This post is this fifty-sixth and final chapter of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on the Steem blockchain.
The story so far:
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55
With himself and Lorne held protectively in her massive left hand, Jonas directed his latest Stone Woman toward the north foundry. Lorne had been right about most of the people being gone, focusing their attention on the giant that had appeared in the city. With the Stone Woman's arrival, many were now confused, wondering which of the improbable titans they should concentrate on. However, Jonas's massive woman was copying Suzana's long, graceful strides and arrived at the foundry long before any coordinated response could be fashioned.
At the foundry, huge vats of iron still sat molten, even though the fires had been banked before the workers ran off to fight Orso's giant. Piles of metal were heaped here and there. There was probably some system to it, but Jonas couldn't discern one. Still, Lorne had been right about the quantity. Now all Jonas had to do was use his magic. What Natasza had said about experimenting with senses by altering her spells had given him an idea. He wouldn't try to grasp and probe the magical properties of metal, building up his knowledge the way he had with stone. He would take his stone spells, and alter them until they started to work on the metal.
He began his spell, the same basic framework that he had used to craft his Stone Woman, but much higher in pitch, like the ringing of a metal bell compared to the deep bass that massive amounts of stone called for. He introduced subtle variations as he intoned, and suddenly the molten iron and steel began to ripple and shake. One of the piles of scrap shifted and collapsed. Jonas increased the intensity of his spell. The discarded pots and pans and barrel rings and whatever else the citizens of Kubara had gathered became red hot, then melted. The enormous vats shattered, and the liquid metal inside splashed and sloshed as it ran onto the ground, combining with the runoff from the giant piles into a pool around the Stone Woman's feet.
She bent down and thrust her right hand into the stuff, and pulled. At first it looked like the metal was running off her hands in large rivulets as she raised it, but then it became clear that the streams were combining into a massive blade. She stood, pulling the still forming sword from the metal on the ground. As she lifted it the sword cooled and solidified. Jonas was not a master swordsmith and hadn't studied weapons in the same kind of detail that he had studied Suzana's form. The sword was a simple, serviceable piece, but Jonas had given it some added magical strength and a wicked razor's edge.
With Jonas and Lorne still clutched in her left hand, the Stone Woman marched off through the city, her sword held before her. With thundering footsteps, she approached the central market. The giant was still there, feeding, but it stopped when it saw the Stone Woman. They had fought before, and it had been victorious. The expression on its hideous face implied that it expected to be victorious again.
The Stone Woman brought the sword up in front of her, and any observer could tell that it was a clumsy, awkward maneuver. “Do you know how to use that thing?” hissed Lorne.
“Not the details, no,” confessed Jonas. “But the basic principle is that the blade cuts flesh.”
The giant lunged, trying to get close enough to wrestle. Jonas had the Stone Woman step back and slash wildly with the sword. The giant dodged, but the edge nicked its arm and a bright red wound opened up, giving Jonas a psychological advantage even though the cut was a shallow one. The giant circled, testing the Stone Woman's defense, trying to find an opening. Jonas continued to slash at it, forcing it back. She wasn't using proper form, but the Stone Woman had an unshakable grip, and many of the rules that governed fencing on a human scale were meaningless to her.
The cuts that the giant was accumulating were wearing it down, tiring it but also making it angry. It became more aggressive with its strikes. Jonas slashed again, but this time the giant continued its charge instead of dodging. Jonas brought the sword up and cut a deep gash into one of thing's arms as it wrapped them around the Stone Woman's midsection. It tried to use its weight and leverage to topple her over, but Jonas shifted her footing to maintain her upright posture.
With the giant pinned against her by its own grasp, the Stone Woman hacked furiously at its back, unconcerned about what might happen if the blade should miss its mark and strike her own body instead. The sword bit deep into the giant's flesh, its back bleeding profusely, coating the square below in blood and gore. The giant, already weak from hunger, lost strength with each drop of blood. It released its grip and fell backwards in a daze. Lorne pointed Jonas toward a place between the giant's ribs. The Stone Woman placed the tip of the sword there, and then she rammed it home, piercing the beast's heart. Its struggles stopped, and Jonas had the Stone Woman open her hand so he could lie down to rest on her outstretched palm.
Jonas rested, doing his best to relax on the hard, smooth surface of the Stone Woman's palm. Lorne peeked through her fingers, looking down at the people who had gathered to fight the invading giant, and who were now unsure what to do. Someone would probably give them orders soon. “Do you think they'll follow Arturo now, as the new emperor?” Lorne asked.
Jonas lifted his head and opened his eyes. “Probably. He has a credible claim on knowing the empress's last wishes. With what has been done to these people, they must be starving for orders to follow. They're probably not going to investigate too deeply to find their provenance. It will be easier to pretend the ambiguities don't exist, and balm their warped consciences by following any orders they can get. Your friend Faber was right about that.”
“I thought I could end it by killing him. But now we have Arturo to deal with, too. Three times now. It seems that every time a head gets cut off, this beast grows a new one.”
“At least with Natasza gone, she won't be able to convert anyone else.”
“When Arturo banished her, was that permanent? Now that he's one of her followers, could he bring her back?”
That was a frightening thought. Jonas had never gauged the depth or breadth of Arturo's powers while they had been together, and now he regretted it. And even if he couldn't before, he might be motivated to figure out how to do it now. Jonas knew from personal experience that extreme motivations sometimes led to magical insights. “We'll have to kill him. It's the only way we can be sure.”
“Even if we do take him out, it seems that someone else will simply rise up to take his place.”
There was truth to what he said. Even if Natasza's spirit was banished, the empire she created would endure. They wouldn't have magic to enforce their rule any more, but most of them had been training as soldiers. They wouldn't be a common peasant rabble, either. They had begun turning themselves into the disciplined, efficient forces that Liat was always famous for, and wouldn't stop until they were an unparalleled military force. Even if some new leader didn't twist them to his own will, they would almost certainly continue the original plan of marching forth and converting people to worship their now departed demon-goddess at the point of a sword. “I don't know how to fix them,” Jonas confessed.
“Can you use your Stone Woman again?”
“All those people? You want me to just kill them?”
Lorne was slow to answer, and he did so with the gravity that his suggestion deserved. “I understand that it's not easy. Acting against someone else never is, even when you know it's right, like it was when I killed Faber. Everything I ever knew, ever believed, told me that I should just do what he told me, but I realized that I had to make my own decision, do what I felt was right. Those people out there... It was tragic what was done to them, but they're not people anymore. They're only tools now. They can't tell right from wrong. Perhaps killing them would be a mercy.”
Could Lorne be right? Could murdering thousands of people be the moral thing to do? His mind raced, turning to visions of the giant massacring the people that had mustered to fight it, only this time it was the image of his dear Suzana doing the killing. Could he do that? He stood up and looked down at the carnage the giant had been able to inflict before Jonas had brought the Stone Woman into the fight. As bad as it was, he realized that only a tiny fraction of the city's population had been killed in the attack. He breathed a sigh of relief. “One Stone Woman, as powerful as she is, couldn't fight all of them. It would be like taking a sword to an anthill.”
“Then maybe we should take a lesson from the priest and use fire,” Lorne replied.
Jonas felt the weight of that statement in his gut as he realized the truth of it. He had the power to do it. The spell he had cast to craft the sword had heated the metal, made it red hot. It hadn't been a desired effect, but he could use it again. With a source of heat like that at his disposal, he could set the entire city ablaze.
“I suppose that's possible,” said Jonas.
“Then what are you waiting for?” asked Lorne.
Jonas was dumbfounded. How could anyone think this was a quick, easy decision? “I'm not convinced that it's the right thing to do. To kill so many people? I understand that you think that it's the same as killing your friend. And if it was just Arturo we were talking about, I would agree. But so many?”
“And what would convince you? Would you like to see a good and decent man like Bishop Vasili preaching holy war in the name of a demon-goddess? Would you like to see Archduke Benedek caring more about the smooth operation of the army than the good of the people? I can show you these things, if you need to see them.”
Jonas didn't know how to respond to that. Lorne was right that the people below would continue their atrocities, warped as they had been by Natasza. Could he let his sympathy for them overwhelm his responsibility to their potential victims? The crime had already been committed by Natasza. He would merely be cleaning up after her evil act. But why did it always seem to fall to him to clean up after the misdeeds of others? Jonas sighed again, realizing the answer to that question. It fell to him because he was the only one capable of doing it. He had never wanted the responsibility for these decisions, never wanted to decide between two horrible paths. He had wanted to study magic, to experience the wonder and joy of discovery. But others were never content to let it end there. Others had forced the issue, but Jonas must make the decision.
Jonas looked down again at the mass of people in the city. He tried to think of them as ants, as he had suggested earlier, but he knew that they weren't. Each one had a beating heart, hopes and desires of their own. Unfortunately, those desires now all stemmed from a dark and twisted core, the desire to subjugate the world for their demon-goddess. Killing them would not be merciful, but it was necessary. If Jonas let them carry out their plans then the blood of their victims would be on his hands as well. But if that was true, why did Lorne's suggestion feel so wrong? The blood of these hypothetical victims might be on his hands if he chose not to act, but if he did do what Lorne wanted then the blood of all of these people would definitely be on his hands. He wished there was a better solution, a way to keep these people from hurting anyone else without hurting them, but he couldn't see one. “All right," he said to Lorne at last. "I'll do it.”
The Stone Woman sprang to life again, holding her sword out in front of her, the blade heating up under the effects of Jonas new spell, becoming red hot once again. She began using it like a fireplace poker, touching thatched roofs and timber buildings, heating them until they burst into open flame. She strolled through the inferno, spreading the fire with her as she wandered about the city.
Exhausted by both the intense expenditure of magical energy and the punishing heat coming from the city that burned around them, Jonas had the Stone Woman lift him and Lorne high into the air where he could take a moment to rest. He sat down and began breathing heavily. Overwhelmed by the enormity of what he had just done to thousands of people, he cried. He fought against the tears, tried to hold back the sobs, but couldn't. Eventually he regained control of himself and felt tired. Tired like never before. Tired as if no amount of rest would cure him.
“You did the right thing, Jonas,” Lorne assured him. “A huge and powerful army of unthinking obedience is too powerful a weapon. No one should wield power like that.”
Was there no end to Lorne's haranguing? He had done it, likely damning his soul in the process. What more did the man want? “You can stop lecturing me, I did what you wanted,” Jonas spat. “You're not the one who has to live with what I've just done.”
“No,” said Lorne, looking at the Stone Woman. “But I'm the one who has to decide whether you can be allowed to wield the power you have.” He turned toward Jonas, holding his knife in his hand, ready to spring forward and plunge it into Jonas's heart. "I'll have to live with consequences of that decision."
