Myranda nodded to Myn, and the dragon reluctantly lifted her claw away. The Chosen stepped back. Nehri’s people rushed in to help her to her feet and raised their weapons against the Chosen. Nehri hissed some orders angrily at them. They slowly backed away.
“Very well. You, and only you, come inside. The rest of you, lower your weapons. Stand down. My people will do the same.”
Deacon pocketed his gem. Grustim slowly and deliberately sheathed his blade. Myn was the last to stand down, glaring at Nehri long and hard before thumping down onto her haunches and huffing in irritation. With the tension of the moment somewhat lessened, the fairies drifted from Myn’s horns and hung in the air, eyes wide and hands clasped in delight.
“So many malthropes…” Freet said.
“So many friends of the fairies…” Shah murmured.
#
Nehri led Myranda inside the hut. Notta sat beside the bed. She looked uncertainly to Myranda, but Nehri whispered something to ease her concerns. Myranda swept her eyes and mind over Ivy’s form. The worst of her injuries had been tended to, perhaps not as thoroughly as she or Deacon might have done, but well enough to keep her from deaths’ door. Her spirit was terribly weak. She had certainly transformed, as they’d felt. There was no helping that, save giving her time to recover.
“Tell me what happened,” Myranda said.
“Reyce… the chieftain… he moved faster than we’d agreed upon. He… began something we couldn’t stop, did something we could not undo. It forced our hand. We needed power to make our plan work, and the only way to get it fast enough was Ivy. She refused. She became angry. I’ve never seen something so destructive, so filled with fury. If not for the power of Boviss and the thirst of the shrine, I don’t know how she would have been stopped. But her strength gave us what we needed. And now the battle has begun.”
“You opened D’Karon portals. Where did they lead?”
“Where do you think? To the isthmus. For weeks we have been carefully placing gems to serve as beacons, destinations. They were coming to our homes, threatening us. What could we do but the same in return?”
Myranda took a breath, disbelief and disappointment in her eyes. “Your plan is to attack? To send all of your people to do battle? Even with the D’Karon spells, this village isn’t large enough to contain the force it would take to defeat the elves. Tell us the rest of the plan.”
“You know what you need to know already. Enough to know Sonril is in danger.”
“You attacked us, nearly killed Myn using fairies and a poisoned thorn. And you have a list of Sonril’s nobles and where they linger.”
Nehri’s eyes flashed with anxiety. “How…”
“You shouldn’t underestimate Ivy. She got a message to us. There is only one conclusion I can come to. Those are the ingredients for assassinations. We warned the nobles.”
“It won’t do any good.” Nehri hung her head. “I do not know what to fear more, that you might be able to stop what we’ve started, or that you won’t. Whether we succeed or fail, something of our people dies today…”
“Nehri, if you feel something you have done, something that you are doing, needs to be redeemed, now may be your only chance. Tell me the rest of the plan.”
She shut her eyes tightly and turned away. “D’Karon forgive me… We promised all of our wealth to a dwarf in the northeast. He is the keeper of the Seven Brothers—huge, terrible war machines that have slumbered since some war before our time. We awakened one of the machines and sent it to the south. It is as nearly unstoppable as anything wrought by mortals or gods. It will reach their capital, turn it to rubble, and then return to its keeper.”
“What manner of war machine…?”
“A golem. A great stone dwarf that knows only the orders it has been given. It will smash the cities. And then the wasps… even if you warned the nobles, when the golem arrives, any and all mystics and warriors will be summoned to face the golem and to try to stop our people and Boviss. Our stealthiest people spent nearly every moment from the formulation of the plan to this day infiltrating the cities of Sonril, finding the most important nobles, learning their defenses, and reporting them back to us. We know all we need to know. There will be nothing to stop the wasps from striking. Generals. Nobles. Anyone of importance. They will all fall…”
“A swarm of fairies as assassins…” Myranda said. “And a major assault to split their resources…”
“You’ll never be able to stop it all. Now do you understand? Once the war machine rose, it was victory or death. Do not interfere. I beg of you. It will mean death for us all.”
“I won’t let that happen. I won’t let any of it happen. You’ll get your people back, there will be no war.”
She lowered her head and shut her eyes. “But that’s impossible.”
“We are the Chosen. We’ve done the impossible before.” Myranda stepped outside just as Ether returned. “What did you find?” she asked the shapeshifter.
“The sting of D’Karon magic is strong, and the spells were cast curiously. The path between where the portals opened and their destination still hangs in the spectral realm like a line on a map. There are a dozen points, each just north of the border.”
“Deacon, we need to find a way to get to where those portals opened, and swiftly. Time is running out.”
“I may be able to reopen one of them with the help of Nehri’s remaining thir gem.”
“Do what you can. And what do you know about golems?”
“Cresh used to talk at length about them. The pinnacle of dwarfish magic. But they were considered too dangerous to be used. His final task before braving the Cave of the Beast was to dismantle the last one in the Rachis Mountains.”
“Did he teach you how it was done?”
“Not specifically. He mostly bragged about the difficulty. It took him years.”
“We have hours.”
“There is a functioning golem!”
“And it is heading toward the elven capital with orders to destroy it.”
Realization dawned on Ether’s face. “This has happened before…”
“What do you mean?” Myranda asked.
“The elven memorial I found had a stone rendering of a dwarf. As it was a statue, there was no indication that the dwarf was intended to be stone rather than flesh and blood. But if a massive stone working of dwarfish magic is on the move, it seems clear that such a mechanism attacked and defeated the elves so savagely that they collectively chose to conceal it from us.”
“Were the circumstances less dire,” Deacon mused, “this would be a tremendous learning opportunity. Magic so ancient and powerful. I ruminated on the operation of such a creation. The amount of magic necessary would require focus of the sort—”
“Deacon.”
“Right, yes. Time is wasting. Is there anything else?” Deacon said.
Myranda turned to Grustim. “The elder dragon is with them. We may need to fight it.”
“Then we may need to prepare ourselves for death,” Grustim said.
“Would such a creature have any weaknesses?”
“They have the same strengths as normal dragons, but amplified to an unimaginable degree. Immense strength. Near-impenetrable hide.”
“And magic may be of little use,” Deacon said. “The strength of the mind and spirit grows more with time than anything else.”
“Then we have too many problems to solve and not nearly enough time to solve them. We’ve been here before.” Myranda turned. “Nehri, two of the dearest friends and strongest allies I’ve ever had were malthropes. One lost his life ending a war that would have claimed my people. The other sleeps on the bed behind you. I am ready and willing to make the same sacrifice to keep you from succumbing to another pointless war. If troops reach the village, know that it is only because I have fallen in the attempt to stop them. I see that you truly care for Ivy, and I cannot afford the time to help her or the risk of bringing her with us in this state. I leave her i
n your care.”
She stepped to Myn’s side and unfastened some straps, freeing a pair of cases.
“When you came to me, Ivy provided a message to convince me you could be trusted.” She presented the cases. “When Ivy awakens, give these to her. She will know what to do.”
She turned to the others. “Deacon, work on the portals. We’ll need one large enough for the dragons. Then you and I see what can be done about the golem. Grustim, Garr, it will be up to you to warn the others what may be coming and hold off the elder dragon if it attacks. Somehow, along the way, we’ll need to find a way to defeat the spells that hide the malthropes. Perhaps if they are no longer hidden, they will forgo their part of the attack. But even if that is not the case, we need to do it so that the fairies can be stopped. They will be difficult enough to find without magic veiling them.”
“I can find them!” Shah crowed. “I can find them, I know I can. After being among the Bramblebreeze fairies, I know I could follow their wind if I need to. It isn’t so different from having to find my way back to Freet!”
“Then you shall be with Ether. The two of you can move the most quickly, and Ether is the only one of us who will be safe from the poison the fairies carry,” Myranda said. “Deacon can give you the locations Ivy discovered. Knowing where they are heading may just allow you to get ahead of them.”
“Shall I kill the fairy assassins?” Ether asked.
“No!” Shah trilled. “Please don’t kill them! They’re just helping the wrong people!”
“Deacon, the ribbons in the cases, the ones that put Shah and Freet to sleep when bound…”
“I, yes, I see what you have in mind. It is a simple matter to duplicate them,” Deacon said.
He drew a length of twine from his bag and, under his influence, sections of thread began to reel out, separate, and faintly glow as he enchanted them. As he did so, he spoke.
“I would be remiss if I did not make it clear that each of the insurmountable problems we face today could serve as fuel for a months-long debate among the Entwell masters, at the end of which there would be little hope for a solution that could be relied upon, and even if we do find solutions, it is doubtful that any could be executed without endangering you, and with you, our unborn child.”
Myranda took a breath and shut her eyes. “The lives of whole nations, of the whole world, have hung upon our shoulders too many times already. A single precious life has been added, and somehow it has doubled the burden. But it doesn’t change anything. We must solve these problems, we must face these foes. It is why we are here. And our lives are no more important than those that will be lost if we relent. If the gods are with us, then someday we shall tell our child of this adventure. If they are not… then we won’t live to regret this. Now let us delay no longer. There is work to be done.”
#
Reyce soared through the sky, following the coast toward the mountains, far from the isthmus where the first blood of this filthy campaign had been drawn. His people had already spread far and wide, using the power of their gems to run tirelessly to their assigned places along the border. If this plan was to work, it must appear as though the attack was coming from everywhere at once. Fear and uncertainty were weapons every bit as crucial as poison and blade. Only he and Boviss were heading in the opposite direction. If things had gone as planned, this would not have been necessary. But their hand had been forced. Both the deployment of the golem and the deployment of his people had come too close together, and thus he had to waste time and expend a tremendous amount of power to speed the golem’s journey. The D’Karon must have been watching over them, though, as they had provided their most favored children with more power than they could have hoped for. With what they had collected from Ivy, they would not miss the power necessary for this next step.
The time away from the battlefield, however, did not suit Boviss’s tastes.
“The others are in a place where the wind is heavy with the scent of elves. Their claws and teeth are tasting the blood of our foes,” Boviss rumbled.
“The attack will not begin until the golem arrives,” Reyce said.
In truth, Reyce was eager to be back beside his brethren as well. He and Boviss could move most swiftly and hit with the greatest strength. They were the ones who would serve as the grim finale to any attack that might tip in the wrong direction. The longer they were away, the greater the chance they would be needed but unable to reach the others in time. He poured magic from the cache of gems he carried, increasing Boviss’s already prodigious speed to something truly astounding. A journey that would have taken weeks by foot and days by normal flight was, with barely an hour gone, nearly complete. Already he could see the massive, lumbering form of his target.
Reyce selected the largest gem that he’d yet to put to use and judged the golem’s path. He shut his eyes and coaxed the beginnings of a spell from its heart. Finally, he dropped it. As it plummeted, intense streamers of light lanced outward, then a swirling darkness grew. It expanded, an inky void swelling among the mountains and trees, directly ahead of the golem. A point of light spread from the center of the void, revealing the sandy fringe of the fields north of the isthmus. It was the nearest destination available to him, as the portals could only lead to where they had been targeted, and their targets were few and precious, as each one was another chance to be discovered. At the speed the golem lumbered, mere hours separated it from Rendif, the first of many targets to which it would lay waste.
Boviss hung in the air, watching the war machine as it flattened trees and pulverized stone. It stepped through the portal and paused, perhaps to get its bearings and to seek its target through whatever mystic means it used. After a moment, it marched stoically onward. Boviss swooped through the portal behind it.
“Now, take me to Rendif. When the golem arrives, you shall have your blood…” Reyce said darkly.
“We should begin the battle now. Let me raze their twisted trees and slaughter their soldiers. Let them test themselves against me before that thing of stone and magic finishes the job.”
“We shall follow the plan, Boviss.”
“Each time you ignore my counsel, you find yourself regretting it.”
Reyce selected another fresh gem. In his haste, he had neglected to restore his invisibility. Though soon enough the dragon, at least, would be revealed, for now they should both remain hidden. He conjured the proper spell. The dragon shifted uncomfortably, his image the ghostly shadow visible to one hidden by D’Karon magic. Reyce looked to the dragon’s fresh wounds, still clearly paining the massive beast.
“And each time you clash with malthropes, you earn new scars,” Reyce said.
“That thing resting in your village is no more a malthrope than that statue marching toward Sonril is a dwarf. She is a creation. A weapon. And when the elves are crushed, you would be wise to crush her as well. She will be the end of you.”
“I do not care about her past. My duty is to ensure the future of my people, and she is among them.”
“If you continue to rule with a weak hand, then your people shall have no future.”
“And if you do not hold your tongue, this shall be the last time I permit you to leave your lair.”
Boviss rumbled in suppressed fury but kept silent. For several minutes he moved with speed only D’Karon magic could manage. Already the golem was far enough behind to be barely visible, and the city of Rendif was just over the horizon.
The dragon did not speak again until, seemingly unprovoked, he snapped his head aside. “Do you feel that?”
“I feel nothing.”
Boviss fixed his eyes on a point to the distant west. “A new portal stirs.”
Reyce matched his gaze, and sure enough, the first sparks of a D’Karon portal were swirling to life. It was barely visible, even to Reyce’s sharp eyes, centered on one of the more distant portal beacons. Reyce put his fingers to his gem, ensuring the enchantment that hid them was secure. The portal’s opening wa
s slow, and a measure less chaotic than he was accustomed to. This allowed Boviss to cover a considerable amount of the distance toward it. When it was fully open, two dragons and their riders came spilling out.
“No… No…” Reyce growled. “They are using the blessed magic!”
“They have pillaged Den. They have stolen your secrets.”
“They have not…”
“They are agents of the elves. They will have ruined your homes. You should have struck more quickly.”
“It cannot be so!”
Reyce clutched his gem and attempted to contact Nehri. The spell would not activate. It could mean any of a dozen things. It could mean Nehri’s gem was drained, or that she was unable to reach it to complete her half of the spell. But it could also mean something far worse, that she was dead, or that her gem was in the hands of someone else…
Boviss’s rumbling voice put words to his fears. “Your village is gone. Your people are dead. The agents of the elves have destroyed the priestess of Den and smashed her gems.”
“It is not so until I have seen it with my own eyes,” Reyce affirmed.
Myranda and Deacon guided Myn to the northeast, no doubt heading for the golem which was now just out of sight. Grustim and Garr soared due south, toward Rendif.
Reyce held Boviss tightly. “Let the others destroy themselves in a clash against the golem. But follow the green dragon and his rider. When he nears the first of the elven settlements, we end him.”
“I can easily end him now.”
“No. Let it happen before their eyes. Let them see that their hired blades are nothing against us. And do not end him quickly. I want them to see that even the best of them is helpless against us. And when the golem appears, grind him into paste. I shall signal the others to deploy their wasps and join us here. This Dragon Rider and the others deserve nothing less than our full, focused fury for daring to violate the sanctity of our village and turn the D’Karon teachings to their blasphemous will…”
The Crescents Page 26
