Distant Light
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Warnings: This 'fic appropriates a genuine Earth language to be used as a language of magic-users. It is NOT Latin. Apologies to any native speakers of this language who may be displeased by the appropriation. No disrespect is intended; the language is beautiful.
He could hear the dragon sniffing at the air. It was many yards away from him yet, completely out of his own range of sight as he crouched beneath the cover of small olive trees. The winds, his loyal friends, carried the sound of the dragon to Merric-- the flap of its wings, the deep purring growl in its throat as it sensed prey, and the sniffing.
One war-dragon with female rider, the winds told him. Dragon hungry. Rider implacable.
Merric chanted the refrain of the Excalibur spell to keep his energy attuned to the winds as he waited for the predators to find him.
"North wind, arise, awaken! South wind, come to my aid."
He had heard the flapping wings from a long distance off, but now the paired dragon-and-rider were close enough that he could hear the low growl and ravenous snorts without the aid of his spirit helpers. Merric remained still beneath the shelter of the olive-boughs, lips moving soundlessly in the chant of his personal spell. A glimmer of green began to dance around the edges of his vision; he could feel anima power flowing around and through his body, as one standing before a blazing fire would feel the heat. In the low light of his hiding place, Merric saw flickers of green dance along his hands. The pattern of the dragon's breathing altered; at last, it located its human prey. But the prey raised his hand with a smile as he burst from his cover.
The blast of wind magic held such energy that the dragon and its rider were not merely downed, they were torn open and bloodied before even striking the ground. Merric felt the shock of the impact travel through his own body-- the protective charms sewn to his robes jangled. It left him momentarily drained, more from the magical discharge than from the physical shock of the kill. He pulled his robes close around him and crouched back under the trees, waiting for either another dragonknight to come around, or for this phase of the mission to end.
From his hiding place in the olive grove, Merric had an unobstructed view of a village to the north. He watched the village, on guard for any unusual movement, while the winds whispered of pain and sorrow and of the battle raging in the citadel that towered above his small cluster of trees. Finally he saw it-- a boy, climbing atop the wall with easy grace, then leaping to the ground. His soft boots made little sound in the dust, but the wind carried the rattle of his light armor to Merric's ears.
"Always the showman," Merric muttered. Not that it bothered him-- mages as a class appreciated a good show, and Merric was no exception. With the winds urging him on, Merric slipped out from under the olive trees, staying close to a seam of jagged boulders as he headed for the village. The other boy likewise kept close to the boulders, though his azure tunic failed completely to blend in with his surroundings.
"Merric!"
"Did you get the tome? Sire?" Merric added the proper address as an afterthought.
His companion held out a bundle of deep-blue brocade with a glittering weave of gold and silver stars.
"It's in there, all right. You should have seen it, Merric. I didn't realize spellbooks were created like that--" The other youth, flushed with excitement, caught himself as though remembering that they were in the midst of a battle. He glanced for a moment at the Macedonian citadel where the fight was, at present, contained. "Here, Merric. Put this wherever you keep the rest of your library."
Merric slipped the bundle into his robes, where it could be concealed among the other tomes he carried.
"It's as heavy as Bolganone," he said, as the tome settled into place. "It weighs as much as Thoron and Excalibur combined."
The other boy did not respond. He was focused again on the citadel, the infamous Aerie of Macedon. War-dragons in bas-relief adorned the outer walls, and the motif continued up the shining heights of the marble fortress. But living and dangerous war-dragons no longer poured from its gates.
"What do those invisible friends of yours say now, Merric?"
Merric tipped his head as though listening closely to the wind. In truth, he could hear the voice of the wind speak to his heart as clearly as it spoke to his ears.
"Princess Minerva and her knights have encircled Prince Michalis. We should make haste, or we'll miss the battle's end."
Technically speaking, Prince Marth of Altea was both Merric's sovereign and the supreme commander of the allied force currently storming the Aerie. Given that the elder princess of Macedon was both an ally and a highly skilled general, Marth had been content to leave the conquest of the Aerie to Minerva so that she could duel her brother and claim her own throne without the taint of outside interference. But it would be deemed cowardly to not be present at all when Michalis fell. Marth was already making his way toward the Aerie gates, and Merric dashed after him.
"I should be ahead of you... my lord. In case of...attack." Easier said than done; Merric's legs weren't as long as the prince's, and he simply couldn't cover the same ground. But Merric's spells were a better defense against dragonknight attacks than were Marth's swords. By the time Marth was close enough to land a killing blow, a war-dragon could have easily thrashed him, to say nothing of its lance-wielding rider.
"You'd have a better time keeping up if you wore regular clothes," Marth shouted over his shoulder.
"These robes... are the mark... of a fifth-year scholar of the Academy of Magic... at Khadein."
"Well, to the rest of us, they're a tripping hazard."
Had anyone else been in earshot, they would not have been trading jibes like a pair of third-year students. But beneath the great walls of a foreign capital, the tame insults were what Merric had to remind him that he was more than a walking library in the service of war. He didn't need to be reminded about the war itself, and if he had needed such, the reminder came swiftly. Two pegasus riders, both wearing the scarlet of Macedon's forces, came shrieking over the Aerie walls. Merric was expecting them and had been reciting Excalibur under his breath as he and Marth mounted the stairs of the Aerie. When the enemy riders appeared, it was no great effort to raise both arms to the heavens and send the girls and their pegasi spiraling to their deaths.
"Was that really necessary?" Marth had paused on the stair to peer over the edge at the fallen girls and their mounts. A few white feathers drifted yet on the air.
"The winds warned me of them both. They were not friends."
"I'm so glad I don't have voices in my head telling me what to do." Marth could run an unarmed curate through without a moment's hesitation, but the sight of a fallen pegasus knight would move him to pity. If Merric hadn't killed the girls with the first strike, Marth might even now be dashing back down the stairs to try and help them.
"Ah, there's Linde," Merric said as they reached the summit of the stairs. He was speaking not of his fellow mage, but of the column of light that blossomed up above the citadel-- Linde's signature way of marking a victory for the Archanean League.
"Blast," Marth said under his breath. "Now they'll say I was afraid to face Michalis himself, and had to let the women do it for me."
It was true, but Merric didn't particularly care. He slipped his hand deep within his robes and felt the silken covering of the tome that Marth had given him. If the spell inside that tome was as powerful as it was supposed to be, then gossip about who was present at the death of Michalis, and why, simply didn't matter.
"Big brother! Big brother!" The high-pitched cry of a little girl rang out against the stark marble walls. "The bad king is dead, and Min-er-va wants you to come right now!"
"I'll be there in a moment, Tiki!" Marth ran toward the child who, with her dark-green hair and pointed ears, was clearly not any blood relation of his in spite of her words. Merric watched his lord and the small manakete girl disappear into the citadel; he remained at the head of the stairs for a while, contemplating the Starlight tome and all its possibilities.
XXX
Marth and Merric both stayed in camp that night with the bulk of the League forces, which allowed Princess Minerva and her knights time to sort things out amongst themselves. Merric would have liked a soft bed-- and a proper indoor bath-- but the Aerie was no place to make himself comfortable at present. Especially not after Princess Minerva had insisted that Prince Marth claim the Macedonian throne alongside her. The public reaction indicated that Alteans were not welcome inside the city walls at present, and Merric didn't feel like ending up as dinner for somebody's beloved war-dragon. Or a pegasus, either-- there always had been a rumor that Macedonian pegasi fed on human flesh.
Most of the evening was occupied with the usual after-battle routine-- assisting the wounded at the healers' pavilion, cleaning weapons and armor, dissecting the battle strategy, and congratulating one another just for being alive. It was well after curfew when Merric at last unwrapped the shining brocade from the mysterious Starlight tome. He ran his fingers over the leather and vellum and gilt, familiarizing himself with the book so that he might know it by touch alone. It felt new, in the sense that no prior user of the tome had left his or her trace upon it. The binding was fresh and stiff, the pages crisp and boldly marked. But the magic that infused every page was unlike any spell Merric had handled before, and Merric could only say that it felt ancient.
"It was amazing," said Marth of the tome's creation. "I gave Lord Gotoh both the spheres, and he simply set them down next to a blank spellbook and waved one hand at them. They smashed together with a burst of light, and words appeared inside the book. Just like that," Marth snapped his fingers to demonstrate the ease of it.
"I don't think that's the way it usually works. Of course, Lord Gotoh is a more powerful sage than any of my teachers at Khadein." Gotoh was a living legend; Merric wasn't exactly sure how long the sage had been alive, but it must have been at least a hundred and fifty years, given that he'd founded Khadein right after the Wars of Liberation. Even for a magic user, that was exceptional.
"One of the spheres broke," Marth added. "The Starsphere, I think. It's too bad, as I would have liked to keep it." The Starsphere protected one's weapons in battle, and kept them from breaking no matter what abuse they were subjected to. Marth's favorite sword was a relatively fragile rapier, so he'd liked having the Starsphere. Merric's mind was already far away from the Starsphere; the Starlight was calling him now. Merric turned the tome to its opening page and began to read-- aloud, as a tome should be read.
"Hoku-ala, hoku-'ai-'aina, holo-'oka'a, leva-lani...."
The sound of every word was beautiful. Just speaking the syllables brought to mind rivers of light, moonlit ripples on the sea. Merric was eighteen verses in before he wrenched himself out of the poetry of pure sound and informed Marth of a breathtaking and obvious fact.
"Marth, this isn't any variant on Common Tongue. It's some dialect of manakete speech."
"Clearly." Marth maintained a dry facade despite the enchantment of Starlight. "It sounds rather like the language Tiki speaks to herself. I thought she was making it up as she went along."
"'Iu-'iu-hoku-pa'a, ka-malama-lama-o-na-lani...."
As he recited the text, the edges of the tome's pages began to glimmer with a soft, faintly blue light. The light grew stronger with each subsequent verse, and Merric soon began to hear a shimmering echo of music, as though he could finally hear the song of heaven itself. Then, too, his voice began to follow a rhythm that was nothing he'd learned in Khadein. It was completely unlike the formal pacing of standard incantation, yet it simply felt right.
"It will never cease to amaze me when you do that," commented Marth, as patterns of light began to dance upon the tent walls.
"Read this." Merric slid the tome across the desk, determined that his friend have some taste of the sheer wonder of this incantation. "Start with 'Kio-pa'a-ke-kau-lani.'"
Marth spoke the chapter aloud, and while his pronunciation was right and his rhythm passable, nothing at all happened. No stirrings of light or faint echoes of music came from the tome. Merric felt a little sorry for Marth, as he always did when confronted with the bare fact that the prince didn't possess the tiniest spark of magic. Merric at times would wonder, with an inner shudder, what it would be to wander through life without magic-- not blind, exactly, but color-blind, or tone-deaf. Able to perceive the world, but missing out on a measure of its beauty.
"Well, it certainly sounds impressive," Marth said. "Let's hope it works as Gotoh promises."
None of them knew, exactly, how Starlight would "seal" the powers of Dark Pontifex Gharnef. Merric envisioned the spell enveloping the sorceror in strands of light and binding him like the elaborately-wrapped corpses found in the shifting sands of the Khadein desert. But no man save Gotoh, not even Merric's teacher Wendell, was familiar with Starlight, and so no one could say for certain.
Merric felt compelled to open the tome again and begin studying it where he'd left off, but he saw Marth stifle a yawn. Depriving the prince of necessary sleep was one of the more grave unwritten offenses in camp.
"Where shall we go from here, my lord?" The question had become a nightly ritual between them, half in jest and half to reassure themselves that there was going to be another day ahead of them.
"Oh, travel by divine warp magic to the fabled ruins of Thabes." Marth spoke as though it were no great matter-- a trip to the market, or a stroll by the waterfront. "Destroy Gharnef. Rescue Elice. Retrieve my father's sword."
"And then?"
"Go to Dolhr and get killed by a very large dragon."
This, too, was an almost-joke between them. The refrain over the months had changed to "get hanged as rebels" to "get blasted by a dark sorceror" to this. It was somehow easier to imagine being dead than to imagine living with the consequences if they couldn't rescue Prince Marth's sister from the Dark Pontifex. It was easier to imagine being killed by dark magic, or killed by a dragon, or even hanged like a common thief, than it was to contemplate what it would be to find Elice, and have her somehow not be Elice anymore.
XXX
Whatever gods granted Starlight its power spoke to Merric with a different voice than did the winds. Their voices broke through his dreams and painted spiderwebs of light on the insides of his eyelids. Merric opened his eyes and felt himself propelled toward the neglected tome by a tense and desperate feeling. Licking his dry lips, Merric reached for the tome, and he cursed silently as the rickety camp table creaked at the movement. Merric glanced past his own abandoned bedroll to the shadowed form of the prince, but Marth was still breathing in the regular rhythm of sleep. Merric hardly dared to breathe himself as he opened the tome to the last verse he'd read that evening.
"Ka-'elele-o-ka-wana-'ao, ka-hikina kaka-hiaka-nui...."
"Merric, could you put it away for the night? I can't sleep with all the light and the music...."
Technically, it was a request from his sovereign lord. But the beauty of the Starlight spell was so potent that Merric could not resist reciting one more chapter, then another, then yet another. By the time he had sated his thirst for the spell, the real stars in the arch of the sky above were fading, and the rays of dawn painted the Aerie an appropriately bloody red.
End Chapter One
A/N: This is part one of a three-parter. I wanted to write something that dealt with the Archanean magic system in a little more depth than usual. The ideas about magic expressed in this 'fic are inspired by the FE3 designers' notes archives on Serenes Forest. Good stuff, that. Oh, yes. I like writing the friendship between Marth and Merric, but the dynamic between them goes seriously weird whenever Elice is in the picture. Marth and Merric have a good friendship, Marth and Elice have a lovely sibling bond, Merric has a crush on Elice, and all three together get... awkward, somehow. So if something seems a little creepy about this story, rest assure that it's all quite intentional. The FE1 manga is partly to blame.
The "manakete" language in this is Polynesian (Hawaiian, specifically). I wanted a non Proto-Indo-European language that was exceptionally musical, and Tiki's name pointed the way. Those are real words with meaning relevant to the spell, though I'm sure I mangled the syntax. Notes to be posted on my DA journal, including the spell translation.
Excerpt of the Excalibur spell inspired by the Song of Solomon, 4:16.