He’d stood up to the Arch-Mage of Armethalieh—his own father—and the consequences of that had been grim enough to make him wary of the penalties of rash defiance. The full cost of that act was one Kellen was only barely coming to realize, one that he was going to face for the rest of his life. What would be the price of making a personal enemy of the Prince of the Demon Legions of Hell and his allies?
Kellen stood shivering in his underpadding and leather socks. He picked up the keystone again. The crystal was warm in his hands, the only warmth in all the world. It seemed to pulse with sleeping life.
He hesitated, glancing up at the fog of green lightning around the obelisk.
He was afraid. He had to acknowledge that. In fact, he was terrified. Not because he didn’t know what would happen, but because he was fairly sure he did. No matter what was to come, it was going to be bad. The only question was, how bad?
For a moment Kellen felt nothing but panic and despair that held him frozen in place where he stood. He felt the hatred here, in a way that was hard to articulate. The things that had created this place, the emotion they had for everything that was not them was so malevolent that the word hatred didn’t begin to describe it. Even if he succeeded here—and there was no guarantee of that—nothing would be over. All the four of them would have done was end the drought in the Elven lands and alert Shadow Mountain to the fact that the Elves knew the Endarkened were moving against them and preparing to strike at the World Above once more. Shadow Mountain would still be as powerful. The Elves would still be as weak. Armethalieh would still be as blind and arrogant, thinking of nothing but itself.
Nothing much would change for anyone, except for Kellen. He would have made powerful enemies, enemies that would not stop until they had taken their revenge for what he’d done here today. Was even Sentarshadeen strong enough to protect him? Would they, if they could?
Would he want them to? Could he live with being the reason why Shadow Mountain brought their agents, their armies, against the Elves of Sentarshadeen?
He looked down at the keystone. He held his future in his hands. He could drop it and run. It would break. If not here, then he could do it once he got to the other side of the cairn, where the others wouldn’t see. He could throw it off the side of the cairn. Then he wouldn’t have to make this choice. He wouldn’t have all the Demons of Shadow Mountain after him personally. He could sneak down the far side, get back to Armethalieh somehow. Lycaelon would forgive him—especially if he renounced the Wild Magic and told him everything he knew about the trouble among the Elves and in the border lands.
Oh, he could see it so clearly: he could become his father’s favored son again; there’d be some tale put about of his having been sent out as a special agent, and he’d be safe, safe, safe …
But then he looked at Vestakia. She’d struggled to her feet, clutching at Shalkan’s shoulder for support. Vestakia had lived every day of her life on the run from the Prince of Shadow Mountain—not hypothetically but really—she’d been fathered by a Demon but had never given up the fight to be human. He looked at Jermayan, who hated Demons with every fiber of his Elven soul, but stood beside a woman who looked like one, who had been fathered by one, and did so now because he trusted Kellen.
Both of them—and Shalkan—were counting on him to keep his part of the bargain he’d begun when he first began to read The Book of Moon. He couldn’t back out now. This was his price. He wouldn’t refuse to pay it.
Maybe I’ll die here, Kellen thought in a kind of grim hope. Compared to being the target of the entire race of Demons, death didn’t seem terribly bad. Death—or failure—if he died trying, surely Jermayan would take up the stone (if it was still intact) and see the task to its end. Surely, now that he knew what to do with it, it didn’t require a Wildmage to actually put it in place!
He clutched the keystone tighter, imagining it cracking in his hands—accidentally!—knowing that even amid the guilt and horror he would feel nothing so much as relief at the choice and responsibility that would be taken from him in that moment. I’m only a boy! I’m only seventeen! a voice deep within his mind shouted despairingly. I’ve never done anything special in my life! I’m not ready for this!
Part of him yearned desperately to believe that, but even if it were true, it couldn’t be allowed to make a difference now. Ready or not, able or not, he had to do what he had come here for, because so very much depended on him.
He turned away from the others and began to walk slowly across the broken wasteland toward the cairn. Taking the first step was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and it was only after he’d begun to walk that Kellen realized he hadn’t even said good-bye. But he knew that if he stopped, or turned back, or spoke, he would never have the strength to start walking again, and so he gritted his teeth and kept walking. If he got back, he’d be able to explain. If they all died here, it wouldn’t matter.
He had not gotten more than twenty paces away before the first attack struck him.
Only it wasn’t the first attack, was it? They’d been under attack from the moment they set foot on the mountaintop, Kellen realized. Why else would he even have considered betraying his friends and going back to Armethalieh?
It was terrifying to realize he couldn’t even trust his own thoughts!
I won’t give in, he told himself stubbornly. I WILL take the keystone to the top of the cairn. I WILL do what Idalia trusted me to do. I WILL …
The next attack was subtle as well, though now Kellen was suspicious of everything. It began with pain, but not intense pain, only the dull aching of every muscle in his body. As if he were in the throes of a fever, except that he was so cold … as if he had been beaten from head to toe. But the pain increased the nearer he drew to the cairn. His real injuries hurt far more than they should have. Each step was an agony, as if his muscles were filled with lead. Each impact of his foot against the ground jarred his bruises into sullen life, until his whole body ached like a rotten tooth, and he trembled with pain as much as cold.
Though he knew his friends were only a few yards away, that if he turned and looked back he could still see them, Kellen felt utterly alone, as if when he had taken that first step he had somehow passed into a place where they could not follow.
And despite the fact that he was the one who had moved, he felt as if it was they who had abandoned him. He was out here alone, likely to die, and they didn’t care.
Jermayan doesn’t care about me. He never did. He only cares about the Elves, about ending the drought. He only pretended to like me to get me here.
If Idalia was such a great Wildmage, why hadn’t she come back to the City for him? Why had she left him to suffer, lonely and despised in his father’s house? She knew better than anyone else what it was like, but she had left him there. And then, Idalia had left him again, to do this thing that he wasn’t ready for, and she didn’t care.
Why had Alance left both of them with Lycaelon, knowing what kind of man he was? What kind of mother would abandon her children to a man like that? His mother had thought only of herself and the trap that she was escaping. She didn’t care either, about either of her children.
Why had no one in all the City cared what Lycaelon did to either of his children? The Law was supposed to be Armethalieh’s greatest treasure, but the Mages set themselves above the Law. No one would interfere in a Mage’s personal life, and so—corrupt, petty, vindictive as they were—the Mages of Armethalieh were a Law above the Law, and their families suffered for it. And the Mages gave everyone the safe little world that they wanted, no one cared what that cost.
No one cared.
He knew his thoughts were petty, unworthy, coming from a part of him that wanted to live at any price, that would do anything, say anything, to get him to give up and turn back. He knew the thoughts came from the cairn, from Shadow Mountain, from the Demons. Kellen ignored the voice, letting it say what it would, letting the words pass over him unheeded. He didn’t even care if that
inward voice reflected who he truly was. It wasn’t who he wanted to be. It wasn’t who he would be.
He had a choice. He was free.
Kellen walked on.
He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, both to shut out the terrifying sight of the obelisk, and to keep from stepping on a stone. The only thing covering his feet were the thick leather socks he had worn beneath his armored boots. Kellen’s feet were quickly growing numb with cold, but if he stepped on a stone and cut himself, or twisted his ankle, he might not be able to walk. And he had to be able to walk, at least as far as the top of the cairn.
Even if he was alone and abandoned. Even if he had no true friends, no family worthy of the name. Even if despair weighed him down so heavily that it felt as if he should be staggering beneath the weight of it. Despair drove him even to tears; he felt them leaking out of the corners of his eyes, but he was too sunk in despondency to care.
At last—he had no idea how long it took—Kellen reached the ring of stones at the foot of the cairn. They were not directly at the base, he saw now, nor did they completely enclose it. There was a gap about six feet wide between two tall stones, and through the gap he could see that the cairn did not rest on the same level ground as the rest of the mountaintop, but at the bottom of a deep pit which began a few feet inside the ring of stones. The sides of the pit were absolutely vertical except where a long sloping path led down between the stones and into the pit.
The cairn was much taller than he’d realized; from where the four of them had stood, they had only been able to see the top two-thirds. He would have to go down in order to go up. Down into a place that had almost certainly been designed as a trap.
Kellen hesitated just outside the tall stones, almost unable to force himself to walk between them. The closer he got to the obelisk, the more he could sense the Darkness radiating from it. The air seemed thick and dirty, heavy now with that bitter scent and taste, making him reluctant to breathe, as if he were accepting the obelisk’s foulness into his lungs when he did. With a conscious effort, Kellen compelled himself to breathe deeply. There was no point in half-measures when he was actually going to have to touch the thing.
He felt a little better once he did, as if the icy air had cleared his head, and a few good breaths had actually swept some of that despair away from him. He was shivering in earnest now, and his body ached with cold. He wished he had his sword, or even a dagger, but the instructions that had come with the keystone had been quite specific. He could bring nothing with him but the keystone. The stone and himself.
He continued forward, stumbling a little through the stones, down the path to the cairn itself.
In the temporary relief from the wind, it was almost warm. He could still hear it moaning, but at least the cold wasn’t cutting through to his bones. Going down was a little easier than going up, which made it a little easier to resist the spiritual attack on him, the attempt to make him give up before he started.
And in a way, that was heartening. If despair was the Demons’ primary weapon—perhaps the odds weren’t as great as he feared.
Soon he was facing the cairn itself, and the long winding grey stone staircase that led to the top.
Here was where the Demons had battled in his vision—hordes of them beneath a black-red sky filled with green lightning. Had his vision been of the past, or of the near-future? Would they come now?
He could feel them, though they were not visible. Their presence was everywhere. And one step on the stairs would be the trigger that released them.
He almost turned back then to warn the others, though he wasn’t sure even now what he’d say. Why hadn’t he told them earlier, when there was time?
You’re stalling, he realized, and smiled grimly to himself. Stalling didn’t make this any easier, and not going up those stairs didn’t guarantee that the monsters from his dreams and visions wouldn’t come. No matter what he did, they would come.
He took a step forward and placed his foot on the first of the steps.
Suddenly the wind’s force increased, changing from a steady monotonous whine to a howling gale in an instant. But even that was not enough to mask the shrieks, the howls, the tumult of the creatures as they were released from whatever arcane concealment they’d been held in.
He looked back. He could see nothing but the wall of the pit, but he didn’t need to see to know what was happening now, this instant.
This was the place of the monsters of his vision, and the monsters were on their way. Imprisoned in the rocks, perhaps, or held in pits, or even materializing out of the thin air, taking the path between the rocks to the cairn, to tear him limb from limb and end the threat of the keystone forever.
He had never had a chance, of course, and he stood there in a state of fatalistic resignation, waiting for them to come.
But fast as they must be, Jermayan and the others were faster. Ill and wounded as they were, it was Jermayan, Shalkan, and Vestakia—not the monsters—who appeared between the rocks that guarded the entrance to the path. They took a stand just between the tall rocks Kellen had passed through. The stones formed a natural gateway to the cairn, and one that could be defended.
As the Seven defended that pass?
He saw Vestakia snatch Jermayan’s bow and quiver from his shoulder, and nock an arrow on the string, and fire.
Kellen hesitated, on the verge of turning back to help them. But he had no weapons, no armor, only the keystone in his hands.
It could be that this was what the Demons wanted him to do—turning back to help his friends would certainly doom them, for unless he placed the keystone on top of the obelisk and triggered the spell, all was truly lost.
He trembled in place, almost physically torn in two.
—Longing to run to join them as a Knight-Mage should.
—Knowing his duty as a Wildmage and a Knight-Mage lay in finishing the task he’d begun.
A Wildmage’s honor lies in betrayal. Finally I understand.
With a bitter cry, he turned away from the sight of his friends, blinking hard against sudden tears.
They were going to die. Jermayan was wounded, Shalkan and Vestakia were poisoned by the emanations of this hellish place. The three of them could barely stand. How could they fight?
Go on. Don’t make them die for nothing.
He took a second step, then a third, up the grey stairs. And then, he began to run.
“HOW long?” Vestakia asked in a small voice, watching Kellen walk away from them.
“As long as it takes to climb the tower and set the keystone into position,” Jermayan answered shortly. He took a step forward, leaning heavily on his sword as he peered after Kellen. His wound—or the hell-spawned magic of this place—must be affecting his vision. The boy seemed somehow insubstantial, as though he moved through mist. But no. The rocks around him were as sharp as ever to Jermayan’s sight. It was only Kellen who had taken on the aspect of unreality.
He darted a suspicious glance at Vestakia, but the sight of her obvious misery was enough to make even Jermayan think twice about accusing her.
“Where he goes now, even you cannot follow, Elven Knight,” Shalkan said. The unicorn sounded utterly weary, and pressed close against Vestakia, as if seeking comfort there.
“Will he die?” Jermayan asked, putting his greatest fear into words.
“We will all die if he cannot do this,” Shalkan said flatly. “We three. Sentarshadeen. The Wildwood. Even Armethalieh and beyond. If they cannot be held here, the trickle of gravel that heralds the avalanche will have begun.”
When Jermayan looked again, Kellen had nearly reached the rocks surrounding the cairn, moving toward the natural gateway in the stone ring. Yet he could not have gone so far at the slow pace he’d been making in the short time since Jermayan had last looked. Jermayan shuddered. This was a horrible place. Nothing was as it seemed, but all of it was evil, polluted, and vile. The pain of his wounds was a wholesome thing compared to the crawling sense of un
cleanness that seemed to fill the very air, and Jermayan was neither Wildmage, nor Demon-bred, nor creature of magic. How much worse must it be for the others?
There was nothing to do but wait.
Slowly it grew darker.
“Ah, Good Goddess save us!” Vestakia cried in a high terrified voice, jerking away from Shalkan. “Something is coming!”
Jermayan whirled, swinging his sword up and taking a defensive stance, though the movement made him feel as if someone had plunged a red-hot poker into his side. For a moment he saw nothing, then his keen Elven eyes detected a flicker of shadow at the edges of several of the boulders.
Without thought, he grabbed Vestakia’s hand and ran.
The stone ring—they’re after Kellen—
Behind him, he heard howling.
Chapter Twenty-five
Battle at the Cairn
THE THREE OF them reached the stone gateway and turned to face their pursuers. Jermayan leaned against one of the pillars for support, and as he did, he felt Vestakia reaching under his cloak, pulling his bow and quiver free.
“I know how to use these,” she said grimly, slinging the heavy war-quiver over her shoulder. It held six dozen arrows, but she shouldered its weight without difficulty. She strung the bow and nocked an arrow with one swift expert motion.
“This is the only way to the cairn,” Shalkan reported, drawing himself up and preparing to fight. His horn had begun to glow: the bright silvery blue of moonlight.
“We have to hold them here for as long as we can,” Jermayan said grimly. The pain of his wound was forgotten; an Elven Knight was trained to ignore such things. But it would sap his strength, his speed …
He didn’t say what they all knew: they were going to die here. The Demon-girl was welcome to his dagger as well as his bow, but they faced overwhelming numbers. All they could do was buy Kellen time.
The Outstretched Shadow Page 72