by Sarah Hawke
“No…” she whispered, stumbling forward and bracing herself against the crenellations to keep her balance. If she didn’t know better, she would have assumed that the Chol had teleported into the fortress. Such magic was rare and exceedingly powerful—the most experienced channelers could shift themselves and perhaps a few others a very short distance, and only to a destination they could see. This…this was something very different.
The Pale is a dark reflection of the physical world. Every wall, every rock, every object—they exist in the same space but do not abide by the same rules. In the material realm, a wall is an impenetrable barrier…but in the realm of spirits, the same wall can be breached by anyone with the will to move it.
Delaryn’s eyes flicked across the inner bailey as yet another group of Chol appeared out of nowhere and crashed into an unsuspected squad of soldiers. “The Anointed can’t channel the Pale,” she said. “How…?”
The Anointed can’t, but the one who commands them can.
“Commands them?” Delaryn asked. “But—”
The words caught in her throat when she heard a stifled shriek farther down the curtain wall. Three Dretches sadistically cut down a fleeing Pact archer before their glowing eyes locked upon the sorceress barely fifty feet away. They charged, excited spittle spewing from their misshapen mouths at the prospect of cleaving down a channeler.
Acting purely on instinct, Delaryn stood straight, thrust out her arms, and reached into the Aether. Its power surged through her, cradling her body in its warm, familiar embrace. She pulled a cloud of vapor from the air and shaped it into a jagged lance of pure ice before hurling it at the Chol. The frozen shard speared through the chest of the first monster and into the second, pinning their corpses in place. The third Chol leapt over his companions, determined to strike down Delaryn at any cost, but the delay gave her just enough time to weave another spell. Freezing another cloud of vapor around her, she forged the watery droplets into a razor-thin disk before she flung it at her attacker. The icy circle cut the Chol in twain as he ran, showering the wall in black blood.
Releasing her hold on the Aether before she invoked the wrath of the Flensing, Delaryn spun back to face the bailey. Her friends were undoubtedly battling for their lives on the other side of the fortress. She wasn’t even sure she could get to them if she tried…
You can’t, her mother said. Not without my help.
“Then show me,” Delaryn said. “Show me everything.”
11
Queen of the Pale
“Duck!”
Rohen saw Zin drop into a crouch a split second before the Chol decapitated him. The monster’s ax chewed through the air with an audible whump, and the sheer force of the swing sent its owner whirling off balance. Zin counterattacked with practiced ease: he leaned back and thrust his sword up, driving the tip of the blade under the Chol’s breastplate and through its gullet. The creature died with a choked-off screech and tumbled halfway down the stairs until it landed atop the growing pile of its fallen comrades.
“Watcher take you!” Zin cried out, the markings on his neck glowing as brightly as ever. “Watcher take all of you!”
The Chol remained undeterred. Through sheer numbers, they had already driven both Zin and Rohen back to the top of the steps on either side of the barbican. The two men were barely thirty feet apart now with Sehris and a few dozen archers atop the fortifications behind them. The dark elf was the one the Godcursed really wanted, naturally, and they were more than willing to litter the stairs with corpses in order to get to her.
Rohen braced himself for another attack as a dozen more Chol stormed over the bodies. The young Templar was bizarrely grateful that the monsters weren’t giving them any respite. If he’d had more than a second to think about what was happening, he would have had to cope with the crushing realization that the Chol were teleporting into the fortress faster than the Pact forces could kill them.
Instead, he clenched his teeth and parried aside the tip of a thrusting spear, then drove his elbow into the face of a Chol so hard it shattered the monster’s jaw. A quick swipe from Varlothin slashed its throat wide open, and a second swipe chopped off the arm of a Dretch trying to slip past him and grab Sehris.
“Incoming!” she cried out, still completely focused on projecting a barrier over the barbican. A pair of fireballs crashed into the shield a second later, and a long, jagged crack appeared in the shimmering magical dome like someone had taken a hammer to a piece of glass. Sehris’s hands trembled in front of her, and Rohen knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the Flensing much longer.
Not that it was likely to matter. At this point, the only question was whether the Flensing or the horde would doom them first.
“Get…back!” he cried out as he kicked another Dretch into its comrades, knocking an entire group down the stairs. As they clawed back to their feet, a shout rang out along the wall.
“Now!”
A barrage of arrows pelted the Chol before they could recover, adding to the nauseating pile of bodies and river of black Godcursed blood. While Rohen paused and caught his breath, he glanced over his shoulder to see Major Thorne standing with the archers on the wall, bow in hand and the visor of his helmet lifted.
“Thanks,” Rohen said between labored breaths.
“Hold the line, Templar,” Thorne replied, signaling for his archers to spin back around and fire at the rest of the horde in the frozen fields outside the fortress. It was a waste of time, considering the Chol weren’t even trying to scale the walls. Realistically, at this point the archers all should have been firing into the lower bailey, just like the infantry defending them should have been rushing down the steps to help the rest of the Pact forces. A veteran officer like Thorne should have realized that.
They’re rattled and frightened. This whole battle is on the verge of becoming a total free-for-all with every man defending the soldiers beneath his banner and no one else. If there’s any chance of driving the horde back, someone has to pull these men together.
“There’s another group coming!” Zin warned. “We can’t keep this up forever!”
“I know,” Rohen said. “Forget the damn gate—we’re going to make our stand below. Archers, to me!”
Thorne swiveled back around. “What are you doing? We can’t cede the high ground!”
“Sehris can’t block their arrows and magic forever. If we move down below, the wall can protect our backs.”
“You aren’t in charge here!” Thorne growled. “I will not—.”
“To me!” Rohen called out, waving his glowing sword at the men on the wall. “Archers, pikemen, to me!”
At first, he feared the soldiers on the wall might ignore him. Thorne was right that none of these men were under any obligation to obey Rohen’s orders, given that he didn’t have any official standing with the army. He wasn’t part of their unit—he wasn’t even technically a soldier. Nonetheless, the men heeded his commands without hesitation: they pulled back from the battlements and started filing down the stairs over the bodies, ready and waiting for new orders.
Orders from a Templar.
“Pikemen in front, archers behind!” Rohen said, signaling for Zin to move down below and help. While he organized the infantry into ranks at the base of the steps, Rohen ordered the archers to crouch on the stairs where they could provide covering fire. Thorne reluctantly joined their ranks, but Rohen didn’t sneer or gloat. The man was putting on a brave face, but he was terrified. All of them were.
“Come on,” Rohen said, racing back up the steps to retrieve Sehris. “Let’s move!”
The dark elf nodded and collapsed her barrier. As he helped her down the steps, he couldn’t help but notice that she was in even worse shape than he had realized. Her luminescent violet eyes had turned almost red, her arms trembled uncontrollably, and her veins had formed an angry, dark latticework beneath her gray skin. She needed to rest for hours, not just a few minutes.
“Spears out, shields
down!” Zin called out from below as another group of Chol broke off from the melee in the courtyard and charged for the steps. “Hold…hold…now!”
The row of infantry—about fifty men in total—lunged forward to meet the Chol head-on. The archers fired a volley over the heads of their companions, dropping an entire row of monsters before the sides clashed in a brutal melee. Spears splintered, shields shattered, and amidst it all, Zin’s glowing markings made him look like a glorious beacon of the Watcher standing against the dark tide.
“Hold here,” Rohen said to Sehris, placing her in front of the crouched archers at the base of the steps. “Do whatever you can to—”
“Look out!” she shouted, thrusting out her arms and conjuring another barrier. Rohen barely had time to duck before a fireball smashed into the shield and detonated in a blinding, searing flash. A wave of heat washed over him, but the barrier held—barely.
While the archers around him breathed prayers to the Guardian, Rohen peered through the flames to the Anointed levitating just behind the latest swarm of Chol in the courtyard. He had no idea where in the bloody void the Godcursed channeler had come from, but its hands were still wreathed in Aetheric flame. Without the Flensing to hold it in check, it could unleash salvo after salvo until every soldier on the steps was a charred corpse.
“Vith!” Sehris swore as she dropped to a knee and released her barrier. “I can’t…”
“Just get me over there,” Rohen told her.
She looked up at him, her eyes completely shot with blood. “What?”
The archers around them fired a volley at the Anointed, but its own barrier was far too strong. The arrowheads shattered on impact as if they had just struck a stone wall.
“Throw me over there,” Rohen said, clutching his blade in both hands. “Now!”
He had seen Templar and sorcerers use this technique before, though they had never actually practiced themselves. Still, give their complete lack of options…
Sehris cried out in pain as her hands glowed with power. With the last of her strength, she clutched his body in an invisible fist of pure force and hurled him up and over the sprawling melee toward the Godcursed channeler. Rohen clenched his teeth and whispered a silent prayer that her strength wouldn’t give out before he could land…
He should have known better than to doubt her by now. She released her telekinetic grip at the exact perfect moment, dropping him right in front of the Anointed. The tall, pallid elf would have been indistinguishable from a Dretch if not for its tattered robes—and the fact it was currently floating almost two feet above the ground. Unlike their feral brethren, the Anointed also didn’t shriek or scream; they couldn’t even if they’d wanted to, given that their lips were fused together as if they had been melted shut.
The corrupted channeler attacked Rohen the moment he landed, thrusting out a gaunt elven hand and unleashing a gout of flame. The Templar rolled beneath the blast and stabbed with all his might, hoping to skewer the bloody thing right through its scrawny, oily gut. But Varlothin glanced off the barrier just like the arrows a moment earlier, and the force of the deflection nearly knocked the Templar from his feet.
“Hathal niveh!” Rohen called out, shifting the wraithblade into the Pale. The sight of the shimmering blue blade didn’t impress the Chol; it whirled around and unleashed another torrent of fire, assuming it could roast the annoying, off-balance human. But Rohen’s shimmering Ward absorbed the energy of the attack so thoroughly he barely even felt the heat, and when the Anointed finally stopped channeling, the Templar lunged forward with another powerful thrust.
This time, the wraithblade effortlessly pierced the barrier and tasted Godcursed flesh. The Chol’s entire torso ignited in spectral flame, and it gurgled out a single, choked-off screech before it collapsed into a smoldering pile.
But there were more. There were always more.
Just as Zin and the pikemen finally drove back the wave of Chol, the fortress’s main gate shuddered with a thunderous crack as a battering ram slammed into it from the other side. Apparently, some portion of the horde still planned on busting inside the old-fashioned way, and without anyone to actively brace the gate, it wouldn’t hold for long…
“Damn it!” he snarled, sprinting back to Zin. “We need to—”
His voice was completely drowned out by a deafening shriek from the skies above the fortress. Rohen turned his head just in time to see a massive flying creature streak over the walls with a rider on its back. For an instant he assumed it was one of the griffon riders, but the beast didn’t have feathers or a beak or feline claws. The creature was time and a half the size of a griffon with thick brown scales, gleaming orange-yellow eyes, and a mighty wingspan that cast a horrifying moonlit shadow across half the outer bailey.
“A wyvern…?” Zin breathed. “How in the bloody void do the Chol have a wyvern?”
“That’s not a Chol,” Rohen said, his elven eyes fastening on the armored rider as the beast soared over Rimewreath. It must have been the same person Sehris had spotted riding alongside the horde earlier, but that still didn’t make sense. The Chol didn’t use horses or wyverns or any other mounts. There was a human inside that armor. But who in the name of the gods would be fighting alongside the horde?
“He’s coming around,” Zin warned. “Archers, try to—”
It was already too late. As the wyvern banked around and streaked back toward the western gate, the rider’s hand flashed with the unmistakable glow of Aetheric power. Keeping one of his hands clutched tightly on the reins, he thrust out the other and unleashed an entire barrage of fireballs at the turret atop the northwestern tower. The detonation shattered the old crenellations as easily as the boulder of a trebuchet, and the hapless soldiers cried out in terror as the flames engulfed them. By the time the wyvern streaked out of sight, the turret trembled, shuddered…and then collapsed.
The crash of the rubble was so deafening it blocked out the screams of the crushed and the dying. Dozens of Pact soldiers and probably just as many Chol were annihilated in an instant, and as the dust and smoke blew across the outer bailey, a pit of genuine dread boiled deep in Rohen’s stomach.
“The general,” Zin breathed. “Oh, gods…”
Rohen panned his gaze across the full length of the sprawling battlefield. The monsters here at the steps to the barbican may have been contained, but they were little more than a single levee trying to hold back an ocean of death. Sehris was crippled by the Flensing, Zin was slowed from a half a dozen cuts and slashes, and the rest of the Pact forces were scattered, broken, and now leaderless. If—or, more likely, when—the gate buckled, this battle would quickly descend into an outright slaughter. Rimewreath was about to be the largest massacre since the Chol sacked Harabel over three decades ago, and whether Rohen wanted to admit it or not, there was absolutely nothing he or his friends could do about it.
Except save Delaryn.
Gritting his teeth, Rohen dashed back toward Sehris, his flaming blue blade scything down another throng of corrupted elves along the way. He could hear the Lord Protector’s voice ringing in his ears with every swing. We are the eternal beacons in the growing darkness. We are the blades of the Triumvirate. We are the righteous fire of the gods, chosen to light the path of their return. We are the Templar of the Guardian, the champions of the Tel Bator.
A month ago—a few days ago—Rohen would have fallen on his sword rather than flee from the Chol. Even now, his heart sank at the thought of leaving all these men and women to die. But the harsh, brutal reality was that Delaryn might be the only hope of preventing another civil war. She was the rightful queen of Darenthi—surely some of the tharns would respect her authority. If they didn’t…
If they didn’t, Rohen was going to save her anyway. Because no matter what powers she possessed, no matter how dark her heritage, he loved her. He always had, and he always would.
“Guardian protect us,” Zin wheezed, his freezing breath billowing in front of him aft
er he hacked down yet another Chol. “There are so many of them…”
The glow from his markings was finally starting to fade, and his enhanced Keeper strength and stamina would fade along with them. Sehris clearly didn’t possess enough energy to feed him again, either, considering that she was down on all fours behind them, her eyes closed and her arms quivering from the wrath of the Flensing.
“We have to get out of here,” Rohen said as the battering ram slammed into the gate. “Now, before it’s too late!”
“And go where?” Zin growled. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re completely surrounded!”
“We have to get back to Delaryn,” Rohen said, pointing toward the eastern tower on the other side of the fortress. “Maybe there’s some way we can—”
“Down!” Zin cried out, slamming into his friend’s flank and tackling them both to the ground. Rohen kept his Ward angled above them, and several arrows slammed into the shimmering disk a fraction of a second later. More followed in their wake; he heard the unmistakable whistle of fletchings sailing just past his ear followed by the gurgles and screams of an entire row of pikemen crumpling beneath the barrage.
“Archers, at the ready!” Major Thorne called out from halfway up the steps. “Turn, draw, fi—”
His last command died on his lips as an arrow pierced straight through the visor of his helmet. His armored body clattered down the steps and landed in a pile of corpses upon the gore-stained grass.
“Shit!” Rohen hissed, lurching back to his feet as a squad of Chol archers appeared on the opposite side of the barbican about thirty yards away. Shrouded by the clouds of dust and rising columns of smoke from the collapsed tower, they were little more than slender silhouettes with glowing green eyes. They had already nocked more arrows, but this time they weren’t aiming at the soldiers.