“We know you, Deceiver,” she heard issue from Thorn’s mouth, but it was nothing that approached human speech. She thought of rocks the size of continents grinding together to shape raw sound into words and felt the faintest itch at the back of her own throat as a resonance of the Power that gripped Thorn prompted her to speak as well.
“As you have marked us, so shall we you!”
In the blink of an eye, the stone around them was transformed, the whole heart of the mountain changing state from solid to liquid, as though some monstrous grate had been removed, to allow the fire at the heart of the world to claim this new territory.
Elora cried out with startlement, but there was no fear in her, any more than there had been on the hillside when the firedrakes came at her behest. She swept an arm across her front, argent immersed in golden glory, and grinned delightedly at the eddies and swirls of flame left in its wake. She thought this might be a place to stay and play forever…
…but Thorn caught her by the arm.
Another columnar slab of stone crashed free, taking them with it, pitching them from an immaterial realm to one that was all too tangible, and Elora cried out as a chunk of basalt clipped her leg.
The mountain wasn’t groaning any longer; it had woken with a roar to shake the heavens and the earth. The floor split before them, one side cast up, the other down, two voices lost in the shriek of shredding stone as Thorn and Elora were carried apart. What had been a level passage was remade in a twinkling as a flight of jaggedly uneven steps, more appropriate to the giants who built this place than those who roamed it today. At the same time huge sections of the wall fell away at the sides, admitting the tempest on the one, and giving a view straight to a roiling lava flow below the other.
The main body of Maizan were a fair way below, cut off from their prey by a wide crevasse of granite that the lava was rapidly filling. All thoughts of the chase had given way to a quite natural instinct for self-preservation. Elora herself was on a fair-sized platform that curled off out of view in the direction of the mantle wall. So far as she could see, she was alone; there was no sign of any of her companions, not Khory or Ryn, the eagles or the brownies.
“Drumheller,” Elora called, a genuine fear for the Nelwyn accenting her girl’s falsetto.
“I’m here!” was his reply from above. He cast his gaze over the drop and as quickly ducked back until his heart slowed its snare-drum cascade. He hated heights. Not when he was riding the eagles, that wasn’t the slightest problem, but looking out over such a precipice…
He shook his head angrily, a bulldog of a man, and lunged a shoulder forward with his head this time, for all the good that did. With both their arms outstretched, there were body lengths between them.
“I’ll find a way up,” she cried.
The devil you will, he thought. And then: Why am I always doing this? Finally, aloud: “Stay where you are. It’s just a plug of rock here, your ledge is the way to safety. I’ll come down.”
He’d forgotten the other heron. He was hanging by his fingers, scrabbling with toes for a flaw in the facing he was sure he’d seen before committing himself, wondering if Elora could catch him should he simply drop, the air gusting thick with sulfur from the rising lava, which in turn was making it too hot to breathe, when a brace of knife-points stabbed him in the back.
He had no words for the pain; even the luxury of a scream was denied him as the bird tried to pluck him from his perch. He didn’t dare let go, even to defend himself, but was rapidly losing strength enough to hold on. It stabbed with its beak, to punch through the back of his skull, but he ducked his head aside and got a face full of rock splinters instead.
The eagles saved him. There was nothing left in Rool to power his bolts; he could only hold on, with Franjean spread-eagled on top to hold him in place, while Bastian and Anele tore at the heron with beak and claws. It was a suicide charge. The essence of those accursed birds was so foul that drawing their blood was tantamount to a sentence of death; being wounded by them made that a certainty. But their intervention gave Thorn the opportunity he needed.
He had one acorn left to hand. With a feral grimace, he popped it right into the Night Heron’s mouth.
It shattered quite nicely on the step below.
So would have he, in his own way, had Elora not answered his unspoken query. Not a catch, in the proper sense of the word, since the impact carried them both to their backsides, but he wasn’t about to complain. His only regret was an inability to return her heartfelt hug when she near squashed him with happiness.
“Well,” he said with a wild smile at odds with his deadpan delivery, “that was exciting.”
“You could have been killed,” she raged back at him.
“Every day, in every way.” She thumped him in the shoulder, not seriously but hard enough to be noticed.
“What happened here?” she demanded. “What’s happening?”
He spared a look around them at the growing conflagration.
“There’s a soul and spirit to these mountains, just as there is to each of us. The Deceiver is their enemy as much as ours; I told them he was here and asked for their help against him.”
“Drumheller,” she cried, aghast, “you’ve set off a volcano!”
“Some tigers, little Princess, aren’t ridden quite so easily as others.”
“Is he dead, then, the Deceiver? Is this over?”
When he didn’t reply, she had her answer.
“At least we’re safe,” Thorn offered. “That’s a start.”
“You call this safe?”
“If we go quickly, the mountain will do us no harm. I made sure when I opened the crevasse to put our foes on one side and friends on the other. The Maizan can escape, but they can’t follow.”
“I thought the herons were my friends,” Elora said softly.
“And so they were, child,” he responded. “Yours, not mine.”
Then they heard Geryn’s voice.
“Elora,” was the call, thready with physical stress and not a little fear. “Elora Danan!”
He’d evidently been caught on a separate outcrop, as Thorn had, only his had dropped away from their step; worse, it had begun to separate from the main rider, opening a gap wider than Geryn was tall. He must have leaped for the wall when he felt the ledge split loose beneath his feet; he’d found some handholds but the rock above offered no decent purchase to continue his climb. And since it was a straight fall to the lava flow below, a descent was wholly out of the question.
“Damn!” Thorn snarled at the sight.
“There must be something we can use to save him,” Elora cried, burrowing frantically into his pouches. “Why don’t you have a rope in here!”
There was, of course, and because it was what she truly desired, it came to her hand complete with a grappling hook.
“Elora Danan,” came Geryn’s call again, audibly weaker than before, “help me!”
Thorn reached for the rope, but Elora wrenched it from his grasp.
“It’s my fault he’s down there, Elora,” Thorn told her. “I thought I’d controlled the temblors better, to leave us all in safety.”
“Do you want to argue, Drumheller, or save the man? You’re fighting off the Night Heron’s poison, you’re not strong enough for this. Will the rope hold him?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about that,” Thorn said as he jabbed the hook into a crack on their step, and Elora pitched the line over the edge. “The stone will split before one of my ropes breaks.”
She didn’t know how to climb, she certainly hadn’t the muscles for it; what she managed then was slightly better than a controlled collapse, leaving rope burns on hands and feet and thighs as she dropped to another jarring landing on Geryn’s ledge. She held fast to the end of her line while warping a length of it close enough for the Daikini to catch hold; afterward, it was a simple matter for him to swi
ng over to join her.
“Are yeh mad, girl?”
Her smile was a mix of bravado and stark terror. “Aren’t we all?” she replied.
“Drumheller,” he called out, “I have the rope. Haul up the Sacred Princess, I’ll follow after!”
“He can’t,” Elora told him. “He was hurt by the heron, he’s too weak.”
“Where the hell are the others, then?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that this promontory is too unstable for us to wait. I thought I could manage on my own,” she confessed; “I was wrong, I’m sorry. So either you go first or we go together.”
“I’ll have yer heart, Drumheller,” Geryn hissed, as he secured the line snugly about Elora’s torso in a harness hitch, “for allowing the Sacred Princess to place herself in such danger.”
“It was my choice, Trooper,” she said with surprising formality.
“Yer too important,” he told her sternly, to her face. “Yeh should know better.”
That said, he pulled her snug to his back in a rescue carry, with her legs wrapped about his waist and her arms around his shoulders.
“Hold tight,” he told her.
“Thorn’s rope’ll break before I let you go.” He paused a moment at her words, for there was something in them that made him believe that she was speaking an absolute truth.
“Perhaps yeh are ‘Sacred’ after all,” he muttered, and let the rope take the strain of their weight as he stepped off his ledge and swung toward the wall.
There were cries from far below as a new figure joined the Maizan, perfect features stricken with concern as he beheld the tableau, a hoarse cry echoing over the crackling growl of the stone as the Castellan called for a bow.
“We hurt him,” Elora cried exultantly as she looked over her shoulder to see Mohdri sway and nearly collapse, held erect by a Maizan at each shoulder. “Drumheller, we hurt him!”
“Hush, girl,” Geryn snapped, propriety cast aside as her excited wrigglings set the both of them to spinning on the line, “or you’ll hurt us in the bargain.”
He tightened his grip, braced his boots once more on the sheer wall, but never got the chance to start climbing on his own, as he found himself being drawn speedily upward. A glance upward showed him Ryn and Khory on the rope, while Anakerie stood beside Drumheller, visible over the crest of the precipice.
Anakerie was staring at Mohdri, lips parted in horror at his miraculous recovery. None of the Maizan with him had been inside the Great Hall when he fell; none knew how badly he’d been injured.
“I tell you true, Keri,” Thorn told the Princess, for her ears alone.
“Don’t call me that, Peck, only my brother’s allowed to call me that. Goes for you as it does for Mohdri…” She stumbled on the Castellan’s name.
“He is not what he seems, Anakerie. He is no friend.” She turned her face to him and he felt an irrational desire to wipe away the giant bruise that discolored a fair piece of it. “I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t be here.”
“You’d rather be with them?” Thorn refused to believe that.
“My place is with my people. I’m the Princess Royal, Drumheller. The King no longer sits his throne,” she couldn’t bring herself to say aloud what she most feared, that her father was dead. “I must take his place. Especially since the only political or military force worth the name that’s left in the land is the Maizan.”
“You know what leads them.”
“It’s because of what leads them that I’m needed most.”
“Thorn,” Elora called as she and Geryn cleared the lip of main riser. “Drumheller!”
The second cry was full of startlement, as Geryn’s hand locked on one of her wrists as tightly as any vise and he swung her swiftly, smoothly around into a painful hammerlock.
His voice rang out: “Release the Princess, dogs!”
Thorn was the first to find voice enough for a reply. “Geryn, what are you doing?”
“Fair exchange, wizard; one Princess for the other.”
“You deceived us!” Elora’s young voice cracked with outrage.
“It worked, didn’t it.”
“You were never in any danger!”
“I learned to climb afore I learned to ride. Hush now, an’ it please you. I’ll do none harm if I get what I came for.”
“Another lie? It gets easier as you go along.”
“Stop this foolishness, boy,” Ryn told him. “There’s no other way off this rock, without you come with us. And whatever you may believe, Keri’s no prisoner here.”
“I thought you pledged to serve me,” Elora spat at her captor, with more than a flash of her old imperiousness. Then, her yell turned into a squealed yelp as Geryn tightened his grip.
“I pledged to serve Angwyn, Sacred Highness. And the personification of Angwyn is the Princess Anakerie.”
“Over to you then, Keri,” Ryn called to her. “Tell the young Captain to let her go.”
Elora chose that moment to make her bid for freedom, attempting a hammer kick to Geryn’s knee that she’d seen Khory use on occasion to good effect. She wasn’t a trained fighter, though, and Geryn was; he blocked her attack and hurled her bodily away from him, into a stumbling spin that sent her crashing full-tilt into Ryn. In that same movement, he had his own blade clear of its scabbard and swung it in a wide, sweeping arc to make Khory keep her distance as well.
“What I believe,” the Pathfinder cried as he launched himself toward Thorn, “is that yeh’re the cause of all this misery. All was right with Angwyn—an’ the world—till I brought yeh within its walls!”
“Geryn, no!” The cry came from Anakeri, her movements as quick as his as she threw herself into his path.
The young man stared in horror as his Princess crumpled to his feet, the act of falling pulling her body clear of the blade that had impaled it. He’d run her right through.
“Put down your sword, Geryn,” Ryn said, in the calm, implacable voice that he boasted of using to scare off killer whales.
Instead, the Daikini lunged for him, hard and fast, presenting a whole series of roundhouse swings with his saber that drove the Wyr quickly back to the wall. The Pathfinder had good strength and speed, and he swung with a near-berserker intensity that would not be denied. He gave Ryn no opportunity to duck underneath his guard and reach him without being cut. Strangely, Ryn didn’t appear to mind.
“Let it go, Pathfinder,” Ryn offered a final time, “and we’ll all leave this place alive.”
“I swore an Oath,” Geryn said. “And you’ve made me betray it!”
When the Wyr finally chose to move, he was a blur of mahogany, using one shoulder to deflect the blade hand while the other caught Geryn in the chest. By rights, the Pathfinder should have been bowled over, but instead, it was Ryn who reeled a step or two away, with a fresh wound in his flank. Geryn brandished the sword that had stabbed Anakerie, streaked crimson with her blood and Ryn’s, as was the hand holding it.
The Pathfinder lunged forward, using sword and a knife drawn from his belt to drive his opponent further back. Despite those best efforts, he found himself unable to reach either point or edge past Ryn’s defenses. He’d drawn his last of the young Wyr’s blood.
Ryn moved once more to the attack, this time taking no chances, striking at Geryn as he would a shark. His muscles and skills had been honed in the great deeps, against pressures that would crush a Daikini, his claws (the natural ones) shaped and sharpened to breach skin that served as well as armor. A spinning side kick took Geryn down the first time, with force enough to jar his belt knife loose from his grasp. Elora as quickly grabbed it out of his reach. The Pathfinder had another though, this one from his boot. Didn’t make a difference. Another lunge, and a willingness to suffer a superficial slash that barely broke the flesh, brought Ryn in close again, to deliver a murderous succession of blows to the body, a
nd leave his foe only the blade that had done the initial damage.
Ryn offered him his life a final time.
“I’m a Captain of the Red Lions,” was his reply, “we don’t surrender to the likes of you.”
With a speed that would have done Ryn himself proud, Geryn slashed through the rope binding Elora, then sprang from his fallen Princess, using the same movement to disengage the grapnel and take it with him; Ryn’s outcry was matched by those of his companions as the two figures disappeared over the edge. Ryn threw himself after them, stretching himself full-length on the slab, with his head extended past the edge, though he dreaded what he’d see below.
Geryn and Anakerie had landed on the small outcrop.
“You son of a bitch!” Ryn raged, which got himself a roguish grin from Geryn in reply.
“I’m a Pathfinder,” he said, brandishing the rope. “We climb as well as ride.”
“Throw back the rope then, I’ll haul you up.”
“Now where’s the sense o’ that, I ask yeh?”
“We’re not your enemies, damn you! It’s the Maizan you should be fighting!”
“Made my choice, furball. Swore my Oath. I’ll be true to both.”
He tied the rope expertly about Anakerie’s torso, then anchored the grapnel in a seam in the rock.
“Keri,” Ryn roared, “don’t let him do this!”
“She’s beyond hearing,” Geryn said. “My doing. Saving her life’s how I’ll make amends.”
“Drumheller’s a healer, you’ve seen him work!”
“Yeh. Truth, I don’t know anymore what I’ve seen. He tells me Elora’s protector is the enemy; my own kind tell me the reverse. Yeh say the Maizan’re the enemy, yet my Princess, she rides with ’em. Back in the forest, them brownies what attacked us, they called Drumheller, ‘Demon.’ ”
“They were wrong.”
“So yeh say. Me, I’ve seen the Princess ridin’ with the Castellan. She loves him true.” He dropped her off the ledge, controlling her descent by looping the line about his own body. “The King’s gone. Angwyn’s hers now ta rule. With her people, that’s where she rightfully belongs.”
Shadow Moon Page 47