The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers)

by Frank P. Ryan

  Immediately the slaughter began.

  A Garg in midflight was bisected by a twirling battle-axe that curved in its flight to return to the hand that cast it. A Preceptor leading a platoon of Death Legion reached a Fir Bolg warrior, only half-emerged from a muddy stream, and sank his twist-bladed dagger straight into the warrior’s throat. The legionaries cheered and chanted the sacrificial hymn to their master. But as the blade emerged from the cold, pale flesh the wound self-healed. At the same time those all-black eyes opened on the Preceptor and an armored fist reached out and crushed his throat.

  Above the third defense, surrounded by a renewed intensity of battle, Qwenqwo Cuatzel, Arch Mage of the resurrected Fir Bolg, held the runestone aloft and whispered a message through the oraculum to Alan:

  “Bear it a little while longer!”

  Alan received the message, but couldn’t reply. He stood, with the incandescent Spear of Lug extended, his teeth clenched and his feet splayed. Mo lay unconscious by his side. Ainé’s remains lay nearby, her body cremated by the fury of her own attack on the Legun. Her ashes were mixed with those of the Legun’s charger, which had been immolated in the same attack. Even the immortal Legun had been weakened and maimed, and was leaking foul green slime from the terrible wound inflicted by the Kyra. Yet still it confronted Alan, battering down his last reserves of strength and spiritual energy. Suddenly, as if detecting his exhaustion and anticipating victory, it roared out a call to all of its forces. Legionaries turned, urged on by their Preceptors. Gargs wheeled about in midflight, heading for the single focus of the Legun amid the wreckage of bodies and broken masonry on the great Plaza of Ossierel.

  Glancing backward, Alan saw that he and the small company of Shee that still fought around him were surrounded by legionaries and were the focus of an approaching swarm of Gargs. The Legun reached out an enormous fire-scarred hand and, with a venomous claw, rapidly closed on Alan’s brow, determined to quench the blazing oraculum.

  From nearby, Alan felt a small whisper of support enter his being. Qwenqwo was fighting his way closer. The runestone! Alan sensed the message of the runestone, the Mage of the Fir Bolg calling for help.

  Taking a new comfort from the closeness of his friend, Alan poured his last reserve of resistance into the spear. He plunged it yet again into the flesh of his monstrous adversary. But the approaching hand hardly faltered, redoubling its purpose, forcing its talon closer. Belatedly, Alan realized the implications of the Shee having lost their leader. He sent a call to every Shee still living, directing them to fight their way here, to where the oraculum-bearer was losing his battle with the Legun.

  At several breaches in the wall, great cats appeared from the flame and smoke of the nearby slopes, leaping out of the shadows to tear out the throats of the legionaries attempting to hold their ground.

  But the Shee were fighting overwhelming odds. The legionaries were armed with steel-mesh nets and long-bladed battle forks, and the numbers of tigresses were dwindling, the survivors tiring. Suddenly, through the same breaches, the war beasts now clambered, their drum masters swaying in the saddles, all the while implacably calling on the warriors to rise and follow, the drum beat never faltering.

  Boom-boom tan-tan . . . Boom-boom tan-tan . . .

  The rhythm of the drums rolled out over the plateau, sending a wave of alarm through the enemy. Gargs fell on the emerging Fir Bolg, to be met with a rain of heavy arrows, javelins and battle-axes. A big centurion dropped from an upper window, his sword held aloft in two hands, intent on bisecting a marauding tigress with a single stroke. But a whirring black battle-axe clove deep into his chest before he reached the Shee, skimming the ground before rising up to find the armored fist of its master.

  As if sensing the changing tide of battle, the Legun hesitated, but then, drawing deep on the malice of its master, it lunged at Alan a final time, accepting a wound the full depth of the spearhead, yet still pressing through every wave of his resistance. As if in slow motion, Alan could only stare at the approach of the venom-dripping talon, resisting with all of his might the imminent moment of his death. The talon was only an inch or two from his face when he heard a sound in the distance, like a humming from thousands of low-pitched throats at once. A whirling entity was approaching, directed at the intersection of his oraculum and the talon.

  A sudden roar of pain filled his ears—but it wasn’t Alan’s. It came from the Legun, whose taloned hand had been severed by the glowing battle-axe of the Mage of the Fir Bolg, who had placed all of the power of the runestone into the stroke.

  Boom-boom tan-tan . . . Boom-boom tan-tan . . .

  The drumming now filled the air, approaching Alan and the Legun from three separate directions, as the Fir Bolg adopted a triple-pronged attack formation, each prong led by the trapezoidal spearhead. At the tip of each spearhead fifteen war beasts formed a cutting wedge, the drum masters beating out a new tactic, the warriors swaggering from foot to foot. Their shoulders swayed in their ponderous ballet of combat, bodies twisting and rotating, their positions never still, so as to deflect any arrow or spear, their armor so dense and heavy that not even the fiercest thrust of blade could penetrate it.

  At an unspoken command, a hail of battle-axes fell on the encircling legionaries, while another tore into the descending cloud of Gargs. Flying clusters and ground formations disintegrated as the bodies fell, with heads detached or wings disintegrated, and all the while the drumming continued, as the three-pronged formation closed around the central focus of the Legun, the runed blades whirling and returning, to be cast again and again and again.

  Alan, his spear arm shaking with exhaustion, watched in disbelief as a flurry of battle-axes struck the Legun. The glittering blades tore deep into the malignant flesh and then, strangely, horribly, continued to spiral deeper, burying themselves entirely within the monster. A second wave struck, a third—and then it became a hailstorm, thudding into the vast malignant being, until a deluge of green gore covered the surrounding plaza. It altered focus, pouring its malice into the nearing columns. But the warriors who fell, consumed with livid green fire, simply rose again. No power, no matter how dreadful, could kill those who were already dead. With an explosion of rage that shook the ground and echoed in the ruined walls, the Legun deserted the battlefield.

  Alan’s ears were deafened by the drums as Qwenqwo appeared by his side. Then Milish arrived, kneeling by the unconscious body of Mo, her regal face awash with tears. “What are we to do?”

  Alan blinked, unable to speak.

  Qwenqwo spoke softly, reassuringly. “It’s over. Everywhere it is as you see in these streets. The guardians of the Vale of Tazan are at large in its ancient forests. They will continue to hunt until not a single enemy remains.”

  In the hours that followed, the surviving Gargs took to the air, a great cloud dispersing into the gloom of the Eastern sky. The survivors of the Legion fled to their ships in the river below. Yet even here there was little respite from the Dark Queen’s vengeance. A great commotion, too far away for Alan to see it clearly, thrashed the water, smashing one of the ships and tossing the survivors into the moiling river. The soldiers clinging to the wreckage screamed as a gargantuan shape rose out of the water—even from such a distance he imagined it might resemble the gaping jaws of a titanic serpent. Its hunger appeared to match its size, for it rose and snapped again and again, as if filling its belly for a hundred years.

  The Cost of Battle

  Alan stood in the rain on the elevated platform of Nantosueta’s tower, heedless of the storm winds blowing from the southeast, from Carfon and the sea. How he had made his way here—how long he had stood here—he didn’t recall. The battle was over. And now the implications were only beginning to sink in to his mind.

  Ainé and Kemtuk dead. Kate lost—taken! And Mark . . . Oh, sweet Jesus, what had happened to Mark?

  “Mage Lord!”

  Qwenqwo’s face looked up into his, the dwarf mage’s stout body wounded in several new pla
ces. Alan became gradually aware of the sky, the hard, high green sky of early evening, with its wrack of storm clouds, wheeling over him. His jaw ached from being clenched in anger and sorrow as he gazed up at the entwined stone figures towering above them. His friend, Mark, bearing obvious wounds, was entwined with the smaller figure of the Dark Queen, the two locked in an embrace, as if for eternity.

  “What does it mean, Qwenqwo?”

  “Mark saved you—saved us all.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “He is not dead. Though dead he most certainly would have been, in flesh and spirit, had his iron heart failed him, for he carried twice a death sentence of poison in his blood.”

  “I don’t understand. How can he not be dead?”

  “Look at their brows.”

  Alan stared more closely at the faces of the entwined figures. Each brow enclosed a black inverted triangle.

  “It’s an oraculum, isn’t it?”

  “The Third Power—the fates protect us!”

  “Mórígán’s power . . . Death itself?”

  Qwenqwo’s face wrinkled into a frown. “Yes.”

  “If Mark isn’t dead, where is he?”

  “Subsumed, body and spirit. He is now bound to the Third Power, as was the Dark Queen.”

  Alan shivered, staring up at the entwined figures, a fateful realization flooding his mind. As bound as he was himself?

  “If my ruby triangle is the First Power and Mark’s is the Third, what happened to the Second Power?”

  “If I interpret rightly, it should have been Kate’s.”

  Alan reflected, with a dizzying resentment, on the complex pattern of what had brought the four friends here—of what still directed, perhaps even controlled, their very lives and actions. “What is the Second Power?”

  “Perhaps the power of new birth—but also that of healing—of healing, perhaps, that which was thought to be unhealable!”

  Alan sighed. So that was why the dark forces had so focused on Kate. What more would the Tyrant fear and hate than the power of new birth, of healing, in such a ravaged world! And how he wished Kate was still here! Her loss brought a terrible sense of emptiness.

  “And Mo?”

  The dwarf mage said nothing.

  Alan recalled Mo in that awful moment, when her tiny figure had confronted the Legun, with the shadow of Granny Dew supporting her like a guardian angel. What did it mean? How was he expected to make sense of any of it?

  Grief rose in him again, that same grief that he had felt with the loss of his parents, but now it boiled within him, as unbearable as madness.

  Qwenqwo preceded him down the winding staircase cut into the sheer face of the rock until they emerged onto the battle-scarred ruins of Ossierel. Here, amid the rain-washed ruins and flagstones, the smell of death hung in his nostrils. The dwarf mage took him to Mo, who lay where she had collapsed after the Legun had fled. Mo was still being nursed by Milish. Alan knelt beside her petite body. With gentle hands he touched her face, the matted black hair. He heard Bétaald’s voice, an anxious insistence from the background. “She will live. There are others, more desperate, who need our help.”

  He didn’t like to leave Mo. But Bétaald was right: the need for ministering to the survivors overrode all others. Alan stood shakily erect to face the dark-skinned spiritual head of the Shee, noticing that her arms were streaked with her own blood.

  “I’m sorry about Ainé. She was incredibly brave.” He inclined his head.

  Bétaald’s yellow eyes searched his, as if looking for some additional explanation, or words of comfort, before she replied. “A great many of those who answered the call to arms lie dead among these stones.”

  So he became aware of the gravity of the catastrophe that surrounded him; in addition to the losses of the defending Shee, many Olhyiu were also dead. And many of the survivors lay injured among the ruins. Even the survivors, haunted by grief and loss, faced an uncertain future. Where would they go now that the Temple Ship had been destroyed?

  He walked among the wounded and the dead, witnessing the price paid by those who had sacrificed so much to help him and his friends. He didn’t have far to wander. At every step, pools of blood, broken bodies—and worse—met his gaze. The groans of the injured scourged his ears as, one by one, he came upon their pain-racked figures, often in small huddles, blood-soaked and pitted by livid wounds. On and on he wandered among them, absorbing the blankness of shock on their faces, the ebbing of life from their eyes.

  A hardening of purpose established its hold on Alan Duval’s heart on this wet and bitter evening.

  He stood aside to allow two survivors to pick up one of the dying Shee. He watched them carry her through the wisps of smoking ruin, heading for some vestige of cover. A rank pestilence still seeped from the earth, as if the darkness still struggled to seed itself everywhere. The shadow of that darkness mocked him still with the evidence of murdered innocence, of so many faces that had once smiled at him, looked to him for hope and protection, the precious life now taken from them. It was difficult to conceive that any of the more vulnerable had survived such a pitiless assault. Yet the Aides were opening up avenues into subterranean passages and cellars, from which the surviving children and elderly were being assisted into the light. Others were tearing apart the rubble to discover still more dead and wounded.

  Milish left Mo to the ministration of others and sought him out.

  Though every bit as exhausted as he was, she insisted on walking beside him. “The wounds caused by sword and arrow we can repair. The Aides will stitch sinew to sinew, or set broken bones. And healwell will support the loss of blood and the shock of scorched flesh. But some bear wounds worse than those struck down by sword or even the foul green flame of the legionaries’ weaponry.” Outrage pained the diplomat’s voice as she led Alan to the entrance of one of the underground chambers, where a dozen or so of the youngest children had been hidden. The Aides, assisted by able-bodied Olhyiu, had carried them out of the cellar and now they lay in the cobbled alley, every face pallid and feverish. It was here that Alan found Turkeya, kneeling in grief by the body of Kemtuk.

  Alan fell to the ground beside Turkeya and embraced him, tears welling up in the young Olhyiu’s eyes.

  Milish spoke softly, with a comforting hand on both their shoulders. “A group of Gargs, led by one so powerful it may have been their leader, forced entry here, though the portal was guarded to the death by three of our bravest. Here it was that your friend, Mark, was wounded by a Preceptor even as Kate was taken. And it was in this cellar that the shaman was himself killed while attempting to protect Kate. The leader of the Gargs was killed by the dwarf mage, who arrived too late to prevent their purpose. Its remains, together with those of the Preceptor, are nearby. Unfortunately, the dwarf mage arrived too late to prevent the Gargs from spreading their poison among the children.”

  Alan climbed back onto his feet and examined the children where they lay, eyes glazed and red-rimmed, the cherry-red lividity on their lips, that same glow aflame in their cold flesh. One of these innocents he recognized: it was Amoté, the little girl who had danced to Mark’s harmonica on board the Temple Ship and pulled Kate’s hair.

  “Oh God, Milish!”

  In the first glimmer of dawn, Alan wandered alone to the easternmost reaches of the third fosse, where a thousand feet of sheer cliff face bolstered the defensive ramparts. Here, the air was cold and refreshing. The cyclopean stones of the great defensive rampart supported him, standing high on a promontory and gazing out over the spectacular panorama.

  The Vale of Tazan yawned before him, too colossal in its wandering valleys and soaring mountains to take in with his tired eyes. How serene it must have appeared in the eyes of the young queen before war and death had invaded that tranquil scene. Even now thunder still rolled among the distant calderas, charging the air with casts of lightning, and an icy rain squalled among the trees, quenching any remaining flames, with palls of mist blanketing the groun
d where ash and embers had been most extensive. Here and there, in the distance, the drums of the Fir Bolg reminded him that they had not yet completed their terrible purpose, a purpose that would continue until not a single legionary or Garg remained within the sacred valley. And even then, as Qwenqwo had explained with a look of outrage, the warrior guardians would be condemned once more to their living graves. Alan felt the grief of the dwarf mage like ice in his heart.

  Had he, and his friends, caused these terrible events? Was vengeance enough to make all of this worthwhile?

  Alan turned his face up to the cleansing rain, washing away the reek of death. In the rumbling detonations that still shook the tor under his white-knuckled fingers, he sensed the same relief in the very rock. Evil was receding, although its defeat could only be temporary, and even this victory had been bought at a very great price.

  Kate was somewhere out there, unconscious and taken away from him. Yet even in that situation there was a small ray of hope. The enemy had some purpose in keeping her alive. If all they had wanted was to kill her, the Garg would have left her dead in that cellar. The swell of grief within him peaked. From his brow a pulse of light flared, and a signal surged out of the valley and far beyond, until it located an unconscious mind caught in the soaring flight of a gigantic V-shaped cloud over the Eastern Ocean. He sensed the tens of thousands of leathery wings flapping and gliding on the prevailing currents of wind. He had no way of knowing if Kate could hear him as he cast his promise, carried upon his pent-up anger into the universe of morning.