Eventide (Meratis Trilogy Book 2)

by Krista Walsh

  She blew her hair out of her face, and Jeff looked more closely at the fighting, seeing a blue current of magic or electricity running down the enemy’s blades at each strike. Not many remained standing, but Jeff didn’t think Raul cared if his whole army got wiped out. The enchanted weapons helped to delay the inevitable massacre; obviously, all the sorcerer wanted was time.

  But time for what?

  “He made his stand next to the mountains.” She pointed across the field where a red glow surrounded a dark figure. “We can’t sneak around him. He’s chanting something, and the spell—we’ve had three men fall because of it. Even now he’s gaining power. There’s some sort of barrier around him that we can’t get through.”

  Jeff’s thoughts jumped to the amulet at his throat, and he reached for it. “You might be able to.”

  Jasmine’s gaze fell to his neck and back up to catch his eye. He saw the hint of fear, the uncertainty, the question of whether she really wanted to be the one to risk her life.

  In a flash it disappeared, her face hardened with resolve, and she held out her hand. “We have to try.”

  Jeff slid the pendant over his neck and ignored her hand, dropping it over her head.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “And you,” she said, “go home.”

  Jeff nodded, but how could he leave when they were about to reach the climax of the story? The turning point that would determine the course of their futures.

  What if they failed?

  Suddenly Maggie felt too far away, and he wanted to be nowhere else but back at the Keep, ready to go home if things should turn really ugly.

  He turned to the path down the mountain, but before he could begin any internal debate, a familiar voice behind him called him back.

  “Not leaving already are you?”

  Jeff’s spun around, and in a moment of deja-vu, he saw Tanner, Raul’s new second in command—Siobhan’s murderer—standing at the top of the path, crossbow aimed at Jeff’s chest.

  “Just like old times, isn’t it, Creator?” the man called out. “You trying to sneak your way out of trouble, me trying to further my ambitions. Remember how well it worked out last time?”

  Again Jeff found he couldn’t hear him well, the hum reverberating even louder in his head. Out of the corner of his eye, Cassie winced and waggled her head, and he guessed she heard it, too.

  “I remember I survived.” He dropped Cassie’s hand so he didn’t break her fingers.

  “Luck,” said Tanner. “You don’t have Connell standing up for you this time.”

  From the darkness, a small black figure jumped onto Tanner’s back. He lost his grip on the crossbow, the wood clattering to the ground.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Venn.

  For a millisecond, her gaze met Jeff’s and a million reactions jumped through his head: some begging her to reconsider, some egging her on, and everything in between.

  Instead he twisted his head away so he didn’t have to watch as she cut her dagger across his throat. The gurgle as Tanner drowned on his blood reached Jeff over the swords and screams of the greater battle.

  His body crumpled to the ground as Jeff turned back, and then Cassie approached Venn, who stood by the twitching body of the man who’d killed her sister, her shoulders shaking with either the rush or the emotion. In spite of the gore, Cassie wrapped her arms around the younger woman and held her until the trembling stopped.

  Before Jeff could say anything, the humming in his ears increased. He groaned and covered his ears with his hands. Cassie and Venn did the same, and the three edged closer to the rock face, watching as the battle waned. Raul’s people numbered only fifteen, with the majority of the Feldallian force still fighting.

  The swords Raul’s men wielded sliced through flesh and bone like a knife through butter, the victims convulsing with electric shock at the slightest contact. It made a disgustingly unfair advantage, and Jeff cheered every time another one fell.

  In the flashing movements of the fight, moonlight glinting off armour and blade, he made out Jayden. He had kept his helmet, but the one-armed soldier stood out—not for his handicap, but his skill with the remaining arm. The sword moved so quickly, it looked like a band of light, not unlike the weapons of his enemies. It spun and swirled in his grip, clashing against the sword of his opponent. It took a minute for Jeff to recognise Michael Dorning.

  The man was on the offensive, pushing Jayden back, whaling on him with the strength and energy of a man younger than he. Jeff didn’t know how he managed to keep it up, blow after blow, but Jayden was tiring, his blade coming up a moment too slow, his reflexes a smidge too stiff.

  Jeff scanned the crowd for Jasmine, hoping that she would see her brother’s distress and go to his aid, but she kept to the outside of the fight.

  On the sidelines of the battle, Jeff saw her dark figure creeping along the rocks towards Raul in his glowing red bubble. He crossed his fingers for her and allowed his attention to jump back and forth between her and her brother, not sure which twin made him more anxious.

  As Jayden and Michael’s personal war moved farther away from the core of the fight and closer to the gaping chasm at the side of the mountain, Jeff gripped his fingers around Cassie’s arm, terrified he was about to watch his friend tumble over the edge.

  Cassie tugged herself away and took a step forward.

  “Hey, Dorning!” she called.

  Jeff jumped at the sudden yell, wanting to shush her so they could continue their so-far successful job of going unnoticed. But the soldier stumbled in his step, giving Jayden a chance to change direction back towards the centre of the field.

  Cassie cupped her hands around her mouth to make sure she was heard. “It’s too bad you missed saying goodbye to your son. I’m afraid Darcy had to leave early and take a shortcut down the side of the mountain.”

  Cruel and heartless, the words had an instant effect. Comprehension sank in on Michael’s face, followed by a rage that contorted his features into a wild mask. He forgot about Jayden and ran towards Jeff, Cassie, and Venn with a bellow, sword held ready to strike.

  With a renewed burst of energy, Jayden pursued, catching up with Dorning and swinging his sword just as the older man charged towards Cassie.

  The blow came so suddenly that even as Dorning’s head tumbled from his neck, his body continued forward, forcing Cassie and Jeff to jump in separate directions to avoid being impaled. Finally, the weight overcame the speed and the corpse crumbled to the ground, slithering towards the edge of the cliff before he followed the same path as his son.

  Jeff released a large, deep breath, and ran his hands through his hair, ready for the fight to be over. But one threat remained, and once again his gaze searched through the crowd, jumping to where he had last seen Jasmine.

  The grating buzzing noise grew even louder and more shrill, until the ground began to shake. Rocks from the mountain rattled loose, clattering down the side.

  On his peak, Brady spoke, his words becoming audible, if no less unintelligible.

  A flash of light burst out from Raul’s red bubble on the other end of the field, and Jeff cried out, worried for Jasmine. He saw a body fly backwards and land on its back a few metres away. The four of them ran over, keeping to the edge of the waning battle, along the rocky face of the mountain where Brady continued to chant. Jayden helped a windblown Jasmine to her feet.

  “The amulet worked,” she gasped, grip tight on her brother’s arm as she steadied herself, “but he’s strong. He threw me back.”

  “What is he doing?” Cassie asked.

  Jeff grimaced. “More importantly, how do we stop him?”

  The mountain shuddered under their feet, and they scrambled to keep their balance. Larger rocks crumbled from above and rolled down towards them.

  As if someone turned the lights out on the weapons of ten remaining foes, the enchantment dropped. In a panic, they tried to run, but within seconds, the Feldallians rushed in a
nd cut them down, a gruesome victory that lacked all of the glory and satisfaction of a win. Because they hadn’t won. The only goal was protected by a shimmering bubble that only one person wearing Jeff’s amulet could penetrate.

  “We have to try something,” Jayden yelled over the eardrum-bursting buzz.

  Another lurch in the ground beneath their feet and more of the Sisters’ words came back to Jeff. It will end in a clash that makes mountains fall.

  But how? To what end?

  Almost as soon as he asked himself those questions, Jeff began to see the answer. And he wished upon everything it was possible to wish on that he was anywhere else but here, on this mountain, in this world, in this period of time. The bubble around Raul expanded, the energy of the spell burning anything in its path. The Feldallians retreated, many of them not fast enough to escape the growing wall, or backing up too close to the edge of the cliff and vanishing over the side.

  Jeff looked around them, but could see no way out. The mountain behind them, and Raul to their right. The path and most of the army were to their left, but Jeff knew they’d never make it in time. Raul’s magic was spreading too quickly.

  Apparently struck by the same thought, Jasmine grabbed hold of the rock face and began to climb towards a ledge about six metres up. Venn immediately followed, and then Cassie. Jeff resolved to stay on the ground and run for the mountain path if he had to, but Jayden gripped him around the waist and boosted him up, forcing him to scramble for handholds and try to get up the rest of the way on his own. Cassie and Jasmine reached for him when he got close enough and heaved him over top. He stretched out onto his back with his heart pounding, thinking that “up” wouldn’t necessarily protect them from the brewing storm.

  He caught his breath and rolled onto his stomach, watching over the side as Jayden backed away from the wall and took a flying leap, getting halfway up on his own strength. With one hand clinging to the mountainside, he dangled until his feet found purchase, and then he continued to climb, bracing his body against the wall to jump from handhold to handhold. Jasmine stretched out on her stomach as soon as he got within reach and held out her hand. He jumped for it, missed, his boots skidding down the rock as his fingers scrambled for a hold. He caught himself, legs kicking until he found a foothold, and then he pushed himself up again.

  The light was getting closer, the soldiers running out of room to back away.

  His sweating palms slipping against the surface of the stone, Jeff kept his eye on Jayden’s progress with increasing anxiety.

  The warrior pulled himself higher, keeping contact with the rock until the ledge became level with his chest, then he leapt towards it, braced his elbows on the surface. Jasmine locked her hands around his wrist to pull him to safety as Jeff lay down beside her to grab Jayden’s sword belt, giving an added heave to pull him up.

  The immediate danger over, their attention moved back to the centre of that shifting wall of light, which had stopped expanding and now took up more than three quarters of the bloodied field, growing steadily brighter.

  Jeff wished they could go back to five minutes ago when there had been nothing to see.

  Raul no longer stood or chanted in the bubble. He had collapsed to his knees and even as far as they were, they could hear his screams, as if some invisible force were tearing him apart. He sat back on his heels, his arms twitching and then bending backwards with spasms so severe the bones snapped. Jeff gagged and covered his mouth with his elbow.

  “It’s killing him,” said Jayden, leaning forward to get a better view.

  “Could we be that lucky?” asked Jasmine.

  Raul fell to his back, his body squirming to escape the obvious pain as more muscles convulsed and strained.

  Gradually, it grew more difficult to see through the barrier, the shimmer of magic growing thicker, brighter, until Raul became more shadow than man on the other side, his screams still heard over the hum of the spell.

  The shadow grew bigger, twisted like a demon struggling for release. As the shape grew, so did the dread in Jeff’s stomach, until it sat like a heavy ball, pressing on his lungs. He reached for Cassie’s hand, pulled her closer to him as he realised Raul’s plan hadn’t failed.

  The sorcerer’s screams cut through Jeff’s last nerve, but the sound was no longer completely human. A shrieking note ran like an undercurrent to the pained bellowing, a nails-across-the-chalkboard squeal that made Jeff want to cover his ears and bury his head.

  He knew that sound.

  It wasn’t possible, but he knew that sound.

  Jasmine and Jayden turned white, and they backed away from the writhing shadow into the mountain face. Venn watched, fascinated, but as soon as she noticed everyone else’s fear, she seemed to grow more afraid herself, reaching for the wall as if ready to climb the rest of the way up, if needed.

  Jeff could still see Brady above them. He hadn’t moved.

  “Come on, man,” he whispered. “If you came here for a reason, you’d better act now.”

  The bone-chilling scream now overpowered the human cries, turning Jeff’s blood to ice.

  By that point, the shadow had grown to fill the entire sphere of the once-small bubble, a span that stretched almost fifteen metres. The shape took on a reddish hue that gleamed like flames. The surface grew solid, forming into thick, ragged scales. As it moved, the ground shook, the sound like thunder in the clear-skied night.

  The light from the barrier faded, disappeared, and the reality of what had just happened became undeniable.

  Raul was gone.

  Transformed into a dragon.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jeff was too terrified even to scream.

  They were fucked. No other way to put it, nothing else to think.

  The Raul-dragon made Talfyr look like a house pet. Four yellowed fangs, two on either side, shot up from Raul’s lower teeth, ready to tear them apart. Yellow eyes swivelled left to right, scanning the mountaintop. He moved one two-metre-wide foot slightly to the left and the mountain trembled.

  Slowly, the dragon stretched out the colossal wings at his sides, an extra twenty feet the plateau could barely contain.

  “This!” Jeff yelled to Jasmine, pointing, as Raul shrieked. “Why wasn’t this in the fucking grimoire?”

  A deep laugh rattled in his brain.

  “Fools!” came the voice—Raul’s on the surface, with the hint of something ancient underneath.

  If a voice could have a size, this one took over the mountain, the words seeming to come from all directions, as if it came directly from inside Jeff’s brain. It left him dizzy. He cringed, the expressions on the others’ faces mirroring his own.

  “No book could stop what had already started.”

  The dragon’s mouth opened and it almost looked like a grin—a smile promising pain and destruction. He raised his wings, and they had to scramble to the other end of the ledge to stay clear of the sharp edges that glinted in the moonlight. Like Talfyr, the Raul-dragon’s wingtips were serrated, jagged, and where they struck the rock, the stone cracked and crumbled.

  The wings dropped, rose again, dropped, and with each successive beat, the dragon lifted from the ground, rising higher than the top of the mountain, its head bent down, facing them.

  “It’s so fortunate that you’re here to see my transformation,” said Raul, his own voice doubled against an ancient language. Two voices speaking as one. Jeff’s eyes watered as it pressed down on him. “May you be the first to experience my revenge. Allow your last thoughts to be sympathy for what awaits everyone else.”

  Smoke spewed towards them like black rivers from enormous nostrils, and Jeff turned his head, trying to blink away the acidic sting of the fumes.

  Far above, Brady’s voice became louder, a sibilant tongue that countered Raul’s harsh cry.

  Jeff knew the rest of their lives could be counted in seconds. As soon as Raul adjusted to his new form, he would open those jaws and douse them all with waves of fire. J
eff’s only wish now would be for their deaths to be quick. With Cassie in his arms, her tears smeared against his neck, his only regret in life would be that he hadn’t figured out why the fuck Brady had come all this way just to stand there and chant like a lunatic.

  But the scholar’s chants turned into a shout, a bellow, an open threat. Jeff could hear the challenge in his call, and no matter what his words meant, Raul listened.

  The laugh sounded again in the air, an arrogant chuckle that said the threat was empty. He feared nothing.

  Brady’s voice dropped in response, and Jeff’s hopes—what few he still harboured that Brady would come through—sank deeper into his boots.

  And then he heard the second cry. It was far away, but coming closer. Just as blood-freezing, but less terrifying.

  Raul snapped his serpentine neck in the direction of the newcomer, more smoke puffing out around him, his jaws opening to release a challenging call.

  A challenge Talfyr met as he flew into sight, barrelling into the larger dragon and knocking his new wings off balance. Sparks bursting like fireworks, white and blue, the dragons crashed into the rocky cliff across from Jeff’s ledge, leaving a cracked dent in the stone. In a heap they landed on the battlefield, Talfyr the first to regain his footing, snapping at Raul’s head and wings. The larger dragon shook himself off and rose back to his feet, swinging his neck to strike Talfyr across the head. White sparks exploded around him as the green dragon screamed and tumbled to the side under the force of it.

  Spreading out his wings, Raul rose once more into the air, circling around Talfyr, trying to gain the advantage of height.

  But Raul was only three minutes old, while Talfyr had over fifteen hundred years of experience. From below, he stretched up to snap at Raul’s legs, his teeth sinking through the scales until blood gushed from the wounds onto the rock below.

  Raul swung his tail, the spikes at the tip aimed straight for Talfyr’s shoulder. The green dragon managed to avoid the worst of the blow, and he opened his wings to escape the offense, gaining his freedom in the sky.

  Brady had fallen silent, and Jeff craned his neck to look upward. The scholar stood on the rocks, his head fallen back on his shoulders and his arms still outstretched, his body twitching in time with Talfyr’s movements.