“They’re your folds, Wejon!” Sjei snapped, wheeling on the Fifth High Priest. “We all saw the globes dim. Get them operational, Myrdin-dai, and right now! We’ve got to find out what is happening in the north!”
Sjei released Wejon with a firm shove then turned back toward the useless Battlebox.
“It could be weeks before we know what’s happened!”
“Fall back!” Belag roared.
The forward lines of the Legions were surging against his own lines. The ground beneath the manticore’s feet was churned into a mixture of dirt and blood, and though his warriors were holding the front line, a break in the right flank had allowed three Octia to charge behind their lines. They had been quickly dealt with but not before several gate symbols had been established and propagated behind his lines. It was only a matter of moments, Belag knew from long experience, before folds would open over those symbols and warriors would pour out of them against the rear of his battle line.
“We’ve nowhere to fall back to,” shouted Gradek in response, his own sword clashing against a manticore Impress Warrior of the Imperial Legion.
Belag looked behind them. It was true. Their own lines had been pressed back almost to the encampment—the battle was on the verge of including the children and elders they were sworn to protect. He glanced up on the western ridge. He could see a dark line at the crest—the entire goblin army—watching and waiting. They were positioned on the right flank but Belag knew that they would do nothing. His troops were on their own.
“Braun!” Belag shouted. “Confuse those folds! Keep them from opening! Keep them from . . .”
Braun stared back at Belag in amazement. A fool’s grin split his face. “Belag! Wonderful news!”
“What is it, Braun?” Belag asked. The manticore was suddenly aware of a change in the air. The sounds of battle had diminished.
Braun rushed over to the Grahn Aur, holding open his hands. “Look! I can’t use the magic!”
Belag shook his head. Braun did not always make sense to him on first hearing. “How is that good?”
“Because,” Braun answered with a vicious grin, “neither can the Empire!”
Belag’s head snapped at once to gaze over the battle lines. His own troops had obeyed his command as best they could, falling back from the line of battle but the Legions had not pressed their attack. The front lines stood facing them uncertainly, their eyes wide. Cries of anguish erupted from behind the battle line in numerous places. All down the line, in Octian after Octian, Impress Warriors were suddenly reacting strangely. Many fell to the ground screaming. Others fell to their knees. Many of the manticores lay facedown on the ground, their knees pulled up under them and their hands stretched out in front of them.
“Think of it,” Braun said with fire in his eyes. “No Proxis to give commands or make gate symbols. No folds. No control.”
As Belag watched in amazement, the Legions of the Northern Fist dissolved before him. The well-ordered lines melted into a confused mob. The sound of sword against sword erupted among the ranks of the Imperial army as Devotion spells failed. The madness struck the Imperial ranks. The Legions were tearing themselves apart. The greater part of the elven army turned away from the battle line in a sudden panic, running to the south away from the Army of the Prophet.
“Where are they going?” Belag asked in wonder.
“Nowhere,” Braun answered with a malevolent smile.
Belag understood.
“Gradek!” he shouted.
“Here, Grahn Aur!”
“Bring all the manticore warriors to the line at once!” Belag drew his own sword and stepped forward. “We wear the armor of our ancestors. For the Honor and Pride of Chaenandria . . . today we charge!”
The stasis bubble collapsed.
Soen, suddenly freed, hurtled down from the sky toward Vendis, who was still gripping the now useless staff.
There were a dozen ways to kill the chimerian and none of them required the use of Aether. Each one passed swiftly through Soen’s mind as he fell but he discarded them all. He had better plans for Vendis . . . more interesting and entertaining . . . but each required that the “bendy” be at least marginally alive.
Soen fell upon Vendis with fury, tearing the useless Matei staff from his grasp and flinging it far away. Pummeling blows would do little to damage the pliable chimerian but could be a threat to the elf. Best to eliminate any weapons from a battle that do not serve your side, Soen thought.
Both rolled together down the rocky slope, coming to a jarring halt against an outcropping a few yards down from the summit. Vendis’ fist just missed Soen’s head as the former Iblisi shifted suddenly and grasped the chimerian’s hind leg. Bracing against his opponent’s back, Soen pulled hard on the leg, feeling the bones slide and shift as he did. This would barely bother the chimerian, Soen knew, whose physiology was build around shifting bones. Soen spun quickly, the leg still gripped in the crook of his arm.
Another of Vendis’ fists shot up. The chimerian had twisted completely around at the waist, his upper torso now on his back while his hips still faced downward. Soen had anticipated the move, however, catching the upward thrusting arm and deftly wrapping it around Vendis’ own pulled leg in a simple knot.
Bind a bendy on himself, Soen thought as he jumped off Vendis, scrambling back up the slope toward Belag’s tent. He yelled back down the slope toward the struggling chimerian. “Come on, Vendis! Come on!”
The chimerian picked himself up. Soen had bound the leg and the arm together tightly and it would take Vendis some time to work himself free of that but chimerians are versatile as well as flexible. Vendis began clambering up the slope using his free leg and remaining three hands to propel himself with amazing speed toward Soen.
The elf Inquisitor positioned himself before the tent door. All he needed now was for Vendis to take him through it.
“You’re quite a miracle, aren’t you, Vendis?” Soen taunted. “You take money from the Empire to spy on the Pilgrims then you spy for the Pilgrims to make a little on the side there as well. You’re probably spying for Ephindria for all I know. So what’s it about this time, Vendis? Who bought you today?”
“It’s about you,” Vendis answered as he shifted his strange, contorted form from side to side, looking for an opening to attack.
“So it’s Ch’drei, is it?” Soen laughed.
“Ch’drei?”
“The head of my Order,” Soen continued, backing toward the tent. “She bought you.”
“You idiot!” Vendis laughed, displaying a wide grin on his malleable face. “Me work for that dried-up husk? She’s nothing compared to . . .”
“The Modalis,” Soen finished. “Of course, who else would find so gullible an agent and be able to arrange a war of convenience all for their own profit. Still, I wouldn’t count on their help getting out of here.”
“They will be here for me soon enough, Soen Tjen-rei!” Vendis countered. “They will be here for us both!”
“I think not,” Soen replied, nodding past Vendis toward the battlefield beyond.
Vendis turned.
The Legions of the Northern Fist that had been so carefully organized and pressing their attack had evaporated into a panicked mob running away from the battle.
It was all Soen needed. He ripped the tent pole from the ground, thrusting it completely through the torso of the chimerian and driving it into the earth.
Nothing in their experience could save them.
Every battle tactic developed by the Imperial Legions had been based around the use of Aether magic. The doctrine of advance, gate symbol marking, retreat, and then Octia folding behind the battle lines had become so fundamental to every military campaign and so consistently victorious that no other possibility was ever considered. When faced with an unexpectedly resilient foe, the Legions could always utilize those same folds to retreat more quickly than their enemy could advance, regroup at a safe distance, and add what additional forces
were necessary. All that was required to reengage the enemy then was to utilize the same gate symbols established during the failing battle, return and become victorious once more.
No one—from the Octian Impress Warrior to Sjei Shurian, the Ghenetar Omris of the Order of Vash standing in a dark room in distant Rhonas—had ever considered or prepared for the failure of Aether during battle.
The Legions fled southward in panic. Many were driven mad from the dissolution of their Devotions. Others were simply overwhelmed by panic. Some few managed to place themselves in a position to surrender but for the most part, they fled from the field of battle in the only direction they knew where they might find safety; directly toward the command encampment of the elven war-mages.
This, however, was exactly the kind of battle that manticores had fought for over a thousand years.
The lion-men stepped to the front of the battle line. Many of them had worn their family armor that morning, the rest managed to grab and wear at least some piece of their ancestral armor in the short time left to form the line four deep. Then, as one, four thousand manticores fell forward onto their hands, looked up and pressed back against their haunches. Each had a weapon slung across his back—some older than their grandfathers. Each breathed deeply in anticipation.
Silence fell down the line as gnomes, humans and elves watched in awe. The cries of the fleeing Legions were growing distant in their ears as a warm breeze drifted over them from the sea at their backs.
“For Drakis!” Belag cried.
“For Drakis!” returned four thousand voices rippling down the line in either direction.
“For Freedom!” Belag shouted.
“For Freedom!” answered the four thousand.
“Forever!” Belag bellowed.
“Forever!” the four thousand thundered back.
With a great roar, the front line charged. Each successive line bounded after it, their hands gripping the ground in front of them, pulling them forward. Their charging strides rushed them forward like a great wave across the blood-soaked ground, bounding over the dead and dying, shaking the world with each footfall.
The fleeing Legions heard them coming, felt their approach through the soles of their own feet. Panic claimed the Legions. Many of the Proxis in flight stopped and tried to inscribe a gate symbol but the patterns they scrawled in the ground were dead and useless. Warriors of the Empire, desperate to escape, began dropping their shields, weapons, and anything that might hinder their flight. A few Octia formed up in Centurai, mostly elven warriors or those who were under the direct command of elves, to make a stand and form some semblance of a defensive line.
The raging manticores’ reason fell to the passion of the hunt. The forward elements of the charge crashed into the ragged elven line with their swords drawn and battle rage in their eyes, smashing the lines and rolling through the warriors like a scythe at harvest. Those whom they did not kill in their first assault they left for the three lines of manticores that followed on their heels. By the time the forth line had passed where the elves had made their stand, nothing remained alive.
On the ridge overlooking the valley, the Pajak of Krishu gazed down on the battlefield and began to chuckle softly. Then his chuckle turned to a chortle and soon to peals of laughter.
“Great Pajak!” Hograthaben, the newly appointed (earlier that morning) General Field Marshal of the Krishu Wyvern Raiders and brother-in-law to the Pajak, addressed his leader. “The Rhonas Legions are in retreat!”
“The Pajak is most amused!” The Pajak responded through his laughter. “I suppose you want to collect the five coins of our wager, eh? Well, aye, Hogra, it was worth it just to see those haughty elven dead-eyes have their big heads handed to them for once on a battlefield!”
“But does it please the Pajak to allow the long-heads to escape?” Hograthaben asked.
The Pajak frowned. “Why would the Pajak allow that?”
“Surely the Pajak has noticed that the elven commanders are fleeing to the south,” Hograthaben said, bowing deeply. The Field Marshal had to be cautious in his new position. The Pajak did not like his wife all that much.
The Pajak looked down toward the end of the valley. The command tents of the elven encampment were still standing but the elves that had occupied them along with what the Pajak estimated at three Cohorts of ceremonial guards had abandoned their positions and were moving quickly to the south.
“Surely,” the Field Marshal said, still in his deep bow, “the Pajak will not allow the manticores alone to claim the glory of victory.”
The Pajak turned his eyes on his brother-in-law. The elves had been an irritation and a threat to him and his family as long as he could remember. If these manticores and their strange religion could crush them, so much the better for him. The Pajak always liked to back a winner especially if winning benefited him personally.
“Field Marshal,” the Pajak intoned in his most serious ceremonial voice. “You will take my army of wyvern raiders, and you will cut off the retreat of these cowardly elves. The manticores have shown what they can do in a charge—let us show them what goblins on wyvernback can accomplish!”
Marshal Hograthaben bowed again, his brick-red face split by a grin and his long ears quivering with excitement. “In your honor, Great Pajak!”
The goblin Field Marshal turned to mount his wyvern.
“Oh, and Field Marshal?”
Hograthaben stopped to look back at the Pajak.
“Kill them all . . . all except one,” the Pajak commanded.
“All . . . except one, Great Pajak?”
“Of course,” the Pajak said through a sharp-toothed smile. “We need one left to tell the tale!”
CHAPTER 42
Scales
THE LIGHT WAS BLINDING.
Drakis had managed to force his way up to the top of the Font but even with his eyelids tightly held shut the brilliance around him was painful. He reached forward with his hands, feeling for the grip of the key. Why the dwarf had left the key connected to the shard in the first place instead of removing it angered him. That he had to be the one to retrieve it angered him further still. Maybe the dwarf could not remove it. Maybe it had the same magic about it that required humans to open the Font. Maybe the dwarf had simply made trouble for them all once again. There had not been time to ask let alone answer any of those questions as the drakoneti were converging quickly on the resurrected ruins of the Citadel and the dragon was racing through the skies to reach them at the same time.
Besides, the anger burned through the horrible, hollow despair that had opened in his chest. Mala was gone and the awfulness of the loss was held at bay by his rage.
In the blazing radiance, his hand caught on something.
Drakis wrapped his fingers around it. He could feel the cool polish of the metal under his hand, the rolling contours of the grip and the jewel set in its pommel pressing against his wrist. For a moment, he panicked, uncertain as to how to cause the key to release the shard. He did not dare pull for fear of removing the sliver of crystal and shutting the Font once more. But he discovered that it twisted easily in his hands to the left and, within a few turns, it fell into his hand.
At once Drakis turned to sit, sliding back down the curve of the Font with the key in his hand. He only opened his eyes when his feet connected with the edge of the Font, rising uncertainly to his feet. He blinked furiously, trying to see.
Drakis dropped the key at his feet, instantly grasping the hilt of his sword and drawing it.
The partially reassembled rotunda of the Citadel was filled with drakoneti. They stood at the edges of the circle, hundreds of them, their barbed tails coiling and uncoiling about their feet. They shifted listlessly from one clawed foot to the other. Their spike-boned faces were fixed on Drakis, swaying back and forth as though waiting.
Ethis was struggling across the floor toward Drakis. Ishander stood uncertainly holding his sword next to the dwarf wielding his ax.
N
ow is the triumph of dragon’s might
Now is the end of the light
The future turning
The past is burning.
Drakis looked up. The dome was nearly complete with a large circular opening at its apex. A column of light shone down through the aperture but was occluded by the silhouette of Pharis alighting on its edge, his enormous rust-red head craning down through the opening. The dragon suddenly released his perch, falling from the ceiling to land on all four of his legs with a thunderous shock onto the floor on the opposite side of the Font. Drakis staggered slightly from the impact, the tip of his sword shaking in his hand. The dragon more than filled half the space of the Citadel.
Drakis snatched the key off of the ground with his left hand and backed several steps away from the dragon, keenly aware of the wall of drakoneti behind him. Jugar and Ishander closed ranks with him. Ethis, trembling and having trouble holding his form, quivered on the ground at their feet.
Pharis hissed. His eyes fixed on Drakis.
Now is the destiny long denied.
Now comes the end of the past
Our future making
The key now taking . . .
Footsteps scraped across the stone behind Drakis.
Drakis spun around, his sword raised.
One drakonet stepped from out of the horde. It was enormous; a full head taller than most of the other drakoneti. Its facial bones swept back from its face into a series of broken spines and horns. One eye was milky and useless but the other stared at Drakis with a brilliant, intense blue color. Its scales had a polished sheen that shifted colors as though oiled. Its shoulders were wide and its arms enormous.
The drakonet stopped, its barbed tail coiling behind it.
Drakis could hear his own heavy breathing. He raised his sword with his right hand, its tip wavering slightly in the still air. The left gripped the key.
The massive one-eyed drakonet began working its jaw. A horrible, choking sound croaked from its maw, its sharp teeth scraping against one another. It reached out with its right hand, the long, broken claws of its fingers opening toward Drakis, palm up expectantly.
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