When Darkness Falls

by Mercedes Lackey

  The Shadowed Elves came swarming out of the darkness, too many to count. They held the far side of the bridge, but they did not need it to cross. As their archers began firing, more of the Tainted creatures began climbing across the walls of the cavern, heading toward Kellen.

  “Back!” Kellen shouted, drawing his sword. If they could hold them in the doorway, they might survive the assault. But survival wasn’t enough. They had to get across the bridge while they still could—and it was obvious that the Shadowed Elves intended to hold them here until the water did its work. They didn’t care whether they lived or died—only that they killed Elves.

  Shadowed Elf archers ran out onto the bridge, pressing their advantage. Though the glass shields Kellen’s force carried provided more protection than the shields the Knights normally carried, some of the arrows still found their mark. Kellen watched helplessly as Elves staggered and fell, plummeting into the black water. Even though the wounds might not ordinarily have been fatal, they were enough to send their victims over the side of the bridge.

  And there was no way he could get to them.

  He waded through the rising water, out into the river gallery. The Elves who had not yet begun to cross had retreated to the bridgehead, forming a guard for those still on the bridge, but that wasn’t enough either. How many Shadowed Elves had escaped Ysterialpoerin?

  They needed the bridge. They needed the Shadowed Elves to come through. All of them.

  Kellen grabbed the shoulder of the nearest Knight.

  “Back!” he shouted, over the howls of the Shadowed Elves, the clash of steel and the roar of the rising water. “Back into the other cavern! Tell Isinwen to retreat!”

  The Knights at the bridgehead began to back away, turning to head for the doorway.

  It was blocked by a party of Shadowed Elves. They wore no armor, but every one of them carried an Elven-forged sword.

  With a roar of anger, the Elves moved to engage their enemy.

  It was almost a parody of a battle. Every move was slowed by the rising water, making the normally-graceful Elves clumsy and slow. The numbing chill of the caves penetrated their sodden clothing. Cloaks and surcoats wound around them, dragging them down and fouling blows.

  But still, against this smaller, unarmored enemy, the conclusion of the battle was not in doubt. The water swirled with Shadowed Elf blood, its color impossible to tell in the azure Coldlight, and the bodies of their dead floated away from the battle, sliding down into the Angarussa.

  Kellen glanced back. The last of the survivors were off the bridge.

  More Shadowed Elves should have been crossing. More should have been swarming over the walls and the ceiling toward the embattled Elven Knights.

  Instead, they … waited.

  He could See the way the battle would go, See the Shadowed Elves’ intention. This time they did not mean to follow their prey into the caves, as they always had before. This time they would wait, holding the cavern until the waters rose again. They would send a few attackers to convince him otherwise, but somewhere, in their last battles, they had learned patience and restraint. It could be a fatal lesson for the Elves.

  He splashed back through the current after the others, cursing at his slowness. After a seeming eternity, he reached the others.

  “The Shadowed Elves are holding the bridge. They aren’t going to attack, and they aren’t going to let us cross,” he said shortly. “What about going back to the main entrance?”

  “The water is even deeper there,” Isinwen said. “It jets from the side galleries with the force of the river itself, making a wall we cannot breech.”

  It was only what Kellen had expected.

  “Where’s Wirance?”

  The water rose several inches before Wirance arrived at his side, and while they waited Kellen removed his cloak and surcoat, and ordered those around him to do the same. He inspected his bow with resignation. The Elven bows had greater range and force than those of the Shadowed Elves, but by now their bowstrings were soaked. Useless. He tossed his bow and quiver into the water in disgust.

  “Some of the archers string their bows with silver, Isinwen said. “The range is not as great, but—”

  But silver would not stretch to uselessness in the damp.

  “I want every one of them here. Now.”

  Isinwen moved off to pass the word.

  As Isinwen departed, Wirance arrived. The Mountainborn Wildmage’s leather armor was black with water, and his lips were blue with cold.

  “I hope you have an idea,” he said when he saw Kellen.

  “The Shadowed Elves have built pumps and dams to flood the caverns. They’ll fail soon. They’ll fail now if we can jar them enough. I need you and the other Wildmages to come up with something that will shake these caves—hard.”

  If they saw that their plan to drown Kellen and his army had failed, the Shadowed Elves might revert to their old tactics and commit to an all-out attack. If not, at least Kellen’s people would escape drowning, and be able to scour the caves for them afterward.

  Wirance considered for a moment. “There is a spell. It will take time to cast. And it might just seal us in.”

  Kellen grimaced. “It’s not as if we have a lot of choices. Do it.”

  Isinwen was struggling back toward the front of the army, staggering through the heavy weight of water and clutching the Elves around him for support as he moved. “Come on. We’re going to try to take the bridge the old-fashioned way.”

  Kellen made his dispositions quickly. Umerchiel’s force would remain to protect the Wildmages. Kellen, Isinwen, and the rest of the first force would do their best to cross the bridge and establish a bridgehead on the far side, so that they could protect more of their force in the crossing.

  It would not be the easiest thing they’d ever done.

  They made their way—once more—back to the river-cavern. Several times Elves fell, disappearing beneath the surface of the water to be dragged to the surface again by the Knights around them. Kellen only hoped that Isinwen had been right about the bows—part of his plan relied on being able to drive the Shadowed Elves back from the far side of the bridge.

  The water poured with increasing force through the opening between the two caverns, white crests of foam upon its top.

  As they reached the cavern’s mouth, Kellen once again passed the word of his plan to all his commanders. A good General, he’d learned, did not keep his plans to himself. Others must be ready to carry them out if he was unable to.

  And unlike a proper story-song General, Kellen would be leading this engagement, not directing it.

  “It doesn’t matter if some of them get past you. In fact, we want as many of them to get past you as possible. The more that attack Umerchiel’s force, the fewer there will be holding the bridge. That’s what we have to secure. If we can take the far side, we can bring enough of our force across to take the fight to them.”

  “So we begin,” Isinwen said. “Leaf and Star guide us this day.”

  Kellen nodded. The Elven archers who were still able to loose arrows readied their bows.

  Kellen raised Light At The Heart Of The Mountain in salute and slogged forward.

  The water level dropped sharply once they were in the river-gallery, but Kellen saw, with a sinking heart, that the river now ran across the surface of the bridge itself.

  He began to run. Master Belesharon had made him run through snow. This was not much harder.

  He reached the bridge. It was as slick as glass, but he had fought in a Circle whose floor was oiled glass.

  He ran faster.

  Behind him, the Elven archers began to attack.

  He’d caught the Shadowed Elves off guard, but it gave him no advantage. They would recover long before he could reach the far side of the bridge. Already their archers began to loose their deadly poisoned darts. Kellen ducked as far behind his shield as he could—it seemed to weigh far more than it had this morning; the subterranean cold and the cost o
f the spell he had cast were telling on him. Behind him, more Knights followed.

  The world dimmed and brightened, in the peculiar vividness of battle-sight. He could see in every direction at once. The Elves behind him were moving away from the cavern opening as fast as they could, moving along the sides of the cavern walls. Fortunately the Shadowed Elf bows did not have the range of their Elven cousins, and they were out of range of the poisoned arrows.

  Ahead, the Shadowed Elves were starting across the bridge, while others began, once again, to swarm the cavern walls, this time carrying the flasks of acid and poison that could kill instantly. Male and female were mixed equally in their ranks, and Kellen Knew that these were the last survivors of the Enclaves they had destroyed farther north.

  The first of the enemy reached him. Kellen slashed at the body with his sword, the blow carrying the Shadowed Elf into the water.

  On the far side of the river, several of the Shadowed Elves flung themselves into the water and began swimming toward the bridge.

  The cold doesn’t bother them. And the current will sweep them toward the bridge. Which is exactly where they want to go …

  He banished the thought from his mind. There was no time to think now, or to change his plan. He had made the best possible plan that he could. It would work.

  Or they would die.

  It was a nightmare battle in the icy darkness, with only the globes of Cold-fire to illuminate the scene. The enemy came from in front—behind—beside—slowing their passage across the narrow bridgeway, and the water rose, threatening to do what even the Shadowed Elves could not: sweep them from the bridge and drown them in the depths of the river.

  Worse, though the Angarussa had been running free before, the bodies of the Shadowed Elf dead did not sink, but floated. They had been pulled by the current toward the exit-passage of the river, and now blocked the outflow completely.

  He drove all those thoughts from his mind.

  All that existed were the targets for his sword.

  Light At The Heart Of The Mountain rose and fell like a breath of wind, severing heads, arms, legs. The faceted jewel in her pommel glowed an eldritch blue in the reflected Coldlight, sparkling in the darkness. Each step Kellen managed to take forward was bought at the cost of a death—Shadowed Elves’, Elven Knights.

  A furious anger possessed him, banishing pain and weariness. He slammed his shield into the face of his next attacker, then tossed it aside. Spinning, turning, dancing through the river water as if it were the dry stone floor of the House of Sword and Shield, he hammered not only his sword, but his very will against the Shadowed Elves before him, daring them to stand and fight.

  The press of the enemy before him broke. The Shadowed Elves were backing away, the ones facing him clawing their way over the ones behind them to escape his sword. The push of bodies drove many of them down into the river. The current was sluggish now, and they were not swept away, but they didn’t seem to know which way to swim.

  He felt a spell begin to build, jarring him momentarily from the battle-trance.

  “Off the bridge! Off the bridge—now!”

  He’d nearly reached the far side. He gained it in a few jumps, Isinwen just behind him. Sometime during the crossing the Shadowed Elves had stopped firing. They pushed forward.

  The Elves still on the bridge crossed it at a splashing run, single file, hacking at the hands of the Shadowed Elves who lurked in the water trying to drag them from the bridge. The water was knee-deep above the causeway now, and rising. It would be even higher where Umerchiel was.

  On the far side of the bridge, the Shadowed Elves seemed to go insane, throwing themselves on Kellen and the others with even greater ferocity than before. There was no thought of restraint now, of tactics. All they wanted to do was kill. Instead of facing them in ones and twos, Kellen was covered with clawing stabbing creatures attempting to tear his armor from his body.

  Suddenly the cavern rocked.

  He’d felt the shaking in the caverns when the Shadowed Elves had opened their dams. That had been nothing in comparison to this. It jarred him to his knees, and it didn’t stop. Wirance had been right. The Wildmage’s spell would do the Shadowed Elves’ work for them.

  The Shadowed Elves howled in terror at the quaking, breaking off their attack and turning to flee. It saved Kellen’s life—if they had taken advantage of the moment, he’d surely be dead.

  But they hadn’t, and even while the aftershocks still shook the gallery, Kellen rolled to his feet and ran after them.

  The Angarussa was running backward.

  The river’s level was dropping as fast as water draining from a bathtub, and the river was flowing in the opposite direction that it had been before. Already the causeway was exposed again, and the rest of the Elves running across it took full advantage of the moment.

  VESTAKIA slept through the rest of the day and into the night, repairing much of the damage she had done to herself in the long struggle to understand the Crystal Spiders. Her sleep, thanks to Idalia’s cordial, was without dreams.

  She was awakened, very early the following morning, by the arrival of Idalia and Cilarnen.

  SHE had seen little of Cilarnen over the past several sennights. Even when she had been down at the Main Camp, he had been in seclusion up at his ice-pavilion, engaged in his mysterious researches. When Idalia first brought him into the pavilion, for one horrified instant, Vestakia thought he had succumbed to the Shadow’s Kiss; his eyes glittered fever-bright, there were hectic spots of color in his pale cheeks, and he reeled and staggered on unsteady feet as if he were drunk.

  “Cilarnen!” she gasped.

  “Another casualty of war,” Idalia said ruefully. But the mockery in her tone could not disguise her concern. She lowered him gently onto a bench.

  “I’d throw up, I think, if I’d eaten anything much lately,” Cilarnen said, bending over to rest his head in his hands.

  “What have you been doing to yourself?” Vestakia demanded fiercely.

  At her words, he raised his head and smiled at her charmingly.

  “Only magick, Lady Vestakia. It is not the simple business for High Mages that it seems to be for Wildmages. Hence, you see, the large city, the many servants … all the things I don’t seem to have at the moment.”

  His tone was light, despite his obvious pain, making her smile despite herself.

  “Vestakia, since you seem to be feeling better this morning, perhaps you could tend to our latest patient,” Idalia said. “Sweet gruel for his tender stomach, I think, then into bed with him. Keep him warm. And stay with him—or I shall put you back into a bed again as well.”

  Vestakia simply tossed her head.

  “Some people, Cilarnen, think that others can do nothing without constant supervision. Shall we show them that they are wrong?”

  “Indeed, Lady Vestakia, I would be honored to assist you.”

  WHILE he ate and drank—the light breakfast was really all he could manage just now, after so many days of fasting—Cilarnen told Vestakia of his night’s labors, and that Jermayan had gone in search of those he had seen in his vision.

  Her teasing mood instantly sobered.

  “But … what could have happened?” she asked in bewilderment.

  “That I do not know. But Jermayan has set out to find them and see. Vestakia, there cannot have been a battle. I saw no wounded at all. And … these are the Elven Lands. You’ve said yourself that the last Enclave of the Shadowed Elves is at Halacira. They were nowhere near that. Certainly it is troubling, but Jermayan will find them soon, and bring news. We shall just have to wait until then.”

  BUT it was not Jermayan who entered the Healer’s Tent to join them, a few hours later, but Keirasti, accompanied by Idalia.

  The Elven Knight looked exhausted, and stunned with cold. Vestakia jumped up immediately from her place by Cilarnen’s bedside, and went to fetch her a large mug of soup. Soup and tea were always ready and waiting in the Healer’s pavilion.<
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  “Before anyone asks, Kellen is alive and well,” Idalia said. “At least he was six days ago, when Keirasti left him. And he was nowhere near Halacira.”

  “Well, there’s some good news,” Cilarnen said, lying back against his pillows again.

  “Indeed it is,” Keirasti said. “I judge he is yet a sennight from Halacira. When Jermayan returns from the Crowned Horns, he will take your warning to Kellen, and he will be grateful to receive it, you may be sure.”

  “I must go with Jermayan,” Vestakia said, coming over and handing Keirasti a large mug of thick soup. “I can help.”

  “No,” Keirasti said. “Jermayan has promised he will return me to my command. They await me at the foot of the Mystrals. Ancaladar can only carry two at speed.”

  “He can take your warning to Kellen,” Idalia said gently. “That will be what Kellen needs now. He’ll probably send for you anyway very soon, to make sure the caverns are clear.”

  AND it would be just as well, Idalia reflected, for Vestakia to have a day or two to rest and compose herself before she saw Kellen again. The way she looked right now, the poor girl would probably throw herself into Kellen’s arms the moment she saw him, and though her brother might have a head made of wood sometimes, he wasn’t made of stone. But he did have a vow of chastity and celibacy that had some moonturns yet to run, and Idalia doubted it would be the easiest thing in the world to remember with a weeping Vestakia in his arms.

  “And you’ll have plenty to do here before you go. Redhelwar has given the order to move the army south.”

  “South? We’re to move?” Cilarnen sat bolt upright. “But I—”

  “Must stay right there and rest,” Idalia said inexorably. “You will have plenty of time later to pack that mare’s nest you call a camp. Which you cannot do if you are facedown in the snow, asleep with exhaustion.”

  Cilarnen subsided, grumbling.

  Just then one of the other Healers entered the tent.

  “Ancaladar is flying over the camp. Jermayan will be here soon.”