“I do not fear him.”
“Listen… you did… that…” Otioch waved back toward the battlefield. “To stop the fighting, yes?”
Marshal nodded.
“So now you’ll start another fight here?”
“It won’t be much of a fight,” Victor said. “Just let us go.”
“I have no desire to hurt you or your men,” Marshal said. “But I will not wait for your Lord, either.”
“You’ll come with us, or…”
“Or what? You can’t hurt me.”
Otioch whipped out his sword and aimed it at Victor. “But I can hurt him. Archers!”
Victor found himself looking up at four or five arrows aimed at him. He looked to Marshal. “Don’t worry about me.”
Marshal looked unsure for the first time this morning.
“What will it be?” Otioch asked. “Will you come with us to Lord Volraag now or shall we wait for him here?”
A swish-thunk sounded and Victor winced, expecting one of the archers had loosed early. Instead, he saw a thin spear quivering in the ground between himself and Otioch.
“How about you let the heroes go?” a voice called. Victor smiled. He knew that accent. Topleb.
Otioch turned, as did half of the Remavian Guard horsemen. A couple dozen yards away stood the curse squad, along with around a hundred other conscripts.
“Return to camp at once!” Otioch commanded.
“I don’t think we will,” said Topleb.
“This is ridiculous! I could have you all executed!”
“But you won’t,” said the decanus whose name they had never learned. “Let it go, Commander. Let these men go.”
Otioch’s face grew red and his sword-arm shook. “Idiots! Even a hundred conscripts cannot stand against a dozen of the Remavian Guard!”
Topleb chuckled at that. “How about a hundred conscripts, plus the Hero of Varioch and the Scarred Magician?” He gestured with his atlatl.
Otioch looked back. Victor let his flail hang loose and drew his sword. Marshal stood up next to him and held his arms out to his sides, palms upward.
“You can’t win, Commander,” Marshal said.
“Once Lord Volraag arrives, this will all be pointless!”
At the mention of Volraag, the conscripts murmured and several began to back off.
“Yes, see? Your Lord is coming. You cannot stand against his power! No one can!”
At that moment, a massive rumble sounded somewhere behind them, back toward the battlefield.
“I think your Lordship found something else to occupy him,” Marshal said.
All eyes looked back and saw a cloud of red dust rolling toward them. “Devouring fire!” Otioch snarled. He swung up into his saddle and waved at the rest of the Guards. They obediently followed him as he charged back into the dust.
Victor let out his breath, then immediately sucked in another one and closed his eyes. The dust cloud struck them.
When the dust cleared, the conscripts gathered around Marshal and Victor. To a man, they expressed gratitude for their actions.
“Theon bless you, sir.”
“You ended the war all on your own!”
“If it weren’t for you, we’d be fighting and dying even now, for certain!”
Marshal lifted his hands until they finally hushed.
“I’m just trying to help,” Marshal said, loud enough for all to hear. “I’m sorry that I didn’t act sooner. If I had, maybe more would be alive now.”
The crowd started to protest, but he lifted his hands again. “Listen, the Commander wasn’t wrong. Once Volraag finishes with whatever he’s doing now, he’s probably coming after me. You should all go now.”
“We’ll stay with you!” someone shouted, followed by echoes of agreement.
Marshal shook his head. “No, no. We’ll do better in small groups, all of us. Go home. You’re not obligated to fight any more.” He took hold of the insignia on his shoulder and tore it off. “We’re not part of Volraag’s army any more!” He tossed the insignia to the ground.
After a few more arguments countered by encouraging words from Marshal and Victor, the crowd finally agreed. One by one and in small groups, the conscripts split off in every direction. At last, Marshal and Victor were left alone with only the five remaining members of the curse squad: Topleb, Gnaeus, Merish, Wolf, and Rufus.
“You should go too,” Marshal said.
“Where we gonna go?” Gnaeus said. “I think we’re better off with you.”
“Wherever I go, there will be danger,” Marshal said. “I can’t take you.”
Topleb snorted. “Danger? Your whole land is danger. I want to go home, but I figure I’m safer with you two. Full of k’uh you are.”
Marshal considered him for a moment. “Then we’ll take you home,” he said.
“We will?” Victor said.
“Isn’t the next closest magic site in Ch’olan? I don’t think we’ll get close to this one again.”
“Ha!” Topleb laughed. “I will take you there! Let you all see what real civilization looks like.”
“What about the rest of you?” Marshal asked, looking at them.
“I think we’re coming with you,” Rufus said, glancing at the others around him. “Gnaeus is right. We’re better off that way.”
“Most of us don’t have anywhere else to go,” Gnaeus said.
“All right then.” Marshal took a deep breath, bowed his head a moment, then looked back up. “I haven’t been a good leader to you all. I was lost. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“I’ve had worse,” Topleb said.
“But now… we’re away from the war. We can get back to what I should be doing, what I’m destined to do.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re going to lift all the curses.”
As the squad erupted with questions, Victor took a step back and watched. He couldn’t remove the smile from his face. Now things could get moving again. They had a mission, a purpose. And finally, a leader.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
VOLRAAG FELT THE air move just before the blast of power struck him. In that split second, he tried to throw up his own power in defense. Whether it helped or not, he wasn’t sure. The blast lifted him off his feet and threw him at the portal.
One of the Durunim snatched him out of mid-air and brought him back to the ground. To his surprise, Volraag still felt the invigoration of his new power. He looked down the tunnel and found he could see much further in the dark than he expected.
Lord Tyrr stood around a hundred feet away, flanked by two strangers. He looked no different from when Volraag met him on Zes Sivas, though he had traded his diplomatic clothes for armor and a warrior’s cape. The strangers, one male and one female, wore gray clothing that told nothing of their status.
“This is foolish, Lord Tyrr!” Volraag called. “I expected better of you.” He glanced around. Tezan stared at his former master, still holding up his light orb. Rathri had vanished into the shadows.
“It’s time for a reckoning, boy!” Rasna’s Lord bellowed. “You have cost me dearly.”
“This is your battle,” Curasir said. “I hope to see you at the next portal.”
“What? Curasir!” But he and the two Durunim retreated through the portal, leaving only the body of Ruitel behind.
Volraag lunged to grab at him, but as his hand struck the portal, it turned dark again and returned to its original watery appearance. His hand bounced off solid rock.
“Diabol take you!” Volraag whirled back to see that Lord Tyrr and his companions had advanced another dozen feet. “Devouring fire and hailstones!” He unleashed a blast of his own at the trio.
The two strangers beside Tyrr waved their arms in opposite directions. Though he couldn’t see it, Volraag knew they had diverted his blast. The tunnel walls shook with the impact. Wild magicians. Still more of them. How had Tyrr found so many? Varion should have been doing the same over the past few yea
rs. Volraag should have been doing it, for that matter!
“Tezan!” Lord Tyrr exclaimed. “So wonderful to see you again!” He pointed at the man he had set up as king.
“Get down!” Volraag shouted. He rushed toward Tezan and tried to throw up more of his own power to deflect Tyrr’s. He succeeded, but the clashing power knocked Tezan off his feet and against the wall. He struck hard and slid to the floor, unconscious. His light orb went out, plunging the tunnel into darkness.
Something changed within Volraag. His insides churned. The salty taste in his mouth grew. Part of him knew the Eldanim power now within him interacted somehow with his own power. But he had no time to consider it.
He retaliated at Lord Tyrr and the wild mages deflected it again. Tyrr laughed. “You’re outmatched, boy! Trying to wield power not even your own! Your death comes soon.”
Volraag didn’t answer. He felt the power growing inside him, building up like the very first time he tasted it. Regardless of what Lord Tyrr did or didn’t do, in a few moments, he knew he would unleash more power than ever. He had no choice.
And then Rathri struck. The assassin launched himself out of the darkness and landed beside the female wild mage. His blade punctured straight through her neck, then tore out the front. Before her body fell, Rathri ducked and rolled past Lord Tyrr. As he came to his feet, he stabbed the other mage up through his chest.
Lord Tyrr roared with inarticulate rage, releasing his power in all directions. Rathri had nowhere to dodge. The blast threw him against the tunnel’s roof and slammed him against it four or five times before letting him fall. The assassin hit the ground and did not move.
The power within Volraag reached a point of no return. He knew he had to choose: strike directly at Lord Tyrr, killing Rathri (if he still lived) and collapsing the entire tunnel, or…
Volraag fell to his knees and threw his arms up. Power unimaginable erupted out of him. It smashed its way through the ceiling and kept going, straight up, spreading out. Volraag began to scream as the power continued to pour out of him, pulverizing stone and dirt, shoving everything up, up, up and out. Sunlight shot back at him, through the dust that remained, clouding the new upward passage at least a dozen feet in diameter.
Volraag suspected both armies would be thrown into even more chaos now. First Marshal built a wall and a ditch, now the earth erupted somewhere in the middle of it all. Lords waged war and the common soldiers paid the price if they were not careful.
“What was the point of that?” Lord Tyrr asked.
“Just creating another exit,” Volraag said. “I’ll need another way out.”
“You really think you can beat me alone?”
Volraag listened for the rumbles he knew would follow. There.
“I don’t need to. You’ll be busy enough.”
Lord Tyrr turned in time to see a wall of water coming at him. Volraag’s blast shook everything enough to break apart the fragile dam that had formed in the gorge above. The trapped waters of the Amnis flooded down the tunnel.
Volraag lifted Tezan onto his shoulder and blasted power downward, launching himself up the new passage. He slammed into the side of it and used more power to ricochet himself and his burden off that point and to a higher one. Two more of those rough impacts and he threw himself out into the open air in the middle of the former battlefield.
Lord Tyrr’s roars of fury echoed below.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“TELL ME ABOUT the Durunim.”
Talinir blinked in surprise. Janaab had brought up many topics of conversation throughout their Otherworld travels. He had especially been interested in Talinir’s stories of his travels with Marshal and Aelia. But this was a new one.
“I would think you would know all about that by now.”
“Tell me anyway. Everything I know comes mostly from my own deductions.”
Arriving at the mountains’ foothills slowed their travel. The ground became even more uneven as they ascended.
“Their existence is why my present condition is so threatening,” Talinir said. “I risk becoming one of them.”
“How, exactly?”
“The exact reasons and process are unknown, but it comes from spending too much time here.”
“Yet you bring your entire city here.”
“It’s not the same.” Talinir struggled to find the right words. “We Eldanim exist in both worlds. We see them both with our eyes, every minute of every day. Normally, when we walk in one world, we also partially exist in the other. We forge our warpsteel blades to pierce through both worlds as well.”
“But that’s not you right now.”
“Exactly. Marshal pulled my entire essence through a portal. But some Eldanim have done this on purpose, choosing only to walk in the Starlit Realm, forsaking the primary world.”
“And they are the Durunim?”
“They become the Durunim,” Talinir clarified. “Our bodies are not made to stay within only one world. Too much time here and we begin to change. It is some kind of interaction between the magic of our bodies and the magic of this world.”
Janaab pushed aside his tattered sleeve and pointed to the dark splotches on his own skin. “Like this.”
Talinir nodded. “I would not have thought it could happen to a human, but here you are.”
“Can you do the same in my world? Bring yourself completely into it?”
“Yes, but it is not a pleasant experience. We call it ‘unfolding.’ We take our entire bodies, as you see us here, and bring it into the primary world. It does not feel right at all. It is difficult to move. The only reason one would do it is to intimidate humans, I suppose.”
“So… you seem to be at war with these Durunim. Does the process change them in other ways, then? Does it make them evil or something?”
“I do not know if I would say ‘evil.’ But it does change them in their minds. They become… more violent. Driven by darker desires. The person they once were ceases to exist.”
“Do you know that for sure, or is that just what you tell yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you studied them? Tried to turn them back?”
“Of course we have! Do you think we would give up on our own people that easily?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I ask.”
“They attacked Intal Eldanir,” Talinir said. “They killed over a dozen innocents before we even realized what was happening.”
“Yet they don’t all seem exactly the same. That Curasir, for example, is very different.”
Talinir didn’t answer. The problem of Curasir had bothered him greatly since their meeting. He had been able to appear as a normal Eldani, without the Durunim’s skin distinction. And then he had shifted into the darkness. How? It made no sense, and contradicted everything he thought he knew about his enemy.
“Let me state some obvious things, then,” Janaab said. He stopped walking and held up two fingers. “There are two worlds.”
“Yes. And the world beyond.”
“The afterlife.”
“Correct.”
“Yeah, let’s save that one for another discussion. Two worlds.”
Talinir chuckled and nodded.
Janaab pointed to one finger. “Humans live in this world.” He pointed to the space between the two fingers. “And Eldanim live between the worlds. Or in both. Sort of.”
He pointed to the second finger. “And this world…”
Talinir frowned. “What are you saying?”
“Let us assume that everything was created by Theon in the beginning, as the Law says. Your beliefs are not far from that, correct?”
“It’s… more complicated than that, but go on.”
“Then humans were created for the primary world. Eldanim were created to bridge the gap between worlds. Who was created for this world?”
“No one. Why should there be?”
“Doesn’t it make sense?”
“It’s a flawed prem
ise. Just because a world exists doesn’t mean a people also exist for it.” Talinir gestured at the stars, making sure not to look up at them. “Our wisest ones say there are other worlds out there. By your argument, a new race must exist for each one of them.”
Janaab shrugged. “Maybe they do. It just seems odd to me.”
Talinir tried not to give Janaab’s theory any further consideration, but it weighed on him. During his training to become a warden, one of the eldest of their order once told him about a group of strangers who wandered the Starlit Realm. “Not us, not them,” he said. Talinir had been fascinated by the idea, but the other wardens dismissed it as the imagination of an elderly mind.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
SERI FROWNED. “HE didn’t want to come?”
“I was unable to find him. One of the women told me he was… busy.” Ixchel didn’t seem pleased in sharing the words.
“Busy.” How could Dravid be busy? They literally had nothing to do here. “So he wasn’t in his room?”
“I looked. They did not want me to, but I looked anyway. He was not there.”
Seri ran her hands through her hair. After everything that happened with the earthquake yesterday, she would have thought Dravid would be more determined than ever to convince her to leave. She almost wanted him to. But where had he gone?
She hopped to her feet. “Come on. We’ll find him together.”
Ixchel didn’t move. “Do we have to speak with Forerunner again?”
“Possibly. He’s the one most likely to know where Dravid is.”
Ixchel sighed and followed Seri.
They could search the entire sanctuary in a short time. Dravid wasn’t in his room or anywhere else in the men’s quarters. The women’s quarters were not an option. That left only Forerunner’s pavilion and the outdoors. Ixchel insisted on doing a sweep of the road before returning to the pavilion.
Inside, they found repairs still underway from the earthquake. No one had seen Dravid, but one of the workers thought he had seen Forerunner pass through the western doors.
Until All Bonds Are Broken Page 21
