken wall. She could squash twenty of the enemy with a flick of her finger. The toy size of the field helped her, as it was little different to her than her blocks in her nursery.
In the field below, shadows became giants and stepped on the enemy creatures. Twenty at a time.
Thank the gods that she was on our side.
The omnivision made our battlefield into a small playset for her. The crown - far more expensive and much more effort to create than any thing made of gold and beset with gems - made it so simple for her to make hundreds of shadows.
She helped hold the third wall. Helped win the second in a month.
Of course it had a price. She was far more tired more often. Her voice was less strong. When she rested, a team of nurses spooned hearty broth between her lips as she lacked the strength to lift a spoon when she was done.
It was the Vicereine Solaria who insisted on doing her utmost for the realm. She was born in the screams of the battlefield. She reasoned it was so that she would see them end.
Even the Duchess tried to argue her out of it. We can stop at the second wall. Just hold it. Hold it steady so we can rebuild and it will be easier...
"Easy didn't win the first wall," said Solaria. "If I am the hope of our people, let their hope be worthy."
She will be a truly formidable Duchess when she comes to the crown. It was my sworn duty to see her achieve it. There was more magic than the magic of shadows. There were other magics, like the magic of life.
I have begun aiding the Vicereine in her recovery. Paying a day of my lifespan to her health and wellbeing.
She is doing well, and so is the war.
I grow older by the advance. Past the first wall. Hemming the enemy in at their font. Into their sanctum. Cutting them off from their supplies. One day at a time.
One day, I will run out of days to give her. It won't matter. More than one man swore their life for the Vicereine. More than one man is willing to don the crown of days on her behalf. Spend their life for her.
I will die rather than see her come to harm. So will they.
So I swore. So did they. So mote it be.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Anke]
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