The sorcerers surrounding the pit ceased their chanting and gasped in horror. Lucien whisked his dagger across the boy’s throat and pushed him into the pit, and in the same moment another sorcerer fell as the brown-skinned swordsman continued his murderous rampage. Lucien grabbed his blackened staff and felt the power surge up his arm as he darted from the pit’s edge, his mind focused on a single thought: Dónall mac Taidg must die!
*
At the forest’s edge, Dónall spun his leaf-shaped blade through the air, reciting poetic Fae words to feed the cyclone’s fury. Their plan had worked perfectly. Khalil had dispatched the sorcerers who posed the nearest threat, while Isaac focused the light of his crystal onto Dónall, combining their energies and strengthening their collective power.
The howling wind eclipsed the chanting of the sorcerers and the Nephilim priest who towered over the pit, weaving patterns in the air. His hands glowed with a ghostly blue fire, leaving momentary streaks in the air in the shape of perverse symbols. The giant appeared ancient. His beard, streaked with white, hung past his groin, his long hair spilled like a wild mane over his shoulders, and his muscles bunched and knotted like the gnarled roots of an ancient tree.
Dónall focused on the prisoners, for their sacrifice empowered this ritual. He whipped his sword in the direction of the cage, and the cyclone lurched, sucking the poles from the ground and shredding ropes. He concentrated to keep the tempest away from the men, who staggered from the breach as if in a fog. The two hulking Nephilim who guarded the cage backed away in retreat, shielding their eyes from the debris torn up by the cyclone, and the sorcerers at the pit’s edge were scrambling. Dónall pointed his sword at the two closest to the cyclone, and though they tried to scatter, the cyclone struck, sucking them into its ravenous maw. The whirling vortex, devouring earth and rocks from the chasm’s edge, flung three more black-robed forms screaming into the pit.
Dónall’s hope soared as he stepped out into the red plain. The closer he put himself to the cyclone, the greater his control over it. He strode toward the pit.
Khalil continued the attack, leaving one of the sorcerers moaning on the ground, trying to hold in his spilling guts. The curved blade plunged through another’s chest, and as Khalil pulled it free, the man tumbled into the pit. Isaac followed Dónall onto the plain, focusing the light, which bathed Dónall in a hazy white glow.
As the cyclone sucked in smoke from the pit and chewed up the surrounding earth, the bearded giant stopped weaving its fell symbols in the air. It stood seven feet tall, but Dónall’s cyclone was many times its size.
Dónall thrust his leaf-shaped blade outward, and the cyclone swelled and then struck, meeting the giant’s outstretched hand. Blue fire flared from the giant’s palm; then, suddenly, the cyclone exploded. The power that encircled Dónall’s blade drained from his hands, and the funnel cloud began to dissipate, spraying smoke and earth across the pit. Particles of debris rained down on Dónall and Isaac. The vortex was gone, as if it had never existed. Across the pit, the giant laughed.
“What happened?” Isaac cried.
Dónall’s legs buckled. He felt drained, as if whatever dissipated the cyclone had sapped his own energy as well.
“At six hundred years old,” said a familiar voice, “the Nephilim high priest is far more adept at the Fae arts than you.”
Dónall turned to his left. Ten paces away stood Lucien. Two feet of flame blazed from the tip of the staff in his hand.
“I should have killed you with the others, old friend,” Lucien snarled. “But this is just as well.” Winding back his arm, he hurled the staff, like a lance, toward Isaac and Dónall.
As the staff hit the earth, its tip erupted in a ball of fire, knocking Dónall backward with the explosion. Burning pain enveloped his face and arms, and he collided hard with the ground, his habit smoking from the heat.
He struggled to move, but his limbs lacked the strength. He was at the brink of the pit and could feel its heat and smell the suffocating stench of brimstone. Hearing a deep growl from the pit’s depths, Dónall slowly turned his head. Ten feet away lay Isaac, smoke wafting from his robes, his beard singed to his chin, his skin blistered. He moaned faintly. To his left, Dónall heard Khalil groan.
Sandals crunched over the charred ground. Lucien looked down at them. “You cannot stop it, Dónall. This time, the drama shall have a different ending. Can’t you hear the Dragon’s growl?”
Dónall winced. His chest ached with every breath. His right arm fell over the pit’s edge, into the hot air of the void below. From the depths of the pit, the growling rumbled again, growing louder with each breath.
“Yes,” Lucien said. “The Dragon shall come, and you shall provide the final sacrifice that brings him here.” As he spoke, the ground shook with faint tremors. Behind Lucien loomed another figure: that of the long-bearded giant. Its mouth opened in a toothless grin. Sigils and runes covered its bone white flesh.
Dónall glanced away and caught Isaac in his gaze. The rabbi dug his fingers into the earth, and white light glowed from the crystal beneath his palm.
Should I? Isaac mouthed.
And at once, Dónall knew. Isaac had recalled their lessons well. With a crystal, a man could split the earth. Summoning what strength remained to him, Dónall nodded to Isaac. Do it.
Isaac thrust his palm harder against the ground. The tremor began faintly but quickly intensified until the earth beneath them shook violently.
For an instant, Dónall’s thoughts returned to Reims, to a time with Thomas on the wooded hilltops outside the city, and the murder that followed, when everything changed so horribly.
Feeling the rage invigorate his limbs, Dónall lunged and grabbed the hem of Lucien’s robes. Lucien flailed as his sandals slipped on the quaking earth and Dónall wrenched him to the ground.
Around them, the earth cracked. Dónall pressed his face against Lucien’s and stared into his terrified eyes. “This is for all of them,” he growled. “For Nicolas, and Remi, and Thomas and Martha!”
At the death pit’s edge, the ground gave way, and chunks of earth crumbled into the chasm. The earth beneath the giant’s legs collapsed, and losing its balance, it toppled forward into the pit like a hewn tree. The earth beneath Dónall’s shoulder began to sag. And then he fell, clinging to Lucien’s robes, caught within a landslide of clay and rock, as Isaac plunged with them into the heat and smoke and ash.
Lucien unleashed a horrific scream, the wild cry of a damned soul.
Dónall closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. And surrendered to the abyss.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
THE PRIME CONFLICT
The Fae cavalry crashed into the Franks like the tip of a giant spear. Horses, spears, and shields clashed with a thunderous sound. Beneath the darkening sky where smoke from the death pit swirled over Rosefleur, Fae riders drove their spears into the first wave of Franks.
Ciarán’s heart pounded beneath his mail. As the first line of Franks buckled, Fae swords rang from their scabbards. The raving Franks fought wildly, which only quickened their deaths as the Fae attacked with preternatural strength and speed, cleaving through the Frankish spearmen, severing heads and limbs.
Alais clung to Ciarán, who rode behind Orionde in the center of the Fae’s deadly wedge. The Franks howled like beasts as their comrades fell silent under the Fae blades. Blood flew through the air, and spears glanced off Fae armor and off their horses’ barding. The wild men put up only a feeble resistance, but then came the Nephilim behind them. Wielding spears ten feet long, the giants stabbed over the ranks of men and into the oncoming riders. Beside Ciarán, one of the spears impaled both rider and horse. To his right, one of the Nephilim thrust its spear, impaling a Fae rider and lifting her from her mount. Without its rider to defend it, the charger became easy prey for the spearmen’s wild thrusts. A Frank charged, his spear leveled at Alais. Ciarán began to draw the blade from its scabbard, but in a heartbeat one of the Fae intercepted
the Frank, shearing his helmed head from his shoulders.
In front of him, Orionde repeated her command: “Keep the weapon sheathed!”
The Nephilim formed a wall behind the Frankish spearmen, and the riders crashed into it like a wave against a sheer cliff. Horses toppled, impaled on the massive spears. Fae leaped toward the giants, slicing through iron breastplates. In front of Orionde, the lead rider raised her sword to parry a spear thrust from one of the seven-foot giants. The spear glanced against the blade and slid into the Fae’s gut. Orionde whipped her sword from its scabbard and spurred her mount into a thickly muscled giant whose chalky face was a twisted mask of fury. The two collided, and Orionde cut a gash through the giant’s ribs. He recoiled, clutching at the gushing wound. The giant had been the last of the enemy ranks standing in the way; the plain beyond was now clear.
“Now!” Orionde cried, and charged the gap in the Nephilim ranks.
Ciarán kicked his charger’s flanks, and it surged ahead in Orionde’s wake as the battle raged on around them. The surviving Fae fought on, screaming their shrill battle cry.
Behind Ciarán, Alais screamed. Her arms, wrapped around his waist only moments ago, were losing their grip. Turning his head, Ciarán understood, for one of the Franks had grabbed Alais’ right leg and was being pulled alongside their mount. Two more Franks clung to the first, forming like a human chain, using their collective weight to drag her from the horse. The Franks glared up at her, wild-eyed, their faces consumed with madness.
“Ciarán!” Alais screamed.
Without a second thought, Ciarán pulled the sword from its scabbard and swung downward, severing the Frank’s forearm. Wailing, the man fell away, and the three Franks tumbled over each other on the red plain. Alais hugged Ciarán tightly. “Thank you,” she gasped. He smiled back, realizing that she was safe—and that they had broken free of the enemy lines.
Ahead, Orionde sped over the wind-swept plain, through the carnage of the earlier battle, heading for the forest’s edge, her white cloak streaming behind her. Ciarán urged his mare forward, praying it could keep pace. Then the earth beneath the horse’s hooves quaked. Hearing Alais gasp, he glanced back over his shoulder to see massive chunks of Rosefleur crash down into the plain with a deafening sound, throwing a cloud of reddish dust and debris over the men and Nephilim and Fae on the battlefield. As tons of stone from the great spire toppled to the earth, the cloud of debris exploded outward. At the edge of that billowing cloud fed by Rosefleur’s cascading remnants rode three figures. Fear clenched Ciarán’s gut, for their pursuers were Nephilim.
Ciarán looked at the unsheathed sword in his hand and, realizing his mistake, sheathed it quickly. But the damage was done.
The pursuing Nephilim rode aurochs, the great bull-like beasts that pulled the massive siege engines. Two of the riders carried massive spiked clubs, but the lead rider held a lance.
Orionde glanced back. “You should not have used the weapon,” she said. “The Nephilim prince knows you hold Enoch’s device, and comes for it now. We must hurry!”
The aurochs, with horns as long and as thick as a man’s arm, moved faster than their size suggested, and were closing on the horses. A hundred yards ahead, mist wisped from between the tree branches at the forest’s edge.
“Faster!” Alais pleaded.
Ciarán glanced backward to find that the aurochs and their riders had closed half the distance between them. The lead rider’s face burned with inhuman rage and black runes decorated his muscled torso, as if Abaddon himself pursued them from the edge of Hell.
Orionde reached the forest first, but Ciarán and Alais were just a mare’s tail behind her. They plunged into the wet, murky mist, scraping past branches and brambles. Orionde stretched out her hand, and the mist parted as if blasted away by a sudden gale, revealing a corridor two hundred yards long, blanketed with fallen leaves. It formed a straight path down a tunnel of overarching branches stretching from the shadowy oaks.
“Through there!” Orionde cried out. “It is the gateway to the valley!”
They raced down the tunnel, approaching the opaque curtain of mist at its end. Behind them, Ciarán could hear the aurochs’ great cloven hooves thundering over the forest floor. In a few heartbeats, Orionde was but thirty yards from the end, with Ciarán and Alais just behind.
Alais’ fingers dug into Ciarán’s side. “Oh, God,” she cried. “Ciarán, jump!”
Looking back, he saw the Nephilim prince draw back his lance. Ciarán wrapped his arm around Alais and leaped the instant before the lance hurtled through the air, hitting the mare. The beast lost its legs and tumbled onto the leaf-covered ground.
Ciarán and Alais crashed to the earth, their momentum driving them forward until they rolled to a stop. The lance had caught the mare in the rump and traveled straight through its belly. The panicked beast, still aware, slid toward the gateway along with its fallen riders.
Cool mist brushed across Ciarán’s face. By the time he stopped rolling, he found himself on the grassy field of the Val d’Anglin. Alais lay beside him, struggling to catch her breath.
Across the battlefield, Angevin horsemen pursued clusters of William’s spearmen. The bodies of warriors and horses littered the grass. The corpse of a slain spearman, one of the younger boys Ciarán had seen upon their arrival at the camp, lay not ten paces away. Spears and weapons lost in the battle lay scattered across the nearby grass.
Behind Alais, where the wall of oaks towered at the forest’s edge, something moved in the shroud of mist. A figure stepped out of the murk. At first, its shadowy form looked eight feet tall, yet as the giant neared the threshold to the Val d’Anglin, it diminished to human proportions, though still taller than most men.
Alais let out a horrified gasp as Adémar of Blois stepped through the misty veil.
The bishop’s chest was bare and still painted with runes, and his feral visage shone with the same rage that Ciarán had seen on the face of the Nephilim prince. Sorcery had allowed the Nephilim prince to pass freely from the Otherworld, just as Orionde had warned. With a chill, Ciarán realized what she had meant, and suddenly the bishop and his perverse motives all made sense.
Adémar picked up a weapon from the ground—a flanged mace large enough to be wielded with two hands, although Adémar hefted it with one, as if its weight were nothing.
Aching and rattled from the fall, Ciarán lifted himself off the ground. He grabbed the hilt of the sword and whisked it from its scabbard.
“So the champion of men is the heretics’ son?” Adémar smirked. “For all the centuries I have waited, I expected to face a great warrior like Charlemagne, not some whelp from an island of drunken Celts.”
Before Ciarán could reply, Adémar struck, and Ciarán just managed to jerk his blade into the mace’s path. As pain reverberated down his arms, Adémar whipped the mace around and hammered Ciarán’s hip, knocking him to the ground. The mail hauberk might have saved him from a sword cut, but it offered little protection against the mace’s bludgeoning blows. Ciarán scrambled, relieved that he could still walk but worried that his hip bone might be cracked. Adémar drove the mace downward, but Ciarán rolled, and the head of the mace smashed into the earth.
“Prepare to die,” Adémar hissed, “just like your friend Niall.”
In a surge of anger, Ciarán thrust the sword toward Adémar’s legs. Adémar heaved his weapon up from the ground, and the blade clanged against the mace’s iron shaft.
“Your ancestors have failed you, boy,” Adémar growled. “The truths of Arcanus were forgotten, their very existence shrouded by ignorance and piety. Your mentor’s discovery came too late!”
On his feet now, Ciarán staggered backward, panting, the sword growing heavier in his hand. He swung again, and the tip of the blade grazed Adémar’s chest, drawing a thin thread of blood. With a roar, Adémar struck a fierce upward blow, which glanced off the mail of Ciarán’s chest and into his chin. He toppled backward, arms windmilling, and
the sword slipped from his grasp.
Ciarán crashed to the ground, blood gurgling in his throat, and slowly raised his throbbing head. Looming over him, Adémar hefted his mace.
“And so it ends,” he said.
*
Alais watched, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Ciarán lay prone, blood spilling from his lips as he fought to lift his head. And there, standing over him, was the man who had raped her. On Adémar’s naked back, an old wound ran between his shoulder blades—the spot where her dagger had struck. She glanced over at the slain spearman and saw something lying beside him in the grass.
Fire filled her veins. Grabbing the spear, Alais rushed at Adémar, sinking the spear tip into the old wound.
Adémar howled in pain and rage and flailed, ripping the spear shaft from her hand. Then he grasped at the spear and pulled it from his back.
Alais glared at him in defiant rage. “I won’t watch you kill him, you god-cursed monster!”
Adémar swung his free hand, catching her in the chest. The air rushed from her lungs, and she felt herself falling, fighting to draw another breath.
*
“Alais!” Ciarán cried. The shock of what she had done jolted him to his feet as his anger swelled.
“Nephilim!” he cried, picking up the sword and swinging at Adémar’s flank. Adémar spun and parried with the mace, then landed a fist to the base of Ciarán’s jaw, knocking him onto the wet grass. Ciarán’s eyes fell to the sword.
“It’s powerless, you know,” Adémar mocked. “Nothing more than a myth.”
Ciarán glanced between his attacker and the weapon with its gray gemstone. Adémar’s words reminded him of something Dónall often said: “There’s truth behind those old myths—just like the ones Maugis scrawled in his book!” The realization crashed over Ciarán like a wave. Recalling the last of Maugis’ riddles, he looked at the gemstone embedded in the sword’s pommel.
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