Dreamlander

by K.M. Weiland

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Berserking fire churned through Orias’s body as he ran across the courtyard. The red blood of fallen Koraudians glittered against his blade. It streaked his arms and spattered his face. Around him, the battle tilted and spread like a map of strategies. He saw the weaknesses, the strengths, and the shatterpoints of both armies. He felt the blood of his Cherazii brethren as it stained the snow, heard the death howls of the Koraudians, saw the ebb and flow of power as the troops deadlocked.

  He knew where he was needed. He saw precisely where the added strength of a single warrior could push Lael into an advantage. But he did not turn to help them. Someone shouted to him, but he ran on. A Koraudian lunged into his path, and he slashed him across the chest and did not look back. What lay behind did not matter.

  Ahead, Mactalde and the Gifted were locked in combat. Each of them was flagging, each of them bleeding. Chris had held his own for a long time. But now the ground slipped away beneath his feet. Mactalde rained blows upon him, driving him back into the battle.

  Orias roared. His vision tunneled, and the battlefield disappeared. He would save the Gifted. If nothing else could be said of his life, then at least let it be said he had saved the Gifted. His strides lengthened, and his sword and his shoulder thrust a pathway through the thrashing bodies. He hurtled the fallen carcass of a horse and landed with both hands solid around his sword and every muscle dragged taut.

  He didn’t see what hit him. Something smashed into his left side and spun him around. His ribs cracked like dry tinder, and blood flooded the inside of his coat. Only whispers of pain filtered through the heat of his brain, but for a long, agonizing moment, his lungs refused to draw his next breath. He clamped his free arm over the chasm in his side, and he brought his sword up to face his attacker.

  Glelarn Rotoss raised his sword like a hammer. Sweat and blood matted his ruddy mane. “Every time we face each other in these little fights, you get the worst of them. You’re going to make me believe the Cherazii aren’t so unbeatable after all.”

  With a snarl, Dougal surged past Orias and leapt. Rotoss struck out wildly, and, with a yelp, the lion crumpled into the bloody snow.

  Rotoss spun back. “Why not send the Rievers in too? Get all the distractions out of the way, so we can get to business.” His blade descended.

  Orias’s sword gave way beneath the blow.

  Rotoss held its tip trapped in the snow. He leaned over until his face was inches from Orias’s. “Well, well. Here we are again, aren’t we, with your life at my mercy? What’ll our bargain be this time? How about groveling on your knees and begging?”

  Orias’s blood pulsed from his side. Sweat beaded his lip. “Our covenant is over.”

  “No, it ain’t. I know how you people work. Cherazii covenants end only in death.”

  “Then let it end.”

  His sword surged up into Rotoss’s and ripped it from the man’s hands. Rotoss staggered back. With a bellow, Orias lunged. The point of his sword plunged into Rotoss’s side, and the man screamed in terror. Orias dragged the blade loose, then levered it up and back in to find the heart. Rotoss’s mouth gaped, his eyes bulging. He toppled to his knees, and his body slid from the sword.

  Once again, Orias’s lungs caved in. His body threatened to collapse, and he stumbled a step. Then, thrusting his hand against the hole in his side, he turned to find Chris.

  _________

  Sweat drenched Chris’s clothes and burned in his wounds. The injury in his side had ripped completely open, and blood trickled down his flank. He tripped over a wounded Koraudian, and his fingers slipped against his hilt. His limbs felt as though they were dragging buckets of cement. He could barely keep up with Mactalde’s attack, much less plot the next move.

  He reeled backwards, always backwards, on the defensive, fighting for nothing more worthy than his life. This was a battle he could not win. It was a battle he was not meant to win. He had come to this world, ravaged it with his folly, then had the arrogance to believe he had the power to put it to rights. But he did not have the power. He was only a man, after all. And, in a moment, he would die, and Lael would die with him.

  Their blades skidded against each other, and Mactalde shoved in closer, almost hilt to hilt, his sword on top of Chris’s. He rammed his chest against Chris’s shoulder, one foot planted behind Chris, trapping him from retreat. “You fought well after all, Mr. Redston.” His mace chopped into the underside of Chris’s blade, and the sword ripped from Chris’s hands. “But not well enough.” His elbow smashed against Chris’s solar plexus, and his leg smacked into the back of Chris’s legs.

  Chris toppled and caught himself on his hands and knees. Tiny suns burst inside his head, and the blood trickling down his side turned his innards spongy.

  “Get up.” Mactalde’s boot thudded into his ribs. “You fought like a man. Now let us see you die like one.”

  Chris raised himself to his knees, every breath a marathon. Mactalde cast the mace aside and stood over him with the sword clenched in both hands. Falling stars, much closer than before, streaked through the sky. The end was coming.

  “Too bad, really,” Mactalde said. “I do hate to see a man die disappointed.”

  Chris searched for his sword. It lay half-buried in the snow, three or four yards behind him.

  “If only we knew the end from the beginning, eh? Life would be much different.” Mactalde’s sword swung over his shoulder, the blade behind his head. He raised one foot, stepped into the swing, and opened his mouth.

  But the sound that blasted through Chris’s ears was the battle cry of a Cherazim.

  Orias smashed into Mactalde, and Mactalde’s blade hatcheted the air in front of Chris’s face. Blood—red and blue—clotted the snow as Orias and Mactalde rolled to their feet.

  “You,” Mactalde said. “You fool! What do you think you accomplish by saving him?”

  Orias snatched his dirk and axe from his belt. “Redemption.”

  Chris lunged for his sword and turned back.

  For the first time, Mactalde was on the defensive. Orias rained blows upon Mactalde’s blade. An ocean of blue blood flooded the left side of his sleeveless tunic, but he fought with juggernaut strength. Roaring, he caught Mactalde’s blade between his own. His arms bulged, veins worming the skin, ligaments trembling.

  But Mactalde didn’t give way. Orias’s cry pitched higher, and he spun away, leaving only the dirk against Mactalde’s blade. He showed Mactalde his back for one long dangerous second, then etched his axe toward Mactalde’s leg.

  Mactalde twisted, and the axe bit into little more than skin. His sword came free of Orias’s dirk. It pierced Orias’s back, above the hipbone, and plunged to its forte.

  Chris hurled himself forward. “No!”

  Orias’s arms sprang wide of his body. His back arched and his head snapped back. He plummeted to his knees.

  Mactalde braced both hands on the hilt to pull it free. “Now watch the Gifted die beside you!”

  Orias turned, and Mactalde’s blade turned with him. Howling, he twisted his body around the steel in his back, turning until he could reach behind and grab the blade. New blood welled in his palms. Mactalde fought to pull the sword free from his grip, and Orias flung his head back and screamed to the sky.

  Chris launched himself. Orias had bought him the time he needed. It would be enough. It had to be.

  At the last instant, Mactalde released the sword and dove for his abandoned mace. Chris’s cry joined Orias’s, and he pounded his sword at Mactalde’s head. The mace haft rose barely in time to catch the blow. Chris swung again, and the blade sliced through Mactalde’s biceps and cracked into bone. Mactalde stared at his half-severed arm. His skin shrank over his skull.

  Chris drew back, gathering momentum. The tip of his blade slammed into the center of Mactalde’s chest, just beneath the sternum.

  Neither of them breathed. They stood across from each other, three feet of steel between them, and watc
hed as a dark flower bloomed against Mactalde’s blouse.

  The mace fell from Mactalde’s hand. He looked up from the sword in his chest and stared at Chris. Chris pulled the blade free, and Mactalde moaned. He laid one hand to his chest and thudded to his knees. “You’ve killed me.”

  Chris cast aside his sword and caught hold of Mactalde’s shirt to keep him from toppling. “This is what I was meant to do. Lael is saved.”

  “No . . .” Mactalde sucked at the air. His eyes rolled up to stare at the palace walls. A film spread across his pupils. “I wanted only to come home.”

  “Was coming home worth destroying the worlds? What did it buy you?” Chris tightened his fingers. “Was it worth the destruction? Was it worth the lives you devastated? Was it?”

  “Yes. Every exquisite moment. Yes!”

  Chris wanted to shake him. Mactalde needed to see, if only for the last moment of his life, what he had done to this world he claimed to love so much. “There would never have been an imbalance if you hadn’t come! The worlds wouldn’t have broken!”

  “I didn’t do this . . . I didn’t cause this. You caused this. You—brought—me—back.” Blood pooled in his cheek and spilled from the corner of his mouth. “You’re the one breaking the worlds.”

  His eyes turned to glass. His body fell limp in Chris’s hands.

  Muted sounds of battle rained in upon Chris from far away. The Koraudians screamed that Mactalde had fallen. Mactalde the Invincible.

  Hoofbeats pounded the earth. The wind wailed down from the walls. It swirled snow devils across the courtyard and slaughtered them against the flesh-and-blood forms of men and horses.

  Mactalde’s body slipped from Chris’s fingers. Chris gasped for air. What had he done?

  Had he really dared to think he understood this place? He had opened his eyes on this world that was a part of his every fiber, just as surely as the one he had always known, and he had rejected it. He had taken one breath of its air, tinged with the sweetness of the gloamwheat, and he had spat it back out. He had been given a second chance at life, an opportunity to make more of a difference than he could ever have imagined, and he had cast it aside.

  Mactalde hadn’t scorned it. He had.

  The battle raged on as the Laelers and the Cherazii pushed back the panicked Koraudians step by excruciating step. Dark clouds edged the horizons. Lightning gouged a switchback between heaven and earth, and the wind that blew ice crystals against his face carried with it the faint, faraway detonation of thunder.

  His lungs burned. Mactalde might lay dead in the snow. But the worlds were still breaking.

  _________

  Allara’s heart forgot how to pump. Her horse had leapt the rubble of the palace walls, and she had seen the final, furious blows exchanged between Chris and Mactalde. She had seen Chris’s sword disappear in Mactalde’s body. She had seen it emerge, red with his blood.

  Side by side, she and Quinnon galloped across the courtyard to where Chris crouched over another body in the snow. The battle was moving away from the palace. The Laelers and the Cherazii were pushing the Koraudians into retreat. Their shouts and screams sailed back to her on the wind.

  “Chris!” She dismounted. A sob and a wild burst of laughter tangled in her throat.

  Mactalde lay lifeless, arms spread, his eyes fogging. She stood over him, and her body shook. She pressed her hand over her mouth. They had won. She had won. She had hung onto the cliff long enough after all. It was over.

  She forced down the tears that swelled in her throat and pounded in her head. The tears of twenty years could wait. They could wait forever. From this moment forth, she would have no reason to shed them.

  She turned. “Chris—”

  He glanced at her. His relief that she was alive and well blasted through her mind. But that was all he could spare her.

  Before him on the ground, Orias Tarn lay crumpled and bleeding. The Cherazim’s mutilated hand clutched a bloodied blade. Together, Chris and Quinnon worked feverishly with bandages from Quinnon’s saddlebags. Orias’s chest barely fluttered, and with every breath, his hand spasmed.

  “We’re not going to save him,” Quinnon said.

  Chris emptied a vial of oronborne into Orias’s side. “He saved me.”

  “Cherazii blood doesn’t clot like ours. Oronborne won’t stop the bleeding. Even if it could, we can’t make right what’s ripped apart inside.”

  “Just keep him alive until I get back.” He left Quinnon to secure the bandages and stood up. His eyes, haggard and hollow, found Allara’s face. “Get him out of here.”

  That was all. After his burst of relief at the sight of her, he radiated only pain and a desperate kind of fear.

  She grasped his sleeve. “Chris, Lael is saved. It’s over, it’s all over now.”

  He looked at the darkness on the faraway horizon. “Is it?”