And all hell broke loose.
The chains around Will began to dissolve. The light in the goddamn cat’s eyes started to fade, but the demigod’s jaws clamped down in a deathgrip on the forest lord’s blade. Tailtiu’s head snapped up, rage on her features as she turned on her mother. Her beautiful hands shot toward Aislinn with incredible speed and wrapped around her mother’s throat. Will knew how incredibly strong Tailtiu was from prior experience. With a twist and a jerk, Tailtiu broke Aislinn’s neck with an audible cracking sound.
Will was already moving, the second war hammer still in his grasp. The spell Selene had put on it was still active, and he brought it down on Elthas as the forest lord struggled to free his sword from the demigod’s death grip.
As the hammer head contacted his opponent’s skin, the spell activated, and the heavy end of the war hammer shifted into the ethereal plane. It passed smoothly through the fae-lord’s body and when it reached the center of mass, Will let go of the weapon’s handle, triggering the second part of the spell.
Will was shifted to the ethereal plane, and the other half of the weapon shifted back to its usual plane of existence, where it now co-occupied the space where Elthas’ torso was.
The explosion that resulted ripped through everything in the vicinity. Elthas came apart like a rotten gourd, and everyone near him was slammed by a pressure wave that broke bones, ripped skin, and generally made for a very bad day. Madrok was driven back into the ground, breaking most of the bones in his body and causing his skull to collapse, while Tailtiu and Aislinn were sent flying, their arms and legs bent at impossible angles and their skin hanging in tatters.
The closest trolls also suffered horribly, but such wounds weren’t serious to them. They could heal even faster than the demon-lord. Selene and Gan were the farthest away, but they were still sent tumbling by the force of the blast. A few seconds later when the spell dissipated, Will rematerialized to witness the aftereffects.
Over the course of recent years Will had observed incredible scenes of destruction on several occasions, but even so, he was impressed. Elthas had quite literally achieved the seldom-seen state of matter that some called being blown to smithereens. Will had always wondered what a ‘smithereen’ looked like, but he was confident now that he knew.
Madrok’s body was still identifiable, crushed into the ground. Impossibly, the demon-lord still lived. The demon’s body was slowly beginning to restore itself even as he watched.
There were still combatants left who were capable of fighting, though. Elthas’ attendants were battered but still largely whole, and being fae, they were already healing. Tailtiu and Aislinn were slowly trying to pick themselves up from where they had been blown, though the broken bones in their arms and legs made it a difficult proposition.
The trolls were already getting back to their feet, as was Gan, but Selene lay still upon the ground. Whether she was dead or unconscious Will didn’t know, and he couldn’t spare even a moment to check. Summoning his falchion from the limnthal, he cast a silver-sword spell on the blade before heading toward the fae soldiers. As he moved, he spent a brief second to turn and put a force-lance through Aislinn’s head. It wouldn’t kill her, but it might buy him time.
In troll he shouted, “Now we kill!”
The fae soldiers had no hope of defending themselves against the trolls physically, and naturally they fell back on wild magic to overpower their foes, but they were unprepared for Will’s presence.
Vines started to grow and withered away just as quickly when his will smothered their magic. Unlike Aislinn, none of the other fae were wizards, and they utterly lacked the ability to resist his strength. Before they even realized what had happened, the trolls fell on them, along with a few well-placed force-lances. The trolls ripped them limb from limb, tossing arms and legs in every direction as they tore the fae soldiers into pieces. Will did his part, hacking into any that managed to reach him with more than two limbs still intact.
The fight was quick and brutal, and as soon as the trolls laid hands on the last fae soldier, Will turned his attention back to Aislinn. His grandmother’s head had already regained its shape, healing faster than he’d expected. Summoning a handful of kitchen knives from the limnthal, Will marched quickly over and began stabbing the steel blades into his fae grandmother’s body.
“One for the left arm, one for the right, now the leg, now the other, next some steel for your belly and some for your chest…” He chanted to himself as he methodically pushed the iron implements into her flesh. “Throat, head, heart…” Aislinn’s body smoked as she writhed in pain, but most importantly, her healing stopped.
“Will, stop,” said Tailtiu, strangely uncomfortable with the sight of her mother’s torture.
He glanced up. “I won’t kill her, but I have to keep her helpless until I can deal with all the rest.” Getting back to his feet, Will studied the field around him. It was a bloody mess. In troll, he yelled a new command, “Find the pieces. Don’t eat. Bring them here.” He pointed at the depression in the ground where Elthas had transcended physicality and become a smithereen.
Killing an immortal fae was tricky business. Even Elthas would probably recover, if enough of him was found and returned to Faerie before his flesh withered away from lack of turyn. His people could regenerate serious wounds even while in the human realm, but it exhausted their reserves. In their home plane they could heal without limit, but not here. The best way to make sure one of them died was to ensure that their body couldn’t be returned before their flesh withered away. Will didn’t know how long that would take, but he knew a great way to speed up the process—a method as old as time itself, and one that worked on fae, demon, and troll alike.
Fire.
Madrok’s form was already regaining cohesion once more, so Will spent a short, joyous period of time using his sword to hack and burn the demon-lord’s body into the small separate pieces that he felt were most appropriate form for such an incredibly nasty being.
While trolls gathered bits of gore, Will finally took a moment and ran over to check on Selene. Rolling her over, he felt his throat tighten for a moment. A large bloody bruise marked her forehead, but his tension eased a moment later when he saw her chest slowly rising and falling. She still breathed. Wasting no more time, he summoned a regeneration potion and poured some into her mouth and some over the wound.
Gan walked over to see what he was doing, so Will gave him a new job. “Protect her.” Then he went back to inspect the hole and its collection of body parts.
The last troll arrived carrying fae pieces and bits and Will recognized one of them. It was Elthas’ head. Somehow the arrogant lord’s head had survived mostly in one piece. That made him feel better. Dropping it into the hole with the rest, Will summoned a large number of the vials of alchemist’s fire he’d kept stowed away in the limnthal since he’d made them over a year ago.
He had begun to wonder if he would ever find a use for them, but Will was certain that this was the day. He poured the first directly over Elthas’ bloody face and then dropped the rest of the vials in the hole around it. He quickstepped away from the hole as white-hot flames roared upward.
With nothing to do for a moment, he looked over to check on Aislinn and Tailtiu. His grandmother was still staked out, smoking and hissing, but Tailtiu had moved away. Turning his head, Will spotted her kneeling beside a tiny body. Lrmeg tried to retrieve the pup to put in the fire, but Tailtiu’s tear-stained face was enough to warn him away.
Throughout the bloody collection process, Will had kept his eyes open for remnants of the goddamn cat, but none had been brought to him. As he watched the fire burn, he spotted something pink in the grass to his left. Bending over, he picked it up and saw that it was a small pink bow, stained with blood.
He recognized it as Sammy’s work. One of the many bows she had lovingly used to adorn Mr. Mittens. Will slipped it into his pouch then rubbed his face in an attempt to scrub away the emotions threatening hi
s composure. There was still much to do.
Chapter 61
The void turyn was spilling out of the city once again, and Will worried that in her unconscious state, Selene wouldn’t be able to keep it from poisoning her. The battle around the Terabinian position was still raging, but the part facing the city was almost finished. He needed to enter the city and do away with the spell-engine, so Selene needed to be taken to safety.
Interrupting Tailtiu’s mourning, he asked his aunt to carry Selene to safety.
“I’m tired, Will,” she said sadly. “I may look fine, but that explosion shattered my bones. Healing them took most of the energy I had. I’ll need to return soon.”
He nodded. “Just carry her for me. I trust you to be gentle. The trolls will protect both of you until you reach the army. After that, you can go home.”
“Mother needs to return too,” she replied, keeping her gaze away from the sight of Aislinn’s smoking flesh.
Will’s expression was unforgiving. “She can take herself home, once I’m done with her—assuming I like what she has to say.”
Tailtiu nodded, then clambered up into Gan’s basket. Will lifted Selene into her arms, and then at Tailtiu’s request, he brought Dinner’s limp body over. Summoning a blanket from the limnthal, he wrapped the pup carefully and then gave it to his aunt, who settled the tiny canine against her chest, atop Selene’s unconscious form.
Something about the sight brought tears to his eyes. Will waved them away, and after they left, he walked over to his grandmother and began removing the knives. He didn’t store them, though, since he wasn’t yet sure whether he would need them again or not.
Aislinn’s body stopped smoking once the last piece of iron was removed. She couldn’t yet speak, but one eye focused hatefully on him, promising retribution. “Keep staring at me like that and I’ll grind you up with a bucket of iron slag and bury you in a hole,” Will warned. There was no humor in his tone.
Never one to act foolishly, Aislinn didn’t tempt him. She found a different direction to stare while her body gradually restored itself. It seemed to take forever, but eventually her chest began to move as her lungs started drawing air in and out. Will judged she would soon be able to talk. Picking up the largest of the knives, he knelt with her hair under his knee and put the point an inch from her right eye.
“Try to move, try to use magic, do anything but answer my questions and I will drive this piece of iron through your eye and the brain behind it. You only have one chance. Offer the slightest threat and I will grant your most secret desire—I’ll end you. I already have a nice fire burning and ready for the task. Do you understand?”
She tried to speak, but her throat hadn’t recovered enough yet. She nodded instead.
“Your plan was clever,” he admitted, filling the silence. “No matter how things turned out, you stood to profit, but that’s always the case, isn’t it?”
She gurgled again, then smiled, showing blood-stained teeth.
“If Elthas got his way, you would be free of the Cath Bawlg, not to mention reducing the debt that kept you in his service.”
Aislinn nodded, then managed to utter two words in a rasping voice. “And Selene.”
A fresh surge of anger shot through him, but Will controlled it. “And you would get a new immortal disciple.”
“But you won,” said his grandmother. “I thought you might.”
“Don’t even pretend to care,” snarled Will. “This turn of events is even more to your advantage. With Elthas dead, you no longer have a master controlling you. As the smartest and most powerful magic user in Faerie you can easily consolidate your mastery over your people, if you haven’t already. You’re more dangerous than he ever was.”
“Unless you slay me,” she suggested.
“The third possibility, and the one you probably desire the most, though the very nature of your existence won’t even allow you to say it,” Will said angrily.
As if to confirm his statement, Aislinn said nothing at all. She merely stared back at him with uncaring eyes.
“The one thing I don’t understand is how you managed to do it. The accord forbids your people from harming humankind. Elthas shouldn’t have been able to make a deal with Madrok. He shouldn’t have been able to command you to help him with it. None of it should have been possible.”
“The accord has been voided,” she replied.
“How?”
His grandmother smiled. “You did it, when you changed my daughter.”
Will’s eyes narrowed. “I saved her. That wouldn’t void the agreement.”
“She became free, yet she was still a party to the accord,” said Aislinn. “Which she then proceeded to break.”
“But she didn’t,” insisted Will.
“She attacked you and ignored her debt, and if that wasn’t enough, she has killed several humans while she was experimenting with her newfound freedom.”
Will’s brows rose in surprise. He hadn’t known that. “Still, the accord was broken by one of your people. Humanity shouldn’t be suffering for it.”
“The fae can’t lie or cheat,” she responded. “So, there were no penalties written into the accord. Once it was broken, it was done. Elthas saw his opportunity, and I encouraged him, as a good wife should.” The gleam in her eye was pure malice.
Seeing her helpless, weak, and broken, did nothing to arouse his sympathy. His grandmother would be dangerous for as long as she lived, and he would never be completely safe until he killed her. But she was also useful, and if he put her out of her misery, he would not only be giving her what she secretly wanted, but he would also be exposing humanity to a new threat with such a broad scope that he couldn’t begin to quantify the risk.
A new accord was needed, and the only person with the authority to make it was currently in his power.
“We need a new agreement between your people and mine,” said Will.
Despite her pitiful position, Aislinn’s faint smile was both ominous and chilling. “Then we must bargain. What terms do you seek?”
A small shudder went up his spine. Will knew he wouldn’t wrangle a winning deal from her. Even the greatest scholar of law would despair trying to come out ahead in any negotiation with the fae, much less Aislinn herself—and he was a far cry from being any sort of scholar of law. A mistake now could lead to consequences that might haunt him, or even worse, humanity, for generations to come.
Two options came to mind to avoid a complete disaster. One was to reinstate the old accord, with a couple of choice additions, while the other was to establish a temporary truce until he could consult experts and garner advice. He worried that a simple truce might allow her to do things he couldn’t foresee, though. His grandmother’s cunning was legendary.
“I want to reinstate the old accord with the same terms, and a few small additions,” he told her firmly.
She studied him with an expression that suggested she was impressed, though Will didn’t believe it. Aislinn could only tell the truth with her words, but her face, hands, body, and every other part of her demeanor could tell a thousand lies. “Simple and quick. You’re less foolish than I anticipated. Are you certain you wouldn’t prefer some time?”
He’d only read through the accord once, back when Arrogan was still alive, and he barely remembered some parts of it, but he trusted the old, familiar terms better than his own slapdash judgment. Time would only give him a greater opportunity to make a mistake. “The old terms, plus my additions.”
“I may refuse, if your additions are unsatisfactory.”
“Then you’ll never return home, and I’ll have to find your successor to try and negotiate with,” he replied.
She smiled. “My successor doesn’t exist. My people are chaotic and fractious. At this time, I’m the only one with a chance of binding them together and forcing them to accept such an agreement. If I refuse and you kill me, then our worlds will be at war.”
“I’m willing to take that risk.”<
br />
“Make sure your conditions aren’t unreasonable. There are some things I cannot agree to, whether I wish to or not.”
“I want to learn how to open gates the way you do. I want to know how you gained such knowledge, and every other bit of information you acquired with it.”
Aislinn said nothing for several seconds, then asked, “Is that all?”
“Is the knowledge of teleport beacons part of my first condition?”
She nodded. “I learned both things and more from a hidden vault left by the Wayfarer’s Society decades ago.”
“That’s what I want,” said Will. “Plus, in addition to reinstating the old terms, I’d like to amend one part. The accord won’t be dissolved if no true wizards are left in the future, but only if there are no living humans left. I also want Tailtiu’s future actions to be of no consequence, since she is no longer truly one of your people or mine.”
“What of bargaining powers?”
“Those will remain with whatever wizard is senior, or if the wizards die out completely, with the most senior official of whatever human nation has the largest population.” It was something that had bothered him for a long time, that his death might end the accord. Now that Selene was ready to receive the limnthal, his worry would be lessened, but it still seemed foolish.
His grandmother thought for several minutes before responding. “I can accept those conditions. Is that all?”
He nodded. “A penalty. If the accord is broken in the future, by any party and for any reason, your people will remain in their own realm from that day forward.”
She shook her head. “That I cannot agree to.”
Will frowned. “Then agree that they won’t travel to this realm from that day forward.”
“I won’t agree to that either.”
He tried several variations of the same thing, but Aislinn refused them all. In the end, the most he could get her to accept was giving the heads of each human nation a ten-day truce and warning if the accord was nullified.
They made a verbal agreement then and there, clasping hands and swearing to uphold their oaths. “A month from today, we will meet again to sign the written agreement, provided we both agree that nothing has been changed.”
Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4) Page 55
