by Tammy Salyer
“Is this, is this happening?” she asked her mum. “Has the Churss come to fight the Minothians?” She quailed inwardly. Was Salukis out there, facing those soldiers?
“The Churss? What do you mean?”
“The stones, they can move—”
It was as if the light created by the vessel suddenly went off in her head. The Churss moved when Salukis played his reeded instrument. The Churss listened to the music. She looked to Symvalline. “I need an aulos.”
Her mum’s eyebrows quirked in a way that suggested she worried Isemay had become a little too overwhelmed to think clearly. “Why do you need an aulos?”
Before she could answer, the sound of a footstep near the doorway froze her as rigid as the vessel statue.
Isemay and Symvalline whirled to face the door. In it stood a youth, possibly just a turn or two younger than Salukis. His clothing was ragged and dirty, his skin an unhealthy pallor in the pulsing light.
“Lady of Vinnr, you came back,” he said simply.
Isemay looked to Symvalline, whose face was calm and open. “Dwoon, why are you still here?” her mum asked.
“Dwoon?” Isemay cut in, surprised. “You’re Mura’s brother?”
He looked at her with equal surprise, then nodded. “The little ones were too frightened to leave, and I wasn’t going to go anywhere without them.”
“Where are they now?” asked Symvalline. “Still under the tower?”
Instead of answering, he took a step to the side, revealing two girls and a boy, all younger than him. Nearly beside herself with joy at seeing them, Isemay blurted, “Are you Onni and Cylli?”
The twins’ eyes widened and the youngest girl gave her the tiniest of grins.
“They are,” Dwoon responded for them.
“I know your grandmum Kalisk,” Isemay said. “She’s so worried about you. But she’s coming, all the Zhallahs are coming.” Isemay knew she was rambling, but she wanted to bring them all hope in what seemed a dire situation. “And you must be Eleni,” she continued, looking at the older girl, then she glanced at Symvalline. “We’ll get them out of here when this is all over, won’t we?”
“We will,” her mum stated matter-of-factly, and Isemay believed her.
A moment of silence fell over them, and the Zhallah children all stared wonderingly at the glowing vessel. Then Isemay had an idea.
“Do any of you have an aulos, a flute?”
Dwoon and Eleni shook their heads. “They took ours when they captured us.”
“Isemay,” Symvalline said, “explain what you need one for.”
“The Cosmoculous is the same kind of stone as some of the Churss. The Zhallahs can play tunes that move them, or rather, that encourages them to move. It’s…I can’t explain it.” She looked to Dwoon for help.
“Yes,” he agreed slowly, uncertain what she was getting at.
Isemay struggled to keep her voice calm against the excitement trying to push the words out too fast. “We need to move the Cosmoculous to the top of the tower,” she pointed up, “and we need a flute to do it.” She knew this would work, she just didn’t know how they’d get it to without the simple reeded instrument.
Symvalline looked to Isemay, then to Dwoon, then back to Isemay. “Give me a moment. I’m going to try reaching your da. Perhaps there’s a way he can get one to us.”
She closed her eyes, and Isemay let her gaze fall on the four Zhallahs. Had they been kept captive here? And…why? They stared back at her with equal curiosity, but with very different questions, she assumed.
“No, it isn’t working. The lens is silent,” her mum said after a moment. “I think the vessel and the Cosmoculous are interfering with it.”
Isemay’s hopes cooled slightly. She just knew this was the answer. How could the fate of a world be decided by the simple lack of a flute?
“We-we could go get one, couldn’t we? I can help,” Dwoon volunteered quietly. The idea captured Isemay’s full attention. He seemed a bit discombobulated by the intensity of her stare—or her overall appearance—but went on. “I saw the Churss and the Minothian forces in the Cosmoculous a moment ago. Almost all Zhallahs carry a flute. If we get to them, we can bring one back.”
Symvalline was already shaking her head. “The risk is too much. Neither of you is a soldier. You can’t drop into the middle of…that. It may well become an all-out battle.”
“You just want us to sit here doing nothing while da fights a battle and the Everlight remains shackled?” Isemay blurted and immediately regretted her sharpness.
But her mum merely looked at her, her face unreadable. She clenched her hands together in front of her, looking down at them as if she were praying, though Isemay knew she did this when thinking hard about something. After several moments, she addressed Dwoon, “Are you willing to take this risk? Knowing the possible consequences?”
The youth’s focus fell on the inert vessel, surging light at rapid, irregular intervals, as if a daystar fueled by rage lay within it. Finally, he said, “If it can free the Everlight and my people, then I’m willing to take the risk.”
The younger girl, Eleni, stepped up and put a hand on his arm, looking him in the eyes. “Dwoon,” she said, “what if you don’t make it? What about us?”
Symvalline answered, “My daughter, Isemay, will stay with you. She can help you reach safety if we don’t return.”
The words did not last long enough on the air to encourage the girl before Isemay said, “No, Mum, I need to be the one to go. If the Minothians come, you can hold them off.”
Symvalline eyed her a moment, then reached out and pulled her into an unexpected embrace, nearly crushing her. “When and how did you get so grown, so courageous? My little Crumb…”
“Don’t, Mum. Don’t cry. Because then I’ll cry. And I don’t want to do that in front of them,” she whispered, half because her mum was crushing her lungs, half because she didn’t trust she’d be able to contain a whimper.
Symvalline let her go, holding her at arm’s length by one shoulder. “You seek out Ulfric and bring him with you when come back, Isemay. Find him first if you can. He’ll protect you.” Her gaze found Dwoon. “Both of you. Once you find an instrument, don’t tarry. And try to stay out of the fight if you can help it. If my senses are correct, we only have one or two hours until the Equifulcrum. We have to get that sphere raised before that.”
Isemay nodded at Dwoon, who nodded back, then she extended the Deathless Guard’s sword to Symvalline. Touching it had made her palms cold and foul-feeling anyway. Symvalline took it wordlessly, and she and Dwoon began rushing back down the tower’s long stairwell.
Chapter Forty-Five
In the field outside the Minothian city, what happened next turned Ulfric’s anxiety into outright dread. A swirling black and gray vapor, like the heart of Balavad’s Fenestros, began to rise from Tuzhazu’s cauldron. It looked like an ominous storm cloud, a portent of destruction. As it rose, it grew, and soon it was a mist rising over the nearest Minothians.
The uneasy Minothian soldiers watched the mist warily, some using their wings to cover themselves. As the vapor rose, it spread and began to come toward the Churss.
Deespora cried, “Close the gaps! Everyone, inside the safety of the Churss!”
The Zhallahs were already well guarded, but those on the edges of their mobile fortress grouped together closer in the middle as the stones closed over and around them, sealing off crevices of light from outside and becoming even more cavelike. Ulfric and the bruhawks were forced with Deespora to move backward, and the last glimpse he had of the line of troops outside was the dark vapor descending around them, enclosing them within its grasp the way the Churss enclosed the Zhallahs.
There was silence. For a moment. Then, there were screams.
It sounded like a slaughter, louder than any battlefield Ulfric had ever been in. What made it worse was that there were no sounds of weapons, no clashing metal or twangs of bows. Just shrill cries, pained wails. He had Urgo look to
Deespora to see her reaction. Her pale eyes gleamed with tears, her expression drawn and filled with sorrow.
“I should never have let him do this,” she whispered.
Ulfric could not let her give in to guilt at a time like this. “Deespora,” he said, his voice that of Stallari Aldinhuus, leader of the Knights Corporealis of Vinnr, commander. “What has happened?”
She looked back to him. “He’s turned them all into Deathless soldiers. They will be unstoppable now. And there is no way to reason with them. They are mindless as well as indomitable. I never thought…I never knew he had the power to turn all of them.”
“Can you undo it with your Fenestros?”
“If there’s a way, I don’t know it.”
“Then that only leaves us with one choice. I’ve seen myself the healing abilities your people have, and we shouldn’t lose many in the fight that’s coming. Remember, we don’t have to win this battle—we only have to keep the Minothian forces and Tuzhazu busy until Symvalline is able to free Mithlí. Once she does that, Tuzhazu will have nothing left to do but lose.”
“Do you think that will make him stop fighting?”
“If he doesn’t, he’ll die. It’s simple. He cannot win when your Verity is free. But that won’t happen if we don’t do something, and do it now.”
Inwardly, Ulfric’s mind tormented him with a vision of Tuzhazu looming over Crumb. He couldn’t let his daughter be under the thrall of that man. If Deespora lost heart and refused to act, he’d already decided he would chance ordering Yggo to grab her Fenestros and Scrylle and abandon the Zhallahs to fly directly to the Cosmoculous Tower. There, he’d give Symvalline the artifacts so she could open a starpath and take her and Isemay out of this realm, perhaps to Himmingaze. The bruhawks would be a formidable force against the Minothians, even those who were now Deathless Guards, but the two of them had no chance against an army.
But the Zhallah Archon surprised him, showing the metal that was intrinsic to every Knight Corporealis of Vinnr, the metal that had made her an Archon in the first place.
She turned and faced her people. “Zhallahs, and our time has come to right the wrongs of our people’s past and bring in a new age of peace in Arc Rheunos. We do not wish to harm those we once embraced as our own kin, who once were our own kin, but they are not any longer. Not while they are held in a prison of lies by the Archons Tek Det Tuzhazu and my sister Akeeva Raamuzi. The Minothians have been made into puppets, ruled by greed for dominion, and the only thing that can stop them from destroying the future for all Arc Rheunos’s peoples is us.
“Today, we must fight for our lives, for our children, and for our future—and the future of the realm. Are you ready?”
The Zhallahs did not hesitate the way the Minothians had. A roar of agreement and excitement boomed throughout the confines of the Churss, slamming like a physical pressure into Urgo’s chest. The bruhawk raised first one massive claw into the air and clenched it, then the other, as if loosening up for a fight. Ulfric would have done the same if he could.
With the thrill that always shot through him just before a battle, he called to Symvalline through the Mentalios. He needed to know if she and Crumb were still safe and to inform her of what was about to happen here.
But as the Churss began to part to let the Zhallahs through, and the view of the mass of Minothians soldiers transformed into the ghastly Deathless ranks spread before them, only silence greeted him from the Cosmoculous Tower.
When the Churss had parted enough to let the Zhallahs through, the two lines of very different fighters stood facing each other. The mist that had transformed them had dissipated, and from mountainside to mountainside, the air wavered with a red and blue glow that dipped low into the valley, the colors bleeding into each other in unusual patterns, further contrasted by a paler light. It was a haunted sky. The moons—Kahros the Seeker, Znopho the White Watcher, and Maiztos the Life Giver—were nearly aligned.
For heavy moments, silence and stillness held sway in the gap that separated the two forces. Neither side, it seemed, was eager to start the battle. The thought galloped through Ulfric’s mind that maybe there was still a chance they could persuade Tuzhazu to see reason.
But as the malicious Archon raised his sword, the multihued light seemed to flash on its blade and along the metal hooks that rose from the crest of his torn, widespread wings, and Ulfric knew that when the sword dropped, it would begin.
Before it did, he urged Urgo: For the Knights, Urgo, we will have victory this night!
Urgo and Yggo as one leaped up and swooped forth, directing their attack at the head of the snake. Tuzhazu.
The flying Deathless Guard were not slow to react. At least a dozen were already airborne before the bruhawks could reach Tuzhazu. Behind Ulfric, the Zhallahs leaped into action as well with a great battle cry as potent and powerful as any Ulfric had heard in his lifetimes.
The flying Deathless quickly diverted Ulfric and the bruhawks, and they spiraled high over the battlefield in a clash of swords, claws, and ripping beaks.
Ulfric had warned the hawks to avoid killing the Deathless when possible, as Symvalline had directed, but there wasn’t much in the way of options when a ravening, mindless warrior with murder in its blood came at them. The bruhawks dodged the Deathlesses’ blades and shredded their wings with their steel-like talons, but the birds couldn’t mitigate the fall to the hard earth and rooftops of the closely built Minothian city, which surely hurt the Deathless as much or more than what the bruhawks could have done to them. Ulfric had to remain disimpassioned, but the reality was that it wasn’t likely the Arc Rheunosian tenders would get a chance to save many before they expired.
The Minothians had the advantage of having been trained to fight, but the Zhallahs had their own advantages. The rolling Churss platforms both gave them a higher vantage and provided rock shields to hide behind when needed. Secondly, only a couple dozen Deathless Guards had the gruesome Ravener swords made for such a melee. The rest fought with pikes and daggers. Though sharp, these were also more easily countered by the farm tools the Zhallahs carried, which weren’t so different.
Busy with aerial assaults, Ulfric couldn’t keep much of an eye on what was occurring below. The hawks disabled and downed at least twenty enemies in short order, but there were hundreds of Minothians. After some unknown passage of time, Ulfric began to sense that more and more Minothian fighters were coming after Yggo and Urgo. He could feel the effects of fatigue overcoming Urgo as if they were his own. The constant jagging, dodging, and darting to avoid attacks was taking a toll.
The bruhawks were without doubt the best weapons the Zhallahs had, but they couldn’t fight every flying Minothian. Ulfric had to get a perspective on the battle. The Deathless had twice the stamina of the Zhallahs, and if they could not stop Tuzhazu here, Ulfric feared he and the hawks would have to abandon the fight to protect Symvalline and Isemay. He had to give Tuzhazu credit. Directing a heavy assault at the bruhawks was what any commander bent on victory would order. Until Tuzhazu was stopped, the snake’s head chopped off, the battle would go on.
Urgo, fall back. Get some distance from the field. We need to reevaluate the situation.
It pained Ulfric’s lead-from-the-front instinct to fall back. Worse yet, he wasn’t in his own form and able to yell commands and rally the troops as needed. No doubt, his long battle experience would have benefited them. The best he could do was team with the bruhawks to inflict the most stopping power. But he needed to find a tactic to get to Tuzhazu, and he couldn’t do it while being harried relentlessly by the Minothian pests.
Getting to great heights quickly was a talent of the bruhawks, and they’d soon lost their pursuers in the haze of the murky air. Urgo’s sharp eyes scanned the battlefield, and Ulfric’s fears, ones he’d refused to consider, could not be ignored any longer.
He’d missed it to begin with, but it wasn’t only the Minothian people who’d been transformed by Tuzhazu’s wystic elixir. The dozens and
dozens of urzidae mounts they rode had likewise been transformed.
The beasts had become hideous. Their shaggy bodies had stretched to an almost serpentine length. Ridden by Deathless Minothians, the beasts no longer lumbered. They whipped through the Zhallahs like enraged cats, pouncing and jumping with an agility nothing that size should have had, easily leaping onto the Churss platforms and wreaking disaster on those who rode them. Their claws had become swords, sharp and pointed and mortally long. The beasts tore through the Zhallahs like paper, and each blow Ulfric witnessed cut through his spirit as well.
The airborne Minothians outnumbered the Zhallahs, and their stronger nets brought them down in a constant rain. He realized the Minothians had already decimated the Zhallahs in the air, and from what he was seeing happening on the ground, it was going to become a rout. The only advantage left to the Zhallahs was the women’s ability to become unseeable and fight from the shadows. The Deathless Guards and their urzidae could not catch what they could not find. One thing stood out from his vantage: it appeared few, if any, of the female Deathless fighters had become invisible. He wondered if something in Balavad’s elixir was blocking this, and cheered the small advantage it gave the Zhallahs for a moment.
But even that advantage soon withered.
From the center of the melee, Tuzhazu walked forward. He’d retrieved his Fenestros from the cauldron, and it now emitted a dark vapor, which spread low on the ground like a foul, creeping rodent. As it spread, it shifted around the forms of those who would have otherwise been invisible to the eye, creating shadow outlines. Now, even the Zhallah women were targets.
His hopes seized on their last chance: Deespora, surely she could stop Tuzhazu, pitting her Fenestros and Scrylle against his lone Fenestros.
As if to answer his prayer, she suddenly appeared in the dark vapor, pacing toward Tuzhazu astride his berserking urzidae. She held both her staff with its Fenestros headpiece and the Scrylle aloft, and a soft white light like a distant star shone from the celestial stone, surrounding her in a perfect sphere that held Tuzhazu’s mist and the Deathless Guards at bay.
