When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  She thanked him. Her friend then reported that he and the squires were well, and relayed what Varama had told them earlier, about an underground stable where eight mounts described as fire horses were said to be housed, along with a winged beast. Unfortunately, no one had been able to learn more about them or their capabilities. Elik also reported that Cerai seemed to have four hundred and fifty followers in all. Some were more valued than others. Perhaps a dozen Naor remained with her. Almost two dozen had escaped through the portals with them.

  “But you saw no other magical tools?” Kalandra asked.

  “Something was being used against Vannek’s dragon,” Elik answered. “But I don’t know if it was another magical tool, or a really powerful spell. It set the dragon’s wing on fire, and burned the blood mage.”

  “How long do you think we have to prepare before Cerai comes after us?” Tretton asked. Elenai was surprised to see that he was asking the question of her. But then, with Varama currently incapacitated, perhaps she was the leader by default, owing to her status as almost queen.

  “She’ll have to learn where we went, and she’ll have to plan an attack and gather forces,” Elenai said.

  “She’ll want to move fast,” Kalandra said. “She’ll surely anticipate what we’re planning. And for someone of her skill it may not take long to find us.”

  “If we’ve already lured and defeated the Goddess, her coming here won’t matter much.” Elenai couldn’t help her gaze returning to where N’lahr lay, for almost all of this had been his plan.

  Kalandra must have understood her sentiment. “I wish he were here, too,” she said.

  “He’s not.” Elenai spoke more bluntly than she’d intended. “The first priority is to master this shaping tool. You said you used it once.”

  “I’m hardly an expert,” Kalandra said.

  “Make yourself one, fast. Thelar said he saw it used, and you’ll want his advice anyway.”

  “Exalt Tesra wielded it, too,” Elik said. “I saw her using it outside the walls.”

  “Take Kalandra to talk with them both.” Elenai passed Kalandra’s emerald and the shaping tool to the squire. She looked to the bottom of the slope, where the portal had opened and closed and where everyone who’d survived the assault had come through. Varama lay there still, tended by a single healer and watched by a pair of squires. “I want to know how long it will be before Varama can recover. I really don’t want to lure the Goddess here until she has enough strength to help.”

  “I think that’s wise,” Kalandra said. “Just remember that we have so many hearthstones the Goddess may turn up on her own before we even turn them on.”

  “I remember,” Elenai said. “I want you to take some of that hearthstone energy yourself.”

  “That’s not important right now,” Kalandra said with a shake of her head.

  Elenai’s lip curled. “We need you. And if you figure out how to manipulate this wand right away, it’s high time to figure out how to keep you alive.” She shifted her attention to Elik. “Tell Thelar that’s a priority.”

  “Yes, my queen.” Elik uttered the words without a trace of discomfort, and it startled Elenai.

  “Good,” she said. “Go.”

  They walked away together, the squire and the ghost.

  Elenai returned her attention to Tretton and Gyldara, who offered a glum smile. Elenai returned it, then listened as the gray-haired veteran proposed how he would arrange their forces. The mesa was surrounded by a sea of dunes, so he suggested some of the closer ones be swept away with magic, the better to create a killing field. That would entail opening hearthstones, but Elenai supposed they’d be doing that eventually anyway. She told him she’d consider that. “The shaping tool will speed the process,” she added.

  “We’ve no way of telling from which direction Cerai or the Goddess will come,” Tretton said. He pointed to the sky, where the ko’aye circled. “It will be hard for Cerai to open a portal behind some dune without being spotted. But if she does come through with her forces, we can hold this mesa. We’ll keep the hearthstones and the wounded to the center. We’ll arrange the kobalin army on the slopes, with Vannek and his Naor high on the left flank, and Gyldara and myself commanding the squires on the right. We can place some spears and other deterrents, but the slopes up to us will be an impediment to start with.”

  It was a sound plan. “Good,” Elenai said. “If Cerai turns up we ought to have spell casters on both flanks as well. I’ll assign them posts.”

  Ortok finally left N’lahr and drew up beside them, waiting respectfully to speak.

  “We were just making battle plans, Ortok,” Elenai said.

  “I wish my warriors in the front rank, so they can make the first blow,” he said.

  She’d been about to ask him if he found starting in front acceptable, so she merely bowed her head. She might have guessed his wish.

  Ortok, though, had more to say. “Elenai Half-Sword Oddsbreaker Queen, my friend is fallen. I owe him the debt of friendship. N’lahr’s absence is like a gap in a wall against our enemies. I mean to stand in that gap.”

  “Thank you, Ortok.”

  “I shall join the Altenerai in his place,” Ortok declared. “I have given the matter much thought. Is there a ring that will fit me?”

  Tretton let out a cry of dismay. Gyldara’s mouth fell open, then quickly snapped shut.

  Ortok waited for her answer, head lifted proudly.

  A kobalin, in the Altenerai? Ortok didn’t fully understand what he was asking. After a moment of reflection, Elenai saw how to explain the situation to him. “It’s a noble thing you offer. But when you wear the Altenerai ring, you protect our people above all others. Before even your own. I will not ask that of you.”

  Ortok scratched a shaggy ear. “Yes,” he said slowly. “This is true thinking.”

  “I’m honored to have you at my side,” Elenai said. “Down to the end.”

  Ortok smacked palms together sharply, as if to say the matter were resolved. “It is good to face the end at the side of friends. Perhaps I could wear a different kind of ring, for my people. It would be a friend to your rings.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” Elenai said. “When I return to Darassus, we’ll make something for you. But you need no ring to show that you’re my friend, or that you’re a good mentor.”

  “I am your mentor?” Ortok asked.

  Gyldara and Tretton looked even more puzzled by her words than the kobalin.

  “You’ve taught me, just like N’lahr and Kyrkenall. You’ve shown me wisdom, and clarity, and kindness. You need no ring to show that you are honorable and just. You reveal it with every action.”

  Ortok grunted. “The regard of a wise woman is at least as good as a ring.” He looked away for a moment, then spoke quietly. “My heart pulls me to look at N’lahr once more, but my mind knows that he is dead. I wish to fight Cerai. When will the battle start?”

  “We should go arrange the troops, Ortok,” Tretton said.

  The kobalin considered him. “That is good. I will go with you. We can exchange tales of battle while we wait. It is said you are wily and relentless, but I would hear the details.”

  Tretton laughed shortly. “We can trade stories.” He bowed his head to Elenai. Ortok did the same and the two walked off together.

  Gyldara started to follow, then confessed, softly, “Nicely done. I had no idea how you were going to handle that.”

  “Me, either,” Elenai admitted.

  “Way to think on your feet.” Gyldara jogged to catch up with the others.

  Elenai was sorry to see her go. She would have preferred some company. While she’d known Gyldara for years as a superior, she’d forged a friendship with her during the battle of Arappa, and she now seemed one of the few from the old days who remained at ease in her presence. Elik had grown increasingly formal.

  Elenai decided to walk the perimeter, eyeing the sloping sides and wondering how N’lahr would have improved upon Tre
tton’s troop placements, which sounded quite solid.

  She checked with the healers and learned Tesra had been experimented on by Cerai, and laced with something akin to the order infecting N’lahr. She breathed, but could not be roused. Muragan slept, the blackened skin on his face pink now after extensive spell work. She listened while Thelar, Kalandra, and the aspirants discussed magical theory and manipulated the shaping tool. And she looked in on Varama, lying apart from them all in a sleeping roll, head pillowed on a blanket. The healers said she had strained her magical senses to their utmost and that she needed days of rest. Varama herself claimed she needed just a little time.

  Elenai didn’t press her. She wanted to tell her how sorry she was about Rylin, but the alten didn’t appear to want company, so she let her be.

  Lelanc and Drusa occasionally flew down from their vigil above to rest, and during one of Lelanc’s descents Elenai sought her out, thinking it would be better for her to hear the bad news from someone she knew.

  Lelanc lay near the center of what had once been the depression hiding the chaos weapon. It had since been refilled by the kobalin. The ko’aye barely raised her russet head at Elenai’s arrival, but she bobbed it in greeting. “These are ill times, Elenai. One by one my friends die. I am told Cerai killed Rylin. I already had all reasons to hate her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elenai said. “I didn’t know you’d been told.”

  “A dark wind travels fast. Drusa tells me anger will eat my heart. Right now it is too hot with anger to be consumed.”

  Elenai sat beside the ko’aye. She looked at the beautiful white feathers along the underside of her neck and wondered when marvels like this had become so commonplace to her she could regard them without comment.

  “Do you think about the battle to come?” Lelanc asked.

  “It’s almost all I can think about,” Elenai admitted. “Wondering what comes after is like trying to look over a wall. I’d like to see what’s on the other side, but I don’t have a ladder.”

  “A ladder tool is that thing two legs use to climb high,” Lelanc said, as if reminding herself.

  Elenai looked up at Lelanc’s huge brown eyes. “Cerai has to die, but we can’t lose ourselves in the process. We’ve lost too many friends already. If she turns up, don’t do anything rash.”

  “That sounds like something Rylin would tell me. I miss him. He is gone so fast. Like Aradel. I was with neither when they passed.” She let out a soft warble. “We did not know each other long, Rylin and I. But our hearts beat as one.”

  Elenai understood. She thought of how she had come to respect Gyldara, Lasren, Thelar, Meria, and M’vai, and the brave second circler, Derahd, because they had faced terror and triumphed, together. No matter that they barely knew one another, they had forged a deep bond that would only be severed at death.

  Three of that number were already gone. “I understand how you feel.” Elenai wasn’t sure what else to say, but she hoped Lelanc took solace from her company, for it brought her a measure of peace to sit with the beautiful creature.

  After a time Lelanc closed her eyes, and Elenai rose and quietly walked away.

  The kobalin were arranged now along the slope, and Ortok stood with Tretton beside the carcass of the great glow beast, burned by the kobalin to keep carrion away. Ortok lifted his hands, appearing to mime Kalandra blasting the thing with the chaos weapon.

  She turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. Kyrkenall stopped beside her.

  “Is it you, or him?” she asked.

  “Me. A bit of him.” He saluted her with his wineskin and drank deep.

  “You’re awfully calm about sharing your head with someone else.”

  “He’s not like some evil wizard out to crush my soul and take over my body. He’s just waiting for his chance to talk to Savessa.”

  “Savessa?” Elenai asked.

  “Their children named them. She’s Savessa, he’s Savech. It means maker and unmaker.”

  “He knows she trapped him, right?”

  “Aye, he does.”

  “I’m surprised he doesn’t want vengeance.”

  “I don’t even think he understands the concept. He’s confused by death and mourning. It’s affected him more deeply than he expected. It’s almost like he’s eaten mine.”

  “Is that why you’re in such good spirits?”

  “It’s why I’m not a sobbing wreck.”

  Below, Ortok and Tretton trudged upslope, deep still in conversation. To the right, Thelar was directing the shaping tool against a nearby dune. Bright energy flowed forth, slowly wearing the sand down.

  “So you know what’s funny? One of the things that’s puzzling him is all my memories from childhood.”

  Kyrkenall had never, ever spoken of his childhood to her. “What memories?” It was hard even to think of him as a child. She’d heard rumors that his mother had become a squire, but hadn’t made it to second rank. The gossip was that she had become a heavy drinker, and had Kyrkenall later in life. He’d lived his first years on the edge of a remote village in Ekhem, and was said to have spent more time in the wilds than in four walls.

  He shrugged, abruptly hesitant to explain, then finished his thought. “Let’s just say encounters with my peers weren’t usually happy. He doesn’t understand why the children feared me because of the way I looked. He finds difference and variety loveliest of all.”

  “Differences can be frightening,” she mused, and thought about the alliance of forces with them on the mesa: Kobalin, Naor, Ko’aye, Exalt, and Altenerai. “But they can be a source of strength.”

  “Aye.”

  “I’m sorry your childhood was hard,” she said.

  “It wasn’t so bad. I had a couple of great dogs. It was just the people who were terrible. Mostly.”

  “And here you’ve spent you life protecting people anyway.”

  “I guess I have.”

  He took another drink.

  “When you grabbed me to look at N’lahr’s sword, could you have guessed it would take us here?” Elenai asked.

  “If you’d told me, I’d have laughed. But life has a way of taking weird turns. Maybe it will work out, and we’ll save Kalandra and N’lahr. Or maybe Rialla’s still alive and we can get her to turn everything back and save us all.”

  “Right now I’m just hoping we can stop the Goddess. And Cerai. And maybe save the realms one last time.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” He lifted the skin again. “I’d offer to share a toast, but I know how much you hate Murian wine.”

  “I’ll take you up on that offer. Just this once.”

  36

  The Battle Joins

  Vannek, sitting near the mesa edge, swigged from his waterskin. A cool wind chilled his face as he looked up to find the blue ko’aye, Drusa, making another circuit, passing beneath the wound in the sky where the stars bled through. That disturbing aerial scar left from the passage of the demon goddess was the only reason the wastelands weren’t blazing in the sun’s heat.

  A messenger had relayed that the mages were readying to open the hearthstones, and he wished that they’d get on with it. Too much longer and the men would grow restless. Varama hadn’t been able to bring many warriors through from Darassus, so his own forces consisted of less than forty, half of those recovered from Cerai’s fortress. They sat nearby, looking over their weapons or drawing in the sand or scanning the heavens like himself.

  He heard a shrill cry above. Drusa swooped down, calling that many tens of warriors neared.

  Vannek frowned and climbed to his feet. Cerai had organized herself quickly.

  From his vantage point on the left flank, Vannek looked down on his men, and below them, tiered on the slope, were two ranks of kobalin. While Naor were still inclined to rush for individual opponents, over the last fifteen years discipline had been hammered into many of their units, and the warriors of Vannek’s tiny force were among them. While they might long to rush to battle, they’d hold until
he gave the order. He had little faith in the kobalin, however, and fully expected them to break ranks and seek solitary combat.

  Ortok had told those on the left that Vannek was their officer, news that they’d absorbed without reaction. They’d been less than pleased when Vannek had instructed them to wait for his word before they attacked, but grunted their assent.

  The kobalin shifted to peer between two large dunes on the left, beyond the killing field. Most possessed dog, horse, or bat-wing ears, which stood at full attention as they faced toward a gap. Their hands tightened on the hafts of axes, swords, and polearms.

  A moment after the kobalin heard it, the faint sound of hoofbeats reached Vannek, and he called to his men to stand ready. “We have to hold. None of them will get to the center through us!”

  The bodyguard at his side grunted doubtfully, and Vannek looked to him for explanation. He rarely said anything, although he’d smiled hugely when they’d been reunited and was following him more closely than ever, as if to make up for having been separated from him during the battle. He had not proven to be a skilled horseman.

  “I worry that they will not hold, Lord General,” the young man said.

  “I’ll do the worrying. You just keep your blade sharp.”

  “Yes, Lord General.”

  The rest of his soldiers stretched arms and loosed their swords. Those few who still had bows planted the shafts in the soil. They tested their weapon grips.

  Thelar and a wispy young female squire in an ill-fitting tabard arrived at a jog. “Lord General, this is Aspirant Tavella.”

  Vannek grunted in greeting and spoke to Thelar. “You think Cerai will throw magic at us?”

  “We don’t know what she’ll do.” Thelar slipped on his helmet so that little but his stern eyes, lips, and strong chin showed beneath the metal. He presented a more martial appearance even than Rylin. His assistant, though, only enhanced her childlike appearance as she fixed the chin strap of her own helm. Vannek reminded himself that when it came to mages, outward appearance mattered little.