Defenders of the Valley

by K. J. Coble

  The Skinners’ intended interdiction carried them into the path of an onrushing Muddle, who bowled between the two and whirled, planting his axe in the belly of the one to his left. He turned, releasing the axe as the warrior fell and catching the second barbarian with a shattering punch to the throat before he could recover. Pivoting on his still-planted right heel, Muddle swept his axe up from his first opponent and blocked a blow from a third Skinner on the steel-studded shaft.

  Clenching his sword with one hand on the handle and the other on the blade, Vohl blocked an overhand blow from a Skinner, the impact jarring through already-weary arms and driving a grunt through clenched teeth. He dropped his right foot back, at the same time shifted the plane of his sword to an angle that redirected the Skinner’s energy. The barbarian stumbled with blind strength to one knee. Vohl stepped back and thrust into the man’s flank, the barbarian moaning in shock at the steel in his abdomen.

  Something crashed across Vohl’s ribs and he went down, landing on his back beside the warrior he’d felled. Vohl fumbled at the gash a barbarian sword had cleaved in his mail corslet, felt blood dampen his fingertips. Shadow blocked the dusk-red sky above him. He looked up to see the Skinner who’d slipped around his flank raise a knotched blade. Vohl’s sword lay inches from his pain-numbed hand, inches that meant death.

  Dodso whirled into the barbarian’s knees, baton and hammer flailing against the man’s legs. The Skinner roared as the baton’s winged head drew a cut across an unprotected thigh. He slashed at the gnome, missing as Dodso dived between his legs and brought both hammer and baton smashing upwards into his groin, folding the barbarian over.

  Grimacing through sheets of pain, Vohl grabbed his sword and sat up, thrusting the point of his blade into the Skinner’s midsection. The blow had little strength behind it but the barbarian’s own forward motion carried him fully onto steel that grated wetly through leather jerkin, flesh and bone. The Skinner sagged across Vohl’s legs. Cursing, Vohl kicked himself free and staggered to his feet.

  “Get me out of here!” Dodso’s voice demanded, muffled by the mass of the barbarian fallen over him.

  Vohl gave the body another kick and rolled it off. Dodso emerged from underneath, awash in the Face’s blood, his eyes enormous. Wendynn, cut in several places, stumbled to their spot and sagged to the ground, breathing heavily. Behind him, Legionnaires staggered in disorganization to the hilltop, fumbling to reform their line as Skinners tore among them. Ulomo bawled wild-eyed at his men, the young officer caked in gore as he simultaneously fought off barbarians and tried to reassert control.

  Muddle backpedaled until he stood beside Vohl and Dodso, bleeding from a cut that had taken off the point of one ear. The crest of the ridge below the hilltop tossed in anarchy, the center of the Valley folk’s line collapsed into a tangle. A horn call brought the centaurs peeling back from the left flank and sweeping around the rear in a desperate rush to stem the tide. They crashed into the mix, clubs caving in barbarian heads with every swing, but they were few and the broken-through Skinners many. And now, Valley folk deserters, who had been a mere speckling to the rear of the battlefield before, were swelling into streams of panic.

  “Master Rhenn,” a breathless voice said as small hands clenched Vohl’s sleeve. He turned to find Danelle at his side, exertion having drained her features down to gaunt bones and hollow eyes. Blood speckled her face and her robes were torn.

  “Are you all right?” Vohl put a hand on the apprentice’s shoulder.

  “A barbarian got close but a Legionnaire...” She swallowed and began to tremble.

  Vohl hugged her close, using her as much to balance himself as to provide comfort. “Stay close, girl.”

  Ulomo’s hollered orders got the Legionnaires recomposed into a semicircle at the hilltop around Vohl’s group. The officer leaned heavily on a spear and Vohl saw blood leaking down the side of one leg. His soldiers breathed hard behind the pummeled wall of their shields, their eyes flicking back and forth between the breached center and the Faces boiling uphill anew towards them.

  Whatever you had planned, Jayce, Vohl thought desperately, you’d better do it soon!

  THE WIZARDS’ DUEL LIT the woods around the clearing in dazzling rays of cyan that froze Illah and Lonadiel’s fight in sudden images of flashing steel and raging eyes.

  Illah had shifted increasingly to the defensive, falling back from sustained exchanges, knowing she couldn’t afford to get locked in close with Lonadiel. His taunts tore at her self-control and his apparently endless endurance sapped her belief that she could win. She fought on with the forlorn cunning of the doomed.

  Ducking around a young tree, Illah avoided a lightning stroke that planted Lonadiel’s saber in its narrow trunk. Fury gleamed in his eyes and momentarily clenched teeth as he strained to saw the blade loose. Seeing opportunity, she came around the other side, lunging low for his flank.

  With speed she could not believe, he spun away from the stroke, the point of her saber skittering across the front of his lammelar corslet. She ducked, barely avoided his free fist as it whistled past her head, and rolled. As she skipped back to her feet, he wrenched his saber free, gave it a shake to loosen shreds of bark and advanced again. The now-severed tree folded over behind him.

  “I see now you are finally fighting to kill,” Lonadiel said, sidling to one side.

  “And yet you are not,” Illah replied, reaching the realization even as she spoke the words.

  “If I had wanted you dead, Illah, you would already be so.”

  “Then the powers seeking dominon over you have not yet won,” she replied, turning slowly as he began to circle her.

  “And you would save me from them, is that it?”

  “We are Yntuil,” Illah said. “We do not believe there is a crime for which there is no atonement.”

  “Then that’s one more thing the Yntuil are wrong about.”

  Lonadiel rushed her. Illah fell back, evading his strokes rather than parrying them, weaving between the trees. Another blast from the wizards sent shards of refracted energy careening through the woods, glancing off trunks in sprays of fiery splinters and thunderclaps. A sapling flew apart to Illah’s left, sent tendrils of shattered branches lashing into her face. Her foot caught a root in her daze and she stumbled, rebounding off another tree.

  Lonadiel erupted through the settling haze of sparks and wood smoke. His boot shot out, caught Illah in the chest before she could recover and blasted her onto her back. She rolled away as his saber came down, cleaving the dirt where she had been. She launched back to her feet, sprinting into the deeper dark of the woods. Glances over her shoulder caught only snatches of Lonadiel, an apparition flitting through gaps in the forest.

  The wizards, she thought, changing direction suddenly and heading back for the eye-gouging flickers of their contest. He was afraid when we drew too near them. If I can draw him in close to Jayce... Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Lonadiel’s shape racing parallel to her, back towards the clearing. Reaching down into her last reserves, ignoring the pain of battered bones and searing cuts, she lengthened her strides to a full sprint.

  The clearing opened ahead, limned in cyan intensifying to white, a bridge of hellish energies coursing between Jayce and the rogue wizard. A shadow moved across the glare, eclipsing it. Illah dived as Lonadiel swung. His blade carved the air over her as she leapt past him. She hit the ground, rolled, spun, and came up.

  Yntuil steel shrieked against Yntuil steel. Lonadiel was a whirlwind barreling down on Illah. She parried the rain of blows, each strike shocking pain through weary arms, her saber becoming an unbearable, repeatedly-jolted weight in numbed fingers. Lonadiel had gone beyond anything the Yntuil masters taught, had degenerated into the pure frenzy of the barbarians whose path he now walked.

  Fading strength dragged Illah down, training failing her, reflexes slowing just enough that Lonadiel finally found his opening and knocked her saber from her grasp. Before Illah fully knew
her weapon was gone, Lonadiel’s fist smashed across her face in a backhanded blow. She hit the ground without really feeling it. A moment later, when Lonadiel’s boot crushed down upon her chest, pain returned in a dull, shuddering wave.

  But the last chilly thrust of death did not come.

  Blinking through blood and disorientation, Illah looked up to see Lonadiel wreathed in an agonizing glare, shielding his eyes as he tried to see what was happening in the center of the clearing. A scream like a thousand beasts being butchered rose and Illah saw fear crease Lonadiel’s features. Suddenly, his weight was off of her and he was gone.

  Illah rolled on to one side. Around her, the world tilted in sickening, nightmare sluggishness, shot through with hellfire. She saw Jayce with an arm outstretched, his face tight in a mask of exertion and seeming triumph as the rogue wizard bent before him with a staff held forth protectively. She saw Lonadiel moving towards the wizards with the flaring curve of his saber raised.

  She saw her mistake in bringing the fight back here and screamed.

  “JAYCE!”

  With sorcery hammering through him, Jayce barely heard the warning. He stood rigid with both feet planted and his weight forward, his raised palm his only barrier against the force of the Staff of Saeyed’s malice. White fire joined him to Morug, the rogue wizard having forgone the subtleties of spell work in favor of sheer, brute power. But his effort had only drawn them closer together, souls linked in a timeless moment as they wrestled across the bridge of ravening energy.

  Can you feel it? Jayce thought, knowing Morug would hear and understand through the bond of their contest. The artifact nears its limit and begins to feed upon you.

  Morug’s response was an intensification of the assault. He staggered to keep his feet, face glistening with sweat, features locked in a grimace of agony as magic split the air with the deafening squeal of the tormented cosmos and the wailing of dead Acolytes whose souls the contest finally freed. Jayce strained as though he held up a great weight, trying to ignore whisps of smoke rising from the sleeve of his upraised hand, the wool crisping in the heat of the sorcery.

  The Staff of Saeyed warped in Morug’s hands, its shaft twisting like a serpent fighting his grasp, the head piece gone white hot and beginning to shed flecks of molten pewter. The battle was no longer a two-sided affair, had become a struggle between Jayce, Morug, and the artifact, its own strange, magical will desperate to survive into the hands of one who would wield it with competence.

  A flicker of steel caught in the corner of Jayce’s eye. The elf traitor swept past Morug into the circle of radiance enveloping the wizards. Morug twitched, feeling the disturbance as the newcomer entered the eye of the storm. His eyes widened, as did his mouth, opened too late in a scream to warn off the elf’s misguided attempt at help.

  The momentary break in Morug’s concentration was all Jayce needed. Freed by the easing in his opponent’s pressure, Jayce brought up his other hand and gasped out a single word of command, an uninspired spell he’d used so often.

  A fork of lightning stabbed from his index finger and punched into Morug’s belly.

  Time slowed to a crawl, the elf attacker nearly frozen in mid-stride, his saber continuing its deadly arch towards Jayce’s skull in slow-motion. Beside him, Morug folded over over, eyes wide in denial as they beheld the glowing hole blasted through his bowels. In his hand, the Staff of Saeyed shivered with cracks of energy that spider-webbed down its length. The head piece sagged, going molten as the winged skull seemed to writhe and open its fanged mouth in a shriek of last-ditch exertion. Cyan brilliance consumed it, spread up Morug’s arm and into his chest, the Staff seeking every last heartbeat of Morug’s life force to save itself.

  Knowing it would not be enough, Jayce closed his eyes and folded his hands before his chest, whispering a word, a final spell he’d saved should he fail.

  A sledge hammer of light, force, and sound crashed through Jayce. He felt himself carried backwards, still locked in his folded-armed pose. The ground struck him once, twice. Then he was skidding across the earth, brambles lashing him, tearing the back of his robes to shreds and cutting into the skin. He thought he’d careen forever.

  But then he stopped, and so did the world around him.

  Jayce didn’t know how long it was before he decided he must still be alive and allowed himself to open his eyes. Trees smoldered above him and smoke rasped in his lungs. Blinking, he labored to sit up, pain from the impact clawing through him. His left shoulder felt wrong, felt loose and throbbing with agony. He ignored it as he struggled to get to his feet. The world shuddered around him in sheets of quivering light that were not magic, were merely exhaustion and the onset of shock. His ears rang, but the woods seemed dreadfully still and quiet.

  The clearing lay before him, not as far away as he thought, glimmering with flames of a very normal yellowy-red. Jayce staggered towards it, grasping his injured arm close to him. Ash fluttered down, a grayish snow blanketing his shoulders as he entered the open ground.

  He paused, uncertain even in victory. He’d fought too hard to trust it.

  A dimple of earth super-heated to glass glowed in the center of the clearing, beginning to crack as the gleam faded and the crater cooled. Scraps of cloak fluttered at its edges. Splinters of Idran blackwood lay amongst them, as did dollops of melted pewter.

  Of the elf traitor, there was no sign.

  “Jayce...”

  A ghost limped from the edge of the clearing. Jayce tensed then relaxed as he recognized the battered form of Illah. He hobbled towards her, ready to sob in relief as his mind finally registered that the ordeal was over.

  “It’s all right,” he croaked.

  She looked around at the wreckage of the clearing. “Where is—” she cut herself off. “What happened?”

  Jayce started to answer but found himself on his knees, uncertain when he’d collapsed. He sagged backwards and Illah caught him in her arms, eased him to the ground.

  “No, don’t!” Illah said, gripping his shoulders as if she would beat the life back into him. “Stay with me! Damn it, you promised me to tell me how old you really are!”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Jayce replied with a weak chuckle. He gestured feebly to the center of the clearing. “When he...Morug...the wizard used up the Staff’s power, it consumed him and itself trying to avoid destruction. Your traitor was too close when that happened.”

  Illah nodded without comment, pain rippling across her face before she forced it away with a wince of determination. The fight in her apparently passed, she managed a smile for him. “Rest now. You did well.”

  Jayce brushed her cheek with his good hand. “I am...sorry.”

  Illah’s eyes went glassy. “We all are.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Re-births

  A swirl of living fire rose from the sarcophagus and coalesced into a shape vaguely human.

  Flames bent, drew the outline of womanly hips, supple breasts. Currents of alternating crimson and yellow traced whisps of hair that danced on gusts of heat. Tendrils of fire extended and became arms spread to sample freedom. A pair of sparks flared to painful pinpricks of light that became eyes focused and drilling forth into the world with ancient sentience. Their glare was matched by the gleam of gems in the surrouding Vul statues’ sockets, throbbing with power as they beheld their risen champion.

  Despite pain, Sarcha sagged to her knees and put her forehead to the rapidly-warming floor of the chamber. She trembled, her breathing shallow as she cowered before a presence that could see through mind, body, and soul, burn down her lies, self-deceptions, and pride and find the frail husk of a girl screaming out in terror of the dark.

  But Sarcha had stopped fearing the dark long ago, had embraced it for the power it promised where her worldly ambitions had failed. With reverence, she lifted her face to the re-born deity and spoke its name.

  “Satayebeb...”

  Sarcha felt the entity’s gaze upon her like a crushi
ng wave of heat. A sound like bellows wheezing to stoke a fire filled the chamber.

  “Long has it been since I heard a mortal speak my name in this world.”

  “I am yours, Mistress,” Sarcha rasped. “I have come far to give you life again. My compatriots and I await your command.”

  “I know,” Satayebeb breathed through the room. “But the work of my resurrection is not yet done, Sarcha Urkaimat.”

  “You know me?”

  “Of course, I do.” A crackle of sparks might have been laughter. “I have known you since the hour you pledged your destiny to me. I have seen your struggles, your desires, your need to shake loose the shackles a decadent and misguided culture has thrown upon you. And I have known what you would do, what I would mean to you.”

  Sarcha’s breath nearly caught in her throat as tension released and all her doubts and fears rushed out in a sob. “You mean everything to me, Mistress!”

  “And you mean so much to me, Sarcha,” Satayebeb replied. The corporeal flames shifted and the entity wrapped its arms about itself. “Help me be fully in your world.”

  Sarcha frowned. “Is everything not as you desired?” She glanced at Clegg’s smoldering body. “I have brought you the words, the rituals, and the blood.” Her heart thundered in her chest. Those fools in Thyrr! Did they forget something?

  “No,” Satayebeb’s voice whispered both in Sarcha’s mind as well as in the air, “all is as it must be. But there is something more.” An arm of wispy flames extended. “Come to me, my child. Help an old woman down.”

  Grimacing through the pain of her battered chest, Sarcha rose to her feet. She started forward but paused, her eyes darting over the glowing slag about the half-molten sarcophagus.

  “It will not touch you,” Satayebeb said, and as she did, the heat hammering against Sarcha’s skin eased. “Come.”