Jikun’s heart froze as the immense, winged silhouette lashed down yet again and peeled the serpent’s scales back like paper.
A dragon. A god-damn dragon in the middle of a wasteland.
Navon’s corpse slid past the serpent’s slacked jaw, breaking Jikun’s paralysis. His companion’s body hit the ground, rolled once, and then… the Helven convulsed suddenly.
With that contortion, the face in the smoke disappeared. Navon’s eyes shot open.
‘Navon is alive?!’ Jikun pushed off the sole of his boot, sprinting hysterically across the earth. Even at his distance, Jikun could hear the male gasp for breath. “Navon! Get up! Run!” he shouted, grappling to be heard over the rising wind. ‘What in Ramul is going on?!’ A serpent had been enemy enough without the addition of legs and wings and god-damn fire! ‘Fucking Ramul!’ His cloak whipped out, threatening to topple him. “Navon, GET UP!”
The Helven flipped onto his chest, scrambling to his feet despite his palpable confusion. Wild strands of his dark hair were still plastered to his face with blood, and his eyes searched frantically where the spectral fog had dissipated.
Jikun dared to look away, out across the sands. Any possible explanation for the dragon’s origins was lost within the smoldering city; instead, his gaze immediately fell upon a figure racing past the base of a dune, eyes fixed upon the battle of the behemoths with surprising serenity. A man in white.
‘He escaped…? Why is he coming this way…?!’
The serpent discerned the arrival at that same moment and with inexplicable vengeance, lashed its tail furiously toward the man. In an instant, the dragon struck its head, talons piercing into the skull. The blow left the tail to slam harmlessly into the sand beside the man. He gave a single shout before he slid down the rolling dune in a sprint directly toward Jikun and Navon.
Navon stirred suddenly into comprehension. “Is that a dragon?” he managed to croak.
But before Jikun could utter his weak conception of events, his words were drowned by the eruption of an otherworldly shriek. A charge blazed across the sky behind them, a tangle of red and grey light that writhed with hollow faces. ‘NECROMANCY!’ His confusion had little opportunity to grow before the spell sliced clean through the dragon’s leathery wings, sending the creature plummeting into the dunes below.
At the thunderous crash, the serpent lifted its head, shaking it to and fro in a daze. Its gaze wandered back to the little elves stupefied within its shadow.
“I don’t know what in Ramul is happening! Just run—!” Jikun bellowed in panic, hooking Navon beneath the arm to shove him forward. To his left, the man in white had let out a horrified cry, skidding to a stop before the smoldering remains of the dragon. He swept his hand once and the beast vanished. Then, with a twist in his dirty white silk, the man was running once more.
‘Who in the Nine Realms…?!’ As though the rising necromantic winds demanded the same answer, the white hood was whipped back in a forceful gale.
A fair face ashen in discomfort and fury was revealed beneath. Not a man. An elf. A Sel’ven, no less! And through the chaos of the battle around Jikun, his mind was slow to comprehend the features lifted straight from Sel’varian paintings and murals and history books. A face even the Darivalians still taught.
He started with recognition. ‘Darcarus? Darcarus?!’ What in the Nine Realms was the True Blood Prince doing in Dahel?!
And who had managed to slay his dragon?
There was a flicker of crimson light and Jikun’s eyes shot past the prince, in the direction of the last necromantic surge; there was an enemy amongst the sands, far greater in power than the True Blood and his beast. Instantly Jikun spotted him—the sheen of the sun’s glow was obscured by a torrent of sunken faces swarming back to the broad figure. The unnatural gust of wind caused the cream-colored mantle adorning the man’s shoulders to whip away from the worn, leather vest below. A thick, powerful body; coarse, tanned hands; and a stern face with a command readied on his lips.
Relstavum.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘What in Ramul is going on?!’ But Jikun did not have long to consider the human: the necromancer who had ripped the souls from the city of Dahel. Whatever his plans, they were not in their favor.
As the human raised his arm above the sand, the serpent reared. Through its visible pain, clarity was returning.
“Navon!” Jikun roared.
The force of his shout dislodged the elf from his thoughts. Navon whirled, eyes meeting Jikun’s, and a sudden wave of familiarity dawned over him. Whether or not he recalled the most recent events Jikun could not say, but upon seeing the serpent, Navon immediately sprang forward and propelled his legs into a run. North. All he knew was to flee north toward the silhouette of something exposed by the serpent’s trail.
Yards away, the male in white—Darcarus—was sprinting in determination to reach their sides. As though they could possibly offer him aid. Before he managed another step, a booming voice filled the desert sands, conjuring tendrils of necromancy to surge from the ground beneath his feet. The True Blood pitched forward with an agonized scream, but Navon’s fingers twisted into a countering symbol of his own. With a yowl of defiance, the tendrils were constrained once more into the earth.
‘Relstavum is after the prince? The damn True Blood is going to get us killed!’ Jikun thought, even as he reached out to yank the Sel’ven to their side. Hundreds of explanations and possibilities flitted through his mind in an instant, but answers to the chaos would have to wait. Jikun’s movement became instinctual. They had to escape the necromancer!
He saw a blur from the corner of his vision—while he had paused to save the god-damn prince, the hel’onja had regained its senses and was now barreling toward them from the north. “RUN!” Jikun swung Navon away from his attempts to change direction and shoved him toward the serpent.
Navon had been in battle long enough to trust Jikun unquestioningly, and so he ran, the Sel’ven dogging their heels.
Jikun was at their side, his boots pounding against the sand, sinking in. Dragged down like a god-damn anchor yet again. But he ran. He felt an icy wisp of dark magic rush over his head, but he did not look back. Not even as his skin tightened—stretched against his bone, threatening to tear free of his body as though it were merely a loose fragment of clothing. He shrieked in pain…!
The serpent lunged.
Both of Jikun’s hands extended. One took the Sel’ven by the arm, hurling him out of harm’s way, and Jikun used the momentum to twist to the side. Still, it was not distant enough to fully avoid the serpent’s dive. Its nose scraped past his ribs and he felt the crack of bone giving way beneath the force. One… two—he stopped counting and refocused. His fingers slid along the side of the beast’s armored scales, calling upon the proximity of its internal moisture even as its eye smashed into his shoulder, tearing his arm free of its socket. He slowed, stumbled…
But his magic had already taken effect. The serpent’s scales swelled and burst, great spires of ice erupting from the center of its body, spraying the hot sand with a sizzle of blood.
Jikun directed one such stalagmite south, toward where Relstavum still stood in his concentrated throes of necromancy. Surprise lit the man’s face for an instant before he was forced to plunge into a nearby dune to avoid being skewered by the onslaught of ice.
Jikun did not cease running. He scanned the cursed, barren horizon. There was nothing! Nothing but that tiny ridge of exposed stone!
“Run for the rock!” Navon shouted.
Jikun’s lungs were throbbing now—his breath emerged in short, agonized wheezes through his broken ribs. But even in his pain he could still jab, “Where else?!” He heard a low rumble from behind and swiveled in time to see the tip of the snake’s tail disappear below the cursed surface. “This thing is fucking persistent!” ‘Run, just run!’ he commanded himself, pushing his legs until they rebelled with exhaustion.
“What is it?!” Navon cried a
s the ridge before them began to take shape.
“It’s a…!”
“It’s a cave!” Darcarus exclaimed.
The grains before them rippled and Jikun vaulted to the side. “Go around!” he hollered as the serpent’s head punctured the earth, showering them with sand. He swept his hand against the shimmering scales, now slick with blood, and sent a barrage of ice once more through its back. “Go!”
Salvation was nigh, but Jikun felt his heart plummet through his chest. The “cave” was no more than a small stone ridge, its opening hardly larger than a Darivalian pup.
They would never get through in time!
Darcarus tore the clasp from his throat and the excess fabric of his cloak fell away as he slid into the narrow crevice.
Jikun gave Navon a forceful thrust toward the hole. “In!” he commanded. Navon dropped obediently to the sand, rolling into the darkness.
As Jikun fell to his knees before the opening, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a series of strange markings etched across its surface, glowing oddly in the shadow of the beast behind him. ‘What is that…?’
Suddenly, a scream resounded from the dark and a hand flashed out to latch onto Jikun’s cloak.
“Wha—?!” He gagged as the hand tightened, constricting his breathing. There was a tug at his neck and Jikun was wrenched into the void. Into the darkness. He felt a wall sweeping past him and smelled the rapid advancement of damp earth from below. His arms flailed, but already the nearness of soil was gone. Instead, a light appeared to his right.
Jikun’s breath caught.
He was plummeting into a great dome of russet stone beneath the earth. A series of small holes pierced the top where dawn’s light shone down in wide, gentle rays to illuminate the inner ground with a soft glow.
Jikun’s attention was pulled from the sight as he noticed the cliffs directly below, just in time to twist his torso toward his feet. He landed with a twinge beside Navon.
* * *
Navon let out a similar moan. “We lost him! Thank Sel’ari!” And what a miraculous stroke of fortune that they had dropped safely to a ledge! He inspected the distant hole of the cavern through which they had fallen, five yards up. In his condition, the Darivalian would be of no assistance reaching the tunnel.
Navon grimaced as he turned away, at once aware of the waves of pain assaulting his body. Perhaps he was not as unharmed as he had first assumed…
He hastily released Jikun’s cloak, which was still grasped white-knuckled in his palm. “Are you alright?” he queried, rocking back on his heels. “Gods! What in the Nine Realms was that?! I cannot believe we scraped by death yet again!” He tucked his hand against the warm wet of his side, trying to gauge the flow of blood without drawing Jikun’s attention to the wound. “It’s like something out of A Dwarf’s Tale—like when Braisebin and his comrades plummeted through the roof of that old estate in Donsury, only to find—”
“Gods, you’re such a savant,” Jikun groaned. He had edged to the face of the grungy wall on their right to slam his shoulder against its craggy surface. There was an audible pop as the joint snapped back into its socket.
“…Savant is not an insult,” Navon sighed, but trailed off from launching into a full rebuke. He had comprehended, for the first time, that they were not alone.
‘Who…?’
He surveyed the male to their right with militaristic detail. The Sel’ven was perched on the tips of his expensive, yet heavily scuffed, leather boots as he considered the distance to the egress above. His hair was blond, layered with darker strands of gold, and loosely braided in a conservative fashion. His clothes—once exquisitely embellished cotton—were faded past their due. Yet even after the chaos, he remained strikingly elegant. His blue eyes were sharp and focused, emanating an intelligence that his youthful, scarless face failed to wholly display.
His words, however, were jarring. “You have got to be shitting me,” he was muttering furiously to himself. “To Ramul with Lady Luck—no wonder he tried to kill you!”
Navon’s jaw visibly dropped, but he could find no words to utter his conflicting emotions. Wealth, heritage, and refinement radiated from the male’s lean and powerful figure, yet his words were dull and crass, of no greater wit than the Darivalian’s beside him.
And to what in Emal’drathar was he referring?
Still… Navon knew this figure as well as he knew any legend from his books! Every elf could identify this male! “Prince Da… Da… Darcar—”
But before he could stammer out his disbelief—and admittedly feverish adoration of the apparition of a genuine True Blood—his vision of the male was obscured. Jikun’s senses had finally cleared and he stepped between them, holding his rib cage gingerly and glaring down at Navon with the weight of all his conceivable threats combined.
A cuffing would be the least of these forms.
“What in Ramul happened up there?!” he roared, reaching out and smacking Navon’s hand away from his side.
It had been foolish to imagine the veteran would not notice.
Jikun’s eyes briefly assessed the wound for severity and when he seemed satisfied that Navon could take his beating, he pounced, ripping the amulet from the male’s neck to fling it savagely over the side of the cliff.
Navon flinched. Yes, the dam with which his general had managed to contain his panic and fear was finally cracking.
“What I have gathered so far is that we have crashed, starved, fled Dahel half-naked, been nearly devoured by a snake, and, of course, been hunted and assaulted by a necromancer!” Jikun hissed, extending a finger. He jabbed over the cliff to what Navon could only fathom was the charm. “Protection my ass… There is a millennium-worth of things I want to say about your naïve trust in others, but I cannot pause to berate you fully without first addressing the chaos that took place back up there! I haven’t forgotten: ‘the GODS HAVE A PLAN FOR US!’” He let out a bellow of laughter that caused Navon’s insides to fold. “Does that plan include dying, Captain? Because I have seen enough dead men to recognize the state, and you… died!”
The prince shifted into view at those words. His eyes slid back and forth between the two males, piercing with such familiarity that Navon could have no doubt. ‘He knows who we are… Of course he knows who we are!’
He tried expeditiously to pull himself up with some semblance of pride, but the snarl in his side refused to comply.
The prince’s lips twitched empathetically. He opened his mouth in an attempt to insert information somewhere into Jikun’s tirade. “Relstavum was—”
But Jikun rounded immediately on the male, his fist curling in warning. “Shut up, you Sel’varian cunt. Don’t move, don’t talk… don’t even breathe…!—I will address you when I have finished.”
The prince bristled, but Navon was unable to witness any further reaction as Jikun whirled around once more to grasp him by the front of his cloak. He jerked him close, locking eyes in challenge.
And yet Navon could read beneath Jikun’s acrimony to that well-masked fear. Was it comradery, or terror in what the necromancy had done…?
Navon could not be certain.
“I died,” he repeated solemnly, wise enough to agree—though he had not had time to consider for himself what had truly occurred. “I died…” And as he repeated the words, the darkness in his mind swelled, as though it was a physical entity merely waiting for an invitation. It forced the stoicism of Riphath aside and a vague memory washed in to replace the hero, rife with feelings he did not recognize. “Yes… I think I passed…” he trailed off as a cackle of mad laughter echoed somewhere in the recesses of his mind. ‘Who…?’ But then it was gone and Navon doubted that it had ever been. He spoke aloud as his mind struggled to piece together the events. “I cast that last spell and then… I was standing in front of a gate.”
His eyes widened. That gate. How had he forgotten such a place? It was so clear now…! An ancient, tarnished, bronze gate, rising toward a starless sky s
plashed with scarlet, luminous clouds. Ashen earth, as though an all-consuming fire had scorched any trace of life from it. An… unnatural place where the air was so dry it seemed palpably cracked.
And a breeze that tugged him, gently, forward…
Navon felt a chill sweep down his spine. He knew the place. He must have seen it countless times before… But he had never been so conscious or lingered so long.
The Realms of the Dead.
What words would Tiras use to expound such a place?! Navon struggled to wrest the ancient necromancer’s thoughts and emotions to mind, but found them oddly distant. Hazy. ‘What would Tiras…?’ But his mind faltered, realizing with unsettling anxiety that he could remember very little of the necromancer’s character.
Ephraim? Eraydon?
But they too seemed lost. A bubble of anxiety rose in his gut. ‘Calm, calm… there are a hundred more!’ And so he clung once more to Riphath, willing the intellectual and tranquil mind of the Noc’olari to dominate his personal fears.
With that unproblematic change, the words left Navon’s lips with utter and sincere fascination. “There was unnatural light around me and yet the earth was dark. There was a giant before me… twenty feet tall… A tremendous, demonic beast wearing radiant armor… He said something…” Navon paused, remembering the pale face bearing down upon him, as smooth as a Sel’ven’s, yet lacking all hints of life—the hair had dulled, the cheeks were grey, the eyes were sunken and had mislaid their shine. A serene voice had resounded in his mind.
“The Realms are prepared to ferry you home…” Navon repeated slowly. And the image was suddenly clear—not the darkness that swallowed him when he cast his spells upon the hel’onja, but a crisp, clean memory of a world not unlike the Æntara in its heavy scent of earth and putrid odor of decay. What had allowed him to remain so conscious?—So present in his magic?! “Like Tiras…!” he whispered. ‘I was cognizant in the Realms, the same as Tiras!’
Heroes or Thieves (Steps of Power 2) Page 13
