“I wish I knew more of their tongue,” Ifferon said as he stepped back from the window. “There does not appear to be anything amiss. Corrias still walks the land.”
Délin calmed the boy down, holding him close until he stopped shaking. He had hoped these kinds of terrors were over, that the new life for the child would mean he did not see the darkness that others appeared not to see.
“I will find out what he means,” the knight said, and though he did not speak his fears aloud, it was clear that he dreaded that meaning.
* * *
Elithéa was back in her cell, though this time her arms and legs were bound as well. She was not gagged, but she had little energy left to shout abuse at passing guards. This did not altogether stop her from trying, and every so often they were treated to another barrage of derisive words.
Délin approached, and she perked up, as if she were readying herself for an attack. She led the offensive with her eyes.
“Have you come to mock me?” she asked, and her tone almost mocked him in return.
“No,” the knight replied coldly. “There is no honour in striking the wounded.”
“So you mock me all the same,” she said. “It is easy to strike others with your so-called honour, when you think they have done dishonourable things.”
“I can control how I act,” Délin said. “I cannot control how you choose to react.”
“Why have you come to me?” she asked. “Do you wish to look down on me one last time before I am put to death?”
“I would not have you die,” the knight replied. “I prayed that I would not have to kill you, and I do not see any merit in you dying anyway. Elithéa, I understand why you did what you did, and it seems, from your decision not to go through with it, that you understand why I did what I did also, and why it was important that we try to bring them back.”
“Then why are you here?” she probed again.
“To forgive you.”
She scoffed and turned away. “I do not need your forgiveness.”
“Perhaps not,” the knight said. “But I warrant that you need freedom, that you of all people cannot bear the bonds for long. Perhaps then you will need the forgiveness of some.”
With that, Délin stepped aside, and there behind him stood Théos, who looked even smaller in frame beside the large figure of the knight. He looked up curiously at Elithéa, who glowered down, as if he too had come to mock her.
“Why bring him to me?” she asked.
Délin knelt down beside Théos and nudged him closer to the cage. He clambered up and stood behind the boy, resting his gauntleted hands upon the child’s shoulders.
“This is the life we saved,” he told her. “He is more than a tree could ever be.”
Elithéa shook her head. “He does not yet know what he is missing.”
Théos reached out to Elithéa and placed his hand in her hand, in the red marking where she had been scalded by the bars that Thalla had set alight. She looked at him curiously, and he looked at her with inquisitive eyes, as if he was recognising the similarity of their races.
“Desh i carsa’ath abutha?” the boy asked, turning his inquisitive eyes to Délin.
“Why is she in the cage?” Elithéa translated, with a hint of satisfaction.
“Is it he or you that asks this question?” Délin wondered.
“Maybe it is both,” she replied. “Abim chasadel,” she told the child.
He did not seem to understand, and neither did Délin. “What did you tell him?” the knight asked her.
“I am an animal.”
“So a lie then,” Délin said.
“Not to the cager.”
Délin knelt down again and tapped Bark, the stuffed toy tree, on the shoulder. Théos turned the tree around as if it had a mind of its own. It bore its eternal smile.
“How do I tell him to play with the other children at the bunkers?” Délin asked Elithéa.
“Pelah truas ith mishanath.”
Délin repeated the words to Théos, and both he and Bark nodded emphatically before trotting off.
“So you need me still,” Elithéa said when the child was out of sight, “as a translator.”
“I think we both know that you are more than that. Perhaps the Matriarchate will not let you don the title of Éalgarth when your acorn is sullied, but you can still be an Éalgarth at heart, if the role is to guard Éala, who still needs us as much as we need him.”
“In a prison I can only be a prisoner,” she replied. “Agon would know that.”
Délin did not like the comparison, for he felt Agon deserved not even a fraction of the mercy he felt for Elithéa.
“The Beast is—” But he stopped suddenly when Elithéa looked away, as if her attention had been seized by something.
“What was that?” she asked.
Délin looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
“That noise.”
“What noise?”
“Never mind,” she said. “It was like a tiny tremor.”
“The rustle of the wind?”
“Maybe. Maybe something more.”
Though it was not cold, Délin felt a shiver down his spine, and a shiver in his mind, as if a distant quake had sent everything shaking and shivering. It passed just as quickly as it had come, but something seemed amiss, as if the world had been slightly tilted—not enough to notice, but enough to change things.
An Al-Ferian guard passed by and halted, as if he too felt unease. “Is this woman bothering you?” he asked, targeting the only source of that unease he could think of. Délin knew the unsettling feeling did not come from her, but from somewhere else, somewhere deeper.
“No,” the knight replied. “But the bonds are bothering her.”
“They could be loosened, but Thúalim insists they be tight.”
“Where is he?”
“At the main bunker.”
Délin strode off without a word. Twenty minutes passed before he returned with Thúalim, who cast his eyes across Elithéa as if she were the lifeless body of a Nahamon.
“So this knight begs clemency for you.”
“And I beg nothing,” she stated.
“It is well that you have such an active mouth,” Thúalim said, “for it is all you will get to use if you spend your life in bonds. And yet for the evil you sought to do there might be another answer, for we could relieve you of the bonds of life.”
“No,” Délin said. “If I need beg again, then I shall beg, for there is no dishonour in bowing before another, that one life might be saved. She will not ask it of you, for pride controls her tongue, but I will ask it for her: be merciful and let her live, and live free.”
“No,” Thúalim said in turn. “If you were the prisoner, then I would have granted this freedom, but until she asks for mercy with her own lips, there will be no cutting of her own bonds.”
“Then let me rot!” Elithéa barked. “And have mercy on my ears!”
Délin shook his head. “You are not making this easy.”
“I am not making it easy or difficult. I am refusing to participate.”
“And so your protest will seal your doom,” Délin said. He knelt down, like he had done for Théos, and he rested his hand upon the cold metal cage. “Please, Elithéa. Put aside your pride. You might think it low to ask forgiveness, but it is lower still to deny that you have done aught that needs forgiving. Why give up when this is not the end? You can atone for your old actions with new ones. And maybe mercy for you will help us be unmerciful with the real evil out there, that which we call Agon.”
It took many moments before Elithéa would talk, and it seemed to Délin that she would blurt out some sharp riposte, and in a single word or phrase condemn both him and Thúalim—and so condemn her to her fate. Yet she surprised them both, for she sighed and said, “Free me, please.” It was not quite the entreating for leniency that Délin would have given, but from Elithéa’s lips it sounded like the epitome of contritio
n and humility. Even Thúalim recognised this.
“I will consider your request,” he said. “Thank Éala that one of his knights sees in you something that the rest of us cannot. For one who might have lost so much because of you, he has already shown you the greatest mercy.”
* * *
Hours passed for Elithéa, until it seemed that the prospect of freedom was just a lie, a punishment of its own for what they deemed as her wrongdoing. During these lonely moments, when even Délin did not greet her, she held up her tarnished acorn to the light, and pondered what tree she might have been, and wondered why it had all been taken away from her, why Éala had been so cruel.
Then Thúalim came back with Délin and two Al-Ferian guards.
“Four men for one woman,” she said with a smile. “Maybe you should bring four more.”
“Everyone in the Mountain Fortress could be talking,” Thúalim said, “and you would sound the loudest.”
“Those who have something worth saying will be listened to,” she said bluntly.
“And do you still say free me, please?”
Elithéa furrowed her brow and shifted posture in the cage, like an animal that had been mauled by its captor. “I say nothing I do not mean,” she stated.
“Free her,” Thúalim said to the guards. As they approached the cage and reached for the lock, he stopped them. “This time make your life worthy of an afterlife as a tree,” he said, and he strode off as the guards continued to release her. They backed away quickly after the rope around her wrists was loosened.
She stood up and stretched her legs and arms. For a moment it almost looked like she were a tree, arching in the wind. What grace she lacked in word, she made up for in form.
“So the wild things are in the world tonight,” she said.
Délin did not respond.
Elithéa tutted. “Aralus would have had a retort for that.”
“And a blade for your back,” the knight said. “You should be less eager for war, even a war of words.”
“Maybe you should be less afraid of it.”
“I do not fear war,” Délin said, “only what might happen to the world if we lose it.”
“Then maybe you are still wearing your cage,” she said. “Do you ever remove your armour?”
Délin gave a slight smile. “Most of us never remove our armour.”
“Idil garthran fíulel abu,” the Ferian said, stressing each word as if it were a curse.
“What good is a Common Tongue if it is not common among us all?” Délin asked.
“Language can conceal like armour.”
“But can it protect us like armour?”
“Telm’s dying words have protected all of us till now,” she said. “But what I said in my tongue was,” and she almost hissed the words that followed, “some armour is a weakness.”
“I suppose it is,” Délin acknowledged. “But that reminds me. What does the word daramath mean?”
Elithéa furrowed her brow, as if the question were a riddle. “Where did you hear it?”
“Never you mind,” he replied. “What does it mean?”
Just as Elithéa opened her mouth to speak, there was a loud rumbling in the distance, which sent tremors into the mountain. The noise was like a thunder in the earth.
“I think you have your answer,” she said. “It means the sound.”
And so it came again, even louder than before, until even those who had previously dismissed it perked their ears and gulped their fear. Worried faces looked to and fro, and their expressions grew even grimmer when they looked out to Corrias, who now stood still like a ghostly tower upon the mountain—and he bore the most worried expression of them all.
II – THE RENDING OF TELARYM
Deep in the heart of Telarym, the noise was thunderous, for it was there, under the dreary darkness of the melancholy sky, that the ground rolled and rumbled, as if the earth had eaten something it should not have. And so within the belly of the earth lay the Beast, and he thrashed and kicked, like an angry child wanting to be free of the womb.
The ground shuddered, as it often did when he fought against his chains, until his anger ate up all his energy and he could no longer fight for freedom. And so he rested until the rage grew once more inside him, eating away at his body and his mind, devouring him and replacing little bits of him with an even greater anger, an even fiercer rage.
Seven chains held him in place. Two grasped his ankles, biting him with their metal maws. One ate into his waist, extending around to his lashing tail. Four gnawed at his wrists, for he had four monstrous arms, long and thick, ending in fingers that ended in barbed nails, which dug into him as much as they dug into anything he could get his hands on. The chains were more than physical, for as much as Agon was alive, they were also. Every time he pulled against them, they would pull back. Every time he resisted his bonds, the bonds grew tighter. And so the pain continued for a thousand years, until Agon grew to loathe Teron’s dying words, and wished he could kill him once again.
But this time the thrashing and kicking was different. His upper right arm pulled on the chain, and it did not pull back. It did not tighten, but grew looser, until the very jaws of the metal ring no longer had any bite. And so with another angry strike he broke the chain, and he held up his freed arm like a trophy, and he banged his fist upon the stone roof above in victory.
All in Halés heard, and all in Iraldas heard.
The Call of Agon had been answered.
* * *
Melgalés fell to the ground as the tremors continued around him, and each fall hurt more than the last, and reminded him that though he was dead, there was a type of pain that even the dead could feel. He struggled to his feet and ran to the steps that led into the Halls, but he was pushed back by a powerful gust of wind.
“It is not your time,” the Gatekeeper said.
“But something’s happening,” the Magus replied. “We need to get to safety.”
“There is a rumour of something coming,” the Gatekeeper said. “And perhaps it is Agon—and perhaps he is already here.”
The Felokar wolves began to howl. Each time the earth shuddered, they howled louder. Some ran around the caverns, and some pawed and scratched the walls. Amidst the rumbling and the roaring, the great watcher Echarin seemed asleep.
And then the ground broke away in the darker parts of Halés, and those lost souls that stood like shadows there fell deep into the pit. Few knew that they existed, and few heard their lonesome cries as they descended and were consumed, until nothing was left but the gaping mouth of Agon, and his reaching arm and clutching hand.
And so he stretched up, and the remaining six chains struggled against his unwavering will, for this freedom for a part of him had given him new strength, and he found within him a well of resolve that could match his overflowing pain and anger.
The arm reached up like a tower of triumph. The wolves saw it as nothing but a threat, and so many of them charged towards it, and many barked and howled at it, and a few even leapt at it and clawed and snapped, but they were flicked away like flies, and the fire in them vanished, snuffed out like a frail candle.
“So he is free,” Melgalés whispered, fearful that his own words might give Agon power, might further unleash the terror that had been caged for a thousand years.
“Not fully,” the Gatekeeper said, though his voice offered little reassurance. “Six of his seven chains yet hold.”
“For how long?” the Magus asked.
“The answer to that question is outside my jurisdiction,” the Gatekeeper said. “But rest assured ... it will not be long enough.”
* * *
Ifferon clung to the ground, even as the ground tried to get away from him, for it shook and shuddered, and each time he found a grip, he lost it once again. Amidst the rumble there were screams and shouts, and Ifferon tried to look up, but dust sprang into his eyes as if it too were looking for something to cling on to.
In time the q
uake subsided, but few dared stand up until they were certain it was over, and even then they feared it would come again, and might come more fiercely than before. When finally there was silence in the world around, and a loud ringing in their ears, Ifferon stumbled to his feet and helped pull others to theirs.
“What’s happening?” Thalla asked as he dragged her up.
“I do not know,” Ifferon said. “But I can guess.”
Thúalim raced past them in a flurry, charging down the path of the mountain to where Corrias still stood silently, gazing south-east towards Telarym, towards where the sound and the shaking had originated from.
Délin came up to them, carrying Théos in his arms. Elithéa strolled behind him.
“I presume you heard it,” the knight said.
“And felt it,” Ifferon replied.
“Do we let everyone out of their cages now?” Thalla asked, looking harshly at Elithéa.
“I left it vacant for you,” the Ferian responded.
“The only cage we should be worrying about is Agon’s,” Délin berated.
“And we have a reason to worry,” Thúalim said as he rejoined them. “The first of Agon’s chains has broken. It is now only a matter of time before he is free.”
III – THE RALLYING OF ARLIN
“Then we have no time to lose,” Délin said, turning towards the door of the Mountain Fortress with Théos still in his arms.
“Where are you going?” Thúalim asked.
“We need to act,” the knight said.
“There is little we can do,” the Al-Ferian replied.
“That is what I thought on the most evil days of my life at the Old Temple, when I cast aside my Sigil of Corrias. If today is to be the most evil day for Iraldas, then there is still something we can do.”
“And what is that?” Thúalim inquired.
“We go to war.”
So Délin began to head for the door again, until Thúalim shouted after him: “Where are you bringing the boy? He is our race, not yours.”
The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 57
