The ploy was working; he was headed for Daniken. The elf circled a few feet from where she stood near the bolder, and shot another tendril of silver light at him. It collided with his head, glancing off the scales and shimmering off into the Void.
Gorjugan didn’t turn from her, but instead came straight for Leona. He could feel the power of the God Slayer, that much Leona knew. He was coming for her, and he meant to end this. With his tipped fangs, he just might be able to do it, too.
Leona cowered farther behind the ice boulder, hoping that Daniken would call Gorjugan away at the last moment, and then she could strike. Leona wasn’t sure how long it was before the scrape of his scales over the ice silenced. She wasn’t even sure if he’d stopped slithering closer to her, or that her heart was raging so hard that it had drown out the sound of his approach.
“Hey, over here!” Daniken called. There was a dull, metallic clang, and a blossom of silver light over her head. He was close. Leona looked up to see Gorjugan’s giant head swiveling above her. He was searching for her. She didn’t dare move, because she was sure the slightest sound would draw his attention.
His head stopped its swaying movement, and he tilted down closer to her. As silently as she could, Leona turned so she was facing the boulder, and the snake. The sound of her movement made him stop, and then faster than she could move, he struck at the boulder, shattering the ice with his giant head.
The boulder jettisoned around her, shards of ice cutting into her flesh. His mouth was full of ice, and a great chomp of his jaws shattered what was in his great maw. He struck again, violent, lightning fast. Leona took the chance, it might be the only chance she had. She swung out with the hammer, using all of hers and Hafaress’ might to smote the darkling god.
Her hammer connected with his jaw, shattering his teeth moments before he connected with her. It drove his head sideways, and the force knocked Leona in the opposite direction.
The darkling god let out a sharp hiss, his eyes flashing dark light into the Void that surrounded them. His head arched up to the ruined cosmos, and he began to fall. Leona landed moments before Gorjugan did. She tried to roll out of the path of his head. When he landed, his body rebound on the ice, and then dropped a final time—dead.
It was done. She’d lived. She could barely believe her luck. She rolled to her side, and pushed to stand, but a sharp pain in her stomach seized her. She cried out as her muscles contracted. Dark splotches formed before her eyes, and she was certain that she’d lost consciousness a couple times.
“Leona?” Muninn said. Leona hadn’t seen either of the of the ravens land, or shift back to their human forms. They knelt around her, Daniken at her feet, the moon scepter strapped to her back.
“How did he bite her?” Huginn asked the dark elf.
“He didn’t, but when she hit him it shattered his jaw . . . the fang must have stabbed into her stomach then.”
She hadn’t made it out. She hadn’t gotten out of battle without defeat.
She felt the shock travel through her, like ice water seizing her muscles, freezing her body. She cried out, trying in vain to twist away from Gorjugan, but her muscles were betraying her, liquid fire, molten ice, traveled through her body, and she knew the God Slayer had found both of them.
She felt the other consciousness in her mind cry out, but his voice quickly faded, and when it did she slumped to the ground, all thoughts of winning, of saving Eget Row and the Ever After ebbing away from her as surely as Hafaress ebbed into the Void and perished.
“Hold still,” Muninn said, pressing a hand to Leona’s chest.
“I’m not dead?” Leona barely managed to moan.
“Not yet,” Huginn said. “Hafaress is gone from your body, but there’s another problem.”
“Gorjugan has poison as well,” Muninn said. “We need to get you away from here and somewhere you can be safe.”
“There’s no place like that here,” Huginn said.
“The Well,” Daniken said. “Take her to the Well.”
“Why the Well?” Huginn wondered. “That’s certainly not safe.”
“No,” the dark elf said. “But the wyrd within the Well can heal her.”
“The tree is dead,” Muninn said. “I doubt the well will do much to heal her now.”
“The tree may be dead, but the wyrd isn’t. Darkness is coming to Eget Row, and the Well is pulling back all of the wyrd. It’s trying to sustain any kind of power that it can. If we take her to the Well, it might heal her.”
“No,” Leona gasped. She could feel the toxins traveling through her, burning away nerves in a tumultuous pain she was surprised she could remain conscious through. “Everyone is dying.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to,” Huginn scolded. “Baba Yaga said this didn’t have to be the end.”
“But it is,” Leona said. She knew it was true, no matter how much her mind didn’t want to accept it. This was the end. They’d lost the Ever After . . . they’d lost the powers of the All Father and Hafaress. She wasn’t sure how she knew the All Father was gone, but she could feel it just as surely as she could feel the Void where Hafaress had been. Her hands were shaking, and she wasn’t sure if that was from the pain of the poison, or if it was the realization that all of this had been for nothing.
“She’s not making sense,” Daniken said. “We are taking her to the Well, end of story. What is she going to do, fight us?”
Leona wished she could, but the dark elf was right, she couldn’t fight them. She couldn’t stop them. And dammit, she wanted to live!
She felt someone grab her feet, and someone else grab her shoulders. She couldn’t make out who was doing what, because her vision was clouding, and all she could see were shapes, and the pulse of silver light over her.
The hammer slipped from her hand, and she was lifted.
Abagail knew the tree was dying. If the sight of the last leaves sloughing from the branches wasn’t enough to tell her, the feel of the trunk beneath her hands was. She had seen the tree in her vision so long before she had contracted the shadow plague. In her dream, the bark had been healthy, brown, and sturdy. Now it was gray and flaked away under her palm like ash. Bits of bark clung to her skin as she climbed, sometimes biting into her flesh and drawing blood to the surface.
Still, she could feel a weak pulse of life from within the tree. Something still remained there, but it was growing fainter, and she was sure the life of the tree would only exist in the roots below the surface of the Well of Wyrding.
Fatigue was a real danger to Abagail. Skye had fashioned a kind of rope from a dead vine, and fastened it tight around her, looping it around his waist. If she lost her grip on the branches and knotholes of the tree, he assured her that he could carry her weight. Truth be told, he was doing most of the work of carrying her up the tree.
Beneath them, Mari and Celeste came. They showed no signs of tiring.
Above them, Daphne pulsed with purple light, guiding them through the twisted branches and the eerie darkness of Eget Row.
Abagail was grateful they clung fast to the trunk, because the Ever After was crumbling. It had started when they first laid hands on the tree. At first it was little more than dust, but as they climbed, more and more of the Ever After had begun to fall. Every now and then they would hear the sound of rocks raining down around them, followed by a great grinding scream. Moments later branches were snapping in deafening pops and roars. Abagail clung tight to the trunk, her eyes screwed shut, waiting for a large slab of stone to crush her against the tree, or smear her down the length of the trunk. It hadn’t happened . . . yet.
She wondered how in the nine worlds she planned on facing Anthros if he rode the Void high above the Ever After. She wondered why they were climbing the great tree if there might not be any Ever After left once she got there.
Abagail wasn’t sure how long they climbed, but they finally reached the top branches where the tree fused almost seamlessly with the Ever After.
; Skye climbed up one branch that had broken through the floor eons before. She slithered through the marble hole after him, and looked around.
“Where are we?” she wondered, taking in the smooth marble floor, littered with dead leaves, scurrying squirrels, and random bits of furniture that looked like they’d seen better days.
“Some storage level far below the main castle?” Skye hazarded a guess.
Celeste and Mari climbed through the hole after them.
“Then we need to go up?” Abagail wondered.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Skye said. “Anthros is up, so I would imagine that’s where we need to go.”
“We should make it fast,” Mari said. “I don’t feel completely safe here.”
It was only then that Abagail heard the sounds of battle above. The darklings must have broken through to the great hall.
Make it fast. Abagail didn’t like the sounds of that. The darklings were winning below. Though they’d cleansed Elivigar through the All Father’s death, it hadn’t seemed to halt the onslaught of the darkling tide. They were losing. The prophecy Baba Yaga had spoken so long ago wasn’t going to be broken as she thought it could be. To make it fast meant that Abagail would die . . . soon.
She looked up at Skye, for the first time really weighing what that meant. An end to everything. Even if they had won, what was there to go back to now? Her home was gone. All homes were gone, save the Ever After, and that was crumbling down around them. Even as she stood, staring into his clear, blue eyes, she felt the floor beneath her shake, and heard another slab of marble hewn from the Ever After, plunging through branches and limbs. She never heard it hit ground, they were too far up for that.
Skye gripped her hand, and pulled her closer to him. She wanted to hear him say it was all going to be okay, that they would live through this. They would see tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. She wanted him to say that Leona would be safe, and she would be there with them after this was over. That she could kill Anthros, and that the darklings would flee when they did. But he didn’t.
“You don’t have to do this,” he told her. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, and held her to his body. “We can climb back down, maybe find some place the darklings can’t reach. We can live through this.”
Live through this by running. He knew this was the end, this was the end of the line for them, that today would see their death, and everything after that was . . . what? Without an Ever After, would there be an afterlife? Would there just be blackness and the cold embrace of death? Would she even be aware of what happened to her after she was no longer Abagail?
She squared her shoulders, trying her best to push the overwhelming finality of death swarming up before her. She shook her head. “I have to do this. With any luck, killing Anthros will chase the darklings off, and more than just us will survive.”
Skye nodded against her shoulder, but he didn’t let her go, and she didn’t fight free from his embrace.
Celeste and Mari ignored them, instead looking for a way they might be able to get out of the basement of the Ever After, and to the fighting above. Daphne helped them search, and Abagail let all of what faced them drift from her mind. This would likely be the last time she felt the close press of Skye’s body, his breath on her neck, his muscles firm against her, the protective embrace of his arms.
She took a deep breath of his skin. He smelled of wood and air, like fresh clothes that had hung on the line all night. He smelled of the first swell of wind off a spring lake. She let the scent drift over her, and fill her senses.
“Found a way,” Celeste said.
“All right,” Abagail said, extricating herself from Skye’s embrace. He took hold of her hand, and the two of them let Celeste lead them up a narrow, twisting set of stairs. Upward they climbed, the sound of blade meet blade drawing closer. The sound of screams, of bodies falling to the waiting branches beneath the Ever After, to the sound of wind whistling through the upper, open reaches of the Ever After.
As they climbed, her fear mounted. Her hand felt clammy in Skye’s grip, and when he felt her shiver, he gripped her hand tighter, as if telling her he believed in her, that she could do it. When another slab of marble tore free from the Ever After, her nerves were so frayed that she yelled in surprise.
Nervously, they all laughed, though Abagail doubted if any of them felt the buoyancy of joy just then.
And then the darkness grew thicker. Like mist trailing over the white marble floor, the darkling wyrd slithered. It was a formless, thoughtless fog, more like the power of the darklings was claiming the kingdom, and less like they were seeking out a fight. But there was fighting happening. A battle raged nearby, and when they turned another corner, it was to peer into the great hall and at the field of battle they were about to join.
The great hall was in shambles. Sections of walls had been torn free, and Abagail could only imagine that those sections were the crumbling bricks that had crashed by them while they climbed. Tables had been upended, chairs shattered, food spilled over the floor and smashed to stains under combatants’ feet. The ballicrie still stood in windows, their whispers carrying easily over the sound of battle. Their swords of light flashing out a claiming for the people below. There weren’t nearly as many people being claimed now as there had been.
Abagail drew her sword in one hand, the God Slayer in the other.
“Ready?” Skye asked.
Abagail nodded, and they launched into battle.
Perhaps for the last time, shoulder to shoulder.
Leona didn’t remember much of the trip from the icy plains where she’d been poisoned. She had faint glimpses now and then of the Void, arching high above, littered with shards of what used to be the nine worlds. She remembered seeing shadows speed across the sky, or maybe that had been moments of darkness from the poison that raged within her veins.
Her midsection had stopped hurting some time ago, and she wasn’t exactly sure that was a good thing. As long as she could feel the pain, she knew that she was alive. But now, how did she know for sure that she was alive at all?
She was still aware of the pulsing silver light around her, the feel of hands on her shoulders and ankles. She felt the lulling sway of the land passing beneath the feet of those who carried her.
The moments of darkness were getting longer, and she wasn’t aware of when they passed from the lands of snow and ice to the lands of green and battle. The sounds of fighting were far off, but, again, she wasn’t completely sure that had anything to do with distance instead of her looming death making life seem farther away.
When her consciousness returned once more, the ravens were carrying Leona between their shoulders. Daniken led the way, her silver scepter pulsing with a light that Leona focused on to keep conscious. She felt an absence in her stomach, and when she looked down for the fang that had been lodged there, she realized it had been removed. Her blood flowed freely, and a black kind of fog drifted from the wound, as if the shadow plague was leaving her body. Maybe it was poison, she wasn’t sure, but it certainly wasn’t fluid.
The lumbered to the top of the Well of Wyrding. From where she stood, Leona could see fragments of the rim were missing. Branches and leaves in hues ranging from brown to crimson floated upon the silvery surface of the wyrd within. Bricks and mortar lay scattered about the edge of the well, and the ground far below.
The ravens lowered her to her knees, and Leona slumped to the stone rim when they let go of her.
“What now?” Muninn asked. “What do we do?”
“We drop her into the wyrd,” Daniken said. “It’s the only thing I can think of.”
Huginn began to argue, but Leona couldn’t focus on what was being said, or the dangerous step closer to the dark elf that the ravens took. Her eyes were riveted on a shape that was looming closer to the surface. Through the murk of the silver wyrd, Leona saw the glimmer of light on scales, the play of refracted light over bare breasts, the cloud of black h
air that surrounded the form. As the figure glided closer, Leona knew what she was seeing—a mermaid.
The mermaid loomed toward the surface of the well, and as she propelled herself upward toward Leona, the branches and leaves seemed to part for her coming.
As the mermaid broke the surface, Leona noticed two more following—one with green hair, like thick moss on an old rock, the other with red hair like a ripe apple about to fall from a tree. The debris cleared more, and soon the other two were breaking free of the surface. While Leona had heard legends of mermaids, she never expected them to look so . . . strange.
Their eyes were larger than normal, their irises nearly encompassing all the white. Their noses were turned up at the end, tipped with a tiny horn. Their ears were long and pointed, not unlike an elf’s ears. Their hands were webbed, and long fins grew from their elbows.
“Dark elf,” the black haired mermaid said, “you’re not welcome here.” The voice was filled with wyrd, and with command. Leona glanced toward the dark elf, and she could see the moment the wyrd began to work on Daniken. Her eyes lost their focus, and her movements became jerky.
Daniken bowed, and backed toward the stairs. When she was out of sight, the mermaids turned their gaze to the ravens, and to Leona.
“You’ve come to visit us at last,” the first said. “I’m Skuld.” The name of Leona’s old doll. If she could sit up straighter, she would have, but the poison was winning out, and Leona had all she could do to keep her head up enough to see the mermaids. Opals glimmered within the dark locks of Skuld’s hair. “These are my sisters, Urd and Verdandi. We represent the past, present, and future, just as you three represent us in the nine worlds.”
Verdandi, the one with red hair, swam toward Huginn, who took a protective step backwards. Within the locks of her hair, emeralds glimmered. Urd, the one with green hair, closed the distance between herself and Muninn. Muninn knelt at the edge of the well, and held her hand out in greeting to the mermaid, who chortled and hid her face, abashed.
Twilight of the Gods (The Harbingers of Light Book 7) Page 10
