The Last Larnaeradee

by Shelley Cass

  And Kiana had certainly known that, and had sent Noal and I away.

  The intensifying heaviness in the air made it feel as if the Gods were compressing the entire world.

  Then an abrupt explosion burst from the raven and a wave of sound and light tore the night.

  Wind gusted against us and Amala reared in fright as a great bolt of red lightning split the sky, forking downward with an audible crackling and sizzling sound. It struck the ground hard, ripping the dirt and sending ash flying from the impact. A smoking crater was left in its place, and though it had missed Kiana, one of Agrona’s own beasts had been thrown backward by about ten yards. It shrieked horribly in pain and the raven screeched in fury.

  A second red bolt rent the night and the raven’s rage was almost tangible as Kiana dived out of the way at the last moment again, leaving only the beasts who had been on her tail in the line of fire. Now another two beasts had lost their balance and were scratching at their startled ears and eyes.

  “Gods!” Noal echoed as we both tried to control Ila and Amala, and as we felt another building surge of power.

  The gravity of the world seemed to pull upward for a moment, up to the raven.

  Then there was the release.

  Another red bolt ploughed down from the sky like deadly rainfall, exploding into the ring of fire. Another, and another in quick succession.

  Red forks were appearing from nowhere, tearing at everything in their path and hitting beasts instead of Kiana. Vortex, twister-like winds were bursting outward from each boom of magical lightning, whipping at us so strongly that I strained to keep Amala steady even from where we were.

  Yet soon Agrona’s relentless, blind attacks had left all of the beasts sizzling on the ground, trying to rise or writhing with the unnatural electricity that licked at their skins.

  While in the very centre of the circle of chaos, Kiana stopped – the last one standing.

  “Is she mad?” Noal yelled over the noise. “She’s going to get hit!”

  I held an arm up to shield myself from the ash and dirt whipping through the air. We watched as red bolt after red bolt hit the ground all around Kiana, sending earth and fire exploding into the air. But she paid no heed, simply loading her bow with an arrow.

  My heart stopped when I saw her lift her bow to aim at the sky. When she had secured her shot, she fired.

  I heard the furious, agonised squawk of the raven as the arrow pierced the breast of the midnight bird. I saw the winged demon plummet from the sky. And then in an instant, I saw the Witch disappear before hitting the ground.

  I saw Kiana suddenly double over with pain, clutching her shoulder as a couple of the Evexus began scrambling their way up.

  “Stay here!” I shouted at Noal, and kicked Amala into action.

  Faster than I had ever felt any horse race before, Amala nearly flew in her effort to reach Kiana. We passed through the opening in the ring of flames, the mare’s hooves hardly touching the ground. We skirted around craters in the earth at breakneck speed.

  “Kiana!” I yelled, and saw her fight to straighten and raise her arm.

  I held my own arm out to her as we raced forward, and, not even contemplating missing her hand, I stretched out, leaned forward in the saddle, and finally grasped her forearm, swinging her so that she could seat herself in the saddle behind me.

  I felt her arms encircle my waist before I turned Amala back to race us away from our scorched battle field.

  Chapter Fifty Two

  The Witch was dragged backward through suffocating layers of the atmosphere as her master’s harsh magical grip reached out to grasp her. But all Agrona’s mind could fixate on was how that mortal wench had had the nerve to lead the beautiful Evexus around like dumb animals.

  And how that mortal wench had shot the Witch of Krall.

  Perhaps Kiana truly did have power to take a Sorcerer’s dead heart and make it beat too.

  Agrona’s feathers sparked and smoked as she was mercilessly tossed through the embers of the Other Realm, and yet her innards burned more fiercely than all else as she focused irately on the one who had managed to hurt her. Her gut writhed with boiling knots when she skidded into reality along the cold stone floor of her master’s chambers.

  She opened her eyes to see the Sorcerer’s booted feet, only inches from her face. So close that she could feel the cool of his power radiating from his body and over hers. As if she was lying next to a pillar of ice.

  There was no scowl upon his beautiful face. There was no anger, or in fact any feeling in his granite eyes. He actually stooped and bent close to her so that she could see his face.

  “You are failing me again,” he said softly, his breath cold on her prickling neck. “I am displeased.”

  He was so flawless, like a perfectly sculpted statue of marble.

  “No!” she rasped, made both ecstatic and terrified by him. “I will still catch them for you.”

  “Try, Agrona,” he almost whispered. “Try.”

  Then he wrapped his powerful hand around the arrow buried deep inside his Witch’s left lung, and without emotion, he wrenched the arrow out.

  Agrona didn’t stop the shriek of pain it caused her, as he made no effort to stop the arrowhead from grinding against her bones and tearing through flesh.

  She licked her lips and smiled at him hungrily. But before she could touch his cheek, he pushed her back against the stone floor and she was sent hurtling even further – back through space and time to where the Evexus awaited her in confusion, still scorched and smoking.

  Chapter Fifty Three

  Dalin

  We rode ceaselessly until first light, when Kiana, shuddering in pain against my back, called us to a halt near a stream.

  The horses were exhausted, their mouths frothing with foamed saliva and their sides heaving beneath a sheen of sweat.

  “Kiana,” Noal said, dismounting and coming over.

  I felt her head lift from my shoulder. He held his arms up to catch her, and helped her walk across to sit by the stream as I dismounted and led our two sagging mares to the water.

  The early sun was bright and warm when Noal and I finished tending Ila and Amala, and sat cross legged beside our fatigued companion.

  “Well,” Kiana visibly composed herself as she held her shoulder. “We make a fine team. And none of us lost our reason or our lives in the fray.”

  Noal grinned back, and winced when a split in his lip opened again.

  Kiana raised a sliced eyebrow. “So the Quest is, for now, still alive and thriving. But we can only afford to take a short time to patch ourselves up.”

  She gestured for Noal to show her his hand, which was blue and stiff from being squashed by the beast he’d faced.

  She was flexing his fingers as I moved to refill our flasks, and after an intense examination Kiana decreed that none of the little bones in his hand seemed fractured. “Though by the colouring of the bruises it was a close thing,” she observed. “Your hand was too small for the beast to clasp tightly enough.”

  Noal gazed skyward piously. “Thank the Gods for my petite features.”

  She was not worried by a surface wound staining his blonde hair red, or by his swelling eye, but pulled out a flask from her healer bag that could help to ease the cold from the beasts’ touch.

  “Whiskey!” he husked with delight and went to take another gulp before she retrieved it from him and corked it again.

  “That’s enough young man,” she said sternly. “Your session is now over.” Then she turned to me.

  “I didn’t get whiskey when I needed heating up last time,” I complained as I came back to them and sat in front of my healer.

  “You got a cup of molten lava instead.” Kiana’s blue and gold flecked eyes scanned me for all of my hurts, but I could see her own bent, pained posture and felt a twinge of annoyance that I couldn’t do anything to ease her as she was able to ease us.

  Her cheek was swollen and scratches and bruises ra
n along the lengths of her arms and across her collarbone – but her shoulder seemed to be the only true bother for her.

  “This will scar,” she commented, clasping my chin lightly with warm, slender fingers and turning my head to the side to inspect a stinging cut.

  Noal grimaced guiltily. “Did that happen when you were helping me? I saw your beast catch you.”

  “No, not that one,” I reassured him.

  Kiana dabbed with an ointment at the slice across my ear, following down my jaw line. “This will get rid of anything nasty in the wound. I’ll have to put the same on your back.”

  Obediently I untied the front of my shirt and winced as I tried to tug my tunic up over my head. Raw bruises had spread across my chest from when the beast had trapped me under the pressure of its foot at the start of our scuffle.

  Noal tutted at the sight of my chest. “Did I cause those?”

  “No, these were my own doing,” I shook my head.

  “Still not feeling remorseful then,” Noal smiled and crossed his arms.

  Levering my arms to lift the shirt and tunic right off, I felt the cuts on my back stretch further open, and felt the trickling warmth of blood.

  Noal whistled and rocked back.

  “You did that,” I informed him.

  “Great, still no need for guilt then,” he said, his eyes crinkled and mouth scrunched in distaste.

  “Turn,” Kiana told me curtly, and I did as I was told.

  “What a mess,” she muttered, and I tried not to flinch away as she thoroughly cleaned each slice. “I’ve seen whip lashes that have cut as deeply as this once. I can help them heal without infection.” She mercilessly scrubbed out all of the dust and dirt that had become trapped in the wounds while I’d fought. “This paste hardens a little and should help to seal the wounds quickly and keep them clean.”

  She tapped my side and I carefully turned myself around to face her again, watching her features as she looked at my chest with concentration – her fingers lightly brushing over ribs and tickling over my collarbone.

  “No breaks or fractures beneath the bruising, so fortune was on your side too,” she reported.

  Then she began cleaning roughly at her own cuts and wounds as Noal scrunched me into a new shirt.

  “You look a bit rumpled. But it’ll do,” he scrutinized me critically.

  “Thanks,” I replied dryly.

  After barely a moment’s attention to herself, Kiana was satisfied. “Now we’re all in order, we’d best set off once more,” she said, observing the sky.

  My attention was drawn to an odd building of dark, surly clouds roiling thickly on the otherwise clear horizon in the distance.

  “Looks like a storm has been building over where we came from,” Noal frowned.

  “I think that storm could be designed to follow our trail and spread out to reach us,” Kiana grimaced.

  “Like it could be purposefully seeking us out?” Noal paled.

  “We have been uncommonly blessed so far, and can’t count on that to continue,” Kiana told him honestly. “The Witch underestimated our stealth and then our endurance in a hopeless battle. But we are pitted against magical foes.”

  “We have our own strengths,” I mused. “You made Agrona herself into an irrational liability and a target,” I remarked, and Kiana inclined her head.

  “Though from now on I think we must aim to flee across to the southern brink of the Great Forest, which is closest to us if we curve our path. The Forest is less dense and is quicker to travel through at that point, so Ila and Amala will not struggle.”

  “It’ll also mean we skirt away from Bwintam,” I realised quietly and she nodded, gazing at the glistening surface of the stream. Dark, scattered rags of cloud were beginning to scud closer to where we were, distorting the otherwise serene reflection on the water.

  “Another worthy reason,” Noal agreed. “I wonder if we can flee both the beasts and the weather.”

  However as the afternoon dwindled the weather continued to take an unnatural turn. The sky became a brooding ceiling of grey that twisted and throbbed above threateningly, until the looming storm finally broke and released overwhelming torrents that pelted down over the world like falling arrows.

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Kiana

  The wind had groaned and the rain had been driving down in an unremitting, blurring sheet for all of the night and day. This was no natural miserable rain that obscured and distorted the green plains. It fell onto our skin, saturated us through our cloaks, and seemed to hammer right down to the bone with an icy intensity.

  I ran ahead in an effort to lead us safely over uneven ground, though I could hardly see or even breathe through the sheen of water that had replaced our air. Noal huddled close to Ila, his golden hair dripping in torrents while Dalin slouched on Amala, his cloak hood pulled up and his face a bitter grimace as the wet slanted sharply inwards.

  I would usually have handled brutal weather and lack of rest easily, but the unnatural power of the tempest beating its gusty fists against us, and the pain growing in my shoulder, seemed to make every step into a murderous sacrifice.

  A hazy outline of Great Forest border trees gradually grew in the distance, but as I began to feel some hope, a shattering wave of throbbing agony washed over me, clawing out from the tear drop scar hidden by my wet clothes. And at the same moment, the wailing shrieks of our enemies sliced distinctly over the booming thunder and blustering wind.

  The sounds broke out of the gloom impossibly close to us and as my stomach curled and dropped like a stone weight in my middle, I immediately turned to jog backwards and let Dalin wetly clasp my outstretched hand to swing me into the saddle behind him.

  I held on with my knees and readied my bow and arrow just as, like shadows separating themselves from the darkness, five monstrous figures appeared at our flanks and at our sides. They surrounded us as though we were sheep to be herded.

  Goosebumps exploded all over my skin, with the unrelenting rain gathering force to add to the cold those beasts issued forth. I shuddered, firing an angry arrow out into the night to hear one of the beasts slide along the ground before retaining balance and rejoining the chase.

  Ila and Amala hurtled over the wet ground even faster, but the beasts did nothing to attack. They simply pressed closer, their shadowed bodies growing larger as the distance between us lessened.

  They weren’t close enough that I could reach out with my fingers and touch them. But my teeth chattered and I shook so uncontrollably that I had to sling my bow back over my shoulder and grip onto Dalin for fear of being swept off Amala by the raging wind as we pounded through the curtains of rain.

  I knew that they were forcing us in a specific direction, and away from where I had planned. But we had no choice, and were lucky to simply face herding rather than attack.

  I scrunched my eyes closed to feel the water rolling down my face and over my eyelids in steady streams. I was aware that, like demon hell hounds herding us through a dangerous frenzy to the Other Realm, the beasts would lead me back to Bwintam in time for my birthday.

  We would have no choice but to take shelter there, and await Agrona’s next move.

  My stomach continued to feel like a lead weight was dragging my insides down as we got closer to my destroyed home, and – satisfied – the beasts slowly let the space grow between us. They slowed their pace, no longer chasing, but fading into dark obscurity behind the veils of rain.

  Soon when I turned I could only see five indistinct figures standing still in the distance behind us, and as I watched they seemed to melt away. It was clear though, that if we tried to change directions, their figures would reappear to herd us back on the track they had chosen.

  I unclenched my teeth and tugged at Dalin’s sopping shirt so he would strain to hear me.

  “They’re gone! We can stop a moment!” I shouted over the howling cries of the wind, and the words seemed to be whipped away from my lips.

  D
alin’s head rose at the sound of my voice, and he looked about in disbelief before he waved his arm at Noal to gain his attention. They pulled the stumbling, heaving Ila and Amala to a grateful stop and we slid stiffly from our saddles to fight our way into a tight group.

  “What happened?” I heard Noal shout over the wind, though I couldn’t clearly make out either of their faces.

  “They pulled back! We are now on the course they wanted us to take!” I shouted over the thundering booms of the storm. I peeled the clinging strands of my hair back into a knot that started to loosen and whip about crazily as soon as I let it go.

  A huge gust of wind sent me almost stumbling backward and both Noal and Dalin caught hold of my arms to hold me upright.

  “This isn’t natural!” Dalin yelled.

  “What are we going to do?” roared Noal. “They’ve taken us off course, and we need shelter!”

  I felt nauseous. “We have to take shelter in Bwintam’s ruins!” I called back, just as Agrona must have wanted. “Or we won’t last.”

  And they wouldn’t be far away; our devilish guardians.

  Dalin and Noal said nothing, but as another huge fist of wind nearly bowled me over, their hands were firm in holding my arms and I stayed upright.

  “Come!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Stick together!”

  The mares were tossing their heads and the rain rolled off their backs in cascading waterfalls, but they followed us as Dalin gripped Amala’s reins in one hand, and clasped mine in the other. Noal clasped Ila’s reins in one hand and mine in his other too.

  We moved like that, as a linked chain, constantly fighting and almost leaning and pushing against the rain and wind, while our link never broke.

  Chapter Fifty Five

  Dalin

  Kiana squeezed my hand and gestured to the right of us. I managed to make out a half collapsed fence, nearly overridden by unfarmed wheat grass and weeds. I guessed that this was where Bwintam’s first field had started, and I remembered a road should be where we stood, but there was no trace of it now.