The pile was only about fifteen meters away, but looking at all the people in the room who would try to stop him if he made a run for them, the distance seemed a lot greater. At least the cubes were near the exit, just as far away from everyone else as they were from him.
Merrick closed his eyes, trying to visualize his upcoming moves. They had to be perfect. He saw himself in his mind diving at the cubes—snatching one of the headsets with one hand while picking up the attached cube with the other. He probably wouldn’t even make it away from the Fianna standing on both sides of him, but he had to try. He could surprise one of them and make a run for the pile.
The guard on his left was named Gerald, the one who had pronounced his loyalty to Ohman and who had stopped the other guards from pulverizing him when he was captured.
Taking a deep breath, Merrick pulled his arm across his chest and drove his elbow as hard as he could into the sternum of the guard standing to his right. Merrick didn’t wait to hear the sucking sound of the guard gasping for air.
Merrick sprang across the room, his arms outstretched as he dove madly for the pile of divinium cubes. A wall of fire suddenly sprang up in front of him, but he closed his eyes and continued his lunge. If Eudroch had control of both Earth and Fire Magic, then so must he. Merrick’s outstretched hand grabbed the cube closest to him as he rolled as far away from the wall of fire and the group of people as he could. As he rolled, he donned the headset and positioned the microphone as he had seen Cara and her crew do earlier.
When he came out of his roll and onto one knee, the wall of fire had vanished, and he saw Cara looking desperately upset, as if he had made the wrong move. Mona had already started moving behind one of the distracted Fire Warriors, and Balach was inching closer to Mona. Six of the Fire Warriors were moving toward him, teeth barred as their adrenaline surges took over.
As soon as Merrick touched the cube, his mind exploded with information as if the piece of magical stone had been waiting for him. His mind melded with the divinium almost instantaneously. Merrick could see voice patterns and reference text and photo images flying past his field of vision faster than he could consciously comprehend. There was too much information for him to grasp, and then, just as the Fire Warriors were closing in on him, the one named Gerald placed himself between Merrick and the Fire Warriors. He was holding the Master Keeper’s dagger in front of him, swinging it to keep them at bay.
Gerald didn’t have a chance against the Fire Warriors or the other Fianna who was also closing on him. At best, the rogue Fianna might buy a few extra seconds for Merrick to figure out how to work the cube. As Merrick struggled with the cube’s interface, Gerald’s body rose up high in the air and slammed back to the ground. His body made a crunching thud as it hit the stone floor. After only a second of shock, his attackers resumed their rush for Merrick over top of Gerald’s flattened body. Gerald was through, but he had given Merrick the extra few seconds that he needed.
Merrick looked up at his fearsome attackers, their weapons drawn and glowing with magic. Without even blinking, he whispered a quiet set of words that were honed and amplified via his throat microphone. The six Fire Warriors and the single Fianna dropped dead in mid-lunge, their weapons clattering to the ground. Now that Merrick had the full use of Terrada’s tongue, he felt a surge of power and control that he had never known before. He stood up slowly and faced the Queen. Mona was struggling with another of the Fire Warriors and Balach was trying to help her by kicking the guard in his legs. Cara was just staring at Merrick, seemingly shocked by what he had just done.
The Queen, for the first time since he had seen her, looked afraid and sank back closer to the fire altar.
Just as Merrick was about to use the cube to help Mona, he felt a horrible thud in his chest, like he had been slammed by the side of a mountain, and he went flying across the chamber into the stone wall at the far side of the room.
When he looked up, barely able to move, Merrick saw Eudroch standing next to the Queen.
Eudroch walked toward Merrick and snapped his fingers once. Cara was quickly dragged by an unseen force over to where Eudroch was standing, her feet several inches off the ground, her body sagging in mid-air, like a lifeless puppet.
“Put down the cube or your friends die. This one first, little brother,” Eudroch said as he punched Cara in her stomach with his full force.
Merrick could see the red spray of blood come out of Cara’s gagged mouth as she continued to hang in the air. Merrick tried to clear his head enough to use the cube again, but Eudroch waved his hand at Cara, and she started to scream so terribly that Merrick froze.
He couldn’t tell exactly, but it looked like the bottom half of Cara was trying to anchor itself to the ground while the upper part of her was trying to reach for the ceiling. Eudroch was ripping her in half. Merrick tried using the same killing word he had used a few seconds ago to take down the Fire Warriors. Eudroch barely took notice, simply shrugging his shoulders and laughing.
“Earth Magic can’t hurt me, brother. I have the power of Terrada and Sigela in my veins, and I am master of them both. If you don’t stop this foolishness right now and give me your creation name and help with the ritual, I will rip Cara in half and then Balach and then, finally, your human girlfriend, Mona. I’ll be happy to finally be rid of her. She talks way too much for being as homely looking as she is.”
“You know I don’t know my creation name—not all of it anyway. Killing Cara won’t change that.”
“Well,” Eudroch said, as Cara screamed even louder, “it’s not going to hurt anything if she dies either.” Eudroch turned back to Cara. “Your father was many things, a traitor, a simpleton, a thief, but he was also a strong man and not afraid of pain. I am interested to find out if his daughter can stand as much of it as he did before dying.”
Merrick’s thoughts were a blur, trying to figure a way out. All he could come up with was a lie that might buy Cara a few extra moments of life.
“Wait! I think I used to know it. And if you kill her,” Merrick said, “you’ll never know my creation name. Back in Tysons Corner, I remembered my name. Ohman did something to make me forget—some kind of forgetting spell wired to the entrances. Ohman said that he and Cara knew my full name, but that they couldn’t tell me—that I had to learn my craft for it to be worth anything to me.”
Eudroch turned to look at Cara whose eyes were rolled back in her head as she fought unconsciousness. Cara crumbled to the ground, released from Eudroch’s hold.
“Gather your wits quickly, my dear,” Eudroch said to Cara, “and tell me what I want to know, or you’ll be dead in an instant.”
Cara tried to get to her feet, but fell down again. She looked over to Merrick and smiled, then turned back to Eudroch, breathing hard and sweating. She pushed back her hair from her face and stared coldly at Eudroch, weakly motioning for Eudroch to remove her gag.
He bent down and removed it as Cara worked her mouth open and shut, stretching her sore jaw. After taking a few dry swallows, she opened her mouth to speak. Merrick wondered if she would use some word of the Earth Dragon’s to save herself.
“His name means one who will kill his own brother to save the world,” Cara said in a dry whisper. Then she opened her mouth and spoke a creation name that Merrick did not recognize, but knew was not his. Eudroch seemed to sense it as well as he raised his hand, his face scrunched up and red with anger.
“You think you’re like Ohman, but you’re not. I’ll give you so much pain, you will beg me to let you tell me the truth.”
Cara just smiled and lay down laughing. Merrick wasn’t sure, but he thought that maybe she had lost her sanity.
As he was thinking this, Eudroch turned back to Merrick and approached him. Merrick was still weak from being thrown across the room into the stone wall with such force, but he searched frantically through the cube’s database for anything that combined both Earth and Fire Magic. He found no words from Sigela’s tongue, but he came ac
ross an archival entry for a word he had heard before—Annoon.
Upon seeing that word, the sound of the Master Keeper’s voice appeared in his head, telling him to go to Annoon, where he could learn his true creation name and be safe from Eudroch for at least a short time. Merrick thought the word Annoon, and his cube responded like a memory in his mind telling him what he had to do to go there. He had to have the blood of a true follower of Terrada sacrificed to the earth before saying the ancient words of calling that would summon the great Terrada.
Looking around, Merrick saw Gerald who had tried to help him, blood pooling around his lifeless body, seeping into the stone floor. Just as Eudroch was upon him, Merrick spoke the words that the Master Keeper had put into his head.
The ground shook so violently that Eudroch was thrown from his feet. Merrick tried to find steady purchase but quickly realized that he was at the center of an earthquake. He could feel Terrada stirring beneath him as he sank down into the stone floor until he was inside the earth once again. The sounds of Eudroch and the others were gone now, replaced with resounding thuds like someone walking in a room above his head. These sounds quickly grew fainter as he felt himself being carried off, dragged through the planet, down deeper and deeper, until he could barely remember who he was. All he felt was a comfortable numbness and warmth like a blanket wrapped around him on a cold morning when he was halfway between sleep and being awake.
#
Gerald lay on the cold stone floor, the side of his face soaking in his own blood. There was only the smallest spark of life left in him as he watched Merrick call Terrada and be taken away to Annoon. He knew where Merrick was going because the Queen had described the process many times when she told about her own trip to the sacred island.
Gerald thought that he might be smiling, seeing the Ard Righ escape to safety. Now that Terrada had been brought into the battle, Merrick stood a fair chance. According to legend, if one dragon broke the truce of bringing one of their followers to Annoon, then the other dragons had the right to do so as well. It wouldn’t be long before Eudroch followed Merrick to Annoon, but in that short time, anything might happen. Gerald had just helped Merrick buy himself and his friends more time to live. Without Merrick present, the Queen and Eudroch would not waste the lives of Mona, Cara, and Balach. They would be safe for a while.
Gerald found it humorous that even as he neared his own inevitable death, he was still concerned about serving others. He remembered his naming ceremony and how he had told the Keepers that his name meant sacrifice for others. He remembered how he was proud and terrified of his fate when the Master Keeper had verified his name. All his life he had served others gladly and had always given to those above and below his rank. He had lived his life to serve, and he would die in a manner true to his creation name as well. He took pride in the fact that his creation name would live on in the Earth Clan’s lexicon. Occasionally, one of the Keepers would pass over his name while reciting his full knowledge of Terrada’s tongue, and for a brief second, that Keeper might think to himself that Gerald had been a loyal man and a good Drayoom who had lived and died for the true Ard Righ.
Gerald’s pride grew stronger and more cohesive as the inescapable blackness around his vision closed in on him, and the angry sounds of Eudroch and the Queen grew faint until all was silent and he was no more.
CHAPTER 43
Even though Terrada herself was Merrick’s guide, traveling through the earth felt alien without Ohman by his side.
Although Ohman was not his true father, Merrick missed the closeness he had felt with the old man. He especially missed the short period of time when he had believed Ohman to be his father. Those days were worth more to him than the rest of his life combined.
With Ohman, he had felt warm and secure while traveling through the earth. Now he was cold and lonely as he journeyed farther and farther from his friends who remained back at the Fire Tribe. Just as Ohman had taught him, Merrick concentrated on Mona while he traveled, so that he would not lose his identity within Terrada’s enormous body. This time, however, his thoughts of Mona were not the happy remembrances of their time together. Instead, they were dread, anxiety-riddled fears of Eudroch and Mona. Sometimes Eudroch tortured Mona as he had done to Cara. Almost worst than those thoughts were the ones where Mona was in love with Eudroch. Merrick trusted Mona’s judgment, but he also knew that Eudroch was charismatic and confident in a way that he would never be.
Eudroch was also powerful and presumably thin and muscular, without the aid of magic. Eudroch was strong where Merrick had always been weak. But his brother was an unstable sadist, who was also almost certainly insane. Who else but a crazy person would be trying his hardest to reunite the sun with the earth?
The familiar cool wetness of travelling beneath a large body of water—probably one of the oceans—interrupted Merrick’s thoughts. He was successfully maintaining his own identity, but he was also completely lost and had not paid much attention to where Terrada was taking him.
After what could have been a moment or an eternity, he felt himself and the earth around him start to rise—first at a subtle slope and then more jarringly. Suddenly, his physical body reconstituted and was spit out of the safety of the earth and into the depths of cold, dark water with no sense of up or down. Merrick had not been prepared to emerge into the shockingly frigid ocean and had not taken a full breath before starting his trip to Annoon. In fact, he didn’t even know if it was possible to hold his breath while traveling through the earth. All he did know was that his lungs were immediately stressed to their maximum capacity as he flailed through the frigid blue water.
When Merrick thought that he could not stand another second without air, he saw a rippling red light above his head. With all his might, he pumped his arms and legs, straining toward the shimmering light.
Black specks started to close in around his peripheral vision as his arms and legs lost their strength. Just as he was about to slip into unconsciousness, Merrick’s hand broke through the water above him, and he felt the wind welcoming him back to life. In the next second, Merrick’s head popped out of the water, as his lungs struggled to take a deep breath.
Merrick thought that the cool air was the sweetest he had ever tasted.
His joy was short lived as he realized that he had emerged into a harsher environment than the one that had almost just killed him. Monstrous waves swelled around him as his body was lifted up and then sent crashing down again and again. Merrick took another full breath and submerged, letting his arms and legs hang limply as he floated along with the chaotic water. Just before he was ready to come up for more air, he opened his eyes and thought that he saw a giant tube of water swirl past him. Merrick suddenly began to panic. What if there were sharks? Maybe Terrada had brought him out here to let him die. It would certainly make stopping Eudroch’s plans a lot easier if Merrick were dead and his body lost at sea.
Merrick forced himself to break the water’s surface again, floating with the giant waves as he tried to breathe without inhaling too much salt water. As his body rose on the crest of a large wave, Merrick saw that he was not far at all from some kind of land—possibly an island.
It could be nothing other than Annoon.
He went under water again to take another rest and then started trying to swim in the direction where he had seen land. Every time he made a little progress, a wave would come along and persistently move him backward.
Deciding that he might have a better chance staying under water, Merrick took in as much air as his lungs could hold, and dove under the water. Beneath the waves, the sea was almost calm. Merrick thought that he saw dark blurry shapes up ahead that he hoped were some form of land and started swimming toward them.
To his left, the water tube flashed by him again, its whirling vortex sucking him along behind it for a short time, while he swam painfully in the opposite direction with all his might. Whether it was some kind of rip tide or not, Merrick would not allow it to st
op him.
He had to come up for air at least three more times, but eventually, the dark objects underwater started to take on the familiar shapes of large stones. Their forms reminded Merrick of the rock from the mountain of the Earth City. He longed to touch them, and he pushed himself even harder as he came within an arm’s reach of the first stone.
With a final push, Merrick felt the slimy cool stone beneath his fingertips. He broke free from the water and climbed up the side of the slippery rock. As he clung to its jagged edges, he looked around and saw that he was hanging on to a rock that was part of a large circle of vertical stones that encircled the entire island. He was still a good hundred meters away from shore, but the sight of the inevitable land gave him hope. He thought that he could hear the sounds of thousands of birds chirping, although he couldn’t see any when he looked around.
As he was straining to see the birds, a wave broke over him like a giant kicking his back. He lost his handhold on the rock and was dragged back out to sea farther and farther from the island.
Merrick remembered the divinium cube that he had used back in the Earth City. He felt around for it, but it was gone, either lost at sea, back at the Earth City, or maybe even returned to the ground from where it had been forged.
At first, he prepared himself to take another breath and to rest under the water as he had done before. He would emerge after a minute of resting and make his way slowly but steadily back to the rock circle. But when he submerged to rest, his body felt terribly tired, and his limbs did not listen to his brain’s command to swim.
He found himself barely able to raise his head above the water and to take a quick breath before being pulled under again. After another thirty seconds or so, Merrick tried to raise his head for another gulp of life-giving air, but instead he felt his body start to slowly sink deeper and deeper into the ocean’s depth.
The Conservation of Magic Page 36