“Silva!” Terrek cried. He thrust forward, shoving between Vyergin and Wren.
Avalar ducked as power from Mornius shrieked by her ear. Gaelin jumped to block her attempt to charge, his arm gesturing her back while he turned to face their foe. Avalar staggered, the ground lurching beneath her as the staff erupted, fire exploding from the stone.
By degrees the blast faded, its remnants flickering on the floor at Gaelin’s feet. The creature was gone, its furious cries echoing down the shaft. Silva remained twitching where the dragon had left him. One half of his torso was missing below his neck, while bits of him dripped from the roof above.
Avalar’s vision blurred. Beside her, Terrek silently wept.
“Commander?” Roth asked behind them. “Are you—”
“Vyergin,” said Terrek in a strangled voice. “I know he’s dead but . . .”
Gaelin sagged trembling against the wall after Vyergin pushed past him. “I’m sorry, Terrek,” he groaned to his friend.
“You tried,” Avalar soothed him.
“Terrek,” Vyergin said hoarsely from where he crouched near the guard. “I—”
“Forget it,” muttered Terrek. “We can’t let this destroy us. That’s just what our enemy wants.”
“Gindle!” Roth shouted. Avalar wheeled to see him gesturing frantically, his brown eyes wide as he stared where the beast had gone. “Gindleyn’s here! He’s got my sister!”
“He does not,” Terrek said. “Snap out of it, Roth!”
“Gindle!” His sword lifted, Roth lunged forward.
Avalar seized the young man by the collar and raised him aloft, kicking and flailing. “Watch the sword!” she cried as the tip of his blade flicked her cheek.
“Terrek Florne,” Gaelin said in Holram’s resonating voice. “This is not what I expected. My enemy does not behave like a warder. His ways are unfamiliar.”
“Understood!” Terrek growled. Avalar waited, her attention on Roth while, his cheeks turning red, he twisted in her grasp.
“Gindleyn!” he yelled again as Terrek stopped beside him. “She’s down the tunnel, Commander! We must help her!”
“No, she’s dead, Roth!” said Terrek. “You found her yourself, remember?” Reaching up, he extricated the sword from Roth’s desperate grip. “Think about it, Lieutenant. We cannot lose you, too!”
Avalar met her leader’s glance as she felt Roth relax. At Terrek’s nod, she set him on his feet. Then Terrek clasped his arm, steadying him.
Vyergin was seated by the dead guard. His head bowed, the captain spread a blanket over the body.
“Deravin,” murmured Terrek. “My father assigned you to me on my tenth birthday. You’ve been with me every single day, and now you’re—”
“Terrek Florne,” Holram intoned. “Erebos is close. We must depart from this place at once.”
“You won’t heal him?” Terrek asked.
His eyes unfocused, Gaelin gazed at the floor. Yet, when Holram spoke, his voice from the staff-wielder was achingly sad. “I cannot mend a body torn to pieces,” he reminded them. “I could remake him, Terrek Florne, but Gaelin is already ill, and he still has much to do.”
“Remake him?” Terrek moved to kneel by Silva, to gently touch the upturned palm outside the blanket. He caught the edge of the wool between his fingers, lifting it to cover the guard’s empty hand. “I can’t imagine he’d like that.”
“There are worse things than death,” said Vyergin quietly. “Terrek, my young friend, let him go.”
Felrina approached Roth where Terrek had left him, his shoulders quaking as he peered down the shaft. “Don’t,” she said, the sound of her voice making him jump. Unflinching, she met his stare. “What you’re hearing now in your head is a game he likes to play. He’s trying to lure you away to k-kill you. This is strengthening him, Roth. Our sadness and pain are the things he feeds on.”
Avalar positioned herself behind Felrina, her body tensing as she watched Roth’s face.
“I’m . . . sorry,” Roth whispered. “For what I . . .”
“No!” Felrina cut him off. “I’m the one with reasons to be sorry. Not you.”
“This isn’t over!” Terrek told them. “He might be getting stronger; I’m quite sure he’s enjoying this. But he hasn’t won. Not yet.”
“He cannot win,” Holram agreed. “For I refuse to be the cause of Talenkai’s death!”
Terrek scowled. “Silva would want us to keep fighting. And that is what we will do.”
Climbing stiffly to his feet, Vyergin took hold of Wren Neche’s shoulder, his cheeks damp as he guided the shaking young guard from Silva’s body.
Chapter 58
LEANING ON HIS crystal staff, Ponu peered over the ledge above Mount Chesna, the wind at his back whipping his white hair forward. His hands trembled as, reaching with his senses, he freed his mind to delve through the Staff of Time’s changeable depths.
He had removed all the redeemable humans he could find from the slavers’ labyrinth. Now he faced the unpleasant task of destroying the rest when they tried to flee, as the black-robed clerics certainly would.
There is a difference, Ponu thought grimly, between the ones deceived by false promises and the sadists who enjoy torture. I will not let the humans repeat what they did to each other on Earth!
Through Sephrym’s heightened awareness, he perceived how Erebos’s attention shifted in the mountain. The Destroyer was stalking Terrek Florne and his men, and Avalar, too—invaders the dark warder intended to kill.
Ponu focused on the present, diverting his gaze from the sunlight overhead. He visualized a dungeon filled with pain, with starving men and women left to waste away in their cells. The staff’s crystal clouded as he probed through its matrix to find what mattered to him most—a pocket of heat buried deep under Chesna’s stone.
Calmly he inhaled, concentrating on his breathing. For this transfer, he would be blind, stepping off the edge of the cliff into nothingness and perhaps death.
His single reference was the ache growing in his belly, the starvation of Erebos’s captives draining the strength from his muscles and bones. His searching brought a human tang to his senses, the rank scent of sweat and terror, the eye-watering stench of stale urine.
He imagined himself beneath a low roof, in a long rectangular chamber filled with sickness and death, despairing hearts both blind and cold, hungry and terrified.
All around him, voices moaned. He covered his mouth. The air reeked of feces, but still he sucked it in while struggling to stay erect. He fixated on his staff’s radiance between his hands, the power of his magic upholding him.
“An angel!” someone whispered. “We’re saved!”
Ponu snorted. “Notice the ears?” He brushed back his long hair. “I’m an elf.”
Tentative footsteps padded in the gloom, the prisoners taking care to stay beyond the circle of his light. “Is this courteous?” he asked. “I cannot see you, but you see me clearly enough. Do I look like one of Erebos’s minions? No, I do not. I’m here to rescue you.”
“Please,” a voice groaned. “Don’t hurt me.”
“I risk much coming to this place,” said Ponu. “I am not an angel. Stop labeling the things you don’t comprehend! I am Ponu, one of the few survivors of my homeworld, Chorahn. Now let me see you.”
A young man in gray robes appeared from out of the darkness, his bruised arms raised to hide his face. Ponu took in the shredded fabric hanging from his shoulders, the fold of flesh that had once been his ear.
“You are a novice.” Ponu lowered his staff and dimmed it. “A servant of Erebos. Why are you here?”
The apprentice sank to his knees, his arms dropping at his sides. “Many of us are,” he whispered. “I’m Gulgrin. I betrayed Erebos by aiding the woman who was training me. It was my fault she escaped.”
Ponu kept his features placid, concealing his horror as the glow of his staff revealed a second figure—a skeletal-faced female accompanied by another, the
two women pale and emaciated, followed by a man so frail he could barely stand. The humans’ eyes were sunken in their heads, the transparent skin of their necks sheened with sweat. There’s at least two score of them, Ponu realized. Perhaps even more!
As his vision adjusted, he discerned people farther back and sprawled on the floor. Beyond them, he saw a shape beside the rear wall, a heap of rotting corpses.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why didn’t they sacrifice you like the others?”
“Oh, but they have!” A man edged closer to the light, his grizzled beard standing out stiffly. “We’re already dead as far as they’re concerned. Starvation is their slowest method, and they’ve tried many. That thing comes among us assuming one of his forms. He strikes at random, dissolving us. We never know who will be next. Every day we're forced to witness him growing stronger as our suffering feeds him. He consumed my wife. I watched his shadow wrap around her. He knew I was there, so he made it take days. I will never get her screams out of my head!”
“I promise you,” said Ponu, “he will pay. This warder will die before this is over. I’ll make sure of it. Even among his own kind, he is an abomination.
“Listen,” he spoke as loudly as he dared. “Come here to me. We’re leaving.”
The man motioned to Erebos’s clerics huddled near the dead. “Surely, you’re not taking them? Let them go to Hades’s blazes where they belong!”
Ponu glared. “I mean to free every living person. No, don’t touch them!” he shouted at the people falling on the novice priests with punches and kicks. Ponu strode toward his enemy’s failed servants, his body ablaze with Sephrym’s fire, tendrils of it hissing along the ceiling. At the sight of the gray-robes’ injuries, he rounded on the other prisoners. “Did you do this to them?”
He snatched a breath, biting down on his rage. “Let’s try this again, shall we? I want everyone where I can see you.” He gestured to the floor in front of him. “And if they don’t go,” he said with a nod at the battered priests, “none of you go, either.”
“You can’t be serious!” a new voice shrieked.
“Oh, but I am!” Ponu marched to the wall where Gulgrin crouched. The apprentice whimpered at his approach. “Do not fear,” Ponu told him gently. “You’re coming, too.”
“How can you say that?” demanded a woman. “It’s his kind who put us here!”
“Yes, and since it is my kind getting you out,” Ponu said, “I decide the rules!”
“He’s an elf, all right,” a prisoner muttered from the darkness. “Look at him telling us what to do.”
“Indeed!” Ponu declared. “And as an elf with the ability to judge, I can decide only to rescue these victims of your abuse, while treating you in the same way I have treated the other monsters within this accursed rock! Oh, but if I did, I would be acting like you, wouldn’t I? As you have been proving yourselves to be just as bad as your captors! You do realize, I hope, that by causing harm, you have been strengthening Erebos, too?”
He pointed at the injured priests. “Now, bring them!”
“No!” cried the woman. The other humans argued angrily, all of them talking at once.
Ponu lifted Gulgrin to his feet, then drew back his cowl from his bleeding scalp.
“Look at him!” Ponu held the apprentice to keep him from bolting. Gulgrin’s nose was dripping blood, his left cheekbone and eye socket were shattered. An infected slash crossed his forehead, a thin trail of pus leaking down.
“You did this!” Ponu said. “Not the tormenters holding you, and not the warder they worship. So how are you any better? You beat these people and you think you have the right? Now bring them!”
The prisoners cowered, the strongest of them shuffling to do his bidding, their shoulders hunched as if they expected him to smite them. Tight-lipped, Ponu watched them help the novices stand, coaxing the gray-robes to come under his light.
“That’s better!” said Ponu. “Now—”
He froze as jittery fingers touched his hand. He stared into an older man’s dark-complexioned face, a pair of great brown eyes brimming with pain. “I dreamt about you,” the human said. “You came out from the fire and you had wings.”
“The Khanal elves believe you humans lack magic,” Ponu said, “but in a way, you do have it, and it lives right here.” He tapped the man’s temple. “This is your higher self. When your heart interferes, that is when you hurt each other.”
Releasing Gulgrin, Ponu opened his mind to the fearful crowd. The prisoners were silent now, clustered around him with their eyes filled with hope.
“Don’t be frightened,” Ponu told them. “You’ll be moving quickly while standing in place, both at the same time. For this to work, you must keep very still.
“Hold on to each other, the injured, too. Huddle up and press against me. Don’t get distracted. Focus on my face.”
Ponu stood gripping Gulgrin. His staff flared as he raised it, flickering as it sensed his need. He visualized the temple with its domed central chamber, the reflective crystal roof above it.
He imagined himself there with the humans pressing close, skimming through the currents of power the Staff of Time created. He was a traveler hurling forward with a flock of wounded souls, wild birds with damaged wings longing for freedom, desperately fluttering in his grasp.
Firming his will, he held them tight. This was magic from his homeworld, a force he had mastered. By the strength of pure will, he had crossed the void to find this world. It was easy in comparison to snatch these people away from their doom and land them safely in front of the Table of Life, inside the main chamber of the temple at Heartwood.
Ponu collapsed as the humans let him go. With slow, deep breaths, he fought to clear his head.
“Thank you,” said Gulgrin. “Ponu, are . . . are you well?”
Ponu planted his staff and stood. “I am,” he said. “But you”—Ponu pushed back the wavy hair from Gulgrin’s swollen eyelid—“are not. We will have that tended to at once. Come.”
Gulgrin reached out to touch his cheek in a gesture of gratitude, his undamaged eye shining bright. Taken aback, Ponu smiled.
Chapter 59
FELRINA GAZED PAST Wren Neche at the stairs. She was glad for the delay in their plan to venture up. I wish Gaelin hadn’t collapsed, though, she thought sadly.
She shivered, for witnessing what had appeared at the time to be Gaelin’s death had shaken her to her core. Despite Holram’s efforts to sustain him after battling his foe, Gaelin had folded with a gasp at the foot of the steps, with Vyergin hastening over and Wren leaping to his defense with his sword drawn. Yet now the young guard was conflicted, bracing his feet, his head swiveling as if he was determined to defend them all.
Drifting toward Gaelin, Felrina studied the stairs on which the staff-wielder lay. The brown splotches on the stone, dappled afresh with Silva’s blood, were familiar. Older deaths? she mused as she licked her dry lips. The people I killed? Sitting on the steps near Gaelin, she recalled how she had waited indifferently at the edge of the pool, lost in her false ambitions, without any consideration for the lives she would take or the suffering she would cause.
Sudden tears stung her eyes as Terrek and Roth stopped to retrieve their shields.
“Well, I’m fine, now,” Gaelin replied testily, his staff with its colorful, glowing crystal propped beside him. Leaning close, Vyergin poured more of the yellow powder into Gaelin’s cup and then stirred with his finger until it dissolved.
“A few more sips,” Vyergin urged as he plied the staff-wielder again with the medicine. “It really does help.”
“Please,” Felrina whispered, surprised to discover she had spoken aloud. Her cheeks flamed. “Don’t make me go up there.”
“Where else could you go?” Terrek demanded.
“Back? Or maybe just slit my throat and be done?” she said. “It would be better! Seeing Mens and the others—I’d rather die!” Felrina turned, struggling to meet his stare. “You wa
rned me if I t-tried to run, you’d have Roth . . .”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Terrek said. “We’re beyond that, Felrina. But now that we’re here, I thought you might enjoy a little revenge.”
She pressed her palm on the bloodstained step. “For years I’ve walked down this stair and never noticed it before. All this death and so much worse, and I never really saw it.”
“But today you did,” said Terrek.
“No!” Angrily, she flipped back her hair. “Don’t make this into a good thing. I’m a monster! I took the lives of innocent people!”
“As have I,” he replied. “I slew the victims of your cult, and I did it so I wouldn’t have to die, and to protect my friends and family. Doesn’t some of that sound familiar? Isn’t that partly why you killed?”
“No,” she said. “It’s because I was foolish and delusional. You would not have had to take anyone’s life, Terrek, if not for what I did!”
“See Caven Roth, there? You owe it to him to climb these stairs and keep going. You owe it to him to try.”
Felrina met Roth’s despondent gaze. “You’re right, Terrek,” she agreed. “I’m sorry.”
Terrek rose, holding out his hand. “You can do this, Felrina. You’re not their slave anymore.”
With a sigh, she surrendered, his arms drawing her to her feet. “But it’s a trap,” she protested.
Vyergin, standing next to her, gravely passed her his dagger. In horror, she almost dropped it.
“No, you’re supposed to throw it,” said Vyergin as Felrina examined the blade with its worn leather hilt. “My aim’s not so great anymore. And who knows? Maybe you’ll hit something vital!”
“But I’m a prisoner. You can’t give me—”
“Of course it’s a trap,” Terrek interrupted. His head was raised, his words addressing them all. “And it’s also our last battle.” Somberly he motioned to the gear on the floor. “We’ll leave all this here. If any of us survive, we can come back for it.”
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