“For all that, you sound cheerful,” she said.
Santon smiled and indicated that the woman should mount and ride. How could he feel too sad when Alarice had told him that Vered still lived.
His momentary cheerfulness vanished when the storm lifted and he saw the Castle of the Winds perched high atop a rocky spire wreathed in fluffy white clouds.
CHAPTER XVII
“Tight, damn your eyes!” shouted Efran Gaemock. His cry rallied the small band of weary, frightened men in front of him. They doubled their efforts, firmed their attack line, and then surged forward. Lorens’ soldiers were taken aback by such ferocity. The rebels under Dalziel Sef had retreated quickly.
Not so this band of berserkers. And of them Efran proved the fiercest. Ignoring a dozen cuts to his arms and legs and one large gash across his cheek, he always attacked and never retreated. Left and right he cut with his sword until he seemed to be a magical creation rather than human. When the blade became dull from cutting into bone and bouncing off armour, he cast it aside and picked up a fallen weapon. With this new sword he continued his battle until he stood alone.
“They’re running like whipped dogs,” he heard someone nearby say. For the first time since he had entered battle, he saw — really saw — what they faced.
Lorens had used the Demon Crown well to find the weaknesses in Dalziel Sef’s troop deployment. The cavalry attack from the castle had split the rebel force and doomed the larger portion to annihilation. To his immense surprise, Efran saw that most of the smaller group had survived and managed to fight back effectively.
“Attack Lorens’ flank,” Efran heard ring over the battlefield. His brother sat on a massive black stallion — not the horse he had ridden into battle. From this majestic perch Dews Gaemock formed a new attack against the rear and weaker side of Lorens’ now struggling, demoralized forces. If they had succeeded in keeping the rebel troops split, their earlier slaughter would have been duplicated, but this small rebel victory had doomed Lorens.
Efran’s thrill of victory faded when he saw that he had rescued the eighty men — and lost the two hundred. Fewer than one hundred and fifty would survive this day in spite of their valiant fighting. The rebels, because of Sef, had gone from fifteen hundred to one-tenth that number in the span of a few days. Years of careful campaigning and building vanished because of one man’s ambition.
“Dews!” he called. Efran waved his bloody sword and reflected light from its silvery blade to catch his brother’s attention. When he did, he signalled for immediate retreat. Dews nodded, passed the order to his lieutenants, then jerked on the reins of his captured horse and vanished down the other side of the hill.
Efran began gathering those around him and slowly disengaging. Lorens’ soldiers had been taken by surprise and retreated when given the chance.
That gave Efran’s small band the opportunity to flee for the dubious safety of their base camp.
Efran supervised the pickup of wounded and the retrieval of what supplies they could.
“No!” he shouted when he saw a rebel start to cut the throat of a fallen soldier dressed in the uniform of Lorens’ personal guard. “Let him be.”
“He’s one of them,” the bloodied rebel protested.
“We can’t take him prisoner. We let him be.”
“If it had been the other way, he’d’ve killed us! Lorens ordered no prisoners left alive.”
Efran looked down at the frightened soldier. One of the man’s legs had been broken when a horse fell on him. “Take this back to your comrades. We do not slaughter helpless men and women. Think on who you would rather follow in the next battle.”
Efran grabbed the rebel’s shoulder and pushed him on.
“Wait!”
Efran turned back to the fallen soldier, his eyes bleak.
“Take me with you. I surrender. I don’t want to go back to the castle. They…he’ll order me executed.”
“What?”
“King Lorens said that we either died on the field or walked back as victors. He’ll have me killed as a failure.” The soldier’s plaintive tone told Efran that he spoke the truth.
To the rebel who had been intent on slicing the man’s throat, Efran said, “See? We may not be superior in numbers but we soar above them in spirit.”
The rebel grumbled and went to the stricken soldier. The soldier recoiled, then saw that he was being helped up. He turned pale and wobbled on his broken leg until the rebel hoisted him onto his back and started back to their camp with the injured man.
Efran smiled wanly. They had won a recruit this day. When the soldier healed, he would fight with twice the strength — and for the rebel cause. They would need many more such conversions, though, if they were to triumph.
Efran caught a horse to replace the one that had been cut from under him by a barrage of arrows. He rubbed his wounded calf; an arrow had passed through the fleshy part and embedded itself in his horse. He swung up into the saddle and wheeled about to get a better idea of their position.
His heart turned to ice. Sef had positioned well enough but had not considered Lorens’ perfect intelligence-gathering. As a result, they would have to hasten their departure from the battlefield before Lorens turned the crown on them and saw how battered they really were. A quick thrust with a company of fresh cavalry and the rebellion would be crushed for all time.
“Dews,” he shouted. “Can you keep them moving back to the river?”
“I must,” his brother answered. Dews seemed unscathed by the battle but his paleness told of shock. Efran rode closer and saw the entire left side of his brother’s tunic had blossomed with a bloodstain. Dews was losing blood by the bucket.
“Retreat, get them into barges and away downriver. Lorens might keep his troops close to the castle to consolidate his position. He won’t come for us until spring.”
“Yes, that is so.” Dews leaned forward, winced at the pain, then said, “I ask a boon of you, brother.” Their eyes met.
“I’m searching for him. He won’t escape. I promise it.”
“Good. We’ll wait at the river. Join us quickly. There may not be time, if Lorens is in control.”
Efran Gaemock turned his horse and rode quickly in the direction of the battlefield. Fog drifted through the wooded area. Already he heard the soft moans of phantoms escaping their mortal bodies. How many would remain phantoms, haunting this bloody patch of Porotane’s once-fertile farmland? Too many, he decided. And it was all one man’s fault.
Efran helped a few rebels orient themselves and begin the slow journey back to their camp. Many would die on the way but the few who would survive needed what he had to offer.
He found Dalziel Sef sooner than he’d dared hope. The other rebel leader sat with his back against a tree, his leg twisted under him.
“Efran! You’ve come for me. Hurry, I hear Lorens’ men coming. They hunt out all the wounded and cut their throats — even their own!”
“Lorens considers it a sign of weakness to be injured in battle. I spoke with one of his soldiers.” Efran stared at the man responsible for single-handedly destroying the rebel army.
“Help me, man. Don’t just sit there on your fine steed.” Sef cocked his head to one side and studied the animal. “You steal well. Your other horse was hardly worthy of a rebel lord and general.”
“This one seems strong and ready to run all day.”
“Then help me up and we’ll be on our way.”
“Help you I will.” Efran dismounted and went to Sef’s dead horse. He cut a length of leather harness loose and fashioned a loop. He tossed it over Sef’s head and got it about the man’s armpits.
“What are you doing?” Sef demanded.
“You’re wounded. I wouldn’t want you to be left behind.”
“I can ride. It’s only my leg that’s injured. Now help me up!”
Efran fastened the leather thong to the saddle horn. He put his heels into the horse’s flanks and took off at a trot, dr
agging a screaming Dalziel Sef behind. He did not seek out the rockiest areas to drag the rebel over, but he considered it. Rather, Efran chose the fastest route to the river where his brother and the remnants of their once-proud army waited.
“Damn you!” sobbed Sef when Efran finally reined back and came to a halt. “I’m all broken up inside.” He spat blood and coughed. Pink froth showed at his lips. Efran thought Sef had a punctured lung, possibly from a broken rib.
Efran ignored Dalziel Sef and went to where Dews lay. His brother’s condition had worsened. The paleness bordered on death itself, but the first words he spoke were what Efran expected. “Did you find him?”
“I’ll bring him before you for judgment.”
Efran tugged hard on the leather harness around Sef’s body. Two others had to help him stand. They supported Sef before Dews Gaemock’s litter.
“You are a fool,” Dews said. “You have cost us years of careful work and turned hope into pain and fear.”
“Who are you to say what I’ve done?” Dalziel Sef spat blood and coughed again. “You dared nothing! I almost won the castle after all your tedious years of laying siege. You are a coward, a weakling!”
“Tie him onto a horse and send him to Lorens,” suggested a rebel at the edge of the assembled crowd.
“Hang him!” yelled another. Still another demanded torture.
“You hear the will of those you betrayed,” Dews said. “I agree with their judgment in this. Execution!”
Dews rose painfully from the litter, a small dagger in his hand. A sudden flash of steel in the sunlight and then a tiny gasp marked Dalziel Sef’s passing.
Efran wished he felt something. Elation. Revenge satisfied. Something. Nothing but a dark and abiding hollowness grew within him. He silently helped his brother onto a barge.
They had a long ways to travel before finding a safe encampment for the winter.
CHAPTER XVIII
“We can’t go around them,” said Birtle Santon. He studied the marching pillars of lightning-filled mist and saw nothing but death ahead. They had ridden through the storms and nearly frozen to death over the past week. But they had survived — somehow. Now that they had come to the base of the pinnacle holding the Castle of the Winds, he saw how futile their perilous journey had been.
“He uses the cloud warriors well,” said Lokenna.
“There’s only the one path to the summit,” said Pandasso. “Let’s forget this madness and go back to Fron. We can rebuild the inn and…” His voice trailed off when he realized that neither his wife nor Santon listened. Both drew small maps in the snow as they tried to figure out ways around the towering cloud warriors.
“We might lure them away,” said Lokenna.
“Too risky,” Santon told her. “We cannot see past this turning in the road. Others might stand sentry beyond. We sneak by these and we might find ourselves trapped, magical beings ahead and behind.”
“I wish I had the crown,” she said wistfully. “I could see what lies ahead for us.”
“The road is not well kept. The horses will have a difficult time, even if we do get around the cloud warriors.” Santon looked at the three horses, now half-starved and at the point of exhaustion. The other two horses had perished along the way. Santon wondered if they weren’t the lucky ones. The Uvain Plateau emphatically ended at this spot. The pinnacle was sharp and jutted upward as if it could gouge out a piece of the sky. To follow that road winding around the peak meant a major expedition.
Santon was not sure any of them had the strength left for such a steep and treacherous climb. To fight the magical warriors made it all the more difficult.
“We can’t sneak by. The Wizard of Storms would not post them here if they were deaf and blind.”
“They might use other senses. After all,” said Lokenna, “they are nothing but fog.”
“Fog and magic,” grumbled Pandasso.
“We might be going at this in the wrong way,” said Santon, his mind racing in new directions. “Why do we assume that the wizard wouldn’t be glad to see us? His magical minions have had innumerable chances to kill us these past few weeks.”
“They seek out brigands,” said Lokenna.
“They might ignore peasants — and we might seem so to them.”
“I am nothing more than a humble innkeeper,” said Pandasso. “I want to return to my village and ply my trade.”
“What would we do if we did confront the wizard?” asked Santon. “We kill ourselves trying to get past his guards and then what? Does he reach out and send a lightning bolt into our mouths for daring to speak to him? What do we gain by that?”
“You have a point,” admitted Lokenna. She stood and faced the nearest cloud warrior. The towering being of grey mist and burning red eyes turned slowly, as if not knowing who disturbed its sentry duty. A foggy hand lifted. Purple and green lightning arced between the fingers.
“We’ve come to see the Wizard of Storms,” called out Santon, standing next to Lokenna. Bane Pandasso cowered behind a large boulder, not daring to show himself. “We have come far to see him — past brigand and royalist soldier alike.”
“I am Lokenna, daughter of Lamost,” the woman said. “My brother wears the Demon Crown.”
The words caused thunder to rumble deep within the cloud warrior. Above scudded new storm clouds with underbellies of steel grey. They swirled and took shape overhead, trailing wisps of cloud stuff. New warriors dropped to the ground and formed a rank beside the guards already on duty.
“What do we do?” asked Santon.
Lokenna shrugged. “I have no idea. We can always die, if the Wizard of Storms refuses to see us.”
“Th-they’re coming for us!” Pandasso began scuttling away. Santon grabbed the man with his powerful left hand and jerked him to his feet.
“We stand together,” Santon said coldly, but inside he quaked as badly as Pandasso did outwardly.
“I wish I knew a spell to utter,” said Lokenna.
“Look. The warriors are…dissolving.” Santon took a step forward to get a better view of the strange transformation taking place. The cloud warriors bent over, touching one another and forming an arch. The vague human forms turned into less animate walls.
“They still pulse as if life flowed in their veins,” said Lokenna.
“Lightning still flashes and snow falls,” Santon said, “but they’ve formed a tunnel for us.”
“He wants us to meet with him. He wants us to go up the road to the Castle of the Winds!”
“No, not me. I’m not going — ” Pandasso’s protests were cut short when Santon heaved. Muscles rippled and sent the innkeeper stumbling forward into the cloudy arch. Pandasso screamed as lightning bolts speared down and collided with his outstretched hands. He bowed his back and continued to scream. Lightning touched his face and legs and bathed his entire body in an eerie purple and green glow.
Then Bane Pandasso disappeared.
“He was blasted into nothingness!” exclaimed Santon.
“No, Birtle, no, he wasn’t.” Lokenna walked forward with more confidence than Santon felt. She stood, arms aloft. Eye-searing flashes lanced toward her; Lokenna vanished.
Santon had to decide between turning to flee like a craven or discovering Lokenna’s fate. He walked forward, heart hammering fiercely in his chest. The darkness within the arch of clouds made him think that eternal night had fallen. Like the two before him, he raised his arms. His good one he held directly over his head. His withered arm rose only to shoulder level.
He swallowed hard when he saw the vivid, crackling magical energies mounting within the foggy walls of the tunnel. Then he screamed as the lightning reached down and touched his body. Every nerve within him shrieked in protest. Santon took an involuntary step forward and fell to one knee.
“Where…” He looked around in surprise. He knew he had to be dead, but this place resembled no hell he had ever heard described.
He stood in the centre of a round ro
om with comfortable furniture strewn about haphazardly. Santon ignored this. His full attention focused on the small rainstorms gathered at the walls. Each seemed a miniature of a full-fledged cousin outside. Rain pelted down to the floor and tiny lightnings crashed and crackled — and each time a discharge occurred, a window opened.
“Yes,” said Lokenna. “He is able to look out over Porotane through the magic of his storms.”
“Why else call me the Wizard of Storms?” asked a straight-backed, leathery, balding man. He pushed up baggy sleeves and revealed thin arms covered with burns and scars. When he saw Santon’s frown, he said, “Every apprentice learns to cast spells.” He laughed. “He also learns what not to do. These are my reminders.”
Santon had believed the Wizard of Storms to be all-powerful and even godlike. The man before him was just…a man.
“You seem disappointed.” He turned and pointed a gnarled finger. The nimbus of magic around the finger formed a solid green rod that speared deep within the cloud on the southern wall.
“Efran!” cried Lokenna.
“Ah, you know the rebel. And his brother, too. Dews Gaemock is sorely wounded.”
“By Lorens?”
“Indirectly,” said the Wizard of Storms. “The direct cause was treachery by this one.” The scene shifted slightly and showed Dalziel Sef’s body strung up by its heels in a tree. Every gust of wind caused the corpse to sway like a clock pendulum. “His ambition proved stronger than the flesh of the rebel soldiers.”
“What of Lorens?” asked Santon. “Can you show us the castle?”
“You want to know what has become of your friend Vered.”
Santon blanched. This seemingly simple old man was truly a wizard.
“See what happens when I cast my scrying spell in that direction!”
Santon threw up his good arm to protect his eyes. Searing light burst forth from the tiny storm cloud. An instant later scalding water cascaded over him.
“The Demon Crown blocks my magic, even as mine blocks its power. I do not like this. Things were ever so peaceful when Alarice hid the crown and none dared wear it.”
A Symphony of Storms (Demon Crown Book 3) Page 15