by Frank Morin
The Kilian elfonnel was leaping about, snatching up rampagers, and gobbling them like a starving child at the Sogail. With each rampager, the purple hue of the giant's flames deepened.
"This is bad." Anton's voice sounded calm, but his expression was deeply concerned, and he didn't seem to notice his Sentry speak had failed him.
"We need to get out of here!" Verena shouted, hovering right up against the earthen rail beside him, gesturing toward the back of the Swift.
Anton shook his head. "The raft upon the waters can but steer within the torrent, but the dam athwart the chasm may subdue the raging flood."
"You can't be serious," Verena exclaimed.
The remaining rampagers, finally recognizing they were doomed, scattered from the elfonnel, fleeing in every direction. Tongues of white-hot fire churned across the ground after them without mercy. One rampager passed right beneath Verena, its feral eyes wide with terror, but the flames snatched it up and dragged it howling and thrashing back toward the maw of the giant.
The sight sickened her, adding to the nausea she felt from the heat and the stench of burning hair and cooked meat. Then she just felt terrified as a tendril of white-hot fire whipped up toward her. Earth exploded out of the front of the tower, forming a living wall that deflected the flames.
Three racing heartbeats later, the fires coiled above the defensive bulwark like giant snakes.
"We have to go now!" Verena exclaimed. "Get on. Kilian ordered you not to interfere. You cannot stop this."
"Victory is weighed on scales of success, not solely upon the heartstrings of the martyr."
Anton's defensive move seemed to have drawn the attention of the fiery giant. It turned toward them and growled, the sound like a thousand pine trees exploding, boiled from within by their own burning pitch.
"What do you have in mind?" she asked, panting in the stifling hot air. Sweat was stinging her eyes, and heat was sucking her strength. She could barely breathe, and activated a jet of fresh air from one of the quartzite stones in her helmet. They had to leave, or they'd be consumed in seconds.
Anton threw out his hands toward the giant, his expression tightening in concentration. The ground rose into a cresting wave, flowing across the valley as if it had turned to liquid. The wave crashed into the elfonnel, spraying its fire backward in an explosive blast that vaporized nearby buildings. The giant took a single step back under the onslaught, and the fires forming its head pulsed and darkened.
Verena caught sight of the rampager leader soaring through the air on pillars of fire, heading for the command building, with Hamish close on his heels. He was taking an awful risk trapping himself inside an enclosed space, but if Hamish could complete his part of the mission and gather information from the leader, they might be able to salvage something form the disaster the raid had turned into.
As the giant gathered itself for another attack, Anton glanced at Verena, then gestured toward the immense rocky shoulder of the mountain looming over the hidden valley. "Reason at times may be found in the depths of shocking distress."
"You're planning to sucker punch an elfonnel?" Verena exclaimed. "With a mountain?"
"Go!" Anton shouted, sweeping an arm into the air and deflecting a dozen lances of flame that Verena hadn't even seen the elfonnel create. "To you it falls to witness the resolution and bear record to Kilian when he returns."
"Don't you dare die on me," Verena urged, tears mingling with the sweat stinging her eyes.
A falling mountain didn't represent much danger to Anton, but if his plan failed, she didn't doubt he would embrace the elements himself and try to bring forth his own elfonnel to face Kilian's giant.
He had suggested the possibility in their final conference prior to launching their assault. Kilian had been adamant that he not do so, confident that he could survive the ordeal and return to humanity, but equally confident that the mighty Anton would not. The powerful Sapper had not looked convinced. If the mountain did not shake Kilian out of the madness, Anton would sacrifice all in a final attempt.
She would have done the same thing. Kilian was too important to allow him to descend into madness and rampage across the countryside, even if he would probably wreck more in Obrion than in Granadure.
Hating that she couldn't do more, Verena shot into the sky, thrusters opened wide, blinking her eyes clear as she surveyed the monster that had consumed Kilian. She soared high above the giant through the turbulent air, not sure how far it could reach with those deadly flames, but suspecting the only safe place would be somewhere on a different continent. The giant was stalking after Anton, whose earthen tower was retreating, flowing over the ground and moving deeper under the shadow of the mountain's shoulder.
Terrified by what was about to happen, but powerless to do anything about it, Verena hovered and watched as Anton positioned himself close to one of the steep sides of the hidden valley. The giant closed on him, picking up speed now that it looked like he was trapped. Whatever Anton was going to do, he needed to do it quick.
The mountain above shook, its entire flank rumbling, dust and debris boiling into the air and sheets of earth sloughing free and avalanching down. The giant paused to look up.
Anton's tower dropped into the earth, sucking him out of sight just before the dust cloud obscured him.
Verena soared higher to get a better view. The mountain shook again, then the sound of thousands of tons of stone shattering rent the air, violently shaking the Swift. The sound intensified until it seemed the entire mountain was coming down.
Verena hoped Kilian survived, but couldn't imagine how even that giant could withstand the might of a falling mountain.
Then she remembered Hamish.
Chapter 41
Verena shouted as billowing clouds of dust descended upon the valley. "Hamish, get out of there!"
"Don't come down here. It's ugly." Hamish's usually cheery voice sounded subdued.
"Haven't you heard what's going on?" she exclaimed, happy he wasn't lying dead in the bowels of that building.
"No. I was kind of busy, and there was some kind of interference."
"Kilian's been infected by the rampager madness," she cried, swooping toward the gaping hole in the front of the building. "And Anton's bringing down the mountain to stop him. The valley's going to get stomped."
"Seriously?"
"Get out of there!" Verena shrieked, swooping right into the building. The aroma of fresh-baked bread and fried bacon assaulted her nose, washing away the gritty scent of broken stone and clouds of earth she'd just flown through.
Hamish rose through a hole in the kitchen floor, carrying a small, charred sack in his hands. He paused to stare at the extensive breakfast strewn all around the kitchen, but only muttered, "What a waste. Let's get out of here."
She pivoted the Swift and shot out of the front wall, the blast wave of her thrusters tumbling tables and chairs back and whipping bacon into the air.
"Hey, be careful," he cried. "Didn't your mother teach you that ruining food was bad?"
"She taught me that dying in an avalanche is worse!"
The two of them rose into a murky twilight of churning dust. The sound of the mountain breaking apart echoed from all sides. It was hard to know which way to go in the turbulent clouds, so Verena reached for a piece of quartzite. "Hamish, stay very close!"
"What?" His voice sounded distant, choppy, as if all the debris was interfering with the speakstones.
She couldn't see him through the gloom, so she lit every piece of marble on the Swift, creating beacons of foot-long jets of flame he could orient on. "To me!"
He appeared out of the murk, his suit covered in grime, nearly invisible until he clutched the back rail of the Swift. He still held the tiny sack to his chest. "I can't see anything."
The rumbling was growing closer, and Verena prayed they would emerge from the dust cloud to see how to avoid the disaster. Fighting back primal terror, she activated the quartzite block in her hand. Inste
ad of releasing its power in a concentrated burst like the thrusters, Verena carefully fashioned its release into a domed shield.
The shieldstones were a particular specialty. Air didn't exactly harden into impassable barriers, and earlier Builders had discounted the idea of using air as a shield. Verena had persisted and figured out the secret.
Unlike water, air could be compressed. A lot. At its heart, the shieldstone was a dome of air, compressed so tightly at its outer limit that its internal pressure was greater than that of objects striking from the outside.
As soon as the shieldstone formed, the air near the top of their little protected space calmed, but dust continued to swirl up into it from below. She was tempted to encase them entirely, but had never tested how long the air in such a bubble would last.
Then a huge rock, the size of a cabin, tumbled out of the obscuring darkness and struck the shield a glancing blow. It rotated away on impact, but still shook the humming shield.
"That was close," Hamish breathed, still flying beside her with one hand on the back rail.
That rock would have knocked them right out of the air. If it had struck a more direct blow, it could have killed them, even with the protection of the shieldstone.
Verena slipped on one of her special gloves, lined with blind coal, and angled their flight to the left. If one stone had fallen so far, more would. They really had gotten turned around in the murky air.
More boulders rained down around them, passing like wraiths in the gloom. Some glanced off the shield, and each time, Verena angled their flight path farther, hoping to avoid the path of destruction.
The rain of debris slowed, and for a second she allowed herself to hope they had cleared the worst of the danger.
Then a mighty boulder loomed above them, the massive stone far too large to dodge. It struck with incredible force, flattening the shield dome and knocking the quartzite block right out of Verena's hand.
"Hold tight!" Verena cried, raising her gauntleted fist and screaming defiance as she threw wide the release rate on the blind coal stones lining her glove.
They struck the boulder and plunged into darkness. The unique slippery feel of blind coal slithered down her skin and coated her with its protective embrace as the boulder slid by. On both sides.
It didn't shatter. They didn't die. Somehow they slipped right through its heart. The hard stone particles that formed it just parted and slid around Verena, Hamish, and the Swift. For a second, they were encased within the giant stone, surrounded by absolute silence. All sound ended, severed. Darkness slid past, so deep it felt like all the light in the world had been snuffed out. She smelled nothing, didn't dare even try to breathe.
The only link to reality was that pulsing, slippery feel of blind coal. What if it ran out before they emerged? Would they be trapped inside the huge boulder, like fossils turned to stone?
She barely had time to feel truly terrified before they erupted out of the boulder and returned to reality with a shocking abruptness. Verena laughed, inhaling the turbulent, dust-coated air with desperate joy, grinning at the sight of murky gloom boiling around them, and savoring every bucking, gut-wrenching lurch of the Swift in the turbulent air.
Hamish gripped the rail behind her back so hard it creaked. "What just happened?"
"We survived."
Verena activated her last piece of quartzite, forming a much smaller shieldstone as she banked farther away from the sounds of destruction. She prayed they wouldn't collide with another giant boulder. The blind coal lining her gloves had disintegrated a second after they emerged from the last one. Even if it hadn't, she didn't think she'd dare attempt flying through another stone.
The sound of the avalanche shook the darkness. Hamish leaned close and shouted something, but she couldn't hear. The gloom boiled with vast amounts of moving earth, and the sound of the mountain coming down was far too close. They had escaped the valley floor before the avalanche had really begun, but it sounded like Anton was bringing down more than that one bony shoulder of the peak.
The air churned, making flight difficult, tossing them to and fro like a tiny raft on an angry sea. She opened every thruster as well as all of the puking dooms along the bottom of the Swift for extra lift. They bounced wildly in the turbulence, sometimes falling for stomach-wrenching seconds when they hit empty pockets of exhausted air.
If Verena hadn't been strapped in so tight, she would have been unseated twenty times. Hamish couldn't fall out of his suit, but he was shouting through the speakstone, challenging the storm in a final act of defiance. He still clutched that little sack tight, though. It must impede his flight effectiveness, but he seemed determined to carry it to the bitter end.
Then they burst out of the cloud of dust and soared into the clear morning sky.
Verena gaped. Anton had outdone himself. The rocky shoulder had toppled into the valley, followed by the peak that had reared above it. The dust cloud continued to boil outward from the catastrophe, chasing Verena and Hamish higher and higher into the air until they reached heights where they had to supplement their breathing with air from quartzite.
"I can't believe it," Verena whispered.
Hamish placed the charred sack into the supply box at the back of the Swift, then hovered next to her, half-reclined in the air. He peeled back his goggles, and his eyes were red-rimmed and haunted.
"He wouldn't stop," Hamish muttered looking down at his gauntleted hands. "I had to kill him."
"Carrot Face?"
He nodded. "He barely even tried defending himself. He was so intent on destroying that sack. I couldn't let him do it. I. . ."
Verena shifted the Swift close enough to grip his hand, drawing his gaze to hers. Hamish had thrown himself into his military training with such enthusiasm, she sometimes forgot how new he was to battle and the hard realities of war. Having been born closely related to the royal family, she had been taught and prepared her entire life.
"You did what you had to," she said, squeezing his hand. "You can feel proud of that."
"It's just as ugly as when I didn't know how to fight," Hamish said. "But now I'm the one doing the ugly things."
"The necessary things." She pointed down at the boiling dust cloud so far below. "If we hadn't destroyed that camp, they would have murdered thousands."
"I know," Hamish said, regaining a bit of his stubbornness. It was a good sign. "It's just such a waste. I couldn't even save any of the bacon."
Verena laughed. Hamish was going to be all right. "An entire mountain nearly fell on top of us. Kilian is lost to some kind of madness while the elements walk through him. That giant could level cities and kill tens of thousands. But you're worried about the bacon?"
"You don't have to state the obvious. I'm not even hungry right now, but that's the emotion talking. We need to maintain our strength, Verena, so when we can do something to help Kilian we're ready. You have to think in broader terms sometimes."
"Hamish, you're the only person I know who can justify your obsession with eating in a way that makes it sound like it's vital to the war effort."
Hamish shrugged and gave her a reassuring smile as he pulled a squashed and dirty malve puff from a pouch at his belt. "That's because I'm one of the few people who understand cause and effect. Enjoy the little things in life whenever you can. They become the big things."
He stared at the pastry for a moment, then sighed and offered it to her. "You're stronger than me. You eat it."
How could she refuse? As she munched on the sweet, she ignored the grit she tasted with every other bite. In that moment, she understood Hamish just a bit better. He was a friend worth having.
"What's in the sack?" she asked.
"I think it's the secret that will explain the entire rampager camp."
"Really?"
"Either that, or it's a sack of half-burned flour and Carrot Face is the craziest food critic I've ever heard about."
Chapter 42
"I'm surprised you're both
still awake," Connor said as he entered Ailsa's office and closed the door behind him.
"Gisela and I were comparing notes."
"Have you learned anything new? I could use some good news."
"So could we," Ailsa said.
Gisela added, "We are learning just today that ancient archives are having been suffered small fire in the past."
"Let me guess," Connor said. "Information about Evander was all burned."
"Along with tomes that might have shed light on the early days of the Carraig and the days right after the Tallan Wars," Ailsa added. "Someone's gone through a lot of effort to protect these secrets, but I had hoped their influence did not extend to the Arishat archives."
"Is great troubling," Gisela said.
Connor sighed. Of course things would not be easy. He was surrounded by half-truths, intrigue, and layers of corruption. He struggled to maintain the confidence he'd felt earlier that they'd find a way to sort things out and define their own destiny.
"What about you?" Ailsa asked.
"Nothing but more lies. Have either of you heard the term 'threshold' as applied to Petralist powers before?"
Gisela shook her head. Ailsa hesitated. "I'll have to give that some more thought."
"What about first breed rights?"
They both nodded.
"You both knew, and neither of you thought to tell me?"
"I thought you are knowing this duty always," Gisela said.
"And I had hoped you would be gone prior to the end of the Tir-raon," Ailsa said.
Connor really wanted to burn Shona's hair again. Every time he felt he understood what he needed to know, he learned there were even worse things waiting for him that everyone but he seemed to take for granted.
"I can't keep doing this," he muttered. "This is insane."
"You can't give up now," Ailsa said. "The only way out is through."
"Is it? Every day, Shona wraps more chains around me and ties me tighter to her plans."
"Her hold is not as tight as she assumes," Ailsa said. "That's why she's trying so hard to secure you."