by Tara Janzen
Avallyn let out a cry as a shard caught her in the thigh, slicing through her chausses to the skin beneath. Blood poured out of the wound.
They’d made a terrible mistake, Morgan thought, his deathlike grip on the Magia Blade welding his hands to the hilt. The four of them wouldn’t survive the next five minutes, let alone accomplish what they’d set out to do. The Red Book of Doom had been wrong. No one should have opened the seal on Kryscaven Crater.
A great boom! sounded above them, and rocks showered down. Boom! The sound came again. Boom!
Dharkkum was pouring out of the hole in the wall, screaming past them not a hundred yards distant, a twisting, whirling mass of light-eating darkness. He’d called it mindless, and it was, but Morgan could only think that it had fought the dragons too many times not to know where its greatest threat lay. Ten years was as nothing, less than a nanosecond, compared to the eternity of the naked singularity from NGC 2300. To Dharkkum, this was the same fight it had fought when Mychael was the dragon, and it was chasing its enemy up to the vault.
Boom! Fire flashed and Morgan saw Ddrei Goch crash into the top of the dome. Boom! Tremors ran down the wall and quaked through the floor. A crack opened at their feet and snaked through the stone, snapping the floor into disjointed pieces. They were all rocked off balance. Madron slipped into the abyss with an anguished cry, and only Mychael’s quick action saved her. He grabbed her arm as she went over the side and helped her scrabble back to safety.
Morgan was tossed off his feet by a sudden upheaval and sent crashing into the floor. Sweet Gods! Pain held him paralyzed, his leg near wrenched from its socket, his friggin’ lame leg.
“Morgan!” Avallyn’s cry brought him around.
A wisp of darkness had broken free of the mass, halting in the wind-driven maelstrom, one separate thread of stillness hovering in the air before them.
Fear stole Morgan’s breath and got him to his feet, his sword in hand.
He pushed Avallyn aside and lashed out with the light of his sword, knowing all the death he and she would ever need was in that one hovering thread of smoke. The power of the blade surged through him, racing up the runes on his arms and freshening with every beat of his heart, uniting them as one. The thread, for all its thinness, had surprising strength, yet was no match for the Magia Blade. The two met with a clash and sizzle, and the thread was no more.
Hundreds more rose up out of the mass to take its place. One after the other, he cut them down, he and the sword moving as a single protective force, the crystal in the hilt blazing. Mychael, Madron, and Avallyn fought by his side, catching any misses with their dreamstone daggers. The four of them battled in deadly rhythm, slashing away at the threads that would have them.
As more of Dharkkum escaped the inner crater, more of Ailfinn’s fire shone through, burning a rainbow path into the heart of Kryscaven. When it reached the broken seal, Mychael and Madron rushed into the breach.
“Khardeeeen!” Mychael cried, running toward the Lost Five, his sword at the ready. “Asmen taline!”
“Khardeen!” Avallyn echoed, following the two. Morgan brought up the rear. Once past the amethyst wall, the brunt of the battle was behind them, with all of Dharkkum focused on the dragons in the cavern, rather than on the frail mortals in the crater.
Racing toward the fire, Morgan barely registered Rhuddlan, Owain, Wei, or Varga. They were no more than a blur in his peripheral vision, for ’twas Ailfinn who totally dominated the arena.
Dharkkum still flowed by, a river of darkness bound for the dragons, but she was radiant, her cloud of white hair shining and floating in an aureole about her head, her emerald eyes no less bright for having been in darkness for so many years.
“You!” She pointed a thin hand at Avallyn. “Do what must be done!”
Avallyn reached the fire, and the Prydion mage thrust the Elhion Bhaas Le into her hands.
“By the powers of light and darkness,” Ailfinn intoned, her eyes growing fierce. “By the blood of the dragons and the breath of the worms, do not delay! Ddrei Glas, gorchmynnaf ichi ddyfod!”
Boom! Boom! Again a great crashing resounded in the chamber, with boulders the size of cottages falling from the dome. The cracks in the floor widened all around. The whole place was crumbling, breaking up.
The green dragon flew down into the crater, her eyes wild, streams of smoke drifting from between her jaws. She opened her mouth and screamed, her wings flapping, torn from her duty by a strong hand.
“Go!” Ailfinn shouted above the whirlwind, and Ddrei Glas took a step toward Avallyn.
Morgan leapt onto the dragon’s back and reached a hand down for Avallyn, damned if he’d give the creature a chance to leave him behind. Avallyn no sooner made it to the beast’s wing than Morgan felt a shift in the wind.
“To the Hart!” the mage shouted, her words already seeming to come from a long distance as everything began to blur around them.
He felt Ddrei Glas lift off, could feel the strength of her beating wings. He pulled Avallyn closer, securing her in front of him. Churning currents of smoke and fire and steam surrounded them with disorientating abandon, yet he knew they were flying up, and up, and up. White fire streaked past them to open the way, coming from Ddrei Goch, who flew on their left flank. To their right were the fathomless depths of Dharkkum, and above them was the night sky, showing through the gaping crack wrought in the dome by the beasts and the darkness.
Faster and faster Ddrei Glas flew, hurtling toward the field of stars beyond the open dome. They had no sooner breached the opening, when all sense of motion ceased. Between one wing beat and the next they were floating in silence... floating through time and space on the dragon’s back.
Great Mother of all the time worms who had ever swirled in a weir, she was not without time-craft herself, especially when set to the task by a Prydion mage.
The full moon shone down on them from above, limning the dragon’s wings and lighting a path through the darkness, and coursing ever so infinitesimally through the night. Time was on hold as the dragon flew. Leaping ten thousand years seemed crude in comparison to the delicacy required of such a brief passage. The stars reeled overhead and Wales slipped by below, both heaven and earth aligning them on the path from Carn Merioneth to Wydehaw Castle and the Hart Tower of the once mighty Nemeton.
Chapter 27
The spell was broken with a dragon’s scream and a flapping of wings over the confluence of the rivers Wye and Llynfl. They’d reached the Hart in the midst of a storm. Thunder rolled, rain pelted down, and the protected, floating sensation gave way to the feel of powerful muscles working in flight, and wet, cold air rushing over them. Below, the lightning-lit walls and towers of Wydehaw Castle soared into view between breaks in the clouds.
Ddrei Glas let out a flaming screech to match the storm, her great, leathery wings catching an updraft and lifting them higher and higher, until she banked into a turn and began to descend at a frightful rate of speed.
Avallyn felt the effort it took for Morgan to hold on to the dragon, felt the muscles in his arms turn rock-hard with the strain. She could hardly hold herself on to him and Ddrei Glas’s back. But the worst was over. They’d escaped Kryscaven with the book. All that was left for them was to put it in place.
Ddrei Glas leveled off in her approach, and Avallyn looked down at herself, at the streaks of her own blood darkening her overtunic, at blistered skin and tattered cloth. During their traverse of Wales, she’d felt as if they’d been suspended in a comforting dark sea of the night sky, surrounded by an ocean of stars. That feeling had disappeared and all her hurts had returned. She’d been wrenched and pummeled in the crater, and now ached down to the marrow of her bones.
Ddrei Goch and Dharkkum had been left behind, but she feared not for long. The book she held in her arms was the key. They had to get it into the Hart, and into Nemeton’s sphere, or all of those they’d left behind in Kryscaven would be destroyed, and mayhaps all of those they’d left behind in
Claerwen as well.
Lightning flashed again, a great bolt of it close by the castle walls. To the west, a tree went up in flames, a burning torch against the night-darkened land. Ddrei Glas slid down between the clouds and landed on the roof of the tower with another bloodcurdling screech.
Sweet Mother, she’d wake the dead.
Avallyn slid down and dropped onto the Hart’s roof. Morgan dismounted behind her.
She heard his gasp and turned to help.
“Nay,” he said, waving her off. “It will hold.”
Ddrei Glas was no sooner free of their weight than she took off into the sky again, circling upward into the dark clouds of rain, before streaking north to take up the fight once more, called by her blood to battle.
Morgan took Avallyn’s hand, and after a quick glance around to orient himself, started off at a limping run. On either side of them were other towers, the castle’s bulwarks against invasion, and as at Carn Merioneth, the forest was everywhere around the castle, wild and far-reaching, the nearest sand being far to the south on the shores of the Bristol Channel.
A sharp pain lanced up his leg with every stride he took, but he dared not stop. Kryscaven Crater had been collapsing in upon itself when they had left, and there was still Aja in the future, with the bone walls of Claerwen under attack by the Warmonger.
He remembered the Hart well, and he remembered the eyrie had been his least favorite room, even less favored than the sulfurous alchemy chamber on the ground floor. A premonition, perhaps? he wondered.
He found the trapdoor leading down from the roof, and they descended on well-worn stairs. ’Twas dreadfully dark inside the tower, and cloyingly close. Not what he’d expected in the elf maid’s abode, but ’twas also a place of deep magic, and magic, Morgan had learned, always left a trace of itself behind.
Great changes had taken place in the tower since Dain Lavrans had held it. Llynya’s oak had already pushed up through the eyrie’s floor, and if ’twas possible, the place was full of even more apparatuses and paraphernalia.
Most importantly, Nemeton’s armillary sphere was right where it was supposed to be, still holding its place in the middle of the tower.
Relief flooded through him.
“Thank the gods,” Avallyn murmured beside him. In answer, he squeezed her hand. Victory was so very close.
He went straight to the sphere and began searching through the bronze rings and copper orbs for the eight stars of Draco. Avallyn did the same, both of them working by the glow of her dreamstone dagger. Its light caught on the crystal pillar, warming it to a luminous hue, and soon the area around the sphere was bathed in soft blue light. The rest of the eyrie remained cloaked in black shadows, the high curves of the ceiling seeming to defy the light.
Outside, the storm was building in force, with more and more lightning flashing across the sky, followed by deep, rolling thunder. ’Twas the kind of storm that struck terror in weak hearts and sent even the brave for cover—and it was coming from the north, where the caverns beneath Carn Merioneth were being torn asunder.
“Llagor, Rastaban.” He found and released the first orb, the eye of the dragon, and the sphere began to hum, the bronze rings lurching into movement.
“Llagor, Etamin.” Avallyn found the second star.
The orbs had been made by Nemeton to float in the air, a floating key set to align subtle meridians and a broad band of particle waves. Tamisk had taught Morgan and Avallyn how to find the spiraling current of air that circled ‘round the sphere and to set the orbs upon it.
“Llagor, Grumium,” Avallyn whispered, releasing the third star orb, and the rings began to roll, one inside the other, the whole skeletal framework creaking and groaning.
Morgan reached for the fourth.
“Llagor, Rakis,” he intoned, and the energy coming from the sphere rocketed to a higher plane, setting his hair on end. He’d expected the increase, but was still taken by surprise by its intensity.
He glanced at Avallyn. She was looking back, her eyes wide, her hair streaming out from her head like a charged halo.
“More potent,” she shouted above the humming noise.
“Aye,” he agreed, wondering what they could expect when the eighth orb was released. Her expression told him she was wondering the same thing, wondering and worrying.
He set himself back to the task of finding the remaining orbs, so focused on the work, it was another moment before he realized the darkness in the tower was deepening, and that the cloying closeness of the place had taken on a wicked smell.
~ ~ ~
Corvus watched the pretty, pretty pair work their petty magic, and his mind seethed. He’d found his place of power. It had drawn him like a magnet the night he’d risen from the earth. All had been dark, except for one brilliant beacon of light in the south, a beacon he’d been too basely crude to find the last time he’d been in the past. In his new, highly refined state of existence, he’d seen the place for what it was, what it had always been—Nemeton’s stronghold, the lost mage who had first traveled through time and returned with the tales of the cosmos, the man who had last written in the Prydion Cal Le, the Blue Book of the Magi.
The tower had been good to Corvus, restoring him somewhat, giving him a bit more form. He could count the fingers on his right hand again, and his vision had cleared out of his right eye. He had more of a right leg and could feel a pulse beating in the side of his neck. He had at last found his salvation. It was here in Nemeton’s place, where the very stones were bathed in the redemptive force of the mage’s power.
He’d been saved. Saved by his own cunning and quickness.
And what were they about down there with their little copper balls, setting them all afloat in the air? he wondered. And what would be the best way to kill them? he wondered even more—though whether to do it now or later was taking on equal importance. They’d released something in the armillary sphere, some kind of energy he felt flowing through him. To feel anything was a novelty; to feel a corporeal sense of power was grimly satisfying. Perhaps the pretty pair could hasten his salvation.
Best to let them finish then, he advised himself, wondering if it was a heartbeat he was beginning to hear in his chest.
He knew who they were. His memory had returned crystal clear, and with his memory all his hate had returned—and the painful horror of his disbelief when he’d seen Avallyn, his Avallyn, Princess of the White Palace and Priestess of the Bones, the most exalted and precious White Lady of Death from the northern dunes, when he’d seen her standing on the weir platform in Claerwen, seen her gaze lovingly at the man who would take her away, a time-rider with a white blaze streaking through his hair.
And not just any time-rider. He felt himself twist tighter into the crevices between stone and mortar at the very top of the tower wall. Not just any time-rider, but the tech-trash thief from Pan-shei.
She could have had an emperor, and she’d chosen a drunken thief, a ragged bastard who ran with a motley crew of other tech-trash renegades, a madman who had dared to steal from the Warmonger of the Waste.
For all these sins the man would die the most agonizing death Corvus could contrive, and the most agonizing death he could contrive included letting the thief watch Avallyn die first. To that end, he stirred himself from the wall.
She was still so beautiful. It was almost a pity to destroy her.
“Avallynnnn.” He breathed her name into the room with all the evil intent of his deepest longings.
Morgan froze at the sound, the last copper orb lifting off his fingertips. They were not alone in the tower.
“Avallynnnn.” The voice came again, nearer, the horror of it overriding even the fierce force crackling to sudden life off Nemeton’s celestial sphere.
Morgan felt on fire with the sphere’s energy, his skin crawling with it, yet he drew the Magia Blade and held it tight, and wished he had a lasgun and a blast cannon—and a dragon. Only one person, if person he could be named, could call to her with
such depravity: Corvus Gei. The Warmonger had been quick enough in Claerwen after all, and now he had them well and truly trapped. Even if they could make it out one of the doors, they dare not leave, not until the Indigo Book was set in place.
Avallyn backed closer to him, her dagger drawn, the book held tightly against her chest.
“Corvus,” she shouted close to his ear, and there was fear in her voice.
“Aye.” Morgan searched the room.
A drift of man of shadow tore away from the tower wall, and he countered with the blade, slicing through air and nothing else.
“You fffool.” A black wisp snaked down from the ceiling and snagged his ankle. With a twist and jerk, he was slammed into the floor. “Do you think you can fight me?”
The breath knocked out of him, Morgan struggled to his feet, grateful he still had two. He knew what Corvus could do with his smoky darkness, and he could only wonder why the Warmonger hadn’t taken part of him.
“Corvus!” he yelled over the growing noise of the storm and the sphere. “You have no place here. Be gone!”
“No placcce?” the Warmonger hissed. “You are the trespasser here, thief. This is my place.”
The shadowy man shifted again, like a curtain rippling in the wind, and Morgan instinctively lashed out, the sword’s cutting edge sliding through more nothing.
“Fffool indeed, if you think you can cut me with a steel edge.” Another black tendril escaped from the wall and snapped like a whip across the room, catching Morgan in the chest, cutting through his tunic and slamming him back against the jagged edges of the crystal pillar.
Pain exploded in his head, and with a grunt, he fell in a heap at the base of the sphere. Lights danced behind his closed eyelids. His skull felt cracked, and there was definitely something warm and wet running down the back of his neck.
“Corvus!” he heard Avallyn cry through the haze of his agony, and he feared she’d be dead or worse before he could raise himself up.