Gaelin smiled, feeling a strong hand slip beneath him and raise him up. He was little again, cradled to his mother’s chest. A palm caressed his cheek; he heard the soft rustle of the tent’s flap being folded back.
“What have I done for you to hate me so much, my daughter?”
“Hate?” Avalar retorted. “I love you, Father. Do you think I wish to hurt you? I do not!”
“Here,” she crooned to Gaelin as she ducked into the tent. “Be at rest, my gallant friend. I saw what you did. You braved Ponu’s fire as he was rebuilding Tierdon, and you tried to get him to stop. I shall not forget!”
Gaelin rolled onto his side on the comfortable pad that served as his bed. He reached out his arm as she drew up his blankets. “Don’t go away,” he begged. “I need you.”
“He is my father,” Avalar responded, bending to kiss his forehead. “If he commands me, I must go. But I dressed this way so mayhap he will not. Soon we shall know. My father has a good heart, Staff-Wielder.”
Gaelin drifted, spinning like a twig in a powerful current. Somewhere outside the tent’s sun-dappled walls, he could hear Avalar defending her right to remain on Thalus—to answer the song of a sword she called Redeemer.
How is it that staves or swords can sing? Gaelin wondered. I hear it everywhere now. Mornius’s song is in me.
“No, Terrek Florne is my leader and I intend to shield him against harm,” Avalar insisted. “I do not burden him or anyone else! I strive to protect my world as a giant should!”
“We safeguard each other,” Terrek agreed quietly.
“I want her here, too,” Gaelin, alone in his tent, muttered to himself.
“Fear not,” Holram’s voice reassured in his head. “Your friend will prevail and she will stay.” Gaelin nodded and turned onto his stomach, the black velvet of slumber covering his sight.
✽ ✽ ✽
GAELIN JERKED AS a hand patted his cheek. Groaning softly, he opened his eyes wide at the sight of Ponu’s face.
“Shh!” the elf-mage hissed. “I am not supposed to be here. I took Grevelin home, but I returned, for I sense you still have questions for me.”
Gaelin smiled when he caught the sound of Avalar’s bubbling laugh. “She’s still here! I was so afraid . . .”
Ponu grunted. “Of that one leaving? It broke her father’s heart to see her like that, as she knew it would. No, she is here. Nothing will make her go until she is ready.”
“What are you?” Gaelin asked. “You’re not like the Seekers I met. Are you immortal?”
“I am an alien, just as you are,” Ponu told him. “I came from a different place, arriving here fifty some years before the giants broke free. My homeworld, Chorahn, was a time portal, and my people were the first elves. We explored other worlds. During our travels, we achieved great things, and we left our seed behind. Talenkai’s elves, the Seekers and the Khanal, the Eris and Starians . . . I am like their father. They sense this and fear me.
“We dabbled on your world also, Gaelin,” he confessed. “For a time, you made us your gods, but it was tiresome for us and damaging to you, so we stopped. That was when you began to make your own crueler gods in your image.”
Gaelin stared at the elf. “Does that mean I am . . . ?”
“Indeed it does,” Ponu said. “We tampered with your species as well. Not all humans, but enough. Which is why your people are conflicted. Some of you behave in ways that seem alien or primitive to others of your kind. Seth Lavahl, for example. If not for the blood of my people, humans would have perished long ago. You would have destroyed each other.”
“Why can’t you save the world?” Gaelin whispered. “I’m not powerful. I don’t know . . . I can’t even . . .” He closed his eyes.
“It isn’t what you know. It’s what you have right here,” Ponu said. Then Gaelin felt Ponu’s hand on his chest, its weight pressing firmly at his heart.
Chapter 29
FELRINA PEERED INTO the depths of her father’s frightened eyes. She covered his fumbling fingers with her own, cradling them in her lap. “You cannot be serious,” she said. “You had Mornius and lost it? Such a failure as that would warrant immediate—”
“You think I don’t know it?” Nithra snuffled back blood, the pinched lines deepening on his brow. “I tried to use my staff. I waited for Erebos to smite the giant through it, but he did nothing, so I ran. What else could I do?”
“Erebos requires the Blazenstone to focus through, Father,” Felrina reminded him. “The bloodstone on your staff would only expand his power; that’s all. I would have needed to be there with Erebos’s crystal for him to help. Why didn’t you tell us you were going?”
“I watched Mens attack Kideren, and all he used was the world’s blood, the same red gem my staff has. I was there, Rina. He destroyed our city with that staff. It’s identical to mine, so why couldn’t I . . . ?”
“That wasn’t Erebos’s power,” she said. “Father, we’ve been over this before. Mens uses the old magic from this world, not Erebos, remember? That’s why he’s damaged now.”
Sitting back in her chair by his bed, Felrina regarded the low ceiling, the damp, inward-slanting walls around them. Nithra’s tiny chamber was colder and closer to the mountain’s exterior than the other rooms she was used to. “Father, if what you’re saying is true, you have little time left. Erebos will hunt for you. He’ll want you punished. That he hasn’t already . . .”
Nithra pressed a rag to his bloody nose. “Of course, I’ll be slain, my daughter, and it’ll be slow. Unless you kill me now, beautiful one. Can you—” He stopped at her groan. “Shame on me for asking such a thing!” he chided himself. “No, Mens will drag it out as long as he can; he’s always hated me. There’s nothing we can do. Erebos listens to Mens. You, little Rina, he’ll force you to watch, I’m sure. Or he’ll have you do the deed. That would be like him.”
Felrina clung to his hand. “Why did you go? You had nothing to prove. You—”
“A father gets tired of humiliating his child,” Nithra answered gruffly. “I wanted you to be proud of me like you used to be. I’d come home and you’d run out to welcome me. I never see that look from you anymore, not since this whole thing started.”
“If anyone should be ashamed, it should be me! I got you into this, Father. You didn’t want to be here. You did it for me!” she cried. “I can’t let him kill you!”
“Shh, Felrina!” Nithra sprang from his straw mattress and rushed to his staff, covering its bloodstone crystal with the soiled cloth. Then he froze, glancing sidelong at her Blazenstone. “Oh, what’s the use? I’m as good as dead right now.”
“Father, I . . .”
“No.” Nithra sank to his knees in front of her. “Listen to me. This is the reality of our beliefs. It is a test. A burden we must bear. You still believe, don’t you, my child? You’re the one who convinced me!”
“I try to,” she admitted. “But every day I catch myself doubting more.”
“Never question!” Her father bent near, his red-stained nose a finger’s length from her own. “Erebos hears what you say. Maybe that’s why he wouldn’t help me with the giant. If he senses your doubts, our great lord may have been—” Nithra grunted at her expression. “No, that’s not right, either. I’m a fool. What can I say? But do try to have faith, Felrina. Think of it this way; our god needs blood to create our new world, and I will give him that. I will die and he will feed. What better death is there for an old man like me?”
Felrina stroked his hand. “In that other world you go to, will you build us a place like the home we used to have? Make it so the Florne boys can visit, too, when all is done, and we can be young together like we used to be before . . . before I betrayed them and you.”
“You betrayed no one!” he insisted. “They’re lost; that’s all. And none of that’s your fault. There’s so much promise, so much beauty in the wake of death, but they cannot see it, for they are blind. Felrina!” She shut her eyes as his calloused han
d stroked her cheek. “For your sake, you must abandon that dream. The man you love is doomed. Terrek Florne will never believe until it stares him in the face. Erebos came to Earth to free us. If not for the . . . enemy opposing him, we’d already be in our forever home!”
“You mean Holram!” Felrina coughed, a sour taste like venom on her tongue. “I hate him, Father! It’s his fault Terrek despises me. And now I’m going to lose you, too. And soon I’ll have no—”
Felrina broke off at a light tap on the door. A timid voice called, “Nithra Vlyn?”
As her father straightened, Felrina extricated herself from his grasp and moved to the doorway. With dread, she drew back the bolt.
Her gray-robed apprentice stood in the tunnel, his gaze darting to her father. “Erebos summons Nithra. And you also, Mistress Vlyn, to the chamber above the pool.”
“We hear you.” Felrina took her father’s hand. “And we come.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“STAFF-WIELDER!” WREN’S voice shouted.
Gaelin stirred where he lay on his back, licking his lips and frowning at the drug’s taste in his mouth. “It will help you rest,” Ponu’s words echoed in his mind and Gaelin grimaced, recalling how in his greedy hunger he had emptied his bowl.
“Wake up, Gaelin!” Holram alerted him, the warder’s thoughts filling his head from the staff.
Raucous cries and the clanging of metal drew closer. Gaelin flung off his covers. Seeing combatants wrestling outside the door, he struggled to sit up. When one of them fell against the tent, Gaelin scuttled from the pad he had slept on, the canvas sagging above him. Choking down vomit, he gripped his belly at the wet sound of steel carving flesh, the plink of blades against bone. Pressure mounted in his throat. His arm was moving against his will to seize his staff. It was Holram, reaching to possess his body. “Walk!” the being commanded. “Rouse yourself so I may help . . .”
Gaelin started. His feet were shuffling along beneath him, his arm using his staff for support. How did I get here? he wondered, taking in the sight of his spattered and dripping tunic, the gory snow freezing his unshod feet. When did I leave the—
“I brought you out,” Holram informed him inwardly. “You would have been pinned under your shelter. Now you must surrender to me, Gaelin! The time has come!”
The world canted as Gaelin strove to keep his balance, gawking at Terrek’s fighters battling among the camp’s ruins, the carnage between the tents, and the warriors and ponies already torn apart. The dachs were swooping in to snatch the men and carry them off. Then a second wave of wings crashed down, so many of the warped humans he could no longer see the snow.
He spotted Terrek cut off from his men, his right arm dangling useless, Roth and Silva at his side struggling to defend him. “Terrek, I’m coming!” Gaelin cried. He lurched forward, desperate to join his friend. He howled when his legs buckled, pitching him onto his chest.
“Lavahl!” Wren Neche burst out of a tattered shelter to his left. Gaelin rolled onto his knees as the young fighter chopped and flailed his way over to him to help him stand.
“You didn’t wake me!” Gaelin accused. With a furious shout, Wren sprang past him, hacking at a gray rush of bodies wielding swords.
“I tried!” Wren grunted as he parried a blow. “When your tent collapsed under all those dachs, I thought you were dead!”
Gaelin held his breath, dazzled by a sudden flash, Holram’s crackling sphere of power springing into existence around him. Through it he spied an enormous dach landing in front of Terrek, its falchion poised above its misshapen skull. As the hulking creature swung its weapon, Gaelin yelled to Silva and Roth guarding Terrek’s back, “Behind you!” He sobbed as the big dach’s saber shattered Terrek’s lifted sword, then swept to hew through his mail and ribs.
Silva, lunging at Terrek’s attacker, tottered to a stop and sank down, blood spurting from his neck.
“No! Let me go!” Gaelin cried as Holram slowed his movements. He scrambled toward an ax buried in a drift, a warrior’s severed hand still clinging to its haft. Mornius grew heavier, demanding both his arms to keep it from dragging on the muddy ground. He wanted to run, to grab the nearby weapon and use it, but the staff held him back. He saw Terrek clutching at his midriff, calling out even as a howling mob of creatures threw themselves upon him, hiding him from Gaelin’s view.
“No!” Gaelin heaved his weighty staff up, stumbling forward as the oversized dach stabbed Roth in the back. The young man’s face turned ashen, his eyes unseeing above the falchion’s protruding tip. His muscles slack, he dropped from the blade, vanishing as Terrek had beneath the horde.
More dachs hastened down out of the branches, their sharp claws gouging the rough bark, their weapons biting flesh as they swarmed at the few men struggling to battle on.
“Holram, help!” Gaelin shouted mentally to his warder. He slumped onto his haunches. “I need you. Why haven’t you healed them?”
“Stop resisting me!” Holram thundered back.
Beside him Wren, still trying to protect him, crashed to his knees, holding up his blade to shield his face.
“Wren, get under my magic!” Gaelin yelled and at the sound of his voice, the dachs by the ruined tents pivoted as one, their attention shifting to him at last inside the shimmer of Mornius’s fire.
Gaelin stared toward the trees past his enemies. Avalar’s angry cries had stopped, he realized. Then Wren slipped as he came near. The guard’s head was yanked back by a winged figure landing behind him, the creature’s saber flashing down to cleave his skull.
Gaelin closed his eyes as Wren fell. It’s over, he grieved. They’re dead. All my friends . . .
“Now, will you surrender?” Holram, exasperated, spoke through his thoughts. “Death and murder. Without fail, it seems the human solution; in that way you are not unlike my foe.”
Gaelin sighed, his body quivering. The same power that had rescued him from his trampled tent was waiting to take him, as it had been all along. The warder’s changing shape appeared to him in the fog as he transitioned without effort, his consciousness drifting into the Skystone’s inner realm, his despairing mind unable to resist.
Impressions of teeth filled his vision. The horde of scaly dachs surrounded him and raised him up, flinging his body like a rag doll above their heads. He felt himself smiling, for Holram’s lion’s shape filled his sight, pulling him into its gaze of gold.
His staff dropped from his hand. He had lost it, or the creatures had taken it from his grasp—he did not know or care. There was only the hissing wind in his ears and Holram’s triumphant roar when the lion possessed him fully—to draw a first breath through him as a living being.
Everywhere Gaelin looked, fire blasted, lashing silver at the frozen land. It came from himself as well as from his staff lying inert by the trees—from his own chest and his screaming mouth.
His sight was the lion’s, perceiving everything, his mortal heart burning with Holram’s rage. Squealing, his assailants tumbled away in all directions, their limbs writhing in the heatless inferno the warder made. Gaelin nodded. No longer did he feel pain or fear. Time as he knew it stopped, as healing streamed across Tierdon’s valley.
Men were climbing to their feet out of the bloody slush. He saw Terrek approaching him, whole in body and stretching out his hands.
Gaelin’s pulse resumed its steady rhythm in his throat. He remembered to breathe when his lungs craved air; Holram allowed him that much—involuntary movements to keep his flesh alive. Yet now the lion’s fierceness crouched in him, the memory of its roar echoing through his head. Gaelin accepted the warder’s embrace, slipping with ease into the background of himself.
Chapter 30
AVALAR, SWEAT STINGING in her eyes, penetrated deep through the press of dach bodies, her blade skewering two before she yanked her arm back. Her father’s words echoed in her head: “Even breaths, child! Aim true and never flail—there! Now, again!”
She set aside her anger as he had
so often urged. This is what I was born to do, she thought, and parried swiftly to deflect a strike. Defending the vulnerable. That is why giants exist!
A saber’s tip nicked her thigh between the straps of her cuisse. With a howl, she whirled to protect her injured leg, dragging her heavy weapon around for more.
These creatures feel nothing, she realized, seeing her attacker’s confused expression as it slumped over her hilt, the weight of its body sliding slowly from her blade.
She stabbed through a winged dach’s belly, then chopped off its leg below the knee, the frail bone splitting beneath her blow. The throb of her heart and the heat of her blood spurred her on, her limbs growing strong and sure. Onward she fought, her sword cleaving the skull of one creature, the momentum of her strike opening the abdomen of yet another.
As she sprang past the gore, she caught an image in her head of a figure behind the trees, his cruel face leering at her, his features from her very worst dreams. It was her magic, she realized, warning her of danger.
She searched for him among her enemies even as more magic-warped humans scrabbled from the branches, their primitive sabers gleaming. A chill at the nape of her neck alerted her. Turning, she froze, staring as the familiar black-robed wizard strode confidently toward her.
Meeting her gaze, he placed himself between two trees, his cloak billowing back as he raised up his staff, aiming its teardrop-shaped gem straight at her.
She groaned, doubling over in sudden pain. Then, with a flick of a gesture, he sent her stumbling. She tripped on a corpse and fell.
“Avalar!” Oburne’s furry cloak rippled as he floundered to her aid. “Sails take you!” he cursed when he came up short, a knot of flightless dachs cutting across his path and shoving him back.
Cowering, Avalar glanced up, repulsed by the sense of wrong the human brought with him, the fully mastered bloodstone mounted on his staff. She screamed when the power-hungry gem seemed to swell within its prongs, the crystal humming as it fed, gorging on the life force in her flesh.
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