She stopped talking for a minute, and her eyes grew distant. “A lot of them didn’t make it. I’m not sure how many will come back. Or if any of them will. Eventually, Greystone saw it was too much. He picked us all up and carried us away from the fight. It was all he could do to get us away. We tried to do what we could, but there were too many.”
She finally stopped, turning away so I couldn’t see her face. But I’d heard it in her voice, what effect seeing all those people die had had on her.
I felt like I was going to throw up. And I realized that I finally understood.
There was a war on. And it was going to happen whether I fought it or not. Other people were going to do the right thing whether I did it or not. And they — my friends — were maybe going to die. And I couldn’t stop that by sitting in the Runehold and saying it wasn’t fair. In Jada’s tomb, I’d found myself hoping that one day I could go to my final rest in a place like that, respected and revered enough that people would want to honor me like they honored Jada. That would never happen if I hid my eyes from the world’s problems. Especially when I was a Realm Keeper, more capable of doing something about it than any man on the street.
I turned and headed back through the door. “Miles!” called Sarah behind me. I didn’t turn around. I strode to stand before the others, who were still spread out across the grass. They looked up at me as I approached, Calvin and Tess with disappointment, Raven and Blade with hostility.
“I’m sorry,” I began.
Blade sneered. “Oh, really? ‘Sorry’ doesn’t cut it, dude.”
“You were right,” I told him. “I was afraid. And I tried to make it seem like I was just thinking of my family, but I wasn’t. I was afraid. But it almost got all of you killed, because you weren’t afraid.”
“Correction.” Calvin held up his hand and pointed to himself. “This guy? Terrified.”
“If you guys are willing to put it all on the line for this,” I said, “Blade, if you’re willing to risk your life, I can’t do less.”
“Thanks?”
“So we’ve got to go back, right?” I said, looking at Greystone. “We’ve got to get into that tomb?”
Greystone eyed me, almost as if suspicious, and said nothing.
“Chaos is all over it,” Calvin said with a shrug. “They’ve definitely grabbed the crystal.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Maybe they destroyed it. Or maybe they stole it for some kind of plan. That was the whole point of this mission, right? To find out?”
Raven cocked an eyebrow at Calvin. “Whoah. Does that mean Miles was paying more attention than you?”
I turned to Greystone once more. “So we still need to find out. Don’t we?”
I thought he was going to remain silent, but after a moment he finally spoke. “We do. If Chaos is indeed collecting artifacts from the tombs of the first Six, then we must focus all our efforts on finding the other tombs. But if they have simply claimed the tomb of Malus as a matter of conquest, we need not worry about the four remaining burial sites, and can focus our efforts upon the rest of the war.”
Sarah stepped up beside me. “But Greystone, I don’t see how any of this matters anyway,” she said. “What’s the point of returning to the tomb without an army at our backs? It’s completely infested.”
“But,” I said, “you mentioned there’s a moat.”
MILES
WE RETURNED TO THE TOMB of Malus the next midday. We crept up on a grassy hill overlooking a glen. There below us was a large, walled-off court with a stone floor. On the walls around it were the Shadows, patrolling and looking out across the land attentively.
The moat was wide and deep. But the Shadows were everywhere. Raven had done a sweep through the air on Ella. She said that the Shadows had a sizable force within the walls, all in perfect ranks, standing there tireless. They weren’t doing anything. Just waiting. Guarding the tomb.
“Okay, I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I’ll need to get in close. Like, maybe twenty feet away. Then, I need that gate taken down. Once it is, I’ll do the rest.”
Sarah looked at me like I was crazy. “No way. You might be able to sneak up, but once the gate is down you won’t be able to make two moves before they pincushion you with arrows.”
I turned to Melaine, standing beside me in her full suit of battle armor. “Can you come with me? When they start firing, you can cover the two of us with your shield as best you can.”
Melaine nodded. I could only see her eyes through her visor, but they looked eager, full of the pent-up frustration of days spent waiting behind while others ventured forth to risk their lives.
“It’s too risky,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “A shield and armor can only do so much.” Then she seemed to have an idea. “Calvin, if you go, too, can you put up a field to protect the three of you?”
Calvin grimaced. “I don’t know if I can hold that,” he admitted.
“Between you and Melaine, we’ll be fine,” I pressed. “Besides, it’s our only choice.”
“You’ll never get close enough without them seeing you,” said Cara. “The field is too open. There’s no cover to approach beneath.”
“Tess, what about that new trick of yours?” Sarah asked.
“What trick?” I asked.
Tess looked up at me shyly from the eye that wasn’t hidden behind her long brown hair. “I’ve been learning how to get into someone’s head,” she said quietly. “Once I’m there, I can mess with what they see.”
“Like how?”
She sighed and closed her eyes. Then, before my very eyes, she vanished.
I started, falling back from my crouch onto my butt. “Whoah!”
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Tess standing there, fully visible again and with a small smile on her face. “But I can only do that on one or two minds at once,” she said.
“If you can do that, why don’t you just make the Shadows fight each other?” Blade asked. I was going to tell him not to be a jerk, but he was looking at Tess earnestly, almost hopefully.
She shuddered at the question. “Their minds are…scary. I don’t want to go too far in.”
“Nor should she,” said Greystone, who until that point had been content to wait silently while we planned. “It is far too great a risk for a mind as untrained as hers.”
“Well then, what about you?” Blade asked. “You know what you’re doing.”
Again, Greystone shook his head. “It is beyond my power. I have skill, but not the ability that Lady Tess will one day attain. I could perhaps create a diversion with one or two of the creatures. The army within is far beyond my abilities.”
“The invisibility thing is more than enough,” I said, elated. “Can you do it from a distance? Like, can you do it to the Shadows on the wall from here?”
“Yes,” said Tess.
“Okay. So stay here and keep an eye on the walls. If you see someone starting to look toward us, block their minds.”
She nodded.
“Blade, Raven and I can take down the gate, and we’ll do whatever we can after that,” Sarah said. She still looked uneasy. “Miles, are you sure you’re not overreaching? That’s a lot of water.”
“I can do this,” I said seriously. “And I need to.”
Sarah looked at Greystone, still unsure. “Maybe I should go, too. I mean, Miles has got all that water there, but they’re all standing on rock. Maybe if both of us strike at the same time…”
To my relief, the wizard shook his head. “Miles’ plan is the best chance we have,” he said. “He needs to create nothing, he only needs to manipulate what is there. And water is far easier to manage than earth.” He looked me straight in the eye. “And I believe, now that Lord Miles seems to have discovered his purpose, that he is up to this challenge.”
I nodded my thanks. Sarah sighed in resignation. “All right, fine,” she said. “But if something starts to go wrong, you bail. You hear me? No hesitation, you get out of dodg
e.”
“You got it, boss,” I said with a smile.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Okay, new rule. No one’s allowed to call me that.”
“Yes, boss,” said all five of us in unison.
Greystone gave a disgusted snort. “If this sweet little display is over with, perhaps we could proceed with the plan?” But I saw Darren, Samuel and Nora chuckling behind him.
Melaine, Calvin and I crept down the slope. Darren complained, but with the gash in his leg there was no way he could move fast enough and stealthily enough to come with us. There was scattered scrub brush on the hill, and we dashed from clump to clump, dropping behind their leaves and peering through to make sure we hadn’t been detected. Finally we reached the bottom of the slope, the ground evened out before us all the way to the moat. The brush disappeared, leaving nothing but open grass between us and the tomb.
I looked up the hill. From where I was at, I couldn’t see the others waiting at the top, but I knew they could see me. I waved an arm. We were ready.
“Do you think Tess is ready?” whispered Calvin beside me.
“She’s gotta be,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
We shot to our feet, all three of us running forward in a low run, hunched over so far we could have touched the ground if we wanted to. My back began burning before I’d even crossed the first thirty feet of the distance to the moat. Beside me I could hear Calvin breathing heavily, his much shorter legs struggling to keep up with mine. I could only imagine how much worse it was for Melaine in her armor, but she didn’t utter as much as a grunt of discomfort.
I kept my eyes fixed on the wall ahead. I could see a Shadow standing there, clearly visible behind a parapet. It stood completely still, gazing out across the ground toward us. I felt like it was staring right at us, but it didn’t so much as draw an arrow to nock to its string.
Another Shadow stepped into view. My heart nearly leapt into my throat.
“Miles!” Calvin hissed.
“It’s fine,” I said, though my throat felt too dry to talk. “She said she could handle two. We’re almost there.”
The first Shadow started, then gripped the wall, leaning forward. Its head swiveled back and forth, scanning the grass.
“It saw something,” Melaine growled from within her helmet.
It still wasn’t drawing an arrow. “It didn’t see enough,” I said.
We’d gotten far enough. I could already feel the water of the moat reaching out to me, aching to be molded to my purpose. “Now!” I said. We hit the dirt, falling flat on our faces behind a small boulder that was half-way embedded in the grassy field.
We lay there, panting heavily. Well, Calvin was the one doing most of the panting. Melaine’s helmet swiveled, her eyes meeting mine from within the visor.
“Now what?” she asked. “How will the others know when to act?”
“They’ll know,” I said, looking back toward the hill once more. “Just keep an eye on the gate, and be ready to go when you see it go down.”
“I’d…be…okay…with them…taking…their time,” said Calvin, gasping between his words like he was about to hyperventilate.
I heard a massive groan on the air. It sounded like the bowels of an old, metal sailing vessel beginning to cave. The two Shadows we could still see turned, leaning out over the wall to try and see better.
The groaning increased. I risked a glance around the edge of the boulder to see the gate beginning to shudder on its hinges. The rock on either side was cracking and falling apart. It buckled as I watched, seeming to crumple in on itself.
The groan was replaced by a roar as a massive ball of flame rocketed through the air, smashing into the gate and blowing it into oblivion. The massive metal construct crumpled in on itself and flew into the courtyard with the force of a cannonball. I heard the shrill, hissing screams of the Shadows within.
“Calvin, be ready!” I shouted. Then I reached out with my hands, feeling through the air with my power and wrapping tendrils of magic around the water in the moat.
Melaine leapt up, standing above my prone body, shield held firmly before her. I heard the first whsssh-tang as an arrow ricocheted harmlessly from her shield to fall easily to the grass a yard away.
“Calvin!” I shouted, my concentration momentarily broke. The water surging up from the moat fell back to its depths.
“Got it,” he wheezed, climbing to his knees. He held his hands out as if they were two flat plates in the air before him. More hissing was followed by the clatter of arrows pattering off an invisible wall in the air.
TSEEER!
The cry of Raven’s falcon split the air above us as she wheeled low. Like Zeus was joining the party, a lightning bolt flashed down at the Shadows on the wall, and I saw one of them fall out of sight into the courtyard on the other side. More fire lanced through the air above, picking off yet more of the creatures who were beginning to nock arrows to their bows.
The screams inside were gratifying, but I knew they wouldn’t have even put a dent in the number of Shadows inside. As if in response to my thought, I heard the sound of many boots tramping the ground as the Shadows began to march forth, the drawbridge already lowered and ready to allow them across. It was time for me to do my part.
I reached out to the water again. This time it surged under my touch, flying into the air in two great streams. The first Shadows appeared within the broken wreck of the gate just as the water washed over them, throwing them back within the confines of the walls. The water clung to itself, helping me to keep it all one great mass of liquid as the last of it flew in through the doors.
The number of Shadows on the walls had increased, and now the clatter of arrows on Calvin’s field was like machine gun fire. His teeth were bared in a grimace as he held them off as best he could. “Miles,” he said. “Not going to be able to keep this up much longer.”
“One minute,” I said.
The water now in the courtyard was a whirling, churning mass. I could feel the Shadows within it like a cancer. They distracted me, pulling my focus. I felt my hold on the water begin to waver.
No! I shouted in my mind. No way. You’ve got this.
I blocked out the sound of the arrow fire above. I blocked out Calvin’s dismayed grunts as each new volley rattled off his protective field. The world narrowed to my own measured breathing and the shape of the water in my mind’s eye.
Slowly I brought the temperature of the water down, down, down, far past freezing. I felt the roiling mass slow, still, come to a halt and become solid. Soon I had a hundred-thousand gallon ball of ice hanging in midair in the center of the courtyard.
I gripped the ball with my mind, and detonated it.
The ice shattered, becoming a billion tiny flying projectiles of death. It was quiet — there was no explosion, no boom and no ball of fire. All I heard from where I lay in the grass was a sound like a massive glass window breaking.
And then I heard the screams. Dozens of them as the shadows inside were lacerated to oblivion by the whirling shards of rock-hard ice.
The clatter of arrows rebounding from Calvin’s field was replaced by the sound of breaking glass, and I looked up in horror to realize that my explosion had been far stronger than I’d intended. A rain of crystal death was pummeling the sky above us, barely held at bay by Calvin’s wall of air.
“Miles!” he cried.
“Down!” I shouted, snatching his legs and pulling him to the ground beside me. Melaine dove on top of us both, probably weighing two hundred and fifty pounds with her armor. I grunted as I heard ice pinging off her solid steel plate.
Then the assault abated, and Melaine pushed herself from us. I got up to find the world in relative quiet. Only a few hissing cries came from the wall as the last few Shadows writhed in their death throes. Lightning bolts lanced from the sky and silenced them forever.
It seemed to take forever before I was ready to move again. Slowly the others came down from the hill, Sar
ah, Blade and Tess staring at me with wide eyes. Greystone looked at me with a new measure of interest, a tiny smirk playing around the corners of his mouth.
“You are a master of deception, Lord Miles,” he said. “Here you had me thoroughly convinced that you’d paid not a whit of attention during any of my lessons, and then you pull off a trick that would have made Reiko proud.”
I shrugged. “No way. She was probably ten times the Realm Keeper that I am.”
Greystone pursed his lips. “Well, yes. Yes, she was. Still, you should learn to take a compliment, especially since it’s so rare for any of you to deserve one.”
“Dude, Miles, that was…” Calvin shook his head. “That was some epic stuff. Like, above level twenty in D&D epic.”
I shrugged. “I did it in meditation the other day.”
Blade gaped, then turned angrily to Greystone. “Hey, how come he gets to do awesome stuff in training, and I still have to practice setting a candle on fire?”
“Okay, well, what I actually did was make an axe out of water,” I confessed. “And then I dropped it on the ground, and it shattered. But, you know, same concept.”
“You did that, and this was the next logical step up for you?” Sarah asked, aghast. “That was a little bit of a risk, Miles.”
I shrugged. “Like you said, it was worth it. And like you also said, who knows what you can do when you just say yes?”
A whoosh of air and the thump of beating wings preceded Raven’s landing on the back of Ella, the falcon. She patted the bird’s head affectionately as she unstrapped her legs, hopping nimbly from its back.
“Everything inside is down,” she reported. “Shall we?”
“Indeed we shall,” said Greystone. “And let us hope, in all earnestness, that I am wrong and this whole expedition has been in vain.”
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