“Still too far to see through the portals.” Rhiannon ground her teeth in frustration. “I can see the attackers, but not clearly enough to tell where they’ll be next.”
Gwen shuffled over to the portal and peered through. The wind whipped through brown grasses across the hillside. Cars drove on the road that followed the river’s curves, their drivers oblivious to the figures materializing and disappearing on the hill above them.
Another sound started on the dying echoes of the wolf’s howl, and Gwen scuttled back to Tristan’s viewing hole. From far above them rose a chorus of voices, unlike any Gwen had heard before. High, and pure as the tone of a bell, the notes of a song without melody fell over the valley with eerie grace. Gwen found her mouth agape and was relieved that Tristan looked as awed as she felt.
“The war song of the Whitecliff realm,” he whispered. “I’ve never heard it before. Watch the wind.”
No sooner had Tristan spoken than three whirlwinds appeared over the valley, visible only from the swirling snow caught in their vortices. They spun faster and grew smaller until each was a narrow cone over the trees. Then, one by one, figures were tossed high in the air and flung into the trees. The song faded until only echoes remained, and the winds resumed their normal bluster.
“Wow,” said Gwen breathlessly. “What was that? Who―”
“The other side will have some broken bones after that,” said Tristan. “Out of commission for a while. The war song of Whitecliff is powerful indeed.”
“Just broken bones?”
“Likely. No one aims to kill here—life is too precious for that. Disabling, capturing, injuries, those are all fair game.” Tristan grimaced. “Not that broken limbs are fun, but better than dead.”
“Then why don’t they just sing and take out all of the enemy?” said Gwen. She swallowed—those figures were people, people who were likely terribly injured now—but the worlds were at stake, and they couldn’t afford to lose. She clenched her fists to steady herself.
“A few reasons. They need to pinpoint the exact location, and our people also need to move out of the way. And it takes a tremendous burst of power, so I’ve heard. I wouldn’t doubt that all three of those singers are unconscious right now. There are only so many skilled enough in war song to pull off feats such as that.”
“More attacks,” said Devin. He leaned over the map. “Closer now. On the south bank.”
“They just emerged into the human world,” Rhiannon called out. “I think I can give useful directions now. Bring that map closer.”
Devin hastily dragged the leather over to Rhiannon. She briefly studied it, looked through the portal, then brought her glowing fingertip to the map. It traced a path that approximated the running Breenan in the human world. Gwen kneeled behind Rhiannon, careful not to get in her way. Three Breenan sprinted across the grasslands, far above the snug cottages in the village below. They stopped abruptly, and one held out his hand.
“They’re going to cross over!” Gwen cried. Rhiannon jabbed at the map. A golden dot that had been following Rhiannon’s finger now pulsed with light.
“What does that mean?” Gwen asked.
“They’re fighting,” said Rhiannon. “But they weren’t taken by surprise this time, thanks to us.”
Through the bushes, sparks and flashes of light burst above the tree line at the spot marked on the map. Gwen held her breath.
Then the trees went dark. Gwen glanced at the map. The once-flickering dot now gleamed golden and steady once more. Rhiannon sighed in relief.
“They did it.”
“There’s more!” called Bretta at the other portal. She gestured at the map wildly and Devin pushed it between her and Rhiannon. She jabbed her finger at the map and a different golden dot followed the trace. Howls drifted across the valley and Gwen shivered.
Trees below them began to sway, unconnected to the howling winds. Tristan leaned forward.
“Were you wondering what spells the Velvet Woods can cast, Gwen? Look at those trees.”
“What are they doing?” Gwen gasped. The trees looked alive, sentient, flailing wildly at something near their trunks.
“Doing their best to attack our people. Corann definitely has the room of enchantments figured out, enough for a battle, anyway.”
Rhiannon and Bretta feverishly traced path after path as Breenan appeared in the human world and dashed across the hillside. Gwen peeked in. A few humans stood at their doorsteps and watched the antics above with folded arms and open mouths.
The eerie singing started again, and some trace of the sound must have made its way to the human world, because a few of the watchers crossed themselves and retreated into their houses.
Drums started, a powerful bass that forced Gwen’s heart to beat in time. Rolling shudders traveled up and down Gwen’s back at the combination of song and deep drum. Then a shrieking cry started, and a crowd of people in the Otherworld burst out of the tree line to cross a small meadow beside the river Kennocha. They looked mad, tearing their clothes and screaming war cries in a wild frenzy. Even from this distance, Gwen recognized the foremost figure as Loniel.
Gwen had thought the meadow empty, but that was far from the truth. Her untrained eyes had not spotted the Breenan slide behind tree and bush, but now that a frenzied horde descended upon them, all thought of hiding was gone. They sprinted before Loniel and his people, fleeing the crazed crowd. An earth tremor caused some to stumble, but Loniel’s bonfire folk leaped on, undeterred.
Loniel raised his hands and grasses grew around the legs of the fleeing Breenan. They tripped and flailed, but the sparse trees growing in the meadow bent to attack the bonfire folk.
“They’re everywhere!” Rhiannon shouted. “In the human world. All running toward the same place.”
She and Bretta frantically traced paths with multiple fingers. Golden dots followed.
“Everyone’s coming to the meadow!” Gwen said. Breenan were popping out of portals all around the grassy space in the Otherworld. There were so many portals that the air surrounding was a patchwork of human and Otherworld.
There was no pretense of hiding any longer. The Breenan on their side burst out of the woods with flinging spell stones and hands held high to cast spells. A song began again to the counterpoint of drums, and the already wild wind became focused once more. Wolves howled, and Gwen clutched Tristan’s arm in fear as massive animals leaped into the fray. Flowers burst open, incongruous in the snow, and spat venom. The river rose in angry tendrils and flung itself toward the fighters. Lights flashed, and sparks flew.
Then the trees came alive. Grasping and reaching, branches flailed and dropped. Whole trunks uprooted themselves and toppled toward grappling Breenan. Screams of fear trailed up to their hidden lookout.
“Corann’s too powerful.” Tristan pressed his fingers to Gwen’s temples and she received a flash of memory—Tristan, much younger, in a grove of trees among other students—and a pulse of knowledge in her core. “Gwen, take over Bretta’s place. Bretta, come here. I have to go help.”
“Tristan! Your orders are to stay here.” Bretta’s brow furrowed.
“I can’t stand by and watch this.” Tristan crashed through the bush without another word and was gone.
Gwen scuttled over the root-strewn dirt to the portal, shaking. Now what? Was everyone really relying on her?
“Gloves off, Gwen.” Rhiannon was pale but composed. “The spell won’t work through leather.”
Gwen slipped her gloves off sweaty palms and twisted to place them behind her on the ground. Perhaps she was still shaky from Tristan’s departure, or perhaps the earth shook again, but she lost her balance. Her unsupported upper body tilted in place. Both hands splayed onto the bare earth to break her fall.
And Gwen’s world stopped.
Chapter 16
Sound lost all meaning. Time slowed. Everything centered within Gwen, between Gwen’s core and her hands in the frozen earth. There was something in the ground.
It knew she was there, somehow, a deep knowledge that had little to do with sentience. Whatever was in the ground knew her the way a mother knows the shape and solid weight of her child in her arms. The magic in Gwen’s core reached out instinctively. It passed through her arms into the soil, and was met by a great welling of magic, deep and huge. Gwen felt a fierce gladness at the connection, as if she had finally found what she hadn’t known she had been looking for. She was vaguely aware of her body glowing with a pure white light and her hair floating, drifting as if gravity no longer existed. She let out a long breath.
“Gwen?” Rhiannon whispered, her voice unusually timid and sounding very far away. “What’s happening? Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen said, her voice soft and wandering. Everything was unreal to her right now, everything except the connection.
“The trees have stopped attacking,” said Bretta. She peered out to the meadow. “Everyone looks confused.” She turned to look at Gwen with wide eyes. “You’re the true heir. Did you just connect with the realm?”
“Is that was happened?” Gwen smiled serenely. “Neat.”
Rhiannon and Bretta glanced at each other with concern, but Gwen had other things to think about. Something was interrupting her connection with the earth below. She could feel its insidious power, wrenching parts of the realm away from her knowledge. The earth magic didn’t like it, she could tell, but couldn’t seem to resist. Gwen explored with her mind, sending her thoughts out of her hands down through the ground, following the magic as it flowed everywhere.
She passed roots of trees, slow and green, and the pink wriggling magic of cold worms in the soil. The glow of a Breenan on the surface interested her for a moment, but she sensed it was a friend and so she moved on. Other Breenan glows passed overhead, some different, antagonistic, and she sent flares of annoyance skyward.
“What’s happening to them?” Bretta said. “Something is pushing all the enemy fighters down to the ground.”
“Gwen? Are you doing that?” Rhiannon kneeled in front of Gwen. “Do you have control over this?”
“Mmm, I think so,” Gwen said slowly. Part of her spoke with Rhiannon, and the other part flowed through the earth under the battle. “They shouldn’t be here. The magic doesn’t like it.”
“It’s chaos down there,” said Bretta. “No one knows what’s happening, but they can tell it’s against the other side. Corann’s people are fighting hard now, desperately, really.”
“Can you help our fighters?” Rhiannon asked Gwen gently.
“I’ll try.”
Gwen wasn’t sure what to do, not really, but she wasn’t anxious about it. She would simply try things until she got it right. She and the realm had only just truly met, after all, and they were still getting acquainted. She found a friendly glow, and then another, and she sent some magic up in their direction.
Then she felt the grasping, foreign power again, tugging more insistently at the magic, wresting parts of it away from her. Gwen’s serenity was interrupted by indignation: how dare it? She pushed back, but the power was slippery, and Gwen didn’t know enough about the magic yet to successfully repel the power. The magic funneled into the foreign power, despite her best efforts to hold on.
“It’s Corann,” she whispered to herself. “He shouldn’t be here.”
“The fighting is moving,” said Bretta suddenly. “It’s as if they know where we are now. We have to move.”
“Not yet,” said Gwen. She pushed hard at the power. Was she making headway? Gwen wasn’t sure.
“Grab the map,” Rhiannon told Devin. She flung a bag over her shoulders and reached for Gwen. “Come on, Gwen, we have to go.”
“No…”
“Yes, they’re coming―”
“Who are they?” Bretta’s eyes were fixed on a new group of fighters who ran down the hillside toward the melee. “Whose side are they on?”
Gwen reached out into the magic and felt the glows of the newcomers, bright and powerful. The magic flowed gladly under their pounding feet, and she released some to hurry their running strides.
“Ours. Definitely ours.”
The new fighters brought their hands up as they approached the battle and let loose a volley of spells that lit the dim meadow with a rainbow of colors. Opponents fell unconscious left and right, and still the spells came. There were no spell stones, no songs, no venomous flowers. Simple, powerful spells poured forth from the hands of the newcomers, and few could withstand the onslaught.
“Who are they?” Rhiannon whispered. “I’ve never seen general spells with so much power.”
With every opponent that was knocked to the ground, Gwen felt the foreign power grow angrier, but also clearer. Distance and direction of the power’s source emerged from a fog.
“I know where he is,” she said quietly. Rhiannon and Bretta weren’t listening.
“Corann’s forces are in a rout! Who are these people? This is incredible!”
An earth tremor shook them, and the wind picked up. The realm groaned under the strain of the quake. More lights flashed in the valley below.
“I know where Corann is,” said Gwen, louder. “He’s at the castle.”
“At the castle?” Rhiannon finally answered.
“We need to go,” said Gwen calmly. Another tremor, longer and stronger this time, swayed the branches around them. Gwen felt a squeeze in her core as the realm twisted and wrenched. “There’s not much time. I need to take control of the realm away from Corann now.”
“I suppose—everyone is in a rout—it might be safe.” Rhiannon looked doubtful.
“Now,” Gwen said firmly.
Rhiannon drew out some stones and touched them with a glowing finger in a pattern.
“I told the king where we’re going.”
Gwen lifted her hands with reluctance but found herself still pleasantly connected to the magic of the realm. It wasn’t as immediate and clear, but it was there.
“Let’s go,” she said.
***
An attendant leaped up from where she sat before a row of colored stones. Faolan glanced at her, while the other rulers talked and gestured at the foliage-covered wall of the tent.
“My lord,” she said. “A message from the fighting group with the heir. Gwendolyn has sensed that Corann is at the castle, and she and her group are going there now.”
Faolan turned to the other rulers.
“It is time,” he barked. “The battle has turned, and the heir approaches her room of enchantments. Come, let us clear the way for her coronation. Corann must be removed.”
He swept out of the tent, and the others followed. Outside, a row of horses waited in the snow. Their hot breath formed clouds that were whisked away in the wind. Faolan vaulted onto a chestnut-brown horse and cantered away without waiting. Queen Brenna was next, her blue cape a swirl behind her as she leaped into her saddle. Isolde mounted a nearby horse with less enthusiasm and followed the rulers through the snowstorm. A crowd of waiting fighters trailed behind.
When they reached the castle after a swift ride, Faolan and the other rulers dismounted and strode up the steps of the castle. Isolde’s lips trembled as she looked up at the ruins of her former home, and she followed the fighters inside with halting footsteps.
From the ballroom came shouts of fighters and flashes of magical light, but the few guards that were left in the castle quickly fell captive to the greater numbers. Isolde hung back near a shadowy pillar while the rulers marched toward a carved wooden door behind the dais. Faolan flung it open.
Inside the room of enchantments, Corann kneeled on the center of the daisy. Three frightened-looking people in simple wool cloaks were clustered around him. The glow of magic faded when Corann looked up at the intruders.
“It’s over, Corann,” said Faolan with a heavy finality. “Your forces have been overcome. Surrender.”
Corann’s eyes blazed for a moment, then dimmed. He hung his head.
“So be i
t.”
Isolde looked away. Her eyes blinked rapidly.
***
Gwen took the lead, to the immense surprise of Rhiannon. Gwen could feel exactly where the castle was, the room of enchantments within it, and Corann, and it was simple to follow the pull. Tree roots and stones were no impediment to her feet, made nimble with the knowledge of their placement. She loped ahead, tireless and steady despite the swirling snow, the warmth of the realm’s magic residing deep in her core.
“Come on,” she called to the others. “Keep up!”
From Rhiannon’s stupefied expression, she had not expected this burst of energy and skill from Gwen. Gwen chuckled to herself. The last time she had traveled with Rhiannon, she could barely ride a horse. Now she felt like she could do anything. It probably wasn’t true, but it was a euphoric feeling nonetheless.
Gwen didn’t know how long they ran for. All she knew was the feeling of her destination getting closer and closer. The room of enchantments called to her, like a lighthouse to a searching boat at night. At one point, she felt a pulse in the magic, and the sensation of the foreign power retreating made her smile in satisfaction. The ground trembled, and she ran faster.
“We’re almost there,” she called to the others. Grunts of acknowledgement greeted her words—no one had breath to spare for talking.
They stumbled upon a well-trod path and ran through a clearing where the trees were singed as from a fire. Gwen nodded to herself—this was where she had first discovered her magic and made a portal, so many months ago. They rounded a corner and the castle rose before them, imposing amid the trees. The crenelated turrets were rounded and crumbling, and torn pennants whipped on their poles in a frenzy. A bevy of horses huddled in a cluster beside the stone wall with steaming breath. Heedless of danger, Gwen sprinted up the stone steps to the open ballroom doors. She ignored Rhiannon’s shouts and ran inside.
There was a crowd of people in the ballroom, including Faolan and the other rulers. The scent of drying furs and leathers permeated the air. Corann was on his knees against a pillar on the ballroom floor, ropes wrapped around his wrists and ankles. He saw Gwen first, and his look was of loss and resignation, with only a hint of hate left for her. Faolan turned at the sound of Gwen’s footsteps, and his face registered relief. The building shook and groaned, but Gwen anticipated it and kept her footing while dust rained down on her party. Faolan noted her sure-footedness and nodded.
Breenan Series Box Set Page 66