by Morgan Rice
That was enough to satisfy Daskalos. More than enough. He stepped back in satisfaction, ready to give Telum more instructions about when and how and where to kill his targets.
That was when the boy struck.
He lunged forward, his blade slicing down at Daskalos’s leg, cutting it from under him. As Daskalos started to topple, Telum lifted him, poising him over a cluster of the crystal stalagmites rising from the floor and bringing him down hard. Daskalos felt them piercing him, felt them tear through flesh and break bones. He even saw the longest of them turned red by his blood where it protruded from his chest.
He wanted to lash out with magic then, but Telum was already dodging aside, and Daskalos didn’t have the strength to spare. The one bolt of power Daskalos threw flickered off the wall, arcing from crystal to crystal as it grounded itself.
“Betrayer,” Daskalos spat the boy’s way. “Traitor.”
He saw Telum shrug.
“But not your puppet,” the boy said.
“I created you for a purpose!” Daskalos said. His anger rose in him then as surely as the blood that was pumping out of his body. How could his creature, his son in all but name, have done this to him? Daskalos would have destroyed him then if he could have.
“You formed me to kill. You formed me to take power,” Telum said. “I will do those things. I will do what you commanded me to do, but after that, I will do what I want, and you will not stop me.”
“I will destroy you,” Daskalos promised. He looked at the stalagmite, ignoring the agony of it the way he had learned to ignore all pain over the long years he’d lived. “Do you think this will kill me? My life is hidden, you fool!”
He saw Telum stand there, his head cocked to one side.
“Things that are hidden can be found.”
Daskalos struggled at the stalagmite then, but Telum was already moving back into the caverns. The sorcerer sent a watching spell after him, and he saw Telum grin up at it as it went after him. The boy wanted him to see this.
“You made me,” Telum said. “Using your power, putting yourself into the magic. There is a connection there. I can feel it. You built me to take power? I will take power. You built me to kill? I will kill you. I will not be controlled!”
He sniffed the air like an animal searching after its prey, and Daskalos watched him as he went. The sorcerer worked harder, pulling himself from the crystals that trapped him little by little. Every movement was pain, but it was worse than that, because it meant that he needed so much of his power to keep healing his broken body that there was nothing left with which to destroy his “son.”
He saw Telum hunting, and the worst part was that he seemed to be going in the right direction. Daskalos had never told anyone where he had hidden his life. Never breathed a word of it to colleagues, or lovers, or friends. It was the one secret that he had kept above all others; the one thing that he would never teach.
It seemed that Telum was learning its location anyway.
Daskalos pulled himself from the stalagmite as Telum reached a small side chamber that appeared to have nothing in it. He started to heal his injured body, but Telum was already slicing through the wards there as if they didn’t exist. He’d learned more in his time in the mist than even Daskalos had thought.
When Telum punched his fist through the veil of illusion that covered a niche in the wall, Daskalos tried to stand, but he didn’t have the strength yet. He could only lie there as his creation pulled his hand back, coming out with a cube of dark stone, so cunningly made that no one could see the way it opened.
No one except Telum, it seemed. Daskalos reached out a hand as if he might be able to stop what was happening through the connection, but he couldn’t touch anything at that distance. He could only watch as his creation opened the box, inhaling what sat within as if to consume it.
Daskalos felt the deadening of his power instantly. He felt his connection snap, leaving a sensation that he hadn’t felt in centuries. He felt vulnerable.
Telum was looking into the spell Daskalos had sent to track him now.
“Don’t worry, Father, I’ll kill the people you want dead. I’ll kill so many people it will make you proud. Who knows, maybe you will even be alive to see it. Goodbye, Father.”
He swiped his hand through the space where Daskalos’s spell hung, and the sorcerer didn’t have the strength to hold it in the face of that disruption. Instead, he lay there on the floor of the cavern, trying to use what was left of his power to hold himself together. While he did it, one question kept going around in his mind.
What had he done?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jeva sat waiting by the bow of the ship that carried her while Haylon hove into view, wishing that it could move faster. She only hoped that she was in time. How many days had it taken to get to Felldust and back? How many hours had she spent on the deck, cursing the wind that refused to blow strongly enough?
Behind her, the rest of her people stood ready, dressed for war. Jeva only hoped that they weren’t going to Haylon in vain. She hoped that the dead were wrong, too. She didn’t want to destroy the Bone Folk utterly, even though that was the price they’d claimed would be paid for saving the people there.
If it was, though, Jeva would give her life gladly, and that was a strange enough thing itself. The priests certainly didn’t love her for it. Already, her talk of claiming to speak for the living had them saying that she verged on heresy. Some of the youngest of her people were starting to ask questions, and wonder why they had to do what the dead commanded.
The priests were worried that Jeva might lead her people to their destruction, but she was starting to wonder if she had already changed them beyond recognition.
Haylon had changed too, and as they approached, Jeva hoped that they weren’t already too late. The fleet that sat in front of the harbor did so more like an occupier than an attacking force. The houses on the waterfront were practically rubble. Only the fact that there were still ships racing around the island as if to fight some foe gave Jeva hope.
“That way,” she ordered, pointing. “Not the main harbor, the beaches!”
The others heard her, swinging the boat around. The rest of the fleet followed it, so that they skimmed the island like a bird of prey seeking out movement in the grass. Jeva could see the people on the shore stirring at their presence, and she guessed that it would only be a matter of time before the fleet there swung around to follow them.
Jeva ignored that for the moment. She didn’t want to waste her people’s first strike on the static lump of the enemy’s main force. She wanted to find the spot where they could do the most good, and where the fighting was thickest.
Thanos would be there, because where else would he be? Not staying where it was safe, or easy. That wasn’t the kind of man he was.
So Jeva looked for where the fighting was still hard, her ship skimming along the rocky coast, scanning the beaches until—
“There!” she said, pointing.
There was a battle going on down on one of the beaches. Felldust ships flowed down onto it like wolves after a carcass. Islanders fought on the sand, battling bravely but clearly overwhelmed by the numbers of their enemies. As they got closer, Jeva could make out the shining armor that Thanos wore, which probably made him a target as much as an inspiration.
“Foolish man,” Jeva said, but she couldn’t keep the admiration out of her voice. “Why don’t you run?”
She could see the reason for that as she looked again. Catapult fire from the enemy ships rained down on the beach, spraying sand as they struck. Some shattered against the cliffs behind the beach, raining down boulders from the rock face. Jeva could see the spot where boulders had fallen before, covering what must have been the path up from the beach into the hills of the island.
It meant that the defenders were cut off, and soon they would be cut down. Jeva wouldn’t allow that.
“Be ready,” she called. “Attack!”
The boa
ts swung in toward the shore, and Jeva stood ready with her weapons close to hand as they lanced in to strike the enemy ships from the rear. She didn’t even wait for the rest of her people, just leapt onto a Felldust ship as they passed, cutting and killing.
She spun, ducking under a sword stroke and lashing out with a knife to hamstring the wielder. Her bladed chain swept round, catching another man across the throat, and she kicked a third over the side.
She was already moving again, running the length of the enemy ship with her knife out to the side. She killed three men before they even realized that she was there, and then she was at the bow, leaping down into the shallow water with a splash.
Jeva looked around and saw her people descend on the beach like some great wave of violence. Their ships shattered the waiting ones of Felldust’s fleet, and Jeva heard wood creak and snap with the impact. She saw men and women pour down onto the sand, slamming into dark armored foes, stabbing them as they tried to turn to protect themselves.
Jeva fixed her eyes on Thanos and started to cut her way toward him. She caught a sword blow in her chain and threw the swordsman to the ground. She leapt over a spear thrust, cutting across a throat as she did so. A shield slammed into her side and Jeva rode the movement, whipping the blades of her chain over the top to strike back at her attacker.
Step by step, blow by blow, she fought her way across the sand to Thanos.
Around Jeva, she saw her people doing the same. They had the advantage of surprise, and all the skills of people who had trained to fight since they could walk. They were some of the finest warriors that the world held, and had no fear of death. Even so, some died. Jeva saw a man cut down by an axe, a woman dragged to the floor and stabbed by a dozen spears. Surprisingly, she found herself feeling sorrow at that, rather than the elation she should have at someone rejoining the ancestors. The living mattered to her now, and it hurt.
Jeva took that hurt out on the next foes she faced. A huge man with a maul swung it at her and she dodged, feeling the impact through the sand as it struck the beach. Jeva kicked at his knee and he struck back at her, forcing her to throw herself flat to avoid the blow. The big man raised his maul.
Thanos was there in that moment, stabbing the attacker through the chest. He toppled backward like a falling tree, and Jeva took the opportunity to spring back to her feet, her bladed chain lashing out to cut through the throat of a man running at Thanos.
“Jeva! You made it,” Thanos said, reaching out his arm to clasp hers.
Jeva pulled him close, then stepped back long enough to stab another enemy. Perhaps a battle wasn’t the place for a heartfelt reunion.
“I told you that I would bring my people,” she said. She gestured to the battle around her, where Bone Folk and islanders, former Empire troops and men from the Northern Coast, all fought side by side.
“And you did,” Thanos said. “Thank you, Jeva. With them, we might just have a chance.”
Right then, it seemed as though they had far more than that. Caught between the defenders on the beach and the crushing force of the Bone Folk, the invaders were finding themselves slaughtered. A few turned to run, but with enemies in both directions, most fought to the death. Jeva stood and watched it, because she had brought this about. She had done this, and she owed it to the dead, if no one else.
“What’s happening here?” Jeva asked as the battle started to run down into individual skirmishes, and the quiet that followed violence. “I saw the city. Has it fallen?”
She saw Thanos nod. She should have expected it, but even so, the news came as a blow. Jeva found herself wondering at that. Had she really thought of herself riding in to an easy victory?
“There were too many of them to hope to hold it,” Thanos said, “so we’re fighting from the hills and trying to hold the beaches. Akila thinks that if we can do that, we can bleed them a little at a time.”
It was a desperate kind of plan, to Jeva’s ears, but probably still a better one than standing there trying to defend a city against Felldust’s full might. They had already seen how poorly that worked.
“It’s good to see you again,” Jeva said.
“It’s good to see you too,” Thanos assured her. “And you came just in time. Thank you.”
Jeva looked around at the last dregs of the battle. More than that, she looked at the boulders blocking the path from the beach. There were too many to shift easily.
“We’ll have to get on the boats and sail around to another landing point,” Jeva said. “I hope you have people who know where all the safe places to land are.”
“We do,” Thanos said. “And we’d better do it quickly before… damn it. We’re too late.”
Jeva turned, following his gaze, and cursed in silence at her own stupidity. Felldust’s ships came into view, pulling around the headland, and Jeva recognized the same ones she and her people had run past in the harbor. They’d probably set off after them at the sight of a fresh invader, especially with the distinctiveness of her people’s bone-decorated ships.
“Of course they’d follow,” Jeva said. “Of course. I am so stupid.”
“We need to get to the boats,” Thanos said.
Jeva shook her head. “There’s no time.”
Which meant that they would have to face them on the beach. Jeva shouted orders, commanding her people to form up. Thanos did the same with the others. They stood there, and although they all but filled the waiting beach, it still seemed like pitifully few as Felldust’s invasion fleet closed off the harbor.
The ships came in with ominous slowness, obviously knowing that they didn’t have to hurry, letting the fear build. Jeva clutched her weapons tightly, determined to at least sell her life dearly.
That was when she saw the storm clouds gathering behind the coming ships, and she frowned, because there was something else in those clouds.
Something that didn’t make sense at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ceres flew in the depths of the storm, crackling with power as it carried her, feeling like a lightning-laced part of it as the clouds hurried her back toward Haylon. In that moment, she felt like something elemental, something pure and filled with energy.
She felt then as if she finally understood what being an Ancient One was. She’d had power before, but now it felt as though she was made of it. It was more than simple energy, though. There was a kind of understanding, or way of seeing, that seemed to come with the rest of it, so that it had been obvious how to breathe energy into the air to persuade it to carry her; obvious how to draw the latent, crackling lightning from it.
Below, she could see the fleet that had come to attack Haylon. She could see every ship, every soldier. She could make out the defenders on the shore, and even at this distance, her power let her pick out the spot where Thanos stood, ready to receive the charge of the invaders as they came in toward the shore.
Some reached it, disgorging from their ships like a stream of black armored beetles. Ceres rode the storm closer, the storm she’d conjured whipping up the waves beneath her. What had it been like when there had been a world full of beings with this power? What had they been able to do between them, simply by seeing all the ways that the world fit together? It felt as natural as breathing to move in lower, the clouds swirling as Ceres moved.
No wonder the sorcerers had been jealous.
It was hard not to be overwhelmed by all this. A part of Ceres wanted to get lost in the sheer joy of all she could do now, but the sight of violence below pulled her attention back to the beach. She saw Thanos fighting, pushing back foes and cutting them down, even though the flow of them never seemed to end.
Ceres knew she had to act, before it was too late. More than that, she knew how it could be done. She could see it as clearly as her hand in front of her. She understood it the same way she’d understood how to hide a boat full of people, or turn someone to stone. Ceres felt the lighting, wrapping it around her hands.
Then she threw it.
Ceres threw more, and now the ships started to catch light as it arced, their sails turning into sheets of flame, their decks becoming infernos. The power of the lightning sparked across the water, so that even those soldiers who fell in had no hope of surviving. Ceres gathered more of the storm’s power, and now hail fell alongside the lightning, punching holes in boat hulls, driving its way through the metal of the warriors’ armor.
She plummeted then, alongside the power of the storm, and Ceres turned it into a dive that seemed to last forever. When she finally sliced into the waves, Ceres swam hard, pulling herself up onto the beach and letting the water fall from her as she drew the blades at her hip.
Men turned to her, but they seemed to do it as slowly as if they were caught in treacle. One swung an axe at her, and Ceres stepped aside neatly, plunging a sword through the breastplate he wore. She turned, wheeling away from a sword slash, then replying with one that took her attacker’s head from his shoulders.
She struck down at the sand then, and stone spread out from her in a wave, turning the sand to something like glass. Where it struck enemies, they froze in place, granite and marble creeping over their skin until there was nothing left of them. Ceres pulled the power back into her before it could reach any of the defenders on the beach, then went forward again.
It was like a dance now, and Ceres felt as though she was the one conducting it, her swords as light as batons as she cut and spun, thrust and leapt. She kicked a man and sent him flying, then plunged her blades down through the collarbone of another.
Men tried to surround her, hoping to overwhelm Ceres through weight of numbers. Swords and spears thrust at her from all sides. There were even men who fired arrows in toward her, despite the presence of their comrades. Ceres dodged aside from them, letting the shafts bury themselves in enemies behind her. She cut more from the air, then snatched a thrown spear and flung it back hard enough to pin an enemy to the sand.