by David Wind
You have gained many abilities, each you will discover, as you need them, ancient abilities, held by the Staff for thousands of years. All are within you; all are ready when needed. Go forward with the knowledge that you can succeed, but only when you fully accept what must be.
He lifted his hands, replaced the cowl over his head and went to the boat without waiting for the rest to follow.
CHAPTER 9
WATCHING TIMON’S BOAT grow smaller in the distance saddened Areenna as another parting took place. She shook her head, the gesture a reflection of her thoughts. For ten months, she’d followed the dictates of her heritage, and she was weary of the battles against the vileness. Tired of being the one responsible for everyone and everything. A darkness weighed down on her, not of the evil from across the sea, but of things she had done and would be doing.
She jumped when a hand settled on her waist. “Easy,” whispered Mikaal, after putting his arm around her waist, pulling her to his side. “What bothers you?”
Areenna shrugged. “Nothing, everything, I don’t know. Master Jalil’s last words…”
He turned her to face him. You do know.
She stared into his eyes, drew on his strength, and from the intimacy of him within her mind. “All I see before me is death. No matter what road we take, the darkness either follows or awaits. I did not ask not for this.”
“Nor I. What alternative have we? If we do not act, do not use our abilities to stop them, whatever happens to Nevaeh will be on our shoulders. How then do we live with ourselves?”
Areenna stiffened and drew back. “Think you I have not already had this conversation with myself a hundred times? Mikaal, I want this over, that’s all.”
He cupped her chin, and laughed. “I would like nothing more.”
She lost herself within his eyes for just a moment. Hold me. Share your strength with me. “Then we go.”
Always, he told her. She went into his arms, pressing her face into the crook of his neck. He held her, their minds joined as she drew not just of his strength, but of his confidence as well.
When she stepped back, the darkness within her mind had eased. It was still there, but no longer held her hostage.
“Are you ready?” he repeated, already knowing she was.
I am. She looked past Mikaal, to the kraals. Gaalrie was perched on Hero’s saddle bar, watching her and Mikaal. Each kraal had a bag hung from the saddle with supplies from Timon’s boat, along with sleeping silks. Her shortsword, bow, and quiver rested on the Landing near the kraals, as was Mikaal’s longsword and knives.
She looked up at the sun, and gauged they had two hours of daylight left. At least we will be through the ruins before dark.
That was my hope.
She sent an asking to her aoutem. The treygone spread her wings to their full six feet of width, gave a sharp cry, lifted from the saddle bar, and flew up the rocky side of the palisade. Two minutes later, joined with Gaalrie, Areenna and Mikaal viewed the ruins beneath the treygone’s wings.
Everything is quiet.
Mikaal laughed. Until we are within.
It took a quarter hour to reach the edge of the ruins. They stopped a hundred feet short of the first twisted and crumbling mass. “The last time we were here…” Her words faded as she looked at the disintegrating remains.
Nothing had changed in the months since they’d raced through the maze-like warren of pathways to escape the creatures inhabiting the ruins. Piles of rubble, stretching like small hills as far as the eye could see, were interspersed within the millennia old ruins, while the skeletons of large structures, reduced to shambles of fallen stone, glass, and twisted braids of metal, remained a haunting reminder of how vast and powerful the ancestors of Nevaeh had been.
Mikaal stopped the kraals. “All is still quiet.”
The ruins were unnaturally silent. No sound came from within not created by the breezes blowing inland from the water. Join me. Areenna closed her eyes and cast her senses outward. An instant later, she drew them back.
Do you not feel it? They watch us.
Yes. His hand went to the pommel of his sword.
“We are stronger now. We need not fear them.” Then she added, When they show themselves, the ones that used to be…people—not the animals, we should capture one. We may be able to learn more of the woman, Lessig.
Mikaal looked at her for several seconds, and then slowly shook his head.
Puzzled by his reaction, she said, “What?”
“You believe it will be easy for you to capture one of…them?”
Did I speak or think such words?
He shook his head and as he did, she laughed and he understood. “So that’s how it is to be? I am to capture it?”
“I thought it fair.”
His gaze washed across her face. “Fair, is it? All right, Princess, I shall do my best.”
“As shall I… My Prince,” she added, urging Hero into a narrow pathway bordered by rubble.
They rode a few hundred yards before the first of the strange coor-like animals stuck its head out of the rubble. It was smaller than a coor, but with a similar shaped head—which was where the resemblance stopped. Its single large eye, which had no white, was but a black pupil. The eye socket extended from its head and rested on a thick stalk that moved in all directions. Its ears were nothing more than a grouping of small holes at each side of its head.
Mikaal stroked Charka’s neck to ease the kraal’s anxiety when the thing rose completely out of the rubble and jumped onto the road. Behind it, a dozen more stuck their heads out from the crumbling remains.
The one on the road stood still, its lips curling, exposing large pointed teeth. It moved toward them. Perhaps three feet long, it had triple-jointed forelegs with two knees on each leg. Long and muscular, yet emaciated and covered with sores, its hind legs were thicker than its body and it had no tail.
So deformed, Areenna noticed, the thought pushed out by the shivering from her body. Before the thought faded, a half hundred more of the mutations raced onto the road, forming a barricade of bodies.
Mikaal’s hands flared in reaction. They do not attack: only block our way.
They hold us for a purpose, Areenna responded. Her powers, already hot within her, blazed through her body.
Let us test their determination, Mikaal told her and urged Charka forward. With the kraal’s first step, a low chatter broke out among the beasts and they bunched even closer together, all baring their fangs.
“They hold us.”
“Do we go through or wait?” he asked.
Something touched the edge of her mind—a testing. She looked over the heads of the smaller creatures, beyond where they filled the road, where a shape emerged from one of the twisted remains. When it stepped onto the road, she recognized it as one of the creatures that might once have been a man.
The moment the thing touched the road, the coor-like beasts moved in a coordinatd rush, surrounding Areenna and Mikaal in a tight circle, dozens more pouring out of the rubble to join the others.
Reacting the second the beasts moved, Areenna drew her powers up and the blue light glowed, not just around her hands, but her entire body.
Mikaal turned to her, his brows rising. “Your weapon, the blue, it covers you,” he said, looking at the shimmering glow. How did you do this?
I did nothing different, she replied.
“From the Staff…” Mikaal whispered. How do we capture…it? He pointed to the man-thing.
The creature stood fifty feet away, its eyes locked on her. Although she had not forgotten what it looked like from their first time, the memory of it was not as sharp as the creature that stood before her. Its misshapen, hairless head was set on an equally hairless torso. She saw no neck separating body from head. Its body was held by three stubby legs, the middle one thinner than the others. Standing perhaps four feet tall, its arms were almost as long as its body, the hands hanging a bare inch above the ground. One hand held a spear-li
ke object; the other was a balled fist. It had a small mouth and two holes where a nose should be, its ears lay flat against its head, man-like.
While Areenna studied the creature, Mikaal pushed his senses to the man-like thing, much the way he did with Charka. He struck a block, and almost withdrew, but intuition held him back. He spread over the block and found a force he’d not been aware of before. He built his power and released it at the man-thing. It struck the creature’s block, and sliced through it as if his thought were a knife.
Within the thing’s mind was an almost dream-like vision of the man-thing bowing before the woman the eight sorceresses had shown him and Areenna.
A sudden darkness washed over him, throwing him from its mind. A half a second later, the creature, moving faster than anyone expected, lifted its arm and threw the spear.
The spear flew straight and true, but the instant it neared them, Areenna’s hands exploded with blue-white light and the spear disappeared. Then she sent a stream of power at the man-creature. Just before it struck, she drew back on her power and whirled her hand in a circle. The light flowed around the man-thing, trapping it inside the luminosity.
She closed her fist, not hard, just tight enough to hold the creature. All around her, the coor-like beasts howled. I cannot bring it to us without killing them.
Mikaal looked around. There were more of the coor-things piling onto the road. Like a river overflowing its banks, hundreds raced up and over the crumbling remains of buildings and beyond them, he saw more of the man-like creatures running toward them.
Join with me. We must learn what we can. Now!
The instant she joined with him, he sent a lancing probe at the creature and again split through the block. Together, he and Areenna pushed into the creature’s mind and, like a dream unfolding, watch his memories parade past.
Within a dark mist, the sorceress Lessig stood, her arms outstretched, her hands open, the palms facing the man-thing. Behind it, a mass of kneeling creatures—hundreds, perhaps thousands of the beings, their hairless heads bowed—awaited the sorceress’ command.
The woman spoke to them, instructing them and sending them out of the ruins to join her at the southern palisades, at the very edge of Llawnroc’s badlands.
Areenna turned to Mikaal. They have gone to where the Dark Ones will land their ships. I never imagined so many.
We go as well, Mikaal replied as more of the man-things spilled into the road.
First, we must get past them, Areenna pointed to the thickening mass of smaller disjointed animals. So many.
The things surrounding them began to howl frantically. More piled into the road to form a barricade twenty feet deep. Behind coor beasts, a small army of the three-legged mutations moved toward them, their knives and spears raised high, their voice loud and angry.
From above, Gaalrie sent a mind picture of hundreds of the three-legged creatures moving through the ruins toward them. Within the mind picture was Gaalrie’s fierce concern.
A sudden wave of darkness washed across the ruins and struck Areenna and Mikaal. She joins them. She goes not against us directly. She…oh…she tests us. Staring at the creatures, she directed her blue light to form a wall before the creatures.
The creatures swarmed forward, pushing and piling one atop the other, slashing and clawing at the shimmering light. I cannot hold much longer now that she has joined them.
We must get through, Mikaal stated.
A deep sadness ripped through her mind as she looked at the unwitting creatures, knowing Mikaal’s and her powers would destroy them if they did not retreat. They deserve this not. She drives them. Is there a way to not destroy them?
Mikaal pushed his thoughts, aided with warmth and understanding to her. This is not about them; it is about Nevaeh. We do what we must to keep Nevaeh from the Dark. Even as he sent his thoughts to her, he added more power to help her. We are running out of time.
It is still not their fault. They have no sense of right or wrong, only survival.
Right now, we must survive! We fight if we are to live.
Areenna closed her eyes. Then if fight we must, we do so…Now!
She dropped the curtain of blue and before it completely faded, balls of blue-white light exploded from her hands, knocking anything ahead of them away and opening a path. Areenna did not use all her power, only enough to clear the road without killing them; rather, she rendered them unconscious. Next to her, Mikaal’s hands exploded into flames.
A split second before Mikaal released the fiery charge at the creatures attacking from the rear, she silently ordered, Wait! Create a ring of fire around us. They will not go through it.
Mikaal did just that, and the attack stopped instantly, but the creatures, both man-like and coor-like, did not leave; rather, they continued to keep pace with Areenna and Mikaal, staring and waiting just outside the range of the flames.
Joined, and of a single mind, Areenna and Mikaal pushed the kraals forward and raced along the streets. From above, Gaalrie guided them through the maze and out of the ruins into the badlands.
A thousand yards from the ruins, Mikaal released the flames and slowed Charka to a walk. Turning in the saddle, he stared at the creatures who stopped at the edge of the ruins.
“She is powerful, this new sorceress,” Areenna observed.
“She is... Why did you stop me?”
Areenna stared into his gray eyes and nodded thoughtfully before she spoke. “What purpose is served by killing or maiming them? They did not attack us; it was Lessig. We accomplished the same thing by allowing them to live, as we would have if they’d died.” She reached out to cup his cheek. They were once people—the three legged ones. Maybe one day they will become more than they are now.
“Perhaps,” Mikaal responded aloud. “Did you see how many went to her?”
“Never had I imagined so many would live in the ruins. Thousands went to Lessig to await the arrival of The Masters.”
Mikaal looked back at the ruins and its inhabitants. “And we go there as well. Nevertheless, think on this… We left them alive. Hope, for everyone’s sake, that they stay in the ruins and travel not to the Dark Army.”
Areenna followed his gaze to where the milling creatures were slowly returning to wherever they’d come from within the ruins.
“How long to the badlands?”
Mikaal shrugged. “Four days if we make good time. We will have to follow the wastelands bordering the Palisades through Aldimore.”
Areenna nodded. Then we should go. The sun will be down in an hour. We need a place to camp for the night.
Mikaal did a slight bow. As you command, My Princess.
CHAPTER 10
IN CAYMIR, THE capital of Freemorn, King Nosaj stood on the Great Lawn. Behind him was the keep, its high walls a proud symbol of Freemorn’s survival through the centuries of fighting both the Dark Ones and the warring dominions the Dark Ones constantly manipulated into battling each other.
Those times are over, Nosaj told himself thoughtfully. When Roth had come, he had united the ten domains into one land—now, after twenty years of peace, it was starting again. He shook his head, expelling his darker thoughts. He looked left, where his army trained.
With the loss of the larger section of the Great Lawn—now filled with tents and The People of the Frozen Mountains—his troops trained in a distant corner. There, the veterans of the war two decades before, trained new troops, working with the young men and women who had barely stepped into their adult boots, but who were Freemorn’s and Nevaeh’s hope for the future.
The arrival of five hundred men, women, and children heralded changes for Freemorn and its citizens. Yesterday, Nosaj had instructed his second in command to take the twenty men he had asked to help settle the newcomers, to an area an hour away from Caymir. They took two wagons filled with supplies and equipment, including axes, saws, hammers, nails, and tubs of glue.
All that is missing, thought Nosaj, is Areenna. The sadness that was
so constant a part of him since his daughter had gone on her first journey to the Island, continually tugged at his mind.
He missed her company and her advice, which even as a younger child had always held an amazing maturity. Having her away, constantly facing dangers most seasoned warriors would run from made him angry that he could not help and protect her as a father should protect his daughter. He did not know where she was and this battered at his mind and heart. When Roth and Enaid had delivered The People, they’d told him Areenna and Mikaal had gone south to learn of the Dark Ones’ plans.
“My Lord,” came a soft voice, interrupting his thoughts. He turned at the sound of his name.
“Good Morning, Sirod.” Smiling at the small woman, he nodded to Neleh. “And to you, Neleh.”
“My Lord, yesterday you asked that I prepare a list of what is necessary for us to become part of Freemorn. I have done so, but I think it is not what you have in mind.”
Nosaj raised an eyebrow at Sirod. “Explain.”
Sirod unfolded a sheet of writing fabric and extended it to him. He took it and read it over. When he looked back at Sirod, he smiled. “You are a wise woman, Sirod. All will be taken care of.”
“It is not asking too much?”
Nosaj put a large hand on her shoulder and pressed gently. “Too much? Hardly; rather, it is a good beginning.” He looked back at the list. Sirod had not asked for supplies or anything tangible. She had simply listed everything she could think of, to give her people the right start in Freemorn. She had asked to have the people trained in the various crafts and occupations necessary to survive, as well as the methods of hunting necessary to keep food on the tables, as she knew there would be only small quantities of freesh in the lakes and rivers of Freemorn.
“Thank you, My Lord. A hundred of our people have volunteered to be trained in your ways of fighting so they may help with the coming… troubles.”
“Sadly, I am afraid they will be needed. Thank you, Sirod.”
