The pirate pivoted, slashed with the saber, and caught the cat in the neck. The beast fell down thrashing, blood pumping from its wound.
The kill had only taken a moment, but when Anton turned back, Ehmed lay rent and squashed like the zombie. Head lowered, the lion with the fiery mane lunged at Stedd. It caught the boy in its mouth, picked him up, and ran in the direction of the other blue flames burning in the night.
Pointing with his saber, hoping someone would take notice and understand, Anton bellowed, “The boy!” Then he gave chase.
He saw immediately that he had little hope of overtaking the giant lion. The bounding strides of its long legs were too great. He forced himself to sprint even faster. Still, the beast lengthened its lead.
Then luminous scarlet netting glimmered into existence on the beast’s hind legs, entangling them and apparently sticking them to the ground. The lion pitched off balance and fell.
Anton realized who must have cast the hindering spell. He’d lost track of Umara when the common lions attacked, but thank Lady Luck, she was still alive, had discerned his need, and had followed him to help.
Eager to catch the gigantic lion, he dashed onward. Zigzagging through the trees and leaping over fallen branches, he passed close to a blue flame glowing at the bottom of a pool of rainwater. Aches throbbed down his body from his left temple and the left hinge of his jaw down to his right ankle and the joints of his right toes.
He looked down at his arms. Bumps were swelling there. The plagueland had infected him.
He lurched around and spied Umara some distance behind him. She wasn’t much more than a shadow in the dark, and he doubted she could make him out any better, but even so, her eyes widened at what she could see of his ongoing transformation.
“No farther!” he shouted, or tried to. His voice had changed, too. It sounded more like one of the lions coughing than the voice of a man.
But whether Umara had understood or not, there wasn’t time to call again. He needed to reach the beast with the fiery mane while it was still immobilized. He ran onward.
For a few strides, he thought he was going to make it. Then, flopping on its side and twisting its enormous body, the lion brought the claws on its front paws to the mesh. It tore its bonds apart, leaped up, and bounded onward.
Once again, it started to extend its lead. Then, all but imperceptible in the darkness, a length of shadow burst up from the ground beneath it, whipped around its midsection, and jerked it to another halt.
It could only mean Umara had kept following despite Anton’s warning. Otherwise, she wouldn’t still have the beast in sight to target it. Hoping she wouldn’t suffer for her tenacity, he sprinted onward and finally caught up with his quarry.
Unfortunately, by now, his steadily swelling tumors hurt even worse. Blocking out the pain as best he could, he cut at the lion’s hind legs.
The creature lowered its head and spat Stedd onto the ground. Then it roared. The thunderous sound staggered Anton and shredded the shadow tentacle into nothingness.
But Stedd was now free and even unharmed by the look of him. As the boy clambered to his feet, Anton rasped, “Run to Umara!”
Stedd stumbled farther from the lion. Anton scrambled to position himself between the child and his monstrous abductor.
A huge paw with claws like cutlasses slashed down at him. He retreated and cut with the saber. The blade sent a fan of blood flying to mix with the rain. The lion snatched its foreleg back.
With a snarl, the beast pivoted to veer around Anton and chase after Stedd. The reaver hurled himself forward, straight at the enormous talons, fangs, and sheer crushing mass of the creature, and cut at its chest.
The saber sliced deep. Too deep, evidently, for the lion to ignore. It snapped around biting and clawing, and Anton recoiled. It wouldn’t have been fast enough to carry him to even momentary safety, except that five luminous spheres, each a different color, flew at the cat’s flank and discharged their power when they hit it, one vanishing in a blast of yellow flame and another bursting like a bubble into a cascade of steaming vitriol. The barrage made the lion falter for a precious instant.
Thank you, Umara, Anton thought. But now take Stedd and run. I’ll hold back the lion somehow.
Slashing and dodging, he succeeded in doing precisely that for several breaths. But the knots in his limbs weren’t just painful anymore. They were binding and grinding his agility away, and he thought fleetingly how strange it was to fight his last fight so far away from the sea.
Then he wrenched himself out of the way of another raking attack, and in so doing, spun toward the spot where he’d last seen Stedd. The lad was still there, give or take, hovering just a few paces away with a scowl of concentration on his face. Umara was there, too, reciting and whirling her hands in spirals. Anton inferred that when the boy hadn’t fled to her, she’d run to him, and when he still refused to accompany her to safety, she’d resumed attacking the lion.
Idiots, both of them, but especially Stedd! Didn’t he understand the blue fire would kill Anton even if the monstrous lion didn’t? What in the name of the Abyss had happened to carrying out Lathander’s mission?
But then again, why was Anton surprised that everything that had happened since he’d first met the allegedly holy child was coming to naught in the end? That simply made it of a piece with the rest of life. Grinning a grin that hurt his newly crooked jaw, determined to score at least one more attack on his towering opponent, he took fresh grips on the hilts of his blades.
Then Stedd raised his hands and called the name of his deity.
Red-gold light washed through the trees. Anton cried out as pain fell away from him in an instant, the sudden relief as shocking as an unexpected blow. He glanced at his arms and found that the lumps and knots were gone.
Meanwhile, the lion faltered and shuddered as the sapphire flame wreathing its mane guttered out to reveal the shaggy gold beneath. When the last tongue of fire disappeared, it wheeled away from Anton to peer back in the direction of the camp.
Stedd dropped to his knees and then flopped onto the ground. Umara kneeled beside him.
Anton watched the lion for another breath—it had, after all, just been doing its level best to kill him—and then, still keeping a wary eye on it, he made his way to his companions. As he did, he noticed no blue flames were burning anywhere.
Stedd looked up at him with a certain smugness. “Told you … I needed to figure out the fire,” he wheezed.
CHAPTER NINE
IT REASSURED UMARA TO HEAR STEDD SPEAK, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE the child had tried to be funny. He likely hadn’t strained himself beyond endurance. Still, she asked, “Are you all right?”
“Just tired,” Stedd replied. “That was … hard.”
“Be ready,” Anton said. “The lion’s taking an interest in us again.”
Umara looked around. Cleansed of the deformities that had been gnarling him into grotesquerie, Anton stood with his bloody swords ready to threaten the gigantic cat turning back in the humans’ direction.
“It’s all right now,” said Stedd.
Umara’s intuition told her the child was correct. The danger was over. But she’d be a dismal excuse for a Red Wizard if she dropped her guard before she was certain. She rose and slid her rustwood wand from her sleeve.
Moving slowly, perhaps to make peaceful intentions evident, the lion padded toward them, and as it did, it shrank. When it halted several paces away, it still stood as high at the shoulder as the largest draught horse, but was no longer the colossus that they had battled with steel and magic.
Despite the absence of blue fire shrouding its mane and its smaller stature, the creature seemed equally impressive, although now in a majestic rather than menacing fashion. Umara almost felt like bowing to it, and when it spoke, she wasn’t surprised.
“I apologize,” the lion rumbled. “I wasn’t in control of my actions. Until the Chosen put it out, the pain of the Blue Fire maddened and diminished me
. But I am sorry and shamed nonetheless, for the harm to humans and my own children, too. I can only seek to make amends. I’ve already commanded the other lions to stop fighting and run away. Now, I’m willing to use my powers to heal or fortify any in need of it, starting with you, Lathander’s cub.”
Anton raised his saber a hair, evidently to remind the lion he was standing armed and ready. “How kind. But I’d prefer you leave the boy alone.”
“It’s all right now,” Stedd repeated. He tried to stand, then seemingly decided the effort was too much for him and settled for sitting with his back against the flaking bark of the nearest blighted tree.
Umara touched Anton on the forearm to ask him to rein in his belligerence, at least temporarily. To the lion, she said, “Who are you?”
“Nobanion,” the beast replied, “or, if you prefer, Lord Firemane.”
He grunted. “Although that name feels like mockery now.”
Anton cocked his head. “The lion lord of the forest? That’s just an old story.”
“Your great-great-grandsires knew differently,” Nobanion said. “But then the world burned, and while I sought to protect a pride of my folk, a wave of blue fire swept over me. It left me as you first saw me, perpetually in anguish. Vicious and deranged.” He turned his golden gaze on Stedd. “Until you cleansed me, and all this corrupted earth as well.”
“It’s time for the Blue Fire to go away,” said Stedd, looking embarrassed by the creature’s gratitude. “Otherwise, I couldn’t have done it.”
“You may have been insane,” Umara said, lowering her wand to her side, “but it wasn’t just delirium that made you attack us.”
“No,” Nobanion said. “In my time, I fought often against the Black-Blooded Pard and so won his hatred. Then the Lady of Mysteries died, and in the tumult that followed, he and I both suffered misfortune, but I fell farther. My agony enabled him to take revenge on me by subverting my will and enslaving me.”
Anton smiled a crooked smile. “You’re talking about Malar. Splendid. I’ve been thinking that a single divine enemy scarcely seems like enough.”
“My hunch,” Umara said, “is that the Beastlord is acting in Umberlee’s stead now that we’re away from the sea. From what I understand, they’re both powers of savagery and destruction.”
“Well,” Nobanion growled, “he won’t do it anymore, not now that you’ve restored me to myself. Not as long as you walk in my place of power.”
“You’ll protect us?” Umara asked.
“Of course,” the lion answered
“Thank you,” said Stedd, “truly. But we need even more.”
“If it’s within my power,” Nobanion said, “you’ll have it.”
“We have to get to Turmish,” said the boy, “and we aren’t traveling fast enough.”
“That can be remedied. Now, may I share my strength with you? There are men suffering beside your fires for want of the healing you and I can give them.”
Umara looked to Anton. He shrugged and stepped out of Nobanion’s way, although she noticed he didn’t sheathe his swords. She came to stand beside him.
The lion lord lowered his head and licked Stedd with a tongue big enough to cover his whole head. Apparently, it tickled; the boy laughed and squirmed.
As she and Anton looked on, Umara murmured, “Surely, our new friend is at least semi-divine. If he can regain his former estate, that’s a little more reason to believe Lathander actually has returned.”
Anton smiled. “Belief is a wonderful thing. Or at least that’s what people tell me.”
Stedd had taken to riding on Nobanion’s back with as little fuss as he might once have ridden the farm donkey or plow horse. Anton watched him bend down, hug the lion spirit’s neck, and almost bury himself in the shaggy mane to avoid bumping his head on a branch.
It was remarkable how infrequently the boy had to do that. With Nobanion for a traveling companion, Gulthandor was a more welcoming place. Game trails wound through spaces where the trees grew farther apart, brambles didn’t clog every pathway, and the ground, though not dry, didn’t threaten to suck a man’s boots off with every labored step. No doubt the lion spirit knew the best ways to traverse his own domain, but Anton suspected there was more to it than that. It was like the forest changed to reflect its monarch’s desires.
If so, perhaps that explained the travelers’ speed, not that mortal senses revealed any trace of it. Content to let Nobanion guide them, the wayfarers seemed to be hiking in a more leisurely manner than hitherto. Yet the spirit assured them they were actually crossing the forest as fast as riders on horseback might cross a plain.
Anton enjoyed the ease and peace of the trek. It was comparable to chasing Kymas’s galley with Umara when, despite the various discomforts of life aboard Falrinn’s sailboat, he’d once or twice caught himself wishing the journey could take longer.
But that interlude had ended when it ended, with life’s usual lack of regard for anyone’s wishes, and this one would, too. He told himself he’d be better off when it did.
Walking beside him, the hair on her scalp grown out to fuzz, Umara gave him a quizzical frown, and he realized he’d been tramping along in silence for a while. He tried to think of something to say, something that would mask the actual trend of his reflections, and then Nobanion came to a halt and lowered himself onto his belly, as was his habit when Stedd needed to climb on or off.
“This is as far as I go,” the lion said.
“Already?” asked Stedd. Perhaps, his sense of urgency notwithstanding, he too had been enjoying the easy traveling.
“Yes,” Nobanion said. “After a century of neglect, I have to tend to the needs of the prides and the forest as a whole. And my part in your undertaking is done. You’ll see that, I believe, if you don’t allow the sadness of parting to cloud your vision.”
The boy sighed. “I guess I do.” He ruffled his fingers through the spirit’s mane as he might have petted a shaggy dog, then clambered down onto the ground.
The Thayan mariners regarded Nobanion with a touch of the same regret. That too was remarkable when Anton thought about it. They were hard men who in large measure justified their homeland’s grim reputation, and mere days before, the lion spirit had led the attack that killed several of their fellows. Yet in the time since, his air of nobility had won them over. Or perhaps Stedd’s steadfast eagerness to forgive and see goodness in everyone had inspired them to do the same.
Fools, the lot of them, Anton thought, and then Nobanion turned toward him and Umara.
“Stedd needs the help of everyone here,” the lion rumbled. “But you two have known him longest and best. You, he needs most of all.”
“Needs to do what?” Anton replied. “Do you know?”
Nobanion grunted. “No. But I have no doubt it truly is a charge laid on him by the Morninglord, and vitally important.”
“Well,” Anton said, “I’ve put up with the brat this far.” He gave Stedd a wink. “I suppose I can tolerate him for a few miles farther.”
“I already pledged to help him,” Umara said, a bit of Red Wizard hauteur showing through even though she addressed a demigod, or something not far short of one.
Nobanion’s golden eyes scrutinized them for another breath or two. Then he turned and padded back the way they’d come.
Anton blinked, or felt as if he might have, and in that instant, the huge lion disappeared. With his departure, even the trail back into the depths of Gulthandor looked suddenly indistinct and overgrown, like it was disappearing now that he didn’t need it anymore.
Fortunately, the trail to the east remained as clearly defined and passable as before. And when the travelers glimpsed the brown ramparts of the Orsraun Mountains to the south, and later came upon a circle of the warty-looking mushrooms called spit-thrice, it was evident, to Anton at least, that Nobanion had kept his promise to see the human travelers safety to the limits of his domain.
That night, the pirate lay waiting while the cam
pfires burned down and his companions snored and shifted under whatever coverings they’d contrived to keep off the rain. A sentry was also awake, but he wasn’t looking in Anton’s direction. When the moment felt right, the Turmishan rose silently, buckled on his saber and cutlass, and picked up the rest of his gear.
As he tucked his crossbow, quiver, bundles, and wadded blanket under his arms, his gaze fell on Stedd. The boy lay mostly concealed under a blanket, but his golden hair stuck out and gleamed even in the waning firelight.
Something clenched in Anton’s neck and chest. He didn’t know precisely what he was feeling, but that was all right because he didn’t want to know. Scowling, he tried to will it away and feel nothing.
The sentry was looking away to the north, perhaps wistfully, considering that was where the sea was. Anton crept west, back up the section of trail the travelers had traversed before the light failed.
He soon reached a stand of beeches. Once he passed through, he’d be out of sight of the camp and vice versa. He felt a momentary urge to take a last look back and made himself quicken his stride instead.
When he reached the other side, he set down the articles he was carrying and started to roll his blanket. Then a voice asked, “Why?”
He dropped the blanket, pivoted away from the sound, and snatched for the hilts of his swords. He had them halfway drawn when he realized the disembodied voice was female and, in fact, familiar.
Umara wavered from invisible to visible, semitransparent and blurry for a moment, then locking into opacity and focus. The darkness hid the complex layered textures of her mage’s garb and turned the red cloth black, but it didn’t conceal her frown.
He took a breath. “I would have thought it beneath the dignity of a Red Wizard to play pranks.”
“If I gave you a fright,” Umara answered, “that’s the least you deserve.”
“Did you follow me out of camp?”
She shook her head. “I was waiting for you here. The moment you promised Nobanion you’d stay with Stedd, I knew you were lying.”
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