He whisked away, his wings a blur as he moved. The crude fists of the golem reached the top of their arc. Myn and Garr, as a final effort to stop the attack, each landed atop a fist, dug in their claws, and worked their wings. The fists began to descend, but slowly. They stopped a moment later with an unnatural jerk, then rose again. The head twitched and turned slightly. One foot shuffled backward. The whole of the golem seemed to be making tiny, innocuous adjustments, never quite finishing a motion before beginning another.
“What is happening? What did you do?” Grustim said, calling down to Deacon.
“The mechanism seemed to be operating on numbered edicts. I couldn’t undo them or remove them, but I knew the whole of the journey was only the first of the edicts. So I added several minor edicts of my own, and numbered them all as the second.”
“How many did you add?” Grustim asked.
“Four hundred and fifty.”
“The golem is attempting to do over four hundred things at once?”
“Yes.” A labored joint fractured, and one of its arms sagged. “We should be mindful of how it progresses. It is possible this will be rather destructive.”
“Hopefully, that damage will be limited to the golem.”
“In the event it is not, we had best have the contingency plan ready to deploy.”
Myn dropped down and snatched Deacon from the golem’s shuddering head. With him safely gathered, both Garr and Myn flew to a safe distance. Freet streaked back with Shah in tow. She carried her stolen thir crystal.
“Here it is!” she trilled.
The gem was glowing brightly with absorbed magic. Between Myranda’s and Deacon’s spells, Ether’s presence, and quite possibly even the spells animating the golem, the area was positively bathed in energy.
“Good, good,” Deacon said. “Myranda, do you think—”
“I can make the smaller one the target, but I’ve never quite understood the portal magic.”
Deacon flexed his left hand and adjusted his ring. “I believe I’ve worked out that aspect of their magic sufficiently. At least, I hope I have.”
They shut their eyes and set to work. It turned Myranda’s stomach to know that the spells she wove had been born of a D’Karon mind. Even utilizing their magic for good was distasteful to her. The mark on her palm tingled and smoldered, as if to remind her of the thin ice she was walking upon, but she pressed on. She forged her will into the proper shape and imposed it upon the crystal. It pulsed and flickered, but finally the prepared spell took hold. It pressed like a coiled spring into the crystalline prison. With just a hint of will, it would consume the stolen energy and become a beacon for a D’Karon portal to open upon.
Deacon’s work was more complex. All others watched in concern, fearful that the golem’s twitching and rattling might become more violent. Fragments of its otherwise impervious body cracked and dropped away. A dim but undeniable light was shining from some of the deeper fractures.
“Listen carefully,” Myranda said to Shah. “When Deacon is through, we need someone to be ready to carry the entry point of the portal somewhere far away, very quickly, should it be deemed necessary.”
“Me and Ether are the fastest! At least, when we’re together,” Shah said. “I’ll do it!”
“Are you certain? You’ve risked your life so many times for us already.”
“It’s right! It’s right to do it!” Shah said. “And I want to do what’s right.”
“There,” Deacon said, holding out the crystal. “It is done.”
The crystal’s glow was different now. It had less of the piercing violet appearance and more of a warmer golden glow. It was as if the presence of Deacon’s spell had imbued the crystal with a purity that had not been there before.
Shah took if from his hands. It was a struggle. The palm-sized gem probably weighed more than she did, but she buzzed her wings and remained aloft. “What do I do when I get far enough away?”
“Focus your mind and think of the word ‘open.’ And don’t forget to drop it and fly clear once you activate it. The spell will do the rest. But do it only if we say so. Far too much D’Karon magic has been used today already.”
“All right!” Shah said, hefting the gem and awaiting further orders.
“What can I do?” Freet asked. “I want to do right too!”
“This isn’t a game, fairy,” Ether snapped. “Not everyone gets a turn.”
Myranda held up her gem. “We need to keep this near the golem’s feet. It needs to be beneath the golem when it opens, and it cannot be crushed before then.”
“And we can’t be sure of when it will open, as that will be triggered by Shah,” Deacon added.
Freet looked to the golem, which continued its odd, rattling attempts at fulfilling all of its orders. “I’ll do it!” he said.
He snatched the thir crystal and launched toward the golem. Myranda wasn’t entirely comfortable placing so dangerous and important a job in the hands of the fairies, but they had shown themselves to be capable and dedicated—and right now, they needed all the help they could get. Now that the soldiers had determined their attacks weren’t doing any good against the golem, and at the moment it seemed to no longer be advancing, a healthy proportion of them had split away from the city and were marching toward where Ivy, Reyce, and Boviss were waiting and watching.
“Come on,” Myranda said, “Our job isn’t through yet…”
#
Reyce watched the troops as they approached. They were readying their bows. He looked to Boviss. The dragon was barely stirring. By the time he was able to do battle once more, it would be too late. Reyce fought a breath into his lungs with a telltale hesitation.
“I know that sound,” Ivy said, pulling his arm over her shoulder to take a bit more of the weight off him. “That’s a broken rib. You need treatment.”
He pulled his arm from her grip and pushed her away. “No… This is the moment I have planned for. I knew I would be giving my life today. I am ready.”
Ivy clenched her fists. “People like you are always so ready to die for something. Don’t you understand dying is the easy part? If you die here, your troubles are over, but the people you leave behind have to live on, knowing they’ve lost you and that they’ll lose everything else because of you. If you want to do your people some good, live.”
“Even with the blessing of the D’Karon, it cannot be.”
“What are you going to do? Fight them alone?”
He lowered his head and took another breath. “I am not alone.”
Reyce raised his hand and spread his fingers, then dropped it with a slicing gesture. One by one, forms unseen until now flickered into vague visibility around him. The others of his force, arriving after heeding his call. Just as when he’d done battle with Grustim, they maintained the greatest part of their mystic veil. They made their numbers known, but not their nature. Almost two hundred of them stood with weapons ready. A match for the force approaching them. The sudden appearance of the greater force caused the elves to pause, but only briefly. Now with their targets in sight, they began to form ranks and draw bowstrings.
“On my word,” Reyce said. “Not before…”
“No!” Myranda called from above.
Myn touched down. Myranda and Deacon jumped from her back. Garr landed beside them, though he and Grustim were more concerned with the dragon.
“Leave us or be struck down as well,” Reyce said.
“No one will be struck down!” Myranda hissed angrily.
She gripped her staff as she spoke, a twist of magic raising her voice and carrying it for all to hear. Deacon added his own twist to the spell, allowing the words to be understood by elf and malthrope alike.
“Listen to me! I know, with what you have seen, it may be difficult for you to believe it, but we have yet to pass the point of no return. War is not, nor should it ever be, inevitable. Terrible things were planned. Regrettable crimes were committed. But they were committed from a place of fear and anger.
If you put your weapons to work now, any of you, a worse crime by far will be committed. Soldiers of Sonril, if you fire your arrows first, I shall defend this force. And you, the people of Den. If you move against the soldiers, I shall defend them. I am a representative of the Northern Alliance. I am the duchess of Kenvard. I am an ambassador of my people. And I am a warrior. If you wish for peace, I will broker it. But if you make war, you will find me a powerful foe.”
Reyce watched the elves as Myranda spoke her stirring words. He watched as she spoke them fearlessly, knowing full well that she risked not just her own life, but the future of peace for her entire nation. And yet she stood with her back to him. She stood with an army of his kind behind her. It was true, what Ivy had said. For him, for his kind, there was no longer anything to be gained by the war he’d hoped to begin and end today, and everything to be lost. He still had Boviss, if he recovered. The dragon could rain devastation upon them, but not enough to end them. Not enough to keep them from the task of hunting down his people, of extinguishing the last of the malthropes.
In the middle distance, the golem’s rattling and malfunctioning began to slow, fresh fractures fouling its joints. The most potent of his weapons was gone from his grasp. His assassins had been stopped. His golem had been stopped. This woman and her friends had done the impossible against him. Perhaps… perhaps she could do the impossible for him. Again, he took a painful breath.
“Lower your weapons,” he ordered.
The half-seen forms of his people obeyed without hesitation.
Myranda called across the field to the elves. “They have as much as extended their hands in peace. Will you do the same?”
With good reason, the elves were more reluctant. Boviss, though still laid low by the golem attack, was clearly alive. But the words of a noble in service of their king carried weight. Their arrows did not leave the strings of their bows, but they relaxed the tension and lowered their aim.
Myranda’s posture eased slightly. “Good. If there is room on the battlefield for wisdom, then there is a chance for us all.”
Reyce swept his eyes across the battlefield, unwilling to believe what he saw. The history of his people, and his own two eyes, had shown time and again that dealings with other creatures ended in disaster for his kind. What few allies they had came at a terrible price, or required constant vigilance lest they turn viciously against them. But here—in a place he had personally and willfully turned into a battlefield—humans, malthropes, fairies, elves, and dragons all stood face-to-face. The windy form of the shapeshifter coalesced, her eyes set resolutely upon him with the same emotional intensity that had shaken the others when they had first seen him, mortals, immortals, even creatures supposedly touched by the divine. And they were all ready to meet each other as equals. For so many years, his entire life, something like this had seemed like a childish dream. And for months he had crafted this terrible scheme, trying all the while to remind himself that those he targeted did not consider his kind to be anything more than animals, and would be better off slaughtered like them. And during all that, a single voice whispered in his ear, coaxing him, goading him.
The ground trembled as though the mere thought of the elder dragon roused him from his daze. Boviss got his feet under him and stood. The motion brought the elven soldiers to attention again, their weapons quickly raised, targeting the dragon. He widened his stance and dug his claws deep into the earth, teeth bared and fire hissing from his nostrils. The raw anger in his expression turned his natural grin into something wholly other.
“Reyce,” Myranda said, her staff gripped tightly, its gem glowing.
“Boviss, be still,” he ordered.
“Be still?” he rumbled. “The enemy is at hand.”
“Perhaps there need not be an enemy here today.”
The dragon’s eyes narrowed. His gaze slid toward Reyce. “After all of this time. After all of this planning. After keeping me on a short chain for generations. After seeking my wisdom and relying upon my strength. You would turn coward at the final moment?”
“How I choose to lead my people is none of your concern. Stand down.”
Boviss growled. For a smaller predator, such a sound was frightening enough. For the elder dragon, the sound was almost beyond hearing. Pebbles at their feet shook and rattled. Trees in the distance lost leaves. It was as though the land itself was trembling in fear. Myranda, Deacon, and the others set their eyes firmly upon the dragon. Gems burned with mystic light. Reyce stood tall and met Boviss’s gaze.
“Stand. Down.” Reyce stated.
Boviss’s answer was a single word, spoken through a gout of fiery breath.
“… Die.”
#
Myranda and Deacon each raised a shield. Though they’d done their best to prepare for his attack, they never could have anticipated its raw intensity. The flames rippled against the conjured barriers. Sheets of brilliant fire splashed back upon Boviss. The air seared and sizzled against all present and filled the whole of the field with a blinding, brilliant light.
Boviss rocked the ground with a powerful leap, taking to the sky before those on the ground could recover. Myranda blinked the afterimage of the flames away. The defense she and Deacon had raised against the breath of flame had not been enough. The worst of the attack had been deflected or absorbed, but the shields had broken. She looked to where Reyce had been, fully expecting to see him roasted to ash… Yet, he still lived. Between him and where Boviss had been stood Ether, her form smoldering as she drank away the last of the flame. The shapeshifter looked Reyce in the eye and reached for his face.
“So much like him… You could be him… I cannot allow you to fall as he did…”
The raw intensity and torment evident within Ether at the sight of someone so like the creature she’d cared so deeply for was nearly a match for the flames she’d absorbed. But there was no time to indulge them. Boviss was already looping around, maw agape and flames ready for a second blast. All warriors on the battlefield, elves and malthropes included, acted as one. A hail of arrows peppered the dragon’s open mouth. Reyce’s soldiers looked to him for orders.
“Spread out! Ready your weapons!” he bellowed.
Myranda and Deacon hopped onto Myn’s back to join Garr, who had already launched after Boviss. Even Ether burst into a whirl of wind and roared skyward. Only Ivy and Shah lingered beside the chieftain. Though he had been spared the dragon’s flame, the battle thus far had left him in no shape for battle against the beast. Shah landed on Ivy’s shoulder as she stood beside him.
“Reyce, please, take shelter. If Boviss realizes you are still alive…” she urged.
“My people fight, and so I must fight,” Reyce said. “The beast has shown his true colors. We’ve come this far on his counsel. If his aim was to wipe us away, he has come shamefully close under my watch. He shall come no further. Your friends fight well, but they do not know Boviss as I do. They do not know his strength, his tenacity. They may survive, but they will not keep him from blood if that is what he seeks. If you care for them, help them. I intend to do the same.”
Sparks and flares of brilliant white stirred around Ivy. The blue of fear, the red of anger, and the yellow of joy were quite common, but white was rare. White was duty. Focus. She reached to her belt and slid her hands into the grips of special blades, punch daggers made specifically for her. She was exhausted, drained by the D’Karon crystals, and battered in her last clash with Boviss. There wasn’t much left for her to give, but as the certainty crystallized, she knew she had to strike down this beast before it took those she treasured most.
“Stay safe,” she insisted. “Please, just stay safe…”
Ivy dashed along with the other malthrope soldiers, eyes raised to the sky. Shah darted along after her, determined to be ready if they decided she and her portal gem were needed.
At last, only Reyce remained. He gripped his injured side and clutched one of the D’Karon gems. He would be of little use in battle.
His every plan had depended upon the weapons he’d been able to amass. The D’Karon magic, the golem, the wasps.
His eyes drifted to the sack Ivy had left behind. Perhaps he could yet save his people…
#
Boviss roared forward, enduring the endless bolts of magic and blasts of flame without any sign of weakening. If he’d chosen to do so, the elder dragon could easily have burned Rendif and a dozen cities like it to cinders before they could stop him, but for the moment, general devastation was abandoned in favor of a single focused target for his rage. If not for Myranda, his machinations would have succeeded. For spoiling his plans, he was clearly determined to make her pay with her life. His jaws snapped, barely missing Myn’s tail as she dove away from him. As Ether buffeted him with wind and Ivy slashed at him whenever he ventured near enough to the ground, he kept his eyes on Myranda.
“This is your doing, wizard,” he roared. “The work of decades, ruined by the words and actions of a pathetic spell caster and her allies.”
“Myranda, we need to get you to safety,” Deacon called.
“No. I won’t abandon the battle.”
“But the child!”
“I won’t abandon the battle.”
Boviss hissed. “Humans had no place here. You should not have come! This would have rid me of the malthropes. It would have rid me of the elves. It would have made them all pay for daring to call my land theirs! To wound me. To imprison me. And it was ruined by you.”
This voice thundered around them, but more potent was the raw intensity of his anger. It was like a broiling heat in Myranda’s mind, rivaling even his burning breath.
“I don’t understand it. If he had such hatred for the malthropes and the elves, and he has such power, why not attack them ages ago?” Deacon said. “He could have easily wiped out Den in a single day.”
Myn swept upward and planted her claws on Boviss’s head, springing off him to get some distance. This brought them terrifyingly close, and gave them a clear view of the forged replacements for his limbs.
“I think… I think somehow, ages ago, it was the elves and the malthropes who injured him. Grustim said that a dragon can be consumed by fear. It happens when something proves to be a threat even when they believe themselves invincible. I think he is afraid of them.”
The Crescents Page 31