The elves drew aside while Tornin pressed the priest further. Lorace withdrew as well to walk beside Adwa-Ki, whose feet slipped with barely a rustle through the layers of gold and brown leaves. She stopped before the clear spring pool and drew a small handful of dried fruit from a pouch at her waist. “We will eat and pause here for a while, though our strength is restored,” she said quietly to him. “This is among my favorite places within the Keth. We can spare the time to appreciate its beauty.”
Lorace cast his sight to Halversome and saw that the raiders before the walls were quiet and lethargic in the noonday sun, warm upon the bluff above the sea despite the rapid approach of winter. A few worked on their siege engines, but they did so at the lazy pace of bored men.
“We can spare the time,” Lorace agreed with a nod as his eyes refocused on the shadowed spring glade. He sat down upon the thick layer of fallen leaves at the edge of the spring pool and breathed deep of the musty, but pleasant, forest air.
Oen and Tornin sat beside him. The priest removed the pack from his back and revealed a cloth wrapped bundle. “Our dwarven host from the traveler’s hall packed this for us with our breakfast.”
Tornin’s eyes lit up as Oen unwrapped the bundle to reveal a sticky mass of more honey cakes.
“Even as a child, I do not recall ever eating so well,” Lorace said as he pulled free a morsel of nutty cake, extruding fine threads of amber honey in the process. “I remember sitting with my family in a forest clearing much like this one, only the trees were tall and straight and bore countless long needles instead of the broad leaves of the Keth. My brothers were both still with us.”
He took a bite of the sweet cake and cherished the memory. “We dined from a large basket which my brother’s and I had taken turns carrying to the spring. I was only six summers old so they did most of my share of the carrying.”
Lorace fell silent, listening to the whisper of wind through the upper branches of the forest and reaching out to feel its movement. A hush had fallen over his companions as he spoke of his family, and he realized that that hush endured in their hope that he would continue. He smiled and shook his head slightly while he explored the memory of that long ago lunch in the woods further.
“My parents shared a sadness between them that they tried to hide from my brothers and I,” Lorace continued, remembering how his parents smiled and laughed that day—smiles that never reached their eyes, and laughs that were tempered with reserve. They made every effort to express their love for him and his brothers with many tight hugs and tender touches, particularly to Bartalus who sat between them. “It was only days later, on his twelfth birthday, that Bartalus departed. I think they knew it was coming, that their eldest son would be leaving them. While we sat and ate, my mother told us the story of how she had met my father.”
Lorace focused his memory on the features of his parents, their bright, clear eyes, his mother’s dark hair cascading down her back, his father’s broad shoulders and deep chest; rarely seen not encased in brightly polished steel pauldrons and breastplate.
“My mother and father were brought together from far corners of Vorallon, led by the Old Gods to join with one another,” Lorace informed his rapt companions. “At the full of the moon of the Traveler, my mother was met by a large white gull who pulled at her skirts. It danced ahead of her until she followed it from the fresh plowed fields of her uncle’s farm into the wilderness beyond. When she hungered, he led her to trees laden with fruit, and when she thirsted, he was only a flutter of wings from a crystal brook. When she tired, he brought her into the shelter of cave or tree. She journeyed through wilderness and over mountain until the rise of the next moon where she was met by the Warrior in his guise of a tall stag who bowed his great crowned head then turned to lead her onward, continuing the trek begun by the gull. Thus she traveled through each of the twelve moons of that year, lead in turn by fawn, boar, bear, owl, snake, raven, hawk, wolf, and rat until finally, the spider of the Lady, leaving a trail of gossamer silk to follow, lead her unerringly to my father Veladis.”
Lorace smiled, recalling how his father took over the telling at that point, reaching out to hold his mother’s hand while he spoke of meeting her traveling through those woods of his youth. “Veladis thought my mother to be an incarnation of the Lady herself, and his heart leaped at the sight of her when he came upon her in the woods. He too was following the silken thread of the Lady, but his strand lead him directly into Fara’s path. When his eyes met hers, he understood at last what the goal of his quest across the breadth of the land had been. He had been lead exclusively by the silk of the Lady of Destiny—that thread ended upon my mother’s fingertip.”
Lorace lifted his face to his own companions. “They built our home and hall on that spot, and were soon joined in their labors by other men and women, among them Sir Rindal and the dwarf Taggi, all to become knights of the Order of the Lady.”
Warm smiles and silence followed his telling of the tale. Knowing the eventual tragedy that befell his parents, they did not press him further. Rather, they let the silence continue as a small flock of blue-feathered birds flashed through the clearing. Lorace chased the birds with his sight as they continued south through the Keth. The air flowed above and below their wings in perfect vortexes, and parted before their streamlined shapes as they darted from tree to tree.
A brittle red leaf falling upon his shoulder brought his full awareness back to the shaded clearing with its burbling spring. Other leaves were falling from the interlaced branches overhead, drawing his senses to study the air that they fell through. It resisted the leaves, forcing them to flutter two and fro or tumble and spin as they fell. Testing his understanding of their interaction, Lorace halted a leaf in its descent with a balancing movement of the air beneath. He gently held the leaf in place as other leaves continued to fall.
Lorace examined the effort of concentration this small act required of him and found it a simple thing. Adwa-Ki’s words about practicing with his gifts foremost in his mind, he expanded his sight throughout the clearing and began catching other falling leaves, one after another, until dozens of them hung motionless all around.
Oen slowly climbed to his feet to stare about at the motionless leaves. When the priest reached out a hand to touch one, Lorace moved it away, with a slight chuckle.
“This is your doing, Lorace?” Oen asked.
“It is,” Lorace answered. “I am moving the air to hold them up.”
“All of them?” Oen asked rhetorically, with a sweeping gesture toward upwards of a hundred individual leaves, many of them behind Lorace’s field of view. “You are using your sight as well—pushing yourself. Make them fly!”
Leaves of every shade of gold and red began to float about the clearing, each on its own cushion of air. As Lorace gained comfort with the spread of his concentration, the leaves gained speed, whirling among one another, following their own paths in a dance he orchestrated to the rhythm of the shifting air. When Esrenar stood and raised his arms, Lorace directed a host of leaves to swirl around his loose blue sleeves, bringing a smile to the elf’s, otherwise reserved, face.
Chapter 6
THE STRANGER
Twenty-Seventh day of the Moon of the Thief
-in Ousenar
Short, high-pitched screams echoed at regular intervals from the throne room, denying Scythe of her focus. The silver needle floating on a disc of wood in the dark water of her divining basin refused to turn. She shook her head in frustration; her search for this Stranger was fruitless. Throughout the morning, she met with failure at every avenue, and the more the Devourer fed, the harder it had gotten to draw on the forces of magic. With each passing candle-mark, the effort had increased and the potency of her spells had weakened. With each failure, a fear had grown that her own screams would soon echo through Blackdrake as well.
There was one avenue that she had not attempted yet; another whose gift may be able to lead her to success. She paced her small chamber
to and fro as she pulled forth her scrying mirror and played her fingers along the gemstones inlaying its gold frame. With relief that brought an uncharacteristic giggle to her lips, the mirror obeyed her command, revealing the army of General Moyan where it sat idle before the walls of Halversome, walls that stood intact and unmarred by any hint of fighting.
Scythe cursed under her breath as she manipulated her view into the General’s command tent. Hurn had failed her. He must be dead or captured and the sword captured with him. She had labored several moons over the previous year in its construction. Its priceless black metal had been a gift from a returning raider. Easily one of her finest creations, she would see Halversome reduced to rubble to return it.
An argument was underway between Moyan and his prescient brother, Hethal, the so-called Mad Monk.
She called out an additional spell over the vision, reaching out with a shuddering effort to channel power to what was otherwise a simple spell, until the sounds of raised voices fill her chamber.
“Tonight, brother!” Hethal was crying. “He returns tonight! We must cross to the north shore of the lake with your Black Hands to be ready for them, and we must leave now to be in position.”
Moyan leapt to his feet and slammed his fist down on the table, sending the half-eaten remains of a meal flying to the floor.
“No! You begged me to wait—I have waited for too many days already. The gates have not opened as you foresaw, these men make no sorties onto the field. They merely stand atop the walls and fire bolts into any of the louts that make up this army of rogues and pirates drunk enough to stagger into range,” Moyan emphasized his disgust with the mainstay of his own army with the wave of a vulgar gesture.
General Moyan dropped his voice into a harsh whisper at the sounds of raised voices and scuffling outside the tent. “This very army that is about to turn on us. I must move up the siege tower now, I cannot be scurrying off with you and the Black Hands to capture this stranger you have been waiting for.”
Scythe’s concentration over the ritual almost broke at the general’s words. Hurn had called to her using the amulet she had made him, over the corpses of his wolves he had mentioned a stranger coming to Halversome, a new pilgrim. Now, from the same place, the term was used again. Satisfied with this connection, and with no further contemplation, she chose to pursue this tenuous quarry.
“General Moyan!” she called out.
“Lady Scythe?” Moyan stammered, looking toward the entrance of the tent, where her disembodied voice emanated. Hethal stood straight, his face a mask of stone.
“Speak, Hethal, tell me of this stranger,” her voice commanded from the empty air.
Bowing his head low, Hethal spoke, “The destiny of this stranger is clear to me, he is pivotal to all our plans. We must attempt to capture him before he returns to Halversome. These gates will open at his bidding and our army will have victory and salvation.”
“And if you fail to capture him?” she demanded.
“If we do not try we will die. Every last one of us will die,” Hethal lamented, bringing his fists up to his pale eyes. “There will be no succor. No surrender.”
The brown robed monk sagged down to his knees and choked out a few more words. “The new god will not rise.”
“You are mad!” General Moyan shouted down at Hethal, veins on his forehead bulging.
“Silence!” Scythe commanded. “General Moyan, you will capture this Stranger at all costs and you will not harm him. I am coming to claim his life for our new master.”
Scythe wiped her fingers across the frame of her mirror, breaking the spell. For a moment, she did nothing, just breathed deep. She blinked slowly and turned her attention to her wax-smeared desk laden with open tomes and scrolls. Possessed with a desperate strength incongruous to her small frame she shoved the heavy desk up against the wall of her small chamber, then began pushing and dragging every other furnishing of her room out into the twisting passageway.
-in Erenar
Hethal rose to his feet and clutched his brother in a tight hug, his vision smeared by the tears welling in his eyes.
His brother stood stiffly, regaining his composure after several chuffed breaths. Hethal released him and stepped back. “This will be your greatest victory, brother, but we must go now!”
“You manipulated her, somehow. I know you did,” Moyan stated in a voice gone cold. He picked up his sheathed sword and strapped it to his waist. “She did exactly as you wished.”
“You played your role perfectly as well, brother. I spoke only truth, as I always do,” Hethal said with a smile. “I cannot explain the shattering madness and doom which awaits this entire world if we fail. It is a vision which has haunted me since I was young, and it is the whole purpose of this campaign to alter it.”
His brother shook his head then strode from the tent. He called out to one of his lieutenants who stood over two combative soldiers, “Leave those buffoons and gather the Black Hands to the captured punts. Now!”
Adwa-Ki stood before Lorace and his companions following the completion of four more rituals, stepping through to four more of the vast forest’s grandfather trees.
“This will be the final portal,” she said as Esrenar began the song of the fifth ritual since the glade of the spring, one hand on the hilt of the black sword the young knight held extended. “It will bring you as close to Halversome as any of the grandfather trees grow. You will step through without us, for we must go to where our scattered people are assembling and aid them in their journey to Halversome. Expect us late tomorrow afternoon, Guardian Oen.”
The portal shimmered, gaining definition as Adwa-Ki continued, “We thank you for your blessing Lorace, and again for the touch of Sir Tornin’s wonderful sword.”
As soon as the portal opened, Lorace stepped through with Halversome’s high priest and his sworn protector beside him. Following the directions of the elves, they turned southward and hiked through the thick woods for much of the remainder of the afternoon until they could hear the gentle murmur of the Silarne. When they emerged onto the rutted road along its banks, the sun was low on the horizon.
Lorace spoke while they lengthened their stride. “There is something I do not understand of my mother’s journey to meet my father. The animus of the Lady is a spider. Of all the animal forms of the Old Gods, a spider seems so insignificant—and sinister.”
“She is the Goddess of destiny,” Oen said. “The spider is her animus as the fawn is the animus of the Child, he who brings new life to spring. As the rat to the Thief, who steals from our larder before the rise of the full moon of the Lady. She lays the design for the coming year as the spider weaves her intricate web. There were barbarians in the wilderlands east of the Stormwalls, Tornin’s kin, who named her the Ice Spider, and many of her worshipers adorned themselves with the symbol of the spider. Her paladins and knights, however, revere her simply as the Lady. They adorn themselves with the sword and star.”
Lorace stooped to grab a fallen stick and traced a design in the packed dirt of the river road. He drew the emblem from the altar before which his mother was slain, a sword pointing straight upwards with a four-pointed star at its tip.
“Like this?” he asked.
“Yes! Of course,” Oen said. “Your home was a temple to the Lady. The Spider is no simple, mean creature. Do not forget the mastery of design and artistry that the spider represents, nor that it is a cunning predator that rivals even the wolf among creatures which fall into its web.”
A final turn of the river revealed Halversome silhouetted by the setting sun. For a while, all seemed well, the Zuxran army unseen until the sun dipped below the bluffs, then the lights of dozens of camp fires in the southern field began to appear.
Lorace focused on those fires and saw the army of Zuxran raiders in clumps of black uniformed and armored men. They gathered around cook fires for their evening meal. To the rear of the host stood the siege tower, an unmoving threat, and an unfinished siege engine.
Halversome showed no damage to her rune-warded walls. Many guardsmen lined the battlements, still wary for an attack that had yet to come.
Lorace reported his findings, assuring Halversome’s chosen guardian that all remained as it had when they departed days before.
Oen’s fingers rose to the heavy silver chain of his office. “I still do not understand why they have not attacked, but I am thankful to see her walls standing secure.”
“As am I,” Tornin said, sharing his relief. “Captain Falraan must be terribly weary of the smell of Zuxrans so close by.”
Lorace lowered his voice to a murmur, “They are waiting for something.”
“You feel it too? Something is not right, Lorace,” Oen whispered. “Is it you they wait for?”
Lorace nodded in the mounting darkness as they quickened their steps. Full night found them halfway around the northern shore of the lake. His sight showed their path to the small river gate they had used to exit the city on their journey to Vlaske K’Brak.
Despite the darkness of their garb and the trees they hid behind, his awareness revealed the handful of Zuxran soldiers laying in ambush. Throughout the forest nearby, a full score of black armored warriors lurked.
“Hold!” he whispered. “They are here!”
Moving in a blur, Tornin stood at the ready between Lorace and the woods, shielding him with his body. His heavy black sword raised and glimmering with enough light to illuminate the surrounding trees.
“Tornin, do not kill them,” Lorace commanded in a harsh whisper.
His hand reached into his satchel to clutch the smooth links of Sakke Vrang as several of the Zuxrans slid out from behind the trees, aiming wicked-looking crossbows. The remainder continued to hide from the light of Tornin’s sword. Do they await a command to fully spring their trap? Lorace pondered.
A tall man with a beard jutting out from his chin stepped from the trees further down the road. “Best you lower your weapon,” he said in voice dripping with menace, “before any of my very undisciplined men choose to disobey orders and put a bolt through your heads.”
Gifts of Vorallon: 02 - City of Thunder Page 6
