I spun and cracked the head of one coming around the side. “Wanna keep count?” I asked my friend.
“Of what?” he said.
“Of the number of Balataur we take down like…Never mind.”
He leaned in close and snorted a laugh. “I shall beat you.” With a roar, he spun and took the head off a Balataur coming around the other side. He charged off, hacking and slashing as he made his way around rocks and trees.
I wanted to keep count but staying alive took precedence as I swung the escrima with all my strength. I had to. The Balataur’s thick hide protected them from weaker blunt force. It took full impacts to affect them. I thought I would tire eventually, and I probably would have sooner or later, but for the moment, I felt strong. Fast.
I used my shifting ability to keep my attackers off guard. Sometimes to move behind them to attack. Sometimes to get myself out of sticky situations when they surrounded me.
I took down many, splitting heads and breaking bones, but they just kept coming. When I’d get a glimpse of the wall, I’d see them coming over seemingly without end. I tried not to think about the people trying to get into the meager protection of the keep. I wasn’t fighting to give them a specific amount of time. I fought to give them as much time as I could.
A few soldiers joined the fight, but not many. I knew Aoife had done what she could to inspire them to stand up for their people, but for all the awe she could inspire, she had her limits. Calming the Delicians so they didn’t trample each other getting to relative safety would be her number one priority.
I jabbed a Balataur right below his rib cage. His breath rushed out and his eyes bulged. A soldier fighting alongside me ran the blade end of his poleax through its throat. I grabbed the back of the man’s collar and shifted him out of the ring of Balataur.
The man slumped against a building and I took the moment to catch my breath. I glanced up at the keep. The number of people crowded around it had shrunk, but too many remained outside at the bottom of the hill. The Circle of Atlas was massive, but it would never hold the thousands still trying to push their way up to it.
Joost and another man struggled to drag Izaak toward the keep. The big man hung limp before them. I hoped he was okay.
Brande jogged up to me. “We must run,” she puffed, clutching at her side. A trickle of blood seeped through her fingers.
“Go, we’ve done what we can.” I turned back to the fighting in the ruins. “I’ll try to take as many out as I can.”
I thought she would try to talk me out of it, but to my surprise, she nodded and hurried to catch up with the others, though she leaned into the pain in her side and moved far too slowly.
I surveyed the scene. A few of the soldiers and members of the Underground burst from the broken buildings and ran on their own accord, but the sounds of fighting continued. Movement caught my eye. I turned toward two smaller trees pulling themselves out of the ruins and begin to argue.
“Seanna!” I called out.
The Ashling turned toward me, said an unheard sharp word at Jae, and set her feet together.
I jogged toward them, but whatever Jae was saying became more frantic.
She ignored him and held up her arms. She became as still as a, well, tree.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I ran up to them.
Jae said something at Seanna in Ashling, but she didn’t respond. “She’s channeling the magic,” he said to me. “All of it.”
“What?”
“What’s left of the Mother Tree,” he said, his voice high and desperate. “It’ll kill her.”
“Seanna?” I said.
She said nothing. Her eyes were close and she looked every bit the tree.
The ground rumbled again. I opened my mouth to say her name again, but crashing sounds brought my head around. Trees shot from the ground on the other side of the ruined buildings. They grew without regard of the Balataur. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
They grew so fast and furious, they split the beasts apart. Crushed them between great trunks.
Over the rumbling sounds of the trees, another split the air. A horn off in the distance.
The last of the fighting Delicians escaped from the ruins and ran towards the Circle of Atlas, leaving the Balataurs free reign.
The beasts didn’t give chase when they broke free of the barriers, though. They cast wildly about as if before disappearing between the buildings. Not chasing the Delicians, but trying to escape…what?
I had to get to the wall to see what was going on, but I couldn’t shift blindly or I’d end up shifting into a Balataur or something. Instead, I aimed my shift upward. For a split second, I hung in the air just long enough to find a free space on the wall. I shifted there.
I stood among Balataurs but they didn’t care. Those who had just climbed the walls jumped back to the plains and ran. I looked at their army, but they no longer faced the city. They had turned to fight the army that had appeared at their backs.
The newcomers I had seen weren’t their reinforcements. They clashed with the beasts from behind and the Balataur were pinned between them and Seanna’s trees.
36
THE ATLANTEANS
I watched the Balataurs scatter across the plains. At least the ones who weren’t actively engaged and fighting for their lives against the new army. The fighting was still too far out to make out much other than a dark, undulating blob that rang with steel on steel and cries of pain. I resisted the urge to shift closer to see who our saviors were.
From what I could tell, they were humanoid in shape. Just as tall as the Balataur, but thinner.
Were they our saviors? The thought crossed my mind. What if this new army were just people who wanted Delicia more? The way the Balataur ran away scared me. What kind of people made those fearless beasts run with tail tucked firmly between their legs?
Where was Lortmore in all of that? Had he run, too? Or was he fighting the newcomers?
I stepped back from the parapet. I couldn’t worry about that right at the moment. The newcomers had bought us some time, but we still had to prepare for the possibility that they might be hostile as well. I shifted back to the other side of the trees and collapsed buildings.
It took a moment to spot Minotaur and Jae hunched in the shade of a still standing building. I trotted over to them.
“They’re running,” I reported. “But, there’s a new force out there. I don’t know who they…are.”
My voice faltered as Minotaur and the Ashling separated to reveal Seanna laying on the sidewalk in her human form. She was pale. Paler than normal. Scary pale. Her eyes were sunken with dark circles around them and she stared at some spot fixed in the bright blue sky.
“What’s going on?” I asked, kneeling to put a hand on her clammy forehead. It felt wet, though no perspiration lined her skin.
Jae said something in Ashling. It was sharp and curt like a curse. He switched to English. “She’s dying.”
“What?” I said. The words hit me like a physical blow. I rocked back on my heels.
“She became one with the magic—with the Mother Tree,” Jae said. He took a few steps back like putting distance between his betrothed and himself would make his words untrue. “The last of Alisundi’s magic seeps from the land. The Mother Tree dies, taking Seanna with Her.”
“What?” I said in a halting voice. “That can’t be.”
Minotaur circled to the other side of the Ashling and knelt on his haunches. He reached into a pouch that hung at the small of his back and pulled out a handful of leaves. They were long like fingers and seemed to curl and wave even though there was no breeze. I recognized them as leaves from the tree that reacted to my touch the first time I came to Alisundi. I remembered how they wrapped gently around my arm when I touched them.
It likes you , Seanna had said. I didn’t understand how a tree could like or not like somebody at the time. I think I got it now.
“Leaves from the paceum tree,” Minotaur answered
my unspoken question. “A symbol of peace on this world. It leaves are said to carry you on to the next world. I intended them for me.”
He unclenched one of Seanna’s hands with surprising gentleness and refolded it with the leaves clutched between her fingers. He took her other hand and wrapped it around her dagger. I must have dropped it somewhere in the fighting. He moved her two fists to her chest.
“May you find peace.” He patted the hand with the leaves and then the other. “And if not, may you fight for peace.” He rolled his eyes at me and stood. “I will check on these newcomers.”
His hooves clicked on the street as he made his way to pick through the buildings toward the wall. I didn’t turn to watch him go. My eyes were glued on Seanna’s face. Her own eyes stared at nothing and her breaths came in slow, shallow puffs.
“She wanted to be in this form to show you what it has meant to know you,” Jae said from his spot several feet away.
“What will happen to her parents? Her clan?”
“Their forest will die,” Jae said. “Many will suffer, but they will carry on. They are a strong clan. Mine will take them in.”
He fidgeted, his barky skin rubbing together. “I don’t know what lies beyond the wall, nor what fate awaits these people, but would you think any less of me if I made my way away from here? I must meet with her clan and mine. It will be bad.”
I looked up at him, finding myself more and more impressed by the Ashling who had cowered while a Balataur took Aoife. I shook my head. “No, Jae. You’ve more than proved your worth. If we make it out of this, I’ll come find you.”
He nodded, his vine-like hair swaying, and turned to go.
“What about Seanna?” I asked. He was her betrothed after all.
“We have said our goodbyes,” he said. “Say yours. Time is short. She will be with the Leaves and Roots very soon.” He ran toward the wall.
“Gaige?”
I turned to Seanna. Her voice was weak and distant. I leaned over her while her eyes searched for me. It took several long moments before they settled on me.
“The Mother Tree thanks you for what you have done for my people,” she forced out with what thin breath she had left.
“For what?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You have opened our eyes,” she said. She took a deep breath and let it out. As the last of it left her lungs, she said, “I’m sorry.” Her eyes closed and her breathing stopped.
I blinked back tears, but they came anyway, blurring my sight. Even with clouded vision, I saw Seanna’s form start to shrink. Her skin became hard and brown before dissolving like decades’ worth of decay and plant material breaking down in seconds. Within moments, she was gone, leaving behind her clothing and the knife. The leaves were gone.
I sighed and took up her knife. “I’ll take this to mean you have peace. I’ll find my own.”
I stood and wiped a dirty sleeve across my eyes. There were more pressing matters. I shifted to the wall.
***
The last of the Balataur were either dead or had fled within the hour. The new army made no move to come closer to Delicia, however.
Aoife stood on the wall next to me, her eyes rimmed with red. She took Seanna’s death a lot harder than I thought she would. Of course, she had known before I told her. She felt it on me. She had simply walked up to me and hugged me tight.
“A convoy comes,” Minotaur said.
Sure enough, a group of about ten broke away from the army and walked toward the city.
“Does that mean we go out to meet them?” I asked.
The large beast nodded his head.
I turned to Aoife. She shook her head. “I feel no ill intent from them.”
“Okay. Are you coming?” I asked Minotaur.
“Of course.”
I put a hand on his and Aoife’s shoulders and shifted out about a hundred yards. The new army was still a few hundred yards away and I could have taken us closer, but I didn’t want to tax myself by carrying them both such a distance.
We walked to meet with those coming toward us. I took a deep breath to try to still my beating heart. What if they demanded our surrender? What would we do? Give up after facing down the Balataur? I didn’t know how much fight was left in us.
“Wait,” Aoife said, breaking my thoughts. “I think I’ve seen them before.”
I squinted, shielding my eyes from the sun. Sure enough, I recognized something about them that I couldn’t quite place. They were tall creatures, thin with a faint blue tint to their skin. As we drew closer, I could tell they had only four fingers on their hands.
Then it hit me. “The tapestry in the Circle of Atlas.”
Minotaur grunted as realization settled on him, too. “There have been rumors that these people were more than myths and legends.”
“Who are they?” Aoife asked.
“What’s left of your Atlanteans.”
***
The Atlanteans were tall. They stood taller even than the tips of Minotaur’s horns. They weren’t, however, the mindless creatures depicted in the tapestry. There was actually a gentleness in their expressions, not the blank look of cold killers.
The tapestry got their skin color wrong, too. Their skin was tinted more of an aqua green, though it did hold a hint of blue in the right angle of light.
“We have come for Daresh,” one said as he stepped forward. He, like the others, wore only a simple white toga and sandals. He wore no armor and carried no weapons.
“Daresh is dead,” I said.
He thought about that for a moment and simply nodded.
“He said he was one of you,” Aoife said. “He claimed to be Atlantean.”
“And so, he was,” the tall man said.
“He didn’t look anything like you?” I said.
“I am sure he hid his appearance among these people for good reasons.”
I nodded. If there was one thing I had learned on Alisundi, it was the different races didn’t like each other. Would the humans in Delicia have allowed him to seize power all those centuries ago had they known he was really one of these people?
“Have you always looked like this?” Aoife asked. “Back on Earth, I mean.”
The Atlantean turned to face her before nodding once.
“So, you weren’t even human on Earth?”
“What is human?” he asked.
Aoife opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. Her brows drew together in contemplation.
“How did Daresh die?” he asked when she said nothing.
I squared my shoulders and took a breath. “I killed him. In a duel,” I added hastily.
If the news distressed or angered him, he showed no signs of it. “As it is.”
“We owe you thanks,” I ventured. “For running off the Balataur.”
“They were merely a roadblock to our ultimate goal.”
“Daresh?” I asked.
He nodded. “He failed to see the blight he caused on this world so we tried previously to make him see. We met these foul creatures before and his human army fought hard to drive us away. That was many times ago,” he said almost wistfully.
Suddenly, he shrugged. He inclined his head toward me. “We owe you our thanks as well, so we are even.”
With that, he and the others turned to go.
I gapped at him. Were they just going to turn around and go home? Wherever home was.
“What about Lortmore?” I called out. “The human that led the Balataur.”
The Atlantean stopped and turned. “We saw no humans numbered among the beasts.”
The three of us watched the Atlantean army turn and head back the way they had come. We stood there for fifteen or twenty minutes just to make sure they left.
“What just happened?” Aoife asked.
“I do believe we have won this day,” Minotaur grumbled.
“Won’t the Balataur come back?” I said.
“Not if Lortmore has truly fled,” he replied.
“They relied on him to lead them on toward their fight. They aren’t creatures who enjoy banding together toward a common goal. They’ll scatter to cause their mayhem where they can find it.”
“So, we won?” I asked after a few more moments of silence.
“Yeah,” Aoife said, slipping her hand in mine. “We won.”
IN THE END
The people of Delicia slowly made their way back into the streets when word of the Balataur threat ending had spread. Citizens and soldiers alike shuffled about like they had no clue what to do.
I didn’t either. It was Brande who stepped up. She barked orders like it was something she was born to do. With a little nudging from Aoife, the Delicians began to obey her.
She stationed the soldiers inside the wall where they could man the defensive weapons if the Balataur returned. That was where they should have been all along, but Daresh’s overconfidence and untimely demise had shaken them. Nobody blamed the soldiers for turning and running, but Brande made it clear it would not happen again.
She arranged others groups to salvage and store rations in the Circle of Atlas in case it was needed as a last stronghold. A quick search of it had shown it heavily lacking in that department. Apparently Daresh had only been concerned with himself and his guards, so food stores had not been a priority.
Brande set those members of the Underground she trusted to lead in the efforts before turning her attention to Izaak. The big man had received a nasty gash on the forehead when a Balataur blade had clipped him, but he’d survive.
Minotaur stood awkwardly among us. The Delicians cast him distrusting gazes and made wide circles to avoid getting near him. If only they knew they owed their lives to him, they’d think differently. But, that would come in time. I hoped.
Once everybody was buzzing about like bees, I pulled Aoife aside and sat on the stoop of one of those nice houses near the Circle. “So, how are you?”
“Tired,” she said.
I knew she meant both physically and emotionally. Tired or not, she emitted waves of calm to influence the Delicians. “Yeah.” I nodded slowly. “Me, too.”
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 81
