Clearly Mirel had not seen him as he had feared, and he had placed himselfin the path of her attack quite by accident. A pile of charred bodies smoked nearby.
Tallyn moved quickly, outpacing the panicked citizens with his long strides. He found a suitable horse, unhitched it and vaulted onto its bare back. Reaching inside his pocket as he
rode, he felt for the smooth surface of the ghar-ten. It felt warm to his touch, and held just enough Blaze for him to form a signal with. He sent his message to the other four Kusurus, and prayed that they would be able to respond in time. Though, with this many eisiels, he wasn’t sure if that would matter. His horse tripped and skidded on the smooth surface several times as he galloped through the winding streets. Arcs of flame shot across the sky above him with each obstruction Mirel sought to remove from her path. He could not deconstruct the forms, however, not without giving away his
presence. Besides, like her eisiels, none of the white structures of the city seemed to be pervious to weapons of Blaze Energy. Most people would be safe so long as they remained indoors. In the mayhem, a cart had been left overturned; its horses had bolted and freed themselves. It was directly in The Hunter’s path. He pushed his mount to jump it, and the horse complied. But the animal faltered on the landing, and slid awkwardly along the ground before it collapsed. Tallyn was thrown clear as the horse screamed wildly. He pushed himself from the cold, glassy ground again, and something grated painfully.
His right arm was broken.
“Well, well, well. Tallyn Hunter,” cooed a familiar, female voice.
He lifted his eyes to meet her cold gaze, and yanked his arm back into position.
“You were always my favourite recruit. So... eager to please.” Mirel appeared to slither as she stepped closer to him. Her eisiels were beginning to surround them in a black, stinking swarm.
He would never forget how it felt to be one of them, to be something between death and life. “Well, pleasing you was quite a challenge given the number of lovers you’ve taken. Does the phrase ‘templar’s sleeve’ mean anything to you? Blazes, it was like hurling a dagger into the Caves of Ielmere.” He leapt to his feet as her eyes erupted with fury, and he withdrew his leading sword to be ready. But instead she pulled something from under her cloak. It was a long, thin object with a silvery tip and black shaft. Many years had passed since he had seen one, and it could only have been a true spear. In an instant Mirel had charged it with crackling ice forms and launched it at him.
The Hunter had little time to react. He threw his body weight to the right, but the spear followed his movements precisely. It had been designed to seek him. He managed to raise his sword quickly enough to divert it from his head, but its propulsion was sufficient to lodge the tip in his shoulder. He fell back against the white ground, the point of the spear crunching noisily as it met the crystalline surface. Pain blossomed across his chest.
“So pretty, and yet such an ugly tongue. Do you know, Tallyn Hunter, you are so much more handsome when
you cannot speak?” Mirel moved closer, and so did her battalion of eisiels.
He gripped the shaft of the spear as hard as he could, but was surprised at the feel of it. The forms within it were rotten somehow, just like the Sky Bridges. Had she caused this? There was no time to consider such trivialities. Its fragility meant he could break it, and break it he did. The fourthousand-year-old true spear crumbled in his hands, and he leapt onto his feet as he withdrew his gale sword.
Four of the closest eisiels were easily beheaded, and a fifth was
relieved of its arm before it could come near. But Mirel was ready with her forms of Blaze, and they rocketed through the air at him in an agonising whirl of complexity. A blistering ball of ice and hail exploded above his head while he did his best to disarm it, but what he would have given for some unnatural Jade’an skill! The form melted away in time, though others would undoubtedly come through before he could be ready. Finishing off a sixth and seventh eisiel, he turned to face their creator. She was there, a hair’s width from his nose. And then the world turned black.
Artemi ran as hard as her legs would permit, dodging between scurrying people and horses and walls and dropped items of food or clothing. Every citizen had panicked at the sound of Mirel’s attack, and it appeared that few had bothered to remember anything else but their own
safety during their flight. She leapt over an upturned cart without further thought, and hurtled towards the source of the blast. Radiating waves of Blaze still sang from the area of its hit, each one appearing as blue lines of fire against a grey sky.
Something tickled her ears. It was The Hunter’s signal, which meant Mirel was at the western gate. Not that Artemi needed much more of a hint at the direction. She chased it, and immediately other noises became apparent of fighting and screaming and... blazes, what was that sound? It was like a thousand whispering,
creaking trees swilling amidst a sticky river of oil. And when she sprinted past the hundredth spray of Gialdin white, she saw exactly that which she had heard.
Artemi halted in her tracks. It shouldn’t have been possible. Not that many. Not in so little time. Her footing faltered, and she stumbled back two steps. Before her, surrounded by the perfect white of the city and a retreating ring of ashen-faced Calidell soldiers, was a mass of writhing, slithering, blackened limbs.
Fire of the fires save us.
The contents of her stomach
fought for escape, but Artemi dreaded the consequences of showing fear more than she feared the situation itself. A surprisingly steady hand reached for both gale swords to withdraw them. The weapons glistened in the dull light, and then flashed. Rain had started to fall from the sky; it splashed upon the ground in soft, cold taps. If the feel of the heavy clouds was a good gauge, those taps would soon become a roar. Taking a breath as deep as her lungs would allow, she ran toward the horde of eisiels.
The creatures fell right and left from the edges of her swords smoothly
and cleanly at first, but inch-by-inch their lines thickened around her. She could hear their broken voices as they whispered the names that Mirel had given her. Many of them came close enough to hiss in her ear before she could throw them back with a carefully aimed slice. Whisk, cut, slice, punch, whisk cut, slice, punch. Again. The bodies were piling around her, but she could feel their daggers dragging through the outer layers of her clothing. Her fight was already becoming desperate. Artemi needed to break out if she was to regain any sort of control. The first eisiel dagger cut through her
sleeve, piercing the skin below with its poison. Time to escape like a coward.
The act of summoning every scrap of Blaze into her spun the eisiels into great, frothing frenzy of light-lessness about her. They could sense those fires, even if they were invulnerable to them. Their milky white eyes widened around her, and their teeth dripped with hunger.
She wound an explosive form together as quickly as she could, and released it into the ground at her feet. In an instant she was hurtling through the air above the twisting crowd, able to see the sheer extent of it and the
dark-haired woman at its heart. Those ice-cold eyes of Mirel met hers in that moment. Their glint was not one Artemi relished seeing.
The rain was beginning to fall with greater intensity, and when the queen landed upon the hard ground, she felt her boots slip a little beneath her. How long before this became a bloodbath of horrors? Already her blade was slick with the black liquid of the monsters she’d slain, a hint at the true source of pinh poison. And already far too many of her soldiers lay dead. Where were the other Kusurus? She needed them here now.
Artemi ran forward again, cutting and hacking at every wizened shape that leapt at her from the group. The size of it was something she was glad for, however: the closer the creatures were packed, the more tangled they became and the harder it was for them to reach her. “Pen them in!” she shouted to the men about her. There was no guarantee how well her instruction could be fol
lowed. Although her army was among the best, few of its soldiers would ever be matches for eisiels. To her left, she caught sight of two of the creatures escaping, but she was too involved to go after them. She
cursed quietly under her breath, and hacked at the hundredth monster.
A great swell of Blaze heat was growing at the centre of the crowd. Mirel was growing something in there, something huge. Artemi readied herself with enough power to contain a fireball the size of the city but, as she did, one of the dark creatures thumped into her shoulder. Before she had time to kick him away with a carefully aimed foot, however, she found herself facing the sky. Something was stuck in her side. It felt... old, rotten.
Another eisiel leapt at her from above, its black blades glittering
through the rain. She managed to block its attack path with both of her swords in time, and thrust her feet into its guts to push it back, but the thing in her side ached terribly. What was it? There was no time to examine her injury; Mirel’s growing ball of Blaze was beginning to make the air crackle with its power, and even the eisiels were becoming distracted by it. Artemi scrambled to her feet, drew more of the energy into herself and dealt it into one of her blades. The metal instantly sprang alight with fire. The flame was red; it sang with warmth and contentment. She thought of the area
around her, and of the distance her wielding would have to make. The flame became blue, and her hands started to quiver with the intensity of the heat between them. Where were the others?
The eisiels were moving toward her again, and Mirel was still building whatever weapon she had in store. No more time. Artemi closed her eyes, and forced the blade of fire into something white. She could not move the monsters from the city, but she could move the city from the monsters. At least, she thought she could. The world slowed, and then stopped. This was her chance.
Artemi sprinted around the edges of the immobile cloud of Mirel’s warriors, their arms and daggers reaching out to the soldiers in Calidell green. Many appeared about to stumble and fall to the ground through imbalance. But then she paused. Blaze was not supposed to affect eisiels, and yet they were frozen along with everyone else. How...? Time was running out; there was no time for such questions. As she hopped past a fighting Calidellian and eisiel, she slapped the daggers from the creature’s motionless claws. And then, at the
other side of the battle, she caught sight of the other three Kusurus. Their black silhouettes were unmoving against the wet shards of white wall, but they looked as dangerous as the blades they carried. The white fire was burning her skin now. She had to let it go.
In a flash of blue the entirety of Gialdin was gone, and all that remained was the roughened earth that had lain beneath. She dearly hoped that the city and its cave had landed somewhere safe. Her blade flame extinguished, and Artemi ran to the slowly re-animating assassins.
“Ves, Rom! Round to the south
and east sides. Khasha, head for the west! She’s in the centre!” Whatever mischief Mirel had been preparing with Blaze now seemed absent. She was surprised at what Artemi had done. That was good.
Vestuna stopped before her and glowered. Without pausing to speak, he reached towards her and snapped the object that had lodged in her side. “True spear,” he muttered in Dekusan. His brow furrowed. “No good.”
“Get your arse over there and start fighting!” Artemi did not need to shout at him further and instead turned to run back towards the fight. The
people of Gialdin were safe for the interim, and so was a larger proportion of its army. A battalion’s worth had been held here with them; they would do well to keep Mirel’s army from spreading across the open area. The queen shouldered her way through her men, and met swords with the seething eisiels. It was time to press for the centre.
With her blades whirling about her in flashes of silver, and the rain now cascading from the heavy skies, Artemi pushed hard through the wall of whip-like creatures.
Artemi.
It was a sound whispered upon the breeze, a sound designed only for her to hear.
Artemi. It is yourfault he is dead.
She spun to the source of the murmurs, but all she could see was the gnashing of blackened, pointy teeth and spinning blades. The smell of pinh filled her nose.
He would still be alive.
Where was she? Artemi twisted and switched around as she fought, desperate for a glimpse of Mirel. Then she saw them: those cold, ice-blue eyes. They were visible between the
snarling bodies for only a moment, and then they were gone.
Youfailed him.
Damn the woman! Anger started to well up inside Artemi, anger at all the things that Mirel had done to her husband. And Beodrin. And all of those Calidellian men. They still needed to be avenged. The woman needed to pay.
Gritting her teeth together, she hacked and cut and sliced with greater speed through the eisiels until the combination of the rain and their black poison blood had soaked her clothing entirely. The world seemed to smell of death.
“Sister?”
Artemi spun, her gale sword ripping through the abdomen of an eisiel as she moved. Before her, dressed in a somewhat unexpected arrangement of brown wool and no boots, was Mirel. Her eyes were glittering and crazed. But she had gale swords: male ones.
The Queen of Calidell leapt at the woman without pause, and began to wield a mixture of fire and burning air to capture the inevitable bolts of lightning and ice that would be sent her way. Already streaks of Blaze were pulling at her spin daggers and both of
her swords. One of them started to slip from her grip.
Four. A cut through the neck and the monster fell. Five. Silar dodged another strike from its friend, swung his sword again and cleaved cleanly through its torso. Six. He jumped left, swept the blade around as fast as he could and twisted to land it upon the
head of one of the healthier-looking eisiels. Seven. Two more creatures loped towards him upon wasted limbs. His tally was starting to look rather impressive, even if he did think so himself.
It was nothing in comparison, however, to the pile of beasts that now lay at Dorlunh’s feet. It was so high that the man was almost obscured by them. “You need my help,” the former, murderous librarian had said, “You should understand that better than most, Lord Forllan.”
And he had. If this battle was to be won, that undersized man was
someone required to do it. Many strange images flittered before the general’s eyes as he fought through the burnt mess of bodies. He knew what Artemi was about to do to the city, and the mess it would create. But he also knew that something was wrong with his old friend, The Smug Hunter. And then there was the matter of the source of pinh. He had always suspected that it came from somewhere he did not wish to think about, but now he saw the truth of it plainly before him. Eisiels were pinh poison. And that meant somewhere, probably within the borders of this country as well as
without, someone was farming the things for profit.
Silar narrowly avoided taking a second cut to his chest, and succeeded in relieving another wretched thing of a continued existence. He thrust his blade forward once again, and the world stopped.
He found himself unable to move against the hard air, but able to see the expressions and intentions of everybody about him. To his right was a floppy-haired, young recruit of the army, just about to have his lung pierced by an eisiel dagger. To his left, Dorlunh appeared to have paused in
mid-air to inspect the eisiels below him, and his crimson scarf trailed his movement in its frozen arc. A flash of red-gold darted between the men, the only movement in the entire scene. Silar’s heart was warmed at seeing it, but chilled by the sight of the woman beyond. Her cobalt eyes were wide with fear, and her dark red hair had been slicked against her face by the rain. One of the eisiels held her aloft, his claw-like fingers wrapped tightly around her neck. Talia.
If she reached for her boot dagger in time, she might succeed in dispatching her enemy, but Silar could
A sudden flash of blue light broke his thoughts, and the city around him was gone. In an instant the air was softened; Silar had to act now. He ran for the floppy-haired soldier first, decapitated his foe and then careered into the writhing, snapping mess of half-dead eisiels. If she could just hold on... A blade came for him before he could think to breathe, and it gouged down the side of one thigh. He cursed, spun, and dispatched the creature as swiftly as he could. Twelve. He was
becoming better at this!
The general ignored the rest of the eisiels in his path, and instead made straight for the one that was now violently shaking Talia in the air. He crashed rather clumsily past his last few obstacles, raised his sword, and brought it down upon the animal. The blade split the eisiel as if it were made of nothing more than melted oil, and Talia fell gasping to the ground. Thirteen. She was alive.
Her expression rapidly morphed into one of delight. “General...”
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 120