Chapter 9
RESCUE
Twenty-Eighth day of the Moon of the Thief
-in Erenar
It was just past midnight when Oen followed Lorace to the exit of the temple. The young man turned to give him a firm hug, which he returned soundly, closing his eyes against the golden brightness flooding his vision. After their embrace, Oen held Lorace at arms-length, where he could see his features clearly, and gave him a nod.
After looking about to see that the plaza was empty of any townsfolk, Lorace took a quick running step into the air, followed by several more, taking him higher and higher. Before vanishing into the night sky, he turned back and put a silencing finger to his lips.
Oen gave a long prayer of thanks to Lord Aran for delivering Lorace to his people. He had no fear of what was marching upon Halversome, no fear of the further trials to which Hethal had hinted. As he watched the stars wheel overhead, his only concern was that they would stop and fall, that the end of days was truly upon them as Hethal had forewarned. Without the blessing of Lorace’s chain, would the fear he should feel crush him? Oen shook his head and tried to find a shred of real fear within himself, but all he found was determination. He would do his utmost to see the world endure, to see these people who depended on him safe. He re-entered the Temple to seek his own bed, certain he would not have much time to rest before Lorace returned.
Lorace reveled in the rush of wind as he ran through the sky, his bare feet landing on invisible disks of solid air that he formed beneath each stride and released behind him. He had initially tried standing on a moving platform of air, as he crossed well above Halversome’s walls, but he could move it only barely faster than a walking pace before his balance became an issue. He knew that given time, he could master this method of flying, but elected to hold to his current method of running through the air.
Running felt right. His body leaned into it naturally, and it flowed with the balance of his muscles. Additionally, he found forming solid steps out of air an almost effortless application of his gift. As he progressed in this newly acquired skill, it took just a bit more effort to accelerate the disks propelling him much faster than a natural run.
He passed well beyond the battlefield. In the sea far below, four large Zuxran galleys rocked beyond the breakwater. He continued south to the rising headland where he descended to the ground and took a moment to check on Sir Rindal’s progress. The paladin still ran a grueling pace with no sign of weariness. The remaining demons of the vanguard were well behind him, but if he so much as stumbled, they would swarm over him like a breaking wave.
Lorace leapt back into the air, resuming his accelerated run through the night sky. Before long, he could feel the miasma of corruption rising from the south. It hung over the advancing demon horde, a concentration of bitter wrongness that knotted his stomach. As he sped closer, it became even more tangible, an unsettling feeling that constricted his tranquility and sapped at his vitality.
He began to slow his run as the hopelessness of defending even one man from this tremendously powerful army of invincible monsters settled onto him like a heavy weight on his shoulders.
Overwhelming exhaustion forced him to descend back down to the ground before he lacked the strength to form the next step of air. He felt the fool for even thinking he could get to Sir Rindal, let alone save him. There was no decision to make except to flee back to Halversome and maybe live for a few more hours.
He took a ragged breath and wrapped his arms about himself as a vain barrier against the despair pressing in on him.
The memory of Tezzirax looming over the body of his father and grasping for his crying mother, hit him like a physical blow and dropped him to his knees. Unstoppable, insatiable Tezzirax, tearing everyone he loved limb from limb, gore dripping from his black claws. Lorace fell forward sobbing for breath as his mother cast one final glance back toward him, before the spark of life was extinguished from her eyes forever. Casting aside his mother’s corpse, Tezzirax picked up Iris in his claws. She twisted her tiny form around in the demon’s remorseless grip until she faced the little boy crying beside the altar of the Lady.
“Lorace they are in your mind!” Iris yelled at him.
“I am sorry,” the child Lorace sobbed. “I could not do anything to stop him! Nothing can stop him!”
“Forgive me!” the delicate blonde woman in the monstrous demon’s grip cried in anguish. “There is no other way!”
The child could not tear his gaze away from the woman hanging in the demon’s claws. His eyes were riveted to her face, her every word commanding the beat of his heart.
“Lorace, my love, would you do something for me?” the woman asked, gracing him with her beautiful smile, even as her face showed the strain of an incredible pain.
“Yes! Anything!” the child cried out desperate to do her bidding if she would just smile at him once more.
“Lorace, show me what you have in your bag,” she urged with a desperate sadness that worried the child. “What have you got in there? Please, show it to me!”
The child reached down to the large bag he carried, anxious to please the woman and make her feel better. He thrust his hands within to grasp whatever was there and show it to her proudly.
Startled awake by Iris’s wailing cry, Falraan rose from a small cot across the room. With a wave of her hand every one of the many candles about the room ignited with illuminating flame to show Iris crumple from her bed.
“What is it, Iris?” Falraan asked as she ran across the room to where Iris lay curled, a small bundle hiding deep within the clean white robes she was given after her bath. The delicate woman whimpered inconsolably.
“I- I used my gift,” she stammered. “I was watching Lorace in my mirror, he runs to the aid of the man in his vision. He fell and I pressed in upon him. One of the demons attacked him from afar, it is gifted as am I, so similarly I could feel it though it was not directed at me. It steeped Lorace in despair, so strong, he would have willed his own death if I had not coerced him with my own emotion.”
Falraan hugged the distraught woman to her breast. “Is that why you cry? Or has Lorace indeed fallen?”
“He is safe now,” Iris whimpered and shook her head. “He took hold of his chain, breaking both spells over him. He will be safe from this demon as long as he keeps hold of it. The despair—it flooded into me.”
Falraan lifted Iris, carrying her from the room. Once more a Captain, she bellowed out a command to faithful Nordoc, ever posted outside her quarters at this hour.
“Fetch a priest, Nordoc. Hurry!” she called out. The sound of his running feet as he hastened away was far more satisfactory than his startled, “Yes, Ma’am!”
Falraan set Iris down in her overstuffed chair, the one luxury to herself, and waved a hand toward the fireplace heating a pile of stones within to a cherry red glow.
“I am gifted as well,” Falraan said to Iris when she saw the woman’s anguished eyes upon her. “I could have burned the Zuxran army with a wave. I would have, burning them to a man, if it was the only way to save my people. That thought used to horrify me, just knowing I could kill so effortlessly. I am not afraid of it any more. Lorace’s blessing removed that fear. Now I know that when I use my gift to kill, I will only use it in the service of that which is pure and right.”
She paused to brush a wispy strand of Iris’s blonde hair back from her tear-streaked face.
“You are so beautiful, Iris,” Falraan said in soothing tones. “Lorace’s chain has blessed you, freed you from your fears. What you are feeling now are false emotions, it is not you anymore. You have found love here, real love, not a coerced emotion. You used your gift to save Lorace. If he had fallen, we all may have.”
There was silence in the room for a while as Falraan gently rocked Iris in her arms, the woman who until earlier this night had surreptitiously ruled an empire.
“Tornin loves me,” Falraan murmured, as she brushed an unruly red curl out of her own
moist eyes.
The sound of the priest’s knock on her door turned her once more into the inscrutable Captain Falraan.
Lorace stood facing south, his left hand gripping the continuously sparking links of Sakke Vrang. To his own eyes, the demon horde had just begun cresting the horizon. A short distance ahead of them the paladin still ran. The demon who had halted him continued its assault. It would have to be dealt with before it could affect anyone else. That meant destroying it before it got much closer to Halversome.
He willed his sight in on the originator, back tracking it from his chain as it reacted to the effects of this demon’s gift. It was a stunted, malformed thing, carried in the long swinging arms of one of the faster runners in the forward ranks of the vanguard.
Lorace scanned the ground and located a heavy stone about the size of his fist. He hefted it for a moment, feeling the weight and balance of it before pulling his arm back and throwing it southward with a shout of effort. He accelerated it, pushing it through the air like one of his spears. Faster and faster it flew, until the air burned in its effort to escape its path. He split a narrow passage through the air ahead of the stone before the heat could melt it. It streaked southward in a flat line leaving a meteoric trail of flame.
The paladin dove at the ground as the streak of heat and light flashed over his head. When it struck the stunted demon, it was going faster than the missiles Lorace had flung with the added strength of Halversome’s citizens. Sir Rindal was still in mid leap to the ground when Lorace formed a shield of hardened air behind him to part the wave of blasting heat that blossomed an instant later.
The horizon lit up with a brilliant flash of light and a deep rumble of thunder drowned out the trailing end of Lorace’s shout a moment later.
Lungs empty, he gasped for breath. His strength returned as his racing heart slowed. Time resumed a normal pace.
Gripping his now quiescent chain, Lorace leapt back into the air, and continued his run toward the paladin. The white of the man in the moonlit distance was clear without the aid of his sight. The demons had fallen back, slowing to circle the hotly glowing pit of ash where their vanguard once ran. Their numbers were still enormous, barely lessened by the loss of their lead rank. Lorace wondered what other demonic gifts he, and the people he would give everything to protect, would have to endure.
“Lady, be praised!” the paladin exclaimed a short while later as Lorace stepped down from the sky a few dozen strides ahead.
Lorace stepped to Sir Rindal’s left, so that the swinging blade of Brakke Zahn was not between them, and ran northward beside him. Overcome with emotion to be beside the one man who shared with him the tragedy of the Order of the Lady, Lorace could not speak. Sir Rindal was perhaps the only living person who had known his family, who witnessed his mother’s smile and crossed blades with his father in their practice yard.
Lorace held out his coiled chain to the paladin as they ran. Sir Rindal clamped hold with a powerful hand, linking his pure spirit with Lorace’s own. Through that link, Lorace was finally able to share a welcome that no air from his lungs could ever voice.
“Took you long enough, young warden,” the paladin chastised as his tireless legs continued to pound out their ground-eating pace.
Lorace barked a laugh. “Do not let go.”
Using their link to time his placement, he formed steps of air beneath both their feet and lifted them from the ground. He could not mistake the presence of another spirit in contact with the paladin—a strange spirit, akin to a forest full of grandfather trees only much more vibrant and immense and very, very far away.
“You feel the Lady,” Sir Rindal said. “She is ever with me. It is her strength which keeps my feet from faltering and shields me from the mental agonies with which the demons have tried to strike me down.”
“She sleeps now?” Lorace asked.
“She harnesses her strength for what comes,” Sir Rindal said before reciting one of the Oaths of the Order. “And mine is the blade which remains ever in her hand while she slumbers—the blade in my hand is the Heart of Destiny, with it I swear to defend your life.”
“I am honored, Sir,” Lorace said. “You hold the Chain of Vengeance in your other hand, with it I swear to defend your life.”
“I am honored, my Lord,” Sir Randal said then grimaced. “There is a great need of vengeance for this world. I am sure the dwarves have named your chain appropriately.”
Once they attained a respectable distance from the ever-advancing demons, Lorace brought them down to the ground and pulled free the spare robe for the paladin. Sir Rindal tore away the last few shreds of clothing from his hard muscled frame, without modesty, and wrapped the white robe securely about himself.
“We can find you some armor when we reach Halversome,” Lorace said.
“For all that either cloth or steel would ward me against the claws of those demons, this shall gird me properly,” the paladin said with a toss of his golden-blonde hair, as they took to the air again.
“My last suit of armor lies at the bottom of the sea,” Sir Rindal said. “I had to cut it from me before it could drag me to my final rest.”
Lorace saw the memory through the chain. The paladin stood on the bare deck of a becalmed ship on an otherwise storm-tossed sea. Sir Rindal had just driven all to abandon the ship in the few small boats it carried, leaving him alone on the vessel with only one other. That other bore Lorace’s face, but it was not him—what controlled his body, like a puppet, was not him. He saw the bestial rage on his face. It was more the look of a hungry predator than any human expression. The man that looked like him was waving a pair of vicious looking blades toward the armored paladin. Brakke Zahn cut through those blades just above their hilts, disarming the animal.
With a prayer to the Lady, the paladin redirected the vessel’s wards. Meant to protect the ship, they were turned and refocused to protect Lorace’s possessed body. Then the godstone sword plunged into that body’s heart, but there was no blood or wound. The blade passed beyond the flesh of the puppet to cut the strings that had animated it, severing the bond between the foul spirit and the body’s—his body’s—precious soul. Dark energy erupted from where the fatal wound should be, so similar to the black flames that Sakke Vrang drew forth from the terribly corrupted. Instead of being sucked away to vanish, the black flames exploded outwards, flinging the paladin overboard and splintering the entire vessel to pieces.
“I drifted for days, clinging to my sword and a small piece of that faithful ship’s hull,” Sir Rindal explained. “When I did beach at last, I was drawn by the Lady’s will to turn north. This army of demons came upon me at the day’s dawning. I would have gladly destroyed as many as I could, before they dragged me down, but the draw to the north was too strong. I could not refuse the Lady, so I began running.”
They ran while the paladin told his story, finally crossing over the walls of Halversome, less than a watch before dawn. The city slept without fear, trusting in the handful of guardsmen on watch dutifully focused on the dark fields to the south. They ran unseen far above their heads to the tall pyramid of the Temple of Aran, and descended into the darkened plaza.
Lorace led Sir Rindal within to find Oen and several other priests already awake preparing a hearty meal to sustain their charges into the coming day.
Oen smiled wide and held out his arms to both men, welcoming them warmly.
“This is Sir Rindal,” Lorace introduced the handsome man. “Paladin and last living knight of the Order of the Lady, wielder of the godstone sword, Brakke Zahn.”
“And I am Oen, high priest of Lord Aran, Guardian of the free city of Halversome, and friend of Lorace,” the priest said as he clapped the paladin in a hug.
“What of the demons?” Oen asked with a raised eyebrow.
“They follow still, though slightly lessened in number,” Lorace answered. “They will be here by the dawn.”
Oen nodded resolutely and turned back to the paladin. “Woul
d you eat or rest?”
The smell of food easily swayed the large man. He sat at the long table and laid his dull silvery sword before him. “The Lady has sustained my strength for days without food or drink. I will not burden her with my empty belly any longer than I have to.”
Lorace chuckled and sat beside him while a young priest served split loaves of bread, slathered with berry preserves and a platter heaped with steaming slices of cured ham. Oen set a large mug of dwarven ale before each of them then sat himself. Lorace ate only a small portion of the bread and jam and nursed his ale while Sir Rindal devoured everything set before him with an appetite that Tornin himself would have a challenge matching.
“You have been without food and drink for a quarter moon?” Lorace asked. The paladin nodded around a mouthful of ham. Letting the man continue his feast, Lorace turned to Oen who was running his eyes down the perfect blade of Brakke Zahn. “Did you get any sleep at all Oen?”
“Oh yes, I slept quite well until Captain Falraan and Lady Iris were brought into the temple some time ago,” the priest said reproachfully. “The Lady Iris was suffering from an attack she endured while rescuing you.”
“She did indeed save me, and thereby Sir Rindal as well. The demon responsible for that attack no longer exists,” Lorace said, climbing to his feet. “Is Iris well?”
Oen raised a hand, imploring Lorace to seat himself again.
“She and Falraan are sleeping soundly now. The good Captain would not leave her side. Hethal spoke to me at length about Iris’s gift,” Oen informed him with lowered brows. “Falraan has built quite a bond with Lady Iris.”
“Trust her,” Lorace said with his most assuring smile, “Iris used her gift to save me only as a last resort. I could feel how much it pained her. Falraan’s feelings toward Iris have been well earned.”
Gifts of Vorallon: 02 - City of Thunder Page 10