by Ellyn, Court
He laid a hand to his wounds, a show of effort, a spark of defiance.
“A moment ago you were afraid,” Rashén said, head tilted on a sinuous neck. “But your fear has faded.”
Thorn nodded, or thought he did. “I’ve been there before.” He recalled the endless light engulfing him, the untainted sensation of being loved, of having been loved since the waking of the world. He held the memory close, desperate in his need for it.
The dragon’s fingers brushed across his brow, his cheek. “I’ll return for you shortly.”
Thorn reached a hand. Don’t leave me alone. Did he speak aloud? He couldn’t tell anymore.
“You won’t for a moment be alone.” Rashén lifted something from the grass. A silver box. Snarls of pain. The click of a latch, and Saffron flying free.
When the fairy saw the state Thorn was in, she flew to him, weeping like a frost-fall that ravages early petals.
There was an immense movement, of wind, of space, of avë, a cosmic curtain sweeping across the sun. Thorn ducked his head and squeezed shut his eyes. When he looked again, both the dragon and Lothiar’s body were gone.
~~~~
39
The earth shook. Azhien hooted. “Dathiel gives them what-for.”
Carah and the rest of the avedrin stopped their dogged march through the mud of the riverbed until the ground beneath them steadied itself. She listened for a rumble of thunder, the crack of a storm. When only silence followed, her worry mounted.
“We shouldn’t have left him.” She aimed her accusation at Laniel.
He said nothing, but nudged the avedrin to keep moving.
Carah obeyed only because Rhian needed her. The spurt of energy he’d roused to whisk her away from the spring had lasted all of two hundred yards. After that, it was she who wrapped an arm about his waist and forced him to walk. He muttered nonsense in her ear, started at nightmares, though his eyes were open. His skin burned beneath her fingers.
Jaedren didn’t look any better, pale and bobbing limply in Doc’s arms. Though the boy was only nine and emaciated, he wasn’t exactly small. Doc fell behind. “Don’t wait for us,” he called, gasping. “We’ll catch up.”
One of the dranithion turned around. Jevanyth, Carah thought his name was. “Give the yno to me.”
The Dovnyan woman, too, stopped every few feet, arms out to balance herself through waves of lightheadedness. Cursing and pleading, the Hereti youth prodded her mercilessly, until the Doreli man demanded he leave her alone. For a time, the Doreli helped the woman keep going, an arm about her. But finally she broke into sobs and slipped to the ground, begging to be left to die. The Doreli man did as she asked, leaving her weeping on the bank.
“Not today, lady,” Laniel said and carried her like a babe. “Almost there.”
The waters of the Leathyr widened and slowed to a silent glide. The woody scent of campfires soon drifted among the reeds and stands of water trees. The soft current of voices eddied. Ynora found a shallow slope in the bank and helped the avedrin climb onto high ground.
Two or three hundred Elarion, however many Lyrienn had ordered to stand by in reserve, camped along the eastern bank of the river. There wasn’t a single tent among them; they preferred the open sky. Only the Lady was afforded privacy. Her pavilion reared up, a billow of silver silk, fluttering with silver banners. Beyond it, an awning roofed the casualties of the battle at the Kaem.
Sentries spotted the avedrin and the dranithion and ran to them.
“My sister inside?” asked Laniel, setting the Dovnyan woman on her feet. She sagged empty-eyed against him. “We need a place for the avedrin before they drop.”
While the healers settled the avedrin on pallets under the awning, Lyrienn emerged from her pavilion. “We felt the earthquake. Was it Dathiel?”
Her brother nodded, grim.
“What’s happened?” When she heard Laniel’s report, the Lady was irate. “You left him alone with Lothiar? What kind of oath-brother are you?”
Laniel growled some irreverent response, his glance darting toward Carah. She returned an I-told-you-so lift of the eyebrows.
“He’s handled twice as many,” he insisted, pursuing Lyrienn from the awning. “One earthquake is all he’d need to inter them all. He’s only minutes behind us, I’m sure of it.”
But Lyrienn was inconsolable.
On the pallet beside Carah’s, Rhian stirred. “You’re going back, aren’t you.” His voice was paper-thin.
She brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. He shivered under her fingers. “First chance I get.”
Rhian frowned but couldn’t muster the fervor to argue.
Carah let the healers pour some cloyingly sweet elixir down her throat, all the while marking her escape route. As soon as Laniel followed Lyrienn into the pavilion and the healers’ backs were turned, she scrambled from her pallet and into the sunlight. Whatever was in the elixir bolstered her strength. Her feet felt solid on the ground, her eyes clear.
Her uncle’s horse was tethered outside the pavilion’s flap. Záradel dozed in the heat, tail flicking flies. The saddle lay in the grass. Carah hoisted it onto the horse’s back. Her arms shook. Had she grown so weak?
Hurry, she told her fingers working the buckles. Before someone sees.
A hand clenched her wrist. “What the hell are you doing?” Azhien turned to the flap. “Brannië!”
Carah jerked her arm free. “Shut up, will you!”
“No! You must stay. It is too dangerous. Laniel, tell her.”
Laniel had ducked from the pavilion. At the sight of Záradel pawing the ground, fully saddled and ready, his mouth opened, but he said nothing.
“Damn it,” Carah said, “don’t make me burn you both. And you, Azhien! You of all people telling me it’s too dangerous. Where’s the camaraderie? Finally decide to cave to the will of your elders, did you?”
“Carah, this is foolish!”
“My uncle may be in chains!”
“Enough,” said Laniel. He glanced over the camp, strategizing. At last, he flicked a hand. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”
Carah hauled herself into the saddle. The stirrups were too low.
“You—but,” Azhien stammered, watching his cousin shorten the stirrups for her.
“Keep the troop here,” Laniel ordered. “If I don’t send Saffron to you in an hour, bring the whole bloody reserve.”
~~~~
“Reform! Reform!” Kelyn shouted, holding the stitch under his ribs. The herald at his side bellowed into a horn, relaying the order with a series of notes. Highlanders and Aralorri militia disengaged and backed into ragged lines.
The ogres had forced them to abandon their hilltop, overrunning it with the dead. The barrier of black mist had kept out the living ogres, but it didn’t affect the corpses of their denmates. The ogres had heaved the bodies through the mist, along with the twisted things hopping underfoot. Bodies and little goblins covered the ground, making maneuvering, even standing precarious.
Kelyn had ordered a fallback. It was all he could do to keep his troops from breaking completely. He considered letting them run, but the path to Tírandon was blocked. A flight east would only see them slaughtered.
Lady Drona led the Fieran regiment and a hundred Miraji against the ogres who had attacked the camp at noon. Her objective was to open a path eastward, but the latest report made Kelyn’s heart sink. Drona had been pushed back into the fringes of camp.
With the White Falcon’s death, Fieran morale scraped bottom.
Kelyn’s division fared no better. Pikes forming a new barricade sagged. The militia were exhausted, but the ogres were tireless. They rushed the new-formed lines. Kalla knelt with her people, a pike in her own fists, a roar in her mouth. Maeret waited behind, clawed front and back where ogres had broken past her shield. The bloody gashes on her face made her look the more fearsome as she shrieked and circled her morning star into the skulls of the ogres who broke through the lines.
&nb
sp; Eliad and his highlanders fell in behind her, the names of their fathers on their lips.
The dwarves took up the rear, in an effort to spare them. As soon as Dagni received Kelyn’s report to remain in the mist lest her armor shatter, she had tossed aside the breastplate and raised both her korzai to the sky. With a bellow, she had led her daughters and her miners in a fierce sortie through the Fire Spear ogres before falling back to the command hill. “All or nothing, Commander,” she’d said when she rejoined Kelyn.
Arrows arched high. The Drakhan elves and the Regulars sent dwindling ammunition deep behind the ogres’ front line. For an instant, the sun dimmed.
An iron dragon leapt the barricade. The copper wolf staggered along behind it, its head bashed in. “Only one whirligig left,” Daryon shouted over the din.
“Where’s the bastard commanding this bunch?” Kelyn asked.
The avedra pointed. “An Elari stands in your place.”
Kelyn shielded his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. Upon the hill he had vacated moments before, the slender figure of an Elari was silhouetted against the sky. “Is it Lothiar?”
“No luck. Haven’t seen him in some time.”
“Hutza armor?”
“Probably.”
“Drop the last one on his head.”
The whirligig whizzed off, followed by Daryon’s two sentinel devices. Kelyn opened his spyglass and later wished he hadn’t. The whirligig spat black rain over the Elari and the ogres standing guard around him. A dark hutza sword batted one sentinel from the air, shattering as it collided with spinning blades. The second sentinel plunged through the Elari’s back-plate and burst out through his chest.
Arryk’s death had provided a hard lesson in the extent of magic’s usefulness.
All around the falling Elari, ogres lurched, fell, writhed. The whirligig’s attack did little good. No horn sounded. The ogres rushing Kelyn’s position fought on, leaderless, heedless.
The barricade of pikes collapsed. An ogre threw Maeret aside. She lay still beneath her shield.
“Dwarves!” Kelyn bellowed.
Dagni led her people in a charge to fill the breach.
“Miraji!” A company of the desert elves swept in behind, covering the dwarves with illusion. Hot sand pelted Kelyn’s face. The mirages made it difficult for him to see his own front line clearly.
He pressed at the ache in his ribs. The pain was spreading, as if boils rose randomly on his skin.
“Da? Sir!” Stubbornly refusing to stay abed, Kethlyn held the reins of several warhorses. “Should I check you again? Maybe your mail is broken after all.”
When the pain started, suddenly and acutely, Kelyn had been sure an ogre’s spear had found a way past the hutza scales. But a quick inspection had revealed barely a scratch on him. Bruises, abrasions, nothing broken or laid open. Now, with the fingers of pain stretching out, he worried that his heart was revolting against the strain. A fine time for his own body to betray him.
He forced his hand to lower and shook his head. “I’m fine.”
A tingling sensation rippled up his nape. His son’s expression of worry changed to alarm, mouth open with a warning, and Kelyn dropped into a crouch, turning as he did, sword cutting a level arc. The blade lodged in a thick shinbone. A single ogre had broken through the dazzling mirage. A spear, surely nine-feet-long, cut the air over Kelyn’s head.
Daryon grunted, hand gripping the spear shaft but unable to stop it. Despite Kelyn’s strike, the ogre’s aim was true, lancing between the grieves on Daryon’s thigh and the tassets at his waist. The avedra struck the ground, the spearhead lodged in the meat and bone of his hip.
Sword in his shin or not, the ogre leaned into the attack, driving the spear into the ground, pinning the avedra in place.
The Drakhan elves heard the cries of Daryon’s distress. Brionyth shrieked a protest. It was as effective as an order. A dozen arrows sprouted from the ogre. Brionyth charged the brute as the light faded from his eyes and shoved him aside, saving Daryon from being crushed.
Distracted by pain and panic, his control over the constructs faltered. The copper wolf hesitated mid-bite and was crushed under an ogre’s hammer. Basi lunged blindly and leapt upon one of the horses. Kethlyn had to kick the damn thing aside or lose the animals to terror.
“Stop!” Kelyn shouted. “Daryon, stop everything. Lie still.”
Teeth and fists clenching tight, the avedra conferred in Elaran with his lieutenant. She nodded, white-faced, and took hold of the spear shaft. Daryon seized Kelyn’s hand and gripped it fiercely. His entire frame shook, his eyes glared inwardly, and the spearhead began to glow red. Kelyn watched in amazement. Crazy bastard was cauterizing the wound with the weapon that had dealt it.
Brionyth jerked the spear free, and Daryon fell limp with a swoon. Kelyn patted his cheek. He roused, woozy and blenched. “Get me up.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Kelyn said. “You won’t walk for a while. We need a stretcher.” A quick glance around the hilltop showed Kelyn that the ogres were pressing hard into the Miraji illusion. They were only elves, and the ogres had realized it. Fierce as the Miraji were, the ogres no longer feared to charge into the unseen.
Goddess, help us, Kelyn thought, will not one advantage be left to us?
With sudden strength a wounded man ought not possess, Daryon shoved Kelyn aside and sat up. Brionyth scrambled back as golden flame ignited like a cloak across the avedra’s shoulders, along his arms, spreading out behind him in wing-shaped swaths. He gasped down great gulps of air and looked to the sky.
The wind stopped. Banners drooped. A shadow engulfed the clouds, circling the battlefield.
Without effort, without the natural movement of standing, Daryon rose, and Kelyn saw that he hovered a hand-span above the ground, wings of flame licking wide behind him. “Brother!” he shouted at the sky.
A roar replied.
The primordial voice made the air shiver and sent needles across Kelyn’s skin.
The battle succumbed as Elarion fell to their knees and ogres raised weapons to the shadow that swallowed the clouds and spat them out again. Dwarves curled their fingers into warding signs, and the humans looked around in awe, in confusion.
The shadow gathered itself. Vast silver wings beat the air. A reptilian tail lashed. Talons curled around a small burden. Silver serpent eyes gazed down, and a snarl invited ogres amid the battlefield to clear a space. They obliged, fleeing up the slopes of nearby hills.
“Rashén,” Kelyn said on a sigh, certain, though he had only seen him as a silver-clad youth.
The dragon settled leisurely, folding his wings behind his back. Gently, almost tenderly, he laid his burden on the ground. Arms and legs splayed darkly. A body. Kelyn’s heart hammered. Whose?
Rashén raised a fanged snout toward the sky and roared, and though the roar surpassed all language, words resided in it. “The Exiled is dead! Slain at the Kingshield’s hands!”
Kelyn found himself on his knees, laughing, weeping. Over. Over. Can it really be over?
Around him cheers punched at the wind. The ground rumbled as phalanxes of ogres broke formation and fled.
A song rose as the Elarion lifted their hands toward the dragon. Though they were sundered, their dialects different, their song was the same. Ancient, it must’ve been. Kelyn did not know its meaning, but he heard the reverence in it. Myth had gathered from the dust, manifesting itself from the light of the sun and breath of the sky, the Mother-Father’s hand moving visibly among them.
Rashén Varél spread his wings and leapt skyward. He careened in a sharp circle about the field of the dead, then aimed his course for Kelyn’s command hill. He glided so low that Kelyn was sure the dragon meant to alight beside him. The horses broke from Kethlyn’s grip and galloped away.
Daryon stretched his arm high, reaching, a plea on his face.
Rashén’s belly dipped as he passed overhead, and Daryon’s fingertips grazed the silver flesh, and the flesh d
anced with ripples of opalescent light. The light spread down Daryon’s arm, enveloping him, emanating from him, growing so brilliant that Kelyn had to turn away.
The tip of the dragon’s tail flashed past, the wings beat with a stroke of thunder and a maelstrom of wind, and he rose, taking the blinding light with him.
Basi’s iron joints clanked as they settled into motionlessness. The purple light dimmed from the glass eyes. Kelyn didn’t understand until he saw that Lord Daryon was gone.
The Drakhan elves murmured. The rumors had been true after all. The avárithen had reclaimed their own.
~~~~
Carah followed the banks of the Leathyr at a gallop. She heard no thunder, saw no flashes of fire. Záradel felt her fear and ran the faster. It didn’t take long for the Elaran black to cover the two miles to the spring. They left Laniel far behind. He might’ve taken another of the horses, but this way Uncle Thorn couldn’t blame his oath-brother for letting Carah return.
She reined in beside the gurgling spring. No sound but wind and water. No armies. No Uncle Thorn. Both had been here. The swath of scorched grass attested to that. Ogres’ bodies smoldered. Another lay on the riverbank. A huge hand twitched. Bovine nostrils snorted.
Carah backed the horse, flung out a hand. Fire spun over her palm, ready to fly.
The ogre didn’t rise to attack her. The great chest rose and fell, and Carah recognized the rhythmic snorting for what it was. Only fairies could induce sleep so sound. If Carah had her way, the brute would sleep until he died of starvation. A flood would come along and sweep his bones downriver.
Záradel’s iron shoe clanked against metal. A shiny length of baernavë chain coiled carelessly in the grass. Carah grinned. Lothiar hadn’t captured her uncle after all.
“Damn it, where is he then?” Looked like Laniel was right. Thorn was probably back at camp, pouring himself a drink. Now who merited the I-told-you-so glare?
