Exile's Gamble_The Chronicles of Shadow_Book II

by Lee Dunning

  That left the way clear for the abomination’s friends. With shrieks and howls of glee, dozens of twisted nightmares as varied as snowflakes, galloped, slithered, flew and scuttled toward W’rath and his companions. “Kneel,” he commanded the Sky Elf and they both dropped to their knees. “Ice—now!” W’rath roared.

  Lord Icewind shouted a word of power and thrust his sword forward, using it as a focus to expand the strength of his casting. The hoard iced over, some snapping off limbs in mid-lunge. A flyer fell to the floor, shattering.

  “Let them taste your fire!” W’rath ordered the First Born.

  The three soldiers unleashed gouts of flame over the heads of W’rath and Kiat. The fire hit the pack of preternaturally frozen demons. They erupted in an explosion of ice and steam. The First Born roared a battle cry and beat the pommels of their swords against their breastplates.

  “Up we go,” W’rath said to Lord Icewind.

  The two jumped to their feet. With the First Born in tow, they stormed the last few yards to the end of the hall where a metal grate had once covered a spillway. It now lay melted and torn asunder. The water beyond rushed by, whisking away the castle’s waste. A misshapen hand reached out of the water and something started to feel around the stone floor, searching for purchase. A tentacle shot out of the dark and splatted into the shield W’rath willed in front of the gaping hole.

  “Can you keep them back while I repair the wards?” Lord Icewind asked W’rath.

  “Absolutely,” W’rath said. To the First Born he added, “Watch our backs, lads. We don’t want to get careless now.”

  The soldiers nodded and turned to watch the hall behind them. Fire danced along their swords. Satisfied, W’rath watched Lord Icewind work.

  The Sky Elf scraped at some white powder with the tip of his sword. “I don’t believe this,” he said.

  “What have you got there?” W’rath asked.

  Kiat put a hand over his mouth as if he might break down. “One of our own sabotaged my wards.” His head swayed back and forth in disbelief.

  Impossible. W’rath stepped closer and toed the small trace of powder with his boot. He didn’t recognize it but even the tiny sprinkling left on the floor radiated strong magic. “The humans already consorted with demons. Surely, one of them managed to get down here and do this.”

  Kiat shook his head. “Ancestors, I wish I could say otherwise but this powder uses components unique to First Home. Someone poured it here and opened a hole hoping we wouldn’t notice until the castle filled with demons.” He turned an agonized face to W’rath. “Why would someone do that? Why would a fellow elf want us dead?” He gasped and his eyes went wide as the answer came to him.

  W’rath’s mouth grew dry. He didn’t have to read Kiat’s mind to know which individual popped into the diviner’s mind. Would K’hul stoop so low? Would he put hundreds of elves, including Lady Swiftbrook, in peril for the chance to kill off a single Shadow Elf?

  W’rath’s caught a glint of light and he stooped to examine it. A ring had managed to wedge itself into the cracked stonework. He finessed it free and almost dropped it when he recognized it. Gold with sapphires.

  Kiat gasped. “This is too awful,” he said when W’rath rose, holding the ring. Another pseudopod slapped against W’rath’s psychic shield and the Sky Elf jumped. “I cannot believe Lord K’hul did this.”

  “Perhaps not,” W’rath conceded. He checked over his shoulder, but the First Born soldiers patrolled further down the hall. “Someone from his family visited this place, though. Someone whom I doubt survived.”

  Lord Icewind gave the ring a last glance and waved for W’rath to put it away. “I may be able to divine who wore it,” he said, his voice bleak, “but later.”

  “Can you repair your wards?”

  Kiat nodded. “Destroying my spells used up most of the powder’s potency. The demons’ passing reduced it further.” With those words, Kiat bent himself to the task of reworking his spells.

  W’rath waited, feigning patience. The creatures they’d faced had fallen too easy for his taste. They’d run across demons—no devils. He might not believe in gods but he did believe in the cruelty of fate. The five of them hadn’t gotten to the broken ward immediately. Any number of invisible or magically adept evils might have slipped in.

  W’rath sent his consciousness to where Lady Swiftbrook tended Lady Winterdawn. The guards remained with her, alert for danger. Lady Swiftbrook had opened the room’s window to allow her greater access to her powers. Nearby, a small funnel of furious air spun. W’rath hadn’t realized she could summon an elemental companion. Its presence provided some comfort but worry continued to niggle at him.

  Minutes crawled by before Kiat finally made the final passes of his casting. He used the sword to trace intricate designs in the air, leaving an afterimage of light. It faded as the new wards settled into place. Kiat’s dropped his hands to his side. The sword’s blade slapped against his bare thigh. His head drooped. Stripped of his robes, wracked by worry and weary from days of spell casting, W’rath didn’t think he’d ever beheld a more pitiful sight. “Come lad, let us get you back to your lady.”

  “She’s my apprentice,” Kiat said. “I failed her.”

  “You saved her life. While I’m not an expert on these things, I’m fairly certain she adores you,” W’rath said.

  Kiat laughed and turned damp eyes to W’rath. “Why?”

  “I suggest you ask her, Councilor Icewind,” W’rath said. “Now come, let’s head back and find your robes. I’ll not have Lady Swiftbrook catch sight of you playing nymph and accuse me of having my evil way with you.”

  Raven climbed with determination, intent only on the task of putting one hand up after the other, finding a finger hold and pulling herself up the side of Gryphon’s Aerie. She had to make the top today. No doubt, someone had marked her absence by now and started to worry. If she stayed missing for another night, they’d have someone divine her location. She’d have to explain why a member of the High Council thought it a good idea to run off and get herself stranded on the side of a mountain while everyone else dealt with the demons. Death by falling or wyvern attack suddenly seemed much less odious.

  An eagle-like scream pierced the silence. Raven gasped and pressed herself into the stone. She risked a peek up and caught sight of a diving figure shooting in her direction. Gods! I’m dead.

  A huge, black leonine body hurtled through the air. Instinctively, Raven cowered against the mountain, waiting for the gryphon to tear her from the mountain and either dash her to the distant ground or rend her to pieces.

  An impact, so powerful she felt the waves of displaced air, boomed across the miles of open space. Raven’s head shot up in time to watch as a pair of tangled forms tumbled past her. A gryphon and wyvern ripped and tore at one another. The wyvern’s poisonous fangs flashed and sunk into the gryphon’s furred shoulder. The gryphon ripped at the belly of the wyvern with its clawed feet. Both shrieked in rage and pain. They struggled with their wings to pull atop the other and gain some advantage.

  Raven remained frozen against the mountain long enough to take in the animal smell of the gryphon and the reptilian musk of the wyvern, before scuttling up the sheer wall with the surety she’d thought gone with her transformation. Terror pushed aside the need for care. She reached for handholds that weren’t always there. Nails tore from her fingertips and instantly started to grow back. The itch of their healing didn’t register.

  A handhold dissolved in her grasp and her arm flailed. Empty space pulled at Raven and threatened to send the elf plummeting to the earth a mile below. Sheer strength saved her as she used every muscle to counteract the loss of balance and solid purchase. When her loose hand finally slapped against the wall and her fingers found a crack to dig into, Raven nearly wept in relief.

  The howl of the beasts slashing at one another pulled the Shadow Elf out of her shuddering immobility. She started her climb once again, this time careful to check
each handhold before committing her weight to it. She gritted her teeth, certain her slower pace would leave her helpless once one of the combatants triumphed and came after her.

  She paused to get her bearings. Not too far above her a rock shelf beckoned. Not safety exactly, but it would allow her to stand and wield her sword. She struggled toward it, altering her path of ascent so she’d reach the ledge from a better angle.

  Just a couple of feet from her goal, Raven stretched toward the enticing lip of the ledge. She shifted herself across the stone, biting her lip in concentration. A sigh slipped from Raven’s lips as she at last grasped the shelf.

  Something touched her hand.

  Ohmyfuckinggods! Raven went very still and focused her hearing away from the battle below her to the shelf above her. The rustling of a stirring body and something like a cross between a growl and a moan reached her ears. The touch came again and this time she sensed warmth and fur. Not a wyvern. Surely, the ledge was too small to hold a gryphon.

  Emboldened, Raven took a deep breath and committed to the final lunge that would leave her dangling from the cliff for the few seconds it took to pull herself up. She dug her fingers into the stone and brought her other arm over to join it. She let her feet swing free of their purchase on the wall and swung into space. A thrill of horror ran through her as something sharp nibbled at her fingers.

  Too late to change her mind, Raven hoisted herself up and swung a leg onto the ledge. She levered herself up and got her first glimpse of the creature huddled there—

  And threw her head back as a beak tried to tear into her face.

  Shit! A gryphon after all. A young one but its eagle’s beak could still do plenty of damage. It demonstrated as much by ripping at her leg. It tore through her leather breeches and dug into flesh. Raven hissed in pain but refused to retreat. With it distracted, she took the opportunity to finish hauling herself up and rolled into the young gryphon, pushing it to the back of the ledge.

  The gryphon cried out. It thrashed and tried to beat its wings, only one of which worked. The other hung limp, broken, probably from a hard fall to the ledge or from the jaws of the wyvern.

  Raven sat up and scooted to the left of the creature, putting distance between herself and the sudden drop. Only then did she take full stock of her ledge-mate’s condition. It lay where her vigorous clamber onto the shelf had forced it. Its lion’s body still struggled to right itself. A smear of blood across the stone spoke of injuries in addition to the broken wing. Its beak gaped open and its sides heaved as it panted with pain and fear. More blood speckled its adolescent grey plumage.

  Throughout it all, its back legs remained inert. At last it stilled, exhausted from its struggles. It flopped onto its side. A soft mewling sigh slid from its lungs.

  “Oh, gods, no,” Raven said. She reached out a hand and petted its soft fur. It cried and she shushed it. “It’s okay, just rest.”

  It wasn’t okay, though. Raven didn’t have much knowledge of animals but even she could see it had a broken back. Out on the harsh mountain the damaged wing alone would doom the poor creature. A back injury meant it had even less time. Minutes. Maybe.

  Raven brushed away the wet gathering in her eyes and glanced down below. The adult gryphon and wyvern still fought. Their battle had dropped them perhaps a half mile further down the mountainside. With all the twisting and thrashing, she couldn’t tell which might win.

  Raven turned back to the dying gryphon and ran her hands over it. Its life had dwindled to the point it couldn’t lift its head to snap at her. She found slashes in its side and a greenish, greasy residue she feared might be venom. The wyvern must have attacked the youngster and dropped it on the ledge to finish it off, only to have its meal interrupted by an enraged parent. “I wish I could help you,” Raven said.

  Wait … She sucked in her breath. W’rath’s words from that first day on the ship came back to her. Because she’d healed him, he’d called her their people’s first paladin. She’d believed him.

  However, after the battle against Oblund, she tried to call upon her new gift to bring W’rath out of his coma—and failed. At the time, she’d rationalized her own barely-healed injuries kept her from focusing her power. In truth, she’d feared her previous burst of magical ability had been a fluke, a gift used once and lost.

  No, she wouldn’t accept that. Linden’s spark still burned bright within her. She felt him every time she drew her sword and flowed through the motions making up the intricate dance of war. He might not have excelled at spell casting but the use of magic relied more on the mindset of the wielder than any innate well of power. Sweet Linden had preferred the physical to the cerebral. She’d inherited his gifts, though. Only self-doubt held her back.

  I need life. Life is wild and growing. The words she’d recited to herself to draw on the magic the first time came back to her. The scent of pine and the gryphon’s wildness filled her. Warmth shimmered through her limbs.

  It’s working! Her growing excitement nearly undid the tenuous grasp she had on the power. She slammed the door on her ego so nothing could distract her from the pulsating green filling her. She directed it down her arms, through her hands and out her fingers. Live!

  The creature jerked under her hands and struggled, shrieking as the power poured into it. Raven pressed on, relentless. Live!

  A rush, like a river, coursed through her ears and the world spun. The young elf remembered how she’d pushed nearly her entire life force into W’rath at Second home and reined in the energy spilling from her into the gryphon. She peeked at it. The radiance of her life glowed from its amazed eyes. Raven smiled. And froze. Her ears had picked up something …

  The warrior sprang from her kneeling position, pulled the sword from the sheath on her back and drew it into a sweeping arc. The wyvern screeched in anger and pain as the tip of the blade left a glistening trail of red across its belly. It beat its powerful bat wings and heaved itself out of reach. Raven set herself in front of the fledgling, placing a formidable obstacle between the wyvern and its meal. “Not today,” she said to the angry reptile.

  The wyvern cocked its head as if to consider its options. It bled from numerous lacerations. A huge chunk of flesh had been torn from its muscular neck. Still, it was here and the gryphon wasn’t. The wyvern had prevailed and it seemed unlikely it would retreat.

  “Go eat the gryphon you just killed,” Raven said. She cut the air with her deadly blade. “You don’t need this young one too.”

  To Raven’s horror, the reptile smiled.

  Raven tried to tell herself she imagined things but she couldn’t doubt the evidence before her. Her assumption the wyvern returned to finish off the fledgling for food left if amused at her naivety. Now more than ever, she wished she’d studied up on wyverns as well as gryphons. She’d assumed the wyverns possessed little more than animal intelligence. This one’s expression suggested it could understand her to some extent and that it worked at some malevolent scheme beyond the instinct for survival.

  The wyvern spat.

  Long considered lesser cousins to dragons, a wyvern’s ability to spray poison from a distance gave some credence to the claim. Like a dragon’s breath weapon, the glob of venomous spit could probably incapacitate or kill most of a wyvern’s victims. Raven dodged but the ledge didn’t allow for much in the way of maneuverability. The poison spattered her. Raven gasped and cringed. The wyvern surged in for the kill.

  Raven uncoiled like a crouching panther and met the wyvern’s attack. Only the slightest resistance shivered up Raven’s arms as the blade sliced through muscle and bone. The creature’s head thumped at her feet before bouncing off the ledge into space. Its body folded in on itself and plummeted like a stone, trailing a stream of blood.

  Raven dropped to a sitting position, relief and elation singing through her veins. She dangled her legs over the edge of the ledge and placed the sword behind her with a shaking hand. She had lacked knowledge concerning wyverns but it too misjudg
ed its ability to subdue her. Few poisons could even slow down an elf, much less kill or disable them. You’re an idiot but you have good instincts. Her snicker turned into a gasp.

  A huge, furred body streaked out of nowhere and crushed her beneath its powerful bulk. Raven stifled a scream and tried to twist free of her attacker. She managed to get her head turned and confirmed an adult gryphon stood atop her, just managing to fit onto the ledge. It bore wounds, but to Raven’s eye it looked substantially smaller than the one she’d seen fighting the wyvern.

  Raven expected the creature to snap her head off with its powerful beak. Instead, it kept her pinned while it examined the younger gryphon. The adult’s throat fluttered and it emitted an odd chuckling sound. In response, the young gryphon struggled to its feet and tottered unsteadily while the adult prodded it with its head and beak.

  Raven almost forgot her fear. Everything W’rath had translated from Lady Stormchaser’s book indicated the majestic creatures could communicate through simple sounds and basic telepathy. Further, Lady Stormchaser claimed they possessed the capacity for reasoning—if not on an Elven level—then at least beyond that of a simple beast. They recognized right from wrong. They had noble spirits.

  However, research could not compare to real life experience. The gryphon’s obvious display of intelligence and emotion filled Raven with a sense of triumph and awe. When it swung its head back to examine her, Raven smiled stupidly up from her helpless position. Sweet Lady, I hope you weren’t just making shit up.

  The gryphon cocked its head. You heal? The words reverberated through Raven’s skull. Raven never felt happier about a headache.

  I heal. Raven willed the gryphon to sense her thoughts. She couldn’t mind speak but she knew someone with the talent could retrieve surface thoughts easily—if they knew enough to pluck them from a willing subject’s mind.