“That is not fair, Herr’Don,” Thalla said.
“Fair?” Herr’Don scoffed. “You think because you spent some years turning tricks in the House of Hataramon that you know what is not fair? Belnavar’s death was not fair. Aralus’ death was not fair.” He struggled to hold up his shoulder to show his mangled arm. “This is not fair!”
It seemed that Thalla had only then noticed his wounds. A well of worry formed in her eyes and flooded her face. She ran to him with arms outstretched, like a mother to her injured child, but this child withdrew from her and met her concern with an angry glare.
Thalla froze, her arms still held towards Herr’Don. When it was clear that he did not want her comfort she rubbed her eyes with one hand and held her neck with the other, as if she had been bitten on the nape.
The tension that hung like a cloud over them was broken by Elithéa’s voice. “What happened to the boy?” she asked, and there was a hint of worry. It seemed odd to hear the tremor in her voice, for she always appeared to care little for others who were not of her race, for those who she said were dead to her. Now one was.
“He ...” Ifferon struggled, careful not to further upset Délin, yet finding that he also had not fully come to terms with what had happened. “There was a battle. It all went wrong.”
“He is dead?” Elithéa quizzed, her golden hue dimming like the sun behind a cloud.
Thalla held her hands against her mouth, as if to stop whatever scream might rush out and rock the mountains.
Ifferon nodded. It seemed better than speaking that little word of affirmation, that little word that would make it all so real. Everyone was dying: Melgalés, Belnavar, Yavün, Aralus, and Théos. Even Teron, though he deserved death. Ifferon wondered how long it would be before dark hands reached for another of them, before they reached for him.
“You said there was a battle,” Elithéa said, wiping her eyes. “I trust then that you found him, that you killed the Summoner.”
“Yes,” Ifferon said.
“So the Call of Agon is ended,” the Ferian said with a sigh of relief.
Ifferon had not the heart to tell her that it was not so, that there was no Call to be answered, and he still feared the wrath of Délin when he finally found out that Théos died in vain, and that with him died his patron god.
“He said something to me,” Délin said, his voice a shadow of what it had been. Gone was its strength and authority, replaced now by a strain and a struggle, and a hint of despair, which promised to reveal an even greater misery if he dwelt on it too much.
Everyone looked to him, their eyes apologetic.
“Sóthé ima,” the knight continued. “Just a whisper, just a ... sóthé ima.”
Elithéa closed her eyes and hung her head.
Délin turned to her, pleading with his eyes. “Tell me what he said.”
It took a long time for her to answer, and she almost gulped the words. “Save me,” she translated.
Délin’s lip trembled and his eyes watered. The muscles in his face tightened as he tried to hold back the tears. “Save me,” he whispered. A tear dropped upon Théos’ ghostly face, as if it leapt from his eyes in some futile attempt to save the child. After a time, when Délin had regained his composure, he looked up and spoke again. “He wants me to save him.”
“A bit late for that,” Herr’Don said with a snort. “A bit late for a lot of people.” He glowered at Elithéa and Thalla.
“It is the words of a dying child,” Elithéa said. “It is what any would say.”
Suddenly a fire sparked in Délin’s voice, a vigour that was an echo of his former strength. “It was more than that. Were the Last Words of Telm just a trifle, something to be dismissed?”
“That was Telm, Délin,” Elithéa responded. “Théos was just a boy, not a god.”
Ifferon bit his lip. Now did not seem the time to reveal what Teron had told him. It did not seem like there was ever going to be a right time for that. Herr’Don looked at him, as if to ask why he kept such news to himself, but the emptiness in the Prince’s eyes showed that he did not really care, that it mattered little if the others should know their doom.
“Why are you so eager to dismiss his words?” Délin asked.
“They are just words,” the Ferian responded. She stood up sharply and turned away. “Nothing can be done. Nothing should be done.”
Délin nodded to himself. “So there is something.”
“There are always dark paths that can be tread, Délin,” Elithéa said. “But we choose not to tread them, because we are good people.”
“Good people who murder others,” Herr’Don said. “Would that Herr’Don the Great could lie to himself as well as you do, but that is one of few things he does not excel at.”
“But there is a path, a way?” Délin asked eagerly.
Elithéa kept her back to them. “If you want to be a necromancer, if you want to follow in the footsteps of Acrath the Turncoat.”
“I do not know who Acrath is, but if she knows a way, then I would hear her speak,” Délin said.
“There are the acorns,” Ifferon explained.
Elithéa turned to him and looked at him harshly. “I told you that because I thought you understood.”
“I did, and I do. There is no harm in speaking of it.”
“But there is much harm in doing it,” she responded. She pointed to Délin. “And he wants to do it, I can tell.”
“So the Ferian can forsooth,” Délin said. “Yet I do not know what it is that I want to do. What are these acorns?”
“Each Ferian child is born with an acorn,” Ifferon told him.
“I cannot believe you are doing this,” Elithéa said, raising her hands to the heavens as if she were beseeching Éala to strike him down. “I cannot believe this is happening.”
“There are many things that I cannot believe have happened,” Délin said. “But I am prepared to believe that there is a way out of this darkness. Why do the children have acorns? What good are they?” He patted the pouch on Théos’ belt, a bag he previously thought was little more than part of the boy’s unusual attire.
“They are the Ferhassan,” Ifferon told him, “the Life Houses, like the Beldarians of the Magi.”
“So they house the life of the Ferian?” Thalla quizzed.
“Yes, and when the Ferian or Al-Ferian dies they are usually planted to grow trees, through which they live on. Or they are sometimes used to bring the Ferian back to life.”
“By those who favour the fleeting moments as a Ferian over the endless ones as a tree,” Elithéa said. “By the defilers of nature, the consorts of death.”
“So there is a way to bring him back?” Délin asked, his eyes wide like a child who had discovered some new wonder, like perhaps Théos would have looked if he still sat with them whispering Ferian words to himself.
“There is a way to kill his tree and spit on his memory,” Elithéa said sharply, almost spitting the words herself. At that point she produced her acorn, with its scars to match her own. “This is what Aralus did to me, to my future. I cannot go back to Féthal. I cannot ever be a tree. What sliver of life I have left as a Ferian is all there is. I will not let you take the boy’s future away.”
“But he does not have a future!” Délin shouted. “Look at him!” The anger in his voice was mixed with grief, and tears lined his face like a funeral veil.
“I understand your pain, Délin,” Elithéa said. “I really do, and I never thought I could or would understand another race in Iraldas. But you do not understand my race, and though he is Al-Ferian, we share this same fate in the forest. What you seek to do to him is not for his good. It is a defilement. It would be like digging up the graves of the dead and desecrating their bodies.”
“Perhaps she is right,” Thalla said. “If this is the way of her people, then perhaps we should honour that.”
“I will not honour death,” Délin said, “for that is what you ask of me when there is the ch
oice of life. I had almost given up. Corrias abandoned me, ignored my prayers. And now there is some sliver of hope, so why would I not take it?”
Herr’Don laughed, and they all turned to him. “Will you not tell them, Ifferon? Will you make him think there is hope when there is none?”
“What does he mean?” Délin asked.
It seemed there was no option now but to reveal the full events in the Temple. Ifferon did not know where to start, and he found he frequently jumbled up things and had to go back and forth in his tale, with each new piece of information further surprising the others, who were more dumbfounded than he had been when Teron revealed it all to him.
“That explains the pendant then,” Elithéa said, “and what we assumed to be his name. Host. He was the host of the god Corrias, a vessel in which he dwelt. So if Corrias is gone, then Éala is dead also. Yet Agon still lives, though he is in chains.”
Délin shook his head. “So he did not forsake me,” he said. “I forsook him.”
“It matters little,” Herr’Don said, “for we are all forsaken here.”
“You did not forsake him if you cared for the child he became,” Thalla said.
“Yet I would forsake him if I chose not to do all I can to restore his life,” Délin said. “So let us do this for Corrias, for Théos. We must bring them back.”
“I may no longer be welcome in Féthal, but I am still an Éalgarth,” Elithéa pointed out. “You know what that means. I hunt down the Betrayers of Trees.”
“Would you hunt me down?” Délin asked. There was a threat in the question, the insinuation that he would fight to the last breath and perhaps beyond. Ifferon recalled the battle with the Felokar wolves, which had failed to bring him into the depths of Halés, and the Sentinels of the Old Ones, which he felled as if they were but toy soldiers and not the guardians of the ancient gods.
“I would rather kill you all than defile a life that has passed on to Éala,” Elithéa said.
“But he is Éala!” Délin replied. “Or was ... and might be again.”
“There is no reason to believe restoring life to the boy will bring back the god.”
“There is no reason not to try,” Délin said. “Even if we fail to bring back Corrias, is the life of Théos not enough?”
“Is his tree not enough?” Elithéa responded. “You know not what you do, Délin, for love and grief has blinded you, and despite your nobility you are still a Man, and you know not our ways.”
“He is an Al-Ferian,” Ifferon interjected. “They sometimes choose to live their second life.”
“They choose wrong,” she said. “And will ever be hunted by us because of it.”
“I think you know what will happen here,” Ifferon said. “There is too much at stake.”
Elithéa nodded. “So be it. You will try to bring him back, and I will try to stop you. I am too wounded and tired to fight you now, and there is a code of honour in the hunt. I will give you a day to run. Then I will follow, and you will think what happened to Aralus is a mercy when I catch you.”
II – DEARLY DEPARTED
“When Corrias walks this world again, may he have mercy on you,” Délin said with a glower at Elithéa.
She ignored him and clambered into the cavern they had rested in the night before. “You had better get moving,” she said. “You carry much to slow you down.”
“I want no part of this,” Herr’Don said. “I will not waste what little life I have left chasing the spirits of the dead. The boy is gone. Corrias is gone. The days of the gods are over. Why die for tomorrow when we can live for today?”
“So that others can live,” Délin said.
“It has all been in vain, Trueblade, and I will not give more hours in servitude to Agon,” Herr’Don said. “He has taken enough from us. My part in this tale is done. If I had the will for it I would strike the Ferian down, for she has brought naught but doom upon us, as if we needed her aid for that. You are cowards to run from her when she can barely stand.”
Elithéa snorted. “For one so vain, you are in need of a mirror. With which arm do you think to strike me down, Herr’Don? For you are running out of options.”
Rage volcanoed in Herr’Don’s face, and he lunged at the woman with what strength he could muster from the darkest parts of his being. Ifferon blocked him, pushing him back, but the Prince’s fierceness was too much, knocking Ifferon back into the snow.
“Ah, now you are brave,” Herr’Don said to the cleric. “You muster some sliver of courage to defend the woman who plans to hunt you down, to defy the very man that rescued you from the destruction of Larksong. You are not all you were made out to be. Melgalés was wrong, and he paid for it with his life. I will not add mine to the treasures cast aside defending a child of a god who can barely muster the strength of Man.
“So go to Alimror and try to grow a boy out of a tree. Even if you succeed, you bring life into a world of death, where we all owe a tithe of days to the Gatekeeper. I thought much of all of you, that this little band of people had a chance, but I guess even the Great can make mistakes.”
With that he turned and strode off to the Grey Hills in the east, leaving behind a trail of snow that he had kicked and pushed aside in his anger. Ifferon stepped forward to follow him, to bring him back, but Délin stopped him.
“Let him go,” the knight said. “If he lived up even a little to his self-appointed title he would be a boon to us, but he is nothing if a bane festers in his heart, and that is a wound much worse than his injured arm.” He clambered up with Théos and looked once more into the boy’s eyes; a tear dropped upon his face. “Our path leads to other places.”
He walked off towards the west, where the White Mountains continued on and led into the land of Alimror, home of the Al-Ferian. He knew not if there was a path through there, or if he would join Théos in an icy grave as they fled the wrath of a woman who did not seem to understand honour and love. Ifferon followed, anxious about this new threat, but relieved to be finally moving again, even if it meant running from a new enemy.
* * *
Thalla lingered behind for a moment. “Do you mean to go through with this?” she asked the Ferian. “Can you not let this one pass? Can you not see why we need to try?”
“We?” Elithéa asked. “So our struggle in Idor-Hol showed you nothing of what the acorns mean to my people. They are our life, Thalla. What would a Magus be without a Beldarian?”
“Me, I guess,” Thalla said, and she felt a sudden shame.
“And look how lost you are. You drift along whichever way the wind blows, even if it is a hot wind from the fires of Halés. And you are powerless, unable to even use the magic you have studied, for fear it will send you straight into the Halls.”
“If I were powerless you would have died in Idor-Hol.”
“And been spared the need to invoke the justice of Éala on you all.”
“We have to try, Elithéa. We have to try to bring him back. What hope does this world have if its gods are picked off one by one and yet Agon still lives? What if he escapes from his prison?”
“None of that justifies the defiling of a life entrusted to Éala.”
“I might as well be talking to a Moln,” Thalla said.
“At least they respect the earth.”
“I respect life,” Thalla said. “And, if nothing else, Théos deserves life.”
“You know my mind on this.”
Thalla sighed. “And you know mine.”
“Yes,” Elithéa said, “and you have much to learn, Thalla. You do not see how the men of this world pull you along on a leash, and how sometimes you follow even without such bonds. Go where the new wind blows. I will make the wind instead.”
* * *
Night curtained the world, and the stars shone out like lanterns, offering some illumination to Herr’Don’s weary footfalls. His rage had carried him far, as had a slip in the snow that sent him tumbling down a large ravine. More battered and bruised than ever,
he crossed the Grey Hills and set his eyes upon the ruins of Nahragor, which was ghostly quiet now in the wake of the siege only a few nights before. He wondered if the Garigút had managed to drive back the forces of Agon, but he soon realised it was far more likely that they had all perished at the hands of the Molokrán.
“At least I am not one of them,” he whispered to himself, and the words were a comfort to him under the bleakness of the night sky and the oppression of the Black Bastion. He decided to steer well clear of the fortress, for above it lingered the echoes of battle, and beneath its shadow lived the shadows of the dead.
Soon he came to the ruin of the Greater Ilokrán where he and the others had fought the Molokrán, and where the Mountain Moln proved a useless friend in a time most in need of allies. He kicked at the smaller stones, knowing not if they were part of the Warding Stone or part of the rocky beast who went by the name Daenardü. Nothing moved amidst the rubble, and Herr’Don wondered if the Moln was deep in slumber, or if it had finally passed away.
“Better you than me,” Herr’Don said, and he kicked another stone into the pile of rocks. This time it felt like the ritual throwing of dirt into a grave. “Sleep then, in peace.”
Herr’Don spotted his tattered cloak further down the hill, lodged in a crevice and weighed down by a small boulder. It billowed in the breeze like a flag, and it was perhaps the only banner bearing the royal colours and the royal emblem in this desecrated land. But Herr’Don knew well that he had not claimed these hills for Boror, and that, indeed, there was not much to claim. Except, of course, the cloak he had cast at the Molokrán in his fit of rage and anger. He recovered it now and held it before him, where he could see the bleak landscape through the many holes in the fabric. He was no longer in the White Mountains, but it was still cold, and so he draped the cloak around him and grew frustrated as he struggled to fasten it with his good arm alone. Eventually he succeeded, and he set off again down the hillside, like a solitary standard-bearer.
The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 33
