“Hello folks,” I said, repeating myself again and again until my voice was loud enough to carry over the whispers, grumblings, and smatterings of full-volume conversations.
“Help, please?” I asked Blondie. She nodded, and then she did what she would never have done for herself, as it was too cheap and she believed in winning people over with charisma rather than power.
But for me, maybe thinking I needed all the help I could get, she let her power free.
The first few rows of creatures took a visible step back, and even people in the back of the room scrunched up their faces like they were in a strong wind. For that’s what it felt like—a sudden tornado in the room, emanating from Blondie.
Petals on a wet black bough, I thought, as Blondie subdued her mojo and, one by one, I saw all those faces turn to watch me expectantly.
“Um, hello everyone,” I said, “Can you hear me?”
Faces amongst the crowd nodded, even as someone else grew impatient. “Who are you?” shouted a voice to my left. I couldn’t help but smile.
“My name’s Jane,” I said. “And I’ve come to help you fight the Red and the White.”
There was a sharp, uncomfortable silence until someone laughed. That laugh spread through the room, till there was an almost universal roar of humor at the sight of me, claiming that I was there to defeat some legendary bad guys.
The laughter stopped just as quickly as it had started, however, when I pulled out the ax.
The labrys showed up in my hand, glowing like a star. Again exhibiting that uncanny sentience, as if it were aware of the situation, it didn’t just light up. Instead it blossomed with power, a force so palpable that even Blondie was forced to back up a step.
This time, the people in the first few rows didn’t move back, they were shoved.
Slowly, the force of the ax waned even as the light it emitted grew until everyone’s eyes averted, including mine. Some of the beings that had once been crowded near the table and had already been shoved back now fell to their knees. Granted, it was less out of a desire to worship me and more because of the bright light. Seeing them genuflecting like that made me distinctly uncomfortable, however, no matter the reason.
Only after I’d well and truly blinded everyone in the room did I dim the labrys, pulling in its power as I did so.
“Like I said, I’m Jane True. And I’ve come to help you fight the Red and the White.”
With that, I waited. But this time, no one laughed.
“I’m not from here, obviously. I’m from America, from what used to be Orin and Morrigan’s territory, on the East Coast. But I didn’t know about any of that until recently. I didn’t even know I was a halfling. And now I’m your champion.”
All faces were turned towards me, now. I read an interesting mixture of emotions: curiosity, admiration, confusion, fear. I’d always hated public speaking—hated anything that drew attention to me. The thought of all those people watching made my mouth go dry, so instead there was only one face I spoke to, and that was Anyan’s.
He was smiling at me from where he’d moved to lean against the wall, with his arms crossed. I concentrated on the curve of those lips, on how his eyes watched me with a combination of pride and affection. Imagining the crowd was all made of Anyans, I started to move more, trying to appear comfortable by making my table into a stage.
“You laughed at me, and I don’t blame you. I would laugh at me. I’m easy to underestimate, but I also didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of it,” I repeated, and for a second my voice caught. I regained control, and then continued.
“But it doesn’t matter what I wanted. The woman you now know as the Red was my queen, and she used her power to betray everyone who trusted her. She killed indiscriminately—her own kind as well as those she looked down upon. She used her position to consolidate her power and to find what she needed to release the Red. And then she let that monster take over her own body.”
I paused, looking around at everyone in the room. They were listening, some nodding along with my words, others still looking skeptical. I looked towards Anyan and he gave me an imperceptible little nod of encouragement.
“Without anyone ever knowing what she was up to, Morrigan nearly brought my territory to its knees. But that was before she was the Red. That was Morrigan, on her own. And now she’s let herself become the vessel to a power so huge it can’t die.
“What she wants now is to give that same power to her consort, Jarl. For those of you who don’t know, Jarl was the front for Morrigan’s evil. He was her left hand man, and he stood by as she killed their king, his brother. Imagine that evil man as the White?”
I strode over to one side of the table, looking down on that side of the crowd.
“In some ways I’m lucky,” I told them. “Morrigan and Jarl left my territory.” I crossed back over the table, to let that side see me. “My family is safe. My friends are safe. I have no reason to be here.”
I moved back to the front of the table, looking around with as much gravitas as I could muster.
“But I am here. I’m here because Jarl and Morrigan need to be stopped. I wish I were here just because I want revenge, or because I’m such a good person that I want to help you. But that’s not it. I’m here because I know that those two will never stop. They’re starting here, certainly. They’ll do what the Red and the White have always done, and destroy Britain. Destroy your friends, your families.
“But they’re not just the Red and the White anymore.”
I straightened the arm that held the ax, to bring it back into the picture, slowly raising its light and power like it was on a dimmer switch as I spoke.
“The Red is also Morrigan. She’s smarter then she was. She’s more resilient. And she’s more ambitious. If she succeeds in making Jarl into the White, they won’t self-destruct after Britain. They’ll take the world.
“So I’m not fighting because I want to. I’m fighting because I have to. Because otherwise those monsters are going to bring this world to its knees.”
“But how can we fight them?” shouted a voice from my right. It wasn’t antagonistic, this time, but serious. Whoever had yelled that question really meant it as just that—a question.
“We’ll fight them the only ways we can,” I said, my voice growing sad despite my intentions. “We’ll fight them with everything we’ve got in us. And some of us will die. I might die. But we have no choice. It’s either fight now, and have a chance at living, or die later, with everyone we love.”
It wasn’t exactly an optimistic speech, but it was the truth, and I realized that fact even as I said the words.
At that moment I realized I had to be in that room, with those people, telling them we had to fight.
It was my role. Which was as close to the idea of destiny as I was willing to get.
With that thought, the ax’s light and the creature’s power filled the room. For the first time since I’d arrived in the UK, I felt at peace. My calm radiated from me, taking tangible form with the creature’s power and washing through the crowd so that more than a few people suddenly looked as if they’d follow me to their graves. But I knew whom I really needed to sway.
I looked over at Jack, who’d dropped his politician’s facade. Instead, he was watching me with the intensity of a hawk, obviously assessing whatever it is that people like him assessed in these sorts of situations. I wished I could believe he was thinking through what was best for his people, but I’d become too cynical for that.
“What do you say?” I asked the crowd, although I knew Jack really was the crowd. “Will you join me in this fight?”
Jack didn’t reply, and all eyes went between the two of us. The silence was oppressive, and I felt sweat trickling down the back of my neck and down along my side.
“You have our support, halfling,” rang out a clear voice.
The problem was, that voice wasn’t Jack’s. It had come from behind me, and it belonged to a whole ’nuther political contingency altogether.
I turned slowly, to where Luke and Griffin stood in the doorway that led to the stairs.
Rebels hissed and spat as the Alfar used their power to clear a route to where I stood on the table. Once beside me, they used their air and earth power to levitate themselves up next to me, and then they addressed the crowd.
“Rebel scum,” Luke said in his flat voice, “your Leader greets you.”
My eyes flew to Anyan’s even as I sighed, internally. Leave it to an Alfar to offend everyone in the room through his salutation.
“You have no rights, here, Alfar usurper,” countered Jack, as he strode towards us, his people moving around him in a way that expressed their solidarity.
“It is I who grant the rights in this territory, halfling,” was Luke’s reply. Jack jumped athletically up onto our trestle table, which wobbled alarmingly. Lyman didn’t bother to join his brother, but he stationed himself at the end of our improvised stage in a way that left him free for action.