Sevry: The Vow
SEVROS, THE LAST King of Savaru, crouched in the shadows
of the wall around the Convent of Azara. The air was thick with the smells of
smoke and death; the light of the dying afternoon grew dimmer as the snowfall
started again. He listened to the sound of the approaching army as he tried to
steady his breath and gauge the right moment to make the dash across the
courtyard and into the convent itself. There were marksmen hidden around the
yard and wall with arrows trained on him, as he had discovered the first time
he tried to make it to the convent. And the army was getting closer. But he was
determined to get to the convent. If he had to die, and it was certain that he
would, he wanted to do so fighting to defend the last stronghold in Savaru.
Sevry had been fighting his whole life, it seemed. A year
ago, the Madrinans thought their conquest was at long last complete. But the
last two thousand living Savarunans gathered under the banner of King Nidelv,
the oldest of Queen Ilvana’s three surviving grandsons, and launched a final,
desperate attempt to drive the Madrinans out of Savaru. Now, after a bloody,
brutal fighting retreat back across Savaru and up the Aza Peninsula through the
coldest winter Savaru had ever known, Sevry was the only one left. Everyone else,
men, women, children, old people too feeble to fight but who had fought anyway,
were dead, slaughtered by the Madrinan army or killed by cold, disease, and
starvation. Sevry had only survived because of his people’s insistence on
defending the last living member of their royal family.
His death was inevitable; Sevry was resigned to this by
now. But rather than becoming the last futile death in these fields of carnage,
he wanted to make one final stand, hopefully taking a few more Madrinans with
him before they destroyed Mother Azara as they had destroyed all the other
Sources in Savaru. It would happen anyway, but he wanted to make sure the
Madrinans paid dearly for the privilege.
A ballad came into his mind, one of his favorites, a
heroic, tragic tale of lovers killed in the wars against invading Madrin clans
a thousand years ago. He began to sing it under his breath, knowing that when
he was dead, the language and songs of Savaru would be gone too. The tale of
Avraz and Irazaja would be forgotten, and there would be no one to sing of his
own death. He sang the song all the way through, making of it a lament for his
people, his land, and himself. Tears slid down his face as he sang, mingling
with the snowflakes that landed on his cheeks. When he was a child, music had
been the breath of life to him, and he had dreamed of becoming a bard. That
dream was now nothing but ashes in the rubble of war, along with all the other
hopes and dreams of the Savarunan people.
When his song was ended, Sevry looked down the long,
snow-covered slope below the convent and across the ruined fields and woods
where the last mundane battle had taken place the day before. The Madrinans had
nearly reached the convent. There wasn’t much time; he would have to risk the
hidden archers. Keeping to a crouch, a handful of arrows narrowly missing him,
he ran through the falling snow across the courtyard and into the great entry
hall of the convent.
There had been another battle here the previous night; a
battle of wizards. Sevry had watched the multicolored explosions of light and
heard the vast rumbling noises of the battle from a distance. Though the
Madrinan wizard-priests were far from their Sources, they had pressed their
attack ruthlessly, but the Daughters of Azara, though of a more peaceful
nature, had had enough immediately available power from their Source to answer
death with death. The floors and stairways of the convent were littered with
the bodies of gray-robed golus and white-clad Daughters, drifted with snow that
had blown through the holes blasted in the walls.
Sevry walked amidst the death and destruction, looking
for the best place to make his final stand, where he could do the most damage
before the Madrinans killed him. At the top of the steps leading to the front
door seemed a fittingly heroic place, but it was too exposed. An archer could
cut him down before the army even entered the courtyard. Somewhere indoors
would be better. In the main hall, the lower half of the great staircase had
collapsed; perhaps if he climbed onto the upper, intact, part, and fought from
there—
He stopped at the sound of a faint moan from behind a
pile of rubble near the staircase. Sword in hand, he moved silently towards the
place the sound had come from. He heard it again, a low, animal sound, not a
call for help but an involuntary groan of pain. Keeping low, alert for signs of
a trap, he stepped closer, and saw the crumpled body of a woman wearing the
white robe of Azara. The back of the robe was saturated with blood both dried
and fresh.
Sevry knelt next to the woman and laid her head on his
lap. Between her wounds and his lack of resources, there was nothing he could
do for her but try to comfort her for a moment. “You’re not alone,” he
whispered, smoothing her long, gray, blood-stiffened hair.
She was large for a Savarunan woman, and something about
her size teased at his memory. She opened her eyes, studied him briefly, then
smiled. “King Sevros,” she said, her voice barely making its way out of her
broken, dying body. “I’m Ysa. I served your Aunt Juzeva.”
Sevry’s hands briefly stilled in surprise. Then he took
up the soothing touch again. “Yes, I’m Sevros,” he said.
“Is anyone else left?” Though her voice was hoarse and
weak, the urgency in it was clear.
“I’m the only one, Mother Ysa. I’ll die too, but I’ll
take as many of them with me as I can.”
“No! You must not die.” She coughed. Sevry raised her
head and put his waterskin to her lips. “Listen to me,” Ysa went on, her words
coming with greater difficulty. “Juzeva had a secret. A Source-token, a small
crystal vial on a silver chain. Into it, Azara put the power to restore all the
Sources of Savaru if they were ever destroyed. Azara would have told me if she
had died. Find her, and bring her back, so Savaru can live again!”
The last word ended in another rattling cough. Sevry gave
Ysa the last few drops from his waterskin. “But how can I find her, Mother Ysa?
I’m standing alone at the end of the earth, with an entire army against me.”
“Trust Azara. She will help you bring back…her own…”
Once again her voice trailed off into a harsh fit of
coughing, which was quickly drowned out by the sound of dozens of mounted
soldiers riding into the courtyard. Sevry started to gather Ysa into his arms,
to take her with him, but she pushed him away. “Leave me. Save yourself. Let
Savaru live again.”
The first soldiers entered the great hall. Sevry
scrambled up onto the pile of rubble that was the lower part of the staircase.
He grabbed the broken edge of the upper part and dragged himself up, determined
now not to let the soldiers corner him. Sword in hand, he ran upstairs, meaning
to find a place to hide, but they came too quickly, clambering up onto the
broken staircase after him. He ran through the hallways and up more stairs,
trying to lose the Madrinans. It galled him to be running instead of fighting,
but now he had a reason to live. He believed Ysa; no one could make up a lie
like that so close to death. It almost seemed as if she had deliberately pushed
away death so that she could tell her secret to someone who could make use of
the knowledge.
The Madrinans drove him upwards through the convent
until, on the top floor, he came to a ladder that led through a trapdoor in the
ceiling. He climbed the ladder and came out onto the roof, which was bordered
by a low stone parapet. The wave-wracked, rocky cove of Azara lay far below.
Sevry stood on the roof, trying to catch his breath and gather his courage for
what was to come. Trust Azara, Ysa had told him. It was all he could do now.
The first few Madrinan soldiers climbed up through the
opening in the roof, grinning and boasting in anticipation of the honors that
would come to the man who killed the last Savarunan king. Sevry ran to the
parapet, stepped up on it without breaking his stride, and, with a final,
defiant cry of “Savaru!”, dove from the wall.
