by T. A. Miles
It was something he should have shared far sooner, but this was not the time to bicker over any of it. His fellow priest was in direct conflict with an archdemon and Vlas had every intention of aiding him, but first the well had to be at least understood. He’d watched the archdemon draw from it once already and apparently, she bathed her physical form in it regularly. It was probably only he and Korsten who fully understood how dangerous that made her.
Vaelyx seemed to come around. He made eye contact with Vlas. “This place has to come down,” the man said, as one who knew what he was asking may not even be possible. “We have to bury it.”
“So, literally dammed,” Vlas translated, glancing past Vaelyx at the well, by way of Imris, who was listening.
She confirmed it by stating, “It was no spell which caused the rockslide.”
“What was it?” Vlas asked either of them, since he suspected Vaelyx knew better than any of them what was going on in this place.
“She’s right,” Vaelyx replied. “It was fire tactics.”
Vlas looked from one to the other, awaiting further explanation.
Imris provided it. “The people of the Islands have studied fire for generations. They have ways with it that could benefit an army.”
Vaelyx heaved a sigh of stress and confirmed her statement. “It was one of the assets we hoped to gain when we first began to cooperate. I believed Ceth would be interested in knowing about it.”
“I’m certain that he would,” Vlas said. “By the sound of it. Tell me more. Can we utilize it here?”
Vaelyx looked to Imris this time, ignoring her disapproving frown while he spoke to both of them. “Oh, we could. We’d have to find their supply first.”
“Their supply of fire?” Vlas questioned.
Vaelyx returned his gaze to him. “Of material to produce fire...more quickly and disruptively than you’d know beyond spell casting.”
“Can you find it?” Vlas asked next, forcing himself around his natural curiosity. This was something that could be studied later, should any of them survive this.
“We can find it,” Imris promised, and he very much appreciated her commitment.
He wanted to ask her if she and Vaelyx would actually be able to use such tools or materials once found, but he knew her answer would be ‘yes’. Whether or not she had any prior experience, he believed her, that she could find what they needed and make use of it. There were the ghouls to contend with, and Vaelyx, but he had confidence in her to deal with both and without his help. The demons were here and so was another priest. Vlas’ place was here as well.
“Go,” Vlas said to both of them. “Be careful.”
Vaelyx went and after an extended moment of regarding Vlas with her mottled eyes and her natural frown, Imris went as well.
“Thank you,” Vlas said quietly after they’d passed, then looked to the well, where a brood of oddly embodied demons loitered confusedly around the priest and archdemon. Where was Merran? The question parted as quickly as it had arrived while Vlas set his focus on Serawe and Korsten, and where he could begin to help.
Twenty-Three
With Korsten vanished, Merran had no option for immediate distraction. In the periphery of his awareness, Ersana struggled to calm a writhing Dacia.
Blood stained the girl’s hair, skin, and dress where the husk of the demon had wrapped around her. The remains of the vessel sat in moist-looking fragments and small deposits of blood after Korsten’s departure and Dacia’s subsequent fall into some manner of fit. Over what, Merran could not be certain. The crone appeared unconcerned with any of it, bent as she was on removing Merran from her presence.
The Ancient’s unnatural limbs thrashed about in a persistent attempt to connect with Merran. He relied on his ability to anticipate her movements to spare himself damage from her attacks and inserted his own where he was able. Fire seemed her greatest fear, though she tended to laugh whenever he worked a spell against her. Beneath her deep chortles, appendages of the tree she’d become shied from the heat and beat themselves in puddles whenever they caught fire.
Merran’s frustration was with the lack of serious or lasting harm the spells did. He would have to find a way to inflict greater damage on the crone, else it would be a matter of who exhausted first. He didn’t have any doubt that one so ancient as her would far outlast him.
You cannot defeat me. The crone’s voice resounded in his mind, reaching into his senses like narrow roots taking hold, expanding as they attempted to draw life out of him. She was trying to sap his will and thereby his strength; a spell of her own. It would have far less effect on him with his soul shielded by Eolyn as it was. Merran risked slowing his movement deliberately where he could to have her think otherwise. Her ignorance about a priest would only be an advantage if she remained ignorant.
Her limbs swept over him in quick succession, as if she were testing his Endurance and the effectiveness of her magic against him. Unfortunately, she was intelligent and unlikely to be fooled for long.
Merran continued with his efforts anyway, ducking down to avoid being crushed. He rose slower intentionally, though as one of the heavier limbs passed even nearer than the others before it, he was forced down by the sheer strength of its wake. He was rolled by the force of its passing and lay on his back for a moment long enough to be caught beneath the light from the ceiling.
In that instant, Merran was able to see that it was a large cluster of crystals, held to the ceiling by the roots that had penetrated the softer earth which formed it. Undoubtedly that had been augmenting the crone’s capacity for and use of magic. Still, a fantastic amount had to have gone into the Summoning, which Merran presumed was the reason she hadn’t attacked harder yet. She wanted to wear him down while she replenished herself.
A shadow passed over him. He felt the mass behind it bearing down on him and rolled quickly away. The sensation of the limb’s passing scoured across his back and shoulders and almost pulled him back into the shallow crater its crushing weight formed in the floor.
Merran continued onto his front with effort, and pushed himself to his feet. Drawing his sword, he quickly cast Fire onto it and stabbed the instantly heated blade into the wood. It writhed as if a pinned worm and jerked him roughly forward with its pull away from him. He managed to hold his footing and recover his weapon.
Taking a moment to locate Ersana and Dacia, Merran found them retreating to the stairwell. Ersana held the crystal she’d tied around the girl’s neck in place while guiding her with some haste out of the fray.
Merran made quick steps toward the main body of the crone. Sheathing his sword, he cast a Barrier in front of himself and held it, bring it forward with him while he ran. The crone’s assaults threatened to throw him from his course, but he maintained focus on the core of her, moving faster.
When he drew near enough, Merran let go the Barrier and drew his sword once more, hurriedly casting Fire onto it. With as much strength as he could muster, he put both hands onto the hilt and swung heavily into the bole. It went in wide and deep, embedding itself beyond recovery.
The crone bellowed complaint that bludgeoned his insides with its reverberation. Her smoldering body jerked and threw him from it and his sword, which the trunk quickly claimed with thin but rapidly growing threads of green wood.
Merran landed on his shoulder first and felt it give a little, before he rolled and possibly spared it from separating. A vine thrashed to life from the floor and wrapped his leg immediately. He cast Fire at a level that would shock it enough to shake it loose, then backed himself up and put down a low wall of heat. His gaze went next to the ceiling and his hands set to work.
You will die here, the crone assured him, but he barely listened while he focused on the gestures required for a Shroud. The air around them began to quickly darken, dimming the light from the crystal significantly. The crone’s presence fell gra
dually from him and the crone emitted another deep laugh.
She said nothing more, and made no further attack.
Merran rose to his feet.
In the same moment, the crystal cracked. Striations radiated outward, onto the ceiling around it and in the process, water slipped through. What were thin lines of threading drops rapidly swelled to wide bands.
“Priest Merran!”
The shout came from Dacia. Recovered from the demon’s hold, she sounded young and afraid.
Merran went to the stairwell, his footsteps hindered by water that was quickly accumulating.
Both Dacia and Ersana reached out to him, urging him into the shelter that would be very temporary. All the while the crone laughed, assured of her victory.
Merran was determined to spite her. “Do you understand a Reach?” He asked Ersana, shouting to be heard over the crone and the water, which already lapped at his heels on the first steps of the stairwell.
Ersana nodded once. “Yes!” she said.
“Then help me Reach us to the balcony!”
Again, Ersana nodded. She took Dacia’s hand and when she reached for Merran’s, he shook his head.
“I require both of mine.”
She settled to move closer and put a hand on his back. “Concentrate on the balcony, Dacia,” she instructed her daughter, who nearly shook with fear and with chill as the water rushing in cooled the still shrouded air. When Ersana said the girl’s name more firmly, she snapped alert and nodded her compliance.
That would have to suffice. Merran worked the Reach spell and noticed that while he did so, Ersana’s lips moved in an unheard incantation, which set the crystal around her own neck aglow.
The portal formed and moved quickly over them, bringing them up to the top of the chamber. They were ahead of the water for now.
Merran ushered mother and daughter quickly toward the route he knew would begin to take them out. He’d spent much of his strength on fighting the crone. He could not perform a Reach out of the caves entirely. Not yet.
Ersana provided a solution. “The gateway back to my home should still be open. It sits in one of the side chambers.”
“Let’s go to it,” Merran said, following her lead.
As they rushed back the way he and Korsten had come earlier, he considered the downward slope of the path and how quickly the water would rush down it, once it had risen high enough.
He wondered if he could cast a Barrier strong enough to hold it, simultaneously he considered Korsten’s idea; a Barrier that might be large enough and strong enough to hold back the wave the crone had summoned, though they could not be sure when it would strike and a Barrier could not hold indefinitely. They weakened gradually with distance from the caster and with time. No single priest could perform such a feat—a Barrier that could hold against the sea. There were four of them in Indhovan, but the gods only knew where Korsten had gone and for how long. Even so, the four of them would not be enough. It seemed likely that another city would fall.
Merran tried to rebuild some sense of optimism against the sense of dread that threatened to overcome him. He’d learned that more often than not such sensations were directly related to Foresight. That talent was not perfect foretelling, but it was often very accurate in its tone and what it suggested could happen, even without detail.
He was not accustomed to it being quite so immediate, but he could not deny the shattering of his hope in the moment he heard Ersana cry out in rage and disbelief.
“Mother!”
The woman rushed toward the base of the slope and the small chamber there. She held her arms out to her sides and looked to the ceiling. Roots covered it end to end. Merran had not noticed them when he and Korsten passed through before.
“Why?” Ersana demanded.
Dacia lingered in the space between her mother and Merran, who had stopped to observe Ersana’s outburst. The girl looked past him, where the crone’s mocking cackles resounded through the tunnel behind them. She was cold and trembling.
It occurred to Merran, as he watched her, that Korsten would have been insisting that they do something, even if there was nothing to be done. His partner often prevailed through reckless determination, just as he had at Lilende. Korsten had begun as a source of frustration to Merran, but quickly became an inspiration...and he loved him.
He loved him selfishly and he knew that it would ultimately keep Korsten from him. He didn’t know when exactly his drive had become only to track and destroy demons so completely, but he did know that it was Korsten’s arrival that shifted the nature of his determination. He knew also that Ashwin had seen the flaw in it before him, and with due authority, neutralized him long enough to prevent him behaving like a fool, all over his own selfishness.
Merran was turning away from others, leaving himself open only to one...one who included others, when he had no reason to and when it seemed a risk to. At this rate, Merran would isolate himself from Korsten as well. It disturbed him that the thought which immediately followed was of Ashwin, and how Korsten would only grow closer to the elder’s openness and compassion.
“Priest Merran...” The girl’s voice, currently small, went almost unheard.
Merran looked at her.
“What can we do?” Dacia asked. Even in her fear, she was determined to carry on if given direction.
Korsten would have consoled her. Merran knew that he could not. Even in the youngest days he could remember, before he knew of war, he’d been poor at alleviating the pain of others. It seemed almost a mockery on the gods’ part, that he should have Healing as a talent.
He summoned the talent he’d always felt more naturally inclined to in Endurance and said to the girl, “We can get out of here, before the water takes us.” Looking to Ersana, who still stood flustered in her disbelief over the crone’s betrayal, he said. “Let’s keep moving.”
Ersana summoned her daughter to her with an extended hand and the three of them continued on foot.
Very little seemed to work against Serawe. Korsten seemed only to be incensing the demon the longer he put off her satiation.
The demons around him were also getting restless, their borrowed blood more than likely stirring in response to their mistress’ frustration...or perhaps to Korsten’s. He couldn’t be certain whether or not he still held them enthrall. He’d attempted to Bind Serawe, but she broke loose almost immediately and he was forced to hastily cast Barrier. She drew back her arm and struck it harshly with her fist. She opened her hand for the second blow, stabbing through with fingers that had extended to claws. Korsten leaned back from their unnatural reach and summoned his own weapon again, whipping the narrow blade across her claws, severing more than one.
The demon withdrew, a hiss of irritation and pain escaping her. In that moment, she was struck an invisible blow. Unprepared for it, she crumpled awkwardly onto her side.
Korsten looked to the Release’s caster in the same moment Serawe pivoted her head toward Vlas and hissed once again, fangs baring themselves.
“Careful!” Korsten warned his fellow priest.
That was all the communication they had time for, before Serawe rolled herself disjointedly onto all fours and sprang upward from the cavern floor. From the ceiling, she laughed at them, her voice layering over itself and echoing throughout the chamber in a disturbing chorus.
The other demons drew suddenly alert to Vlas and set into motion toward him.
“Don’t!” Korsten shouted instinctively.
This time, the beasts failed to listen.
Vlas was shielding himself with a Barrier and Korsten took the moments Vlas’ quick thinking had afforded them to lure the demons back to him. He drew in a deep breath and steeled himself and his emotions, dropping himself into a state of calm and what he’d come to realize was also trust; trust in himself, trust in the magic within him...his gift
s from the gods and from his predecessor...and trust also in the demons.
In these moments of Allurance, of seduction, and of promise, they belonged to one another...bound by blood’s calling, in a pitch the demons could not ignore and that connected Korsten to them as he spoke in a language that had no actual words. It was a sounding of emotions, primal and deep, causing a resonance within the very spirit. The Vadryn were greedy for it, and felt empowered by it. They stopped and turned toward him, crawling almost suppliantly over to where Korsten stood.
Above him on the ceiling, Serawe let loose a primal sound of her own, one of abject rage; rage over the lesser demons’ behavior and over her own response to Korsten’s Song. It was only her ancient being which enabled her to resist.
In a fit of temper, the archdemon summoned the blood from the basins to her. They shot toward the ceiling as if great trees had suddenly grown from the pools. The crimson pillars spread, like a network of branches and vines across the rock overhead, making it red and wet. Serawe concealed herself within the spread.
“You will never leave here,” she promised. The words drifted erratically through the chamber as she moved, making her location difficult to descry.
A bolt of blood shot down from the ceiling, impaling one of the embodied demons surrounding Korsten. The body became wet and broke loosely apart, chunks of it traveling up the shaft of blood, along with the wispy trail of the demon in its natural state. Within moments, it was swallowed into the mass on the ceiling.
“I am going to keep you,” Serawe promised. “Forever.”
In the corner of Korsten’s vision, Vlas remained still but cast him a questioning look. Korsten found himself both glad of his presence and worried over it simultaneously.
Vlas had a solid presence of mind and appeared well anchored within himself and his own rational senses. He was wary of the Vadryn, but not easily overcome by them—as no properly studied priest should have been. Still, there were several of the Vadryn present—one an archdemon—and Vlas was not a hunter.