Another kick swept Briel’s ankle out from under him. Letting go of Knightswrath, Briel landed in a roll, bit back a scream as pain lanced his broken arm, and kicked blindly. He struck something and heard his opponent grunt. With speed gained from thousands of hours of training as a Shal’tiar, Briel dove headfirst toward the sound. Somehow, he avoided being stabbed and caught Rowen in the stomach.
Rowen fell in a tangle of bloodied limbs, taking Briel with him. Their swords clattered away. Briel fought his way on top, took a knee to the groin, and elbowed Rowen’s forehead. Then he stabbed his fingers toward Rowen’s eyes. To his amazement, the Knight caught his fingers and bent hard. Bone snapped. Briel bit back a scream and tried a head butt. Rowen shifted and took the blow on the side of his head, though it was enough to stun him.
Fighting back pain and exhaustion, Briel pushed himself up on his broken hand and tried to angle his knee toward Rowen’s throat. But Rowen blocked Briel’s knee with both hands and shoved him off balance. For a moment, the two were parted, though Briel still barred Rowen’s path.
Rowen picked up Knightswrath. Wincing, Briel fumbled for his shortsword. He gripped the weapon with his good fingers and got to his feet. He turned to check on the king.
Loslandril had reached the wytch, but a gigantic Isle Knight in ancient, dusty armor held the king by the arm, immobilizing him. Silwren lay on the floor, motionless, her eyes wide and staring. Loslandril tried to twist free, but the new Knight held him so firmly that the king’s wrist might just as well have been encased in stone.
Briel frowned. Where in the gods’ names did he come from? He saw by Rowen’s stunned expression that he must have been wondering the same thing. Both men regarded the new Knight with confused fascination.
Crane and stag emblems covered the Knight’s ornate breastplate, but the largest and most central symbol was a nine-pointed flower. Though the Knight’s helmet had no visor, shadows seemed to obscure his face. An empty silver scabbard hung at his side. He held the king a moment longer then tossed him away. The Sylvan king struck the far wall like a ragdoll. He whimpered and lay still for a moment then crawled back to Quivalen’s body and wept.
The ancient Knight of the Lotus turned his head, momentarily fixing his shadowy gaze on Briel. Though the ancient Knight appeared to be unarmed, Briel stepped back. The ancient Knight turned to Rowen. Though neither spoke, Briel sensed something pass between them. Rowen Locke trembled. Then he fell to one knee, laying Knightswrath on the floor before him. He said something that Briel could not understand, though he thought the words were Shao.
The huge Knight turned to Silwren and knelt. As Briel and Rowen stared, one dusty mailed fist opened over the glass knife. The ancient Knight of the Lotus seized the freyd and pulled it slowly from Silwren’s breasts. Another hand closed on the blade. The knife shattered. Tossing away the pieces, the ancient Knight of the Lotus rose.
His shadowy visage regarded Silwren a moment longer then turned to face the sarcophagus at the far end of the room. His body began to shimmer. The luminstones flared, flooding the tomb with so much light that Briel was forced to shield his eyes. A moment later, the radiance dimmed.
The Knight of the Lotus was gone. But he had taken something with him. The dreadful pallor faded from Silwren’s cheeks. She blinked. Then she wept. Slowly, she sat up, tentatively touching the ghastly tear in her gown. She turned. “Ro-Rowen?”
But Rowen was already rushing to embrace her.
Gods save us… Briel turned and caught Loslandril’s eye. The king still leaned over his son’s charred body. With wet, desperate eyes, the monarch indicated the shortsword in Briel’s hand. But Briel shook his head, turned away from his king, and faced Rowen.
Briel raised his sword. Rowen tensed, raising Knightswrath in answer. Briel drew his own sword across his left cheek, so deep that he felt the edge scrape bone. Warm blood flowed down his cheek. He resisted the impulse to press on his wound. Instead, he bowed.
“Os’lum hen-tar’i, Isle Knight.” He straightened. “We surrender to your justice.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
KNIGHTSWRATH
A thousand mad thoughts raced through Rowen’s mind. Had he really just seen Fâyu Jinn? Moreover, had the founder of the Knighthood—or his shade—appeared out of thin air to save Silwren? Had he healed her wound, or had he actually brought her back from the dead?
Like El’rash’lin did for Hráthbam…
Rowen shook his head. He did not have time to think about that. He stepped protectively in front of Silwren and fixed his gaze on Briel. He tried to think of a reason not to cut the Sylv in half—surrender or no.
By any reasonable measure, he had every right to do so. Briel had shown signs of misgivings, sure, but he had still kept fealty with the king. He had tried to kill Rowen a moment ago. And he had stood by as the mad prince murdered Silwren. And didn’t he try to kill us at Que’ahl?
Rowen tightened his grip on Knightswrath’s dragonbone hilt. Heat raced up his arm. He scrutinized his Sylvan enemy as they stood, bloody and unblinking, in the pale illumination of the luminstones. “You don’t actually think I’ll spare the king after what he did to Silwren, do you?”
Silwren touched his arm, but Briel said, “Actually, I do. Besides, my surrender has terms, Isle Knight. One is that you stay away from Loslandril. One dead royal is enough for today, I think.”
Rowen glanced at the king, who knelt with blank, stunned eyes over the charred corpse of the prince. “She was just defending herself.”
“I didn’t say otherwise.”
“Something she wouldn’t have had to do if you’d stood up to the king.”
Briel sheathed his sword. “We don’t have to fight—at least, not each other. Forgetting about this Dragonkin for the moment, if the Olgrym have not breached the World Gate yet, they will soon. I’m out of men. We need magic… especially if Fadarah and his sorcerers show up. If the wytch helps us—”
“Ask her yourself.”
Briel blinked then directed his gaze at Silwren. “A pact, wytch. No more knives in the dark. Help us defend the city, and I swear to you, we’ll let you leave unharmed.” He paused. “If you want, I’ll throw in as many gold coins as you can carry. Gods, I’ll even build a statue of you with my own two hands if I survive.”
When Silwren still did not answer, Briel added, “And… I’ll make sure things change after you’re gone. No more Shel’ai infants will be killed. I don’t know what we’ll do with them—maybe send them to you—but they won’t be killed. That’s my pact, wytch.”
Rowen glanced at the Sylvan king, who seemed completely oblivious to his surroundings. “Do you really think he will honor that agreement?”
Briel tapped his sword hilt with one of his unbroken fingers. “I’ll see that he does. In fact, I’ll swear it on my honor as a Shal’tiar.”
Rowen smirked. “A little late to talk of honor, Sylv.”
“Maybe not. We both have blood on our cheeks. Besides, we have shared enemies. Besides Fadarah’s lot, this Dragonkin—”
“Your king’s gone mad, Briel. There probably is no Dragonkin!”
“Yes, there is,” Silwren said at last.
Something in her voice made Rowen turn. “Silwren—”
“He’s near,” Silwren said. Her voice trembled. “I couldn’t feel him before… I think he was hiding… but I can feel him now. Whatever healed me… Jinn, if that’s who it was… maybe he did it. But I feel him, Rowen!” Her violet eyes widened. “He doesn’t want to face me himself. He’s lived too long to risk that. But I can feel how powerful he is.”
She took Rowen’s arm, and he fought to keep from screaming as wisps of wytchfire leapt from her fingertips. “I can’t kill him. He’s too strong. Don’t you see? He’s been draining Shel’ai infants for years, taking ones abandoned outside the forest, draining them the way his kind used to drain dragons. He’s been draining others, too. And he’s been doing what we did! Cadavash… Namundvar’s Well…”
“His name is Chorlga. He stayed here when the other Dragonkin left. Or maybe Nekiel left him behind on purpose, to try and find a way to break down the Dragonward from the inside.”
“Silwren…” Rowen tried to pull free of her scalding grasp, but her grip was like iron.
“Jinn showed me, I think. Chorlga has been hiding in Ruun for a thousand years! He’s been here all this time, turning us against each other, and we never knew. He wanted us to learn about Namundvar’s Well!”
Silwren’s grip tightened even further. “He wanted Fadarah to turn us into Dragonkin! He knew we wouldn’t be able to control the power. He thought we’d all end up like the Nightmare, that we’d destroy ourselves.”
She released him suddenly. “Only he forgot about Knightswrath. He forgot about what Nâya did…” She lowered her eyes. Then she stretched out her hand and took Knightswrath from his grasp. “He forgot what she did for her people. For Jinn.” She stared down at the blade. One hand held it by the hilt. The other wrapped around the blade so tightly that blood trickled down its steely length. “For the man she loved.”
Too late, Rowen understood. He called out her name and dove for her, but she stepped just out of his reach. Her white pupils flared. And Rowen could not move.
For one long moment, Silwren stared at him, her violet eyes brimming with tears. Rowen tried to hold her gaze, tried to speak. But before he could find the words, wytchfire flared to life.
Rowen watched in horror as the flames spread up her arms and flickered down her shoulders, tracing her back and thighs, trickling down to the stone floor. Her clothes burned away. Silwren’s bare flesh glowed white hot. An awful, six-winged shadow spread on the stone floor behind her.
When she spoke, her voice had grown louder, and several spoke in concert. “Nâya gave her life to undo the treachery of her father, Nekiel, foul servant of the Undergod. Other Dragonkin joined her. What they did was remembered by no one—not the Sylvs, not the Dwarrs, not even the Knights. But their sacrifice crafted a relic.”
Rowen strained against whatever magic held him immobile. He had the thought that Silwren might be reading his mind, as she had done so many times before. Don’t do this, he pleaded. We’ll find another way—
“There is no other way.” Silwren smiled sadly. “When this is done, look to the east. Jalist needs you. So do the Knights. So does everyone—as I did. Goodbye, Knight of the Crane.”
Before Rowen could think his answer, Silwren’s body blazed brighter than ever. Unable to blink or look away, Rowen wept. He lost sight of her face in the fiery glare. White wings spread behind her. Violet eyes—still familiar somehow—met his.
For one brief moment, everything froze. Then Rowen heard a scream—half pain, half triumph—followed by a sound like rushing water, as if an entire ocean were being drained. With frightful quickness, the fire imploded. Dimly, Rowen saw Knightswrath at the center of the maelstrom. He realized the sword was sucking all the fire, every last tendril, into its blade.
No, not fire. That’s Silwren! I have to stop this. I have to stop her before—
As quickly as it had begun, it was over.
The luminstones dimmed then returned to normal. Rowen blinked. He realized he could move but made no effort to do so. Silwren was gone. Knightswrath hovered for a moment in midair, then clattered to the cold stone floor, rocked, and lay still.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
THE OPEN GATE
Fadarah strode through ash and shattered iron—all that remained of the World Gate—and surveyed the ruined, corpse-strewn fortifications around him. All his bodyguards had been killed, down to the last Olg. Still, his heart swam in exhilaration. True, they had hardly ascended from the forest floor, but they were in Shaffrilon. They had breached the World Tree. Olgrym streamed past him, crazed and howling. The stink of their passage both sickened and elated him.
Too many to be stopped. By nightfall, all of Shaffrilon will be ours.
Of course, sooner or later, Fadarah and his remaining Shel’ai would face a different challenge: killing the last of the Olgrym and claiming Shaffrilon and the surrounding forest for themselves. Might as well let Shaffrilon’s ailing defenders do their work. After all, every Sylv and Olg killed here is one we won’t have to face later.
He spotted Doomsayer leading the Olgrym charge against the next gate. Fadarah sneered. Armored in blackened iron, the hulking Olgish chieftain might have been mistaken for Fadarah himself were it not for the Olg’s long hair—braided with animal skulls—and the way he fought: mace in one hand, sword in the other. Fadarah thought of the two-handed sword he’d left behind, remembering where he’d left it. He felt a pang of guilt then chided himself.
A fresh chorus of screams caught his attention. He turned in time to see two Olgrym tormenting a young Sylvan warrior, little more than a boy. Each held him by an arm and a leg. The Sylvan warrior screamed for mercy. The Olgrym ripped him in half, laughing.
Fadarah had the urge to burn the Olgrym to ashes, but before he could make up his mind, Shade joined him. His young second-in-command still bled from an arrow that had struck his shoulder. Shade had already broken the arrow in half but had not had time to dig out the barbed point.
“You should stop to heal that.”
“They’re reinforcing the Moon Gate, General. Should we burn this one down, too, or let the Olgrym do it for us?” Shade spoke in Sylvan, though Fadarah doubted any of the charging Olgrym cared enough to eavesdrop.
Nevertheless, he answered in kind. “Let the Olgrym do it. The more that die here, the better it will be for us later.” Fadarah drew Shade aside to let more Olgrym pass. “How many of us remain?”
Shade’s face darkened. “Nine, I think. I can’t find Hasiel, but I saw Tamrien go down from arrows. I ordered the rest to the rear after we breached the World Gate.”
Fadarah frowned. He could not recall the faces of the two Shel’ai that Shade had just mentioned. “Good,” he said. The Sorcerer-General pressed his fingers to Shade’s wound.
Rather than recoil, Shade merely hissed through clenched teeth as Fadarah grasped the arrowhead and wrenched it out. Then Fadarah pressed one hand over the wound. Before Shade could protest, Fadarah sent a flood of energies into the wound—more than was necessary, so that by the time he was done, the wound had healed almost without a scar. Fadarah pulled his hand away and turned back to the Moon Gate. “Did you see what Doomsayer did to their general?”
Shade nodded. “I half considered putting him out of his misery, but his men carried him away.”
“Better for us that they did. The sight will make them more afraid. And he’ll bleed to death soon enough, if he hasn’t already.”
“I’m not sure they can be more afraid, General.”
Fadarah saw a wild glint in Shade’s eyes. He remembered the man’s fondness for blood and murder and marveled that Shade seemed as calm as he did, given all the torn corpses heaped around them and the slaughter still taking place only a few hundred yards ahead. “One can always be more afraid.”
Fadarah wondered why he’d just said that, then he eyed the Moon Gate again. The tides of battle were turning. What had seemed like a rout moments before had ended with the Sylvs flooding through the Moon Gate and sealing it behind them, just as archers and trebuchets along the parapets unleashed a fresh flood of devastation on the charging Olgrym. Gray bodies twisted and fell, shredded by arrows and burned by fire.
The remaining Olgrym, still over a thousand strong, howled in unison and hurled themselves at the new obstacle. A great many still carried ladders and ropes fixed to grappling irons. But the Olgrym carrying them made only a token effort. Fadarah immediately saw why.
Like the World Gate, the Moon Gate resembled the front wall of a fortress, crowded with defenders. But it was shorter, made of stones carved with ornate Sylvan reliefs that provided a myriad of convenient handholds. Meanwhile, the gates were too broad and thin, constructed more for appearances and
ceremony than actual defense.
As the Sylvs busied themselves with frantically defending the parapets, the rest of the Olgrym simply took axes to the wooden doors. Before long, the sound of chopping wood drowned out even the screams of the dying. Fadarah wondered why the Moon Gate’s defenders didn’t tip cauldrons of burning water and oil on the attacking Olgrym. Then he guessed that they’d run out. A few trebuchets fired, sowing more destruction in the farther-back ranks of Olgrym, but the missiles did nothing to slow the decimation of the gates themselves.
Silwren, are you in there somewhere? If so, why aren’t you helping them?
“They never expected an enemy to get this far,” Shade muttered.
“They never expected a lot of things. They never expected us to survive. They never thought we’d come back. They didn’t think we’d seek justice.” Fadarah formed a fist, pulsing with wytchfire. “Bring up the others. We’ll let the Olgrym do their work then follow them into the city.”
“And… Silwren? I haven’t sensed her.”
“Nor have I. She could be hiding from us. Or she fled. No matter. Bring up the others. Tell them we’ve nearly won. Tell them Shaffrilon is ours.”
Shade nodded and left.
Fadarah stared at the Moon Gate a moment longer then stooped to retrieve a curved Sylvan blade off the battlefield. The blade seemed small and puny in his half-Olg fist. He laughed. Then he turned back to the gates and let loose a mad, howling cry of challenge.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
NYA
Rowen felt as though he were wading through fire. Somehow, it did not kill him—but it singed his skin and burned him deeper than that. His mind buzzed like a hornet that had burrowed in through his ears and nested in his brain while he slept. But it was awake—and angry.
He ran. He thought he was running from the fire, but somehow, he ran to it. Dimly, he heard screams of panic and terror on the other side of the flames, but he paid them no mind. Once, he thought he heard someone call out his name, but the buzzing in his head drowned out the sound. Then he was running again.
Knightswrath (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 2) Page 39
