After He Was Gone (3)
…He had respected him.
"Ed, our youngest. What brings you all the way out here?"
"Brother!"
"You rascal. It isn't Brother. You have to say Your Majesty."
"Brother… Your Majesty?"
"Kahaha! This one never fails to make me laugh."
No. He respected him still.
A sovereign greater than any other. A sage king and a wise king, a man who knew how to put the kingdom before himself. A genius who never shrank from reform and always showed an insight a step ahead of the age. The man who, in a human body, had come to be called the Martial God — Edmund had respected him with all his heart. He had watched those achievements from directly in front of them since he was a child, more closely than anyone.
And so.
Couldn't I become that, too?
If it was him — the younger brother, the one who had watched from nearer than anyone — then could he not become like his brother? Like the Martial God? That such a feeling should, at some moment, put out a sprout in Edmund's heart was hardly strange. He had respected him, and longed for him, more than anyone. To wish to resemble the thing one longs for is only natural.
And so….
I haven't gone wrong. I am… the Martial God's brother!
There was no way the thing he was doing could be wr—
Thuk!
"Gyaaaaaah!"
"Your thoughts run deep. Some worthless fancy? Or did you mistake this for a dream?"
"Aaaagh…!"
"Then I suggest you wake. This is real. You loathsome beast."
Fwoosh!
"!!!"
Edmund could not even scream. Pain? No. This was not a thing one word could define. It was something more horrible — more frightening, more skin-crawling.
"I find myself grateful to that knight. Yes. How could mere death be forgiveness enough? He ought to live more horribly, more painfully, and only then go."
Thuk!
The blade driving in between Edmund's brows, and the flame with it, were drawing something out of him. It was nothing other than—
Shrrrk!
……Edmund's soul.
…To think I was this much of a fool.
Blake let a self-mocking sneer settle on his mouth — a bitter smile at his own stupidity. He had thought himself a reasonably clever man, a prudent one. Only now did he see that he was not clever at all. He was foolish beyond measure.
Why didn't I know?
He had suspected the royal house. Twenty years ago he had been certain the ones who killed his wife were no ordinary power — a faction that had aimed at the lady of Galahad herself, pierced that iron guard, and slain her. Among the powers that deserved suspicion, the royal house had certainly been one. But in those days his father, the Martial God, still lived, and that had taken the edge off his doubt. He had believed no one could slip free of that man's control.
…But that had not been so.
At the banquet the other day, when he heard that Edmund was the very man who had, in substance, revived the Blood Cross Army thirty years ago, the shock struck him like a hammer to the skull. A man who had deceived the Martial God's eyes, lied to his face, and committed a betrayal of that kind. Family was no reason to trust. Blood was no reason to trust.
So once the banquet had collapsed into ruin, Blake kept digging. He investigated every last one of Edmund's vassals, turned over what lay behind them, and whenever he found someone suspicious he did not hesitate to seize them and wring the information out. And so, a bare ten days. In only ten days, he knew. Edmund had been involved in the death of his woman. Those who killed her with their own hands were surely the Blood Cross Army — but the indirect hand was certain.
"You hid it well and tight. The cruelty of killing your loyal vassals while dressing the deaths as chronic illness or accident, and then killing their families too, lest a word leak out…. Unfortunately for you, this kingdom has a house that can see souls."
"…Mordred!"
"Going to their aid the other day made their cooperation easy to obtain."
"Damned mysteries!"
The vengeful spirits of those who had died unjustly. Blake had been prepared to bow his head to Mordred merely for the chance to meet them, yet they gave their help willingly.
Fortunate, that he had helped them. Because of it—
"I was able to learn the truth."
"Urgh!"
"The vengeful dead said it. Give you the most horrible death, the filthiest. I intend to keep that promise."
What the vassals killed by Edmund's hand to bury the truth, and their blood, had wanted was one thing only. Revenge. And that—
"is what I want as well."
"Blake!!"
"Shut your mouth."
Fwoosh!
"Aaaaagh!"
Voice thick with rage, Edmund tried to hurl himself at him — but that was a dream that could never come true. And no wonder.
Wooong—.
"From this moment, your soul is subjugated to this magic sword. Did you imagine a thing like you could resist?"
From this moment he was nothing but a subjugated slave.
One of the five mysteries of Galahad's magic sword, Lancelot — and the most difficult of them to wield. The soul is bound. The slave cannot lift a hand against the blade.
The Mystery of Subjugation. To subjugate an opponent of high grade was all but impossible, and even the method of control resembled sorcery, so it was a mystery one could hardly bring oneself to use. Had Edmund stood at a grade above ordinary men, resisting it might have been possible. For Edmund, it was not.
His grade, at the most generous estimate….
"Lower even than a Common Soldier. Well. There would have been no chance for grade to accumulate. You never grew strong. You never staked your life on effort, never built knowledge, never piled up good deeds. How could a thing like grade exist in you, who lived by nothing but shortcuts and never made any effort at all?"
"You bastard! Wh-what would you know! How hard We struggled! Do you know how hard We struggled to catch Him — to catch Our brother! You, chosen by mystery and blessed all your life, dare speak of Our pain…!"
"Amusing. The notion that a shortcut counts as effort."
Was the hatred of mystery only jealousy, that mystery had never chosen him? Amusing. No — loathsome. If he knew how painful the years had been since the magic sword chose Blake, he could not have spoken that way. And yet he would not even try to understand. He only fed the jealousy. That sight was sickening without end.
Crack!
"Well. Enough. Further talk is meaningless."
Blake did not put that disgust into words. Nothing was as pointless as conversing with a patient spinning delusions of persecution. Pressing Edmund's soul and body at once, he told him, low.
"I am not the least bit curious about your circumstances. Not what you were thinking when you betrayed the kingdom. Not why you hate me. And no wonder — every one of those reasons would be a reason just like you. Foolish, incompetent sovereign, who has soiled the name of Pendragon."
"!!"
"I intend to give you nothing but pain. In life, and in death. Without end."
"W-wait!"
Had another man said it, one might have dismissed the words as a joke. But he was the master of the magic sword. And the magic sword did not spare a cruel hand — gladly — when it came to fulfilling its master's command.
Wooooong—!
Whoosh!!
The mysteries within the blade answered their master's fury and fell upon Edmund. He meant to resist even then.
Crack!
"Kkeuuuugh!!"
He could not.
"N-no! W-We are……!"
From a consciousness growing distant, flickering out, Edmund pleaded. That all of this might be a dream. That some hand might come quickly and save him. But….
Crunch! Crunch!
Grind…!
"Aaaaaagh!"
The pain did not let him go. It only bound him fast and bestowed a greater agony.
"B-Brother…."
Edmund reached out a hand, remembering the one who had always lifted him with a warmth. Regrettably—
Whoosh—.
…there was no hand anywhere that took his.
Crrrack!
And so the one once called king was taken apart.
……Like a lump of meat.
Fwoooosh!
A castle was burning. The Silver Palace — a castle that carried a brilliant history — was burning.
"C-call a mage!"
"Irene! Call Irene Windler! We need her magic!"
"D-damn it…!"
The fire would not die easily. Water thrown on it did nothing. Moment by moment it only burned the castle harder.
"Aaaagh!"
"N-no!"
And the flames looked like hunting hounds. As if choosing whom to burn, they took a scant few — the men who had faithfully carried out King Edmund's orders. It could not be coincidence. Those who recognized the flame half-lidded their eyes and clicked their tongues.
"So this is the flame of the magic sword. Frightening, almost."
"Kahaha! And yet, Brother, that is not the face of a frightened man!"
"It is no lie. A dangerous blaze — that much is true."
"I want a bout with it!"
"Calm yourself. I am not yet ready to lose a reliable younger brother."
Black-haired men. The sovereign of the North and its Champion were watching the burning castle, as if they were watching a festival.
"Well. It seems we aren't the only ones watching."
"What do you say — shall we invite them to watch with us?"
"No need."
Besides these two, Grand Duke Magnus and Maximus, several others were watching the burning castle, and every one of them felt the others' presence, fierce and unmistakable.
"Over there is Tristan, and there Offen and Mordred. And there…. Ho. Bedivere and Percival? It has been a while."
"Not only them. Near every great noble has gathered."
The houses of long history that had opened the age of Pendragon together with the Knight King had assembled to the last. Those now called great nobles, or great houses. Besides them, the rising great houses were gathering as well, Offen at their head — Howard, Cavendish, Gulliver, and the like. The title of great noble, which only twenty-one houses in the kingdom were permitted to bear: those who held it had come. Seeing them, Magnus clicked his tongue.
"No one means to save the king."
"Who would save a thing like that? A man who sold the country and at last wrecked the nation the Martial God built. A fine feat! Not twenty years since the Martial God passed, and he's ruined the country to this degree! It'll be an evil left in the histories — kahahaha!"
"I agree."
In a sense, the reason those houses had gathered was one. Today was, in a sense, the day their shackles came undone. Pendragon — the royal house that had received the silver dragon's Dragon's Blessing and inherited the blood of the great Knight King — was at last collapsing. And that was also the moment the oath with the Knight King, the bond that had held the great noble houses, vanished.
Even if Edmund did not die, Pendragon had been the first to abandon the oath that bound them, the honor of chivalry, and to commit treason and evil. They would no longer be pressed down beneath the name of Pendragon. It was also a thing that stirred the appetite of men who, for all their mighty strength, had till now been content to reign as nothing more than the lord of a single province.
The beginning of an age of war.
Those with power, and those with a will, would rise.
An age of rival warlords.
Now — who would take this continent, blessed by mystery and by fairies?
Truly.
"Kahahaha! Since it's come to this, how's the North making a proclamation of its own? The royal house of Lionel! Doesn't that sound splendid!"
"……."
"…Brother?"
Magnus, who on any ordinary day would long since have taken him to task, did not. Instead—
"It would not be bad."
"…Ho."
He was smiling.
"A royal house. That."
— Not a bad sound at all.
Fwoosh—!
Within a fireworks that deserved the name of fire-demon, the heroes whose shackles had vanished let their eyes gleam.