The Eternal Flame

by T.A. Barron

  He hadn’t any time to think about this, though, for he bounced away from the wing and spiraled down into the open air. Sensing his opportunity, Rhita Gawr snorted triumphantly and loosed another blast of lightning. Even as he fell, Tamwyn saw the explosion of black sparks as the bolt leaped toward him. There was no chance to dodge, and Basilgarrad was out of reach, unable to help.

  Without warning, a flaming body slammed into Tamwyn’s side, throwing him clear of the lightning’s path. He somersaulted, but still glimpsed the face of the fire angel who had saved him.

  “Fraitha!” he cried, recognizing Gwirion’s sister. During his days in Gwirion’s village, her laughter had often filled the air.

  Before she could answer, the lightning bolt sliced off one of her legs and ripped through a wing. She stared at Tamwyn, as silvery brown blood poured from her thigh and the fire faded from her shaggy, barklike skin.

  “Prevail, Tamwyn,” she said hoarsely. “By the fires of Ogallad . . . prevail.”

  With that, her soulfire went dark, just as the fires of a great star had gone dark moments before. As lifeless as a burned-out cinder, her body plunged downward to the realms far below.

  Tamwyn blinked to clear his vision, even as he also fell. Suddenly he heard a whoosh of air above the wind. An immense claw, brutally sharp, swung toward him and—

  Hooked the strap of his pack. Basilgarrad banked sharply as he swung the young man upward again. With a clatter of his torch pole against the dragon’s scales, Tamwyn landed once again on his companion’s head. Still shaken from what he’d witnessed, he stood and clasped the dragon’s long ear.

  “Thanks for saving me,” he said into the ear. But down inside there were also unspoken words: I only wish you could have saved her, too.

  He gazed around at the battle on high. And shuddered. Emboldened by their leader’s words, the warriors of Rhita Gawr were fighting with new fury. Perhaps it had been the warlord’s reminder that they, unlike the fire angels, couldn’t die. Or perhaps it was the tactical intelligence that Rhita Gawr was now providing them through his thoughts.

  The result, though, was clear. Gwirion’s forces were diminishing. One after another, fire angels lost their lives, spinning downward like smoldering coals. Always they died bravely, fighting to the very last. But nonetheless, they died.

  Tamwyn, clinging to Basilgarrad’s ear, shook his head. This can’t go on! How can we survive much longer?

  As the green dragon whirled through the sky, Tamwyn’s hopes fell even further. For two more questions hit him once again, with the force of black lightning. How could they ever drive the invaders back through the doorways to the Otherworld? And how could Tamwyn even hope to close those doors behind them?

  26 • The Battle of Isenwy

  Even as Tamwyn and his allies struggled to survive the battle in the sky, an equally fierce battle raged far below, on the Plains of Isenwy. And in that conflict, Brionna’s most gruesome fears proved correct: The eagleman Kerwin, whose courage and sense of honor were as famous as his ferocity, had been only the first to die. Right from the moment the parley had collapsed, the fighting continued—and only intensified. Now, in the late afternoon light, the brown mud of Malóch shone with streaks of red.

  Across the treeless plains, warriors from both armies fought with every weapon they could find. Hundreds of armored gobsken, wielding broadswords and pikes, hacked away at the alliance of elves, dwarves, humans, flamelons, tree spirits, and giants. Men and women battled each other, slashing with swords or grappling with daggers in the mud. Elves from El Urien and Brynchilla shot precisely aimed arrows from their longbows, while flamelons used their advanced weaponry to hurl flaming balls of tar, launch burning spears, and throw heavy stones. When the flamelons’ catapults ran out of rocks, they started hurling the bodies of dead or wounded gobsken.

  One female giant, wearing a heavy net of river rocks over her robe of woven tree roots, fought two ogres at once—even as she squeezed the neck of a four-eyed troll. Bands of squat gnomes ran just behind the gobsken, wielding their ceramic spears with deadly accuracy. The gnomes shrieked wildly, stabbing at every foe they encountered. And, when their spears broke, these ferocious fighters simply leaped onto their enemies’ backs, biting off their ears and throttling them with grimy, three-fingered hands.

  Elsewhere on the field now strewn with bodies, a brawny tree spirit swung his oaken arms at a pair of shrieking ghoulacas. While the nearly transparent birds tried to shred his bark and gouge his eyes with their bloodred talons, he bashed at them ruthlessly, swaying like a sapling in a storm.

  Nearby, a dense cloud of blue-winged mist faeries flew into the face of a troll, making him stumble and drop his club. Even as he fell, though, he swatted at the faeries, killing many of them. He then knocked a woman off a horse and crushed her underfoot. At last, a trio of elven archers stepped in. They needed to shoot more than a score of arrows into the troll before he finally died.

  Standing together on a small rise, a group of mud-splattered men and women strove desperately to hold off a band of gobsken and gnomes. Although Kulwych’s forces outnumbered them threefold, the people still held their ground. They were led by Lleu, along with another Drumadian priest, a red-haired man who wielded a saber skillfully, despite his badly wounded leg. His maryth, a sable-eyed doe, also fought bravely, kicking her hooves into the gobsken warriors’ breastplates with such force that their armor often cracked—along with their ribs. Meanwhile, Lleu’s own maryth, Catha, sailed above the fray until she chose her targets. Then, time and again, the hawk plunged down with an earsplitting screech and scratched out the eyes of surprised soldiers.

  When Catha attacked a helmeted gnome, however, the situation changed. She dived, but just before she could strike, the gnome thrust his weapon upward, impaling her. Lleu heard her agonized screech and fought desperately to reach her, slashing with the broadsword he’d taken from a fallen gobsken. While he battled, he silently recited every prayer he knew, begging Dagda and Lorilanda to help keep the silver-winged hawk alive.

  Above the battlefield, more fighting raged. Eaglefolk swooped through the air, chasing down the murderous ghoulacas, forcing them into talon-to-talon combat. As the ghoulacas’ frenzied shrieks rent the air, echoing across the Plains of Isenwy, so did the cries of the feathered men and women. Although they were outnumbered, and unable to see their foes clearly, the eaglefolk fought with such terrible ferocity that the ghoulacas soon learned to avoid them as much as possible.

  Yet among the eaglefolk, the ghoulacas feared most of all the warriors of one particular clan. Marked by brown tailfeathers, black stripes across their wings, and flashing brown eyes, these warriors fought with a fury that knew no bounds. And that was understandable, for they belonged to the Tierrnawyn clan of upper Olanabram—the clan of Kerwin.

  Despite their inferior numbers, the defenders of Avalon were, in many places, holding their own against the forces of Kulwych and Belamir. Or even defeating them. They were helped by the fact that Belamir himself was forced to remain disguised as a gentle gardener. For he could not reveal that he was really a changeling without losing his multitudes of human followers. Just the word changeling alone made people speak in whispers; the sight of one would produce outright terror and hostility.

  Most of all, however, the allies of Avalon were helped by their deep love of their world, its sacred qualities and wondrous places. That devotion gave them all—elves and eaglefolk, men and women, dwarves and giants—a distinct advantage. Call it the power of inspiration, or of love itself, that advantage provided the strength they needed to survive. And, perhaps, to prevail.

  But that was not enough. Because of one man, and one weapon, the allies of Avalon were destined to lose.

  Harlech swaggered through the melee on the battlefield, a wide grin on his broad slab of a face. Although he wielded a broadsword in one hand and a hatchet in the other, those were not his weapons of choice. His preferred tool of attack was the claw that hung from his neck,
a claw that glowed eerily until it suddenly shot out a beam of red light. Anything struck by that beam instantly burst into flames—then utterly disappeared.

  Only because the claw required a few moments to regain its power after a deadly blast, drawing more strength from the faraway crystal in Kulwych’s cavern, did Harlech need to carry any other weapons at all. Yet he made the most of the claw whenever he could, systematically killing the other side’s mightiest warriors. One giant, the black-bearded leader of the dwarves, and some of the elves’ best marksmen, all fell to his attacks. Harlech even managed to disable one of the flamelons’ catapults, destroying the beam that held its throwing arm to its base.

  Virtually unchallenged, Harlech strode through the crowds, pausing now and then to slash people with his sword or bark commands to the gobsken. Even as he scanned the brutal conflict for his claw’s next victim, he frequently checked the sky for that eagleman who had humiliated him in the battle atop Kulwych’s dam. Now that was a target worth finding, he told himself. Severing that eagleman’s head from his body would be a true delight.

  Just then Harlech saw, standing on a mound of mud, an elf maiden with a long braid. Brionna. All alone she fought, surrounded by the corpses of gobsken who had fallen to her arrows. Right now, she was firing into the multitudes of angry gobsken trying to reach her.

  “Perfect,” growled Harlech, his malicious grin expanding. “Since I don’t see the eagleman nowhere, that she-elf will do jest fine. She has messed wid me plans fer too long now.”

  Sweeping his broadsword, he strode toward her. The edges of his eyes gleamed with the same color as the claw that dangled around his neck.

  Brionna, meanwhile, was too busy fighting for her life to notice. And too full of grief to care. She had lost so much in a terribly short time. And then, on this field of battle, she had lost one thing more.

  Only moments before, a gobsken warrior had savagely cut down her childhood friend Aileen. Before Brionna could do anything to stop it, Aileen—who loved nothing more than brewing a simple cup of hazelnut tea—lost her arm and then her head to the gobsken’s ax. At that instant, something inside Brionna snapped. She grabbed Aileen’s bow and quiver and then fired the arrows, every single one, into the gobsken. Long after he had died, and fallen on his face in the mud, she continued firing, pouring arrows into his lifeless body.

  She felt sickened by her brutal behavior, so unlike an elf of El Urien. And even more sickened by the fact that she felt no regret whatsoever for what she’d done. Worst of all, she wanted to kill more of those gobsken, as many as she could. And she would keep right on doing that until, at last, she herself was killed.

  Scurrying across the battlefield, she snatched up a whole armload of quivers from fallen elves. Then, having climbed atop a muddy mound, she started shooting arrows into gobsken. Like a machine, she fired, nocked a new arrow, and fired again. Not even pausing to watch each one die, she had soon killed so many gobsken that the ground all around her was piled high with bodies.

  More gobsken came at her, from every side. They were so enraged that they charged headlong, stumbling over the corpses, shouting vengeful war cries as they brandished their blades. Yet Brionna held her position, turning slowly on the mound, firing relentlessly.

  More gobsken died. And more. Some of them came so close before they collapsed that Brionna could hear their raspy breaths or smell the sweat on their gray-green skin. Now dozens lay dead at her feet. Glancing down at all the bodies, she realized that, because of her efforts, the lives of many elves and Drumadians might yet be spared.

  But that won’t make up, she added somberly, for the lives that have already been lost.

  Finally, she was down to her last quiver. And then, a moment later, her very last arrow. She nocked it, aimed at the nearest gobsken, and fired. He toppled over. But several more warriors were charging, ready to strike her down.

  Brionna held her head high, knowing that her time to die had arrived. I may be just a killer, she told herself grimly, and not worthy of elfhood. But at least I’ll die defending Avalon, and I guess there’s some honor in that.

  The barest hint of amusement shone in her deep green eyes. Scree would agree.

  That was when she spied Harlech, pushing his way through the fray. She saw the red glow of his claw and the smirk on his face—and realized that he was just about to kill her. His weapon of sorcery would do its work before any of the gobsken’s blades could reach her.

  “No!” she cried, grasping her empty quiver. “Not like this!”

  27 • Strange Sensations

  Just as a deadly bolt of light shot from Harlech’s claw, sturdy talons grabbed Brionna’s robe at the shoulders. She was jerked upward and carried aloft, even as the red beam exploded on a pair of gobsken who had been charging at her from behind. The warriors instantly burst into flames, then vanished but for their weapons that fell to the muddy ground.

  Shocked as well as grateful, Brionna turned skyward. The face she saw, above the talons and powerful wings that bore her, was the last face she expected to see.

  “Scree! It’s you.”

  “You look surprised,” he said dryly, pumping his wings as he carried her away from Harlech. Gently, he shifted his talons so that they would pierce only her bark cloth robe and not the skin of her shoulders.

  Still trying to comprehend everything that had just happened, she blinked at him and mumbled, “I had shot my last arrow . . .”

  “A good thing, too! If you still had any left, you might have greeted me the way you did the first time we met—and shot me out of the sky.”

  The elf maiden didn’t laugh. Instead, waves of grimness washed over her face. “Scree, I’ve done some terrible things.”

  His large, yellow-rimmed eyes glanced down at her. Finally, he spoke, his voice so quiet that it was barely audible over the din of battle beneath them. “So have I, Brionna. So have I.”

  Their eyes met. For the span of several wingbeats, they spoke only through that shared gaze—a gaze that held all the grief, shame, and loss they had experienced in the recent past. Yet it held, as well, something else: a fragile hope, as slim as a feather, for the future.

  Reversing his wing strokes to land softly, Scree set her down by a shallow brown stream, some distance away from the fighting. Even so, as he released his talons from her robe and landed next to her, a ceramic spear splattered on the mud of the stream bank. Scree spun around and glared so wrathfully at the gnome who had thrown it that the squat little warrior turned and fled.

  The eagleman turned back to Brionna. “You should—” He caught himself, then started again with a less argumentative tone. “You might consider . . . staying out of the battle now. You’ve done your share, and more.”

  She looked at him uncertainly. “What about you?”

  Scree dragged his talons through the muddy ground. “Me, I’m going back in there. I have a meeting—with that worm who attacked you. He got away from me once, back at the dam, but it won’t happen again.” His eagle eyes narrowed. “What can you tell me about that evil bolt of light he shot at you?”

  “It came from a claw, born of his master’s sorcery.” She shuddered at the memory. “Harlech wears it around his neck.” She grabbed Scree’s feathered shoulder. “And something important! The claw needs some time to regain its power. How much time, I don’t know. But it gives you—”

  “A chance,” he finished. “That’s all I need.” With the feathers of his wing, he brushed her cheek. “Keep safe, now. Please.”

  Her elven eyes sparkled. “Only if you will.”

  He nodded. “I’ll do my best.” Stepping back, he leaped into the air with a mighty downstroke of his wings. As he rose, he released the piercing cry of his people, a cry part eagle, part human, and thoroughly terrifying.

  Brionna watched him go, fingering her braid thoughtfully. For the first time in this long afternoon, she felt, to her considerable surprise, glad to be alive. Then, viewing the melee on the plains, her expression
turned grim. She started walking back toward the fighting, her feet squelching in the mud. Her eyes scanned the terrain, searching for another quiver of arrows. For she, like Scree, had more work left to do.

  It took just a few seconds for Scree, flying over the battlefield, to spot Harlech. The burly man stood right where he’d been, near the pile of dead gobsken, whose tangled bodies formed a gruesome burial mound. Harlech was cursing angrily, swinging his broadsword through the air. No doubt he’s upset at having missed his target, the eagleman thought as he sailed closer. Guess I should offer him another one.

  Before swooping down, he scanned the area, looking for the other eaglefolk who had come here with him from Fireroot. To his satisfaction, he saw many Bram Kaie warriors already engaged in battle, aggressively hunting ghoulacas. Led by Cuttayka, the burly captain of the Clan Sentries, they tore into the packs of ghoulacas, slashing with talons and beaks. Their black-tipped wings gleamed like shards of obsidian in the sky. Even young Hawkeen, the golden-eyed lad who had traveled so far to stay at Scree’s side, fought viciously, doing more than his share to terrorize Kulwych’s killer birds.

  Scree smiled slightly, for he could tell that Hawkeen would become, in time, a warrior to be greatly feared. Perhaps he, like Scree, would someday lead his people into battle. And perhaps he, too, would discover that, even amidst life’s broken wings of sorrow, there might yet be a single feather of surpassing beauty.

  Something else pleased Scree, as well. The Bram Kaie had rejoined the flocks of their fellow eaglefolk. It would take quite some time, no doubt, to regain the respect—let alone the trust—of other clans. But the fact that Bram Kaie warriors were here, fighting alongside the rest of their people, was at least a beginning.