The first enemies appeared at a notch between two large dunes, four horselike beasts sporting dark iridescent scales and spikelike manes. Two mailed warriors rode along the back of each, the rear-seated man holding a clutch of spears. The helms of a larger host were visible behind them.
Lelanc, now airborne with Drusa, called down that a second large force approached from the right.
“If she’s pinning the flanks,” Thelar said, “Cerai must plan something for the center.”
“True enough,” Vannek agreed.
Muragan had explained about the difference between the exalts and the Altenerai, saying further that Thelar was reputed to be a fair swordsman. He had not also said he was a student of military theory.
The lead horse thing let out a loud snort, disgorging dark smoke from its nostrils.
“She’ll probably use the winged beast Rylin learned about against the center,” Thelar said. “I hope it’s not a dragon.”
“Hope? Best pray.”
“I’ve no faith in prayers,” Thelar said. “Do your Three give you strength or miracles?”
“They deliver victory to the brave and cunning.”
“Let that be us, then,” Thelar said.
“They come for the fight!” a huge brown-furred kobalin shouted eagerly from downslope.
The horses had sprung into motion, churning the sand as they beat forward, closely followed by at least a hundred helmed warriors with round shields and axes. They ran in a loose wedge formation, giving vent to a full-throated roar. Vannek heard that mirrored from the right, but spared them no more thought. His job was to hold the left.
Vannek’s kobalin shifted and stamped their feet in the sand. When two shook their weapons overhead, others joined in. A handful advanced a few steps, and others moved after and soon both lines of kobalin wavered.
“Hold until my signal!” Vannek shouted. “Hold!” The Altenerai horn call from the central mesa signaled the same order. Kobalin, though, would be unlikely to heed it, no matter that they had apparently been taught the meaning of the sounds.
The kobalin ceased their forward movement. Many scowled back at Vannek.
The horses galloped on, racing ahead of the troops.
“Archers!” Vannek shouted. “Drop those animals!”
A moment later a flight of arrows soared for the enemy.
But the shafts of his seven archers glanced off the shining scales of the mounts. Three stuck out from the armored shoulders of a single spearman, in back of a rider. A ragged arrow volley followed the first, and while it too failed to stop the horse-things, one of the mounted spearmen was struck and dropped from the saddle.
First blood was apparently too much for the kobalin. One with dark red fur let out a gibbering shout and charged. A second ran after, and then the dam burst and every single kobalin under Vannek’s command ran screaming at the enemy, a full minute before he would have released them. He swore, then called again for his men to hold.
There were shouts from the right flank as well.
Two kobalin charged straight for the first of the horse things, axes raised. As they closed into range, a fleshy sack at the back of the horse thing’s neck expanded, reminding Vannek of a frog. When the beast opened its scaly mouth far wider than a horse, it didn’t make a sound, but a ball of fire immediately emerged to engulf the scaly green kobalin before it. The other threw itself clear, left arm aflame, and rolled in the sand to put out the blaze.
The horses plunged through the kobalin line, burning and kicking as they went, the spearsmen at their rear taking deadly toll.
One stout, red-scaled kobalin, fully alight, crushed the foreleg of the foremost horse. He fell, dying, but the creature dropped and kobalin swarmed over the beast and its riders.
Cerai’s infantry ran in from behind, and Vannek ordered his archers to loose their final shafts before the soldiers got too close to the kobalin.
In moments, the flame-breathing lizard horses were charging up the sandy brown slope to the top of the mesa. The kobalin mass stopped the greater number of Cerai’s troops, but dozens broke free and ran in the wake of the horses.
That’s when Thelar proved his worth. Just as a third ragged volley of arrows rebounded from the armor of the rider in the forefront, and one well-aimed arrow stuck uselessly beside the lizard horse’s expanding throat sac, the exalt’s fingers worked back and forth as though he manipulated invisible threads. His spell tore the sand from beneath the lead animal and sent it sliding backward. He and his aspirant worked the same trick with the next animal, and sent it head over heels down slope.
The final lizard horse reached the Naor ranks.
The spearsman on its back dropped one of Vannek’s soldiers as the beast raced up, and another four felt the kiss of its flame. They screamed as they died.
Vannek led the rush from the left, spear in hand. He’d heard it said Kyrkenall raced to battle with a poem on his lips, but Vannek offered only a bellow of rage. His bodyguard and three of his spearmen shouted with him as they attacked.
The horse-thing reared and its mouth opened. The spearman behind the rider cast and missed Vannek’s shoulder by a knife length.
Vannek crashed into the animal’s scaled underside, and his men struck a second after him.
One flailing hoof glanced off his mailed shoulder and another hit the warrior to Vannek’s left in his helmeted head, dropping him.
But their assault sent the beast over, and it fell sideways, breathing a gout of flame as it struck the ground.
Vannek threw himself flat, hit the sand hard, and slid. His boot felt momentarily hot, and he jerked his feet out of the way, then rolled and scrambled to stand.
Upright once more he discovered Thelar had covered the creature with a blanket of sand. Vannek’s loyal bodyguard drove his weapon through the rider’s throat.
After that the real battle began in earnest. Cerai’s soldiers raced to close with Vannek’s troops, fighting with ferocity. Vannek’s men held their lines at first, but before long the assault fragmented into the vicious one-on-one conflicts even his own people secretly preferred.
Vannek was at their forefront. He lost all sense of the greater battle, for his attention was rooted only in the now, moving at quarter speed so that each individual moment felt a day’s length. This strike Vannek blocked, that arm he hewed, leaving red ruin. That thrust he dodged, another he took on his shield. He swept a leg with his spear, then drove the point down through armor and turned to face another foe.
When his spear lodged too firmly in a chest, he snatched a dead man’s sword and carried on the fight. When his shield splintered under a terrific axe blow he grabbed a knife in his off hand and drove it into a screaming enemy face.
He fought his way through the warriors that came and came until he discovered he had somehow survived and all of his opponents were down. When he paused to wipe sweat from his face he accidentally smeared blood from an arm wound he hadn’t felt.
Scanning his surroundings, he discovered his bodyguard stood still beside him, and gave an approving nod to the devoted young warrior. The man smiled as though he’d been awarded a land grant. Thelar and the aspirant remained, along with fifteen more of Vannek’s men, panting in a ragged line. Others lived, farther down slope. The dead and dying littered the ground on every side like broken grain stalks.
While he’d been fighting for his life, a strange silver beast had appeared in the sky. It resembled a ko’aye, but a second set of wings flapped behind the first upon its elongated back. A helmed woman in an Altenerai khalat rode behind its long neck. That had to be Cerai. Four warriors sat behind her along its sinuous spine. As the beast swooped above the center of the mesa, the enchantress who commanded it directed a burning blue flame at the ground below; someone screamed, but it seemed more a cry of alarm than of pain.
An answering golden beam shot up from the midst of the mesa and struck the beast along its tail. A swath of it fell away as shining flakes and the beast trembled.
Cerai set her beast climbing. The two ko’aye dropped from out of the sun and closed upon the winged thing. Seeing a rider with a bow upon the back of Drusa, Vannek smiled. For long years his people had been the target of the world’s greatest archer, and they had both feared and admired him. Being Kyrkenall’s ally was strangely thrilling, and he looked forward to seeing the destruction he would wreak.
The ko’aye dodged and weaved away from spears and shafts cast by Cerai’s warriors, but the peerless bowman found his marks. Two of the beast’s weapons-men slumped with arrows standing from their helmets. Even at a distance, on a moving platform, to a shifting target, Kyrkenall had struck two men dead through tiny gaps in armor.
Lelanc tore another warrior from his seat. While he fell, screaming, both ko’aye dove at Cerai, Kyrkenall firing the while.
An arrow struck her in the throat and a second was engulfed in the wave of blue-white flame rolling out from a shining object she held. Lelanc took the brunt of the attack, and burst into flame. The ko’aye’s wings evaporated almost on the instant and her charred, smoking form dropped stonelike toward the desert floor. A loud cry of dismay rose from the throats of many of the watchers, and Vannek wasn’t entirely surprised some were his own men, who would gladly have hunted ko’aye only a week before.
Drusa pulled away, one of her own wings smoking. Her neck flared back, her wings spread wide. Kyrkenall, on her back, leaned toward her head, shouting something.
But the ko’aye could not hold its glide, and plummeted. Vannek swore.
Then, only a dozen feet from the ground, Drusa’s astonishing speed eased until she drifted slowly down. The ko’aye didn’t seem to have anything to do with the action, for she hung limp. Instead, she appeared to be borne gently by invisible hands.
Vannek grew conscious of Thelar, working magic at his side, but he didn’t think he had saved Kyrkenall either, for the exalt’s hands were still moving after Drusa settled safely. Thelar followed the movements of Cerai, circling back on her monstrous, four-winged ko’aye. His breathing was labored.
“Who saved Kyrkenall and his ko’aye?” Vannek asked the aspirant.
“I think that was Kalandra,” the young woman answered, her voice hollow from within her helm. “I don’t know how her spell reached so far.”
“Why isn’t Elenai shooting at Cerai?”
“The weapons don’t have that great a range.”
“What’s he doing?” Vannek asked, looking pointedly at Thelar.
“The threads on the dragon have been torn open,” the aspirant said, then paused to take a breath. “Exalt Thelar’s pulling on them. The range is too great, though.” She spoke to Thelar. “You shouldn’t risk—”
Thelar drew heavily down with both hands, like a beast clawing flesh. Above, the dragon simply fell away into wind-borne strands of silver, as though it had been composed of spools of yarn the exalt had unwound. Cerai and her last warrior flailed as they fell.
A cheer went up from the allied troops. The warrior struck ground with a thud. A heartbeat before Cerai did the same, a shimmering violet portal flared into existence beneath her and she vanished through it.
37
The Last Farewell
There was nothing she could do for poor Lelanc, but Elenai sent healers running toward Kyrkenall and Drusa. Kalandra strained at the limits permitted by her emerald, peering out from the mesa’s edge.
Cerai’s monsters lay dead, along with most of her soldiers. Any survivors had retreated, most of the kobalin in pursuit. Only Ortok and a few dozen remained, either tending their wounded or looting Cerai’s dead for arms and armor.
Watching from the center, Elenai breathed a sigh of relief as Kyrkenall stirred upon Drusa’s back, fumbling with his straps. He then fell sideways, and stumbled, as though drunken.
He climbed stiffly to his feet and Elenai knew on the instant from his sharp, jerky movements, that the chaos entity once more had possession of him.
The ko’aye flapped her wings and shook her neck, as though she were dizzy. She struggled to stand, then decided to lay down. Kyrkenall put a hand to her neck.
In her distraction, Elenai had allowed her chaos staff to stray too close to Kalandra, and quickly turned it aside. She looked to the right where Gyldara, Tretton, and the squires had held the flank. Squires now searched among the fallen and carried the wounded back to the healers, already tending injured soldiers to the left of the hearthstone cache. The stones recovered from Cerai still lay in an unceremonious pile, glittering and beautiful, at the mesa’s center.
From afar came the shouts of battle, tinny and indistinct. Somewhere out of sight the kobalin harried Cerai’s retreating soldiers.
Varama breathed heavily beside her, the shaping tool in one hand. The two aspirants watched her protectively. They had been extremely fortunate during the attack, for Cerai had gotten off only one spell, and had made the mistake of assaulting Kalandra’s image. All that had done was burn the ground beneath her.
“What can Cerai do now?” Elenai asked. “She wouldn’t dare assault without another army, and she doesn’t have one.”
She never found out what Varama was opening her mouth to say, because a glowing violet portal spiraled open in their midst. Elenai stepped wide to face it, leveling her staff, and then a spray of blue lightning crackled forth. One minor bolt hit Varama and drove her to her knees. A larger one struck Elenai directly and blew her off her feet. She slammed backward into the ground, shaken and moaning. Her khalat was smoking and a burnt, acrid stench filled her nostrils.
Cerai emerged, turned a sword blow from an aspirant, and wrenched Varama’s shaping tool from her hand. She darted forward and snatched the staff from where it lay beside Elenai, struggling to rise.
Elenai didn’t see from where Ortok had come, but he was suddenly in their midst. His axe blow slammed into Cerai’s chest. The traitorous alten flew off her feet. Ortok advanced with a howl.
No matter that the Altenerai armor had protected against the axe’s edge, it was a mighty blow and should have broken ribs and driven breath from Cerai’s body. Yet she rolled the moment she hit the ground, and was up and moving, shaping tool in one hand, chaos weapon under her arm. She raced for the mesa’s side. Ortok’s next blow would have taken her head if she hadn’t moved.
Cerai leapt off the mesa’s side.
By the time Ortok had helped her to her feet Elenai understood the sickening truth. Cerai had portaled out with both weapons. She’d taken advantage of their lowered guard and struck surely, as only a veteran could. Elenai was livid with herself for not having anticipated it.
Ortok was vowing vengeance again, but as Elenai struggled from her daze she grew more alarmed at the troubled mention of Kalandra’s name by the two aspirants. Varama’s brows were furrowed in worry as she knelt beside something on the ground, and Elenai hurried to see what it was.
Kalandra’s emerald sat with a fracture in its side stretched up from a black burn mark. A faint pinprick, like an impossibly distant star, burned within.
Elenai’s breath caught in her throat and she frantically searched the mesa. There was Kyrkenall, sprinting toward them, but Kalandra herself had vanished.
Ortok had seen the direction of Elenai’s gaze. “One of the lightning bolts struck her magic gem,” he said.
A grinning Kyrkenall arrived beside them. “That was great pleasure,” he said, speaking with the God’s voice. “This Kyrkenall delights in the changing of living states. Carnage, he calls it. Hah. Where is his lover? She saved the creature whom he loves, and he wishes to thank her.” He searched among their faces, touching his chest. “Ah, how he loves her. It’s like a fire. It almost burns out his sorrow. He is very sad the other ko’aye died.”
“Kalandra’s badly hurt.” Elenai looked down again at the emerald, and then to the fist-sized scorch mark burned into her khalat just below her heart. She’d been lucky.
While Kyrkenall’s expression shifted from inhuman curiosity to actual hum
an alarm, Veshahd, the male aspirant, arrived with an azure hearthstone shard, which Varama opened on the instant. She poured energy into the damaged emerald.
It was only then that Elenai recovered her full senses, and shouted for the Altenerai to gather and to pull in their lines. Cerai might well return for her hearthstones, too.
Kyrkenall sank to his knees opposite Varama, and it was he, not the God, who spoke. His hands stretched for the gem but he did not touch it.
“My love.” His voice shook.
Gyldara and Tretton arrived at a run, along with Elik and a small band of squires. Thelar and Vannek jogged up a few moments later, an aspirant and Vannek’s bodyguard with them. Most surprising of all, Muragan himself walked forward, his thick torso clothed in an ill-fitting borrowed shirt. The hair and beard along the right side of his head was singed off, and newly grown skin showed pink and glistening. Vannek grinned and clapped him on the back.
“Cerai attacked,” Elenai said. “We need to guard the hearthstones.”
Varama ceased her work with the hearthstone, and pushed to her feet, waving off Veshahd’s helping hand. She stared down at Kalandra’s broken gem. It had not changed.
The pain upon Kyrkenall’s face was so pronounced, Elenai turned from him.
When he spoke behind her, though, his voice was level. “She is near.”
Elenai whirled, thinking he had meant Kalandra. But seeing Kyrkenall standing and looking up, his face now only faintly touched with grief, she knew it had been the God who spoke. He cocked his head to one side and looked at her. “There is more of me now, since you released my energies to attack the beast of the air. My thoughts come more easily. They are still colored by this one, though.”
Elenai spoke swiftly, grasping at this last hope. “Cerai took our weapons. She took the rest of your energies. We have no way to attack the Goddess now.”
“I understand.”
“Do you understand she will destroy us when she comes? Then she will destroy our world?”
The God in Kyrkenall did not answer. He lifted a hand and the wind rose. The sky darkened.
When the Goddess Wakes Page 39
