Victory of the Hawk

by Angela Highland

  Everyone get down!

  Magic flared with concussive force, and with it, a physical jolt that shook the entire cavern. It threw Faanshi backward from Kirinil and sent her crashing into a wooden chair that toppled over hard at her impact. Its arm cracked beneath her, but she ignored it along with the dull pain of broken wood jabbing into her flesh. Neither was important, not when she had to scramble back to her feet and fling herself back to her teacher’s side. As she staggered back upright, she could barely see. Dizziness threatened to tilt her sideways, while spangles of golden light splashed across her vision—her magic, driving off the pain of her fall. Alarrah also scrambled back up off the floor, horror flaring in her eyes.

  In the same instant Faanshi realized that the ambient magic in the air was beginning to fade, and worse yet, so was the snarl of protest her healing had raised at the agony in Kirinil’s frame. She froze, unable to make sense of how her teacher had crumpled to the floor. How he lay there now, limbs twisted, blood streaming from his nose and his ears. And how he remained unmoving even as Alarrah let out a wail and threw herself down beside him, a glow leaping into life around her hands only to fade the moment after.

  Faanshi couldn’t help but join her, for her magic—and the simple fact that this silver-haired elf had taken her under his guidance and treated her like a trusted kinswoman—demanded nothing less. Yet her magic roiled uncertainly as her hands connected with his flesh. Even as it latched onto broken bones, it skittered and lost its grip on something far more fundamental.

  Then Faanshi at last recognized what she saw before her, and what she now touched with her own hands. Cold and heat swept through her at the same time, along with revulsion so deep within her blood that she could barely acknowledge it consciously. She’d encountered death before—when Julian had killed a Hawk to defend her, and during the fighting when they’d escaped the cathedral in Shalridan. But this time it was different. This time was the first she’d ever experienced the death of a friend.

  This was the first time she could proclaim death her enemy.

  It was only a small mercy that Alarrah seemed to realize what had happened at the same time she did, so Faanshi didn’t have to say the words aloud. He’s gone. Much more slowly than she’d kneeled, Alarrah stood up again. Tears streamed down her cheeks, in answer to Faanshi’s own tears, and in a numb voice the she-elf said, “The Wards are down, enorrè. Can you feel it?”

  Heavily, Faanshi nodded. “Something’s happened,” she whispered. “I heard Kestar yelling—I touched his mind just before. Something bad enough that Kirinil—” She couldn’t finish. She didn’t have to. To her knowledge there was but one thing powerful enough to break down the Wards that Kirinil had raised on Dolmerrath.

  Cold, stark comprehension dawned in Alarrah’s face even as she bit out her words. “Astàllemerron, carilan te—Oh, Faanshi, they’re going to need us.”

  Mother of Stars, help us. Faanshi hadn’t had time to learn much Elvish yet, but those words at least she knew. As Alarrah reached to grasp Faanshi’s shoulders she did the same in return, swallowed hard, and prayed to the Lady of Time for courage. Still she couldn’t bring herself to move as she cast a tearful glance down at Kirinil’s form. “We can’t leave him. Surely it would offend your gods if we—”

  Another jolt shook the caverns, sending fragments of stone and dust drifting down on him, and Alarrah shot a fearful glance upward. “There’s no time.” Her voice cracked, but even so, she tugged Faanshi with her toward the nearest entry curtain that led back out into the caves. “If we’re right, we can’t help him now and the others will need us more. We can’t get trapped. Come on!”

  They ran then, and Faanshi almost outpaced her sister, for while Alarrah had an elf’s speed and grace, Faanshi had the advantages of youth and magic whose limits had not yet been reached. It distressed Faanshi deeply to see Dolmerrath’s halls deserted, still more to see cracks shooting along ceilings of stone or Tembriel’s charmed mirrors shattering in sprays of glass. But there was no time to dwell on that either. She could only run, following Alarrah to the stable cavern. Almost all the horses were gone, taken out by the scouts, and what few beasts remained—Julian’s Morrigh among them—had clustered into a tight, nervous herd at one end of the cave. The elves and humans watching over them were all armed, and one called out to Alarrah as she and Faanshi burst into view. Alarrah called back in Elvish, too fast for Faanshi to comprehend.

  Still Faanshi neither slowed nor stopped, for something else tugged harder at her attention. Her sense of Kestar was growing stronger, and even without Alarrah’s shouted directions she bolted toward a stairwell that spiraled high up into the rock. Faanshi neither knew nor cared where the stairwell led, or that the stone all around her continued to shake with unsettling force. All that mattered was that it led to Kestar and the rest of her friends.

  Her lungs heaving for air, with Alarrah hard on her heels, she scrambled up the stairs. The air grew heavy and close, as though a thunderstorm were about to strike. At the top of the stairs they found thunder in truth, for Gerren, his two guards and Celoren were all firing muskets out through narrow slits in the walls of stone. Julian, Rab, Kestar and Lady Ganniwer were reloading similar weapons, and though Faanshi knew nothing of guns, she couldn’t help but guess that those had just been fired. She couldn’t breathe without inhaling the stench of gunpowder.

  Beyond the others, out through the windows, she saw what drew their fire. She’d seen the spectral figure of the Anreulag only once before, but once had been more than enough. The Voice of the Gods was unmistakable, shrieking Her fury at oncoming horses, Her hands uplifted to the sky.

  With each syllable She screamed, She called down lightning.

  * * *

  There weren’t many mages left in Dolmerrath. Oh, aye, they still had half a dozen or so who could sense magic, work simple charms or soothe a nervous beast. But until Faanshi had come to them, bearing more power than Tembriel had seen in decades, there had only been Kirinil, Alarrah and herself with any significant power. Now, to her terror, she felt the Wards fall—which could mean only one thing. They now had fewer mages still.

  She charged northward on her horse, away from the trees, away from the force of Hawks that had come thundering up from the south. The Hawks didn’t matter nearly as much as the far greater threat of the Voice of the Gods, and Tembriel’s voice, heart and power roared as one in fury and in anguish. She had to hurl her fire high enough to keep from incinerating her horse. The beast finally reared in panic, and she leaped off its back and let it bolt even as she hurled fireball after fireball ahead to the figure wreathed in clouds of crackling power.

  Gunfire sounded before her and behind, along with the building tattoo of the hooves of horses, as more and more riders charged out of the woods. She didn’t stop to see who was closer behind her, the rest of the scouts or the Hawks they’d been engaging, for the world narrowed down to the Anreulag. Too many elves had died at Her hands. Tembriel smelled smoke as the leather armguards she wore began to smolder, but that didn’t stop her as she called forth her largest fireball yet.

  It flew straight toward her target, only to explode in a shower of light and flame. Wreathed by tendrils of fire, the Anreulag turned to face her. Hands came up in a gesture that mirrored her own, and then threw sizzling power straight back to her.

  Tembriel had just enough time for one prayer to the Mother of Stars before something tackled her hard to the ground. Her head smacked into the earth, and for an instant her world swam out of focus. In the next she caught sight of her brother Jannyn standing protectively over her, whirling with his bow in his hands to face the Anreulag.

  Then the lightning struck him and burned his body to ash.

  * * *

  Captain Amarsaed’s Hawks couldn’t have asked for a better distraction than the Voice of the Gods Herself, appearing in all Her radiance on the last stretc
h of open ground between them and the heathen elves. When Her holy fire drove away the cloud of fear that had infected them all, they hurled forth their voices in a roar of jubilation. They renewed their charge on the elves, for the pointed-eared demons turned their attention to the coming of the Anreulag instead. The captain himself shot three of them, and five more fell to the guns of the Hawks who flanked him on either side. Jekke saw them all go down beneath the rightful justice of the gods, and each one’s death made her roar loudly enough that surely the Father, Mother, Son and Daughter would hear and bless each blow struck in Their names.

  Most glorious of all was when the Anreulag unleashed Her power. The she-elf with the gift of fire—the demon who’d helped kill Bron—could not stand against Her. Nor could the elven male who rushed forward to defend her. The Voice’s own fire engulfed him so thoroughly that for an instant, nothing could be seen of him but the outline of his bones—and then nothing could be seen of him at all.

  It was as if every tale the older Knights of the Hawk had ever told to young cadets about the Anreulag’s might on the battlefields of Tantiulo and beyond had come true. Jekke had never seen the like, and she wept and screamed her joy, even as she brought up the rear of the charge, that the gods had given them such a matchless honor.

  But the Anreulag didn’t stop with mowing down the elves in Her path. Glowing blue-white from head to foot, inexorable and terrible, She strode closer and closer to the woods. With one immense thunderclap of power, She sent the limp forms of elf warriors flying in all directions.

  Then She attacked the Hawks, and when Captain Amarsaed himself was the first to fall, their screams of religious fervor quickly gave way to panic.

  * * *

  None of her friends were hurt or slain, and that truly was a mercy of Djashtet. Yet when she and Alarrah came racing into the weapons bunker, none of them had time to acknowledge their coming.

  Alarrah took one look at what the others were doing, then promptly seized a bow and elbowed Gerren out of the way. They shouted hot, furious-sounding Elvish at each other—but Gerren yielded his place at the window to her. Dolmerrath’s leader came to her instead, carrying himself with too-careful precision, as if at any moment he might fall.

  “Kirinil is dead, akreshi.” She hated to put it into speech, for saying it aloud made it real, but she couldn’t tell whether Alarrah had already told him. Gerren squeezed his eyes shut, his features twisting with anguish so sharp that her magic almost woke at the sight of it. “He gave his life trying to keep the Wards from coming down.”

  “I felt him go,” Gerren rasped. He gave Faanshi no time to wonder at his meaning, and instead seized her nearest shoulder, turning her to directly face him. “You’re a shielder as well as a healer—it’s what you did at the abbey. If there’s any chance you can do it again, now is the time.”

  I don’t know what I did. The protest had circled time and time again through her thoughts ever since she, Julian, Kirinil and Alarrah had escaped from Arlitham Abbey, and her only comfort had been the hope that surely they’d be safe in Dolmerrath. That surely, Djashtet in Her mercy would not allow them to be threatened again, or at least not for a little while.

  In that instant Faanshi froze, shaken by the terrible fear that perhaps the Lady of Time could not match the Anreulag’s power. Or even worse, that perhaps She did not exist at all. Hadn’t her sister told her the elves had fought among themselves over the same doubts about their Mother of Stars? And she was no priestess, no Djashtethi sage like her okinya had been. What claim could she make to wisdom on the nature of gods?

  “Tembriel! Jannyn!” Alarrah screamed then, shocking Faanshi out of that fear and into a more immediate one—the sight of her sister in a frenzy of anger and grief, lunging toward the low, barred door at the right end of the bunker. The other two elves intercepted her even as Gerren sprang to Alarrah’s side. The humans were left to pause in that moment and cast looks of anguish at each other. Rab visibly winced, while Kestar and Celoren seemed unable to look in the direction of the elves and focused stoically instead on keeping weapons trained out the windows. Behind them, Ganniwer kept handing them ammunition, though not without a troubled glance toward their elven companions.

  Only Julian turned his head long enough to spy Faanshi. He didn’t shout at her, for he too was keeping a gun trained out the window, and she knew him well enough now to know he wouldn’t divert his attention. But the look he shot her was searing, every bit as fierce as a shout, and oddly bracing. He wasn’t surprised to see her. And that he could keep his attention on the task before him told her he trusted her to do the same.

  She would have to worry later about the reality of Djashtet, and apologize to the Dawnmaiden in her next prayers—if she lived to see another dawn. Julian’s reality was beyond doubt, and for him and the rest of her friends, she needed to step beyond her fear. And for all her doubt, she found herself praying in reflexive hope that what lessons her teacher had imparted to her would be enough.

  Faanshi closed her eyes and strove to reach out into the world around her as she’d done with Kirinil—but this time, on no one’s strength but her own.

  Not once at Lomhannor Hall or since her escape had she had the chance to learn to swim. Yet flinging her power out into the cliffs and caves of Dolmerrath without Kirinil there to guide her felt like she supposed swimming must, if you’d had but a single lesson and had to jump into the ocean from a burning ship. Sending out her magic wasn’t hard, for it leaped at the chance of liberation.

  Figuring out what to do with it was far more difficult.

  Her senses swam and nearly revolted beneath the flood of impressions that swamped them, sensations far less personal than what she gleaned from the mind of anyone she healed, yet far greater in breadth and scope. This time, without Kirinil’s guidance, she could barely make sense of the shape and flow of the land—but on the other hand, she almost staggered and fell beneath the echo of Kirinil’s magic. It hadn’t faded yet, not entirely. She could sense the resonance where the Wards had been, shredded remnants of magic that had been ripped apart by the maelstrom of power out on the cliff.

  It felt like pain. And pain was a foe that she could conquer.

  Without her looking, her hands found the support of the rock wall behind her. When her palms connected with the stone, she thought of how she’d pulled Kestar and Julian to her in Arlitham Abbey, shielding them with her power. She could do nothing less for all of Dolmerrath, and if she could touch the remnants of Kirinil’s magic, she could heal it. There was no time for hesitation or doubt. There was barely enough time for a prayer, and her doubt vanished in the light of faith that Djashtet would listen.

  Dawnmaiden, Noonmother, Crone of Night, guide me.

  The world went white around her as Faanshi’s power flared.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dolmerrath, Kilmerry Province, Jeuchar 10, AC 1876

  Julian hadn’t admitted it to Faanshi or even to Rab, but he still had nightmares that looked exactly like this: blinding light engulfing his entire world, an instant before searing his body to cinders. The girl had saved his life and given him back his missing eye and hand in the process—but a man didn’t cheat death like that without consequences, and a deep, atavistic part of him howled when the Anreulag appeared out on the cliff. Not again.

  But he had no time for fear, not even when Faanshi came running to find them as he’d expected she would. Nor was there time to shout at her to take cover, for that howling part of him did have a point. Not again, indeed. This time he had more weapons at hand to make sure that searing fire never reached her, and fear or no fear, he was prepared to personally fire every bullet and arrow the elves had in their armory if that was what it took to keep Faanshi safe.

  Faanshi, however, rendered the entire question moot.

  From her head to her feet she began to glow with a white-golden light
so fierce and bright that it stung his eyes to try to look at her, never mind reach her. Nor could he see anything else, not Rab on his one side or Vaarsen and Valleford on his other, or even the musket he’d commandeered. Magic so strong that even he could feel it surged through the air, yet this time without the brutal simplicity of Kirinil’s uncanny Ward-induced fright stabbing into the very center of his brain. This power was more raw, more pure, crackling over his skin without burning, and stirring something deep within his blood and bones. He knew this power. This was the magic that had reshaped him.

  “Mother’s Mercy,” Rab breathed beside him. “What’s she doing? Can she really fight off that?”

  His partner latched onto his shoulder, and Julian blindly felt for his in reply, just to give himself an anchor in the dazzling, all-consuming light. “She did it once,” he said. “She can do it again.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I am.” That was Vaarsen on Julian’s other side, his voice gone hoarse and rough with wonder. “You didn’t see what she did in the abbey. I did.”

  The ground shook, the latest in a cascade of tremors that drove aside all other thoughts. Julian pulled himself up to peer out through the window. Even without looking directly at Faanshi it was hard to see, but he made out the chaotic swirl of energies turning ominously in their direction. And the figure at the heart of that storm, Her hands lifted in a gesture he’d come to know all too well.

  He tried to yell a warning, and at least two of the elves shouted as well. As the Anreulag hurled a volley at the bunker, the explosion of rock and earth overpowered all their voices. Julian threw himself down, snapping up his hands to protect his skull. Yet nothing fell on him or any of the others, and in surprise, he snapped his head back up.

  Faanshi’s light had not only held back the assault from the Anreulag, it sent the stone and soil flying outward. Deliverance from the threat of broken bones, however, meant only that now Julian had an unparalleled view of the Anreulag as She stalked closer to what was left of their shelter. As magic slammed into magic, the radiance diffused, turning everything strangely bright and clear. All at once Julian could see the others’ shocked faces, and each and every scrape and bruise they’d all sustained. Whorls of dust and ash hung in the air, yet none of them obscured the shining form of the girl who strode forward from the wall. Faanshi stepped between Julian and Kestar, giving neither man time to intercept her before she passed, and the Rook was left to exchange thunderstruck glances with Vaarsen in her wake.