Yarr whirled around to get some distance between himself and the gargant. He did not reach for the dagger he held in reserve. Instead, he crouched and whirled around again with his hands wide and his legs bent and ready to leap. Dhon struck at G’rkyr’s head, chest, and chest again. The gargant blocked each strike and then, with a sudden swiftness, his blade lashed out again. Dhon groaned, and the ax, pulled back with both hands over his head in preparation for a strike, fell to the dirt.
Even as Yarr leaped into the air, G’rkyr cut his blade across Dhon’s middle, and Dhon cried out, “Grim take you!” But the voice was straggled and far away as Dhon staggered and fell. The Fhurtroll held in his guts with one hand while he groped the ground for his ax handle with the other. Yarr landed on G’rkyr’s back at the same time the gargant tried to kick away Dhon’s ax.
Yarr used his legs, locked them around the gargant’s neck and squeezed with all his might. His hands he locked around the chin to keep the gargant’s head where he wanted it.
Amidst the cheers, claps, and boot stomps, Yarr felt the world slow and shift around him. It was almost as if he was the only one alive. That everyone and everything else was beyond this time and place. That he was seeing through another’s eyes. He heard a voice. It seemed very far away; it was screaming, screaming a single word: “Nooooooooooooooo!”
Yarr was falling, but it was the gargant who fell and not him. His legs and arms were fixed in place. He waited until the last, dropped and rolled as the gargant hit the ground, squarely on his back. The sharp strike was meant to crush Yarr, but instead pushed the wind out of the gargant.
Yarr closed his eyes against the dust spray, but did not pause. He drew his dagger, lunged forward from his knees. He found the gap between the gargant’s armor and shoulder, shoved the dagger in. Using the blade dug into flesh as leverage, he swing himself up to the gargant’s chest, then withdrew the blade and aimed it at the gargant’s throat.
G’rkyr diverted the blow clumsily and Yarr drew a red line across the back of the gargant’s hand. G’rkyr snarled, his face suddenly suffused with fire. He slammed his other hand into Yarr. Yarr felt the jolt of the blow in his chest and shoulders as he went sprawling.
Yarr hit the dirt on his side, rolled around, and jumped to his feet. His moves were almost catlike but the gargant was just as quick. The gargant stood over Yarr, both hands bunched into fists. He bore down, aiming to crush Yarr with a double blow. Yarr twisted his body, moved back, and the fists slid by.
Yarr delivered a counterstrike with his dagger, but not fast enough. G’rkyr dropped back to a guarded position, watching Yarr, his eyes wide, his face alive with fire. G’rkyr was still winded and wounded; he went to a knee, put a hand up as if to say stop, no more.
Yarr spun forward, deftly lunging, his dagger gliding toward the gargant. He slipped by the gargant’s counter, stuck the blade into the knee joint of the gargant’s armor, and twisted his body around the dagger until the hilt snapped off in his hand.
G’rkyr gasped, tried frantically to withdraw the blade. The blood made the blade too slippery to grip at first but he dug the blade out after a pair of heartbeats. Panting and groaning in pain, he looked up at Yarr, his face no longer lit with fire, his eyes questioning.
“Death knows you now, and you know her,” Yarr said plainly as he jumped up and kicked the gargant in the face with both of his heavy boots. The move sent Yarr flying in one direction as the gargant fell back in the opposite direction.
Yarr rolled as he hit the ground and came back up on his feet. He stalked around the gargant until he was standing behind the other’s head, then he lifted both arms in the air, hands balled into fists. “Your day’s entertainment,” he shouted in Cikathian as he awaited the judgement, “Blood and death! Damn you all!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The twin suns of Cyvair began their decent as the mob roared and cheered Yarr’s condemnation. Makhatar went to her feet. Reveling in the moment, she turned alternately left and right. Martin’s expression said that he wanted no part of any of it, but he played to the crowd all the same while his Trykath counterpart stood mutely.
Yarr panted and sucked at the air. He scooped up a discarded sword and pike, drove them into the dirt at his feet. He was a bloody, dirty mess and bone tired. He stood ready, listened for turning wheels, the screech of the gates, the slide of the slats— sounds that meant new nightmares were coming his way. The mob had wanted his death only moments ago. Makhatar wanted his death still. If she wished it, he would breathe his last breath soon.
When Yarr turned to look for Dierá, sudden tears in his eyes matched her earlier tears. It seemed an age since he had cried, but it seemed all he could do. It was not anguish or sorrow or remorse that caused the tears, but absence and pity and grace. He was devastated to find Dierá absent; he pitied the mob and their hatred; and yet he had found grace. “Élvemere lives,” he whispered to his father and mother, for he felt their presence as strongly as he had ever in life, “if only as a dream in my dying heart.”
Yarr turned calm, sympathetic eyes to Makhatar. He pitied her most of all. Her life was the smaller one. Truly. She was the thing to be studied and pitied. The wealth of the Hundred Worlds was hers, and yet she was so self-loathing and jaded she could not find joy in any of it. She felt the weight of the worlds every day and had lived less in her centuries of freedom than he had lived in a hundred years in captivity; she was the slave and not he. He could let go of this life and find freedom. She would never be free, not in this life or in the next.
Yarr was about to shake his fists in the air, but sank to his knees instead for he felt them then. The soft presence and the mighty one; both demanding his attention.
“You just don’t know when to die properly, do you, Alv?” The sharp voice in his mind was unmistakable; it was Makhatar’s.
“Be strong,” Yarr said as he swept up the sword from the dirt. He turned his eyes to Dierá among the hawkers and gravers, answering her soft call to him as he did so. “The Merciless One knows you and will welcome you.”
Yarr turned calm, sympathetic eyes to Makhatar. Martin spoke her judgment and the mob agreed. “Death for the Jurin.”
“Take as you can,” Yarr shouted in Cikathian. “Mercy is what I will deliver.” He made a spectacle of sweeping his sword, delivering it to the dirt beside a fallen Monsjurin, lunging at a fallen Fhurtroll. He leapt into the air, landed on top of the fallen Empyrjurin.
As he stalked across the gargant’s chest, he saw his mother open his arms to him. He smiled, saw Dierá look to those he had pointed out, and then he struck, plunging in the blade, delivering the blow to the heart between armor and ribs.
The deed done. He fell down to his backside, smiling still. Blood flowed from the wound delivered by his own hand and frothed from his own mouth. The twin suns gave the last of their light as he took in the last of his breaths, and he went to the darkness unafraid, knowing there was yet light and hope.
He had dared to dream a dream of Élvemere. It was the one true thing he could believe in. He was humbled and blessed that something so precious had been given to his care. “Please, please, please, forgive me,” he said in Alvish. “I dared dream, and when Élvemere could not live otherwise, I gave what left I had.”
Yarr no longer saw the waking world. Instead, his second self saw the flat, open grasslands of his beloved homeland where Windrunner’s son waited for him. He climbed onto the young stallion’s back and raced with the winds across the sweeping plains to the great forest. Soon he was standing outside his father’s pavilion of rich blue silks and yellow satins.
“Join us,” said his father, calling out from within the pavilion.
“Yes, please. Hurry now,” his mother said.
Yarr put haste to his step. “Pritish,” he said in greeting as he entered.
“Salus, salut,” his father replied.
“Sit,” his mother said. She poured a steaming cup of blue elder juice and set it before him. “Drink
this, find peace. There is hope. Without doubt, you are the Light of Élvemere.” She looked to her husband. “Our walk now?”
Yarr’s father nodded, took her hand, and she in turn took Yarr’s. The three left the pavilion and began walking. Windrunner and his kin followed.
Yarr had been drifting for so long, but now he was home. He could breathe again. All his troubles and fears dissolved. He believed; all was possible. He could dare to lose himself completely now, and did.
“Goodbye,” he said to Dierá. Her face and lips before his mind’s eye were the answers at the end of the light. She was faithful and strong. She would cast him gently to the night and help him forgive the cruelty of this day. “Don’t worry. Time will heal all. Everything will come around and one day Élvemere will live. No matter what, it was worth the cost.”
But these words were not Yarr’s, they were Dierá’s, and he realized he had returned to the waking world. He lived, breathed, and Dierá cradled him in her arms. “Forgive me,” she said, the hungry white power of life still flowing from her mouth to his, “I could not bear to live without you.”
The mob was in an uproar. Rioting began. Drakón and titans were being escorted away to safety by S’h’dith warriors. The magi were frantically erecting perimeters of magic to hold back the crowds. Trykaths were pouring into the stadium from every side tunnel. The skies over the stadium were alive with flyers and buzzers of many sorts.
Dhon, Jdost, and G’rkyr lived. They were circling protectively, holding back the Gnogs and Trykaths. Makhatar was furious, screaming as she rode a wave of power in a crescendo from the stands to the stadium floor. The king, the titan, and the fat prince were at her side.
“You?” Makhatar screamed. “How dare you!”
Dierá answered, “I am Athania Dierá Steorra of the Élvemere and I dare all.”
Makhatar clawed at Dierá. The titan and the Drakón prince interceded before she could land her blows. “These will best serve in life, not death,” the titan said. “Retribution in service,” the prince said. “Subscribe them in the war against the Jurin armies.”
Makhatar pulled back, thought better of it, and came back round with her claws. Only the king’s words stopped her from striking. “No,” he said plainly and firmly.
The prince spoke into the king’s ear. “Surely they’ve proven themselves. Let them bring death to our enemies.”
The king waived the prince back, waved back Makhatar’s blind outrage. “Bind them as need be. Life service in the corps. No one will broach disapproval in this.”
And so, Yarr’s new life in service to the corps began.
About the Author
Robert Stanek is the bestselling author of more than 100 books for young people and adults. He lives with his wife and children in the Pacific Northwest in the United States, and is intensely fascinated with our natural world. He loves the outdoors and frequently takes his family on short trips to see the natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest.
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