Chapter 38
FELRINA FACED THE Attendant First, her arms crossed over her chest to quell her trembling. Beyond him stood the open doorway of her chamber, a glimpse of freedom she knew she would never have. “Why is Mens doing this?” she cried. “He rapes me and takes my staff? Why? I make his dachs!”
A slight frown wrinkled the gray-robe’s forehead. He peered past her at Gulgrin scurrying back and forth. Frantic with fear, her apprentice was lighting every candle in the room. “Steady, Gulgrin,” the boy muttered to himself. “Focus!”
Felrina planted her hands on her hips. “Why here in my room?” she demanded. “If Mens intends to sacrifice me, there must be a ritual, isn’t that right? We’ll need an altar with . . . troughs to catch my blood. And the others to . . . partake!”
She shuddered as the First’s calm gaze met hers. “This is all very untoward, Priestess,” he replied. “None of us know what the leader’s plans entail. The communion will take place as usual; Mens has assured me of that much at least. It will be performed in the chamber below, where you will be transferred once you are ready. He’ll have a runner send us word.”
Her mouth went dry. “What does he plan to do to me?”
“I am not him. I cannot say what he has in mind,” said the First, his attention sliding to the bed behind her. “I suspect he’ll flay you for the ceremony, or at least the parts he likes. He enjoys that with women.
“Your clothing,” he said. “Remove it.”
“Gulgrin,” she whispered, “please go.” Her apprentice’s face blanched beneath his wavy black hair. Despite her fear, she went to him, gripping his bony shoulders. “Go!” She lowered her voice. “Listen, get away from these people if you can! Whatever he plans, it will be bad, and I don’t want you to see. Just go!”
Gulgrin groaned with indecision. Releasing him, she stepped aside as he skirted the First and stumbled out. With shaking fingers, she began to disrobe.
“Now what?” she asked when she was done. She turned, covering herself as best she could with her arms.
Mens stood behind the Attendant First, his grin widening as he hefted her staff. Crimson power blasted from the Blazenstone, striking her full across the chest. She flew back, her body going numb, her right elbow shattering as she struck the wall and flopped onto the bed.
“You may leave,” Mens told the First, his tone pleasant yet firm. Felrina, eyes frozen shut, heard the rustle of Mens’s robes as he crossed her little room, followed by the grunt when he heaved something heavy onto the table.
Desperately she fought to unclench her teeth, to manipulate her tongue enough to speak.
“I thought I told you to get out!” Mens snapped.
“You will require an assistant,” the First protested. “No ritual is done without at least one—”
“This is not the ceremony,” said Mens. His tools clattered onto the table beside her pillow. “I have some techniques I want to try out to prepare her.”
“There will be no rite to go with this?” the First queried.
Felrina held her breath. Please, Fin, she thought to the man. Stop him!
“You’ll get your blood,” Mens drawled. “But not tonight. Now go. This one’s going to take a while!”
Felrina struggled for air while the Attendant First, after a lengthy pause, shuffled out. Then the bed creaked as Mens settled next to her. “Yes,” he breathed into her hair. “We’re going to be very quiet, aren’t we? No more cries, and no sounds from this”—Mens touched her throat—“at all. In fact . . .” There was a low scraping as he pulled a chair close, followed by the soft squeak of wood. “I think you’ll be far too busy trying to hold your breath.”
He seized her shoulders and flattened her on the mattress. “Nice and relaxed,” he murmured. “Felrina, if nothing else, you are predictable. I have the staff, and the rest has played out just as I hoped. Your flesh is now mine to carve up and kill. I knew you’d try to stop that ritual. Still, I enjoyed our moments together earlier very much. I see no reason to be done with that yet. Only this time, let’s make it a game, shall we?”
His ragged panting filled the room, and in the sliver of light beneath her eyelids, Felrina spied the little saw beside her left breast. “You, my dear, get to control how quickly we do this. Each time you’re forced to inhale, I get to cut you a little more.”
✽ ✽ ✽
GAELIN STOOD WHERE Avalar had left him, gazing up at Mount Alianth’s white slopes, which Avalar had named Ponu’s Peak. Beside him, the Shukaia cut a vicious gash in the mountain’s wide flank, a cut that bled copiously despite the clogging ice, its black currents descending to cross the curve of the landscape below.
“I feel so small,” he whispered, gazing at the immense valley, at the darkened hills and clusters of frozen trees between him and the forest beyond. Through this they would need to travel, staying under cover as best they could.
He turned to the pony-sized beast next to him, the calico pack-shan splaying its forelegs to lip at the snow. Wren Neche sat beside Silva nearby, feigning alertness. Not far from the two warriors, Avalar hunched over her sword, cleaning the blade with a tattered cloth.
Terrek moved among the four other shan, his breath pluming in the air. With him strode Roth, unconsciously mimicking his posture and stride.
“You have changed much, Warder,” a voice said.
Argus hovered above him within his cloud of emerald light, his phantom wrists crossed over the emblazoned hawk on his breastplate. Slowly the ghost reached out, tapping Gaelin’s brow with a fleshless finger. “Are you in there, my friend?”
Holram smiled as his weary human host retreated among his thoughts. “I am here,” he said. “And in the staff, also.”
“Ah,” murmured Argus. Bobbing gently, he reclined on his back, eyeing the moonless sky.
“I will miss our talks,” Holram told him. “There is beauty where I go, but isolation as well. Warders create and protect. That is all. There are no friends.”
“You’ll still have me.” Argus grinned. “I like to think I’ll be able to visit you. I am a ghost, you know.”
“I do hope, after I am free at last from this world, I may retain some contact with young Gaelin through my stone,” Holram said. “The boy might have difficulty at first, living without me.”
“Hmm,” said Argus. “You mean this little mortal would become our one connection?”
Gaelin blinked to clear his vision, finding himself nodding at the ghost. His face went hot when Argus, watching him, grunted. “Home again, gone again,” the specter sang. “Jiggity jig.”
Slowly Argus rose above the treetops, his arms spread wide as if to hug the stars. His visage, when at last Gaelin saw it, gleamed silver with phantom tears.
Chapter 39
AVALAR RAISED HER hand, shielding her eyes from the glare of sunlight on the drifts as she ventured into the open where the river entered the valley. After a moment, she turned back to peer below the branches at her companions.
“Then what do I do?” Gaelin was asking. The staff-wielder sat on a stump by the fire while Terrek fastened snow-paddles to his boots. He wriggled his leg until Terrek gripped his ankle to hold it still. “How am I supposed to walk in these?”
“You’re in my light,” Terrek complained, his swollen fingers fumbling with the straps.
Avalar crouched beside him. “This is a new pair,” she pointed out. “They have never been used so the hide is stiff. Here.” She yanked off her gloves with her teeth and folded Terrek’s hands gently between her own. For a long moment she massaged them, blowing her warm breath through her fingers.
Abruptly, she released him. “Now it should be easier,” she said.
“Oh, I see,” said Gaelin, watching Roth and the two guards try out their Eris footgear. The men were already beyond the trees, struggling to walk on the tops of the drifts.
We use paddles, too, Avalar thought. Not like these, but similar. An oval of wood lashed with leather. She smiled as Terr
ek hooked the last buckle. “I wish now I had remembered to bring mine,” she told him.
“If only the Eris had a pair in your size,” Terrek grumbled. He gestured to Gaelin. “Walk around and get used to them. You’ll figure it out.” He claimed the seat Gaelin vacated, and as the staff-wielder went floundering toward the other men, he bent to attach the devices to his own boots.
“Let me,” Avalar said, staying his hand.
She sniffed as she worked. In the corner of her eye she saw Mount Alianth through the trees. Somewhere, high above the peak’s wintry slopes, Ponu would be gazing from his cave at the same cloudy sky.
Or observing me in his mirror, she thought. Even on Thalus, I am not free.
Standing to help her leader to his feet, she glanced at the shifting haze above the river. The wisps coalesced into streamers as she watched, a graceful line of dancers swaying to and fro. Not so unlike the colored lights we see in the sky north from Hothra. She smiled despite herself. The fog stretched into forms she fancied were faery people, the elves’ distant cousins on Tholuna. Or mayhap they are the giants from long ago; her mouth went dry as the thought intruded. Shivering, she heaved her pack onto her shoulders and stamped out the fire.
✽ ✽ ✽
“KEEP GOING!” AVALAR laughed as Gaelin tripped and almost fell. He had been demonstrating his newfound skill, grinning as he lurched in a tight circle in his ungainly footwear. “The others are leaving you behind!”
She froze as the mist solidified above the riverbank, a giant taking on form at its edge. The figure’s shimmering skin was the inky black of the royal and long-extinct bloodline. Unseen by her companions, the specter passed through their bodies, his muscular arms outstretched as he shambled toward her, his torn, short-sleeved tunic covered with blood and his transparent jaw stretched in a howl.
Avalar sagged to the snow. The arrival of the ghost sparked a burning along her nerves, the memory of heat the phantom carried from happier moments in his life, a time when he had roamed under Tholuna’s searing sun.
She strained to focus through the fog accompanying the ghost. Who am I? she wondered, gazing blankly at flashes of darkness, of dank, smelly stone pressing close to her neck and hunched back. She was cringing on her bloody knees, her back stinging under the rhythmic fall of the lash. Weak from hunger, she quaked as she tried to raise her scraper and work so that her pain might stop.
She moaned as the apparition touched her face. Then it softened to vapor and blew apart.
“Giant?” Terrek said. He had been speaking to her for some time, calling her name repeatedly as he hastened to join her. “What is it?”
“I . . . know not, Leader Terrek.” Avalar staggered to her feet as Roth, Silva, and Wren plodded by, each of them leading a lightly burdened shan and carrying what the lazy beasts had refused. Bugling joyfully, the little creatures burrowed and breast-stroked through the deep snow, their tufted tails sticking straight up.
She fell in behind the peculiar procession, sinking to her knees in the icy whiteness. Stubbornly she waded past Terrek. While he walked unencumbered with his back straight, she flailed and panted. Glancing to her left, she spotted random blades of grass jutting above the snow by the river. Turning, she plowed toward them.
“Good idea!” Terrek approved, “but not too far, Giant! And watch that ice!”
Avalar grunted and trudged, sinking and thrashing, her dread mounting as the steam gathered thick above the water’s currents. She gasped when her ankle twisted, her calf muscle spasming painfully, and as she kneaded her aching limb through her boot, a blanket of fog rolled in.
A memory weaved itself around her from the sun’s flickering rays, from the gray lines of shadow below the Shukaia’s frigid banks, and 8from the mist’s unending skeins. A vision of giants rose, surrounding her on all sides. Her people were chained together in a circle with their bloody wrists connected, both children and adults, their features pale as wax, the grooves on their cheeks carved deep by unfathomable agony.
In horror and rage, Avalar’s mouth stretched in a silent scream. Four mottled grakan snarled as she sank beneath the weight of her chains. She was to be devoured, along with her friends and family. A rough voice shouted beyond the mist, a human slaver urging the bearlike creatures on.
As one, the great beasts sprang. She lay supine, the shaggy monster above her tearing out her throat, her blood spraying crimson while she pushed in vain at its bony chest. Yet still she witnessed her people falling, their bodies torn apart. Malnourished and sick as they were, her people died mute, leaving their corpses to nourish the grass.
With a jolt, she remembered who she was and where she stood. Forgotten was the pain in her calf. River’s end, she thought. The land of ‘final journey’ where the injured slaves were taken to be killed. She stuck out her arms to keep her balance, for the world was spinning, a kaleidoscope of haggard faces, tortured bodies, and wounded hearts. These are memories, not ghosts. They cannot be real!
Across the cloudy sky, she spied leathery bat-like wings, the gray body of a lone dach winging her way. She growled as voices clamored behind her, her human companions struggling to reach her in their clumsy gear. Then the snow field erupted into steam, a fretwork of fire zigzagging through the drifts.
High overhead, the enemy hovered, howling its frustration. It tilted its wings into a dive.
As she yanked out her sword, a powerful hand snatched her wrist. Turning, she saw Gaelin beside her, his staff aimed at the creature.
“Now!” said Holram’s voice through her friend, and a painful tearing sensation seized her chest.
The fog seethed around her hips, and Mornius’s flames rebounded to vanish within Gaelin. His staff dropped away, and he exploded with light, sheets of lurid power blasting from his body.
The dach reeled, tumbling backward through the air. Avalar crashed to her knees near the fallen staff and fought to pull away from Gaelin’s grasp, aware of Terrek thrusting toward her, and Holram’s spirit tearing her apart, his power gripping hers, manipulating it against her will.
She remembered the staff-wielder’s words, how the magic of giants could heal such as this, but that had been Gaelin. Now, in his place, a god stood blazing, barely resembling the little human she knew.
With all her force of will, try as she might, she could not stop him. Nor can the dach, she thought, seeing how the multicolored flames bound the creature, their tendrils mirroring the fingers of Gaelin’s lifted hand. Pulsing, the magic transformed her stricken foe. The dach’s wings and tail melted, the unnatural flesh merging with its body. As the warped human’s legs shrank and thickened, the spikes folded and slumped, vanishing into its spine.
Avalar screamed for it to end, yet the hiss of vapor muted her cry. The edges of her vision darkened, blurring everything but the sky and the magic, and the dach, now a man, being lowered to the slushy ground.
She gasped in pain when Gaelin let her go, the staff-wielder collapsing in a boneless heap. Her friends were shouting above the shan’s anxious warbles. Avalar sheathed her sword and then dragged Gaelin from the icy water, propping him against her.
Dazed, she scanned the melted field. A short distance in front of her, Terrek knelt and shrugged off his woolen cloak to cover the stranger’s shivering form.
“Captain Vyergin’s not dead,” Gaelin murmured.
“Vyergin?” she echoed. She scooped the staff-wielder into her lap.
Terrek and Roth approached, supporting the man between them. While Silva and Roth lifted Vyergin onto the bronze shan’s wide back, Terrek hastened to the other smaller beasts, jostling the first to get at the one behind it.
“Clothes!” Vyergin burst out. “Boots, blazes yes! What a lousy morning! Is there no hot tea? Who put you in charge, anyway?”
“I think that was my father,” Terrek answered with a grin.
The men were converging around the captain, hiding him as best they could from her view. Terrek returned with a bundle of woolens and leathers: his b
eaver-fur cloak, a dangling sock, gloves, a gray woven shirt. There were leggings, too, and something else—a tan pair of torn underjohns.
“You can have these!” Roth offered, hurrying over with a charcoal pair of riding boots. “I bought them at Westermore, but they pinch my toes, and I think your feet are smaller.”
Terrek prodded Vyergin gently. “We’ll find clothing that fits you later,” he said in a hearty voice. “There are the supplies we foraged from your crate. From the one you had on your sled, remember? Plus, Oburne did some scavenging after the battle. We lost most of our men.”
While Wren and Roth helped Vyergin dress, Terrek met his glare. “Oburne didn’t strip the dead,” said Terrek. “He only took what he thought we could use from the tents.”
“Lucky for them that they died.” Vyergin winced. “I need armor!”
“Later!” Terrek said. “Once we reach those trees.” With a vigorous snap, Terrek cleared the snow from his beaver cloak and handed it over. “What in the blackest blazes happened to you, Captain?”
Vyergin shuddered. “Not my favorite thing. That’s for damn sure.” He wrapped the cloak about his shoulders. “I shouldn’t remember. Oh, but I do. That black-robe had no idea what he was doing with that staff! So many of us died terribly—a great shadowy fist crushing men into pulp. They were slaughtered, butchered by that thing! All because that idiot black-robe couldn’t make dachs right.”
“He made you,” Terrek pointed out.
“True, but I was among the last, and even I was flawed. I retained my self-awareness. He took everything else from me, but he couldn’t take that! So yours truly knew enough to escape the moment I spied the open sky!”
Gaelin moaned as Avalar shook him. “Wake up,” she hissed into his ear. “You must rouse yourself! It is too cold to sit here, Gaelin. Keep moving.”
“Staff-Wielder!” Vyergin dropped from the shan’s back, teetering as Wren Neche attached the Eris’s paddles to his boots.
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