Gaelin stumbled as he followed Terrek beside his horse. What if I try to help? he thought, gripping his staff. Mornius could strengthen them, but then I'd be slowing them down.
He grimaced, imagining himself sick and vulnerable again and needing to be carried. Reaching out, he leaned his weight on Duncan's rump as he struggled to walk, feeling under his palm how the horse trembled.
✽ ✽ ✽
AVALAR GRINNED AT Tye Warren’s rapt expression while the youngest Talhaidor master evaluated her from the sidelines. She swung her shoulders toward her trainer, Roshar Navaren, tipping her blade at the last moment to parry his thrust.
Because of her size, they trained in the plaza, where the citizens of Tierdon could watch. This is a good thing, all this noise, she reminded herself as she feinted with her weapon. It forces me to focus!
Seeing Roshar’s blue eyes go wide, Avalar’s grin faltered. She followed his rigid stare over the heads of her audience. Far in the distance, past the wintry fields and dense pines, she saw a blackness like a cloak appear above the Snarltooths and then fall swiftly to hide the mountains from her view.
Behind the benighted peaks, Avalar beheld an ominous storm rising, a wedge-shaped darkness composed of wings and skull-like faces, needle-sharp teeth, and flashing sabers all aimed like a dagger at Tierdon’s heart.
“Dachs!” Roshar yelled. “They’re coming! To Battle’s Hall, everyone, be quick!”
Ponu, hear me, Avalar thought. She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating her magic as hard as she could to summon the winged elf. This is your city they are coming for!
She recoiled, for the fiery wall her mind struck was perilously alien. Something mighty gripped the elf-mage and held him in thrall. “Sails take you, Ponu!” she cried. “We need you, now!”
Avalar, fighting back sobs, whirled to confront the human-made building where Tierdon’s citizens fled. There were ten of her trainers to protect the people from an attacking force surpassing her ability to count, and she was but one giant.
Camron! The thought spurred her into motion toward the museum. Raising her sword, she darted forward—one quick stride, two—as a massive swarm of wings and tails swooped under the domes, a horde of screeching blackness, human flesh warped beyond repair.
She fought with abandon, hacking into her unnatural foes’ toughened hide, cutting through their elongated bones and poisoned spines. Repeatedly, she swiped at her face to clear her sight, her armor streaming with blood.
Avalar took a step, jabbing with her sword to impale another howling creature flying at her, its clawed, leathery wings open to grab, its toothy mouth grinning. Yanking her blade free from its bony chest, she struggled relentlessly toward the museum’s white stairs. It was at this place where, so many times during her short stay at Tierdon, she had met Camron Florne. My friend, she thought. My friend!
Screams rang from the direction of the hall. The Masterswords had failed. There were too many dachs against too few of the elf-trained humans. All of them were dead: Roshar Navaren, Tye Warren, and Graham Steel. And now innocent people were perishing as a result—women, children, and the fearless little girl who had walked by her knee . . .
With an anguished roar, Avalar charged a black-robed human descending the steps to meet her, hating him for not being the one she wanted to see. He raised the staff he held, aiming its stone at her chest. She screamed as a fiery fist swept her off her feet.
Stretched on her side with her limbs tingling, Avalar caught snatches of Tierdon’s people racing past her and falling, many of them dragged aloft by the winged mob. She heard a loud crack when the city’s sheltering domes shattered above her, the tinkling crystal morphing into snowflakes to blanket the buildings and streets.
She spotted Camron in his blue uniform jacket with a shortsword in his hand, hurrying stealthily down the stairs behind her attacker. In horror, she saw the amateurish grip he had on his weapon.
Despite her numbness, she clambered to her feet, charging at the black-robe to distract him, smiting any foes that blocked her way.
A flying shape caught her attention, fluttering low over the steps in pursuit of her friend. Avalar stopped in mid-charge, stunned as she saw the dach’s knobby knees tucking under its chest, its claws seizing Camron by his shoulders. With furious flaps of its leathery wings, the magic-warped creature hauled him into the air.
“No!” Screaming, she sprang forward.
“Avalar!” yelled Camron, his face strangely calm while he met her shocked stare. “Protect the museum!”
Sobbing, she plunged into the second wave of fire from the mage’s staff, her body going numb when she toppled through its heat, her weight crashing into the black-robe’s body and pinning him beneath her.
His eyes goggled at her, his fingers tugging at his staff, slamming it hard along her belly. Pushing up despite how her muscles spasmed, she twisted her weapon, setting its keen edge beneath his jaw.
Blinded by her tears, she pressed with all her strength, feeling the sharp steel of her sword grind through the man’s tendons and muscles. She heard the soft crunch as the vertebrae parted—then her blade connected with the blood-soaked stone. Repulsed by the corpse’s agonal breath from the massive wound, she gagged and rose onto her right elbow, slapping aside the gaping head, far away from its twitching body.
Her nerves still numb, Avalar fought to stumble erect. Again something stretched her flat, knocking the air from her lungs as she hit the slippery steps. She heard a sizzling pop and grabbed at her rib cage under her mail shirt, gawking as she withdrew her palm covered with blood.
Through the stinging of her grief, she spied another human in black robes standing across the courtyard, his thin body rocking from the force of the staff he held, its fiery blasts lancing through the city, cutting down Tierdon’s buildings and reducing to rubble its once-proud wall.
“Protect the museum!” Camron had said. Dazed and retching, Avalar cast a defiant glare at the wizard’s ruddy features through the flashes of his fire and half crawled, half staggered, dragging her sword and her convulsing body up the stairs and under the ornate archway.
Chapter 12
GAELIN LOOKED UP at the distant sound of Terrek’s voice. He struggled to focus far ahead, squinting through the sunlight as his friend, still leading his tired horse, stopped in front of the sleds.
“Another rest. Even the ponies are faltering now,” said Wren behind his back, and with a groan of relief, Gaelin sagged to his knees in the frigid powder, hearing the grunts and sighs around him as the warriors still standing did the same. His hand trembling, he unfastened the half-empty flask from his hip and lifted it to take a gulp, closing his eyes when the fire in his throat reached his belly. He passed the container to Wren, who accepted it gravely.
“We’re not going to make it,” the guard confided under his breath. “This is the third winter that I’ve made this crossing with Terrek. The last two times it was never this bad so soon.”
Bending over his knees, Gaelin rubbed at his numb feet through his boots. “I didn’t realize you—” He stopped, his lungs aching as he strained to breathe the chilled air. “You seem so young to have been with him that long.”
“I was fifteen when I started,” Wren said proudly. “Lucian Florne is a good employer, and everyone who lives around Kideren knows it. So when Vale Horse needed more hands, my grandfather recommended me. I began as a messenger boy. By the end of the first year, I was already riding patrols with Terrek, and now I’m a guard.
“Not many people get along with Florne Senior, as you’ve probably heard, but I’m quiet, so he tolerates me. ‘To judge a man’s mettle, consider the companions he keeps.’ That’s what my grandfather always said, and that’s what I do. I notice the ones who are loyal to him.” The young guard nodded at a figure moving among the recumbent men. “Captain Vyergin there is a former Enforcer and Lucian’s best friend. And the big Lieutenant Oburne with all the fur, he was accepted by the giants enough to fight with them.
He’s ridden on a giantship, I hear, and he—”
“Please, Wren,” Gaelin interjected. “If I need to know about these people, I’ll ask them!”
Wren looked him up and down with a glare and then gestured to his garments. “Fur-lined gloves and boots with heels . . . pretty nice, wouldn’t you say? Not to mention the quilted leggings padded for riding and that jacket you’re wearing. Florne’s your employer, too, whether you realize it or not, and it’s wise to know about the men you travel—”
Wren stopped as the shadow of a lean, compact figure fell over them both. Gaelin looked up at Brant Vyergin’s craggy face. With his palms braced on his knees, the captain bent and puffed for air, then motioned to the staff lying inert beside Gaelin’s leg. “I need your help, Lavahl,” Vyergin said.
Wearily, Gaelin reached for Mornius, using it to lever himself upright to face the man who, not so long ago and with Terrek’s help, had cut away his matted hair.
“I can see you don’t trust me now,” said Vyergin, “but Hawk is lame.”
As Vyergin guided him around the warriors, Gaelin looked ahead to where the animals were tethered near the sleds.
“Anything you can do,” Vyergin murmured. “It’s this damn mountain and my stubborn pride. Hawk’s not so young anymore. I pushed him too hard and now he’s hurt. Will you look at him?”
Gaelin saw the big dappled gray standing still next to Vyergin’s gear, the whiteness under his raised foreleg spattered with crimson. Vyergin moved in to hold the gelding’s bridle, speaking quietly into his ear to gentle him down. Gaelin lowered his staff and squatted near the lifted foot, supporting it atop his knee. With gentle touches, he probed the horse’s heel.
“It’s deep,” said Gaelin, his fingertips slick with blood. “He stepped on something, but it came back out.”
“It was a sliver of granite and I pried it loose,” Vyergin said above him. “I kept it in case you’d need it.”
“No, he doesn’t have to . . .” Gaelin broke off and stared, bewildered, at his hands. “That’s not how it works.”
“He?” asked Vyergin. “Who are you talking about?” But Gaelin was still, taken aback by his own words.
“Well, it’s the heat in the fetlock I’m worried about,” Vyergin said. “He jumped and landed wrong.” The captain paused. “Will your magic heal a horse?”
Gaelin regarded Vyergin’s tight-lipped visage. Aside from the fact mounts were valuable, the captain’s attachment to the big and friendly gelding he had reared from a foal had been obvious to them all.
Taking up Mornius, Gaelin positioned its Skystone against the horse’s braced foreleg. With a soft sigh, he shut his eyes. He was so tired he reeled, and Vyergin reached quickly to steady his shoulders. Already his mind was floating, the tightness draining from his muscles.
A presence waited for him in the gem’s inner fog, a lion’s stern face. I’ll be sick again, Gaelin thought sadly from a faraway place, but still he wrapped mental arms around the shaggy head, the pulsing fire of the entity’s mane expanding from within the stone and then from his chest.
Mornius jerked in his grasp, spouting its flames of blue tinged with silver, pouring wave upon wave of crackling power across the snow. Voices yelled in surprise—from his past or present, he could not tell.
The ripples of the warder’s magic spread wide, reaching beyond the wounded horse. Gaelin heard his voice murmuring words he did not understand, and yet he spoke them, muttering them under his breath until the squeal from Vyergin’s horse and the repeated neighs from the other animals, alerted him. With a start, he scooted back from the gelding’s stamping hooves.
Vyergin knelt near, his eyes incredulous. “Staff-Wielder, what have you done?”
Gaelin hesitated as the men around him climbed to their feet. Oburne was standing by Vyergin, his expression unreadable, while the others . . . The warriors sloshed like children through the slush, converging on him with the blood and fatigue gone from their grinning faces. Mornius’s fire had healed them, too.
“I don’t . . . know.” Gaelin stroked the staff lying beside him, its multicolored gem pulsing in its iron claws. With a shudder, he closed his eyes. “Is Hawk healed?”
Gloved fingers clasped his upper arm. “Yes, indeed!” The captain laughed sharply. “Is there anything that isn’t? But why in Hades’s blazes did you wait so long? You could have been relieving us of all this—”
“Enough, Vyergin.” Terrek’s voice was stern, his approach soundless. At his gesture, the warriors splashed away to fetch their gear.
As the tipping world righted itself, Gaelin drew a long, shaky breath. “Take it slow at first,” he counseled Vyergin with a gesture to Hawk. “He lost a lot of blood.”
“You bet.” Vyergin stood and patted the charger’s muscular neck. “You have my thanks, Staff-Wielder.”
Gaelin stared. Tendrils of fog were stretching in front of his sight, and he wanted to follow. By degrees, he drooped forward. His body was heavy, his shoulders sagging. Then knuckles were thumping his knee. After a reluctant pause, Gaelin lifted his head.
Terrek knelt before him, his hazel eyes clear and alert, concern deepening the lines around his mouth. “Gaelin?”
“Tired,” Gaelin said.
“Understood.” Terrek hauled him to his feet. Numbly Gaelin leaned on his staff as Terrek hurried to retrieve his horse. The snow was twirling around him again, the white flakes indistinguishable from the fog.
✽ ✽ ✽
LULLED BY DUNCAN’S easy strides, Gaelin wandered through a soothing mist. He heard snatches of voices on the wind, the men telling him how the company had reached the summit and had rested farther on. At one point, a dialogue interested him enough to focus his drifting mind. He recognized Vyergin’s gruff voice.
“I am grateful for what he did, believe me,” the captain said, “but he could be trying harder, don’t you think? All that time while we were freezing, what did he do?”
“He followed my instructions,” was Terrek’s retort. “I told him I wanted him to recover, and he knows if he uses Mornius, he can’t. Look what it does, Vyergin. He says it helped him get through his childhood, but do you remember how he was when we found him? You think he got that way just from Lavahl’s abuse? I don’t. He has become dependent upon that power. I know you see it, too, how much it harms him. So let’s make his staff our last resort, shall we? I’d like to get through this without destroying him.”
Gaelin frowned as he returned to the mist. The answers he sought were not with these men but in the safety of the Skystone with its realm of inner vapor where the warder dwelled. With care, he sifted through the gem’s matrix, struggling to understand what the strange being in Mornius wanted, yet always the answers flitted beyond his reach.
Twice the staff had acted independently of his will, first during the battle at Heartwood and now by healing more than Vyergin’s horse. Gaelin frowned at the helpless feeling it gave him.
I am not your tool! he thought to the warder, and then he drifted.
He roused to find himself draped over the saddle, his face against Duncan’s lowered neck. With a groan, he straightened on the horse and peered at the twilight through the branches. Pale above the forest, the Companion’s crescent winked between the clouds, its light as solitary as he was, circling life without getting too near.
Shivering, he listened to the sounds of camp approaching completion, the removal of tack and gear. He heard a soft crunching; footsteps paused and then briskly resumed.
“Silva and I pitched the shelter,” Terrek called. “I had hoped you wouldn’t awaken.”
Terrek emerged from the trees and stopped in front of the horse, a faint mist rising to swirl around them both. Dismounting, Gaelin reached to untie Mornius from the saddle. “I’m glad I did,” he said. “I’m not dependent, and I’ve been babied enough!”
Aware of Terrek’s scrutiny, he squared his shoulders and strode toward the tents.
Chapter 13
AS TE
RREK REINED in his horse, Gaelin straightened behind him on the gelding’s back to peer at Tierdon. He had glimpsed the ruined city through the low-hanging clouds during their arduous descent from the summit. The destruction, viewed from the higher altitude, had not seemed so extensive then, or as final as it did now. Gaelin sighed, his gaze on the sad expressions of the warriors around him.
Gravely the men spread out in the knee-deep snow at the edge of the valley, their bloodshot eyes staring at Tierdon’s remains under the flock of carrion birds. Two days earlier the fighters had been angry, Gaelin recalled, or grieving while they walked. But now—
Terrek sat rigid in his saddle as Vyergin, drawing alongside them with a click of his tongue to his horse, broke the silence, swearing from Hawk’s dappled back.
“I know every building and street.” Gaelin remembered Terrek’s words to his men from three nights ago. “I know the faces, the people.”
Without a sound, Gaelin lifted his staff, its power tickling his palms while he sought to pass endurance and strength to his friend.
Terrek twisted to scrutinize the terrain, tears brimming in his hazel eyes. “No tracks at all,” he observed. His jaw hardened. “If our enemies came through on foot there would be some sign. They must have flown.”
Oburne’s thin black braids flicked when he turned to study the empty field. “The attack came from above,” he agreed. “We have no defense against so many winged dachs, and they know it. Next time we’ll be powerless to stop them.”
Terrek glowered as he gathered up the reins and motioned to the sleds.
✽ ✽ ✽
GAELIN COVERED HIS ears. The chatter from the scavenging birds was unnerving as the company passed beneath a bent tangle of metal and then picked their way around the scattered debris beyond. Still seated behind Terrek on his sturdy white horse, Gaelin squinted at the brightness of the sun’s reflections flaring from Tierdon’s splintered glass.
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