by JA Andrews
Alaric’s legs slowed, as though he were running though water, but his momentum crashed him into Ayda. The two of them faltered, but she didn’t fall.
Alaric felt his heart slow. The futility of his actions crashed in against him, and no matter how much he clung to the idea of getting out of the circle, the edge was too far away. He would never make it.
He stood there next to Ayda, both of them encircled by the runes. Douglon, Brandson, and Milly were shouting and waving, but Alaric could barely hear them. It didn’t matter. It would all be over soon.
Gustav bent over and began reading faster.
Alaric fixed his gaze on the swirling ruby. He had never imagined that he and Evangeline would both die at the same time.
A roar shattered the haze, and a huge force slammed into Alaric’s side, shoving him sideways into Ayda. The two of them tumbled away, to the other side of the circle.
Douglon grabbed for them, pulling them clear.
Nox sat inside the circle. He looked pleased, but as Alaric watched, the lizard’s eyes faded and his head drooped down to the ground.
Ayda sat up and started back toward the creature, but Alaric grabbed her arm.
“We’ll never get him out. If we cross the influence ring, Gustav will control us again and all three of us will be trapped.”
“But… Nox…” Ayda said, looking at the runes around him.
You were right, Alaric. This is the answer, Nox said, his thoughts coming sluggishly to them. The wizard has his creature, a much weaker being than either of you.
Alaric shook his head. “Nox, focus on us. Come out.”
Nox looked at Alaric through his dark, reptilian eyes. I remember. His thoughts staggered out to Alaric, desperate and reaching. The sacrifice exceeds the reward. I remember that emerald. I remember my name. I remember why I chose to forget it.
Nox opened his mind and Alaric saw a boy, writhing in pain. A man held a snake and the boy’s mother wept. He dropped down next to the boy and cradled his head, pouring energy into him. A green light pulled out of the boy’s body, the child screamed. Then the light condensed into an emerald that dropped heavily onto the boy’s chest.
Alaric pulled his mind away. “Kordan?”
Chapter Fifty-One
“Kordan,” Alaric repeated, his mind spinning.
You were right, Kordan said, I have made many choices I regret, but those choices do not control today. Today, I choose to be a Keeper again. I choose to stand up against something evil instead of toying with the edges of it.
Alaric shook his head again. “This isn’t the answer. The spell will kill you.”
It is the only answer. The spell will claim a creature, but he needs a creature at least as great as a human to revive Mallon. I am the only one here who is not. Even if I have enough energy to revive him, the Rivor will not rise powerful. He will be a shadow of himself.
“It will kill you,” Alaric said again weakly.
Kordan nodded. I thought I had died a useless death many years ago. If my death will stop this, it will be more than I ever imagined. He looked at Alaric intensely. Give me this chance.
Alaric looked at the lizard again, then nodded. “I’ve been searching for your Wellstone, searching for anything I could find of yours. My wife…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You have the antidote for rock snake venom.”
Kordan fixed Alaric with a long stare. Acadanthus leaves, the words slipped weakly into Alaric’s mind. Acadanthus leaves boiled to a strong tea.
Alaric stared at the lizard. “Does it work?” he whispered.
Kordan nodded. He bowed his head briefly to his newfound companions before turning his head and glaring at Gustav. Gustav was looking at Kordan frantically. Every time Kordan’s eyes began to sink closed, he would shake his head vigorously and growl, re-fixing his glare on the wizard.
“This still hasn’t stopped him,” Douglon pointed out.
“No, but Kordan is right. If Gustav can raise Mallon with just the energy that Kordan has, Mallon will be terribly weak.” He glanced at Ayda.
Ayda was looking at Kordan with tears in her eyes. She looked up at Alaric, fury building again.
Alaric nodded. “Yes, get angry.”
Ayda stalked around the influence ring until she stood as close as she dared to Gustav. She glared at him, her fingers flexing. The courtyard darkened and a breeze swirled through it.
The wind didn’t ruffle Gustav at all.
“Your spells protect you for now, wizard,” Ayda said. “But when you are done, you will no longer be safe.”
Milly helped Brandson over to where Douglon stood.
“Be ready,” Alaric said. “When Mallon wakes up, we need to attack. I have no idea what he’ll be capable of. Gustav should be exhausted. I doubt he’ll be able to do much. But focus on Mallon. There will be time to deal with Gustav afterward.”
They moved closer to the edge of the influence ring, closer to Mallon’s body.
“Your ruby,” Milly said, looking toward where it rested on Mallon’s chest.
Alaric’s heart clenched. “Even if I pull it out of the spell, it won’t matter. This rune links the spell to ‘the stone with latent energy,’ meaning the Reservoir Stone.”
“Can you replace it with something else?” Milly asked.
“Yes,” Alaric said with a short laugh. “If you have another stone with latent energy.”
Milly’s shoulders slumped. “You can’t just leave it there.”
Alaric looked at the swirling red light. A matching flash of red reflected off his chest. He looked down at the flame Ayda had frozen. The stone with the potential to be a flame. Alaric grabbed the necklace and yanked it off his neck. “I’d say the potential to explode into flame qualifies as latent energy.”
He just needed to overcome the influence ring and reach Mallon’s body. He began to fill his mind with Evangeline, with how desperately he wanted to see her again. Bracing himself, he stepped over the line and strode toward Mallon’s body.
The ruby swirled weakly. Too weakly to do anything. Would he ever see her again? Despair crashed over Alaric. He couldn’t bring himself to pick it up.
A flash of fiery red from Ayda’s flame dangling in his hand caught his eye.
You are better suited to fire than flowers, Ayda had said. You have that tight burning core of anger, or pain. Or guilt. It’s deep, but it’s bright.
He reached inside himself, looking for the anger. He found it, a burning core of fury. Clinging to it, he tried to shake the haze of Gustav’s influence, but the anger just kept leading him to despair.
He had to let go of the anger. What else had Ayda said? That the anger wasn’t all of him. That the anger was only there because of the love he had. Ewan had said the same.
They were right. He was angry because Evangeline was dying. And he loved her. He was angry because the role of Keeper didn’t feel right, but that role sat inside the deep well of knowledge that he loved.
There was more there than the anger. There was more there than the decision to save Evangeline, to create a ruby, and to turn his back on the Keepers.
No one is defined by a single choice, the Shield had said. With each day, we decided anew who we are, what we will grow toward. Alaric has chosen to be a Keeper a thousand times in a thousand ways.
A thousand times in a thousand ways. Alaric pushed away the despair. It was time to choose to be a Keeper one more time. Right now.
This time, when Alaric looked for strength to fight the influence ring, he didn’t reach for his anger. He reached for the things he loved. The things that made him who he was: Evangeline, his life as a Keeper, the queen, Ewan, Ayda, Douglon, Brandson, and Milly. He found them, a solid, indestructible foundation beneath the rushing despair of Gustav’s influence ring and beneath the fire of his own anger.
He anchored himself to that foundation. This moment was his to choose, and he would choose to follow his own mind, not Gustav’s.
The despair receded.
Alaric reached down and picked up the ruby. He almost dropped the flame in its place, but paused. He didn’t want the flame touching Mallon, either. Instead, he set it on the altar. Then, clinging to the truth that this moment was for him to choose, he stepped back out of the influence ring.
Alaric clenched the ruby to his chest until the rough edges dug into his hand. He could still feel its warmth. Her warmth. But it was so faint compared to what it had been.
Gustav was sweating and panting. He stared at the ruby in Alaric’s hand.
“Gustav,” Brandson pleaded. “Don’t do this.”
The wizard shuddered.
Alaric walked along the outer edge of the influence ring until he stood next to Ayda, close to the wizard. “Not going how you had planned? Well, you can’t stop now.”
With a shaking voice, Gustav picked up reading where he had stopped and walked the last short distance until he had gone all the way around the circle of runes.
The runes suddenly glowed a vivid blue. The Wellstone burst into light and sent a rush of scalding white energy at Mallon’s body. The flame from Alaric’s necklace remained unchanged. There was no life inside it for the spell to take. The runes on the ground grew brighter and brighter until both Ayda and Alaric stepped farther away. Gustav sank to the ground, exhausted.
“No,” Brandson said, a broken whisper.
With a sigh, Kordan’s head settled to the ground. His eyes stared lifelessly across the courtyard. Alaric felt a pang of regret, and Ayda let out a small groan.
A moment later, there was a rustle from the side of the altar, and Mallon’s legs stirred.
Ayda began to breathe furiously, and Alaric, after a glance at Gustav, who was lying senselessly on the ground, reached forward and rubbed his foot across the influence ring. The line rubbed off and the influence ring was broken.
“He’s too exhausted to keep it up,” Alaric said. Grinning, he strode across it with Ayda on his heels.
Their motion roused Gustav who cast a frightened glance at them then rushed to Mallon. The wizard shook him and started yelling for the Rivor to awaken.
With a groan, Mallon opened his black eyes and slowly turned his gaze on each of them in turn.
Douglon let out a war cry and rushed toward the Rivor, his axe raised. Mallon’s eyes narrowed, and he hissed at the dwarf. Douglon went flying backward, crashing into a heap against the keep wall.
Brandson hobbled forward a step and threw his knife at Mallon. The Rivor swatted it away and with a look, knocked Brandson flat on his back.
Ayda and Alaric paused.
Mallon focused his eyes on Gustav, then flexed his hands. A smile spread across his face. He pulled himself up, leaning on the side of the bone altar.
“Well done, servant,” he said, his voice cutting through the courtyard.
Gustav dropped into a fawning bow.
Ayda, who had begun to shake with fury, stepped forward. The Rivor’s eyes fell on her. He studied her for a moment before his grin widened even farther.
“Very well done,” Mallon murmured. “You have even brought one who holds some of my soul.”
Gustav looked in surprise at Ayda. “She what? I didn’t… um… I thought…”
“Shut up, wizard,” Ayda said, never taking her eyes off Mallon.
“Come to me, my child,” Mallon commanded. His body still leaned heavily on the altar, but his voice burned with power.
Ayda lurched forward as though on a chain. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, but her body was dragged slowly forward.
The Rivor looked at her hungrily. “Come closer. I am still weak, but the darkness you hold will change that. The darkness you have kept for me all of these years.”
Alaric looked at Ayda in fear. This was the darkness Will had warned him of. The darkness he could almost see sometimes.
“Come to me,” Mallon called to her. “I will give you power even an elf cannot imagine.”
Ayda cast a frightened look at Alaric. Her feet stepped forward again.
In desperation, Alaric held her eyes and opened his mind up to hers. He felt her presence in his mind as her gaze clung desperately to him. He saw her, standing in the Greenwood while the elves died around her. She was tiny and dim and alone.
Her eyes glazed over.
Alaric threw images at her. The image of her standing in Queen Saren’s council, defending Alaric. The moment when Douglon had told her he would die for her, lying on the ground with an arrow in his chest. The time she had held out her hand to Alaric, willing to share the story of how her people died. Ayda chatting with Milly as they walked along a road. Any image he could think of to show her she was not alone.
Ayda’s eyes refocused on Alaric, and he could see her thoughts clear. She smiled, then turned back to Mallon.
“Come!” he commanded, his voice growing harsher.
“You want your darkness back?” she asked him sweetly. “It would be my pleasure. I am tired of carrying it.”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed the Rivor’s face.
Ayda held out her hand and took a deep breath. Breathing slowly out, she formed her hand into a claw. Inside the claw, a swirl of darkness appeared surrounded by wisps of light. Tendrils of black kept slipping out, reaching between her fingers, but then the light pulled them back in. The light slowly tightened, spinning the dark into a ball of utter blackness.
Alaric could feel it pulling at him. He leaned back, pulling away from the void she was holding. A single tendril of black snaked out toward him, but just as fast, a finger of light snatched it back and trapped it in the ball.
The lights were the elves—what was left of the elves that had been trapped in Ayda.
Mallon shifted backward, his eyes widening.
Finally, Ayda looked up and smiled. “A gift from my people.”
With that, she gave the ball, engulfed by light, a nonchalant toss.
It tumbled through the air and landed next to Mallon on the altar. The Rivor drew back. He reached out to touch it, but a spark from the light whipped out at his hand, and he drew it back sharply.
“Keep him near it,” Ayda whispered.
Alaric gathered as much energy as he could in the space of a breath. Before Mallon could step back, Alaric reached his hand toward the Rivor. “Alligo!” He hissed the same spell Gustav had used to keep them rooted to the ground this morning.
Mallon froze, everything below his head locked into place. Gustav, at the very edge of the spell’s range, bent over and tugged on his feet, struggling to move them. Both of them cursed and struggled against the spell.
“That won’t last long,” Alaric said. He could already feel fractures in the spell holding Gustav’s feet.
Ayda was staring at the white lights wrapping the ball of darkness. “They need more power, more energy.”
Alaric looked desperately around for something, anything. There was nothing to draw from. The courtyard was stone. There wasn’t even a fire to pull energy out of. His eyes fell on the frozen flame sitting on the altar.
“Would the potential for a big fire help?” he asked, nodding toward the frozen flame sitting on the altar.
Her eyes widened and a wild grin spread across her face. She took the flame and turned back to Mallon. He was still looking uncertainly at the dark ball spinning on the altar completely enclosed in a web of light.
Ayda walked up to him and looked him squarely in the eye. She pointed to the bundle of light encasing the dark ball. “You did not destroy my people. I just want to make sure you understand that it was the elves that defeated you.” She glanced over her shoulder toward Alaric and the others. “With a little help.”
Then Ayda held the tiny crystal flame in her palm. She blew on it, setting it to quivering. It burst into a living flame.
Mallon’s eyes widened and she smiled at him.
“Everyone knows that darkness is only dark until you throw in a little light,” she said and tossed the flame at the altar. It landed on
the little ball of darkness and light, spreading out and dancing over the surface.
Ayda turned and walked over to Kordan’s still body. She kissed his scaled head gently then turned toward Alaric.
Alaric stared at her for a moment. Her face was bright and easy. Nothing about her sparkled or flashed, yet she looked more alive and real than he had ever seen her.
“We should go,” she said, glancing at the flame that was spreading across the ball of darkness. “Quickly.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Alaric called to Douglon, who was stirring against the wall. The dwarf staggered over and helped Alaric drag Brandson to his feet. The three of them stumbled back toward the keep, following Ayda and Milly.
At the door of the keep, Alaric paused and looked back. The others crowded behind him, watching breathlessly.
The blackness was spreading, now covered in orange flame. The white lights that had held it in a ball were stretching out, reaching for each other and creating a web that stretched over the darkness. Mallon strained back against Alaric’s spell. He shot spell after spell at the ball, trying to destroy it, but each one was merely absorbed, swelling the size of the darkness trapped there. Gustav snapped his feet free and raced to Mallon, clutching at his arms and tugging at him, but the Rivor didn’t move.
“Gustav!” Brandson yelled, “Get away from there!”
Gustav looked toward Brandson for a moment, then went back to pulling on the Rivor.
With a rush of noise like a great wind, or a blazing fire, the ball shot out into an enormous size, enveloping Mallon, Gustav, the altar, and half of the courtyard.
The orange flame, which had been stretched almost to invisibility, flared up. The web of white lights joined with it, creating a shell of brilliant white fire. Alaric shielded his eyes from the searing brightness as a wave of heat rolled over him.
There was a low trembling in the ground. The circle of darkness and flame collapsed down with a concussion like thunder. The ground shook and debris shot out from it, pelting Alaric with pebbles and spreading a thick cloud of dust.