by Katy Winter
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
At the gate, the Doms watched the Riders disengage to regroup and, as they did, the Doms once more raised their staffs and began to chant, their voices strident and carrying. The Companions stared at them.
“I am Fire. Lightning ignites fire.”
“I am Air. Fire turns to ash. Ash clogs the air.”
“I am Water. Water clears the air and floods the land.”
“I am Earth. The Guardians absorb the water.”
“Foes of Shalah will burn.”
“They will feel the power of the winds and the storms.”
“They will be drowned by my anger.”
“The ground will tremble. Shalah’s foes will quake.”
The Riders laughed.
“Then, Maquat Doms, we meet your challenges.”
“Have them!” called out Sapphire. “We’ll all meet on Shalah at the end.”
“Your end,” sneered the Riders in concert, their staffs raised in readiness.
Jepaul and Sh’Bane were now very close. Red and white light flared about them where they stood, the lights bouncing from one to the other and touching the tips of each other’s staff. In the aethyr, the white still surrounded the red disc that glowed molten hot at its centre. The Doms, still defiant, now summoned the elemental spirits who were there in swarms of fury, darting everywhere in frenzied, uncoordinated attacks on the minions who retaliated.
The Companions continued to help the Doms fight, but the Doms were ancient and already seriously weakened. The Riders slowly, minute by minute, began to drain them even with Islasahn’s support. Javen and Belika sensed impending collapse as the Doms struggled to keep the Riders at bay. The Companions stayed locked in support of them but they noticeably tired too until Knellen, suddenly aware of this danger, called to Jepaul. Jepaul was abruptly aware of the elemental spirits who dashed madly about in disorder. Still clashing with Sh’Bane, he began to marshal the little creatures, his instructions to them terse.
“Drive the Riders back! Answer only to your Elemental!”
Knellen heard. He called on the Companions to instruct and redirect their spirits. The Companions had repelled many of Sh’Bane’s minions but now the spirits, fresh and animated, began, with Companions’ support, to attack and harass the Riders. The Riders found themselves too far from the gate to easily retreat. Their aggression had brought them beyond refuge. Harried, they had to back down the stairs rather than up and this alone gave the Doms renewed energy. With the Companions and spirits they edged the Riders ever closer to the edge of the stairs.
A very real fight ensued. The Riders saw the gulf before them. They knew the stairway was blocked and struggled to hold their own. Their minions enabled them to retreat a little before they were once more pushed back down a step, one step at a time, their minions surrounding them. The Doms were the ones who finally surged at them. With their staffs blazing and their white lips chanting, they met the Riders on the last step. They watched them fall off it, themselves teetering on the brink in such a way it was only Knellen’s fast thinking that saved them. The Companions frantically grasped the Doms and dragged them back. The remaining hellions retreated, shrieking and squealing as they tumbled over each other to get to the gate. The Doms sank on the landing, their spirits hovering round them. The Companions were on their knees, heads hanging.
The Riders found themselves tumbling towards the battlefield beyond Baron/Kelt. There, elementals of all descriptions attacked Geysermen, among others, who rampaged causing death and mayhem wherever they trod. Cilikas swung tentacles poisoning and stinging indiscriminately, even their own as well as their allies. Those of them on the battlefield outside the city impaled Shalahs wherever they went. The Succubi, newly re-formed, terrified and drained anyone, even their own army. Maekwies, shrill and angry, flew in all directions with the Sabbiths in disordered groups causing destruction. Baron/Kelt was besieged and the defenders were losing heart.
To see what they knew had to be the Riders of Aeyr suddenly appear struck horror and despair into every heart. It seemed the Doms and Companions had lost their battle. Baron/Kelt was close to collapse. Then, as they watched the Riders stay suspended in the air, the defenders watched a sight they thought was a mirage. Each Rider became increasingly indistinct, as if mortally weakened.
They watched Kwarel, some distance from them, plummet abruptly, falling from his horse that crashed with him. They saw how being on Shalah changed his form. He became heavier and heavier fumes as he fell among Succubi, Wraiths and Sabbiths, a gaseous quality to him as he literally transformed into a wraith. He found himself unable to rise as he was gathered among them, his form struggling to retain an identity of its own. With the Wraiths and the Sabbiths he was inexorably drawn into a vacuum. It was a massing vortex of energy - such a violent storm it battered all on the battlefields with its ferocity. With them he was swept into the epicentre and swallowed. The raging tornado disgorged bits of Sabbiths and Wraiths as it left. Kwarel was gone. The defenders blinked.
They next saw Hadem. He was pushed down by a force the defenders couldn’t identify, until he was directly above the Maekwies who shrieked up at him. As he sank lower very, very slowly, the Maekwies screamed even more shrilly: his heat affected them and they were trapped by it as a haze of heat continued to build across the sky. Hadem tried to rise but he was weakened and lacked the energy to make an upwards surge. He, too, began to lose his identity as he was increasingly caught among the Maekwies and Sabbiths who burned. Hadem’s heat became such that all around him was ignited. Finally, in a shower of soaring sparks, all around him combusted, those lucky enough to escape in considerable disarray doing so. When the air cleared, there was simply ash everywhere and nothing else. Ash rose and fell.
Those of Baron/Kelt had watched two riders seemingly disappear. They didn’t trust they’d see any more that could benefit them. That was until a shout went up and heads turned to the west where people could see, disbelievingly, a third horseless Rider. It was Tudeh. He slipped lower and lower as he fought to regain height above creatures who owed allegiance to him and to whom he’d sent a call to rise in Sh’Bane’s defence. He fell among the Cilikas. They were indiscriminate in their search of prey. He struggled to control them but they were now frenzied and many were maddened by fire and so blown about by gales some had broken limbs.
They descended on Tudeh. The sounds emanating from the seething mass as he was torn apart were horrible. People cowered and covered their ears. By attacking and consuming him, the Cilikas were poisoned. More and more of them gorged on dismembered bits of him, devouring them but unaware of his toxicity. The watchers of Baron/Kelt witnessed their grotesque death throes with revolted fascination before their eyes turned wonderingly to Leth.
They saw he’d descended to just above his Geysermen and was exhorting and directing them to their proper quarry. The Geysermen eagerly and obediently converged on Leth, their flailing arms like windmills and their huge feet creating craters with every lumbering step. The defenders of Baron/Kelt could now see little as the battle of all the elements of Shalah was further away. It was shrouded from them by tearing winds and storms of unprecedented fierceness that rocked their world and shook the ground where they fought for their very existence. It seemed to them that Shalah could be torn apart. Men looked fearfully at each other.
Leth was no longer clearly visible, but what the defenders did suddenly witness shook them to their very souls. Mercifully distant from them they saw a gigantic geyser erupt from seemingly nowhere, with giant plumes of boiling steam and ash and monstrous yellow clouds of sulphurous gas. These were accompanied by ferocious jets of mud that soared into the sky with molten lava. The concussion from the eruption reverberated round Shalah and again shook its foundations.
In the midst of the steam people saw a writhing figure slowly become vapour in front of them: as it did it tinged the yellow clouds with a reddish/green sickly glow. It was spectacular but terrifyin
g. It was even more so when the gaseous clouds began to slowly spread over the distant battlefield and drift steadily towards the battlefields at Baron/Kelt itself. They were highly toxic and choking.
The defenders, sharply and urgently warned of its coming, rapidly drew back seeking shelter wherever they could. They were able to fashion masks to cover noses and mouths. Already people began to cough and eyes started running. The Red Council army wasn’t as lucky. Driven to resume battle by Varen, metalans and Nedru, they were unaware of the cloud until they began to be materially affected by it and those nearest the eruption zone were engulfed by it. Then they were choked and burned other than those who made a precipitate dash and ran for it, desperately reaching the defenders and imploring refuge. Despite the savage fighting, refuge was given, attackers gratefully huddling next to defenders. Their suffering was patent to everyone.
No one at this stage knew what happened with Leth. It was only later that it was revealed. He was seen to be knocked off balance by his clustering Geysermen and was literally dragged down among them in a spectacular fashion. Since his entity was considerably more toxic than theirs, he intensified their poisonous gases a hundred-fold. It caused the massive eruption. It not only killed the Geysermen but anyone else near them. That included Sabbith, Maekwies and Cilikas.
It also affected those called on by the Doms. However, they appeared to have been aware of what was happening with Leth and most managed to escape but in considerable disorder. The battle there collapsed as toxic ash coated everything and gases hung in the air making breathing impossible. Those called on by the Doms reassembled and waited at a safe distance for a resurgence of fighting. They were, as the Doms knew they would be, angry and vengeful, and it would take time for them to be calmed, controlled and allowed rest again. They watched, with merciless eyes, as Sh’Bane’s minions staggered about dying in front of them.
The battles for Baron/Kelt came to a halt until the clouds dissipated. Then all saw the result. There were huge holes in the ground well beyond the city where the Geysermen had wreaked so much carnage. Hot mud pools gurgled and occasionally spat up small jets and sent out gases. Vents in Shalah’s surface steamed where the world was split and riven in all directions. Those who suffered the fallout coughed and struggled with burning throats. The Red Council army was especially in disarray. The Baron/Kelt defenders were relieved, but speechless and awed. Battered but with renewed hope they marshalled for the resumption of hostilities, well aware they now had a fighting chance with so many hellions dead or dying.
Sh’Bane, now in a death struggle with Jepaul, was suddenly aware his Riders were gone, but he still expected the Nedru, vicious and anarchic, to fight. He believed they would win as would he. He had no idea what occurred on Shalah as his attention was on Jepaul. He also knew the Doms and Companions were significantly weakened and expected that over time he’d drain Jepaul. So the battle in the aethyr continued.
It was when Sh’Bane, tired of this, suddenly confronted Jepaul on the step at the gate that the Doms sensed Jepaul’s vulnerability. Knellen’s warning came too late. So did the now flaring jewellery. Sh’Bane struck Jepaul very hard. Staggering, Jepaul felt an instant chill that paralysed him like a moment of living death that transferred itself to the Doms and Companions. He went to his knees, his staff wavering. Then he faintly heard Quon’s anguished voice crying in pleading desperation,
“Believe, child, believe!”
He lifted his head in answer. At the same moment he opened his eyes to see, for a glimpsing instant, Loriel’s image. He also heard music that coursed through him, steadied him and helped push back the deadly creeping cold. That and Quon’s words gave him hope. He heard Loriel’s call. It was remarkably clear.
“Time, Jepaul.”
Jepaul went beyond himself. He rose. He launched himself directly at Sh’Bane. His staff high and blazing as never before and blinding in its strength, he threw the Anti-Spirit lord backwards at the same moment as he struck him a stunning blow on the head with his staff. Sheer agony lanced through him as he did it, but he ignored it, his teeth gritted and lips drawn back. Sh’Bane fell back. His staff was knocked from his hands. Jepaul grabbed it. Screaming with the pain from it he was again sent to his knees, but he managed to hold onto it as it sapped his energy and ate into his marrow. He heard Quon’s yell.
“Break it, Jepaul! Break it!”
He couldn’t. Nor did he have time to consider doing it. Exhausted, but gathering his will and aware Sh’Bane was closing in on him once more, Jepaul got to one knee as the Anti-Spirit lord came for him to retrieve his staff. He unclenched his hand from Sh’Bane’s staff. He let it drop at his feet, his hand bone cold from its touch. At the same moment he raised his own, the point directly facing Sh’Bane for the first time.
Sh’Bane, hurling himself at Jepaul, couldn’t stop his lunge. He became impaled on the staff that went right through the centre of his being. It was only the Doms and Companions with their combined strength who enabled Jepaul to survive the impact and subsequent draining of energy and spirit that threatened to consume him. Sh’Bane’s howls shook the aethyr and Shalah. Those still fighting at Baron/Kelt paused in shocked anxiety, their eyes skyward in mute terror. Jepaul held his staff steady. With the Doms and Companions in support he began to push Sh’Bane back towards the gate, the Anti-Spirit lord still impaled.
In the aethyr the red disc was slowly swallowed by a white light of such brilliance it lit up the darkness for miles. As they pushed Sh’Bane, a Dom grasped the anti-spirit staff, wincing as he did. He managed to drag it back from the gate out of Sh’Bane’s reach. As Jepaul and Sh’Bane were interlocked, the anti-spirits and hellions on Shalah began to pour up stairs to every gate, tripping, stumbling, clawing and trampling each other in their haste to get through a gate and to safety.
Quon, bone weary, his voice a thread, called urgently with Knellen to Lesul. Lesul, flying over the battlefield in a clinch with a Sabbith, heard the distant call and broke from the Sabbith.
“Now, Lesul! Now! Hurry!”
She called to her own. In a matter of minutes only dead Grypans were on Shalah. Lesul and her kind, bearing their injured between them, reached the third gate and passed through it, barely in time. The four outer gates were beginning to close. The Doms sank to the stairs, the Companions crouched beside them, all their concentration on Jepaul. It was still only their combined support with the Doms that sustained him as the anti-spirit continued to drain him.
In the aethyr, Sh’Bane was a ghastly, pulsating red apparition. Inky fading blobs within specks of red matter, frothed at the fringes that were once his proud fierce disc. With a huge effort and urged on by the Doms, Jepaul, with Quon’s hand on his, yanked his staff free. A coldness touched him as he sank by the gate and watched Sh’Bane fall away from him, the Anti-Spirit lord mortally wounded. He quickly faded. Jepaul couldn’t move, while the little elemental spirits clustered about him anxiously. Belika and Quon cradled him.
The little fire elementals tugged determinedly at Sh’Bane’s staff that Sapphire still gingerly held, deliberately shattered it and burned it until only ash lay at the gate. The Doms, their staffs quiet, were gaunt, frail and grey as they gently touched Jepaul. He trembled as though he had a fever and was in profound shock. He looked harrowed and ill. His staff lay beside him. Then they heard the pipe. The sound came from far away, but it came gradually closer and the sound flowed through those clustered at the gate, especially through Jepaul.
On Shalah, the Nedru wheezed exhortations. They saw the Riders appear. They heard Sh’Bane’s howls of fury, his voice like rolling claps of thunder that rocked the foundations of Shalah as he faded in the aethyr. They saw the Geysermen collapse, the Cilikas suddenly gasp out life on shuddering earth from fumes and gases, and the fire hellions drown as the water elementals came in ever-increasing storms and waves of drifting mist and rain. The air hellions choked. But the Nedru didn’t know wha
t happened at the Fifth gate. Nor did they understand the powerful white light that lit up the sky, a sight that made the attacking army falter as they felt it was an ill omen. The army began to fall apart. Cohesion went awry. The Nedru exhorted in vain.
And then, from a distance, came the sound of a pipe. Stillness fell across Shalah. The defenders paused. The anti-spirits reacted to the sound in one way, the Shalahs in another. The anti-spirits squealed, squeaked and shrieked. Those who could, covered their ears. All began to collapse and shrivel. So did the writhlings who drove so many to ghastly ends. The music actually maddened them. As it came closer they began to pour from their hosts, clawing and biting in their urgent need to get out as they too started to shrivel. Their winking lights dimmed as they shrieked like whistles at a high pitch that was an ear-splitting keening.
The Nedru, affected by the music but able to mostly resist its affects and abruptly aware Sh’Bane was no longer near Shalah, watched the writhlings in impotent fury. Hosts, including Varen, reeled about drunkenly, bleeding, scratched, confused, some seriously hurt and others unable to move. The Nedru were in a hissing circle of rage when they were confronted by Jepaul who materialised right next to them. He was gaunt. His eyes, almost lifeless, were deep pools of exhaustion without reflection. His face was unrecognisably stern.
“We answer you,” they wheezed.
“You do.”
“We obeyed Sh’Bane.”
“You did.”
“Where is he?’
“Gone.”
“We obeyed you of the Progenitor’s line.”
“Yes, you’ve done what you always do. You destroy. You annihilate. You cause unspeakable suffering.”
“We were brought here.”
“Your species are the universal nihilists of the outer aethyr.”
“We take pride as the Nedru.”
“You’ve served your purpose.”
“Who are you?”
“Know me, Nedru, for who I truly am. I’ve battled with Sh’Bane, your master. Yes, I’m of the Progenitor’s line but I’m more. I’m Maquat Dom Spirit, one of the Five Elementals and Guardians of Shalah you thought defeated and unable to challenge you. With them I seek retribution, Nedru. Look upon your nemesis, not your master as you were forced to call me.”
There were flurried cries and robes swirled about figures in high agitation.
“We will leave.”
“We are finished here.”
“We have done.”
Jepaul raised a hand.
“Enough!”
The sight and sound of the Nedru was too much. So close to them, Jepaul actually felt as if their combined anti-spirits drained him where he stood, motionless. Even without their touch he felt parts of himself chill and feel numb with cold, a sense of creeping ice such as he felt within with his touch of Sh’Bane and his staff. His lifeblood felt as if it would congeal. His soul was close to dying. He heard the music again, very faint, but enough to make him able to move again. Then the sound faded.
Jepaul closed his eyes and took a very slow breath that he expelled gently. Then he opened them to look out across a vista of utter devastation. There was no fighting. People scurried backwards and forwards trying to help the wounded of all kinds, including those relieved of metalans. There were broken or idle machines; strewn often shattered bodies; burned corpses; land soaked in blood, churned beyond recognition, blackened and blasted; the injured calling out in pain; piteous crying of all creatures hurt and floundering. There was suffering everywhere Jepaul looked.
His eyes stared across the desolation and carnage to stare unblinkingly at Baron/Kelt, still standing, but her walls torn apart and all who fought to save the city and Shalah savaged and marked for all time. He saw staggering people from the Red Council army, freed of metalans but bewildered, dazed and profusely bleeding from the frenzied, maddened escape of clawing writhlings leaving unwilling hosts. It was a scene from Jepaul’s worst nightmares from the time he was a child, but now it was magnified a thousand-fold. His amber eyes were now deep wells of grief because he’d always tried to avoid or disguise ugliness, his soul dying a little with each encounter with it. Now he felt defeated by it.
Then, once more, he heard Quon’s voice because the music had gone.
“You have belief in yourself. You are us, Jepaul. Believe, young one, remember – believe.”
He felt the combined rush of support from Doms and Companions, however weakened it was. It was enough to make him raise his head. Then he heard their chanting unexpectedly grow stronger and louder.
“Believe, Jepaul! Believe!”
Buoyed yet again, Jepaul took another deep breath as he faced what he knew would be his last act for the salvation of Shalah. His hand shook as it held the staff: his body trembled with the trauma he’d so recently experienced: his face was white and his lips were compressed and bloodless. He struggled to act. He quivered with exhaustion and a feeling of icy cold as another surge of abhorrence at what confronted him shook him. Then he felt the chant swell within him and push back the numbing cold.
With an effort, Jepaul swung the staff high above his head and his lips moved as he joined the chant and turned his head to look directly at the Nedru. They hissed and slowly gyrated. A welling of utter loathing for what they represented and what they’d done shook Jepaul to the depths of his being. He locked their minds to his. They tried to resist but his mental grip was like steel.
“Look at me, each of you in turn,” Jepaul commanded.
The Red Councils tried to go into an immediate synthesis of resistance. They failed. Jepaul repeated the order. He raised the staff higher, the runes clear. When they saw that and heard his chant get louder, the Nedru gave wheezing hisses and coughs of apprehension. They huddled closer, their reedy cries becoming distressed as they swayed and their heads bobbed. Boney hands gesticulated. The group broke up. Jepaul and his staff began to blaze with a light that was once more so blinding any close by had to turn away or cover their eyes, their expressions deeply fearful. Those near the city or within it recognised it was Jepaul but none had seen him like this.
The Nedru, creatures of the dark, couldn’t hide any longer. Light penetrated their robes and made their disguise useless. When Jepaul became light energy the Nedru howled and hissed as they were suddenly exposed for what, for wondering but revolted eyes, they truly were - tall black shadows. They were un-fleshed deformed skeletons that couldn’t absorb or deflect light. Now they began to crumble, screaming with excruciating pain as they tried to shrink under cloaks and hoods rapidly becoming transparent. All those on Shalah they’d made to suffer now saw them abandoned and powerless. They began to crawl, boney hands grasping at air, their bones alight.
As their bones continued to burn and crumble, a few metalans, huge ones, poured out winking in the light. They scuttled in disorder, confused and hurt by blinding energy. They writhed, helpless, dying where they fell. The Nedru, still screaming and trying to get air, finally fell at Jepaul’s feet. Their skeletons continued to twist and burn as he went from one to the other and wrenched back the remains of their hoods so that gaping toothed maws of nothingness, just blackness, were revealed. Into each, the coldness again seeping into him despite the chanting, Jepaul thrust his staff. The dying howls of the Nedru were another awful sound that echoed across Shalah and made people shudder.
Jepaul was gone.