Chapter 20. The Lorkon Barrier
Jacob sneaked forward, keeping tight to the wall as he neared the town hall.
The villager with the big ax struck the door again, then kicked his way through the hole. All the villagers poured inside the building.
Jacob waited several seconds—no one stayed outside—then dashed forward, eyes wide open, looking for any sign of more Bald Henries. He had to go fast, before Matt returned. They’d planned it so Matt would race around the town for ten or so minutes, hopefully giving Jacob enough time to run in and out with Aloren. Doubt crept into his mind. How was he supposed to go into the town hall, grab her, and get out with people all over inside the building?
He pushed these thoughts aside and trotted up to the front door, peering inside. The room was empty. He paused. Except for a girl lying on the ground. What if it was Aloren? Jacob ran to her and rolled her over, then jumped back in fear. It was Duana. Dead, bruised, barely recognizable. His breath caught in his throat and he stepped away from her, wiping his hands on his jeans. No colors swirled around her at all. He’d gotten so used to seeing varying shades of the rainbow on people’s faces that it disturbed him to see someone without it.
Noise upstairs made him jump and he stepped against a wall, flattening himself. The sounds dissipated. After giving the rooms on that floor a cursory glance, he decided to go upstairs to find the source of the noise.
Nothing in the first few rooms. Then he turned a corner and saw the back of a villager as she disappeared into a room at the end of the hall. He scurried forward and looked into that room. Remembering the knife in his boot, he pulled it out, holding it close to him.
The woman disappeared down a set of stairs opposite Jacob. He crept across the room and glanced down. It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t safely follow.
The stairs had seen quite a bit of use in the last several minutes. There was fresh mud on the steps, and a lot of it.
He reached the bottom, where a long, tall passage opened up before him—man, Eklaron loved tunnels. At least he could plainly see everything in it. A whole ton of villagers were crowding, pushing forward, carrying torches. And there, way ahead of them, barely visible, a hunched-over figure—no, two—running toward the opposite end.
Jacob’s heart felt like it was trying to exit his body. One of the figures was a girl, he was sure of it. Aloren! And the other, a larger person. Possibly Eachan?
But how was he to get to them before the villagers did? He’d have to push through the people, and somehow he knew they wouldn’t be okay with that.
Then he remembered something. The freshly dug tunnel on the other side of the wall! That had to be where this passage led! From what he could tell, the direction was right. If he hurried, he might make it there to meet Aloren and Eachan!
Jacob sprinted back up the steps, down those at the other side of the town hall, then dashed out the front door, only checking briefly that no one was outside.
Back at the stairwell where he and Matt had arranged to meet, he waited a couple of seconds for Matt before getting too impatient. Then he raced down the street, not caring who or what saw him. He heard footsteps above him and looked up—Matt jumped across the roof of the building next to Jacob.
“Matt!” Jacob called up to him, again not caring who heard him.
His older brother darted to the edge of the building, jumped onto the roof of a porch, and shinnied down the support pillar.
“Where are the Dusts and Bald Henries?” Jacob asked.
“Back there,” Matt said, motioning. “Where’s the chick?”
“Almost to the main wall now. The villagers are chasing her through a tunnel. We’ve gotta get to the other end to help her.”
Jacob and Matt tore off down the street, nearing the location where they’d left the others. They halted at the sound of running feet, hiding behind an old outhouse. Jacob looked around the side of it. The Ember Gods were coming down the street, heading in the direction of the town hall. Jacob and Matt fled the other way, around the back of a building, and watched as the men went past, swords still in hand.
Jacob’s breath caught in his throat. There was only one reason the Ember Gods would have left the fight. Gallus, Ebony, and Sweet Pea had been killed!
“Hurry!” he whispered.
They darted down the street, ducked into an alley, and collided with someone rushing in their direction. Jacob looked up, relief making him forget his panic momentarily.
“Did you see the Ember Gods?” Gallus asked. “They took off at a run—don’t know why.”
“Ebony and Sweet Pea?”
“Are fine, just a little tired. Where’s Aloren?”
“Being chased by the villagers. We have to go. Now.”
Gallus nodded, and the three of them dashed back to where Sweet Pea and Ebony waited.
Jacob pulled the Key out, shoved it into the lock of the nearest building, yelled, “The Fat Lady’s house,” and swept them all through to her cabin.
She looked up in shock from her dirty couch where she was talking to Hazel. “Did you get—”
She didn’t even have the chance to finish before the group had exited through her door.
Hazel flitted close to Jacob as he ran, exertion making his side hurt. “Where’s Early?” he gasped.
“Here!” Early’s impish voice said from somewhere near his right.
“Make us go faster—Matt and me.”
Seconds later, Jacob felt warmth spread across his legs and back, giving him what felt like limitless energy, and he and Matt left the others in the dust.
They tore through the scented air, barely keeping from plowing the people down, and raced to the hole in the ground.
Jacob jumped into it first, Matt close behind. They stopped, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. There, a couple hundred feet ahead of them, were Aloren and Eachan. Aloren’s back was to the brothers, and Eachan was on the ground. They were backlit by the torches the villagers carried. The people were thirty or forty feet behind, and no longer running. It looked like they were struggling to move.
“Aloren!” Jacob called.
“Jacob!” Her voice was distant, but it was hers.
That was enough motivation for Jacob to run again. He reached her in record time, Matt struggling to keep up.
Aloren burst into tears, myriad colors dancing around her face. She dropped Eachan’s hand and threw her arms around Jacob. He held her tightly, too happy to see her alive to care that his older brother was watching.
Matt pushed around the two of them and reached for Eachan. He called over his shoulder, “Lover Boy, get over here and help me.”
Jacob let go of Aloren and grabbed one of Eachan’s hands while Matt took the other. They tried to pull the large man to his feet, but he barely moved a fraction of an inch.
“What’s going on?” Matt asked.
“The barrier,” Eachan groaned breathlessly. A very deep shade of purplish-blue swirled around him—despair. “The Lorkon must know—stopped me.” He reached for Aloren, looking her in the eye. “Please, Aloren. Go!”
“I can’t just leave you here!”
“Yes . . . you can. I’ll be fine.”
“They’ll kill you!”
“I’m dead already,” he said.
Jacob was shocked to see tears flow from the man’s eyes. “Are you sure, Eachan? We can figure something out.”
A whooshing sound came from behind the villagers and they screamed, falling to the ground. Fire flowed along the ceiling over their heads. It dissipated and the Ember Gods stepped through, their hands and feet glowing, striding toward Jacob and the others.
“Oh, dang it,” Matt said, voicing Jacob’s thoughts.
“Hurry!” Eachan yelled.
A blast of flame shot down the length of the tunnel. Jacob dropped to the ground, covering Aloren with his body, Matt alongside them. Jacob felt the flames above him and tried not to breathe in the smoke. The heat wasn�
��t as bad as he’d expected, and he looked at his arms. His skin was glowing blue, and the leaves were so bright, he had to shut his eyes.
Laughter floated toward them. “Turn yourself in, Jacob, and we’ll let your friends go. Put up a fight, and none of them will survive.”
When the flames died down, Jacob, Matt, and Aloren jumped to their feet and started running as fast as they could away from the deranged men.
Jacob felt the blast before he heard it. There was no way they’d make it in time. Eachan yelled out in pain, and something in Jacob snapped. He let go of Aloren’s hand and spun around.
No more. The Ember Gods would no longer terrorize the people of this city.
“Leave him alone!” Jacob yelled.
The flames stopped, and Jacob saw Eachan slump in relief.
“Come with us, and we will.”
Jacob glared. He grabbed Matt’s knife from where it was attached at Matt’s outer thigh, pulled out his own, and ran down the tunnel, yelling.
“Jacob!” Aloren screamed.
“No!” Matt yelled, his voice full of agony.
The Ember Gods laughed, each of them pulling out their swords.
“How darling,” one of the men said, then turned to his companion. “Sanso, the human wishes to fight us.”
Sanso grinned, beckoning for Jacob to come forward. Jacob jumped over Eachan and met the swords with a clash of metal. He swung violently, dodging the attacks. The Gods barely did anything, though, and he recognized they were just playing with him.
“Stop messing around!” He pushed Sanso as hard as he could, nearly knocking him to the ground. “You’re wimps! Cowards!”
Sanso’s color flickered between boredom—the purplish pink—and irritation—a dark pink—like he was trying to maintain control of his emotions. Jacob pushed him again. “Coward!”
The air around Sanso’s face flared bright red, and Jacob knew he’d gotten what he wanted. Sanso glowered. “You really want us to fight? You think we’re afraid of you? We could smash you like a fire beetle right now—never mind what’s intended for you.”
“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. And you’re just a puppet of the Lorkon! They tell you what to do, and you do it!”
The other leather-clad man growled, his color changing to match Sanso’s. “Let’s show him the true power of an Ember God.”
Sanso nodded in agreement and they jumped forward, a new energy behind their strikes. Jacob wasn’t able to block everything, and he felt the Kaede leaves heating up. He trusted they’d do their job and keep him safe.
Every time the swords struck, a flash of blue light burst from his skin or armor. He blocked as many attacks as he could, doing his best to keep pushing the Ember Gods away from Eachan and the others.
Sanso roared with frustration, becoming even more ferocious in his advances.
After several minutes, Jacob felt his armor begin to wear out. The strikes started to hurt and he couldn’t tell if they were piercing through. Sweat dribbled into his eyes, making them sting and get blurry.
Suddenly, the scenery around Jacob changed drastically. He froze, still holding his knives. The Ember Gods, the tunnel, the darkness—all of it had disappeared. Instead, he was surrounded by mountains so tall, he couldn’t see the sun.
“No, no, no!”
Jacob shook himself, punched out, kicked, tried to get over whatever his body was doing to him. The mountains didn’t disappear. “No! I can’t hallucinate now!”
A gust of wind brought snow flurries with it, and Jacob realized he was shivering. He spun and ran up the side of the mountain nearest him. He threw rocks, viciously stabbed snow banks. Nothing he did jolted him back to his own reality.
He’d failed. Sanso and the Ember Gods would take Aloren and Matt to the Lorkon. Devastation hit him and he fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands, squinting to keep the tears from dropping from his eyes. What was wrong with him? Why, during the most important fight of his life, had this happened?
“Jacob!”
The shriek made him raise his face. A flash of light replaced by blackness, then a burst of flame as an Ember God blasted him with fire. He was back in the tunnel. Relief poured over him even as he realized he didn’t have much time left. How long would the armor last?
Sanso was still attacking, though he was starting to favor his left shoulder—the one Jacob had stabbed when they first met. Had he and his companion even noticed Jacob’s episode? Matt and Aloren were screaming at him from behind.
Jacob jumped to his feet, thrusting forward with his knife. It nicked Sanso in the left shoulder, and he screamed in rage.
“Pile of beetle dung!” he shrieked. “Worthless human!”
The Ember God grabbed Jacob and flung him over Eachan, at least twenty feet down the tunnel, toward Matt and Aloren. Jacob slammed against the side of the passage before falling to the ground. The power of the leaves dimmed to a nearly imperceptible level. He only had a few moments of protection left.
The Ember Gods sent a blast of flame and Jacob jumped to his feet, bright fire roaring past him on either side. His armor barely held the heat back.
“Early!” Jacob called. “Hazel!”
The Minyas appeared next to him.
“Give me strength, both of you, and help me push forward!”
The Minyas nodded and disappeared.
The blaze stopped and he jogged toward the Ember Gods, his mind clearer than it had been since entering Eklaron. Two spots on his shoulders warmed where the Minyas touched him and he broke into a sprint, then a fast lope. He put his hands in front of him and concentrated on molding the air—something he’d never done before. The flames were just erupting for a second time when Jacob leaped over Eachan.
The air in front of Jacob’s hands started to ripple. It bounced, then held still as soon as it hit the fire. There was a flash of light as the hot element touched Jacob’s palms, and his hands started glowing such a bright blue that he couldn’t look at them. The inferno flared around him, not burning him.
He continued running, letting the Minyas’ energy help him push forward. The strength behind the Ember Gods’ power grew as Jacob neared, but he didn’t stop.
Taking advantage of the element of surprise, Jacob jumped through the last of the flames and landed in front of the Ember Gods, letting loose a wild roar.
The men looked up in surprise. Blinded by the searing light, they hadn’t seen him coming. Instinctively, they raised their hands to blast him, but Jacob was ready.
He concentrated as hard as he could, sensing power originating from the Minyas. He drew on this and held the intensity inside himself. Then he released it at the same time the fire exploded from the Ember God’s hands.
Jacob’s ability was stronger.
The Ember Gods cried out, and the force behind Jacob’s attack blasted them back. He heard his brother and Aloren calling him to come, but he ignored them. He wasn’t done.
Drawing from the Minyas’ power again, he reached into the sides of the tunnel, using the air shield he’d created as spatulas to pull out huge chunks of earth, then he dug into the dirt above him.
The sides and top of the passage collapsed, filling in the tunnel, and Jacob jumped back.
He concentrated one last time, sucking power once more from the Minyas, and molded the entire mound of dirt into a huge stone, barring the way.
His arms fell to his side, the job finished.
Matt and Aloren reached him at the same time. Both were panicked and screaming. Jacob searched the air, looking for the Minyas, but couldn’t see where they’d gone. He looked down and gasped.
Early and Hazel lay on the ground. Jacob prayed they were only unconscious. He gently picked them up and carried them out of the tunnel.
Kilenya Series Books 1, 2, and 3 Page 101