by Cindy Dees
Ayli spoke up. “I already have a link to my king, forged through thousands of years of fealty to him by my people. I need no focus item.”
“Perfect, then.”
Raina passed Gawaine’s crown to Rosana while Eben passed Eliassan’s bow—Gawaine’s bow—to Aurelius. For her part, Raina clutched her fist tight around Gawaine’s signet ring, which still clung tenaciously to her middle finger.
She could keep the nature magic for herself. Be healthy and hale. Live a long, full life. Or she could give up the magic to Gawaine and go back to that other state where she would soon go mad and die. As if there was any question of what she would do.
“Let us begin,” Aurelius intoned.
Raina closed her eyes and concentrated on Gawaine. Good heavens, he was close. His spirit was so close she could practically reach out and touch it. All that was needed was one big spark of energy to complete the joining of body and spirit.
“Call your magic and begin channeling it into the regalia,” Aurelius instructed.
Much in the manner of ritual magic, Raina called the green magic and focused it into the ring on her finger. Immediately, the unicorn horn band grew warm and vibrated with excitement. Someone gasped, and she realized the ring was glowing brightly, along with the bow and the crown.
No sooner had she opened her eyes than every bit of the pain and noise and madness pushing at the boundaries of her mind surged forward, all but overwhelming her. And she hadn’t even cast any magic!
She wasn’t going to beat this. The curse of her magical power was going to get the best of her. But for now, she was determined to see through this ritual.
“Place your item touching his body,” Aurelius murmured, staring at the bow in fascination.
As Ayli laid her hands on Gawaine’s ankles, Rosana put the crown on his head, and Aurelius wrapped Gawaine’s right hand around his bow after all these thousands of years, Raina gave her ring a tug. It came off easily, as if sensing its final destination and approving of it. She slipped the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand, and it shifted imperceptibly in size, widening to fit his larger hand.
Gawaine’s hand was cool against hers, but supple and strong, not stiffened with death. As she stared down at it, the magic stored in his ring began to flow into him. His palm warmed faintly to the touch, and his wrist took on a vaguely rosy hue. Blood was starting to flow through his veins.
But it was too slow. It was not enough. They needed more magic, something big to make the final connection between body and spirit. The other three healers must have sensed the same thing because they all started murmuring incants for healing and casting their magics into him.
It was still not enough.
It was going to take her magic—all of it—to wake him.
She didn’t hesitate. Her life was a worthy trade for his. She opened the floodgates wide, wider than she’d ever opened them before. The voices surged forward until the noise of them blinded and deafened her. And still she let it flow. She reached out to all the voices, all the echoes, all the spirits in Haelos. And for a moment she felt them all, her connection to each and every one of them, her link the source of her immense well of magic.
Throwing herself into it headlong, she drew all the magic she could summon, not satisfied to let it passively flow through her and into Gawaine. Rather, she sucked it into her lungs in painful, gasping inhalations. She took all the energy of all the living beings of Haelos, channeled it, shaped it, became the magic herself. And then she exhaled every last bit of it out in a great gust of healing magic. Into him.
Blood. Breath. Life.
And as she died, he came to life.
In that single shared instant of in-between, his eyes opened as hers began to close, and they saw each other. Both alive, both dead. Together for one perfect, endless instant.
Joined in magic and spirit, sharing their hopes and dreams, their love and pain, the whole long life they could have had together. Love. Laughter. Children and grandchildren. Dear friends. Struggles and triumphs, a peaceful nation and a healed land. All of it was there in his wise, dark eyes. And she lived it all with him for that one moment out of time.
Then her hand fell away from his, and her legs collapsed out from under her as he sat up, reaching toward her.
The cold, dead ground came up to meet her body, and the blackness of the void wrapped around her spirit, sucking her down, down, down. Into nothing.
* * *
Shocked at Raina’s collapse, Will belatedly jumped into action as the Gaged Man charged into the clearing, barreling past Rynn and Eben. Rosana screamed something about Raina dying, Ayli screamed something about Gawaine living, and Tiberius and Adrick ran forward toward a small figure that stumbled drunkenly out of the forest.
His mother.
The sight of her froze Will for a costly second as the Gaged Man reached him and took a vicious swing at his knees, attempting to hamstring him. Only Will’s long years of training and extreme agility saved him from being crippled. He leaped high over the worst of the blow, but still caught a bad gash on his lower leg. He fell and rolled, coming to his feet well behind the Gaged Man.
Ayli leaped in front of Gawaine to defend him and was gutted for her troubles. She slid off the Gaged Man’s bloody sword in a heap of rags and bones on the ground.
Selea swept forward, his dark cloak sailing out behind him, but armed only with daggers, he was not able to close on the Gaged Man and take the ancient warrior down.
The Gaged Man threw magical damage at Marikeen and Kendrick, who charged from his off side, and both of them went down, badly wounded.
They were in big trouble. As far as Will could tell, everyone in the party was tapped out. The healers had just cast everything they had into Gawaine, everyone was injured to some degree or another, and the Gaged Man was a formidable fighter.
Will looked frantically for his father, but Ty was kneeling next to Serica, who lay on the ground in a pool of blood. Panic for his mother slammed through him, but he had no time for it.
Using the metal-clad end of his staff, he walloped the Gaged Man on the back of his helmet hard enough to force the man to turn around and face him. The man bared his teeth in fury and leaped on the attack.
Wounded, out of magic, and armed only with his staff, Will was at a severe disadvantage against a fully armored, magic-wielding, sword-swinging opponent. But by the Lady, he would die rather than let this assailant murder Gawaine.
Will fell back, parrying the blistering flurry of sword swings, drawing the Gaged Man away from Gawaine step by step. As he’d hoped, his friends slid in behind the Gaged Man, forming a living wall between the attacker and Gawaine, who had slid off the bier and had gathered Raina’s body in his arms.
The Gaged Man’s gaze darted away from Will for an instant. Frantic that his foe would disengage from him and turn back to murder all his friends and Gawaine, Will taunted him. “Afraid you can’t take me? I’m bleeding and limping and armed only with a stick, and a great warrior like you can’t take me? You’re not worthy to lick the dung off my boot if you can’t beat me in my current state!”
The ploy worked. The Gaged Man made an aggressive move toward him, and Will fell back a few more paces before the renewed onslaught.
Out of the darkness and tangled tree roots, three elves raced forward, shouting. Will had just enough time to glimpse spiderweb markings on their faces before they attacked the Gaged Man, slashing at him from all sides with swords. Will joined in pummeling the Gaged Man, aiming for the joints in his armor where his flesh would be most vulnerable.
The Gaged Man went down under the attack, letting out a piercing scream of rage and frustration. One of the zinnzari lifted his sword high in both hands over the ancient warrior’s body and plunged his sword into the Gaged Man’s heart.
“That should do the job,” Will commented dryly.
* * *
Thanon heard a scream, and his head jerked up. What manner of beast made such a fearsome s
ound? It went straight to his gut and twisted his innards into knots of abject terror. He projected his mind outward, trying to sense this new threat, and he reeled at the towering fury of the immensely powerful mind that was almost here.
The battlefield was much less chaotic than it had been a half hour ago. Most of the phantasmal forces were defeated and turned to dust. A tight cluster of night trolls and nulvari void casters were still stubbornly holding their ground. Worse, lizardmen seemed to keep pouring onto the island, coming from who knew where, rallying around the one remaining nullstone construct.
Tarses had been forced to lead the attacks on the other two constructs because his Klangon steel sword was one of the only weapons on the field that could damage the incredibly hard creatures.
As for Thanon’s men, they were battered and beginning to show the wear of hard, continuous fighting. His healers were running very low on magic, much lower than he wanted to let on to his enemies. He would not be exaggerating to say the situation was becoming dire.
“Thanon! Report!” Tarses called to him.
He jogged over to where the general directed the battle. At the moment, Tarses was instructing has various subcommanders in how they were going to execute a pincer move upon the night trolls and drive them away from the black door.
“You’ll hold the door against the lizardmen, Thanon. Park your men in front of it, let them rest as they can, and don’t let anyone through.”
“Yes, sir,” he responded briskly.
He jogged back to his men, who were grateful to fall back from the main fighting and array themselves in an unmoving line in front of the nullstone door. They bent over, hands on their thighs, breathing hard. His men were even more spent than they’d been letting on. Gratitude and admiration for them coursed through him. They would die to the last man to protect the door Raina had passed through if he told them to.
And that was exactly what he told them to do. Gripping weapons anew and resettling armor into place, they took up guard duty in front of the door.
The scream sounded again, this time much closer and much louder. It grated upon his ears and mind, forcing him to throw up his mental defenses against the agony that shriek induced.
His men flinched but held their ground.
A great shadow swooped out of the mist, passing over the battlefield at high speed, obscuring so much light for that brief moment Thanon could hardly calculate how large the flying creature must be.
The night trolls and nulvari turned as one and ran, literally screaming, for the shore, the fastest of them disappearing into the mist.
The shadow came back without warning, this time from the other direction, with a great whooshing sound of wind. Massive talons reached down out of the mist, grabbing the largest of the trolls and casually crushing them before dropping them. A great, bat-like wing dipped down and swept the nulvari aside like grains of rice on a tabletop. They flew off into the mist, and moments later, Thanon heard splashing and screaming as the violent currents swept them away.
The dragon landed then, her huge claws plunging into the soft ground of the island, great wings spread wide. The lizardmen on the field fell to their knees and plastered their foreheads on the ground, chanting frantically in unison, something about being blessed by the return of the old ones.
Thanon stared in utter shock, gazing upon his first and only dragon in a life that spanned hundreds of years. She stood several times the height of a man, her scaled body glittering every shade of green, her massive, muscular tail twitching in what could only be fury. He did not need to read her emotions to know that she was enraged.
“Why do you come to this place?” she demanded.
He wasn’t sure she spoke the words aloud, but they resonated painfully in his mind.
Tarses glanced over at him, and Thanon shrugged back. He had no advice for the general about how to converse with a furious dragon.
“Out of my way,” she ordered imperiously. “Attempt to impede me and die.”
He blinked, and in the next second, the dragon had been replaced by a shockingly, dangerously beautiful woman. She looked human, and yet he knew without a doubt that she was not. Power poured off her, waves upon waves of it, beyond measuring in scope and scale.
She stalked toward him, and Thanon realized belatedly that the door was her goal. He leaped aside, gesturing for his men to do the same. They all scrambled out of her way, giving her wide berth.
As she drew near, he noted that her human hair was dark, and that green sparks flew off the tips of individual strands as it flowed around her. She wore a form-fitting green dress that was simple and elegant, and her eyes … her eyes were mesmerizing. Wide, green, and slightly uptilted, they were impossible to look away from.
Only when she waved her hand and the stubborn nullstone door opened of its own volition before her did he tear his gaze away from her exotic, sharp-edged beauty.
Beyond the door lay a wide chamber that looked to encompass the entire interior of the island. It glowed softly from within, and the dragon, still in human form, strode inside.
* * *
Will looked up sharply as a woman moved toward them. She was dressed all in green, her dark hair giving off green lights, and green magic crackling from her fingertips. She stopped a dozen paces from where they were all gathered around Raina’s dead body. Not even Gawaine had been able to revive her. Raina was well and truly dead.
The void left by her passing was so vast and painful that he’d gone completely numb inside, his mind lost in blank denial. But he knew that when the feelings came, they were going to be awful beyond measure.
Aurelius had soberly declared her beyond renewing and beyond resurrection. She had apparently completely burned out her spirit channeling all the magic she was capable of into Gawaine.
She’d been so young, so full of dreams, so stubborn and generous. He couldn’t believe she was gone. And yet she incontrovertibly was. For now, Will embraced being too devastated for tears, too numb for grief. That would come, but later.
As the stunning, furious woman drew close, Gawaine looked up from where he knelt, cradling Raina’s corpse gently in his arms. Will was shocked to see a tear track upon the king’s cheek.
The bedraggled, bleeding, exhausted party braced defensively as the woman took an aggressive step forward. But Gawaine said in a weary voice, “Greetings, sister. It has been a long time. How was your nap?”
“Fine! Yours?” she snapped.
Will looked back and forth between Gawaine and the woman. Sister? Could this be … Hemlocke? But she was a dragon …
If any dragon could take a human form, this would be exactly what he would imagine it to look like. Power and danger and arrogance rolled off the woman in green.
“So! You children couldn’t resist meddling, could you?” she snapped. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
Bloodroot growled inside his chest, and Will frowned, beyond caring right now if he offended a dragon. “Actually, madam, we know exactly what we’ve done. We’ve given Haelos its Mythar back, and with him given the continent a chance to heal and be whole. We’ve given the people of this land their king back, and with him a chance to be free.”
“Freedom. Hah! You know not what it means, boy,” the dragon retorted.
“Exactly. But we would like to learn.”
“Oh, you shall, foolish human. You shall. And in the meantime, you’ve killed my brother. Well done,” she added sarcastically.
“How’s that?” Aurelius asked.
“As long as he was here, he was safe. I watched over him, and no one could touch him. But now, he is awake. He no longer falls under my protection. My promise to our mother is fulfilled. You are on your own, brother.”
Gawaine did not respond. Instead, he looked down at the body of the girl in his arms and wept.
Which seemed to irritate Hemlocke greatly. She paced from one side to the other and back before stepping forward aggressively enough that he was forced to look up at he
r. She glared, and Gawaine stared back implacably at her. Will got the distinct impression that they were sharing some sort of psychic communication. Or more accurately, that they were silently arguing with each other.
Hemlocke burst out, “You loved her? Since when do you love anything but your precious land?”
Gawaine answered in a voice laced with pain and regret, “Since I met her.”
“How fascinating.” Hemlocke took a few more steps forward with sinuous grace that reminded Will of a panther he’d once seen at a fair. The expression in her green eyes was just as predatory, too.
Gawaine rose to his feet as she approached, Raina’s limp body still cradled in his arms. Hemlocke stopped directly in front of him, staring down at her.
“She’s human,” Hemlocke spat.
“She was noble in spirit and kind in heart. And brave. So brave—” Gawaine’s voice broke.
Will was close enough to see a distinctly calculating look come into Hemlocke’s eyes as she stared at Gawaine’s bowed head. Then she reached out, laid her hand over Raina’s heart, and closed her own eyes.
Will jumped violently as Raina took a sudden gasping breath. Gawaine moved quickly, laying her on his bier and quickly wadding up his silken shroud under her head.
He placed his hands on either side of her head and stared down at her, concentrating intently for many long seconds. “Come back to me,” he murmured aloud at one point.
Another breath, this one deeper. A long exhalation.
Raina’s eyes fluttered open.
A gasp went up from everyone followed by exclamations of relief.
Gawaine looked up at Hemlocke, his expression ravaged. He spoke humbly. “Thank you, sister.”
“You owe me. And so does she.”
Will got the feeling Hemlocke hadn’t revived Raina for any altruistic reason at all. She’d done it because she wanted to have some sort of a hold over Gawaine.
Gawaine’s gaze narrowed. “I understand.”
He obviously thought the same thing of Hemlocke’s motives.
“I’ll leave you to your human friends and your short life. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”