by GJ Kelly
Above, feathers flew, the hawk’s talons buried deep in the Condavian’s tail, wings dragging and flailing before it tore away, leaving the great spy in the sky wheeling and trying to maintain some semblance of order to its flight. But it was struggling, and the hawk seemed to sense it, promptly climbing into the puffy clouds which hung in the pale azure of a bright day’s sky before flicking back its wings and diving. Hook-beaked nature’s vengeance for the insult of dark-made evil’s trespass blasted into the Condavian, breaking the foul-made bird’s back and tearing flesh and feathers, leaving a smoking ruin to tumble and immolate, the Eye plummeting.
This time the hawk received no cheers and there were no fists waving in the air for its success. It didn’t seem to mind though, disappearing behind the trees of the eastern forest a short time later. But the victory did fill four hearts with a strange pride, and a strange determination as they continued south.
Almost halfway down the length of the valley, the ground became much firmer, an absence of streams, springs and standing water testifying to a geology which Corax might find interesting but which for Gawain meant an increased rate of progress, and he even considered allowing Gwyn to gallop. But Ognorm called a ‘melord’, and Gawain drew them to a halt.
Behind his right shoulder, Venderrian was frowning, and Ognorm jerked a nervous head towards the ranger.
“Ven?” Gawain whispered.
“I cannot say, miThal, I thought I saw a faint light upon the ground, yonder.”
Gawain scanned the grasses in the area Venderrian had indicated, and though he stared, he saw nothing. Blades of grass, rippling, nothing more, their glossier sides almost silver, reflecting the light of the day. It did look like a light, shimmering, if you stared closely for long enough.
“And now? Ven?”
“My apologies, miThal. Perhaps I am straining too hard to see something which is not there.”
Gwyn snorted, ears twitching this way and that, her great head swinging in an arc as if peering for enemies only her chosen mount could see.
“We’re all tense,” Gawain sighed, patting Gwyn’s neck. “Come on, let’s get these last miles behind us.”
Gwyn trotted forward, gaining pace and was about to break into the canter when a sudden breeze blew up, making Gawain’s eyes water. He wiped them and blinked and felt his senses begin to scream a warning, as though a worm had sprung into existence in the empty pit of his stomach. The breeze grew stronger, and the warning crystallised. The wind was coming from the south…
“Allazar!” he called, and the wizard, surprised, glanced across at him.
But then the breeze became a wind, lifting cloaks, whipping hair, and suddenly it was a gale, and the horses slowed instinctively, squealing in protest at the sudden buffeting. The gale began to swirl, whipping all around them, a typhoon in miniature, the wind began to howl, and they were showered with dirt and spiteful gravel.
Horses cried out and reared up in pain and shock, gravel stinging such was the force of the wind, and gusts bowled two of them over, Venderrian and Ognorm tumbling to the ground. Gawain glimpsed the packhorse running back towards the north, saw two more steeds following it, desperate to escape the roaring of the hurricane. Gwyn stumbled and squealed a warning, and Gawain leapt clear, and he screamed for her to run, Gwyn, run to the north!
And then Allazar crashed into the ground in front of him, eyes rolling wildly, cloth-wrapped staff held firmly in his gloved hands as the wind howled around them.
Calm, then, and stillness in spite of the roaring of the wind.
They were in the centre of a perfect storm, all four of them, their small circle of ground suddenly a haven of peace, a great wall of spinning wind expanding around them and slowing, debris tumbling from the twister’s loosening grip, spattering them. To the north, they saw the horses, safe and running clear.
And they saw rising up from shallow-scooped hollows in the ground and advancing slowly towards them from shimmering air which had hidden them from sight three elfwizards, clad head to toe in crystal-studded robes, one with a staff and two with long rods held out before them parallel with the ground, and chanting. A hasty glance around revealed another three, likewise advancing, hemming them in, encircling them, the wind dying away as they drew closer. The hairs on Gawain’s arms seemed to scream, standing erect and quivering beneath the sleeves of his shirt.
“Quintinenn!” Allazar shouted, disgusted with himself, dragging himself up onto his knees and ripping off his gloves and the cloth from the Dymendin. “They were using Viell-made Cloaks none of us could see and I could not feel their power through the staff! Stupid stupid stupid!”
The wind died, and the six chanting Viell advanced. Gawain simply scowled, drew an arrow, and hurled it. Only to watch it curve away harmlessly up and over his target’s cowled and gem-studded head. Ognorm gave an immense battle-cry and hurled his arrow, but it too arced away into the distance. Venderrian squatted on one knee, they heard the creak of his bow as he drew the full length of the elven longshaft, and loosed the shot. Which also swerved in flight, narrowly missing the head of the Viell he’d been aiming at, the arrow deflected by some mystic force.
“Allazar!” Gawain commanded, and the wizard stood, and presented the staff.
“Behind me, my friends!” Allazar commanded, and they moved to stand thus. “I shall wreak pitiless vengeance upon those who stand in our way!”
Sparks fizzed at each end of the Dymendin. Allazar frowned and thrust it forward again, chanting louder. More sparks fizzled and popped, and Allazar began shouting the chant. Nothing. Sparks, fading, popping, and then not even sparks came in answer to his mystic summons.
“Allazar?”
The wizard tried again, a different chant, a stream of chants, screaming them furiously, and still the Viell drew closer, coming to a halt only ten yards from them, whispering sibilant rhythmic chants of their own. Venderrian loosed another shot and again it missed the mark, the arrow curving straight up and then dropping like the useless stick it had become, tumbling as it did so.
Allazar fell to his knees, his face a picture of sudden shock and anguish. He dropped the staff, and stared from his hands to the three gaping at him.
“It’s a binding!” he cried, “They are performing a rite of binding! I can do nothing! Gawain! I am become nothing! The staff is useless! Gawain!”
There was so much desperation in Allazar’s voice and expression Ognorm drew Nadcracker and screamed “There’s something I can do, by the thrukken Teeth!” and he charged forward towards the nearest chanting Viell, the Meggen mace clutched in his two mighty fists.
There was a crackle of grey lightning, and Ognorm lifted off the ground and was flung back towards them, landing heavily, stunned, eyes rolling. Venderrian uttered a stream of Elvish invective and began loosing shot after shot at the Viell whose mystic force had assailed his friend, hoping one of the arrows would strike the mark. None did.
“Allazar!” Gawain cried, and stooped to shake the wizard’s shoulders. “Bring forth the Eldenbeard! Bring him forth!”
“I cannot! I cannot! It is a binding! This is how Morloch was bound and chained! I can do nothing!”
On the rise to the west less than a quarter of a mile away, a noise. Horses. Many of them.
“Vakin Dwarfspit,” Gawain sighed, mind wheeling.
Thirty-six horses advanced in a block six abreast, and moved at a leisurely walk halfway down the slope towards them. Then they stopped. Horses bobbed their heads. Saddles creaked, metal clinked against metal. In the front rank, riders of the RJC, four of them, and they parted to allow riders from the second rank to advance through their line.
The Ahk-Viell, clad in long robes which shimmered black and hung heavy with glistening stone gems, eased forward, long staff held in plain sight, four elfguard of the Tau riding escort in box formation around him. They continued down to the foot of the slope, and ambled towards the group of four companions, bound now in a circle of barely visible rotating mist
tinted the faintest of greys.
Rage billowed in the pit of Gawain’s stomach, and with Allazar on his knees, Ognorm flat on his back and being tended by Venderrian, he was the only one left standing. He hurled another arrow, this time towards the distant riders, but once it passed through the circle of chanting Viell it seemed to lose all energy, and simply fell like a twig from a bough some twenty yards away. Still his arms tingled, becoming almost numb from the energy swirling around them.
If horses could be said to be swaggering, those approaching were. The Ahk-Viell clearly was in no hurry, and the force of crystal-coated elves and men on the slope behind him certainly weren’t; they simply sat saddle, watching the spectacle unfold as if bored and anxious for home.
“It is a binding!” Allazar cried, and shook the Dymendin as if to coax it into life. Tears of rage and frustration welled in his eyes and slid down his cheeks, the wizard uttering chants and mumbles and curses and twisting his hands on the White Staff as if he would wring the very magic from it.
But none came.
“It is a binding!” Allazar sobbed, head bowing, rocking back and forth and staring at the useless Dymendin as if betrayed.
For him, perhaps, it was a betrayal. The world betrayed by Toorsen, Morloch’s foul seed sown. The kindred betrayed by Toorsen, left standing alone at Far-gor with only the one-twelve with them to represent the great forest in the war. The D’ith betrayed by the Toorseneth, and destroyed utterly. And now, the White Staff had betrayed him, too, and Eldenbeard, and all the powers gifted him by the Circles of Raheen.
Allazar clutched the stick as though it were an immense snake and he throttling the life from it. Then he threw back his head, and gave an immense cry, a cry which had horses starting, ears twitching and eyes rolling, a cry of such despair and rage few had heard before, save those few who had witnessed Gawain’s rage at the foot of the Threnderrin Way.
Gawain glimpsed the desperate light burning in the wizard’s eyes moments before those eyes closed and screwed tight shut, as if Allazar hoped that denying himself sight of the world around him would make the pain and anguish disappear.
Something seemed to lurch within Gawain’s chest as he looked down at the wizard, on his knees, bent double over the White Staff, hands like talons burying themselves deep in the soft and yielding soil, clutching great fistfuls of southern Mornland. That something lurched once more, and seemed to break, like a string drawn too tight or a twig bent too far. A sudden calm filled him, as it had when long ago he’d stood before a great black lens, and seen his friend, Martan of Tellek, wounded and bloodied on the cavern floor within the Dragon’s Teeth.
He glanced up then, teeth clenched, and waited for the Ahk-Viell, glowering.
And if the Ahk-Viell, his escort, and the thirty-one riders on the slope hundreds of yards behind him could have seen the darkness in Gawain’s eyes, they would have turned as one, and not stopped running until the Toorseneth’s high walls were wrapped snug and warm around them.
oOo
33. Instinct
“I’m all right, Ven mate, noggin’s a bit dizzy is all,” Ognorm mumbled, and from the sound of it, dragged himself to his knees behind Gawain. Then the dwarf let out a gasp of surprise as if punched in the stomach.
“Bugger me! Where’d them all come from?”
“Peace, my friend,” Venderrian whispered from behind and to Gawain’s right.
The five elven riders drew to a lazy halt a few cautious yards from the chanting circle of Viell binding Allazar’s mystic powers and holding the four of Last Ridings trapped in a wispy, swirling circle of grey mist; the elfwizard himself sat sneering in the centre of the line flanked by two elfguard either side, bows held ready, arrows nocked.
“I am Kanosenn, Ahk-Viell of the High Council of Toorsen, Advisor to Insinnian the Steward of Juria, and Commander of Retribution. You shall render unto me the Sceptre of Toorsen.”
“I shall not,” Gawain called back, and clenched his teeth, desperate to maintain the strange calm in the eye of his fury. It allowed him not only to think, but through the strange aquamire and the lingering effects of the Shadow of Calhaneth in his arms, to feel events around him.
He could feel a slight pulse in the swirling, grey-tinted power revolving around them, feel the pulsing of it as it passed from each shrouded Viell’s stick to the next, the elfwizards’ rods and staves amplifying it, keeping the mystic energies in motion, keeping Allazar bound and utterly powerless. Keeping them all contained within a wispy, insubstantial wall against which not even Ognorm’s great strength could prevail.
“Let there be no mistake, horse-king. Let there be no confusion. Let there be no false hope for negotiation or bargains of any kind. This,” the Ahk-Viell swept a hand in an arc, “This is your ending. Your story is over, your deeds all done. Your lives are spent. None of you shall leave this place, and none shall know your fate but those of Toorsen’s Creed here present to witness it. You may choose to end swiftly, or in great misery and discomfort. But you shall render unto me the Sceptre of Toorsen. And you shall end.”
Gawain felt the veins in his temples pulsing, but still he held himself in that strange calm centre deep within.
“The Sceptre of Raheen shall be the ending of your reeking creed. It shall fell the putrid tower in Ostinath and burn from the rubble of its walls the lingering stench of Toorsen’s treachery. None shall live to bear Morloch’s madness into the world, and nor shall you. Run. Now. While you may. Run. If you make it to the trees on the ridge, why then you will have made it to the trees on the ridge. But still I shall destroy you. Run. Now.”
Kanosenn of the Ahk-Viell smiled a thin, cruel smile, and his heavy dark robes glittered as he shifted in the saddle to lean forward.
“Bluster!” the elfwizard declared, and uttered a cruel laugh.
“Stay down, Ognorm. You too, Ven,” Gawain whispered, and heard the sound of Venderrian’s clothing shift as the ranger knelt as ordered beside the dwarf.
“Bluster from a horse-king of a dead land and a dead breed now made ashes and scattered, grey and cold, neither light nor dark. Your wizard weeps, broken and bound at your feet, the white staff a futile stick, its light fading, an ancient tree which shall be mine, and the Sceptre of Toorsen shall be returned to its rightful place. I know the Sceptre is with you. I can feel it. It, like the Toorseneth, bears the imprint of its master’s power, so long did he wield it.”
“Lights, miThal, from the north!” Venderrian whispered. “Dark! Three of them!”
Again, Gawain clenched his teeth and held himself calm in the centre of the storm. He felt the relentless circling of the Viell’s binding energies, felt the pulsing of their rods and staves, and felt the answering vibrations in the sword on his back, and in his own veins. He heard the humming of the sword, pulsing too in time with the energies around them. Felt his heart slowing, felt the skin on his forearms keeping time with the rhythm of the Viell’s silent chanting.
The world seemed tinted grey, as if seen through faint-smoked glass. He flicked a glance to the north, and saw three unmistakeable hyphens growing there in the sky, advancing, drawing nearer with each pulse of the binding.
He looked down then, and the pulsing within him surged too. His friend lay clutching great handfuls of Mornland as if hoping to squeeze but a single drop of natural magic from the verdant soil with which to strike at the enemy. His friend. Allazar, a wizard, the Last Sardor of the D’ith, who had walked with him in darkness and in light. His friend. Who had stood with him in war, and stood by him in peace. His friend. His long-suffering friend, who’d earned every lump on the head he’d ever received from Gawain. His friend. Who’d faced the darkest servants Morloch could send against them, and prevailed. His friend. Whose world lay in ruins and who lay now likewise but still attempting to summon mystic power in spite of a binding which had once held Morloch himself. His friend. Allazar.
Another glance to the north. Three winged creatures larger now, and approaching swiftly. Anot
her glance down at his friend, that word pulsing too in time with the whispered chants of the Viell, and then Gawain closed his eyes, feeling the tensing of his muscles in time with the rotation of the binding energies revolving about them.
“No more bluster?” Kanosenn sneered, his arrogance taking Gawain’s pose as a gesture of surrender. “Excellent. I have not this far come simply to endure witless conversation with a blundering imbecile. Render now unto me the Sceptre of Toorsen. And I shall end you quickly.”
Of course, Gawain knew that just as those outside the circle of binding were safe from missiles launched from within, those within were safe from missiles launched from without. Insight. Else why bother with talking at all? If they truly knew the Sceptre was in the map-case beneath Allazar’s cloak, a simple arrow-storm from those on the slope would have sufficed to remove all threat and leave Kanosenn free to take it from a group of compliant corpses.
The clarity of strange aquamire. It was like a drug, and Gawain understood why Allazar feared it. So much had Gawain imbibed too, along the way from Calhaneth. He’d drunk a veritable flood of it in the Eastbinding through the strange power of the ancient blade, and now it pulsed within him, and in that very sword too.
Insight. Four of the six chanting Viell performing the binding carried Rods of Asteran and were therefore of lesser rank than Ahk-Viell. And they were very far from their domain. They were, therefore, reliant entirely upon false aquamire Toorseneth-made to enhance their energies, here, in Mornland, so far from home, so far from their domain where their powers knew only the boundaries of their rank and learning.