Ariel's Tear
Page 11
Hefthon crawled over to Veil and placed a hand over her mouth. She awoke with a start but remained silent, her eyes turning wildly in fear. Hefthon placed a finger to his lips and nodded upwards. Veil rolled over to look at the sky, and Hefthon released her. He crawled over to Tressa and gently shook her awake. Together, the three of them lay and watched the passing lights.
“What are they?” Veil whispered.
“I don’t know,” Hefthon replied. “Goblins maybe? Ariel never said what the Tear would do.”
Tressa nudged Hefthon into silence, and they lay quiet till the lights had passed over. After the last fiery glow had disappeared, she turned to her son. “How long did Geuel say it would take him to reach home?”
“He should be there already,” Hefthon replied, squeezing her hand. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
Tressa nodded. “Well, I’m not sleeping again tonight. We should get moving.”
Together, they rolled up their blankets and set off again into the woods. Hefthon tried to tell himself that Gath Odrenoch would be fine. After all, the goblins scarcely looked any more threatening than fairies now. But still a dull unease undergirded his thoughts. He knew the creative power of the fairies. If the goblins had unlocked an equal power, he shuddered to imagine what they might destroy.
* * *
Wagon wheels creaked in the darkness around Gath Odrenoch. A long stream of carts and pedestrians jostled their way through the gatehouse, horses whinnying and children mewling in their mothers’ arms. Inside, a group of deputies assigned sleeping quarters and issued commands regarding food distribution. The blacksmith stood beside a table of his wares, welcoming the frightened farmers to purchase their sense of security.
Geuel stood in the watchtower at the wall’s southeastern corner. Behind him, in the center of the tower, the fortress’s flagpole scraped at the night sky, its pale pennant rippling in the wet wind. A new broadsword hung at Geuel’s side, a plain piece unadorned and slightly loose in the handle. Around the wall, his fellow guards stood silent and watched the stir of nothing through night’s shadows. Beside Geuel, Toman leant on the haft of his spear, an oversized iron helmet drooping over his right brow.
“You can get some sleep, you know,” Toman said. “You’re not actually on duty.”
Geuel nodded. “Maybe later. I just want to watch for now. At least until everyone’s inside.”
“So, did you kill any?” Toman asked.
Geuel glanced over puzzled and then realized what he meant. “Oh, yes, I suppose I killed several.”
Toman’s eyes glittered in the dark. “They’ll worship you in the barracks tomorrow. No one’s killed a goblin since the founding.”
“I suppose,” Geuel said.
“Tell me about the fight. What was it like when you found them in the city?”
“I don’t really remember the fighting too well,” Geuel replied. “It’ll probably come back after I think about it. I know I killed two at least. All I remember clearly is a leg. There was a little fairy leg lying on the stairs. It was so—clean, so whole looking.”
“Oh,” Toman replied.
Geuel shuddered. “I don’t know why I keep thinking about it.”
They were silent after that, and eventually Geuel lay down in the back of the tower to sleep. He awoke to Toman shaking his shoulder.
“Geuel, Geuel!” he said, “you have to see this.”
Geuel stood and looked to the south. Hundreds of dull orange lights filled the sky, like dying embers from a distant fire. The passing breeze tasted of smoke.
“Are they fairies?” Toman asked. “They must be fairies.”
Geuel narrowed his eyes. He wanted to agree, to smile and rejoice that the fairies were once more flying the night skies; but he couldn’t. There was something wrong about the light, something off. Not only was it dimmer but it seemed also somehow fouled, malicious. “No—no,” he said slowly, “I don’t think those are fairies. Toman, sound the alarm.”
“They’re fairies,” Toman said laughing. “What else flies that way?”
Geuel ripped away the sentry horn that hung on Toman’s belt and blew three short, sharp blasts. Instantly, the fort came alive with shouting soldiers and running feet. Women cried for their children and dragged them into whatever shelter they could find as the guards came rushing from their barracks in full force, mail shining in the dim starlight and faces set with the confused courage of men who have never seen war.
Soon the walls were lined with a hundred soldiers. Groups of farmers and laborers armed with an assortment of weapons and tools crowded in the fort’s main square. Hounds in their kennels howled at the excitement, anxious to enter the coming fray.
Kezeik came beside Geuel and laid his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “What are they, boy?” he asked. “Do you know?”
“No, but they’re not fairies.”
Kezeik turned to the men on the wall. “Archers! Prepare for a volley!”
Geuel’s dreams came rushing back: Gath Odrenoch burning, the blacksmith’s son alone in the gate, Deni dying, his face frozen in a strange half-smile. He cast a silent prayer to Curiosity and braced himself for the coming destruction.
* * *
An eerie silence reigned in the goblin city, broken only by the scattered splashes of water from Reheuel’s clothing and the distant echoes of droplets from the stalactites above. “I don’t like this,” Reheuel whispered as he crept through a narrow alley. “It’s too quiet.”
“Would you prefer opposition?”
Reheuel ignored the question and then asked, “How much farther?”
Ariel flew upward over the surrounding buildings and came back down. “Not far, maybe two hundred yards.”
Reheuel slipped an arrow back onto his bowstring. “At the very least they must have left guards with the tear,” he said.
They emerged then onto a wider road and Reheuel saw the tower which they were approaching. It rose nearly fifteen stories, a surprisingly slender building, terminating in a flat, bowl-shaped structure. A stone chalice fit for Faeja Himself. A heavy oak door opened onto the street where Reheuel walked.
The windows on each side of the street were still and silent, but still Reheuel felt watched as he approached the tower. He walked with a perpetual flinch, ready to turn and fire in an instant. When he reached the base of the tower, he paused to admire its construction. The entire surface was indeed one stone, but it was carved all around in murals and reliefs of old battles. Men and elves stood side by side, the men resplendent in their gilt armor, the elves wild and fierce in their leathers and tattoos. And, pressing them back, always locked in combat but with a slight upper hand, were the minotaurs. Great, hulking beasts with hooves as large as a man’s head, they bellowed and tore their way across the mural, obviously idealized by the artist but still representing an unimaginable ferocity.
“The artwork is so intricate,” Reheuel said in awe.
Just then a shriek rang from high above and a rock about the size of a man’s fist crashed into the cobblestones near his feet. He flipped his bow upward and fired instinctively. The arrow clattered harmlessly off the sill of a sixth floor window, driving a goblin back into the tower.
Reheuel dragged heavily on the door of the tower and felt it slowly give. His arms bulged and strained at the exertion, and he wondered briefly how many goblins it must take to open this same door. A shaft whistled down over his shoulder as he stepped out farther from the wall. He ducked quickly in through the door and drew another arrow.
Shrieks rang throughout the tower’s stone passages, dozens of high pitched nickerings followed by the scrabble of clawed feet on stone. Reheuel found himself in a kind of wide entryway, three passages leading off into the tower. At the end of one he could see a staircase.
“Through there,” Ariel called. “It’s near the top.”
Reheuel ran forward several steps and then heard the skittering of claws in the hallway behind him. He spun around and let an arrow
fly, striking an oncoming goblin in the chest. Its sickle-shaped sword fell to the floor as it went down writhing. He jumped the stairs six at a time, often nearly falling as his booted feet struggled for a grip on the narrow ledges. Ariel flew along at his side, her light burning brightly with excitement.
As they climbed higher, the sounds of their enemies flooded the tower around them. Claws skittered on the stairs below and doors slammed in the distance. Snarls and yowls echoed through the hallways. Halfway up the spiral staircase, Reheuel stopped with his back to a closed pinewood door. He braced himself there and drew his sword. “Watch above,” he said to Ariel.
Seconds later, a mass of long slender limbs shot around the bend of the stair and the bodies of four goblins dragged themselves into view. Reheuel swung downward once and ground his blade along the edge of a stair. Rock powder and shards spattered into the goblins’ faces where they hung near the floor.
The group of them recoiled quickly, scrabbling over one another back against the wall. One overbalanced and fell screaming down the stairs. Reheuel lunged forward quickly and caught another across the shoulder, neatly severing its trapezius. The remaining two screeched and ducked down low, sweeping out their sickled blades at Reheuel’s ankles.
He backed up the stairs slowly, swinging his sword but struggling to reach them. Their long, snaking bodies clung to the steps far below him as their sickles sought for his ankles. He stumbled twice on the narrow steps, and then one of their sickles caught his boot. The rusted blade barely bit into the thick leather, but the force still dragged Reheuel off his feet. He crashed heavily to his back and dropped his sword. It clattered uselessly down the stairs. He felt his bow snap beneath him.
In a moment, the goblins were on him, struggling to reach his vulnerable throat past his heavy cloak. He put up his arms and batted at them, knocking aside their reaching arms and blades. Twice the flesh on his arms tore on their swords, but his heavy sleeves took the brunt of the damage. Finally his grasping right hand took hold of one of their throats. He swung its body across his chest and knocked the other goblin into the wall. They snarled and spat, the one he held biting deeply into his wrist. He kicked out at the other one with his boot and sent it flying down the stairs into the round wall. With one hand freed, he slid his dagger out of his belt and plunged it into the goblin he held, pumping the handle until the writhing ceased.
He struggled to his feet then and saw the three living goblins on the stairs, two bleeding and the other favoring its left arm. He lifted a sickle-sword from the stairs next to him and threw it, a short, half-rotation throw. The curved blade sunk into the farthest goblin’s chest, and it dropped down the stairwell.
He tossed his dagger back to his right hand and crouched over the stairs, waiting for another attack. The remaining goblins, however, turned and scurried back down the stairs, their frustrated chunnering fading with their footsteps.
Reheuel sheathed his dagger and turned back to Ariel. “Maybe some help next time?” he said as they started climbing.
Ariel shrugged. “You didn’t need it yet.”
As they neared the final floor, Reheuel heard the sound of claws once more on the stairs below him. A large, studded oak door stood closed at the end of the stairs. Reheuel grabbed the iron ring set in its edge and dragged it open. Passing the door, he found himself in the cup of the tower’s chalice, a massive room with bowled walls and a ceiling of latticed stone and transparent diamond wood panes.
The first thing he saw was the Tear, a stunning white gem the size of a plum—it lay on a kind of altar carved up from the floor in the room’s center. The second thing he saw was the minotaur. It stood at the far end of the room, nearly seven feet tall and breathing in long, snorting drags. Heavy strands of mucus ran from its dark, bovine nose, and its matted black fur hung in ragged dreadlocks over its human shoulders. Its hooves were cracked and infected, jagged from constant wear. Pussy bubbles and sores stood out on its mangy shanks.
Chapter 10
The night sky roiled in deep shades of black and purple, heavy clouds blotting out the light of the celestial bodies. But still the wall glowed and flickered with the gyrating shadows of the sentries as the cloud of ember lights grew nearer. Geuel slid his fingers gently along the string of his new bow, feeling the beeswax spread over his fingertips. An arrow hung listlessly on his undrawn string, and six more protruded from a bag of hay before him.
Kezeik stood at the corner of the tower, his face glowing in the light of a nearby brazier. His wrinkled forehead glistened with pooling sweat, and several tendrils wound down past the crows feet near his eyes. He looked very old in that moment, more run down than the ancient hound whose head rested against his thigh.
The approaching cloud was clearer now, a field of single lights rather than a mere glow. Kezeik nodded to Geuel and Toman. “Ready, lads?”
Geuel nodded silently, and Toman grinned.
“Consider this your induction,” Kezeik said with a kindly smile. “As of now you’re both members of the guard.”
He turned back to the wall on their left. “Archers! Ready!” Fifty strings slid back to fifty cheeks, and fifty arms lifted their bows in a ragged salute to death. “Fire!”
The arrows hissed from the wall in a stuttering salvo, a staggered volley spaced over nearly two seconds. They glided upward from the parapet and vanished in the darkness before even reaching their peak.
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
A second volley, slightly more uniform this time, whipped out into the night. Still the cloud of lights drew nearer, distinct now. Each light formed a slender oval of about six inches, just larger than a fairy. With each volley of arrows, the cloud undulated slightly, individual lights flickering in random directions, giving the impression of a swirling current within the cloud. But the cloud kept coming. Geuel never saw a single light disappear in the four volleys that the archers fired. They simply shifted, flickered, and returned.
Finally, when the front edges of the cloud lay a mere hundred feet out, Kezeik dropped his bow. “Shields!” he called, and the walls rang with the click of falling bows and the dull clatter of wood and leather as men fitted their shields over their vambraced arms.
Geuel squinted at the lights as they approached, striving to narrow his focus to one figure, hoping to see his enemy. They were darker than he expected, glowing only in threaded veins, like the embers of a dying fire. Their bodies were black and choked with the smoke that enveloped them and emanated from within them. Whole portions of their body were formed of smoke, thick wreaths that rippled across their limbs and torsos, disturbing the natural flesh and leaving it still whole in its wake. Their bodies and features were unmistakably goblin when visible but distorted by a smoldering inner light. They seemed exhausted by their own flames, hanging constantly on the verge of final consummation.
They passed over shrieking in a cloud, and in their wake thick billows of ashy smoke rolled across the wall, stinging the eyes of the guards and sending several men into thick coughing fits. Toman coughed twice and clawed at his eyes, trying to clear them and to stay alert. Geuel drew his coat over his nostrils and breathed in shallow drags. As the center of their cloud poised over the wall, the goblins wheeled around and descended. Shields rang and sparks flashed in the night as flaming bodies struck the sentry ranks. Shrieks both human and goblin echoed through the foothills around the city.
A tiny flash of light shot toward Geuel’s chest, and he swung his shield to bat it away. The shape dissipated around the shield’s edge, and Geuel swung right through it, leaving only tendrils of smoke in the wake of his blow. A throaty chuckle rippled from the smoke as it weaved back into its original form. A tiny goblin with ragged crow-like wings flashed from the smoke toward Geuel’s face. He staggered backwards, swinging his sword twice and both times watching the goblin easily slip around its edge.
A column of smoke sprouted in the goblin’s hand and consolidated into a vicious stiletto. It flew forward and thrust. Geuel swung hi
s gloved hand and batted the creature off balance. It flashed downward and buried the stiletto in Geuel’s thigh, instantly dissipating back to smoke. Around the wall, men cried out in shock and fear as their blades carved harmless gaps in wreathes of smoke, as intangible blades formed and cut before their very eyes. Tiny hands sprouting from tendrils of ash grasped and clawed at patches of exposed skin. Tiny arrows of ember embedded into sentries’ eyes.
A cry to Geuel’s right tore his attention away from his own wound as he struggled to tie a bandage into place. Toman was rising into the air, rings of smoke circled tightly around his wrists, his ankles bound by a shadowy, glowing form. His wrists smoked with the heat of pressing coals, and his eyes flashed from side to side in terror. Geuel grabbed him by the leg and struggled to pull him down, slashing carefully at the smoke around his ankle. As his blade hit the smoke, it faded to nothing and Toman’s legs swung free. The bands around his wrists faded off and formed into two goblins in the air nearby. Toman fell heavily to the tower floor, his body jolting on the wooden planks.
Geuel heard then the spit of burning pine, the crackle of sap boiling in flame. The walls around the city burned, lighting the entire courtyard in a freakish network of shifting glows. Lights like embers flashed in clouds and solitary arcs all through the city, spinning into smoke and emerging in fire to strike, shrieking and cackling in voices fully goblin and yet equally something more.
Geuel and Toman stood nearly back to back in the tower’s center, separated only by the stout flagpole of the Iris, batting with their shields at the tendrils of smoke that swerved toward them like the tentacles of some central beast. Nearly every time the smoke merely dissipated, but once Geuel was rewarded by the meaty thud of flesh against his shield and the weight of a body ricocheting back into the shadows. Kezeik was nowhere to be seen, having moved down to the nearby wall where the fighting was heaviest. Geuel could still hear his voice shouting orders from the fray, orders not meant to be heeded but merely shouted to remind those fighting that command still reigned in the battle.