“We are nearly there,” one said, and he knew that no Protocrat would need such assurances.
Allies were coming.
He hoped they had brought an army, but any help would be welcome. He turned his attention to the battle flowing around them, like a river around a rock. Ignored by all, he stood guard at Shorn’s back.
Their friends were coming. It had been a long wait. Soon, they would know…had they won the day, or would they fail before ever seeing the fabled red wizard’s ancient face.
He hefted his axe, taking comfort in its weight, and began to sing. Anything was better than the pleading of the souls trapped within the portal.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Know peace, Tirielle A’m Dralorn, rest your head a moment…come lie with us, here, under the dark…there is nothing to fear…no anger, no hate, no pain, or loss…your father is with us, Tirielle. Dran A’m Dralorn rests in us, beyond the world of suffering…there is nothing left for you in the world, you have lost everyone, but in us you can be with them again…join with us…it is easy, just rest…no pain…no more loss…no more suffering…
Her tears coursed down her cheeks, washing clear the grime from her face, but they could not cleanse her heart.
She knew the voices for what they were. Lost souls, the echoes of the ages. If her father had been with them, she would have heard his voice. A voice she had not heard since she was a child, but nevertheless lived on in her mind. It was that voice which she heard now.
‘There is no peace this side of death, daughter, and to wish so is folly. There is only the fight. Always, no matter how hard the path you travel, remember this; to fight for yourself, that is natural. To fight for others: that is divine. I will love you whichever you choose, just so long as you fight…’
And she fought. She fought against the desire to put her head down, to end the suffering. She fought because she knew that those she lost along the way would want her to. She was a fighter. That was all she had. All her life had been a struggle, and until her last breath she would rail against her fate. She would strive, overcome…she might not succeed…she was not a fool. The odds were stacked heavily against her, but she was in until the end. The easy way out was for cowards. Her father had raised no cowards.
But, oh, the pain she felt. It was as real, as solid, as a blow to the chest. Her ribs ached, her breathing was hard. She sobbed, and felt her heart labouring in her chest. Sharp pains racked her body, but she knew it was just the pain of loss. She was not injured, but once more she had been destined to lose a man she loved.
That he did not love her in return mattered little. She had grown to love him, to love his face, his gentle eyes, even his fierce hands that wielded a sword…what choice did he have? It was a time of war. Perhaps, in another life, he might have been a scholar, or a farmer…still she would have loved him. A man’s nature does not change, whatever he holds in his hand.
And so, her tears fresh, her pain real, she wandered blindly in the tunnel, the souls of the lost calling her name, knowing her past, her hopes, her dreams, her fears, but they did not understand her, not at all. If they did, they would know she would not be swayed. In this pitch black afterworld, their hunger was all there was. But Tirielle had no room for pity. She followed the voices of the living. That was where her duty was, and always would be.
She followed them, the real and solid. The Sard talked constantly. She let herself be led by their words, ever forward. She had heard that in the wilderness a person tended to walk in circles. She hoped that was not their fate.
The voices of the dead came from outside, tinny and frightening, pleading, urging, begging her to come to them. No matter how persuasive they were, she was not about to go to them.
She was not ready to join the dead.
Her skin prickled, and she turned around. Something was following her. A blinding light, rushing toward her through the tunnel. She could suddenly see Carth’s broad back through the tunnel ahead of her.
“Something’s coming!” she called.
Carth spared enough breath to call back to her.
“Run,” he said, with no urgency, but she thought she knew what was coming — the destruction of one side of the portal. The world of the living was reclaiming this place.
So j’ark had finally died, joined the lost. She hoped he would find peace, some sort of resolution. Strangely, now she knew he was gone and that there was no hope of him ever joining her, her tears dried up. He had done what he set out to do. Looking behind her, she realised this was their only chance. She ran. The light felt warm on her back. It was approaching.
It seemed like an age, but it was difficult to tell the passage of time in the blackness, and even the light rushing toward them was only peace, nothing to be afraid of, let it wash over you…she shook her head, and renewed her pace.
In moments, she could see light in front of her, too. Like snow falling, or ice.
She saw Carth disappear, and she threw herself forward at the approaching light, away from the chasing, blinding light. She knew which side she wanted to be on.
The voices of the dead cried out in anguish.
In her head, she heard one among them.
“I love you,” it said. She knew the voice well. It sounded clear, crisp, but it did not plead for her to stay. She knew he was not among them. He was no longer lost.
She dived through, from darkness into light.
Chapter Eighty-Five
And tumbled into the arms of a grizzled warrior, strong arms wrapping round her and pulling her away from the portal.
“Run!” the warrior urged. She needed no imprecations — she could feel the wind howling through portal at her back. She ran as hard as she could, the burly warrior’s boots slapping the cracked ice beside her.
There was no time to question, no time to take in the amazing sights around her (ash raining down, the sizzle of a magical battle, a trio of barbaric warriors herding them toward a mountain larger than she had imagined possible…but only noticed in the blink of an eye.)
Then the world exploded. The wind was suddenly pulling at her (no! not back into the after world) and she was struggling against it, running with all her might. Quintal was beside her then, and threw her to the ground.
Snow, ice and rock tumbled around her, some cracking from Quintal’s armour. Eventually, the ground beneath and above calmed, and she rose gingerly.
She took the time to look around. There was now a massive crater where the portal had been, its radius stretching at least a hundred feet.
She dusted herself off, and looked around. The bearded warrior was grinning at her.
“Takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?” he said, his accent strange and somewhat guttural, but not, she realised, unrecognisable. He was speaking Lianthrian. She had expected a different language, at least.
“Saviour, meet the First. This is Tirielle A’m Dralorn, the Sacrifice,” said Quintal with a warm smile.
“Not me, I’m just along for the ride,” said the warrior with a grin. “Not for me, illusions of grandeur. You’ll be wanting Shorn. That’s him, over there. Can’t miss him, he looks like the Wildman, the one with the big scar — I wouldn’t bring it up, though. He’s a bit touchy.”
“Renir!” shouted the man above the din of magic colliding and the battle at the foot of the mountain, “come on! There’s a path here. Drun’s soldiers say this is the way to the wizard.”
“Alright, I’m coming!” the warrior called Renir shouted back. He turned to Tirielle and said, “He’s a bit bossy, but you’ll get used to him. Shall we go? I don’t think the Teryithyrians will be able to hold them back for long.”
Tirielle risked a glance down at the battle, and saw…white rahkens!
“You have rahken allies!”
“Don’t know anything about rahkens, Tiri, but they fight like devils. Good to have them on your side. I see there’s a brown one with you,” he said, pointing up the slope to Roth’s receding back. “Be good to
know your friend, too. With any luck, that is. And if we don’t get moving the Teryithyrians won’t be able to keep the Protectorate busy…and I get the impression that you’ve got an engagement you need to keep.”
“From the sounds of it, the wizard stirs already,” said Quintal, clambering up the slope in a dignified manner, while the barbarian climbed hand over hand, throwing his great axe ahead of him.
“If this is him stirring, are you sure it’s wise to wake him up?” asked Renir, gaining the pathway (if it could even be called a path — it was crumbled and ragged).
“We have no choice,” said Quintal. “It is destiny.”
“Fate’s got a funny way of playing tricks on you. I’m just now coming to realise that,” he said, somewhat enigmatically.
He pulled Tirielle up behind him.
“Where is the Watcher?” she asked warily. It wasn’t turning out as she expected. But then, what had she expected? That she would be met by more shining paladins, like the Sard, shimmering in their armour? The warrior called Renir was begrimed and rugged as the mountains, but his eyes shone with a certain kind light. She found herself warming to him already. There was no guile in him, no rancour, and, she realised, even though they were surrounded by enemies and beneath the aftermath of a terrible battle, there was no fear.
She had grown so accustomed to being around men — and Roth — that felt no fear she had come to take it for granted.
She fell into contemplative silence, and concentrated on catching up with the rest of their strange party. Ahead was a dark man, built as large and broad as Carth, but bald, his head glinting in the cold winter light. A wiry old man, clean shaven, carrying two short swords after the Protocrat fashion, clambered alongside the Sard. The one known as Shorn seemed to be limping…perhaps he had been injured in the battle — it would not be surprising. Even the Sard had fallen to the red-robed warriors, for all their skills, for all their power.
She warned herself not to underestimate the barbarians. They had allies as powerful as her own, the white rahkens, fighting by their sides. And they had survived this far.
She longed to meet the Saviour (Shorn, damn it, soon I too will be babbling about fate along with the paladins) and shake his hand, if they followed such customs in this land. But then, they too, were foreigners in this icy wilderness.
Are they warriors born, like the Sard, she wondered, or just men thrust into fate’s whirling pools the same as her? Drun Sard, she knew of, even though she had never met him. She imagined he would be wizened, possessed of wisdom granted by long years of life and hardship. Where was he? The man that could lead the paladins must have an amazing presence…would he have a kind face, or would he be stern and forbidding?
He was not among them, she was sure. She knew he would not carry a weapon, and each man here was armed. Renir, with his great axe, the wiry old warrior had his two swords, and the dark man carried a huge double handed bastard sword, something she had never seen before. She had been around swords all her life, and she thought she knew every shape possible, but never had she seen its like. It would take a man of his size to hold it steady, let alone swing it with any accuracy.
She examined her new companions as they fled up the side of the quaking mountain. It was hard work, fighting the incline and the shifting ice and rock underfoot. She was tiring faster than she expected as they climbed, fallen into silence long ago. The air seemed to press on her lungs as they rose along the side of the mountain.
There was no sign of pursuit below. She wondered how the white rahkens fared — if they were as strong as the rahkens she knew, the Protectorate would be hard pushed to hold them back.
The pathway lurched suddenly beneath her feet, and she stumbled toward the sheer drop at the side. Renir’s hand was around her arm before she could teeter any further toward oblivion.
“Been like this all week. You get used to it after a while. The trick is, pretend you’re at sea,” he said with a grin, and let her go.
She smiled back, with a mumbled ‘thanks’, but could spare no more breath for talking. She was at her limit.
Just how much longer would it be? If the rahkens could destroy their enemies, they would still be hard pushed. If this quaking and the ash tumbling through the air were signs of the wizard awakening, she dreaded to think what would happen when they met. Even if the Protectorate on the lower slopes were utterly annihilated, they might still die at the hands of the mountain.
It shimmied again, and she swayed this time, found her footing almost immediately. It was, she thought with a quiet smile, just like being aboard a ship in a gentle wave. She looked down and saw shale sliding down the slope, gathering pace and snow as it fell. She risked a glance up — never a good idea to look up when on precarious footing — and blanched as she saw the overhanging ice above her. One more quake and the whole lot would come down on their heads. It was a wonder it hadn’t fallen already.
She gritted her teeth and ignored the dangers. If it was her destiny to die on this rock face, then why all the talk of prophesy? She didn’t trust prophesy entirely, though, so with one careful eye on the rocks and ice above, she stumble on, ever onwards, no time for conversation or foolish tears, but an endless trudge along the precarious rockface, higher and higher, leaving the world behind until the battling warriors below turned to shapes obscured by the falling snow and ash, and then to mere specks, glimpsed occasionally through the clouded skies.
She climbed where she had to, walked where she could, her lungs burning and her limbs aching, leaden. At last, she thought, when she risked looking up, they were stopping ahead. Roth was waving them on urgently, even though the beast seemed at rest, its pose almost languid, like it, too, belonged on these frozen slopes. How easily its clawed feet could climb these mountains. No foolish sandals for Roth.
She cursed under her breath that she had not thought to come prepared…but then when had she had the chance to equip herself with winter clothing? In Beheth, where it was always temperate and the citizens had never needed, let alone seen, a cloak?
Her feet and hands were frozen, her breath frosted the air. At least if she kept moving she would not freeze to death. But she was deathly cold. Perhaps, in the mountain’s heights, it was the cold as much as the altitude that stole the breath and sapped the energy.
She followed on, staring at Renir’s broad back, rather than at the sheer drop below or the ominous sheets of ice above.
As if sensing her discomfort, he stopped and turned to face her.
“I’m a fool. My wife always said so, and I’m inclined to see her way of things these days.” He shrugged off his thick cloak and handed it to her.
“I cannot! You’ll freeze to death.”
“Somehow I don’t think I will. I might be cold, but I’d rather be cold than watch someone else freeze to death. Take the cloak. It is warm. Besides, I’m sweating now. Oh! I don’t mean I’ve made the cloak sweaty…it’s quite clean…it doesn’t even smell…I’ve been wearing it all week…” he paused for breath, looking slightly red in the face. “That’s another thing my wife always said, I talk too much. I’d be grateful if you’d take the cloak.” He held out the cloak — perhaps smelly, perhaps sweaty, but above all warm — bashfully.
“Thank you, Renir. If the gods be kind to us, we’ll both be warm before this day is out.”
“Don’t see how, Tiri, but I’ll drink to that. Warm, in a nice comfy bed. I can’t remember the last time I was warm, or slept in a bed. I think I might smell of Teryithyrian, too. They don’t make the most comfortable of sleeping partners. Not that I’ve slept with one, if you know what I…ah, never mind me.”
They had caught up the others, and for some reason Tirielle found that the strange warrior had made her smile. His countenance was terrible, but under the grime and the beard she realised he did not have the look of a slayer, but of an ordinary man, with kinder eyes than usually.
Behind her, a massive slab of ice cracked and fell loose, crashing to pieces down th
e side of the shifting mountain. Shivers racked her body, then, and she hugged herself. The cloak was comfortingly warm, with the warrior’s body heat. It cut out the piercing wind, too.
She was not one to overlook the little mercies. She was thankful for what she could get.
“Perhaps we should wait for your friend,” said Roth to Cenphalph, where they were paused before a great, smooth round boulder, incongruous amongst the ragged rock and fragile shale.
Tirielle looked round and saw an old man walking up the side of the mountain. He wasn’t sticking to the path, but leaping nimbly over rock and crag with the ease of a mountain goat. His beard reached his waist, and his hair was even longer.
Drun Sard, her mind supplied. He was everything she had imagined and more. No man could climb the rock as swiftly without the aid of magic. Not at his age. He must be ancient for his white hair to grow as long. She smiled at the sight of him.
“He’ll catch up,” said Shorn. Tirielle noticed his voice lisped slightly, no doubt a result of the blow he had taken to his face. She took pains not to stare.
She felt she should make some form of introduction, but she was too short of breath join in the conversation.
“How are we to move it?” said Quintal, eyeing the rock baring their way. It was as the map had described it. Worn thin with age and the inhospitable weather, Tirielle could see the markings described in the scroll. It was the entrance to the depths of the mountain. She could think of many places she would rather go. A small, snide part of her piped up…and what if it never moves? How long till the soldiers catch up? How long will we last against an army?
She shook herself and looked at the old man climbing steadily toward them. He would be there soon.
“I think this is why I came,” said Roth. It seemed sad, and spared a glance at Tirielle. She wondered what it was she saw there on Roth’s face. It was something she had not seen before. It looked, to her, like acceptance. Always before it had fought, never giving in. Now it seemed as though the mighty beasts will had crumbled.
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