“Fine,” Allystaire said. “Stay behind me, a dozen paces or more, till they are spent. Gideon thinks he can end this. We need to give him time.”
“Is the boy a sorcerer or not?”
“I expect we will learn that soon enough.”
The pack of chimera—more than ten but less than a score—were drawing closer now. Numbers were hard to determine, for they moved so quickly, so oddly, and close enough to distort one another. They seemed hesitant, but Idgen Marte nocked an arrow and raised her bow, and Allystaire lifted his shield and spread his feet, swinging his hammer in small arcs to keep his wrist loose.
One broke from the pack and charged. Idgen Marte loosed, and Allystaire set his feet and squatted behind his shield.
* * *
Inside the cave, Torvul had left the large lantern with Bethe, who had calmed but refused to leave the mouth of the cave and its view of the daylight. He produced an even smaller one from a pouch, little more than just a tiny dot of light in the immense darkness of the cave, and followed Gideon. The boy walked unerringly forward, picking his way through the formations of rock spikes without the slightest hesitation.
“What is in this cave that’s so important, boy?”
The boy stopped, tilted his head to one side, but did not look back at the dwarf. “Power. Whatever is animating those monsters. Whatever has made them into beasts.” He paused. “I think.”
“Made them? So what were they before?”
“Men,” Gideon answered as he adjusted his grip on his staff and set off again.
“They were what? What has the power to twist man n’ beast into those…things?”
Gideon stopped, turned back, and said, “A god.”
“Well, I’d hate to be put out like this for anything less,” Torvul huffed, as he hurried to scramble over the rocks and catch the boy, who had already turned and moved ahead into the twisting, dark passages.
* * *
Idgen Marte put an arrow into the shoulder of the furred and scaled horror that crashed against Allystaire’s shield, but if that slowed it down, Allystaire couldn’t tell. The impact drove his weight onto his back foot, and chances were he was only saved from being overborne by having the high ground. There was no time to reflect on the odds. Claws and teeth scraped against his shield. The attacker was focusing on the blue-and-gold-painted oak, it seemed, rather than the man behind it. Allystaire had time to cock his arm and bring his hammer down in a savage and skull-shattering arc directly on top of the creature’s head. It was as deadly a swing as he had ever managed; with the advantage of height, the economy of his arm’s movement, and the way he was able to shift his weight, he felt confident it would have staved in the finest steel greathelm.
The creature staggered back a pace or two, roaring, and held its head at an odd angle as it tried to charge the paladin again. It tripped, and fell, and Allystaire leapt upon it, battering its skull with his hammer once, twice more. Finally he heard a loud and resounding crack and the beast, some mix of bear and fowl, twitched and spasmed on the ground in its final moments.
He shuffled back up the slope, keeping his shield facing the group of chimera that seemed cautious, hesitant to approach. From several yards away it was hard to tell just what parts each beast was made of; they were a writhing mass of fur, feathers, claws, teeth, and the occasional and incongruous human.
“Up the slope. Slowly. One step at a time. If they rush us before we make the doorway—”
Don’t give them ideas. They might know our speech. Idgen Marte’s thought cracked like a whip in his mind, and he cursed inwardly.
They were within half a dozen long paces of the cave mouth when two of the stirring horde finally drove themselves against them. With sharp, curved raptor’s beaks set in gaunt human cheeks, beneath huge yellow bird’s eyes and winged arms, these two seemed more coherent, more whole than many of the others. They both attacked Allystaire, from either side, screeching madly, awfully, and driving themselves into the air in short hops, their wings not quite taking them aloft, but serving to lengthen their jumps dangerously. Too late, Allystaire realized that their attack was not just in unison, but in concert, as they hurled themselves at his shield arm and his hammer arm. The one to his right, that had lifted a leg and bent one taloned foot, claws flexing as it reached for the haft of his hammer, suddenly screeched and fell tumbling backwards in a storm of loose gravel as Idgen Marte’s arrows feathered it twice.
The other, though, managed to plant both its claws on the rim of his shield and immediately threw its weight, wings beating the air, backwards. Allystaire felt his feet begin to slide on the loose rock beneath them, and even as Idgen Marte loosed an arrow—and missed—decided to let go of his shield. He slid his arm free of the straps and danced away, and the winged chimera tumbled to the ground, cawing in triumph, as its taloned feet flung the shield down the slope.
Grimly, Allystaire shifted both hands onto the haft of his hammer, stepped towards the shrieking beast, and swiped the head of the maul savagely across its face, smashing its beak, and scattering pieces of it amidst a fountain of blood.
He and Idgen Marte scrambled back to the mouth of the cave as the rest of the chimera began a charge upwards at them. Allystaire reared back and flung his hammer into the midst of them; it thunked into something but amidst the roiling mass of monster he couldn’t see what he hit or how hard. Idgen Marte’s final arrows joined it, and then she tossed her bow aside and both of them drew their swords, Allystaire’s a wide and ugly hand-and-a-half, Idgen Marte’s a singly edged and graceful curve.
* * *
Inside the caves, Torvul’s breath puffed in his barrel chest as he scrambled, banged his shins on rocks, dislodged streams of pebbles with his boots, and occasionally crunched down on something brittle he preferred not to think about.
Finally his breath caught as he pulled up behind the boy in a massive round chamber. He knew enough of caves and tunnels to know that they’d been moving steadily down into the earth, and rock rose above them in a dome so perfectly formed that Torvul could not help but think, briefly, of the grace and art of the cities of his own people, lost beneath the same earth as they stood under now.
This dome, however, was natural. Torvul’s eyes, at least, couldn’t find the mark of a tool on the stone, and if any eyes would’ve noticed, he was sure they’d be his. Gideon’s footsteps had stopped, and Torvul had to tear his attention away from the cavern around him to see why.
The dome arched over an underground pool, not really large enough to be a lake, but large enough that his lantern’s light did not reach its far shore. What light his lamp did throw, though, was cast upon a small island, only a few paces wide, smack in its middle. On it stood a circle of tall, smooth shapes. Too regular and straight to be the natural stone, he thought.
“It is on the island,” the boy was saying, his breath rapidly filling his thin chest.
“A god is on the island, boy?” Torvul lifted his lantern higher and peered into the darkness. The tall shapes…obelisks? Pillars? He couldn’t put a word on them. They ringed the island at regular intervals, and something—dark irregular shapes—sat atop each.
“What is left of it,” Gideon answered. He glanced up at the dome, then the island, and finally at the dwarf. “Follow me with the lantern. I may need your help.”
Torvul’s gaze was drawn upward again. He just thought he could make out, on the ceiling, more shapes of red daubed on the wall. Winged and feathered things, standing on straight, human legs. His attention was quickly torn away by the splash of water as Gideon began wading into the pool.
“Wait, you don’t know what might be in that water,” Torvul found himself calling out, before snorting and wading in after him. “Travelin’ with Allystaire is startin’ t’wear off on me,” he muttered, as he plunged first one boot, then the other, down into the water, lifting his lantern high above his head.<
br />
Several paces ahead, Gideon had adopted a graceful swimming stroke. Torvul was only halfway across the water when the boy, skinny and dripping wet, clambered onto the island to confront the last vestige of a god.
* * *
Outside, the scene was chaos.
Idgen Marte dashed and darted among the beasts, using their own shadows to move from one to another, her arms whipping her curved sword from one chimera’s leg to another’s back to under another’s arm. Her blows were not enough to fell any single monster alone, especially with thick fur, the occasional patch of leathery, near-armored flesh, and the bulging of unnatural muscle there to absorb her attacks. But the multiple cuts added up, and soon her blade was flinging droplets of chimera blood with every swing.
Allystaire, by contrast, had no grace in his swordsmanship. His blade was large and ugly and swung in wide, dangerous arcs. The sword’s length kept the worst of the monster’s claws from him and near constant movement kept any of them from trying the same trick that had divested him of his shield.
It was not, given the way his arms and shoulders protested, a long term strategy.
He whipped his sword to his left, felt it bite into the body of a furred and scaled horror that had been opening a wide-jawed, razor-toothed mouth and lunging for him. His edge had taken the monster under the arm and stuck. It twitched and bled, still trying to raise a bear’s claw for him, when Allystaire leaned back just far enough to raise his boot and kick it away, hard. His sword came free with the heavy crack of ribs breaking.
With half their numbers dead or writhing upon the ground, the pack of chimera broke away, and Allystaire and Idgen Marte backed up to the very entrance of the caverns. Inside, they could hear Bethe’s praying, her voice running from a shout to a mumble and back again, invoking Fortune, Braech, Urdaran, the Green, the Cold, and gods and powers whose names Allystaire did not know.
Heaving for breath, and only just avoiding falling to a knee, Allystaire locked eyes with Idgen Marte, who had streams of sweat running down her face.
“Your Gift,” she said, pausing for a deep breath. “Why is it not—”
“I do not know,” he said, turning his eyes to the roiling, wounded pack of monsters that cawed and roared at them. One, another that went on all fours—though one arm and one leg were those of a man, burned a dark brown by the sun, and the rest of his body was that of a wolf—suddenly broke back towards them, leaving Allystaire no time to finish his thought. He stepped forward, holding his sword straight out, the pommel braced against his armored hip, and the point steady in the air like a pike set to receive a charge.
The impact of the thing impaling itself and dying upon his sword staggered Allystaire, and he fell backwards, sword tumbling from his hands, the bleeding, spasming body of a dying chimera locked upon its end. The wind was knocked out of him by the force of the fall, and he had a dim sense of Idgen Marte standing above him, holding ground in a fight instead of leaping about, and with what seemed to him a painfully deliberate slowness, he pushed himself back to his feet, just in time to catch the birdlike chimera, a beast that seemed unfazed despite carrying two of Idgen Marte’s arrows in its flesh. The raptor-like creature was able to dart its head in and sneak its razored beak past the cheek guards of Allystaire’s helmet, and rip a strip of flesh from his face—below the eye, which Allystaire realized had been its target. He seized its neck with one hand and drew the other back, curled into a fist, and began raining blows upon its face.
* * *
When Torvul climbed out of the water surrounding the island he almost cried out in shock, as he saw Gideon kneeling in the midst of the pedestals, before some rough stone block that answered too well to the description of altar.
But what truly gave the dwarf pause was the boy’s thin arms reaching out to some object on it and changing, one sprouting feathers, the other fur.
And then the boy shook his head, and Torvul felt, more than heard, the word No emanate not from Gideon’s lips, but from his mind. It was the sound of a massive gate rolling closed in front of a keep. It was the sound of an executioner’s axe striking clean and thudding into the block.
Gideon’s arms were his own again.
Torvul dared not approach closer because he did not wish to spoil the boy’s concentration. And, in truth, after feeling that resounding wave of power thud through him he was, perhaps, a little afraid. With two fingers he loosened the mouth of a pouch and began easing a potion bottle out of it.
He spared a quick glance at the pillars. Long straight tree trunks, crudely smoothed. And at the top of each one, twice his height, rested a skull. He saw bear, raptor, wolf, fox, and others too shadowed to make out.
Then the dwarf suddenly felt a tug as if at his own mind, and then it was as if something huge was smothering him, something that promised him hot blood in his mouth and fresh meat for his fire. The thing that touched his mind sang a dark and bloody song of strength and power, of animal bloodlust, of safety, and the dwarf felt his body being shaped by this force, reshaped for the necessity and the glory of the hunt. His lantern fell to the ground from fingers suddenly grown large and clumsy.
But it was too much, and though on some level he knew that this spirit, this presence, was trying to help him, he felt very suddenly and clearly that his mind would disintegrate beneath its presence.
And then there was another No, shouted into the air like the crack of a whip. It echoed in the chamber. Torvul found his thoughts realigning along with his body, and he flexed his fingers and breathed deeply, reassuring himself, as he bent to pick up the lantern.
By then Gideon had lifted something off the altar, some kind of crude stone idol. He wrapped his hands tightly around it and closed his eyes. Torvul saw a ripple of flesh along the boy’s arm, as if the spirit was reaching out to change him as well, but Gideon shook his head and the movement along his arm stilled.
“I know,” the boy said, speaking directly to the idol. “But you must understand.” The boy shook his head, intensely. “We do not need this gift. We cannot use it.”
The boy held the idol at arm’s length, opening his eyes as he continued. “Your time is passed. We no longer need the caves. We are beyond this. We need not become animals to take prey. Your gifts are too much. They drive us mad. We no longer understand them, as you no longer understand us. It is time to let go.”
The dwarf felt some kind of answer. It was not articulated, and he could not have explained it, except that it felt like a kind of mourning, a shade of regret. Perhaps in some way an apology. There was a sense of loss. Torvul had the impression of the end of a failed hunt, of partners in the chase parting for good.
Then there was a soft crack and the idol in the boy’s hands shattered, turned to dust, and released a shockwave of power that the alchemist could feel getting ready to expand and fill the cavern.
Except Gideon raised a hand, and just as quickly as the power had fled, he gathered it into himself. It was like watching a tremendous wave being pulled into a small drain, and not of its own movement. It did not flow. It was drawn.
He turned then, to Torvul, his eyes wide and calm as always. “It is done. We should go now.”
“What, what just happened? What did you do?”
“I expect that the others will ask the same questions. If it is all the same to you I’d prefer to explain once.”
Torvul frowned and set his mouth into a grim line. “Why don’t you explain t’me on the way? I might be able t’help the rest understand.” He tried to let his hand rest casually on his belt, his fingers a quick twitch away from the potion he’d eased out of its pouch earlier. With his other hand, he gathered up his lantern, none the worse for wear from spilling to the ground. Of course it isn’t, came his smug craftsman’s thought. I made it. He lifted it high, and turned back to the boy. “You lead the way, talk as we go. My old legs are tired.”
The boy n
odded, bent and picked up his staff, and began walking towards the edge of the island, swinging it like a walking stick.
When Gideon turned his back, Torvul slipped the single bottle free from its pouch and palmed it. Lady, grant that I don’t have to use this, he thought, with a genuine ache behind the words. Then, with a deep breath, he thought, Grant me the wisdom to know what I just saw and what it means for You.
Gideon had stopped, halfway across the pool. “Are you coming? I can see in the dark but you might want to follow me.”
“Right. Coming.” Torvul set off with one last look at the impossibly perfect dome of rock, and the just as impossible hand-daubed paintings that covered it like some temple’s ceiling. Which, he had only just now realized, it had once been.
Chapter 12
The Will
Outside the cavern, as Gideon subdued the vestige of a god within, Allystaire and Idgen Marte found themselves driven to their knees by the sudden, ear-shatteringly loud screams of the handful of chimera they still faced.
The one Allystaire had come to grips with had tried to peck at his eyes again, and so he’d responded by doing his best to shatter its beak with his steel-clad fist, and had put a good crack in it when the thing suddenly seemed to forget that it was even fighting him, turned to the sky, and shrieked. It made a last desperate attempt to break free of the paladin’s grip. When that failed, it simply fell limp, as if struck, still screaming. The intensity of the noise broke through Allystaire and Idgen Marte’s weariness and concentration on the fight, and they backed away, lifting hands to cover their ears.
When the inhuman noise stopped, there were no twisted, half-made chimera arrayed on the ground around them. No wounded monsters.
There were men. Most of them clad in the scraps what Allystaire instantly recognized as livery: Innadan, Harlach, Delondeur, Oyrwyn, even far-flung Damarind. Each bore the wounds that had been done to them in the battle.
“Oh Goddess, oh Goddess,” Allystaire breathed, one brief moment of shock before he acted. He stripped off his left glove and dropped it to the dirt, and scrambled to the side of the chimera—No, the man—he had impaled upon his sword. The man still twitched, blood leaking feebly from around the length of steel planted in his body. Allystaire threw himself down the slope, landing on his knees, stones falling loose around him, and placed his left hand upon the man’s side and his right on the upper third of his sword. He felt the faintest fluttering of life within the body, and tried to reach for it with the Goddess’s Gift. He found it, he held it, and began to pour life back into the man.
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