“Dance with me?” Anuit held out her hand.
Arda looked at her beer for a split second before Attaris took it from her. “What are you waiting for, lass? Life’s too short!”
She looked up at Anuit. The dark-skinned woman’s eyes smiled at her, glistening with feeling. “I’m sorry,” Anuit said. “I’m sorry I made you wait. I’m ready now.”
Arda’s own eyes welled. She took Anuit’s hand and allowed herself to be led towards the dancing throng of people by the bonfire.
Anuit swayed to the music, hesitantly at first. Arda joined and encouraged her, their fingers touching as they moved. Sweat beaded on their skin in the fire’s light, and Arda realized she wore too much this close to the bonfire. She peeled back her dress’s top to her waist, freeing her small-shirt to the air.
The drumbeat slowed to a pulsing drone, and the music changed with it, low, rhythmically enchanting. Arda touched her fingers to Anuit’s back, and the two moved closer as they danced. They turned and spun, falling away and then back again.
Anuit danced with her back to Arda now, looking at her over her shoulder. The darkling moved close behind her, matching her movement. She reached around and slid her fingers over Anuit’s belly, slipping through her skin’s moisture. Anuit closed her eyes and hissed an intake of breath. She leaned back into the paladin and laid her head on Arda’s shoulder. Arda embraced her with both arms, and they slowed, swaying their hips together gently to the music’s magic.
Anuit grabbed Arda’s fingers and clasped them tightly against her belly. She turned her head and whispered into Arda’s face. “Let’s get out of here.” Her breath was hot on Arda’s cheek.
The paladin nibbled and kissed her ear, touching her tongue to Anuit’s earlobe. “Yes,” she murmured back in a whisper. “Somewhere away…”
They hurried hand in hand into the woods and kept running until they were alone, far away from the other revelers. They found a mossy bed beneath two thick tree roots.
“Here,” Anuit said. She turned and kissed Arda.
“What changed?” Arda asked after the kiss.
“Oriand talked some sense into me,” Anuit said.
“I’ll have to thank her then,” the paladin laughed. “What did she say?”
“She reminded me to trust love over doubts planted by demons.”
“Wise.”
Anuit placed a finger on Arda’s lips and looked straight into her eyes. “I’m in love with you, Arda,” she declared. “I’ve loved you for a long time. I knew it when I found you in Tulley’s chamber. I knew it when you let the vampires feed on you so I wouldn’t have to endure that. I’m sorry it took me so long to accept it.”
“I did that because I loved you even then,” Arda breathed. “Before then.” She slipped her hands to the back of Anuit’s wrapped top, unfastening the ties. “I didn’t realize what my heart knew until Erindil, but since then I’ve been certain.” She pulled away Anuit’s top.
Anuit pushed her dress to the ground and stepped out of it. She stood naked before Arda. “It’s Lovers’ Night,” she said.
Arda pushed her own dress to the ground and the two of them lay together in the moss.
They made love, losing themselves in the pleasure of each other’s bodies. Arda had not felt so happy in a long time. Anuit was soft, gentle, and tentative. She didn’t know what to do, shyly exploring with her fingers. Arda showed her and made Anuit gasp.
A thud interrupted them from the other side of the tree. Whispers and laughter touched their ears. Another couple had found the mossy beds between the root legs. It was Lovers’ Night, after all.
Anuit giggled in a whisper. “We’re not alone.”
More laughter from the other side.
“I think…” Arda whispered back. “Oh gods, I recognize that laugh. It’s Aradma and Kaldor.”
The two of them lay still in silence. They listened and heard heavy breathing that grew into moans. The other couple made no effort to be quiet.
“They don’t know we’re here,” Anuit whispered.
“Should we sneak away?” Arda asked.
Anuit nibbled Arda’s ear as she breathed, “Don’t you stop touching me.” She started moving again, squirming into Arda’s touch.
The mosses bloomed with soft grasses and flowers around them, the newly grown foliage tickling their bodies.
Anuit giggled in a whisper again. “Yes, definitely Aradma,” she said. “She’s so happy, she’s making the ground grow.”
Arda leaned into her lover and whispered in soft, hot breaths, lips brushing against Anuit’s ear, “Shut up, and don’t stop what you’re doing.”
* * *
Ghost slept in the fields outside of Windbowl. He was old now, and sleeping seemed the best way to pass the time anymore. Keira lay beside him, and Fernwalker and Yinkle had curled up, nestled against the warm fur of his tummy. He wasn’t sure about Yinkle, but the other two were his family. He missed the solitude of hunting in the jungles of Vemnai, but the gift of intelligence the elf man had given him more than made up for it. There were enough deer and goats in Windbowl to keep him happy. Tiberan’s bond had made Ghost a new being, and the transformation had survived even after the elf’s death. The only thing that frustrated Ghost was that, even though he understood the powers of speech, no one had heard him for nine years. Fernwalker’s developing ability was sporadic at best.
Before he died, it was obvious to Ghost that Tiberan adopted Keira as one of his own. Ghost also knew that Aradma was Tiberan’s mate, so when Fernwalker was born, Ghost considered her his own cub. Before he met Tiberan, he would have no part in raising cubs. When the seelie formed the bond, he assumed more traits than just intelligence.
Yinkle stirred and rose, yawning.
“Wake up, Fernwalker,” she said. It’s time to go home.”
Fernwalker protested but rose to her feet. Ghost raised his head and gave a soft sniff to them as they left. The embers of the bonfire still glowed. They weren’t the only ones who had slept out in the fields. People were starting to rise and make their way back to their homes, either in the city itself or their respective villages and towns.
The tiger remained behind with the sleeping Keira. She had gotten cold in the night again and shifted into her wolven form. Life without fur seemed like it would be miserable.
Ghost was about to lay his head back down beside Keira’s snout when a sharp twinge jolted him fully awake. He sprang to his feet in surprise, jostling and waking the young wolven woman. She opened her eyes in alarm at the tiger’s sudden movement.
Ghost looked around but didn’t see anything. Was he becoming jumpy like a house cat? Was he spending too much time with people?
The twinge hit him again, and then he realized what it was. His mystical bond pulsed with the presence he had not felt in over nine years. Not since he died.
The feeling was weak, far to the south over mountain, field, and forest.
Ghost had to go to him.
“What is it, Ghost?” Keira asked. She shifted back into human form and knelt beside him. He looked her in the eye.
Come with me, cub, he silently thought. Let us reclaim our lord.
“What’s wrong, Ghost?”
Please don’t ask me who’s a good kitty. I have yet to find one.
He pointed his nose south, and then back at her. Two more times, he pointed south and then looked at her again.
Finally, he shrugged as only cats can do and walked towards the beacon in his heart. He padded on to Keown Road and headed towards South Pass and the lands beyond.
Keira followed him.
34 - Chronometry
Eszhira sat in the cargo bay of the gnomish transport gyrothopter. Rotary wings overhead did not lend themselves to a quiet approach. The blades made a whirring noise, and the steam engine hummed smoothly, powered by elodian crystals. They were high enough not to be noticed, especially with the moderate cloud cover. At least they didn’t burn coal or wood, she thought. The gnome
who came up with that design was crazy. Those engines belched poisonous smoke. Elodian crystals generated magical heat when compressed, so the engine had very little exhaust. The gnomes had devised a way to recapture the steam, condense it back into water, and return it to the boiler.
It was daylight. There wasn’t a living soul within a hundred miles of Artalon.
The bench was short, made for a gnomish crew. Eszhira’s seelie legs lay almost flat on the metal floor in front of her. The gray-skinned light elf curled her legs up and checked her bootlaces. Protective leather with soft soles, perfect for moving silently.
They were a long way from Cloudmoore, where Eszhira had spent the last nine years living, learning, and training with the gnomes in their secret city. She and Kristafrost had not left Artalon when Aradma and the rest of the seelie fled. When Valkrage went mad, the Templars fomented the mob into an anti-elven frenzy of hatred. Kristafrost wanted to remain behind and continue her work against Templar control. Eszhira also stayed behind, and when High Templar Pavlin had joined Rajamin’s cause, she had decided to forget—if not forgive—the sexual abuse she had suffered at his hands. She had hoped that he could redeem himself in service to the nascent Church of Light, but when he turned against the seelie, her judgment fell. He needed to die.
The problem was, by the time they’d snuck back into the city the following day, he was dead. She’d seen his body, along with twenty other Templars, all killed by… something. They hadn’t been sure by what at the time. The mob had dispersed and people were people once more. They buried their dead, and it was already apparent that the Artalonians weren’t wasting any time in abandoning the city after Valkrage’s destruction of six of the city’s towers and the final explosion at the top of God Spire.
Kristafrost had suggested they leave the city, too. The Templars were gone, and Eszhira’s vengeance was thwarted. Pavlin was slain, and with Valkrage gone too, so were the final remnants of the Shadowlord’s Artalonian Empire. It would soon be a dead city.
Before dusk, Kristafrost had shown Eszhira her true base of operations—an underwater station off of Artalon’s coast where she kept a small submarine hidden beneath the docks—and the two of them escaped to the submerged structure. Kristafrost then sat at a strange contraption and sent a message to Cloudmoore through the means of a series of pulses. She explained that these were too low for the ear to hear. The message would be relayed back, and an evacuation transport would be sent for the both of them because her own long range underwater vessel wouldn’t also accommodate Eszhira.
They stayed submerged for five days, until a message came back to them with a rendezvous location. They then returned to the surface to circumnavigate the city, and saw lines of people leaving, complaining about a disease where the infected killed in the night.
They hadn’t engaged with anyone, hurrying to a secluded, wooded area. Kristafrost shot a flare into the sky, and moments later a medium-sized gyrothopter descended from the clouds. That’s when Eszhira met Fizzdrits. They crawled on board, and the wondrous craft sped away, lifted into the air by fast whirling propellers.
They took Eszhira to Cloudmoore, the gnome’s secret city far away from Artalon. Cloudmoore was constructed of the same wondrous copper-colored zorium and glass that Artalon’s towers had been built from. It wasn’t as large as Artalon, only a quarter-mile across in width, but it was a giant gyrothopter floating in the clouds high above the center of the Sapphire Sea, held by hundreds of large propellers at its tower tops. Eszhira was the first non-gnome to even be allowed knowledge of the city’s existence, much less step foot in it. Kristafrost insisted, and Eszhira later learned she had bribed the gnomish authorities with the chance to observe and study a new species of elf that Ahmbren had never seen before: the seelie.
Word eventually reached Cloudmoore of the vampire contagion. Kristafrost and Eszhira then realized what “disease” they had heard about during their final retreat from Artalon, and knew they had been lucky to escape. The infected seemed particularly aggressive towards seelie. Kristafrost focused on training Eszhira to be a Cloudmoore Agent, teaching her combat and survival skills, and honing her body to an athletic level that rivaled the Kaldorites. They conducted several missions into infected lands to bring back samples of vampire blood so that gnomish alchemists could try to derive a cure. So far, no such breakthrough had been made.
Then one day, Kristafrost intercepted a message in Astia. A new strain of vampire had emerged, one with more control and which was able to convince the living to submit freely into a sort of symbiotic relationship. From that correspondence, they learned that Pavlin was still alive in Artalon, ruling over a dead country of hungerbound.
Eszhira knew it was time to return and end him.
Some gnomes supported the theory that killing the first vampire might destroy the whole bloodline. They thought it was worth testing the hypothesis by sending a strike team to take him out. Eszhira was convinced that Pavlin was the first. They had ascertained the contagion originated from the goddess Malahkma, and Pavlin had served in a crime guild under that name when he had raped Eszhira. She was certain he had made a deal somehow with the goddess. It had been clear he hated elves, blaming the fall of the Empire on all their kind and Valkrage’s transgressions. The vampires hated seelie above all others, and this only confirmed it in her mind. Pavlin was the first vampire, the source of this plague, and she was determined to kill him.
“We should have plenty of time to establish a base of operations,” Kristafrost said. “We can’t sleep at night, so we’ll need to use some of the daylight hours to rest and the remaining for searching for nests. It will be easier to kill him as he sleeps.”
Eszhira nodded. “We should start with God Spire.”
Kristafrost stood on the bench beside her, tightening the buckles on the seelie’s jump harness. The gnome already had her own goggles down. Her right eye had been gouged out long ago, and the goggle that covered it was closed over with a metal plate.
“Fizzdrits!” Kristafrost shouted. “How much longer?”
The pilot leaned back and eyed them over his shoulder. His eyes looked tiny beneath thick spectacles. “We’ll be in orbit in a few more minutes,” he shouted. “Then we’ll descend to drop altitude.”
Eszhira tucked her hair inside the leather cap, and then pulled her own goggles over her eyes. She didn’t like clothing to fit so tightly, and its straps clamped uncomfortably around the base of her long ears. The gnomes had cut holes for them to poke through—tucking in fourteen inches of each ear behind the cap was too painful—but the fit wasn’t perfect. She was ready to make the jump and shed the headgear.
She also didn’t much like the thin rubber suit underneath the leather harness. Once they hit the water, they would need to pull the clamps and collapse the wings as quickly as possible. The first time she had done this, she had been petrified with fear. Kristafrost had assured her that the magical conch shell amulet tied around her neck would activate as soon as they hit water. This time, at least, she knew what to expect.
“Open bay!” Fizzdrits shouted. Gears turned and shafts spun, and the rear door of the torpedo-shaped craft gaped. Eszhira saw the city of Artalon far below, with its mile-wide, hemispherical skyline of towers, and a half-mile high at its central tower. All Eszhira could hear now was the rushing of air outside.
The gyrothopter flew and slowed over the central spire of the city, its rotors turning upwards so that the aircraft hovered over their target.
“Remember!” Kristafrost shouted. “Into the sea!” And then she jumped out.
Eszhira followed, running off the platform into the rushing air. She exhilarated in the free fall for a brief moment, and then extended her arms, catching her wrists on the hooks that pulled the spring-loaded wings into place.
Zorium poles extended, webbed by zorium-weave fabric into wings that caught the air. They attached to her wrists and ankles, and she angled her descent, racing along the air’s surface as if on a predetermined
racetrack.
Shooting past the city and out over the water, she spread her wings and angled up, slowing her descent. At the last moment, she pulled up, hovering momentarily at the top of the arc above the waves. She pulled in her arms and legs and tucked herself into a ball, then tugged the clamps, and the wings snapped back inside their metal containers.
Eszhira then straightened her body and dove fingers first into the water. The conch shell’s magic responded, and a snake-like bubble of water extended from the shell’s opening to fasten itself to her nose and mouth, providing fresh air beneath the waves.
She pulled a different cord, and this time her ankles shot a covering of webbing over her feet, extending past her toes to form flippers. Kristafrost floated in front of her, waiting. She beckoned, and then dove deeper.
Eszhira swam after her, propelling herself forward with the gnome-crafted flippers. The water grew green and thick, and it became difficult to see. Ahead of her, she could make out some sort of light, even as the sunlight above receded farther and farther away.
They came to a bronze-colored sphere connected to a series of glass tubes and more spheres. The light, she realized, was a window. Kristafrost swam beneath it and disappeared. Eszhira followed her and came up under the bottom. Her head broke through the surface of water into an inner pool inside the sphere. Her magical bubble burst when she emerged into air. Kristafrost was already climbing up a small ladder onto the surrounding rubber floor, having already retracted her swim fins.
The outpost was built for gnomish proportions, but the spheres were large enough for Eszhira to move about with relative ease. She had to stoop low in the glass tunnels between them, however.
Kristafrost peeled off her rubber suit in favor of cotton. Eszhira followed, glad that her body could breath again.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 77