The rest of the Sworn, the elders, pregnant women, and young children, had been sent inland and far from the battle, guarded by a small group of warriors. The rest waited here along the barrow line, called to action by Talwyn’s vision.
A burst of red light lit the sky bright as day, casting the entire landscape in a bloody glow. A blast of power accompanied the light. It shook the ground under Jair’s feet and whipped the wind as the temperature plummeted enough so that his breath misted in the air.
A deafening boom shook the ground. Jair saw a crevice open along the barrows. He turned just in time to catch Talwyn as she staggered.
“They’re coming,” she breathed. Her face was ashen, her voice slightly slurred as the blast of magic caught her with its backlash. Pevre stepped between Talwyn and the widening chasm. His hands were weaving through the air in a complex series of wardings. Talwyn caught her breath and stood, returning to Pevre’s side as Jair, Emil, and Mihei drew their swords.
As bright as the night sky had been, it turned to inky black. Neither stars nor torches lit the night. Jair knew he stood only an arm’s length away from Talwyn, but he could not see her. The ground trembled once again, and dozens of high-pitched shrieks sent a shiver down Jair’s back. He gripped his stelian tightly. Blinded by the darkness, he had no idea how to defend himself or the others if an attacker rose out of the night.
Total darkness faded to a dull gray and then to a night sky lit once more by stars and torches. Yet the screeching wails continued, and as Jair watched, red and blue balls of light floated from the chasm. Wraiths followed the lights, streaming from the jagged crevice in the ground. Smoke and mist when they rose, the beings became solid as they stepped onto the ground in the realm of the living. Jair caught his breath.
The creatures that formed out of the cleft belonged in nightmares. Some of the beings had green-gray skin clinging to their protruding bones, bones that were too long to have once been those of men. Other beings were the mottled blue-gray of a bloated corpse, with distended bellies and gaping jaws. Yet others were muscular creatures with the sinewy lines of a large cat but the general form of a man, covered in a skin that was a yellowish purple like an old bruise. The beings walked upright, though with a forward lean that reminded Jair more of a bear on its hind legs than a man. Several of the beings had four or six arms, and each ended in sharp-clawed fingers or in hands that wielded great scythelike blades. Some of them wore bones, blackened, shriveled fingers, hands, and ears as ornaments, while one of them had wrapped rotting entrails around his brow like a headpiece. As one of the risen creatures turned toward him, Jair saw a face that did not look to have ever been human. Folds of blue-gray skin hung from its high, broad forehead down to its jowls. Wide-set, large eyes held a glint of both cunning and madness. A broad, sharp-toothed maw opened wide on a snakelike hinge. A three-forked tongue flicked from between the double row of daggerlike teeth. The stench of putrefaction rose with them from the depths.
“What are those things?”
“Nachele,” Mihei replied.
A blast of yellow light flared from the wardings Talwyn and Pevre had set, streaming toward the emerging creatures, punching through the mist of forming shapes. For an instant, the mist slowed and swirled.
Down the line of barrows, Jair heard the horn blast to attack. Jair had assumed that the Nachele might move with the lumbering power of a large bear. Instead, they struck with the speed and power of vayash moru. Jair let himself slip into the fighting trance of the Sworn’s warriors, following the energy of his attacker with his instinct as well as his senses. Though his opponent had only two arms, each ended in long, jointed whiplike fingers that lashed at Jair and curled around his stelian, threatening to wrest it from his grip. Red eyes with vertical black slit pupils gazed hungrily at Jair out of their deep-set sockets, a contrast to the gray-green of its leathery skin.
Jair jerked his stelian back, freeing it from the creature’s hold, and charged forward, thrusting his blade toward its chest. With a sibilant cry, the Nachele flailed its whip-fingers again, opening up bleeding welts where they grazed the skin on Jair’s hands and one cheek. The Nachele made a clicking sound as Jair circled it, and Jair let his left hand slip to the tunic of his shirt, grasping Talwyn’s amulet.
The amulet flared with light, nearly burning his palm, and the light arced from the amulet to Jair’s stelian blade. He charged forward recklessly, dropping hold of the amulet to grip his blade two-handed, striking at the Nachele with all his strength. Just as he gained an advantage and began to press the creature backward, it dissolved into mist and vanished, leaving Jair to stumble forward with his own momentum.
It took only a glance to see that Emil was engaged with an equally fierce foe. Around him, Jair could hear the cries of the Sworn warriors and nightmarish clicks, hisses, and screeches from beings that had not walked above ground in over a thousand years.
Talwyn, Pevre, and Mihei had stopped their chanting and taken up their swords as more of the Nachele advanced. Mist began to swirl around them. The Nachele did not have to rely on their speed to surround an enemy; the mist also did their bidding, swirling and solidifying into shapes.
Before the mist could fully form, Talwyn and Pevre lurched forward, swords held in a two-handed, shoulder-height thrust. Chanting as they ran, they plunged their stelians into the churning mist as their swords flared a brilliant orange. From the mist where they struck, an earsplitting shriek echoed from the rocks around them. The mist rolled back. Jair and Mihei held their ground. With a thunderous crack, the mist around Talwyn’s and Pevre’s swords vanished, but just as Jair hoped that the shamans’ spells had turned the attack, shapes solidified out of the haze, rushing toward them.
Mihei and Jair took the brunt of the attack, using their talismans to borrow from Talwyn’s magic. The Nachele reared back and then came at them as swiftly as the wind, so that Jair was almost knocked from his feet with the momentum of the attack. He swung his heavy stelian with all his might, in blows that would have easily cleaved through the body of a mortal. His attacker, a six-armed warrior with blue-gray shriveled skin, cackled as it parried his blows, though some of the strikes cut through its skin enough that rivulets of a puslike liquid began to stream down from its many wounds.
Across the open plain, along the line of barrows, Jair could hear the cries of soldiers and the clash of steel. Behind his attacker, Jair glimpsed one of the Nachele plunging its long, sharp talons through the chest of a Sworn warrior. It lifted the dying man in its many arms and bent him backward, snapping his spine. The Nachele plunged its sawlike teeth into the soldier’s exposed belly, gorging on the flesh as fresh blood stained its matted hair and covered its chest in gore.
Jair and Mihei were fighting back to back against two of the Nachele, while Talwyn and Pevre worked in tandem, striking with both sword and magic to interrupt the Nachele’s attack. Yet even as Talwyn forced one of the Nachele back with a blast of magic, Jair knew that they could not hold off the Nachele indefinitely.
A sound like the loudest rolling thunder Jair had ever heard drowned out the clang of swords and the battle shouts of soldiers. In the pale moonlight, Jair could see openings appear in the sides of the barrows, yawning black caverns. The rolling thunder moved across the open ground like a physical force, echoing from the barrows and the rocky hills. Behind the thunder swept silence like a suffocating blanket. Everything was shrouded by the silence, and though the battle raged and Jair could see soldiers’ faces grimace with screams of pain or twist in rage as they roared battle cries, no sound escaped the weight of the silence. Jair could not hear his breath or the pounding of his heart that had been deafeningly loud just seconds before.
The Nachele did not ease their attack, despite the unnatural silence. But as Jair struggled to hold off the press of his Nachele opponent, he saw motion coming from the barrows and braced for another attack.
Twice the height of a man, garbed in what appeared to be flowing black shrouds, the newcomers
to the field of battle swarmed from the barrows with the fleetness of an insect horde. As they moved, Jair saw that what he had taken to be swirling capes of fabric were long tendrils that fell from the creatures’ shoulders down to the ground. Beneath the swaying tendrils Jair glimpsed long, thin arms with powerful, clawed hands.
The Nachele began to turn their attention from the Sworn to the ominous black shapes that rose from the barrows. The two Nachele that battled Jair and Mihei dissolved into mist, fleeing from the fearsome newcomers. Jair turned, stelian raised, to add his strength against the other two Nachele, who remained locked in battle with Pevre and Talwyn.
These must be the Dread, Jair thought. If the Dread were to be their salvation, then their rescuers were every bit as terrifying as their adversaries.
Pevre’s lips were moving in a chant and it seemed to Jair that the older man fought with twice his usual speed, beating back the Nachele’s attack. Talwyn also mouthed silent protections, and her stelian’s aim was true, scything between her attacker’s two blades to rake the razor-sharp tip of her sword across the Nachele’s chest.
Jair raised his stelian and swung with his full might, aiming his blade for the back of Talwyn’s attacker. As his blade fell, the two Nachele moved with blinding speed. The Nachele Talwyn had been fighting pivoted out of position to attack Pevre with its barbed-bladed swords. Pevre’s opponent, a blue-gray creature with long, whiplike fingers of claw and bone, whirled to confront Talwyn. Pevre’s swords blocked his attacker’s onslaught, though his parry nearly drove him to his knees.
Jair’s blade fell just short of the Nachele that had turned on Talwyn. In the stifling silence, Jair saw the whip cords of the Nachele lash out at Talwyn, watched as they snaked past her sword, which had not yet corrected its angle for the new attack. Jair screamed a warning that Talwyn never heard as one of the long, bony whips struck her in the chest, penetrating her leather cuirass. Mihei and Jair reached the Nachele at the same time, beating on its ridged back with their stelians, and while the razor-sharp blades cut through cloth, armor, and skin, the Nachele did not turn its attention from Talwyn.
The whip cord jerked back from Talwyn’s chest and a look of astonished disappointment crossed her features as blood pulsed from the wound and Talwyn sank to her knees. She was still mouthing an incantation, but her tawny skin had grown ashen.
Jair marshaled all his strength to bring his stelian down point first into the back of the Nachele, while Mihei angled his blade to strike under its arm. The Nachele stumbled and then its whole form shuddered, blurring around the edges as if it were attempting to vanish into mist. Talwyn’s lips moved again, and she thrust out her palm, sending a flare of power toward the staggered Nachele, which writhed for an instant in the glare and then crumbled to the ground in a heap of bone.
Before Jair could take a step toward Talwyn, two of the Dread swept up behind them, intent on the remaining Nachele that battled Pevre. Too late, the Nachele realized its peril, but the Dread’s presence kept it from fleeing into the mist. The curtain of black tendrils swept out in the blink of an eye, wrapping around the Nachele and pulling it into long, bony arms hidden beneath the tendrils. The Nachele disappeared into the Dread’s deadly embrace, and suddenly, the silence was shattered.
Jair’s throat was already raw from screaming when the silence ended. Heedless of the Dread or the Nachele, he rushed forward, reaching Talwyn at the same time as Pevre. Wordlessly, Mihei stood guard as Jair and Pevre eased Talwyn back to lie on the dry, brown grass.
Pevre’s chanting took on a fevered intensity, and Jair dared not speak for fear he might break the shaman’s concentration. Jair took Talwyn’s hand, and her fingers wound around his, though her grip was weak.
“Hang on,” Jair murmured. He shot a glance at Pevre. “Can’t you do for her what she did for Tris? Can’t you call on the life energy of the Sworn?”
“That energy is shattered,” Pevre said, as his hands moved over the wound in Talwyn’s chest, tracing burning lines of power in the air. “Too many dead and dying. There is no energy to spare.”
“You can’t just let her die!”
Talwyn’s eyes struggled open, and Jair could see that she labored to make her gaze focus. “Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise me that Kenver will know both our worlds.”
Jair swallowed hard. “I swear to you.”
There was a rustle like wind through dead leaves, and one of the Dread stood at Talwyn’s feet.
The damage is too great. Too much of the Nachele’s poison has reached her heart. Even we cannot heal a mortal of it. But Cheira Talwyn’s spirit may dwell with us, safe among her people and the souls of her ancestors. The voice did not speak aloud; Jair heard the words echo in his mind, slow and deliberate, as if the speaker were trying to remember how to make himself understood to mortals.
Talwyn’s gaze rose to the amulets Jair wore at his throat, to one of silver and leather, wound with strands of her own dark hair, the amulet that had enabled her spirit to visit him in his dreams in the palace at Dhasson. “If I go with the Dread, I can watch over Kenver, and the amulet will bring me to you in your dreams.”
Jair held her hand in both of his, clutching it as if by holding on he could bind her soul to life. He did not care that Pevre and Mihei saw the tears that streaked down his face or heard the sobs that robbed him of his breath. “I love you, always,” he managed.
Talwyn gave a weak smile. “And I will be with you, always, my love.” Her voice was faint, and Jair could feel her breath slowing, see the light of her spirit leaving her eyes. As Talwyn’s body stilled, the Dread reached forward with two of its long, black tendrils, sweeping them across Talwyn’s face as if by catching her final breath it retrieved her spirit.
She will rest among the guardians who do not sleep, and keep watch with those who cannot die. Do not mourn her, son of Harrol. She is with you still.
Chapter Twenty-Five
That’s him, all right. I’d know the son of a bitch anywhere,” Cam said, lowering the spyglass with a curse. “I wondered when my traitor brother would bother to put himself at the slightest risk by joining the war he started.”
“By the crest and regalia, the Temnottans look to be indulging Alvior’s fantasy of becoming the next king of Isencroft.” Wilym turned to the side and spat, as if the very mention of Alvior’s name poisoned his tongue.
“Of course they are. They need a puppet king, and Alvior wouldn’t fuss about the terms of the agreement so long as he got a crown out of it.”
“How much do you think it’ll damage the invader’s cause if Alvior dies?”
Cam grimaced. “I doubt they’ve grown that fond of him, except for his usefulness. He’s not the type to inspire loyalty. He probably doesn’t know that most of his former Divisionist followers are hanging from gibbets outside the palace. But it will certainly raise my spirits to part his head from his shoulders.”
Cam looked across the battlefield. What had once been thousands of acres of farmland and pasture leading down to the shore of the sea was now a pockmarked and burned killing ground. Huge boulders lay where they had landed from the near-constant two-way barrage of catapults and trebuchets, war machines that thundered day and night.
Benhem and his mages had discovered the secret of the invaders’ Destroying Fire, casting waves of flame back on the advancing troops. Between the two entrenched camps, a charred and blackened no-man’s-land attested to the range over which both sets of mages could hurl their curtains of flame. Ingenious use of the Destroying Fire coupled with the reach of the catapults lobbed fiery missiles deep behind both lines.
“We’ve given them a pounding,” Wilym observed, “and they’ve given it back. I had hoped that if we showed fierce resistance, they’d pack up their ships and go home to Temnotta. Maybe they’re more afraid of what’s behind them than what’s in front of them, but now I’m convinced that we’ll have to destroy every last one of them before this over.”
Cam nodded soberly. “I ha
d come to the same conclusion.”
Wilym glanced at Cam. “Is the queen ready for her part in the assault tonight?”
Cam let out a breath and nodded. He was sure that Wilym could read his uneasiness in his face. “I don’t like it, but she’s ready. Damn it, Wilym, if it were Donelan, I wouldn’t think twice about seeing him place himself at risk. Many’s the skirmish that you and I had to chase him to keep up if his blood was high in a battle. But it’s not Donelan. It’s Kiara and she’s pregnant. Two kingdoms hang in the balance. If I had my way—”
“She’d be under house arrest back in Aberponte with an entire division of mages and soldiers to protect her,” Wilym finished for him with a laugh. “I guarantee she wouldn’t be happy about it!”
Cam grimaced ill-humoredly. “If you’ll recall, Donelan didn’t much like it either when we had to put him under guard for his own protection.”
Wilym’s expression grew sober. “And we both know how well that turned out.” He met Cam’s gaze. “Donelan was murdered in his own bed, in a locked room with guards at the door and the two of us in the other chamber. We can do our best, Cam, but we can’t guarantee Kiara’s safety, just like we couldn’t guarantee Donelan’s. It’s the price of the crown, and she accepts it.”
“It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Later, Cam and Wilym joined Edgeton, Vinian, and the other generals for a briefing before the night’s attack. Rhistiart, Cam’s valet-turned-squire, was wide-eyed and silent as he kept the group’s cups full of watered wine and refreshed a trencher with cheese and hard sausage. Kiara sat at the head of the assembly, with Cam and Wilym on her right and left. Brother Felix was there, along with Morane and Benhem from the mages. Jae rested near the brazier, exhausted from harrying the enemy. Royster sat on the floor just inside the tent doorway with a leather folder filled with parchment, ink, and a pen, poised to chronicle the moment for history.
It took just under a candlemark to finalize the last details for the battle and to assure that every resource was in place. Throughout the conversation, Cam thought Kiara was quieter than usual, although she leaned forward to listen intently. He guessed that her thoughts strayed to her own, untested role.
The Dread: The Fallen Kings Cycle: Book Two Page 43
