by Ellyn, Court
The ogres outside the mist watched in horror and shoved, shoved to steer clear of the seething tendrils and the pools of black liquid seeping across the ground. Panic destroyed their ranks as they turned and fled.
A volley of arrows took flight and peppered the writhing monstrosities with fletching.
“Carah, your fire!”
She had lost her focus entirely. Her firewall dwindled to a smoldering black stripe. The ogres thick in the melee didn’t know what was happening to their denmates in the rear and were surging through the Miraji cavalry and into the lines of Aralorri infantry. Alyster was down there with his kindred, Carah was sure of it. It wasn’t like him to avoid the thick of the fighting.
Sick to her stomach, Carah tried to ignore the sight of one of the transformed ogres crawling with an arrow in its back and slide into the murky waters of the moat.
Concentrate, she told herself. If Alyster is overwhelmed, it’s your fault. She raised the staff, and the firewall rose with it, cutting the ogre advance in two. Forget everything else. Fire. Only fire.
The shouts and orders bombarding her ears receded, supplanted by the rush of energy buzzing in that wondrous place at the base of her skull. She seemed to float over the battlefield, seeing it all at a glance, as if she had wings.
On the ogres’ north flank, the Regulars gave ground. Ogres surged after them.
“No,” Carah said. A second line of fire sprang up. The Regs reformed behind it.
Near the moats, the black mist dispelled. The sun shone bright again, its light spat out. A brown circle of dead vegetation and misshapen corpses were all that remained.
The ogres shifted beyond the range of archers and catapults. A third firewall sprouted. With a beckoning crook of her fingers, Carah commanded the fire to slide toward the moats, compelling the ogres to risk the arrows instead.
Someone called her name, but she did not recognize the voice. The fierce buzzing in her head was all she heeded, all that mattered. Rhian had shown her this place deep inside, this crackling, intoxicating void where she drifted, completely and wholly herself. And these ogres, these ogres, had taken him.
Amid the melee, the white silk banner of the Miraji went down. And their commander? Had Sha’hadýn fallen too? The disappearance of her banner was tantamount to a horn sounding retreat. The desert Elarion broke. The golden shimmer of their lines crumbled as they gave ground.
The ogres charged through Carah’s firewall. Some reeled, consumed in flame, but many more emerged merely singed and gave chase. Had she not made the firewall thick enough, high enough, hot enough?
The Leanian cavalry tried to form up in time to shield the foot soldiers, the militias, the highlanders, but the tide of ogres mounted.
Rage settled in Carah’s belly, broke out as sweat across her skin, ached in her jaw with the clenching of teeth. She slammed the foot of the staff upon the stone under her feet, and her awareness dived down, down through hand-hewn rock into the damp coolness of the earth. The buzzing in her head spread out like fingers, groping through the sluggish substance of the bedrock itself, feeling out its layers, its faults, its water-carved cracks.
Only days ago, she had melded with the earth, her mind laying quietly among ancient pebbles and subterranean pools seeping, seeping for an age underfoot. In her excitement, she had trembled, and the earth had trembled with her.
She needed something more substantial today. The crystal orb aimed for the middle of the ogre advance, where their charge led them around the curve in the wall, almost out of sight, then Carah stomped her foot. A shockwave shook the gatehouse tower, churned the moats into a froth, and knocked the dwarves off their feet.
A swath of ogres too were shaken to their knees as the wave sped toward the place the staff indicated. The ground shuddered, roared, and ripped as a spine of bedrock heaved itself up into sunlight. Ogres caught upon it were thrown skyward.
Their advance halted. A cry of dismay rose. Ogre battled ogre as companies in the rear rushed on, mindlessly driven, crushing their denmates against the bedrock barrier. But the jagged wall was only fifty yards long. Once the ogres recovered from their astonishment, they would go around.
Burn you all! Carah swept the staff. The thin barrier of fire unfurled like a curtain. It raced across the plain, a roiling blanket of fire. Ogres who failed to raise shields were devoured. But the working was too big for Carah to maintain. And the sight of the flames, her flames flooding the plain terrified her. With a whisper, destroy the world. She dropped the staff from numb fingers, fingers buzzing like the crackling void in her brain. The fire blanket wafted away on the wind and was gone.
The ogres took the hint. A horn bellowed, and the phalanxes, scorched and blistered, routed north toward the high moors. Smoldering corpses littered the ground behind them.
Somewhere far away, metallic sounds continued as companies of humans and Elarion battled the ogres who were pinned against the bedrock wall. A few tried to slip around it into the moats, but Dagni and her dwarves were waiting for them.
On the battlements there was silence. Wind and sun buffeted Carah as she floated in the buzzing void. Her hands rested at her sides. Where was the cheering that should follow the retreat of an enemy? Carah glanced down, straight down the sheer side of Tírandon’s wall, upon the muddy waters of the inner moat. When had she climbed onto the battlement? Her feet were braced between the crenels, but she could not feel them. She was the void, detached from this limited, clumsy body.
Someone held onto her. A hand gripped her about the knee. Fearful green eyes clung to her. Don’t fall, please don’t fall, Arryk’s thoughts screamed. He had seen them falling, of course, his little brother, his aunt, and he imagined Carah too, plummeting.
Beyond, everyone was staring at her. The engineers at their quiet machines. The archers holding bows lax. Laniel Falconeye, who wore a peculiar expression, as if he’d known all along what she was capable of doing. Eliad, with his falcon-scarred cheek. Where was his patronizing smirk now?
Love, come down, said Uncle Thorn. How subdued even he sounded. Let it go and come down.
The buzzing insulated her, and she waded through it like thick fog. Slowly it cleared. In its place, she felt her body trembling, every muscle trying to cramp. Pain roared up from the base of her skull and tossed a black cloak across her eyes. She reeled.
Arryk’s grip tightened. His free hand snatched her wrist and dragged her down from the crenels. Uncle Thorn opened his arms and caught her. Her knees refused to bear her weight. Hands, so many hands, eased her down against the wall. She curled up, shivering, her robe and her hair damp with sweat.
Uncle Thorn held her tight. His laughter was golden against her ear. “I think your lessons paid off after all.”
~~~~
4
Near midnight, Lothiar crouched unseen in a corner of Aerdria’s quarters. The Lady was not asleep, as he’d expected. She knelt before a shrine to the Mother-Father, murmuring. Ten small globes of fay light surrounded the shrine’s winged triangle; the light gilded Aerdria’s pallid cheek. On occasion, a whimper punctuated the whispered supplication.
The long river of her hair spilled in a glossy black current on the floor. A silver dressing gown pooled at her knees. A goblet rested on the floor beside her, conveniently within reach. Her brow was bare of its silver coronet. It waited on its velvet pillow, waited, a fine layer of dust dulling its sheen. How long since she had worn it?
Lothiar shouldn’t have been able to sneak into Aerdria’s rooms undetected. The portal had opened, carrying him from Bramor to the Lady’s palace with a single step, its rim crackling, the air changing, the cold stinging for an instant, but Aerdria had not stirred from her prayers. Was she so deep in her pleading with the Goddess that she had not felt the surge of avë, the intrusion of a guest? Or did the goblet at her knee contain something that dulled her senses?
Beyond the shrine, the balcony was open to the night. A balmy summer breeze stirred gossamer drapes like ghosts and
carried with it the distant clash of battle. The ogres of Black Marsh pounded at Linndun’s southerly gate. They had been at it for weeks now, though they had little hope of breaking in. The gates were warded. But their dogged attempts kept Commander Tíryus and his Regulars busy. Too busy to send reinforcements to the Sons of Ilswythe.
How close he had come. Lothiar couldn’t think about the events at Bexby Field without groaning in anger. Dathiel hadn’t shown at all, and the War Commander had slipped through his net, slick as an eel.
Rhian was no small prize, however. The young avedra was beautifully defiant. Most of the others quivered in their chains. But not Rhian. He was a splendid beast brought to heel, snarling and pacing, ready to bite the hand that ventured too close.
Wouldn’t last. The Pit drained hope as the chains leeched avë. A few weeks, and Rhian would become as pitiful as the rest.
In the meantime, Lothiar had to change tack. With his duplicity now made clear, any hope of inviting the Sons of Ilswythe to tea had been lost. Other means of motivation were required.
He allowed himself only the barest breathing, the softest shift of foot as he melded with shadow.
“Please,” Aerdria muttered. “…save us.”
Why did Lothiar hesitate? Why draw out the inevitable?
The nightwind eddied over the balcony, carrying the scent of trees still warm with sun, the roar of waterfalls embossed with moonlight, the feel of night over a city Lothiar knew as well as his own face. Knew, and missed. For more than twenty years he’d been away, pursuing battle underground, sleeping in one cave or another, chill and grimy and exhausted, a stranger wherever he stepped foot.
He did not expect the rush of nostalgia that struck him at the sight of Aerdria’s bone-white thelnyth furniture, or the lullaby of wind in the treetops, punctuated by the soft tinkling of agate leaves on the tree towers, or the aroma of honeysuckle wafting from the palace’s gardened tiers. In all his travels he had found these things nowhere else.
Home. So driven had he been to survive in his exile, to train his army, that he had not realized how deeply he had longed for it. But he was not here to stay. Not yet. Sentimentality was a mire that would drown his resolve.
All across the city, his chess pieces slid into place. Take out the knight, the rook, the queen, and the board was his.
When should he make his move?
The longer he watched Aerdria at her prayers, the deeper his disgust. The only prayer that ought to rise from the Lady’s mouth was a plea for forgiveness. Because of her flaccid leadership her people had become lost, cowardly, content to waste away into obscurity. Because of her, the Elders and the Regulars had turned from the needs of their own kind and lent aid to humans instead. Humans who would betray them. It was the way of slaves.
Lothiar couldn’t blame Aerdria, not really. She had been taught to lead this way. Decades before he’d been born, Lady Dorelia and the denizens of Dan Ora’as had been ousted from the southern lands, ousted from the Desert, ousted from the Drakhans, bloodshed in their wake. The shame of defeat had destroyed Dorelia. Despair consumed her, and she went into the Light, without so much as a spark of hope to sustain her.
In his childhood, Lothiar was fed upon tales of carnage and betrayal. Each night, the firelight was full of songs of terror, of sorrow, of retreat, of sweet bowers that offered safe refuge. And the singers sang as if these bowers were salvation, a complete good. Lothiar had hated those songs most of all. He wouldn’t need a bower if he had a sword.
He remembered Linndun’s relations with the local tribes, how the human chieftains swore friendship to Aerdria, the trade of goods, the trade of daughters. But humans bred like rats and always demanded more. More food, more land, more trees to build their reeking little hovels. In exchange for what?
A blade in the back, that’s what.
Grumblings of distrust swept down from the war-beleaguered mountains like a fever, burning low at first, but rising hotter as the years passed. The promises the chieftains made were scorned by their sons. Humans had strength in numbers, so why not take what they wanted? And they wanted everything. It was their way.
New songs, new commandments were birthed of that war. Do not peek beyond the Wood. Do not shake the waters. Do not remind them we are here. Keep silent, and keep to the shadows. Take solace in your bower, and remain a slave to fear.
To never once question, to never once stand and say no, Aerdria was a sheep leading sheep.
Would her people take up the sword again if they no longer had their sheltering bower? Would they remember their courage? Or would they roll onto their backs and let the humans swarm over them?
A distant boom shook the nightwind.
Aerdria’s whispers to the Mother-Father stopped. Reaching for her goblet, she pried herself stiffly to her feet. Was it wine or numbness in her legs that caused her to stumble toward the balcony? She peered out into the night, south toward the embattled gate. But the explosion wasn’t the groan of the wards giving way.
Aerdria realized it. Perhaps she heard screams coming from elsewhere in the city. Perhaps fire caught her eye. She hurried halfway around her tower to the north side of the balcony and leaned far out over the rail.
Lothiar started to rise, decided against it. If her death was thought a suicide, it would convey the wrong message. Best wait. He coiled tight again. With a glance he checked the buckle on his wrist, the leather straps laced through his fingers. They bound a three-inch-long blade against his palm.
“They can’t have broken in,” Aerdria said, loud enough that her declaration might’ve been for Lothiar himself. “Goddess help us, fire in the veil tower.”
Yes, three strike forces, three targets. Paggon and Fogrim were to take a portal into the barracks and sever the head of the Regulars. If they were lucky, they would catch Commander Tíryus alone. But Lothiar didn’t have much faith in luck. At the same time, Ruvion was to port into the Tower of the Veil and put an end to the ceaseless chant that disguised the Wood and hid Linndun from human eyes. The Keepers were bound to fight back. Even if they managed to subdue Ruvion and his ogres, they would find the tower doors barred. None would escape the fires.
Lothiar alone comprised the third squad. His was the most difficult task of all.
Aerdria strode from the balcony, a whirl of silver silk, making for a table and the small silver bell upon it.
Lothiar stood and stepped into the light. “Don’t.”
Her fingers knocked the bell onto its side. It gave a feeble, muffled warning as it rolled in a circle. The goblet clattered from her hand. Golden liquor splashed the white floor. Horror stole her voice, “You … you’re dead to me. I will not look on you.” She raised a hand before her eyes.
“That’s been the trouble for a long time,” he said, approaching her as cautiously as he might a wounded fawn. “You wouldn’t look. You refused to see what was happening in front of you. It’s led us to this.”
Her shielding hand dropped to her side, and her ancient lavender eyes pinned him. She had aged in the last two decades. Her cheeks had grown hollow, her skin dull and thin and lax. The long years and their inevitable consequences had caught up to her. She was a waning star.
Lothiar expected anger or loathing burning in her steady gaze, but he detected only compassion, maybe even resignation. “Funny,” she said. “Dathiel said the same thing.”
A fist pounded the door. “My Lady!” The shrill timbre of Captain Cheriam’s voice. To Lothiar, Cheriam had always sounded on the verge of panic when passing along orders. Never could abide her, really. “My Lady, are you awake? The Tower of the Veil is under attack.” The latch rattled, but Lothiar had locked the door.
Aerdria stared at the latch, her mouth open a little, as she realized her rescue and her escape were cut off. “I … I’m aware,” she called.
“I’ve gathered the Dardra,” Cheriam persisted. “Please let us in.”
Lothiar gave a little shake of his head.
“No, Captain, st
ay there,” Aerdria ordered. “You must stay there.”
“But my Lady—!”
“Go, Captain, please! H-help the Keepers.”
Muffled voices echoed along the corridor and feet shuffled as the dardrion formed up.
“Did you receive no warning that I was coming?” Lothiar asked. “No dream, no whispers from a dragon, no visit from your sister?”
Aerdria glowered. “That is a cruel thing to say.”
“Was it? To me it sounded like fact.”
“Amanthia is gone! You attack my city, do not mock me as well.”
She was sincere. Amanthia and her pet dragon had plagued Lothiar with taunts and prophesies for weeks, yet they did nothing to warn the Mother’s faithful servant of Lothiar’s plans for the Wood. Interesting. Seemed the Goddess was finished with Aerdria after all.
Lothiar flexed his right hand. The leather straps tightened, creaked.
Aerdria’s glance followed the subtle movement. “You won’t let me follow Dorelia and Amanthia into the Light? It won’t be long now. She has heard my plea. She must have heard me by now. Any day she’ll come for me.”
“I’m afraid not, Lady. I need you to make a pronouncement.”
She composed herself, clasped her hands together, raised her chin. “It won’t work. The people will never see things your way.”
“They may have to, one day.”
How fragile her courage was. Her mouth worked to hold back a sob. Her breath quivered in her throat. She glanced at the door, started to call for the guard, but Lothiar’s hand moved to the pommel of his sword. He was prepared to hew them down, these he had trained and led. It was her or them.
